Why Me?

by Treva Harte

  The two them both started laughing.

  "God, Em. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you since forever. I missed you." Cassie looked down at the gin and tonic she was drinking. "I haven't had one of these since we last met. They aren't bad. But I just never drink them without you."

  "I haven't done a lot of things we used to do together, Cass. I was too busy trying to keep everything together. Whenever I saw you in the last few years, you were always such a free spirit. I was probably envious. Oh hell. Of course I was envious."

  "And I thought you'd figured out how to be a grown up! I envied you!" Cassie had forgotten the fun of confessing all your deepest hidden feelings.

  "Man, were we stupid."

  "Yeah, and now we're just drunk." Cassie stared at the glass she'd refilled more than once. "I haven't been drunk in years."

  "Me, neither. I'm sure glad Jim has the kids this weekend. And I never thought I'd say that and mean it." Emily began to laugh again.

  "But Em, what should I do?"

  "Well, you don't seem crazy to me. Drunk and feckless, maybe, but not crazy. But I'll admit this voice sounds serious."

  "I'm scared this will be like last time," Cassie muttered, at last.

  "Well, is it? By the way, I still contend you weren't cracking up then. I mean then everything piled on top of you and you needed out. How about now? Does your job stink? Are you engaged to some new jerk that you want to run away from?"

  "No. None of that. I've been really careful not to make the same mistakes. So I don't understand what's wrong and I don't know what to do."

  "Well, you can't do much about Tash suspecting something so don't worry about it. You do need to go on with the shrink appointment, I suppose. Hmmm. What can I do to help?" Emily sized Cassie up. "I know. I'll dress you properly for a visit with the psychiatrist. You never could dress right for important occasions."

  "I've been dressing myself for years, Emily."

  "Now let someone who knows how do it." Emily answered. "And call me when you're done with the doctor. I want to know if things are going to be all right."

  "I don't think one visit will cure everything, Em."

  "Well, it's a start."

  Chapter Four

  Cassie fingered the pearls around her neck. Her dad had given them to her when she turned twenty-one. She wore them on special occasions. Special occasions like job interviews, funerals and, now, first visits to the psychiatrist. Cassie lumped them all under "Things You Don't Like Doing."

  For a moment Cassie wondered if she'd like her pearls more if she wore them to different types of events.

  Naaaw.

  Cassie studied her surroundings, trying to ignore the knot in her stomach. The reception area was tastefully decorated. The walls were off-white, the abstract swirls of the one painting on the wall were soothing, and the gray leather chairs were surprisingly comfortable. Everything was designed to make you relax.

  The whole place made Cassie very nervous.

  "Ms. Majors?" The woman who stepped out didn't make Cassie feel any better. This woman didn't dress carefully for special occasions. She just dressed that way all the time. Cassie could tell. "Dr. Blessingham."

  Cassie stood up, carefully smoothing her silk skirt.

  The woman held out a nicely manicured hand and gave Cassie's hand a measured, firm shake. Then she dropped her hand to her side and stepped aside just enough to let Cassie into the inner office.

  "Well, then." The woman looked her over. No soothing bedside manner here. "What can I do for you?"

  "Well—uh—" Cassie willed herself not to stammer in the face of authority. "Actually my stepmother recommended you."

  "Natasha Cassidy. Yes. You mentioned that on the telephone. A delightful woman."

  Cassie was sure that was why she had gotten an appointment so quickly with such a popular doctor. Using Natasha Cassidy's name tended to move things along.

  "She said you're a specialist in a problem I may—I am having. But I don't know much about you." Cassie knew that wasn't quite as forceful as she wanted it to be, but in the face of the other woman's formidable courtesy that was the best she could do.

  "You'd like my credentials?" The woman smiled. Once. Nicely.

  Cassie wished she had that professional niceness down herself. It must come in really handy.

  The only problem was that all that professional niceness didn't warm up those eyes of hers.

