Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  Why then, David wonders, am I seriously considering whether or not I will alibi the son of a bitch sometime this August?

  For however abhorrent he finds Stanley’s behavior, he cannot ignore the fact that if he does become his accomplice, so to speak, he will also be serving his own interests. All day Thursday, this continues to trouble him, to the extent that he begins feeling in imminent danger himself of forgetting his technique and his medical task. His technique is to coax a patient’s memories into the present, so that they can be dealt with more effectively than they had in the past. His technique is to keep his own personal anxieties, hopes, aspirations, fears, cravings or lusts out of this office and out of the therapy. In this office, he is a neutral and objective listener, an indefatigable, nonjudgmental interpreter. Here in this office, his medical task is to guide back to mental wellness eight severely troubled people.

  But.

  His patients’ disturbing memories are most often sexual in content. As a result, much of his working day is spent listening to Arthur K or Susan M or Brian L or Josie D or any of the others as they reveal—or try to avoid revealing—that the symptoms of their illnesses can be traced back “with really surprising regularity to impressions from their erotic life,” thank you again, Dr. Freud. David accepts this basic premise as an absolute truth. It is, in fact, the very foundation of the medicine he practices here five days a week, save for the month of August.

  But.

  On this Thursday morning after Stanley has made an August offer he may not be able to refuse …

  On this Thursday morning after he has raced to Kate’s apartment at seven-thirty to be with her for even just a little while before going to work …

  On this relentlessly hot and sluggish Thursday morning toward the end of July, David listens apathetically to his patients’ tales of sexual abuse or neglect or indulgence or addiction or identity or dysfunction, relating them only to his own passionate sexual entanglement and finding them by comparison merely dull and inane.

  She calls him at ten minutes to eleven to say that the insurance company has sent her a check, and she’ll be going out today to buy a new bicycle, would he like to go with her? The bicycle shop she’s chosen is on Seventy-ninth, between First and York. He tells her he will meet her there at twelve noon.

  To commemorate the occasion of the Buying of the Bike, as he will later refer to it, she is wearing what she wore in the park on the day they met. The green nylon shorts, the orange tank top shirt, the Nike running shoes and white cotton socks with the little cotton balls at the back of each. The salesman in the shop, a young man who introduces himself as Rickie, is similarly dressed; perhaps there is a bicycle race somewhere in the city today.

  In any event, he is wearing red nylon shorts that do little to conceal muscular young legs, and a blue nylon tank top of a lighter shade and with the numeral 69 in white on the front of it. Hmm. The top exposes pectorals, biceps and triceps that have all had higher educations, either at the local gym or in a state penitentiary. This association comes to mind because he is sporting, on the bulging biceps of his left arm, the tattooed head of an Indian chief in full feathered headdress, and this further prompts the notion that perhaps he himself is an Indian, forgive me, David thinks, a Native American, of course. His skin fortifies the assumption, a rather dusky color that could be a suntan. But his hair is a shiny black, pulled to the back of his head in a ponytail and held there with a little beaded band that further confirms the idea that he may be a Sioux or a Cherokee or, more appropriate considering the fact that he’s twenty-two or -three years old, a mere Ute. He and Kate seem splendidly matched in age and costume. Here in the bicycle shop, David begins feeling like a decrepit fifth wheel.

  Rickie the Callow Ute starts selling her a bike, making sure to flex his marvelous muscles each time he lifts down another one from the rack. He asks where she will be doing most of her riding, and she tells him in Central Park, and then immediately informs him that all she’s got to spend is four hundred dollars, so please don’t start showing her bikes that cost two, three thousand dollars, which she knows some of them do.

  “I think I have some good models to show you in that price range,” Rickie says.

  “Not in that range,” Kate tells him. “I’m talking four hundred dollars, not a penny more, not a penny less.”

  “Including tax?” he asks, and flashes a mouthful of glistening white teeth which David would like to punch off his face.

