by Anna Roberts
"Okay." Crispian sits back down and takes my hand. "We're ready, aren't we Toots?"
"Yes."
"Give it to us, doc."
"Both barrels," I murmur, pressing my knees together.
"Okay," says Dr. Quinn. "Crispian - you're socially stunted, sexually regressive and entitled. It's this same sense of entitlement that makes you think you're allowed to help yourself to other people's intellectual property and exactly why you're staring down the possibility of a prison sentence. I would say there was a chance of changing this but I'd be lying out my ass because you tick enough boxes on the Hare checklist to be diagnosed as a actual sociopath, and as we all know sociopaths don't do well with life-lessons that require them to develop some sense of empathy."
"Oh," I gasp.
Dr. Quinn shrugs. "Then there's the My Little Pony paraphilia, which is quite frankly one of the strangest sexual fetishes I think I've ever encountered in sixteen years of clinical practise. Again, your sociopathic tendencies make cognitive behavioural therapy not only difficult but downright dangerous and your narcissistic traits only mean that if CBT does manage to make a dent in your twisted little psyche you'll only go back on the internet and find a fresh echo chamber of similar-minded weirdos who reinforce your belief that it is not only normal but in fact desirable to whack off to pictures of anthromorphic horse vaginas."
I blink. "I don't understand."
"I know you don't, Hanna. Or at least, you don't appear to. You must understand that it's very difficult for me to warn you off treatment in this way, not least because I always fantasised about being rich enough to paper my bathroom with banknotes. But from a clinical perspective you are..." He peers at me for a moment and sighs. "I just don't even know where to start. I'm leaning towards borderline but then you're a little bit histrionic and a lot narcissistic and a whole heap of avoidant. It's like you've turned self-loathing into a brand new form of narcissism and on some strange, lizard brained level I think you know what you're doing, and yet on the other hand you're not actually that bright, are you?"
I blink again, stung. I feel my lower lip quiver.
"It's not a clinical term," says Dr. Quinn. "But when I look at you, Hanna, two words spring to mind."
"Oh?"
He nods. "Yep. You are a mystery, a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in Converse and unflattering flannel. You are the most fascinating psychological car-crash I have ever had the privilege of treating. In layman's terms, Hanna - you are a hot mess."
"I'm fascinating?" I whisper. I squeeze Crispian's hand tighter. With his dysfunction and my dysfunction our love affair could rival even the one that plays out in the magical pages of Sensual Music. Yes, he was a post-traumatic concert pianist with a Dave Peltzer childhood but the heroine’s only real psychological damage was from the time her handsy ethnic male friend tried to grab her left breast at a party. She was never a hot mess.
"So you'll treat us?" says Crispian, ever the practical one.
Dr. Quinn nods. "Oh yeah. Although I'm duty bound to say that I don't think you should be together, since she's a bona-fide basketcase and you're a borderline sociopath..."
Crispian holds up a hand. "Whatever. I'm so bad? Did she tell you about the problem drinking? And the kleptomaniac tendencies?"
"Yours or hers?"
"Hers, of course."
Dr. Quinn gazes at me for a moment, his mouth hanging open. If I didn't know better I would say I saw the light of love dancing behind his hornrimmed glasses. "What's your middle name, honey?" he asks.
"Moonbeam. Moonbeam Galadriel."
"Moonbeam," he murmurs, thumbing the corner of his luxury yacht magazine. "Yeah. The Moonbeam. I think I'm gonna call her the Moonbeam."
Chapter Thirteen
The Irma Monologues
After the therapy session I feel strangely restless and innervated. I remove a couple of layers of flannel in the hope of catching Crispian's attention, but he turns on his laptop and the next thing I hear from him is when the door-buzzer goes and he yells from the couch.
"Baby, can you get that? My tag goes off if I go near the hallway."
Crispian has ordered a giant Chinese feast and has misplaced his wallet. I pay for the takeout. The delivery boy coughs. I ask him if he's seen a doctor. He coughs some more and holds out a hand. Jeez - I'm picking up the tips now? I really do hope that bitch-troll of an attorney comes through; I miss the days when Crispian paid for everything. And I miss my car. And my state-of-the-art laptop. And the impromptu champagne lunches aboard his luxury yacht.
