No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  Amanda leans forward to kiss me. Her tongue slides across mine. We remain still, mouths pressed together, gently. She breaks off the kiss, and looks at me.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks.

  I lean back, away from her.

  ‘You know what’s funny?’ I say. ‘I was talking to my shrink. I told him that I wanted to become a new man. A better man. I think the old Jimmy Thane would have wanted to fuck you.’

  ‘And the new Jimmy Thane?’

  ‘The new Jimmy Thane wants to fuck you, too. That’s why I’m beginning to suspect my shrink is no good.’

  And then, because it’s the only decent thing to say: ‘I have to leave now, Amanda. I have to go home to my wife.’

  She looks me over for a long time. For a moment I think she’s going to slap me, or cry, or yell, ‘Then get the hell out!’ But she does none of those things. She says, brightly, ‘You see? I told you he would be here tonight.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jesus. I told you he would be here, in this apartment. Now you see for yourself. He is inside you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. I don’t feel Jesus inside me. But then again, I don’t feel much of anything inside me. I’m just tired. So tired.

  I stand up, head to the door. Amanda follows.

  ‘I need a ride back to the office, Amanda,’ I say. ‘Would you mind?’

  She grabs her car keys from the side table and tosses them to me. ‘Take my car. Leave it in the office. I’ll get a ride in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I turn to leave. She grabs my arm. ‘Jim,’ she says, with a grin. ‘Don’t you want to ask?’

  ‘Ask what?’

  She takes my hand, and guides my fingers to her breast. Her nipple stiffens under my touch. She keeps her palm over mine, preventing me from moving. ‘Ask me what it means.’ She presses my fingers down, on the place where I saw her tattoo. ‘I saw you looking. Can you read Russian?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to know what it means?’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I ask dutifully.

  ‘“Jesus died for my sins.”’

  ‘That’s what it means? Why do you... ’ I pause. ‘Why do you have that tattooed on your breast?’

  ‘So that I can remember it,’ she says, emphatically.

  ‘When I want to remember something, I just use Post-it Notes.’

  She laughs. ‘You see?’ She removes her hand from mine. Reluctantly I lift my fingers from her breast. ‘Do you see how you use jokes? To hide from the truth?’

  I’m too tired to argue.

  In the parking lot, as I walk to her car, I hear the thrum of tyres on the other side of the noise abatement wall. I feel a strange surge of emotion, something I can’t identify at first. It’s not regret – regret that I didn’t make love to her – which is the feeling I was expecting to have by now. This feeling is something different.

  Triumph.

  Yes, that’s what it is. For the first time I can remember, I didn’t give in to my urges. My base, evil urges.

  Maybe this is the start. Maybe this is the new Jimmy Thane.

  As I climb into her car, I smile. The new Jimmy Thane. I like the sound of that.

  CHAPTER 19

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Dr Liago says.

  We’re sitting in his study, that odd room built entirely of leather and wood – oak floors, bookshelves filled with calf-skin bindings, window shades with oak slats shut tight – a room that is somewhere between English gentleman’s club and New Jersey funeral parlour. Four days have passed since my visit to Amanda’s apartment, four days of relative calm – relative, anyway, for Jimmy Thane – four days without a church-basement exorcism, or an abortive sexual escapade, or a public drinking binge in the office lunchroom.

  I glance at the clock on Liago’s desk, old-fashioned enough to proclaim ‘Electric’ proudly on its face. It glows orange.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ I say. ‘I left her apartment and I went home to my wife.’

  ‘And what did your wife say, when you told her where you went?’

  ‘I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ I laugh. ‘Are you married, Dr Liago?’

  A simple question, I think. A question that requires only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for an answer. But Liago strokes his short white beard and mulls over this question as if I have asked him about the mysteries of string theory or quantum physics. He says, finally, ‘I wonder why it is that you want to know that.’

  ‘Just making conversation,’ I say.

  ‘Is it important to you? To know whether I’m married?’

  ‘Forget it, Doc. Sorry I asked.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘Married.’

  ‘I didn’t tell Libby where I went, because nothing happened, and it wasn’t worth the trouble.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says, nodding. ‘You’ve had quite a week. You broke into someone’s house and found cash in a garbage bag. You suspect that the man who hired you is involved in some sort of criminal enterprise. And you drank again – drank champagne—’

  ‘I didn’t exactly drink,’ I insist. ‘It was a party, and I was forced to do it.’

  ‘You were forced to drink,’ he says, in that maddening tone used by psychiatrists and parents – the one where they repeat your words exactly, thereby making you sound ridiculous and guilty.

  ‘That’s exactly right.’

  ‘And you looked down your secretary’s shirt and saw her breasts. And you kissed her.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘More or less. The kiss wasn’t much. It lasted just for a second.’

  ‘Do you want my opinion?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘These do not sound like the actions of a man who wants to live a quiet and normal life. Do you agree?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘On its own, everything you’ve told me has a perfectly acceptable explanation. You broke into a house because you wanted to find out who was stealing from your company. You sipped alcohol because your Vice President of Marketing was trying to embarrass you.’

  ‘Vice President of Sales.’

  He ignores this. ‘You went out last night with your receptionist because... ’ He stops. ‘Why exactly did you go with her?’

  He’s got me. I entered her car and let her drive me because I wanted to fuck her. Because I couldn’t get that image out of my mind, of her breasts, and that Cyrillic tattoo, and because I wanted to see her outstretched on a bed, naked, with her back arched and her ribcage exposed, so that I could read the writing on her body at my leisure, like a novel with a delicious twist to the ending.

  Dr Liago is waiting for me to explain why I got into Amanda’s car. But the best I can do is offer a guilty smile.

  ‘You see?’ Liago says, triumphantly. ‘Even the fact that you are investigating this theft from your company – even that, in itself, is self-destructive. Just as Libby told you it was. You turn over rocks, looking for answers, but the answer is staring at you. You were hired not to look for answers. Your venture capitalist, the man who hired you—’ He glances down at his pad to search for the name. ‘Tad Billups. He doesn’t want you poking around, answering policemen’s questions about Ghol Gedrosian. He told you this. But what do you do? You poke around. The very fact that you do this is a way of destroying yourself – of denying yourself that fresh start that you deserve. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the same way, you attempt to destroy your relationship with your wife. You do this by... well, let’s call it flirting – with your receptionist.’

  ‘I see where you’re going with this.’

  ‘Do you?’ He stares at me. Finally he asks: ‘Have you talked to Gordon Kramer yet?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what happened. About the kiss. About the drink.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because I’m afraid Gordon will show up at my office with the grim
face of a hangman, and that he’ll punch me in the jaw, and that he’ll handcuff me to a sprinkler.

  But out loud I say, ‘Because I would prefer to talk to you about it.’

  ‘Good,’ he nods. He seems genuinely pleased, that we’ve reached a new level of trust.

  But something is bothering me. I try to recall what Liago just said, try to replay his words in my mind.

  ‘That name,’ I say.

  He looks at me warily, and – is it possible? – do I see a flash of fear in his eyes, that he’s been caught in some kind of mistake?

  ‘What name?’

  ‘Ghol Gadro... whatever.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says. He looks down at his pad again. ‘Ghol Gedrosian,’ he reads.

  ‘Did I tell you that name? I don’t think I did.’

  He smiles. ‘Of course you did.’ He taps the precise spot on his yellow legal pad where he wrote the name.’

  But his scribbling is quite small, and Liago’s chair is several feet from mine, and he doesn’t offer me the pad to see for myself.

  ‘How else would I know it?’ he asks.

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘From the sound of it, Mr Thane, you’ve had a very exhausting week.’ A polite way of saying: You sound paranoid.

