Ms. McGurty banged the floor under my desk. Her book store was directly below. Over the months that I had been in business the Booke Stoare owner had developed an uncanny sense of knowing right where to bang. I had seen a baseball bat behind her counter and was sure that’s what she used to bang on her ceiling, my floor.
I had learned to try to ignore her. She really wasn’t a bad person as long as she was ignored. I don’t think she liked that, though, being ignored. She’d been an attention-getter ever since she’d been told women weren’t allowed into the infantry at the outbreak of World War I. She had been a women’s libber ever since. That was okay with me. But I had made the mistake of saying ‘Miss’ to her the day I had moved into my office. She never forgot it.
I looked over at the phone. Mickey Mouse still had a smirky grin on his face. It seemed Mickey Mouse wasn’t so mickey-mouse made. I got up and walked over to it and stomped on it. The grin was gone.
My wife. I had married her the third time just a couple of years ago. I guess she wanted another divorce decree to even out the frames on the walls at home. Three marriages, three divorces, three children, one woman. Seemed out of balance.
I had called her as soon as I stepped in my office. She had said only six words; “Your clothes are in the street.”
After sweeping up Mickey’s parts and dumping them in the John Wayne trashcan, I walked over to my small closet.
Inside the closet, besides a couple suits and shirts, were sixteen boxes piled up from the bottom of the floor to behind my hanging clothes. I picked up the top box and opened it. I pulled out another Mickey Mouse phone. I set it on the desk. Whoever had boxed the phone had made a noose of the phone wire and wrapped it around his neck. I unwrapped it and bent around behind me and plugged it in. I lifted the phone from Mickey’s yellow-gloved hand; there was a dial-tone. I tossed the box by the trashcan.
Only fifteen phones left in the closet. There had been twenty-five in the beginning, payment for one of my first cases. The phones retailed for over sixty bucks. The client’s bill had been nearly a thousand, so I figured I had done okay on the deal. With my temper, it was actually a great deal.
I sat down and leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, raised my arms behind me and tried to relax. Yeah, right, relax.
I opened my eyes. Sunlight flooded the room through the windows behind and to the left of where I sat. I had the corner office, so I sat in a triangle, with windows all around. The office was fairly small because of the design. But the owner had given me the adjacent office until he rented it—which would be never—so that allowed me to keep this room nearly empty and therefore nearly neat.
My gray metal desk, bought at a government auction, faced the door. On each side of the door the walls were bare. The closet door was on the left. The windows on my right took up a whole wall. Outside those windows I had a good view of the wall of the building across the street.
The windows to my left looked out on the convention center. I could see the workers spreading tar over its roof. My windows were closed, but the sharp odor of tar filled my room. Or was it just a memory?
I kept a small filing cabinet by the door, with a chopped-off coat rack sitting on top. There were two captain’s chairs facing my desk. My desk was bare. I kept note paper in the top drawer, phone books and directories in the left drawer. In the lone drawer on the right I kept a pistol. I kept it loaded.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
Really, when I thought about it, I hadn’t loved my wife in years. We had remarried the last time for the kids. To hell with it, it would be the last one with her.
So what if I had just bought a new house, a car and new bikes for the kids. Even a new dog bowl. A few bills and child support never killed anyone, did it?
I thought of Beth, and then tried not to think of her. What good would it do?
4
It was all Rivkin could do not to yawn.
“Did you feel guilty about what you were feeling about this Beth?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Thinking about her, Beth, then bam, divorce papers. I could imagine Life, if Life was an entity, giggling. I was sick with fear about losing my wife, but thinking about Beth at the same time, like ‘well at least I have something to fall back on.’ But mostly I was feeling empty. The guilt was there, like the inevitable sunset. But the emptiness was like high noon in a heatwave, beating down on me.’
“Did you experience any shortness of breath?”
“Look, Doc. The wind wasn’t just knocked out of my sails, the sails were blown away completely. Of course there was shortness of breath, but it wasn’t the advent of a nervous breakdown. I’ve had a couple of those. This was close, but different, too.”
“Have you been diagnosed as having nervous breakdowns before?”
“Look, I know this may sound insulting, but I can read. At the time I had a couple of breakdowns before, I didn’t know what I was going through. But I happened to be reading a ‘phyc’ book in a library once, and I recognized the symptoms.”
Rivkin actually smiled. He wasn’t insulted. He was of the opinion that given the opportunity most people could do anything—if they could read.
“Any anger?” he asked.
“Yeah, after the wave of guilt. I’ll tell you about that in a moment. But see, what happened, getting the divorce papers, just confused me more, made me doubt my morals. Like, what the hell’s the matter with me? I was struck by Beth and the way I felt about her, but the thought of cheating on my wife never occurred to me. Am I the only one that won’t cheat on a mate?
“I don’t see why you’re questioning your morals. A lot of people besides yourself have high standards and live by them, too. The actions of your wife was beyond your control anyway—-”
“But they shouldn’t have been. I should’ve seen it coming and taken action.”
“Ah, so you’re a man of action? As if doing something will solve any problem.”
“Well, hell, won’t it?”
“Usually not, as a matter of fact.”
“Then is that my problem?”
“Mmmm.”
“Mmm what? Come on, Doc. Don’t do that stuff to me. All you shrinks are the same. You—”
“Mr. Klick, I thought you said you had never been to a psyciatrist before?”
“Well, I fudged a little on that. I’ve seen a couple. Once in the Army. And another time after that, when I was a cop. Situations where I had to go”
“How man times did you see them?”
“The one in the Army three times. The other one twice.”
“Hmmm.”
“C’mon, Doc. Ya’ll just sit there and go ‘Hmm’ all the time and never tell a person nothin’. You ain’t said anything either.”
“Does that mean you’re going to stop? I really would like to hear the end of your story”—but more than that he’d rather be heading out to the nightclub. Still, this Klick was interesting…for a sociopathic peronsality disorder client. If cogent, they told the most fascinating tales.
“For half price,” Clyde said.
“Ha hmmm. I suppose that was a joke? No, no discount. But I will tell you what may be causing you to ‘screw up’ your life. Give you some advise. But mostly the only person that can—”
“—Help you is yourself. Yeah, I’ve heard that before. And yeah, I knew that. But I’ve done that too, helped myself, picked myself back up a half-dozen times. Let me tell you Doc, that doesn’t work.