Owl Dreams

by John T. Biggs

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “The Dick Zombie,” was Dr. Selene’s new name among the Stringtown janitorial staff. Orderlies called a “love sausage alert” when he walked onto the floor, and the nurses speculated on ways to muzzle his pet “trouser snake” before someone got a nasty bite.

  Psychiatric residents were the bottom link of the gossip chain, so when Marie heard one junior shrink tell another about the doctor’s “testosterone lobotomy,” she knew the word was out. Dr. Selene was in love with a client. It was only a matter of time until disaster struck.

  No surprise there. Marie’s love affairs always ended in disaster. But this time she laid out her plans like a demolition expert. She was lucid and alert and ready to resume her life with Archie Chatto. Maybe her fixation on Archie meant she was still crazy, but it didn’t feel that way. She hadn’t felt so clever and in control since she was fourteen years old—just after the police took Gideon away.

  The doctor reacted to love like an inexperienced high school boy. His voice raised several decibels when he talked with Marie. He stumbled over words. He wrote her name in the margins of patient records. His respiration rate dramatically increased when Marie gave him the slightest amount of attention—and sometimes when she didn’t.

  The doctor’s confidence gradually grew stronger, as Marie knew it would. Slowly, tentatively, he nibbled at the edges of her affection, in much the same way he’d approach a tough cut of meat. Take small bites. Chew each one thoroughly. Hope you find the tender parts before you break a tooth. Everyone in the hospital could see Dr. Selene’s behavior for what it was, with the possible exception of the psychiatrist, himself.

  He took meals with her in the cafeteria. Not exactly an intimate setting, but they were together in a safe environment where he was still the doctor and she was still the patient.

  Phase one. All systems go.

 

  Then he took her away from the institution to eat in fancy restaurants in towns with state lodges on lakes built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

  Phase two. Countdown in progress.

  Then he brought her flowers.

  Lift off.

  There was no way the famous and influential Dr. Selene could pass off a dozen long-stemmed roses as cutting edge floral therapy. Marie made preparations for the next step on the courtship agenda. She had studied the manuals and double-checked the figures. Who says romance isn’t rocket science?

  Dr. Selene shut the door to Marie’s private room as soon as he crossed the threshold. He walked toward her slowly, stiff legged, stooped over in a sort of standing fetal position. He thrust his hands into his pockets and fumbled with something just beyond their reach. Unless the doctor had become a banana smuggler, love was on his mind.

  Dr. Selene’s lips moved, but no words came out. Marie knew he had something important to say, something clever and romantic.

  “Well . . . .” He’d probably written a script, rehearsed it in front of a mirror, but now it was as irretrievable as the list of presidents he’d memorized in the eighth grade.

  “It’s like this, see . . . .”

  Marie took a seat on her twin bed and invited the doctor. “Come sit beside me.” She coaxed him with soothing vocal inflections and hand gestures as if he were a nervous puppy.

  Dr. Selene muttered something unintelligible. The poor man’s saliva had thickened to the consistency of peanut butter.

  Marie handed him a half-filled glass of water that was sitting on her bedside table. A prominent lipstick smudge decorated the rim, and she watched him turn the glass so that his lips were positioned exactly where hers had been.

  “Something like a kiss,” Marie told him.

  Dr. Selene choked a bit, but he finished Marie’s water and released the breath he’d been holding since he first entered the room.

  She could have put the doctor at ease, if she had chosen. Marie was good at making men feel comfortable, but then he’d feel entitled to take their relationship to the next logical level, and Archie Chatto would not approve.

  It always came to this when a man and a woman were together long enough. This was the point at which the character of the relationship would be determined. If things went according to Marie’s plan, she’d have her way with Dr. Selene without giving him the medium of exchange every man desired. This was not the first time Marie Ferraro had practiced sexual brinkmanship, but it was her first time with a man Dr. Selene’s age who was so obviously inexperienced.

  He kissed her.