  Cassie was getting the same feeling she did at banks. It was her money but somehow she always got intimidated as the bank officials waited, patiently and politely, for her to make her case as to why she needed that money. Cassie mustered her courage.

  "Yes."

  "Of course. I graduated from Yale, went to medical school at Duke, I worked several years at the Mintzer Institute..." she moved smoothly through all the right steps. Cassie started to tune out. "...where I began to develop a particular interest in a number of severe psychoses. For example I have written a number of papers on auditory hallucinations..."

  Psychosis? A psychosis sounded pretty severe. Auditory hallucinations? The doctor sounded plenty qualified, but none of this was reassuring Cassie at all.

  "But I'm sure you aren't paying by the hour to hear about me. Something has brought you here. Would you like to discuss it?"

  Dr. Blessingham had finished her spiel. She was waiting for Cassie to talk. To produce. To make it worth her professional time to listen to her new patient. At least that was the way it felt to Cassie.

  She couldn't start talking about a voice that was telling her to chat with someone who might become president. That was just too out there. Maybe she could lead up to it with talking about a mere congresswoman. Oh yeah. That would make everything much more reasonable.

  "I keep thinking I need to talk to someone I don't know." Maybe she shouldn't even mention the voice at first. "I have to tell someone about a person named Lida. I think Lida might be an important person, actually—"

  *What the bloody hell are you doing, woman? Are you insane?*

  Cassie almost welcomed the voice back. In fact, that voice sounded like an island of reason right now.

  "Well, I probably am insane. Why else would I be here?" Cassie answered.

  "Well, people have many reasons to consult a psychiatrist. That would be one." Dr. Blessingham blinked, once, but spoke smoothly.

  No. No, no, no.

  *You're an idiot. But you're not insane. You're only going to get yourself into worse trouble if you stay here. Get the bloody hell out*.

  "You may have a point." Cassie knew that when the voice started to sound reasonable she was in trouble, but her gut was agreeing with that voice. She trusted her gut.

  Besides, the shrink had on a pearl necklace that looked way too much like Cassie's, and anyone who voluntarily wore pearls just wasn't Cassie's kind of person.

  "Thank you. Now would you care to pinpoint your problem just a little more? Most people don't think they are insane. If they do, they usually have a reason. Maybe several reasons."

  "I must be insane to be here." Cassie tried not to giggle. "At least that's the way I'm hearing things right now. I'm sorry I wasted your time, doctor. But I did pay your bill up front and now you have at least forty unoccupied minutes that you didn't have before. They're my gift to you. I hope you enjoy them. Good-bye."

  *Cut the sarcasm and leave.*

  Cassie stood up. She didn't bother to shake hands in farewell. She just walked out as fast as her pinching high heels would let her.

  * * * * *

  All the strange elation Cassie had felt after her exit had long since faded by the time she got home. After all, what she'd really done was paid a lot of money for ten minutes of nothing. As she unlocked the door she thought about the cleaning she had rearranged in order to make time for that stupid visit.

  "What a waste."

  "I totally agree." Cassie stopped, her hand still on the dead bolt lock, and then turned. The voice she'd heard wasn't inside her head. This vo
ice was attached to a real body.

  "What? Who-"

  Wynn Harmon, dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, of all things, was sitting at her kitchen table. His sunglasses were tossed on the table and his long hair, no longer tied behind him, swept down to his shoulders.

  He looked...different. Not as aloof. He looked a little wild. Oh God. Her throat was getting dry just looking at him. And other parts of her body were getting wet. How did he do that?

  Cassie looked at her cat. Pandora was curled up in his lap, something she never did with strangers. They both looked disapprovingly at her.

  "That lock is a total waste. Your security could use a bit of work," he told her, as if it was her fault he was inside.

  "Your manners could, too." Cassie heard the words come out her mouth before she could stop them. Well, there went one cleaning job.

  But wait a minute. Forget the cleaning job. Why was he here at all? Most clients didn't make house calls to their cleaning people. And none of them ever made uninvited house calls.

