“What sort of matters?” Virgil asked, her voice flat, trying to not betray any emotion, which, Ricky noted, was just as revealing as any other tone might be.
“First, the truly mundane: The money you stole from my retirement and other investment accounts. You will replace that sum into Crédit Suisse account number 01-00976-2. Write that down. You will do this promptly…”
“Or?” Merlin asked.
Ricky smiled. “I thought it was an old truism that no lawyer should ever ask a question they don’t already know the answer to. So, I shall assume you know the answer already.”
This silenced the attorney.
“What else?” Virgil asked.
“We have a new game,” Ricky said. “It’s called the game of staying alive. It’s designed for all of us to play. Simultaneously.”
Neither brother nor sister responded.
“The rules are simple,” Ricky said.
“What are they?” Virgil asked softly.
Ricky smiled to himself. “At the time I took my last vacation, I was charging patients between $75 and $125 per hour for analysis. On average, I saw each patient four, sometimes five times each week, generally forty-eight weeks each year. You can do the math yourselves.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re familiar with your professional life.”
“Great,” Ricky said briskly. “So, this is the way the game of staying alive works: Everyone who wants to keep breathing enters therapy. With me. You pay, you live. The more people who enter the immediate sphere of your life, the more you pay, because that will buy their safety, as well.”
“What do you mean ‘more people’…?” Virgil asked.
“I’ll leave that up to you to define,” Ricky said coldly.
“If we don’t do as you say?” Merlin sharply demanded.
Ricky replied with a blank, level harshness. “As soon as the money stops, I will assume that your brother has recovered from his wounds and is hunting me once again. And I will be forced to start hunting you.”
Ricky paused, then added, “Or someone close to you. A wife. A child. A lover. A partner. Someone who helps your life be ordinary.”
Again, they were quiet.
“How much do you want to have a normal life?” Ricky asked.
They did not answer this question, though he already knew what they would say.
“It is,” Ricky continued, “more or less the same choice you once gave me. Only this time it is about balance. You can maintain the equilibrium between yourselves and me. And you can signal that equity with the easiest and really the most unimportant of things: the payment of some money. So, ask yourselves this: How much is the life I want to live worth?”
Ricky coughed, to give them a moment, then continued, “This is, in some ways, the same question I would pose to anyone who sought me out for therapy.”
Then he had hung up.
It was clear above New York, and from his window seat he could make out the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, as the plane swept over the city and approached La Guardia. He had the odd sensation that he wasn’t returning home as much as he was visiting some long forgotten dream space, more like seeing the wilderness camp where one had spent a single unhappy summer as a child, crying his way through some long parentally imposed vacation.
Ricky wanted to move swiftly. He was booked back to Miami on the last flight that night, and he didn’t have much time. There was a line at the rental counter, and it took some time to extricate the car reserved for Mr. Lively. He used his New Hampshire license, which was due to expire in another half year and thought that perhaps it would be wise to relocate fictionally to Miami before returning to the islands.
It took about ninety minutes through modest traffic to get to Greenwich, Connecticut, but he discovered that the directions obtained over the Internet were accurate down to the last tenth of a mile. This amused him, because, he thought, life is never actually that precise.
He stopped in the center of town and purchased an expensive bottle of wine at a gourmet shop. Then he drove out to a home on a street that was, perhaps by the inflated standards of one of the nation’s richest communities, fairly modest. The houses were simply ostentatious, not obscene. Those that fit this second category were located a few blocks over.
He parked at the bottom of the driveway outside a fake Tudor-style home. There was a swimming pool in back and a large oak tree in the front that had yet to bloom. The mid-March sun wasn’t insistent enough, he thought, although it did have some weak promise as it filtered between branches that were still to blossom. An oddly unsettled time of year, he decided.
With the bottle of wine in hand, he rang the doorbell.
It did not take long for a young woman, no older than her early thirties, to answer. She wore jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, and had sandy hair that was swept back from her face, displaying eyes that were lined at the corners and some wrinkles, probably prompted by exhaustion, around the edges of her mouth. But her voice was soft and inviting, and she spoke, as she swung the door open, in a near-whisper. Before he could say anything, she said, “Shhhh, please. I’ve just gotten the twins down for a nap…”
Ricky smiled back. “They must be a handful,” he said pleasantly enough.
“You have no idea,” the young woman replied. She kept her voice very low. “Now, how can I help you?”
Ricky held out the bottle of wine. “You don’t remember meeting me?” he asked. This was a lie, of course. They had never met. “At that cocktail party with your husband’s partners about six months back?”
The young woman looked carefully at him. He knew the answer should be no, she had no recollection, but she was brought up more properly than her husband had been, so she responded, “Of course, ah, Mr…”
“It’s doctor,” Ricky said. “But you should call me Ricky.” He shook her hand, and then held out the bottle of wine. “Your husband is owed this,” Ricky said. “We had some business together a year or so ago, and I just wanted to thank him, and remind him of the successful outcome of the case.”
She took the bottle, a little nonplussed. “Well, thank you, ah, doctor…”
“Ricky,” he said. “He’ll remember.”
Then he turned and with a little devil-may-care wave, walked back down the drive to his rental car. He had seen all he needed, learned all he’d needed. It was a nice life that Merlin had carved out for his family, one that held out much promise for being nicer still, in the days to come. But this evening, at least, Merlin would have a sleepless night, after uncorking the wine. Ricky knew it would taste bitter. Fear does that.
He thought of visiting Virgil as well, but instead merely had a florist deliver a dozen lilies to the film set where she had acquired a modest, but important role on a big-budget Hollywood production. It was a good part, he’d learned, one that, if handled well, might lead to much bigger and better roles in the future, although he had his doubts that she would ever play a character more interesting than Virgil. White lilies were perfect. One usually sent them to a funeral with a note expressing deep condolences. He suspected she would know that. He had the flowers wrapped with a black satin bow and enclosed a card, which read simply:
Still thinking of you.
s/Dr. S.
He had, he thought, become a man of far fewer words.