"Hanna, you are a goddess," he says, when I stagger back into the great room, over a hundred bucks lighter and weighed down with a small Chinese banquet.
"I am?" Huh. Maybe he's into me after all.
"A goddess of deliciousness. I can smell your char siu from here."
"Okay," I murmur. "Thank you."
He taps on the laptop a little more. I wait. He glances up. "Come on, Hanna," he says. "Shred my duck already."
Shred his...? Oh my. I flush. "Um...I don't know how to do that," I murmur.
Crispian frowns. "You don't know how to shred a duck?"
I shake my head. "I've never...had reason to, I guess."
"You take two forks, stick them in the duck breast and pull them in opposite directions. Then you put the duck in the pancake with the hoi-sin sauce. Although don't bother with the scallions and cucumber - it's against my religion to eat vegetables."
"Oh. I see." I dish out the food. As I'm doing so my phone bloops a text alert and I see it's from Timothy Grope. It just says CALL ME.
I haven't forgiven him for those threatening text messages, so I text back NO.
As I'm rolling up duck in pancakes he texts again. QUIT DICKING AROUND + CALL ME.
I start to text I AM NOT DICKING AROUND I AM PREPARING DINNER but I get as far as the k in dick before my phone slips out of my duck-greased grasp and plops into a container of sweet and sour sauce. Shit.
"Hasten thee with the victuals, wench," says Crispian. "Lest I fade away from hunger."
I fish around in the sweet and sour with a fork. The stuff is really gloopy and when I pull my phone out it's sticky. The silence between us stretches like gum.
"Um...like prithee hurry the fuck up." Crispian's voice is irritable and I kind of want to tell him to get off the couch and get his own damn dinner. After all, I paid for it. I really miss him being a billionaire. He used to have staff for this kind of thing.
"Yeah, okay," I call back. Hopefully the sweet and sour won't taste too much like phone. The bigger question is whether my phone will ever again be not-sticky.
"You're supposed to answer back medieval-like," says Crispian, as I bring him his food. "It's a thing, remember? Our thing."
"Yeah, okay." My phone is making strange noises. I think it might be a text alert but on the other hand it could be some kind of electronic death rattle. It's hard to tell through the film of gluey, bright orange sauce.
"Can you at least get me a fork? I can't handle chopsticks and type at the same time."
I wipe off the screen. Oh crap. It's definitely broken. I wander back to the kitchen, poking hopefully at the buttons, but the screen has gone blank and the strange noises are becoming quieter. "One moment," I murmur, half an ear on Crispian's demands. Luckily there's still a landline in the bedroom. My heart beats echo in my ears as I dial Timothy Grope's extension number.
"Hi. It's me. What's up?"
"Where the fuck have you been?" he yells. "I texted you like five minutes ago."
"Yeah. Sorry. You were smothered in sweet and sour sauce."
"What?"
"Um...the phone. I was fixing dinner and he wanted me to shred his duck and I was like 'I don't know what that means' but it was just that thing you do with crispy duck. And then my hands got greasy shredding his duck and you - that is the phone with your text in it - fell into a container of sweet and sour sauce and I think I broke it. The screen's gone blank.
"
There's a short pause. "You dropped your phone in sweet and sour sauce?"
"Yes."
"Have you tried putting it in rice?"
"Rice?" I get up from the bed.
"Yeah. I read somewhere that if you get electronics wet by accident then you're supposed to put them in rice. It draws all the moisture out of the components."
"Oh, okay," I say. "Does it matter if the rice is egg-fried?"
"Er...I don't think it helps, Hanna." I take his advice and instead bury the sticky phone in a dish of yeung-chow. "Listen," he says. "You remember that book from the other day?"
"Which one? We read a lot of books."
"He was a billionaire with emotional issues and she was a skinny chick with no self-esteem..."
"...um..."
"No. Sorry. Not helping. He'd been beat up by his mother's pimp and burned with cigarettes and fed scraps from the garbage. And she loved him anyway even though she was totally not into him for his money - I mean, personally I think the lady doth protest too much but whatever..."
"...there were several of those."