  For one minute his mouth moved up in a quite charming grin.

  "Sometimes my manners do."

  Cassie couldn't help herself. Against her better judgment, for just a minute, she was charmed. She had never seen him smile. That simple gesture had transformed his face and made him look—well, not spooky but attractive. Approachably attractive instead of good-looking-but-keep-away-handsome.

  Then the mouth flattened back out again as if the smile had never existed. Maybe she had taken to seeing things as well as hearing them.

  "Well, why the hell are you here?" Cassie figured the time for politeness had long since gone. "And how did you get in anyhow?"

  "I'm here to see you. Getting in was absurdly easy. That dead bolt won't help you if anyone seriously tries to enter this place."

  "I don't have anything worth stealing. Most everything here is from yard sales."

  She saw him glance around and her heart sank.

  What she liked to think of as a cheerful, bohemian interior suddenly looked like a disorganized mess. The brightly painted, mismatched chairs looked cheap instead of cheerful. The old sofa with the serapes thrown over the stains on the back looked shabby rather than comfortable.

  Then something clicked.

  She couldn't believe it had taken this long. The accent wasn't quite the same, but the timbre of the voice was. The snotty attitude expressed by those two voices was exactly alike. And "bloody hell" was something Wynn would say, wouldn't he? Her voice had said that, too.

  "You rotten little swine."

  "Ms. Majors?"

  "I don't know how you've done it and I don't care. You can just stop doing it right now. And if I could figure out how to do it and have people believe me, I'd sue the hell out of you for this little trick."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Pardon me, my butt. You're the voice! You've been talking to me!"

  *Congratulations. You're smarter than you look.*

  "Stop it!"

  *Make me.*

  For one long moment Cassie contemplated all the ways she'd like to make this jerk stop. Very painful ways.

  Then she took one, long breath. Calm. She needed calm.

  "Fine. I don't know if I can make you quit. But I assume you didn't do this to show off what a great party trick you have. What do you want from me?"

  "That's easy, Cassie. Art."

  "Oh, no. Art."

  "I need you to help. No one will suspect you if you give him my message since there's no reason for you to know anything about him."

  "Yeah. Right. Why don't you just tell him?"

  "Because Art and I would be dead before I got the chance. Or at least by the time I got out the door. Men with guns came after me in my home last night. They aren't sure when or how, but they know I'm going to send a message. They're waiting for me to do that. So I have to do the unexpected. I have to use you. By the way, that reminds me. I believe I'll need to stay at your place here for a while. Once again, no one has any reason to connect you with me. I'll be much safer here than anywhere else I can think of."

  "Why don't you just mind zap Art?"

  "He's not a person I can—uh—mind zap. His mind isn't receptive to me."

  "Good. E-mail him instead. See, I'm being fair. I'm assuming phone calls are monitored. Right?"

  "I think so. And I plan to e-mail him—after you give him our code to let him know when to get the message. I'm not letting it sit on a computer where God knows who will read it before he does."

  Cassie rubbed her forehead hard.

  "Maybe you better talk to me a little bit more about this. In coherent sentences. Out loud. And slowly. I'm not understanding a word."

  "Fine. But one more thing—"

  "Yeah?"

  "No more psychiatrists. They aren't going to help. You don't have a problem anyhow."

  "Oh yeah, I do. The problem may not be the one I thought I had originally, but it's a big one. A big, annoying Welsh problem."

  "Ah. Yes, I see your point. But that problem isn't going away. Not yet."

  She opened her mouth to explain to him exactly how she intended to get rid of her problem but he wasn't looking at her. Or, if he was, he wasn't looking at her face.

  His eyes swept her up and down and a whole new wave of indignation took over. It was indignation that was making her so warm, right? Yes, of course. Cassie got angrier just because of that momentary cheap sexual thrill.

  "God. I finally took a really good look at you. You may do after all."

  He sounded both stunned and pleased.

