Compulsion (3 page)

"Yes," she said.  The look in her eyes made me feel she might actually understand.  "This has to be very difficult."  She drank the last of her coffee.  "For me this would be too much."

I motioned to Mario for a refill, took a drag off my cigarette.  "Why do you think that?"

"I could not keep myself... how do you say? ...apart from it."

"I've got the same trouble."

Justine used the tip of her finger to steal a bit of the froth off my coffee, licked it away.  "But you see patients even knowing this.  You don’t worry for yourself?"

"Every day."

A few seconds of silence passed.  "My day," she said, "was mostly thinking of you."

The last of the tightness in my jaw and neck melted away.  I took her hand and felt my pulse slow.

*            *            *

I took her home.  My place.  A nineteen-hundred-square-foot Chelsea loft with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the steel skeleton of the Tobin Bridge as it arches into Boston.  The building had been constructed as a factory when the Industrial Revolution transformed Chelsea from farmland and summer homes to coal yards and textile mills.  It had stood through two fires that burned most of the city to the ground, in 1908 and 1973.  It had stood as the city welcomed wave upon wave of immigrants — the Irish speaking Gaelic, Russian Jews escaping anti-Semitism, Italians, Poles, Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Serbs.

My view was as raw and beautiful as a heavyweight bout.  In the foreground:  triple deckers, smokestacks, tugboats driving full throttle against the massive hulls of oil tankers on the Mystic River. In the distance:  the shimmering skyline of Boston’s financial district.

Justine, elegant and slim in tight black cigarette pants and a fitted black sleeveless shirt, stood facing one of the windows as I poured her a Merlot and myself a Perrier.

"Cheers," I said, handing her the glass.

She noticed I wasn’t joining her.  "No wine?"

"I can't drink."  I paused.  "Actually, I drink more than anybody I know.  I just can’t stop."

"Why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Why can’t you stop?"

For a moment I thought we were separated by a language barrier, that she wasn’t getting the fact that I was in recovery from alcohol, among other things.  But then she looked at me in the same knowing way she had at Café Positano, and I realized she had intended the question — and wanted the answer.  I nodded.  "I can’t stop because I lose myself in the booze.  And I end up never wanting to find myself."

"Right."

"Thanks.  I hate being wrong about my own disease.  It makes me wonder whether I’m worth my hourly rate."

She laughed.  As she moved, her collar gaped open enough for me to glimpse her cleavage and the top of her black lace bra.  "No," she said.  "I mean, I understand."  She sipped her wine.

I still felt the need to explain.  "It’s like having a headache that finally goes away with a pill.  You might have struggled through the pain before, but now you know relief is just a swallow away.  So you keep swallowing.  And meanwhile, underneath the waves of calm, your life is unraveling."

"I understand.  My mother died of this."

I felt like an idiot.  "Of alcoholism."

"Yes.  They have this even in Brazil."

"I’m sorry.  I..."

She left me at the window and walked over to the largest of five paintings I had hanging on a brick wall that ran the length of the place.  It was a six-by-nine canvas by Bradford Johnson depicting the rescue of the crew of a sailing ship by another vessel.  A rope is tied between their masts, high above the raging seas, and a man dangles by his hands as he traverses the fragile connection.  "I like this very much," she said.

I walked to her side.  "What do you like about it?"

"Taking a risk to help someone."  She pointed at the ship that was still in one piece.  "That one could have kept sailing."

Her comment made me think of the sixteen-year-old Bishop boy, probably headed for trial as an adult, facing life in prison.  Would the system stop long enough to listen to him?  Then I thought what it would be like to hear about the animals he had tortured, about
his
torture in Russia, about Darwin Bishop finding one of his baby girls dead in her crib.  I thought about having to feel all the jealousy and fear and anger coursing through the family, in order to understand whether it could have added up to murder.  "What if both ships end up sinking?" I half-joked.

"Then taking the risk was even more beautiful," she said.

In my heart I agreed.  But coming close to drowning in the undertow of Trevor Lucas’s terror had left me with deep respect for solid ground.  I pushed the Bishops out of my mind and reached for Justine, using her beauty to anchor me in the moment.  My hand found the soft curve of her arm, just above the elbow, then moved down her rib cage, not stopping until my fingers were curled under the waistband of her pants.

She touched her lips to mine, then leaned back.  "Perhaps we should not start," she said.  "I am in this country only one more day."

I have seen lives saved and others destroyed in less time.  I tightened my grip and pulled her to me.

*            *            *

I took her to bed, a king-sized Italian creation with chrome legs and a gray flannel, upholstered headboard, all done up with pearl gray linens.  She sat at the edge and lifted her arms so I could help her with her top, but I gently pushed her onto her back, moved my hands to her ankles, and pulled off her pants.  The scantiest black lace thing covered her.  A vertical fold in the cloth was enough to make me lightheaded.

Five or so years back, my own psychiatrist, Dr. James, then eighty-one and still razor-sharp, had challenged me to consider whether my sex life was actually driven by addiction.  He was a Freudian analyst and a Talmudic scholar, and I am eternally in his debt for partly filling the holes left in my personality after it developed without a real father.

"How would I know if I’m addicted?" I had asked.

"Are you seeking the woman or the act?" he said.  "Do you want her soul or her body?"

"Both," I said immediately.

"For what purpose?  To what end?"

"To feel love."

"You can fall in love in a day?"

I thought about that.  "In an hour."

"Again and again?" he said.

"Dozens of times.  A hundred times."

"You believe these women seek this also?  This union?  What you call love?"

"I do."

"And you believe this is Nature’s design?" he asked.

"Yes."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Then he sat there looking at me, without speaking.

The quiet began to weigh on me.  "What do you think?" I surrendered.  "Do I add sexual addiction to my list of diagnoses?"

"I’m afraid not," he said.  "The case is worse."

"How so?"

"You have a touch of the truth."  He smiled, but only for an instant.  "God help you."

Tonight my truth was Justine.  In a world of artificial intelligence, transplanted organs, and cloned sheep, I knew it was my heart pounding in my chest as I looked at her, my lungs working like a bellows, my blood feeding my excitement.  I reached and pulled the cloth triangle up between her lips, watched the cloth dampen, listened to her groan as my fingers moved inside her panties, then inside her.  I knelt in front of her and traced her smooth lips with my tongue, moving her thong first this way, then that, teasing.  When I could feel her muscles starting to tense for complete release, I stopped and stood up.  I pulled her thong off.  Then, never taking my eyes off her, I freed myself, lifted her knees, and spread them apart.  I moved inside her, reveling in the way her flesh resisted then yielded to my thrusts, resisting less and less each time.  And then I yielded, abandoning control, moving now as one with Justine, as Nature dictated, with no more thought of it than waves rolling onto a beach, soaking into soft, moist sands.

*            *            *

Sunday, June 23, 2002

My eyes snapped open, flicked to the bedside clock — 7:20
A.M.
  I had the feeling we were not alone.  I dropped my hand to the Browning Baby semiautomatic I keep between my bed frame and mattress, a vestige of my days tracking killers.  I lay still.  I had almost convinced myself I could hear the intruder’s footsteps when the lobby buzzer sounded two insistent blasts, vaguely reminding me I had heard the same sound in my sleep.  I realized I had probably been awakened by something closer to a Federal Express delivery than an attempt on my life.

"Make them go away," