“In time,” she repeats.
I nod and look at her for a moment. In time. Fortunately, training in the martial arts has made me a patient guy. I get the in time thing but I still want this behind me.
My mind flashes to Tiff. Not Tiff the person. Her body. I look back out the window irrationally embarrassed that the doc is reading my mind.
“What?”
I look back and instantly wilt under that raptor gaze. “‘What’ what?”
“There’s something else on your mind.”
“You ought to be a detective,” I say shaking my head. At least she didn’t read my lurid thoughts.
“I am. Tell me.”
Actually, I have been wondering about something but there’s no way I’m going to ask it. No way at all. Her eyes bore; her eyebrows lift.. Damn her. I sit up higher like a kid in the principal’s office. “It’s my, uh, relations with my ex… with Tiff.”
“You get back together or cut it off completely? Or are you still doing the carnal visits?”
Tiff left around midnight last night. We began the evening with self-conscious chitchat, moved to lust, and then laid there after without a whole lot to say to each other. A half hour later, I walked her out to her car where there was an awkward moment of internal debate whether to give her a goodbye peck. Finally, she leaned forward, did an air kiss off to the side of my face, and mumbled, “See yuh, good lookin’.” I nodded and snapped a military salute as she slid behind the wheel. I saluted, for crying out loud.
“We’re not getting back together.”
“But you’re still meeting occasionally?”
“Yeah.”
“For sex?”
“Yeah. We barely talk at all after. She just goes home.”
“So what’s your question? Mr. Happy isn’t so happy or is he happier than he’s ever been.”
I snort a laugh. “Well…”
“Whichever it is, it’s still a normal reaction to an abnormal event.”
“It’s the last one. I mean, I can’t get enough of her. Then afterwards I don’t like her anymore. I mean, I like her, it’s just that… Damn, I don’t know what I mean. We’re that cliché of two different people from two different worlds.” Could I sound anymore like a seventeen-year-old.
“So while you’re having all this confusion you’re still okay jumping her bones?”
“Yeah. That make me bad?”
“No, just male.” She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Listen Sam,” she says in a softer voice, recognizing that this isn’t an easy conversation for me. “Some people lose their appetite for food in response to stress, while others have an enhanced craving to eat. In the same way, some individuals can lose their sex drive in response to great stress, while others experience a tremendous sex drive, especially after a combat situation in which they were triumphant. Faced with death, destruction, and horror all around, there can be a powerful life-affirming drive toward sexuality.”
I exhale slowly. “I thought I was some kind of a pervert. I… kill… and it makes me want sex.”
The doctor does that faint smile again, and sits back. “You’re not a perv, but you aren’t too far off on the rest of your analysis. Some psychologists believe that the enhanced need for sex by some just might be the drive of a male, having defeated another male in a mating battle, if you will, to claim his prize—the woman.”
I look at the doctor for a long moment as I mill that over. It makes sense, I think. I can feel a slow smile spreading across my tired face. “So, it’s sort of a perk of the job?”
“One they can’t tax.”
I laugh hard and reach for my coffee I’ve yet to sip. It’s cold but I don’t care.
“You ready to go back to work, Sam?”
Finally, the question, part of it, anyway. I can’t appear too anxious. “What do you think?”
She looks at her computer screen, scrolls down, and reads some more. “You’re sleeping better now.”
“I am,” I lie.
She scrolls again. “Still having nightmares, though they’ve changed of late.”
“Not as many. Maybe twice a week. And there’s that change of roles thing that started last weekend.”
“All normal,” Kari says, still reading the screen. “I’m so glad you don’t drink. How is your martial arts training going?”
“Great. I lost a few kids when the press attacked me. Concerned parents. But in the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten new ones to take their place. I’ve been doing extra training on the heavy bag. It seems to help. It… whatever it is… just pours out of me and into the bag.”
She turns to face me. “I wish all my patients chose exercise over intoxicants. So, are you ready to go back?”
I nod, though somewhere deep inside I feel a pang of reluctance. Fear of getting back on the horse she called it during our last visit. That, plus there’s something else that’s been bothering me.
“I’m ready. Yes.” That sounded squirrely.
“Okay,” she says. She leans toward me. “One more question.”
Part two of the question.
“You’re out on the street and things turn to shit again. You got no choice but to blow some son-of-a-bitch to hell. Can you do it?”
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. Once again, the faces—the elderly Jewish man and the tweaker—emerge out of the darkness:
The old man’s eyes are large with fear, his body writhing on the floor, his face bleeding from where the hold-up man struck him with his pistol. The tweaker’s eyes are glassy, crazed, his teeth and facial skin rotten from meth. He glares at me with stupidity and defiance, his long-barreled revolver jutting obscenely toward the whimpering old man.
“Shoot me, you fuck,” he spews through blackened and broken teeth, his dead eyes struggling to focus on the big hole at the end of my semi-auto.
“Listen, pal,” I say in a surprisingly calm voice. “Put your weapon down and let’s talk. You don’t have to—”
“Shoot me and I’ll shoot this old Jew as I die.” His gun hand trembles so hard that he will likely shoot the man before he intends to, anyway. “Come on, shoot me and—”
I fire.
The 9mm round punches a neat hole just below the shitbird’s nose, smack into his medulla oblongata. The bullet kills his sad brain and stops his heart instantly, dropping him like the bag of bones that he is, his muscles unable to fulfill his promise to shoot the old man.
I hold my Glock on him until the just-arrived uniform officers move in and handcuff him. “What a shot!” one of them says, as I holster. I ignore him, walk calmly out of the secondhand store, and sag helplessly to my knees. The shaking begins in my arms and spreads rapidly to my entire body. I struggle to my feet only to slump against the shop window, my body covering the “Get” on the sign Get More Bang For Your Buck.
I look up at Kari who is again giving me another of her field mouse-hunter looks. She knows where I’ve just been. I once partnered with an older guy for several weeks before he commented that he had spent eighteen months in Vietnam. When I asked when he was there, meaning what year, he looked at his hands for about a half