  ‘I am pretty tired,’ I admit. ‘And things will only get worse. Tomorrow I’m going to fire a lot of people. More than half of the people that work at my company.’

  ‘How does that make you feel?’

  ‘Feel? I don’t feel anything. It’s my job. I have a list in a desk drawer. I fire whoever’s on the list.’

  ‘You enjoy that.’

  I’m appalled. ‘Enjoy it?’

  ‘Having power. A power that you can’t exercise over your own life. You – a man who can’t refuse a drink at a party, who can’t keep his eyes from wandering down an employee’s shirt, who can’t stop lying to his wife about where he goes at night – you suddenly have a chance to determine other people’s fates. Isn’t that so?’

  I squint. ‘That’s not very charitable, Doc.’

  ‘Perhaps. But is it true?’

  Before I can answer, Dr Liago’s face widens in surprise. For an instant, I think he is incontinent, because suddenly he has an embarrassed look, and he reaches a hand down to his pants. Then he fishes in his pocket, and finds a cellphone. It vibrates.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he says, looking at the screen of the phone. ‘This is very... ’ His voice trails off. ‘I’m afraid it’s an emergency. Can you wait here?’

  ‘No problem, Doc.’

  He stands, lays the yellow legal pad face-down on his chair, and walks halfway to the door. Then he stops, and – thinking better of it – returns to his chair, and retrieves the pad. Without apology or acknowledgement, he removes the pad from his chair, and carries it with him out of the room. He shuts the door behind him.

  I sit very still, trying to listen through the thick wood of the door.

  I hear Liago’s voice, rising with emotion, but his words are muffled, and I can make out only the most general impression that he’s arguing with someone on his cellphone.

  Maybe he knows I’m listening, because he says two quick words, and then there’s silence, and then I hear his footsteps on the uncarpeted floor in the entry, growing distant. The exterior door of the house opens and shuts. I rise from my chair, go to the slatted window, and peek through.

  Liago is walking away from his own house, down the long gravel driveway. He stops next to his Crown Victoria. His back is towards me; I can’t see his face. He presses the phone to his ear, gesturing as he speaks.

  This continues for a minute – Liago pantomiming, gesturing intently, arguing. When he turns around, though, and I see his expression, I realize something quite different: he’s not arguing. He’s begging. His face is ashen. His hands shake.

  I dart to the side of the window, out of his view, but it doesn’t matter; Liago has forgotten about me. He does not even look in my direction. His attention is rapt, held by that phone call.

  Which is most welcome, because it gives me the chance I’ve longed for – which is to snoop through Liago’s private belongings.

  I have a rule: if you don’t want me to see your things, for God’s sake, don’t leave me alone with them. Especially if you’re my psychiatrist. After all, who doesn’t want to know the secrets hidden by his own shrink?

  Alas, Liago’s office doesn’t hold much promise for a man like me, being devoid of intimate personal effects. The top of his desk is bare – no pictures, no mementos – and the room is decorated with that sparse movie-set quality that I noticed the first time I was here. It’s an office that conveys the notion of being a ‘psychiatrist’s office’ without really seeming like a place where an actual human being works or lives. I’ve met men like Liago before – men who are more interested in portraying themselves to the public, rather than actually living their lives. You see this a lot in the venture capital business, where the walls of private offices are adorned with lucite IPO plaques, listing lead underwriters and the number of millions raised, but contain no pictures of little Johnny playing Pee Wee Football, or the venture capitalist’s wife wearing a wedding dress.

  I walk to Liago’s desk. There are two drawers on the side, and a narrow one on top. I try a side drawer first. It is empty. The second drawer is empty, too.

  I despair of finding anything interesting about this drab little man to whom I pay $125 per hour, and to whom I spill my own secrets. But then I pull open that final drawer – the thin long one at the top of the desk.

  And I’m glad that I do.