"Shit, I don't know. Maybe he was a pirate billionaire. No - a vampire. I don't fucking know. I'm trying to find the frigging thing. You liked it, Liz wants it. She's got this theory..."
"...that I'm the Chosen One," I finish. "Yes, I know. Is she nuts or is there really such a thing?"
"May as well be," says Timothy Grope. "Most publishing decisions are based on gut instinct. Occasionally we get to follow the dirty, stinking, filthy money but usually it's all decided with old fashioned Spidey sense and a Twister spinner."
"A Twister spinner?" I stare at the receiver in my hand, unable to believe what I'm hearing. "Is that true?"
"Yep. The story goes that they used to sacrifice goats and look through the entrails, but it makes a fucking mess of the carpet and the vegetarians complained to HR, so what are you gonna do?"
I sigh and try to mentally sift through the vast number of books I read in the office. "Wait," I say. "Was he a werewolf?"
"A billionaire werewolf?"
"Yeah. And she was his secretary and she had red shoes and I remember thinking that was kind of clever..."
"Oh my God, yes - it was another one of those shitty fairytale retellings. Wolf At The Door?"
"Yes! Her name was Scarlett and his was..."
"...Lycurgus," says Timothy Grope, in a flat tone, as if reading from a page. "Lycurgus? Fucking really?"
"I thought it was original."
"Hanna, you think everything's original. You probably still think knock-knock jokes are funny. You thought 'shredding duck' was some kind of euphemism for hand relief, didn't you?"
I hear Crispian call my name. Jeez - he sounds pissed. "I don't know what you mean," I say.
"Hand relief. Happy endings. Masturbation."
"Oh. That. No...I've never."
"HANNA? WENCH? COULD I GET A FORK ALREADY?"
I open the bedroom door. "MOVE YOUR FAT ASS TEN FEET TO THE FUCKING KITCHEN AND GET ONE." There is a short silence as I realise that these words actually came out of my mouth and then I hastily yell "FORSOOTH!" in his general direction in the hope he might think I'm still doing some kind of medieval talk thing.
Timothy Grope is giggling down the phone. "Is everything okay?"
"Yes. Fine. He wanted a fork. We're having Chinese food and he's not good with chopsticks."
"Forsooth?"
I feel my face turn hot. "It's a thing we do. We talk all medieval."
"I hate to break it to you but I think your language might be a bit more Anglo-Saxon than Medieval. You have a surprisingly dirty turn of phrase for such a naive woman. Were you serious about masturbation just then? Like, never?"
"No," I say. "I don't do things like that."
"You've never leaned up against the washing machine on a spin cycle?"
"Why would I do a thing like that?"
"You've never even had a close encounter with the showerhead?"
My face is burning hot. I can hear Crispian stomping around outside and I don't know why, but I'm seized with a strange impulse to lock the bedroom door. "I don't know what you mean," I murmur.
"I know you don't, although I can hardly believe it. You mean to say you've never slid a hand inside your panties and rubbed one out for the greater good?"
"No." Is this really a thing that people do? "It's not healthy. I hear it makes the television remote stop working."
He laughs. "What? What are you talking about?"
"That's what my roommate says. She's always doing it. She says her boyfriend likes to watch."
I hear his breath hitch. "Well, yeah - that can be fun," he says. "I'm just...well...I'm just surprised. Really surprised. I thought someone with a mother like yours would have had some kind of radical sex education."
My mouth goes dry. Visions of hairy horrors and projector slideshows stop me in my tracks. "I have to go. Bye," I say, and hang up the phone. Oh God. Why did I remember that just now?
"Hanna, why is there a phone in the yeung-chow rice?"
I unlock the door, my heart in my mouth. Crispian is standing outside the door with the dish of rice in one hand and my phone in the other. "I don't know," I say. "I have to go out."
"Out? Why?"
"I don't know," I murmur. "I just have to." I feel very strange. The old memories come rising, unbidden, to the surface of my mind. Holy crap - they're so clear. I remember everything, especially the smell - that unholy stink of patchouli and ineffective 'natural' deodorant. Oh my God.
"Hanna, what the hell is wrong with you?" says Crispian. "Is this about your boss? Or Dr. Quinn? Are you having an affair?"