  “Well, I guess I can spring for the tax,” Kate says and smiles back.

  “Phew,” Rickie says, and flicks imaginary sweat from his noble brow.

  It occurs to David that they might be flirting.

  Rickie displays a beautiful little number painted in a color he describes as “Wild Orchid with Blue Pearl Hyper-Highlight” and identifies as “a Cannondale aluminum bike in the 3.8 Mixte series with your hybrid frame and your TIG-welded all-chrome-moly fork,” Kate listening wide-eyed, David standing by with his thumb up his ass, “and your GripShift SRT 300 shifters with Shimano Altus C-90 Hyperglide 7-speed rear derailleur and cogset,” speaking a language known only to the Plains Indians and young Kate Duggan, who seems to know exactly whereof he speaks. But the bike costs four hundred and seventy-nine dollars, and Kate has already told him …

  “Sorry, I thought I’d sneak it past you,” Rickie says, and grins his boyish all-American grin again.

  “You almost did,” she says, and bats her lashes at him.

  She climbs onto the next bike he lifts from the rack. As she settles onto a black leather seat Rickie describes as “a Vetta comfort saddle, made in Italy,” the side-slit in the very short green nylon shorts exposes the now-traditional hint of white cotton panties beneath. “You keep in good shape,” Rickie says, interrupting his shpiel—or at least his bike shpiel.

  “Thanks,” she says. “How much is this one?”

  “About the same as the other one. Where do you work out?”

  “I don’t. I’m a dancer.”

  “Really? What kind of dancing.”

  “I’m in Cats,” she says.

  “No shit!” he says.

  David wonders if Rickie thinks this older person here might perchance be Kate’s brother, standing and watching this blatant little flirtation and making no comment. Or mayhap her father? Whatever his relation to this lithe slender dancer slipping so easily from saddle to saddle, David seems to have achieved an invisibility only Claude Rains or Vincent Price or Nicholson Baker could have aspired to.

  “This Tassajara in the Gary Fisher line is a bit cheaper,” Rickie says, “but it’s got every feature you’d …”

  “How much cheaper?”

  “Four forty-nine. But it’s got your TIG-welded double-butted cro-moly frame and your Weinmann rims and Tioga Psycho tires …”

  “I really can’t spend that much.”

  “In that case, I’ve got just the bike for you,” Rickie says and pulls down a sporty number in the Raleigh line, which he describes as “Your sweet little M60 with a chrome-moly frame and STX Rapid Fire Plus shifters and Shimano Parallax alloy hubs. Comes in the metallic anthracite you see here.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Three ninety-nine, how’s that for on the nose?”

  “What else have you got?” she asks.

  He spends another twenty minutes showing her bikes, at the end of which time Kate settles on a purple fade, multitrack cro-moly sport with your basic high-tensile steel stays and steel fork and your Araya alloy 36-hole rims and your white decals for a mere three hundred and forty-nine dollars.

  David leaves her in the shop with her credit card and Chief Running Mouth while he rushes back up to Ninety-sixth Street where he buys a hot dog with your basic mustard and sauerkraut on Lexington Avenue and gets to his office in time to greet his next patient, Alex J, who tells him that just when he thought he was making real progress, he’s started rubbing up against girls in the subway again.

  When Kate phones the
apartment at twenty to seven that night, she seems to have completely forgotten the Buying of the Bike. Or perhaps he’s the one who’s exaggerated it out of all proportion. He asks her to wait a minute because he’s just put his dinner in the microwave and if they’re going to talk, he wants to run into the kitchen to turn it off. He takes his good sweet time doing so, letting her cool her heels even though he knows she’s calling from the backstage phone, punishing her for her behavior earlier today. When at last he returns to the study and picks up the receiver, he says, “Okay, I’m back,” and hopes his inflection properly conveys a sense of distance. She seems not to notice.

  “We’re dark tonight, you know,” she says, “but I made dinner plans a long time ago. With one of the girls.”