  Because there’s a big black gun, which slides across the interior of the drawer when I open it, the way a chewed-up Bic pen might slide if you open a drawer too quickly.

  Now that is interesting. A big black gun. How many shrinks keep big black guns in their desks?

  I look at it, warily, from a distance. I wonder what kind of patients Dr Liago sees. They must be very dangerous men.

  I close the drawer – much more slowly and gently than I opened it, to be honest – and begin to explore the other side of the room.

  What attracts my interest now is the metal filing cabinet, the one with the oversized and intricate lock. This must be where Liago keeps his patient records. This is where, for example, he must keep all those pages from his yellow legal pads – like the pad that he just removed from the office – the pad with all the notes from our conversations.

  I am not expecting this cabinet to reveal much – not with that big lock securing the drawer – but I tug anyway. And wouldn’t you know it – the drawer glides open easily.

  The good news about Dr Liago, I now see, is that he keeps copious and detailed notes about all of his patients.

  The bad news about Dr Liago is that he has only one patient. And that is me.

  At least, this is the only way I can explain what I see in the filing cabinet. Inside the drawer is a single hanging folder, stuffed thick with yellow sheets of paper. The folder is labelled in a neat hand. ‘Thane, Jim’, it says.

  And that is all.

  There is not one other folder. Not one other patient.

  Just one: ‘Thane, Jim’.

  I open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, to be certain. That drawer is empty.

  Just one folder. Just one patient. ‘Thane, Jim’.

  I feel a sickness inside me, a dark fear rising from the pit of my stomach, threatening to engulf me. There is something... wrong here. Something dangerous. A doctor with a gun. A doctor with only one patient.

  My fingers flit through the pages in the hanging folder. The sheets are thick with scribbles, tiny and intricate handwriting, the ravings of a lunatic. There is an impossible amount of writing – too much information to be gleaned from the one session that I spent with Dr Liago.

  I read the pages, flipping through them quickly, at random. ‘Gordon Kramer’, a paragraph begins, in that tiny crazed writing, and Gordon’s name is underlined. The
notes continue: ‘St. Regis. Garage. Handcuffs. Parking Area 4C. Sobers him up.’

  Another paragraph starts: ‘Hector Gonzales. Bookie. What happened to Jim’s finger? Libby drives him to hospital. Bloody dish towel around hand. Jack in the Box for hamburger.’

  These are incidents from my own life. I remember them clearly. They are seared into my mind. But what I don’t remember is telling Dr Liago about them. About any of them.

  ‘Lantek, Ethernet networking – VP of Sales – made drunken pass at Bob Parker’s wife while high. San Francisco loft.’

  I want to read more about this incident – and all the others recounted in the doctor’s notes – but behind me, the door creaks, and I turn to see it opening. I know that I can’t make it back to my chair in time. Instead, I return the folder, softly close the filing cabinet, and take just one step away, into the corner of the room, where I pretend to be studying the diploma on the wall. ‘Dr George Liago, Doctor of Medicine, Cornell Medical School, 1972’, it proclaims.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Liago says, entering the room, breathless. ‘That was rude of me. I’m sorry, but I had to take that call. An emergency, you know.’

  He sees me standing near his desk, which is clearly not where he expected to find me – and his eyes dart around the office, suspiciously, before they return to me.

  ‘No problem,’ I say. ‘Just admiring your diploma. I always wondered how they make the script so fancy. It must take them an awful long time to write each one by hand. How many people were in your class?’

  ‘I think it’s a mechanical reproduction, Mr Thane,’ he says.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, trying to smile. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Not much of a joke.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘Should we continue?’

  I return to my seat.

  He sits down in the chair across from me. I try to keep my face blank, try not to telegraph my distress.

  For a moment, I think about confronting him – standing up, stomping to the file drawer, wrenching it open, and shouting, ‘Where are your other patients? What kind of doctor are you?’

  But something tells me not to. Just to play dumb. Which isn’t terribly hard for a man like me.