The Tease (The Darling Killer Trilogy)

by Pill, Nikki M.

  He grinned. “Who was that?”

  “Just a friend. Something silly.”

  “I’ve never seen you blush before.”

  “Am I?” I pressed my palm to my cheek, which did feel warm. “I’m just – you know, flustered by this whole thing.”

  “I see.” He had a particularly piercing gaze which he reserved for certain key therapeutic moments like then. I was good at silence, though, so I waited. “So what do you think a person should do if they run into this issue?”

  Good. Take the person out of the hot seat by asking the question in third person instead of second. I sighed again. “Tell their supervisor, work through it, and never ever ever ever sleep with a client.”

  “That’s right. I could go on and on about psychodynamics and power differentials and the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship, but I think you know all that stuff. The real question is – are you just going to be uncomfortable for a while, or is this going to stop you from doing your job?”

  An image of Grant flashed into my mind. His hair falling into his dark eyes, his shy smile, his soft voice. I might go home and eat an entire bag of potato chips after rehearsal, but I could always hit the stage. “I can do the job,” I said.

  “What is it that attracts you to him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s quiet and British and sweet. And he has nice hair.”

  He nodded. “There are worse reasons. How many sessions have you had so far?”

  “Just the intake.”

  “That’s what I thought. What’s the presenting problem?”

  “Low self-esteem. He wants to overcome self-doubt and build self-confidence.”

  “That’s well within your capabilities,” he assured me.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m supposed to help this guy believe he’s a lovable person. Can it get any worse?”

  “Give it time. He might reveal something that changes your perspective on him.”

  “I will.”

  “Feel better?”

  “I do,” I said. “Thanks for listening.”

  “Any time,” he said. “Hey, how’s the studying?”

  “It’s good. Still listening to Walter in the car.”

  “That’s coming up soon, isn’t it?”

  “A week from Tuesday.”

  “There’s nothing to be anxious about,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not anxious.”

  He looked pointedly at my stomach. I had been pressing both hands into it since he mentioned the test, without noticing consciously. The National Clinical Mental Health Exam required two thousand hours of experience, two years in the field, and an assload of studying. If I weren’t one of the thirty percent who fail, I’d get my clinical license, which meant I could bill insurance companies, get into a higher pay bracket, and go into private practice if I wanted. No big deal, honest. I shook a fist at him in mock irritation and headed back to my office.

  • • •

  The intercom buzzed, and my pulse sped up. Stop that, I told myself sternly. It was the last thing I needed. I couldn’t stop myself from smoothing my grey pencil skirt, making sure my pink, faux angora sweater wasn’t bunching and checking that the clasp on my pearl necklace was behind my neck.

  There’s nothing wrong with looking polished.

  I let Max in and exchanged pleasantries on auto-pilot. He stood almost an entire foot taller than I, with a shock of unruly sand-brown hair that I wanted to tousle. He wore an olive-green, waffle-weave shirt that emphasized the definition in his arms and shoulders. I resolved to be diligent about eye contact.

  You’d make a ludicrous-looking couple, I reminded myself. I had black hair, grey eyes, and ghost-pale skin. People often compared me to a daguerreotype or Japanese watercolor.

  That’s a lie. One artist compared me to a daguerreotype, and a photographer once said I looked like a Japanese watercolor. Most people compared me to whatever dark-haired woman they remembered from old TV shows about horror movie clichés, or simply said “Jeez are you pale.” Unless they were telling me I was short. I never understood why people felt the need to inform me I was short. It’s not as if I had failed to notice.

  “We made a lot of progress with your background and history last week,” I said once we sat, “and I appreciate you letting me ask a million and a half questions. I’d like to find out more about the insecurity you described.”

  He shifted and looked away briefly. “Well. It’s not – exactly – insecurity,” he said. “I might be sort of depressed.”

  Almost everyone says they’re feeling depressed. We call that the “presenting problem.” No one walks in stamped with a diagnosis, and everyone is more than their diagnosis anyway. I nodded and waited, projecting openness. Sometimes silence is the best tool. If a person is struggling, and you wait, eventually they’ll blurt something just to end the pause.

  He ran his own fingers through his hair and looked up at me from between his forearms. “I might be absolutely mad.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “I have these… urges,” he said. “They’re embarrassing.”

  I skimmed my memories of our first session. Stern prim mother, quiet father, upbringing religious, but not excessively so. Perhaps more repressive than I thought?

  “It’s about women,” he said. “I like– cold women.”

  “Cold how?” If he’s attracted to women who aren’t affectionate, that could certainly contribute to self-esteem issues. If they’re outright cruel, then we could be facing issues of emotional abuse. If—

  “Cold, temperature-wise,” he said and exhaled deeply. “God, you must think I’m awful.”

  My internal therapist patter hit a wall and slid down, leaving a slick residue of theory and positive regard. “I don’t think you’re awful.”

  “It’s such a relief to actually say it,” he said and collapsed back into the sofa. “It’s so hard to ask for what I… want… in a relationship.” He leaned forward again. “My last girlfriend…” He bit his lip and closed his eyes. “I asked her to lie outside in the snow once, just for a few minutes. And then to lie really still while we – it was the best sex I’d ever had – but she broke it off. I think it bothered her. And it should, it’s fucking weird.”