  Archie wouldn’t mind a kiss. Especially a kiss like that. Dr. Selene kept his mouth closed, his lips puckered tight, the way a boy kisses his sister. The back of his hand brushed across her breast, a contrived accident, totally expected.

  The doctor followed a pattern genetically programmed into every teenage boy. When Marie didn’t slap him, he grew bolder. He gave her another close-mouthed kiss and pressed the palm of his right hand over her left breast. He squeezed rhythmically as though he were strengthening his grip with an unaccustomed piece of exercise equipment.

  Archie wouldn’t mind that either. Men had been groping women in the same clumsy manner ever since God made Eve.

  Dr. Selene eased Marie back onto the bed, never once considering a firm “throw down” would be better. Far more consistent with his crude technique.

  He lay on top of her, allowing her to appreciate the feel of his erection through the combined thickness of her dress and his pants.

  Marie failed to suppress an involuntary shiver, but she knew Dr. Selene would interpret her tremor as poorly controlled ecstasy. Sometimes the most seductive thing a woman can do is to cleverly disguise her revulsion.

  This adventure would not proceed as the psychiatrist hoped, but Marie wouldn’t be the one to call it off, at least not directly. She analyzed the situation. What would serve her purposes more—a premature ejaculation or sudden erectile dysfunction? Not much time to decide. The doctor lifted her dress, and was in the process of removing her panties. He employed the same economy of motion a mother might use to change a diaper on a toddler who has passed the optimal age of potty-training.

  The doctor held Marie Ferraro’s underwear in his hands much longer than was appropriate. He stretched them to their elastic limit, and drenched them with palm sweat. When he tangled them in his zipper while dispatching his trousers, Marie knew it was time to act.

  “I know what it is you really want,” she whispered in a slow seductive hiss, barely audible over the central air conditioning.

  “What?”

  “I know exactly what you want,” she whispered louder the second time. She had to because the psychiatrist pulled back several inches.

  All men had their little sexual quirks. Scars left from careless parenting, she supposed. Marie had never met a man who didn’t want something he was ashamed to admit. The psychiatrist was no different. He hadn’t exorcised his own demons through years spent on an analyst’s couch. Dr. Selene’s secret desires were alive and well, and from the effect her obtuse statement had on his formerly vigorous erection, they must be particularly shameful.

  “Before I give you what you want,” Marie said. “There is something we should talk about.”

  Dr. Selene’s romantic moment had passed. Discussion sounded good, if only Marie Ferraro’s panties weren’t embedded in his zipper.

  “Archie has escaped from prison,” Marie told him. She would have known this for a fact even if she had not seen it on the television in her private room. She would have been able to smell Archie Chatto’s freedom in the wind.

  “He’ll come for me. You know he will.”

  The doctor managed to extract Marie’s underpants from his fly. When she ignored his efforts to return them, he folded the panties into thirds and placed them on the bed beside her. His eyes lingered on them while she explained his current circumstances.

  “He’ll kill you.” Her tone was as free of inflection as an automated answering machine. Press one if you are feeling faint. Pre
ss two if you would like to run out of the room. Press three to review the menu. Have a nice day.

  Marie’s indifference struck the psychiatrist with the impact of a hammer. Dr. Selene rose from the bed and backed away from her without breaking eye contact—all the way to the door of her private room. He found the doorknob through trial and error.

  When he pulled it open, Marie heard the sound of clinic shoes retreating down the hall. Probably a nurse. By tomorrow the shameful story of Dr. Selene’s romantic conquest would be in its final form, complete with sound effects and erotic dialogue.

  “Do you really know what I want?” The doctor brushed telltale strands of female hair from his shirt, and checked one last time to be certain everything was properly tucked and fastened.

  “I do.”

  “It doesn’t trouble you.”

  “A bit, perhaps. Not much.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” the doctor said. “About Archie, I mean.”

  Marie knew exactly what the doctor meant. He was about to be coaxed into a rash act by a woman he could not have. Like Julius Caesar. Like Sampson. Like Hercules. The good doctor didn’t stand a chance.