  “Too bad,” he says.

  “Can you come over later?”

  “No, I have to get up early tomorrow.”

  “What time does your plane leave?” she asks.

  “Four o’clock.”

  “Will you be going from your apartment or the office?”

  “The office. I quit early on Fridays.”

  “So you can go up there.”

  “Yes. Right after my last patient leaves.”

  “What time will that be?”

  “Ten to two.”

  “Can I see you before you go to the airport?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Are you coming to my place tomorrow morning?”

  “No, I can’t. I have a patient coming in at eight. On Fridays …”

  “Sure, a short day.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long is the flight?”

  “An hour and twelve minutes.”

  “So you’ll be up there at twelve past five.”

  “Well, five-seventeen. It leaves at four-oh-five, actually.”

  “Will Helen be waiting at the airport?”

  “Yes. And the kids.”

  There is a long silence. In the background, he can hear voices moving in and out of focus. He visualizes dancers in cat costumes rushing past the phone, dancers stretching. He can hear someone running a voice exercise, phmmmm-ahhhh, phmmmm-eeeee, phmmmm-ohhhh, over and over again.

  “Is something wrong?” she asks.

  “Nope.”

  “Is it Rickie?”

  “Who’s Rickie?”

  “The guy from the bike shop. You know who Rickie is.”

  “Was that his name?”

  “He asked me out,” she says.

  David says nothing.

  “I told him I’d think about it.”

  “Fine.”

  “We’re not married, you know.”

  “I know that.”

  “You have a life that doesn’t include me, you know.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you can’t get angry if somebody …”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t say yes. I just said I’d think about it.”

  “Did you give him your number?”

  “No.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “You’re angry, right?”

  “No, I told you I’m not.”

  “Good. Then why don’t I come to your office tomorrow?”

  “I have patients all …”

  “On your lunch hour, I mean. So I can see you before you go up to the Vineyard.”

  “Well …”

  “Do you have to go up to the Vineyard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you stay in the city instead?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why don’t you marry me?”

  “I’m already married.”

  “Divorce her and marry me. Then we can make love all day and all night. And you won’t have to worry about Rickie. Or anybody else. Not that you have to, anyway. What time do you have lunch? Twelve?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s when we met in the park.”

  “I know.”

  “Twenty minutes after twelve. On the last day of June. I’ll never forget it. Do you have a couch?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Of course, a shrink. Is it leather?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, we’ll do it on your couch.”

  I couldn’t believe we were doing it right on the office couch.

  “What color is it?”

  “Black.”

  “I’ll wear black panties to match.”

  “Fine.”

  “And a black garter belt.”

  “Fine.”

  “With black seamed stockings and a black leather skirt.”

  “Okay.”

  I was so ashamed of myself.

  “Don’t be angry, David. Please.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The doorman’ll think I’m one of your nymphomaniac patients.”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you have any nymphomaniac patients?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “That means yes.”

  “No, it means I can’t tell you.”

  “Well, you’ll have one tomorrow. Does that excite you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I call you when I get home tonight?”

  “No, I want to get some sleep.”

  “Right, you have to leave for the Vineyard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll see you at twelve tomorrow. Who shall I say I am? If the doorman asks me.”

  “You don’t have to give him a name. Just say you’re there for Dr. Chapman.”

  “Oh, yes, I will most certainly be there for Dr. Chapman.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “You’re supposed to say you love me,” she says.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “Of course you do,” she says, and hangs up.

  She arrives at the stroke of noon Friday.

  He comes out of his private office when he hears the outside bell ringing, and finds her standing in the waiting room, studying the deliberately neutral prints on the wall. She is wearing a short-sleeved white cotton blouse and a pleated watch-plaid miniskirt with black thigh-high stockings and laced black shoes. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, fastened with a ribbon that picks up the blue in the blue-green skirt. He wonders if she’s wearing the black panties she promised. She does not look at all like the nymphomaniac she advertised on the telephone last night. Instead, she looks like a preppie in a school uniform.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Come in,” he says.

