Burning Time (14 page)

After three hours, he could stand it no longer. His back and left hand were painfully cramped. It occurred to him that there was something wrong with the machine, and he raged once again at the world for being backwards. He hadn’t considered the possibility that the machine was a right-handed machine.

The girl’s eyes were closed, and she was still breathing like a dog with a cold. Troland stood and surveyed his work. The outline of one side of her body was nearly complete. He wanted to finish it in one day. Her skin had puffed up in places. It was irritated and red. He knew that if she were awake, all the places where he had worked would be stinging badly. She must really have had a lot. He knew of cokeheads so filled with shit they had their whole bodies tattooed in a single go. Every once in a
while, there was a case of someone going into tattoo shock and dying.

There were cramps in his left hand. He cursed his fate. No matter how much he worked on it, he still didn’t have much control in his right hand. At his first school, they used to say left-handed people were crazy. Told him that when he was five, six, learning to write. Said it was proven without a doubt lefties were crazy and no good. His father tied his hand behind his back so he’d grow up straight. The fucker almost killed the hand that could draw beautiful pictures and write like the writing in old books.

The school people were wrong, too. It was his right hand that was a monster. It couldn’t draw or form letters at all. Troland hated it. It could hold a screwdriver. It could light a match. But it couldn’t do anything
nice
. He stretched, and went back to work.

Hi, it’s Charles. I’ve been thinking about our talk on Sunday. Give me a call when you have a minute
.

The answering machine went
click
.

Jason sat at his desk with one of his favorite skeleton clocks in front of him. The glass case was off, and he was watching the brass sunburst at the bottom of its pendulum swing back and forth as the pallet at the top of the pendulum moved back and forth over the escape wheel.

Tuesday, ten fifty-six
A.M.
Click, burble, doodle, doodle-oo
.

Dr. Frank, I have to cancel my Tuesday appointment. My throat really hurts. Oh, and I think I left my appointment book there. If you find it, hold on to it for me, will you. I’m, like, dead without it. By the way, it’s Jeff
.

Something deeply satisfying about clocks. Nothing but a series of spur gears, powered by falling weights, or unwinding springs, turn the two hands.

That’s right, retreat to bed, Jeff, when the going gets tough; Jason shook his head. He hated being canceled at the last minute, even when he desperately needed the time. Jeff was due in five minutes.

Jason had been tempted to leave the well-thumbed book on the floor where Jeff dumped it when he last came in. Jason had wanted to let it sit there forever, or at least until Jeff cooled down enough to come back and start looking for it. But that sort of thing always distressed the other patients. Daisy wouldn’t be able to think about anything else for months. Even Harold would be disturbed. They all wanted to be only children. Jason knew that Jeff used his hypochondria to manipulate and worry him. He would never let on, but secretly he did worry over every sore throat and cold.

Tuesday, eleven-forty
A.M.
Click, burble, doodle, doodle-oo
.

That was irritating, too. Jeff called when he knew Jason had another patient. Five minutes later, and Jason would have taken the call. He focused on the clock to calm his annoyance. Some people put pets on their laps and stroked them, or talked to them, to get their heartbeats down. Jason watched the insides of his clocks, moving the way they should. As he watched the gears engaging, he wondered what aspect of Jeff’s regression he should worry about. Shit, if he might have done something to cause it? No, he decided: Jeff just didn’t want to face getting well and having a future. Safer to leave the appointment book that represented his future behind on the floor.

That is your last message
.

Jason sighed and pushed Erase.

I will erase your messages
.

He waited a few seconds while the machine rewound the tape and then he dialed Charles’s number. Charles had almost the identical message on his machine. Jason sat there while the soothing voice regretted not being with him and promised to return the call as soon as he could.

Please start speaking after the tone
.

Tone
.

Hi, it’s Jason. I have a cancellation. I’ll be taking calls for an hour. It is
—He looked at the face of the clock. Now that he had made a minor adjustment, it seemed to be running perfectly.

—Eleven forty-five
. He hung up and put the clock and its case back on the shelf between two stacks of journals.