  Somehow that was even more insulting, though Cassie wasn't sure why just yet.

  "Do for what, pray tell? And why are you looking at me like I'm a-a prize at auction you might want to bid on?"

  "What? No. I'm just surprised. You look, well, respectable."

  "I am respectable. A lot more respectable than people who break into other people's homes. Listen, bucko—"

  "No, no. I just meant that you look like someone who could go to a Senator's office without being pounced on by security first."

  *In fact, she doesn't look too bad at all once she is out of those cleaning rags of hers. Rather fetching even.*

  Cassie paused. So many different types of anger were now pushing at her she wasn't sure she could express any of them.

  "I—I—"

  *Calm down. You know I'm not here to do anything but get Art, me—and you—out of a mess. There's no need to get in a snit.*

  Cassie opened her mouth to blast him out loud. She shut it again.

  Wynn blinked at her, looking genuinely surprised.

  "Hey!"

  "Yes?" Cassie crossed her arms.

  "That was an evil thing to say to me."

  "Yes."

  "Totally uncalled for."

  "Oh, I thought it was very justified. And Wynn—"

  "Yes?"

  "I didn't actually say anything."

  "No. No, you didn't. Oh my God."

  "I think I can do it, too. You know, your party trick. It isn't so hard. And, by the way, Wynn, besides being able to talk to you I think you should know I can hear what you're thinking. I hear your voice. Literally. Even when you aren't trying to send me a message. Got it, jerk? I can hear the thoughts you don't mean to transmit."

  *Of course. How could I have missed that? I just wasn't expecting—No one has ever been able to do that before with me...*

  "Shit." Wynn said out loud.

  Cassie couldn't help grinning. It was gratifying to surprise the high and mighty Wynn.

  Despite his words he didn't look angry. He looked surprised, then thoughtful and finally concerned.

  Cassie stared in fascination. He had just shown more emotion in those few seconds than she had seen on his face in their whole previous acquaintance.

  Then the thoughts came flooding in.

  *I suppose I'll have to trust you now. But you need to understand something. I picked you to help me because you could receive my th
oughts and do what I want. Now you're both more useful and more dangerous, Cassie. And I'm afraid you're probably in more danger.*

  Cassie stopped smiling.

  Chapter Five

  "Quit that squirming. You aren't making it easier, especially since the last time I did anything like this was four years ago. To a dog."

  "That doesn't reassure me."

  "I'm not reassuring you. I'm shaving your hair off."

  *No, it won't be like Sampson, Miss Delilah. My gift doesn't reside in my hair. I don't think. It's been so long since I did cut my hair I can't be sure.*

  *Very funny.*

  *I hope I'm just being funny. What if we discover we can't communicate this way any more?*

  "I guess we'd just have to go around talking like normal people do." Cassie squinted and then nodded. "OK. I think you'll do."

  He looked at himself in the mirror.

  "Oh, God. I haven't had my hair this short since I was a teenager and living at the—living where I was made to keep my hair short."

  "Your hair doesn't look half-bad."

  "It looks all bad."

  Cassie looked again and disagreed.

  Wynn was handsome, no matter how he wore his hair. The long hair made him look aloof and mysterious and untamed.

  The buzz cut made him look tough. Lean, mean and dangerous. She wouldn't mind jumping him either way.

  "Nonsense. You look like you're in the military. You should fit right in at the Pentagon. Well, I guess maybe you look like you just started in the military with all that white skin showing on your head. But still—"

  "Wonderful. That's been my ambition for years."

  "Listen, you look different. Really different. I thought that was your goal," Cassie pointed out.

  "There's different and there's different. When it starts growing in I'll look even worse. Maybe I should grow a goatee."

  "There's no pleasing some people."

  He aimed one of those rare, lethally charming smiles at her. She felt the unwelcome warmth again as he did. She wished he'd stop that. She wished she'd stop feeling that way when he did smile.

  "Thanks, Cassie."

  *But now we need to stop fooling around and get to business*.