by Jem Fox
I used the pay phone to call work. I left a message for Merle and told her my apartment had been broken into. Truth. I told her I was okay. Truth. I told her I didn’t know when I could come back to work. Truth. I’d have to go in eventually to pick up my last paycheck.
I have to find somewhere else to stay while I find another apartment. I have to explain it to the institution. And I have a ten-page paper due on Friday. But first I have an appointment.
At the municipal building I was getting ready to walk through the metal detector when I remembered I still had the gun in my backpack.
I pivoted and went across the street to the bus station and stuffed the backpack into a locker, dropped in a quarter and got back a key. All my worldly possessions. And Robby’s gun.
Carl’s waiting room is aptly named. He always starts me late, then wants me to stay past the hour. He works his little bit of power like a dog working a bone.
He finally came to the door and waved me in impatiently, like I was the one who’d kept him waiting.
How to describe Carl. He always wears a plain-colored shirt — a weird shade of green or brown never seen in nature — with a skinny, cheap tie that turns over on itself halfway down his skinny, caved-in chest. He always has sweat on his upper lip. He tepees his fingers together and smirks when you talk, balancing his elbows on the arms of his office chair. He’s not bald, but he wears his hair in a combover anyway. He smells like corn chips.
He sits in a chair that pivots, leans back, and rolls behind a big metal desk and the chair I get is hard wood with a crack running down the seat that pinches my ass if I shift wrong.
He leaned back and did the tepee thing with his fingers. “And how are we today, Darla?”
“I can’t speak for you, Dr. Warner, but I’m fine.”
He has a sour little smile. “I heard from your social worker that you left work early yesterday.”
They keep tabs on me like I’m one of those bears they shoot with a dart, tag, and then follow around. Like I have a shaved ass and a bad attitude and can’t be trusted around campers and picnic baskets.
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Hmm.” He pursed his big shiny lips and nodded real slow, looking at the ceiling. You know how some people will raise their voice to talk to someone who doesn’t speak English? Carl always exaggerates his expressions like I was raised by wolves and don’t comprehend human emotion.
“Your supervisor mentioned your ‘illness’ when we had our conference call. I asked her about the quality of your work, Darla, and do you know what she said?”
“No, Dr. Warner.” I wished I still had the gun. “What did she say?”
“She said you don’t make friends easily. Is that true?” He picked up his pencil and twiddled it between his first two fingers. “Do you not make friends easily?”
“I’m there to work. It’s not a social occasion.”
“And what is a social occasion for you, Darla?”
This is what got me into trouble when they first brought me in. They weasel around and ask questions that I can’t fake the answers to. But I’ve been out for the better part of a year. I’m better at faking now.
“A social occasion is when I get together with my friends and relax.”
“So you do have friends then.”
Talking to Carl was like choking down cold, lumpy oatmeal. You get halfway through the bowl and you think you’ll never make it the rest of the way.
“Sure. I have friends.”
“And what would their names be?”
Sometimes I try to focus on his sweaty upper lip and just stare at that so I don’t have to look into his beady little eyes.
“Well, last night I ordered a pizza and watched some TV with Robby and Ramón.”
His eyebrows went way up and he leaned forward, cocking his ear toward me, making a fake “wow” face. “Robby. And Ramón. Those are boys’ names, aren’t they?”
If I let a pause hang too long before I answered, I felt like it was a point for him.
“Yes, they are.”
“So … your friends are male.”
“Some of them.”
“And are you special friends with one of them? Robby? Or Ramón?”
I started to answer but he cut me off. “Or are you special friends with both of them?”
He never riled me, but he never stopped trying. I kept my voice pleasant. “Are you calling me a whore, Dr. Warner?”
He tapped his index fingers together and smiled. “I’m not calling you a whore, Darla. Are you calling yourself a whore?”
This is why people hate psychiatry.
The only assumption I could make about my “therapy” was that if I survived a year of sessions with Carl without beating him to death with his stapler, I would prove that I was sane and untroubled enough to merge with society.
The rest of our session was more of the same. Veiled insults and mockery from his side of the desk, bland refusal to engage from mine.
Every time I was there, I would try not to look around the room and think about the differences from when it was James’s office. I would try not to think about the painting James had behind his head instead of Carl’s framed certificates. I would try not to remember the heavy blue pottery rabbit he kept on the corner of his desk. I wish I’d taken that rabbit. But that would have broken so many rules. My father’s, about having things you care about. James’s, about stealing. Although you can’t really steal from the dead, can you?
When I got up to leave, Carl stretched out his arms and drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. “Darla, I’m afraid I may have to make a negative report about your cooperation with the program.”
I held onto the back of that torturously hard chair and imagined throwing it at his head. “Why is that, Dr. Warner?”
He shook his head sadly. “I just don’t feel we’re seeing the kind of progress we should expect to see at this point.”
I let my gaze wander up to the ceiling. I pursed my lips. I cocked my head to the side. I nodded slowly and exaggeratedly. “I see what you’re saying.”