He sat there watching the pendulum go back and forth. At eleven fifty-five, the phone rang.

“This is Dr. Frank.”

“Hi, it’s Charles. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.”

Pause. Jason didn’t help out.

“About Emma,” Charles prompted. “Look, I don’t know what I can do. But I can’t just sit here and ignore what you’re going through.”

Still Jason was silent.

“I want you to know I’m here for you. I want to help. Do you want to meet and talk about it?”

One part of Jason wanted to put Charles off, send him back to his secure little niche. Another part was impressed that Charles was willing to take the time to bother.

Finally he relented and said, “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

“I break for gym now. When is your next appointment?”

Jason usually jogged after Jeff, so he was free until one-thirty. Amazing. Charles was offering to give up his maintainance, and today, no less.

“I usually break at twelve-thirty on Tuesdays. I’m free from now until one-thirty,” Jason replied, surprising himself.

“Great. Why don’t you come here? … And why don’t you bring those letters you mentioned?”

“You want to look at the letters?” Jason said.

“Yes, any objection?”

“Ah, no, but why?”

“The letters are what you’re really worried about, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Jason said, surprised that that was the case and that Charles knew it. It
was
the letters he was worried about. He checked the clock again. He could be there in ten minutes.

Twelve minutes later, the two men were shaking hands in Charles’s waiting room.

“I brought the letters,” Jason said.

“Sit down for a minute. There’s a lot to this. A whole lot,” Charles replied, leading the way into his office.

There was a desk, chairs, the analyst couch, the usual things. At the far end of the room was a new leather sofa. A burnished antique coffee table was positioned in front of it.

Charles headed for the sofa and sat heavily. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

Jason raised his eyebrows. Drinking in the middle of the day now, were they? “Yes, I would,” he said. “But I better not.”

Charles shrugged. “Listen, I can’t get a handle on this.”

Jason blew some air out of his nose. He didn’t have a handle on it either.

“You know I don’t want to dig into places you don’t want me to go. But it’s a puzzle. I don’t have the pieces.” He shrugged apologetically. He was a big shrugger. “You
know I’m here for you. I’ll do anything I can, but without the pieces—” He raised his shoulders again.

“What do you want to know?” Jason smiled wanly.

Charles took a breath. “Well, I saw the film.”

“I thought you would. What did you think?”

“I was very surprised,” Charles said carefully. “I wasn’t
shocked
. I mean, most films these days have some pretty graphic sex in them, but,” he paused, “the content is disturbing. There’s no question about that. It takes a dim view of therapists. But there’s a lot of that going around. That’s not an issue in itself.… You said Emma didn’t tell you about this, is that right?”

Jason nodded, and then shook his head. “Well, a film doesn’t just arrive out of nowhere,” he admitted after a slight hesitation that he knew Charles noted.

“The script was around for a—long time.” Jason could still visualize it sitting there on the table for many months. “I just didn’t read it.”

He hesitated again, then went on. “The guy who wrote it is a friend of Emma’s. I admit I never liked him—grubby, insinuating, supercilious sort of asshole. Defensive. But he had been a friend of hers since college. Emma was in several of his plays,” he added.

He smiled, thinking of the plays.

“Good plays?” Charles asked.

“She was good, but the plays were—nothing. Not daring, not involving. Just kind of dull.” Jason grimaced.

“So you didn’t read this one?”

“Emma says she asked me to read it, but I don’t
remember
her asking me. I don’t know, Charles. I just can’t imagine not reading it if she asked me to.”

“Well, you didn’t like the guy’s work. You didn’t
want
to read it,” Charles said neutrally, then more to the point: “I guess you’ve been drifting apart, as they say.”

It happened all the time, happened to everybody. Different tastes, different work sent people on tangents they didn’t expect when they married. Jason sucked in his lips the way Harold did when he didn’t want to admit something. So the great listener hadn’t been listening to his own wife. Charles’s empty stomach began to gurgle.

“So what do you think her involvement was?” he asked after a minute.