Once he followed me to Florida. Now he can't follow me into the hall. He gets one leg out of the front door and the tag goes off. "Jesus, Hanna," he yells. "Get back here - right now. Get back here and take this phone out of my dinner."
The elevator doors open and I'm nearly knocked flat by the armed police officers who guard Crispian around the clock. There are screams behind me but I just need to get away. I'm immersed in the depths of my post-traumatic flashback. It's the closest thing to a plot point I've ever experienced.
I take a cab back to my old apartment. Jesús greets me at the door, dressed in a frilly apron and yet another pair of trashy shoes. "Hanna, what the fuck?" he says. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know," I say. "I just remembered something that happened to me when I was little. Something disturbing."
"Okay," he says, frowning. "Well, that's not good." He pulls me inside the smoky apartment. Kate is sprawled on one end of the sofa with a notepad on her knees. On the other end - to my intense surprise - is Alicia.
"Oh, hey Hanna," Kate says, leaning forward to accept the joint from Alicia. "You've met El Fupacabra, right? El Fupacabra, Hanna - Hanna, El Fupacabra."
Alicia waves and slumps back against the arm of the couch. Her eyes are very red.
"So, like..." Kate says, in a high breath-held voice. She exhales. "So like when did you decide to become like, a cryptid? Was it a conscious decision or did it just kind of come naturally to you?"
Alicia blinks. "You can consciously choose to become a sasquatch?" she says, in perfect but stoned English. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. You should see Hanna in a bikini."
I burst into tears.
"Oh come on," says Kate. "Don't do that. I'm not judging, dude. It's retro - some guys love it when your inner thighs have big-ass Victorian sideburns."
"I need to talk to you," I splutter, through my sobs. "I'm so confused."
Kate gets up from the couch and drags me into the kitchen. Jesús is cooking something and I see for the first time that the apron and stripper shoes are all he's wearing. I cry out in shock but Kate just sighs. "Hanna, it's just an ass. Will you chill the fuck out? I thought you were raised by hippies."
I can't think straight. I can hardly see straight I'm crying so much.
"What the fuck?" says Kate. "What did
he do to you now?"
"Nothing. Nothing. It was..." I gulp. "It was my boss."
She stares. "Your boss? Holy shit. Which one? Timothy Grope?"
I nod. Jesús hands me a cup of tea. "Are you okay?" he asks. "Did he like, touch you or something?"
"No. He called me to ask about this book I liked," I sniff. "And then we got talking and I...I can't...I can't talk about this." I'm conscious of Alicia ten feet away on the couch. Jesús grabs the remote control, points it at the TV and jabs the button. Nothing happens. He tries again. "Seriously. Already?" he says, glancing at Kate.
She shrugs. "Like you don't get a kick out of it."
He fiddles with the batteries and eventually succeeds in turning up the TV. "Did he say something inappropriate on the phone?" asks Kate. "Because that's not cool. That's exactly why you should have a union."
"Dios mios - is everything gonna be about a fucking union from now on? You tell one bunch of Oompa Loompas to unionise and suddenly you're like trying to lead the proletariat to a successful revolution and shit. It's not gonna happen, Kate. You're never gonna be Karl Marx..."
"I fucking know that, dude. I'm just saying..."
"...worker's rights are the cornerstone of a civilised society. Yeah. I know. Kind of not the point right now. What did he say, Hanna?"
Kate swats him across the behind with a dishtowel. "Scram, shitlord. This is girl stuff."
Jesús retreats. Kate grabs a bowl from the kitchen sideboard. "Just in time to lick the bowl." She hands me a spoon. "Brownie mix. Fucking awesome."
I take a tiny taste just to be polite, but as the gooey chocolate taste spreads all over my tongue I know I'm going to want more. "I had no idea Jesús could bake."
"He has his moments. So what did that creep say?"
"He wasn't being a creep," I explain. "Well, not much. He just said I was...naive."
Kate blinks. "Um...seriously? You're freaking the fuck out over that? Because you kind of are."
"No, I know that. I've always been innocent..."
"...you could call it that, yeah..."
I lower my voice. "But he said I probably didn't know how to...you-know."