  “OK,” I said, mentally flailing about for a response. “I understand that you’re struggling with this, but I wonder what judging yourself accomplishes.”

  “I’m trying to make myself stop thinking that way.”

  “Not everyone has the same sexual fantasies. We’re taught that sex is a shameful thing, so sometimes the mind will create fantasies that satisfy a metaphorical longing. There could be something very normal at the root of this desire.” God, I hope so.

  “D’you really think so?” he asked.

  “Let’s talk about this a little more,” I said. “I’d like to understand. What do you like about it?”

  “OK,” he said, and he frowned. “It feels like… like I’m warming her up.” He smiled faintly. Addicts often smile when they recount their behavior, even when they say they want to quit. Reliving can be pleasurable.

  “Like… bringing Sleeping Beauty back to life?” I asked hopefully.

  His smile disappeared. “Not quite,” he said. “I don’t think that far. It’s the heat, the passion, with the ice, and –” He pressed his fist to his mouth. “I’m worried I might hurt someone.”

  “How might you hurt someone?” I asked carefully. Please, please let him say he’s worried about frostbite.

  “Those murders in the news,” he said. “The Darling Killer. I can’t stop thinking about them.”

  He might say something that changes your perspective. Thank you, Jeff, for the understatement of the decade. “Tell me more about that.”

  “I’m fascinated with them. I keep going back and reading the news stories, seeing what he did to them. Wondering what it’s like at that moment, when the life is in her eyes and then… isn’t. And then… he writes the word ‘darlin
g’ on them. So… I wonder if he really does love them, in his way, even for a little while.”

  “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “He strangles them,” Max said. “I read that stranglers do it that way to preserve their beauty.”

  Because a bruised neck and crushed windpipe is fucking gorgeous. I softened my face to make sure the flash of anger didn’t show. “Have you had thoughts about hurting anyone else?”

  He shifted. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Crap. That is extremely diagnostic. “Have you thought about hurting someone specific?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not a monster. I couldn’t – hurt someone I know, if that’s what you mean.”

  “OK,” I said. So if it was a stranger… I fought not to fidget as I asked the Big Assessment Question. “Do you have a plan?”

  He broke eye contact for a second and looked back. “No. I’ve wondered, but I don’t have a plan.”

  I considered asking if he owned a weapon, but hesitated. The Darling Killer strangled his victims, so his own hands were weapons. I wanted Max to know I was listening, but I didn’t want him to feel like I was suspicious. Lack of plan generally indicated no immediate danger, and talking about it was a good sign. If he suspected I would report him, he might shut down.

  “Max, I think it’s very brave that you talked about this,” I said. “I appreciate the strength it took. It’s hard to talk about things that are so intimate, especially if we’re worried about being judged for them.”

  He smiled a little. He interlaced his fingers, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked up at me. “I don’t want you to try to make me feel better,” he said. “I want to stop feeling this – these urges. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t want you to hurt anyone either,” I assured him. “But that statement alone is a positive sign. A lot of individuals who do hurt other people know right from wrong, but don’t really care. Maybe they don’t have the capacity to care. You do, and you’re motivated to make the change, so I think you can.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Have you ever looked into online communities, or fetish communities?” I asked. “Some people do enact scenes and fantasies in safe settings.”

  He shuddered. “I’m not one of those people,” he said. “You always see all these fat people in leather walking into weird places, and I’m not like that.”

  I passed on commenting about the judgment. We had bigger things to address.

  “Really I don’t trust myself,” he confessed. “It’s like they tell you when you have a packet of crisps or something, to pour out what you want and put the bag away. I’m worried – it feels like I’d be eating one straight out of the bag, and then suddenly the whole bag’s empty.”

  I thought guiltily of Grant, and of the bag of blue potato chips I inhaled after rehearsal on Monday. “I know just what you mean,” I said. “Insight is good. It creates the space for change.”

  He fidgeted with his watch.

  “Are you feeling worried about how to get through the coming week?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  “Let’s work on a plan for some other things you can do when you feel… a sense of pressure,” I said. “Because we can talk about metaphor and your childhood and all kinds of other things, but I feel like that kind of stirs a lot of things up – which may be fine for next time. This time, I don’t think it’s fair to you unless you know what you can actually do in the real world to manage those feelings.”

  We worked on some breathing exercises, and he made a list of things he could do to improve his mood and restore a sense of normalcy: going to the gym, watching comedies, calling his parents in England. He looked less weighed down when he left, and promised to call if he felt like he was really struggling.

  After he left, I pulled out the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, the bloated, 900-page Holy Grail of insurance-based mental health treatment. I flipped through the DSM to Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders. There was no actual code for necrophilia, just Paraphilia, Not Otherwise Specified.