  She prowls his office like a cat, studying his framed diplomas, running her palm over the smooth polished top of his desk, looking up at the curlicued tin ceiling painted a neutral off-white, circling the desk again, running her forefinger over the slats of the Venetian blinds behind it, studying the finger for dust, pursing her lips in disapproval as she swipes it clean on the short pleated skirt, and then at last going to the black leather couch, and sitting erect on it, her black-stockinged knees pressed together, her hands on her thighs, the palms flat.

  “Would you like to know why I’m here, Doctor?” she asks in a quavering little voice, and it is obvious at once that she is about to play the role of a troubled adolescent girl here to consult an understanding shrink. He wonders again if she is wearing black panties under the skirt.

  “I’ve already told all this to Jacqueline,” she says, “Dr. Hicks, but I feel it’s something you should know, too, don’t you think, Doctor?”

  Shyly lowering her eyes. Staring at her hands flat on her white thighs above the black stockings. Sitting quite erect. Like a frightened little schoolgirl.

  “Oh yes, I certainly do,” he says, and smiles, and joins the game. Sitting in the chair behind his desk, he tents his hands and pretends he’s this troubled little schoolgirl’s psychiatrist, a not altogether difficult role to play in that he really is a psychiatrist, although she’s no schoolgirl, Senator, black panties or not—is she wearing black panties? Is sh
e, in fact, wearing any panties at all, her knees pressed so tightly together that way, Sits there like Sharon Stone, legs wide open, no panties. What looks good to you?

  What looks good to David is Kathryn Duggan, sitting on his office couch, here to make love to him. He has already forgotten the way she batted her eyes at the Callow Ute in the tank top yesterday afternoon. This is today, and she is here, and she is pretending to be a schoolgirl and he is pretending to be a psychiatrist. He doesn’t have to pretend too strenuously, of course, since listening is what he does all day long. But pretending nonetheless, he listens as she raises her eyes to look straight at him where he sits, those startling green eyes peering unblinkingly at him, her hands never moving from her thighs, her knees tight together, a little virgin girl sitting erect on his couch, beginning her make-believe little tale of woe.

  It is Westport, Connecticut, and little Katie Duggan—“That’s what my parents used to call me, Katie”—is thirteen years old and working for the summer as an apprentice at the Westport Country Playhouse, a job she got through her father’s best friend, who that summer was the theater’s accountant or something, “I forget what his exact title was,” she says, “but he was there in some sort of financial capacity, he wasn’t the artistic director or anything,” sounding very genuine in her little schoolgirl role, relating that she was just beginning to develop at the advanced age of thirteen the teeniest budding little breasts, “Well, look at me now, nothing’s changed much,” she says and lowers her eyes in mock shyness again. He does, in fact, look at her now, looks at the front of the pristine cotton blouse, and discovers that as usual she’s not wearing a bra, and discovers, too, that her nipples as usual are erect against the cotton fabric, puckering the fabric, and wonders again if she’s wearing panties, “although I already had pubic hair,” she says, “it started coming in red when I was twelve.”

  “How interesting,” he says. “Are you wearing panties now, miss?”

  “Yes, I am, Doctor,” she says, and smiles briefly, and then resumes the pose of serious little girl relating something she’s already told Jacqueline Hicks, but which she feels is something he should know, too, don’t you think, Doctor? As she begins talking again, she seems to immerse herself more deeply in the role so that he now finds himself truly listening intently, just as any real psychiatrist might, just as Dr. Hicks might have if such a story had actually been related to her, just as—he realizes with a start—Dr. Hicks must have when Kate first told her about that summer when she was thirteen. This is real, he is too skilled a listener to believe any longer that it is playacting. Not three minutes into the story he knows that this is what really happened and that she has chosen this method of revealing to him what she has already told Dr. Hicks, whom she was seeing when she was “really crazy.”