He purely glowed with smugness. He started to talk, but I cut him off.
“Maybe—” I pursed my lips and touched my fingertip to my chin. “Maybe I should try a different therapist.”
That got his attention. He looked like a peanut had just lodged in the wrong pipe.
“Maybe a woman.” I raised my eyebrows as high as they could go. “We might have a better rapport.”
He glared and started to come back with what was no doubt going to be a very sharp retort, but I was already sliding backwards through the door and waving a cheery goodbye. I sprinted for the elevator.
I hope that sweaty upper lip is a sign of impending stroke.
At the student services building I rode the rickety elevator up to the third floor and checked out the bulletin board at the front of the work-study office.
There were a dozen index cards stuck there with various jobs people needed done. I passed over the ones for babysitting and yard work and found what I needed. I checked to make sure none of the secretaries were looking my way, then I ripped the card down and shoved it in my front pocket.
I went down a floor and walked into an office, smiled, and asked nicely, with tones of apology, if I might borrow a campus directory. Then I looked up the professor’s address. Telephoning was no good. I needed to jump to the front of the line. No time to waste when you’re homeless and jobless.
The bus ride over was uneventful. In the light of day, I could feel myself waver. It seemed a little foolish to abandon my apartment and my job just because of Robby and Ramón. They were probably just trying to scare me. Impress me with their manliness and their toughness and their little plastic gun.
But my father had trained me better. First instinct, best instinct. Whatever scares you in the deep, dark night is just as dangerous in the daylight — more so, because you’re less afraid and therefore less cautious.
Daddy
didn’t abide by second thoughts. He operated entirely by first thoughts. Robby and Ramón came for me with a gun. Robby and Ramón threatened my life. They are Violent Offenders. They are would-be Killers and probably would-be Rapists. They are Bad Men. My father would have killed them, then left town. I didn’t kill them, but I did injure them. I’m not leaving town, but I will take the bolt hole. I’m going to hide out, double back, triple-check. Then I’ll come back out and resume living aboveground, once the threat has faded away.
My father wouldn’t have accepted a faded threat — only a completely obliterated threat. That is just one difference between him and me. I’m willing to settle for something less than the complete obliteration of my enemy.
I was thinking about what Merle said to Carl about me not making friends at work. I admit that stings a little. I do more than my fair share of the labor and I never leave scut work for the next shift. As cafeteria workers go, I think I’m solidly in the top ten percent.
But I remember a conversation I had last week with a washed-out blonde named Melody.
Melody told me she wanted to be a veterinarian. That’s the kind of job an eight-year-old wants. “Why?,” I asked her. “Because I love animals,” she said. “Really?,” I replied. “Then why would you want to be around sick and injured animals all day? Ones who got hit by cars? Ones who’d eaten poison? Ones who…” Well. She stopped me there.
Seems to me the only person who’d want to be a veterinarian is someone who hated animals. That’s one reason I don’t have friends. I’ve been infected with a poison called reality and it’s always trying to leap onto a new host.
This is how it works. If you do your share of the work and smile pleasantly at your coworkers and say “I’m sorry, I can’t, but thank you for asking” to the first three invitations, they will simply assume that you go home to a husband that beats you or a mother who’s sat in her wet adult diaper all day waiting for you to come home and heat up a can of soup. They get it — there’s no reason to belabor it. You’re excused from further invitations and again, as long as you do your fair share of the work and cheerfully cover for Margaret when she has her dental surgery, there’s no problem at all.
I knocked on the professor’s door. The house is big and brick with dark green trim and a tile roof overhung with century oaks. The front walk has buckled from tree roots but it still manages to look like money. The houses along University Row all have that same slightly beat-up look to them — the same look the professors themselves have. Where the profs have cashmere sweaters with holes and nice suits going threadbare at the cuff, the houses have gutters full of leaves and fancy trim flaking paint. They don’t look like they can’t afford to get things fixed up. They look like they have so much money they just don’t give a shit.
I knocked again, using a tarnished brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. I hunted for a doorbell but didn’t see one. Just as I was about to give up and go snooping around the back, the door opened.
The professor, glasses falling off the end of his nose, cardigan buttoned wrong, was holding a red leash in one hand and looking mighty annoyed.
“Hello, sir,” I said in my best fake brought-up-right voice. “I’m here about your ad looking for a dog walker.” I looked pointedly at the leash.
“Thank God. Come in.” He stepped backward and waved me in absentmindedly. The hallway was wide, the ceiling was tall, and the oriental rug was faded.
He walked straight back to the kitchen, passing through a swinging door. A big golden retriever jumped up and greeted me like a long-lost friend.
The professor rifled around the countertop, which was piled with papers and snacks and magazines. “Did Marilyn send you?”
“Um, no, sir. I got your information from the work-study office.”
He wheeled around and pushed his glasses back up his nose, frowned, and looked me up and down, but not in the sexual way, just the “you look mighty small for a college student” way. “And Marilyn didn’t send you?”