Jason frowned. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“With the script. Is Emma jealous of your patients? Does she think you’re involved with someone else? Did she write her own part? I mean her unconscious motivation, Jason. She may be acting, but who’s the voice here? Who wrote the story and why? Was she … involved with what’s-his-name?”

“Mark?” Involuntarily, Jason shuddered. “He’s a jerk.”

“He’s her director,” Charles pointed out. “Is he in love with her?”

“I don’t know. She’s attractive and bright.” Jason looked away. Warm, when she wanted to be. He was feeling very emotional and was beginning to sweat. “Who wouldn’t be in love with her?”

“So,” Charles said. “What were the areas of conflict between you?”

Sweat ran down Jason’s sides. He considered taking his jacket off. Charles wasn’t wearing one, and he had loosened his tie. Jason decided not to take his jacket off. He might need to leave soon.

“I didn’t think it was anything serious. She wanted more work, of course.” Wanted to spend more time together. She had been talking more about having a baby, and he had been resisting. He was involved with his patients and his writing. She didn’t like being left home
when he went to conferences. She hated his jumping out of bed at dawn every morning. Very little morning love. He didn’t say any of that out loud.

“Look, I missed it. She may have been jealous.” He swallowed. “She may have been lonely, but I don’t think she wrote the thing. She’s not like that.”

“Involved?”

“Well, she’s always been
involved
with him. She knew him before she knew me. I didn’t think they were ever lovers.” Jason looked at the wall again. But he didn’t know that for sure.

He was the one who had been married before. They talked about that. A lot. At the time, his character was more of an issue to her than hers had been to him. She was a more interesting and beautiful woman than he ever expected to get. She was deeply in love with him. Why should he harbor doubts? He hadn’t. Could she be aggrieved enough to take a lover? He had seen it on the screen with his own eyes, the possibility of Emma with another man. Emma graphically showing him what she could do, what she was capable of doing, and still he had trouble believing that the woman he loved would do it.

“What about you?” Charles asked.

“What
about
me?”

“Are you involved with someone?”

Oh, so that was it. Charles had involvement on the brain. He couldn’t imagine anything else. Jason frowned irritably.

“This isn’t
about
that. It’s not about love affairs. Look. This is something else.” He took the letters out of his briefcase and laid them out on the coffee table in front of them. Fifteen of them. One had arrived each day except Sundays for the last two weeks. On Thursdays, two letters
always arrived. Jason figured the second letter was the one the writer mailed on Sunday, when the mail wasn’t picked up or delivered. The postmarks were all smudged. No way to know where they came from.

“Just take a look at this. I’m worried about her
safety.”
Jason raked a hand through his hair. “I’m worried about keeping her
safe
, Charles. There’s somebody out there who knows a whole lot about her, who wants to hurt her. It’s all here in these letters. Emma doesn’t see it, but anyone with training can see what this stuff means.”

Charles frowned, still unconvinced about the real story. “So,” he said. “You still love her.”

“Of course I love her. I’ll hate her forever, but I love her.” Jason was surprised to hear himself say it.

“Fair enough.” Charles turned his attention to the letters.

Jason had put a date and a number on the top of each one. Charles read them through, and then read them again. Then he read them a third time, going over each one very slowly. When he was finished, they sat in silence for a long time.

“Jesus,” Charles said finally. “You have reason to be worried. What is this thing here?” He pointed to the drawing at the bottom of each letter. “A chariot, a Chinese symbol, a wheel with flaming swords?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before. It seems to be a signature for him.”

Charles frowned. “He’s quite a poet. Listen to this:
‘If you could read my mind, what a tale my thoughts could tell. Just like an old time movie, ’bout a ghost from a wishing well. In a castle dark, or a fortress strong with chains upon your feet. You’ll know the ghost is me. And I’ll never be set free as long as I’m a ghost you can’t see. You won’t walk away like a
movie star who gets burned in a three-way script. Enter number two. A movie queen to play the scene bringing all the Right things out of me. I don’t know where you went wrong but the feeling’s gone, and I have to get it back. But stories always end, and if you read between the lines, you’d know why I can’t get you back.’
This is weird.”