  I opened Max’s file and looked at his chart. I picked up my pencil and hesitated. 302.9 Paraphilia NOS (provisional). Did I want to put that in ink? Did “provisional,” which basically means, “I’m not entirely sure,” make it okay? What if he requested a copy of his records, or what if the insurance company refused to treat him? I came into therapy with these naïve ideas about a never-ending stream of depressed and anxious people I could heal through the therapeutic alliance and unconditional positive regard. How much Jung do I have to read to make this right?

  I focused on the feeling of my breath coming in through my nose and filling my lungs, exhaling from deep in the low belly. Inhale and exhale. The present is what we have. Katie is okay. A warm glow started to fill my chest as I thought of her. Katie made it. It’s going to be okay.

  I jumped at the knock on my half-open door.

  “Sorry to startle you,” Jeff said. “How’d it go?”

  “It was interesting,” I said.

  “What happened?” He came in and shut the door, sitting in the space Max had recently vacated.

  “Well. He did say something that turned me off.”

  He waited. Silence is a good tool.

  “Is necrophilia treatable?” I asked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Cat’s Meow Theater nestled in the Portage Park area of Chicago, on the opposite side of the expressway from trendy and expensive Lakeview, but still just as tedious in rush hour. Route 90, the major route from the northwest suburbs to the city, always crawled after work, especially on Fridays. I usually took Milwaukee Avenue from my job in Niles into the city and cut through Jefferson Park on my way down to Portage Park. It might be a calf-cramp inducing stop-and-go, but 90 could be a parking lot. Walter kept me company.

  Walter Donnelly was the narrator on my National Clinical Mental Health Exam study guide CDs. His pleasant baritone accompanied me through traffic jams, interminable freight trains, late-night trips home through deserted city streets, a few two-hour drives home in snow storms, forays to the grocery store, and generally everywhere except the veterinarian. In the latter case, I’d usually have to turn off the CD after a few minutes of Caprice’s howls drowning him out. Usually, though, Walter would recite different scenarios and ask me what I would assess for, then gravely announce the correct answer. Some CDs were litanies of facts that I could, after seven months, recite along with him.

  I arrived at the theater with seconds to spare. I mentally blessed Adam again for having an employee and performer parking lot, slung my purse over my shoulder and across my body, wrestled my leopard-print hanging bag and rolling bag out of my trunk, and headed in through the back door.

  The Cat’s Meow was the coolest place nobody had ever heard of. It was a 150-seat theater whose owner, Adam, had lovingly renovated to hearken back to the 1920’s theaters in Chicago. The lobby had a gorgeous, embellished tin-tiled ceiling painted in gold, an old-fashioned popcorn stand, and a bar designed to look like a speakeasy. The bar was in an alcove framed in exposed brick and plaster, so it looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and torn down the wall into a hidden room. Old movie posters of Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Clara Bow, and others decorated the walls.

  It was almost too cool to stay open. Apparently, Adam did well, but quirky doesn’t always survive in the city, so I hoped for the best.

  The back door took me to an alcove from which I could either walk into the wings of the theater or head upstairs to the offices and dressing room. I hauled my bags up the wooden stairs and arrived in the green room, which was directly above the speakeasy.

  I blinked as my eyes adjusted from the dim hallway to the pandemonium of flesh and glitter. My fellow members of the Chicago Cabaret put on their makeup, wiggled into their stockings, and gabbed away. The walls were a sickly shade of green that made every complexion look faintly ill, and the floor was a creaky,
dark golden wood. The hideous colors had an upside, though: it was virtually impossible to lose anything you actually liked in the dressing room. A pale counter ran along each side of the room underneath long mirrors. Huge fluorescent globes lined the top of each mirror. There was enough space for five chairs to each wall and, for some reason, a cot next to the shelving on the far wall. I never asked why.

  “Hi, Sweetie!” Monica said as I stuffed my rolling bag under the counter. Monica reminded me of those Macedonian Venus statues, all love and abundance. From her lush figure to her wild mane of tiny brown curls, her full lips to her wide-set dark eyes, rhinestone-studded glasses to sequin-seamed jeans, to her cascading laughter, she embodied her mantra, “Go big or go home.” Her complexion was a rich shade of sienna with golden undertones. She delighted in huge flowers for her hair, plump babies, and furry animals.

  We air-kissed, and she whispered in my ear, “Tish is in a mood. I haven’t seen her like this since the Boylesque Incident.”

  “Oh dear,” I whispered back. About a year before, I was a little too candid with Tish about wanting more diversity in the pro troupe. The scene was drawing out some great male burlesque performers, but Tish insisted they were still in the student troupe because of performance readiness. When I pressed about including dancers who explored lesbigay or transgender issues, and a wider range of ages and body types, she made it very clear that I was just a performer, and she was the troupe leader. So I kept my mouth shut, and performers who didn’t fit her vision stayed in the student troupe or moved on to other studios.

  “Yeah. Oh dear.”

  I shrugged out of my plum-colored overcoat. It got warm fast back there. “How’s it going?”

  “Long day,” she said, “and a dead baby.” Monica was a social worker at a neo-natal intensive care unit. I had no idea how she managed it.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I said, and squeezed her hand.

  “It’s part of the job,” she said. “You?”