“No, sir.”
He went back to his search. “Do you have any experience with dogs?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve had dogs my whole life.”
“What’s your major?”
I didn’t want to say Business. He was a professor of Literature. “Undecided. I’m just a freshman.”
He harrumphed and then gave a little crow of satisfaction and came up out of the clutter with a ring of keys. He searched through them and started working one off the ring.
“What’s your name?”
“Darla.”
“Let me see your student I.D.”
I dug it out of my backpack and handed it to him. He looked at it, grunted, and handed it back.
“Darla, I am late for a departmental meeting. I’m going to trust that a lengthy interview is not necessary for a job requiring so few skills.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here is a key to the house. You’ll need to come by and walk the dog twice a day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I would prefer late afternoon. You need to walk him at least a mile or he won’t get enough exercise to settle down in the evening. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Never let him off leash outdoors. He’ll run for the hills. There are bags for his waste in that drawer; never forget to take them. The neighborhood watch in this area is almost entirely focused on people who don’t pick up after their dogs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can feed him when you return after the afternoon walk. The food is here. The scoop is in the container — he gets one scoop in his bowl. And make sure he has fresh water.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stopped then and really looked at me for a moment. “Do you have any questions?”
I cleared my throat. “I have an afternoon class a couple times a week. Is it okay if I come a little later on those days?”
“Fine.”
My next question was a delicate one. “Will there ever be anyone else here? When I come?”
He didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even wonder if there might be a nefarious reason for my asking.
“Unlikely. My wife is an attorney and works long hours. My son, who until this week was responsible for the walking and feeding of Horatio, has decided to pursue some extracurricular activities that will keep him away from home until later in the evening. You can ring the bell before you let yourself in as a precaution, but I highly doubt you’ll ever run into one of us. The only reason I’m here is because — good God, I’m late. I have to go.”
He shoved the leash at me and grabbed an overstuffed leather bag off a chair. Lifting a hand halfheartedly, he went out the front door, slamming it shut.
Horatio, staring at his leash in my hand, whined softly.
I looked around. The professor just walked out and left me standing in his house with everything he owned at my disposal and he’d known me all of five minutes. I shook my head and addressed the dog. “All this, Horatio, and they don’t worry one whit about losing it.”
I walked over and opened the junk drawer where the professor had tossed the ring of keys, searched through it for the one I wanted, and worked it off. I tucked it in my front pocket and patted it. Mission accomplished.
I hooked the dog to the leash and let myself out. I was halfway down the sidewalk before I remembered we hadn’t discussed when I was getting paid.
The night of no sleep caught up to me around three o’clock when I was sitting in Comm 101 being baked by the sun coming in through the ceiling-high windows.
Unfortunately it was a small class and a small room, so I couldn’t ease myself down into a good napping position. I should have skipped class and taken a study carrel nap at the library.
The guy who teaches that class is young. He wears stained white button-ups and dark pants with a cheap sheen to them. His hair is down to his collar and he swings his head to the side to knock it out of his face.
He droned on about Marshall McLuhan
and the global village and wrote some complicated graph I couldn’t decipher on the blackboard. It felt like there were weights tied to my eyelids.
I had my ballpoint propped on my notebook page and every once in awhile I’d startle and notice that my sad attempt at note-taking had degenerated into just a shaky line trailing off across the paper. I caught the guy one row over looking at me. He grinned a little and made that quacking motion with his hand, rolling his eyes toward Shaggy. Without cracking a smile, I looked back at my notebook and my spirit writing.
I don’t know why I bothered going to the lecture. Hopefully Shaggy didn’t notice my eyes sliding shut and my head slipping forward and then snapping back. I don’t want him in a poor frame of mind when he grades my final paper.
When the clock finally ticked over to ten till the hour, people started shuffling their papers and sliding things into their bags. Shaggy summed up with his voice raised, but it didn’t appear anyone was listening. It was a relief to stand up and stretch.
The wide hallway was crowded with a traffic jam of human bodies. I had another class across the quad. I stack my schedule so I can get my work hours in. The next one was an auditorium lecture so I thought I could grab a cup of coffee, sit in the back, and bail if I got too tired.
“Darla.”
Some guy I didn’t know was leaning against the wall. Good-looking. Dark hair, slim build. He said my name again and beckoned me over. I didn’t move. I just stood there and let the students pass around me like floodwater around a post. I didn’t know him. And he sure as hell didn’t know me.
A hand gripped my elbow and another guy was standing right next to me. “He wants to talk to you. So talk to him.” The flunky had a high, breathy steroid voice and big gym muscles.
The crowd of students was already breaking up. If I wanted to raise a stink, I needed to do it quick. I yanked my elbow away from the flunky and stepped away from him, but he was on me like my own shadow. I walked over to the good-looking guy. He looked mid-twenties and he was wearing a leather jacket and a nice shirt. No jewelry.
“What do you want?” Might as well cut right to it.
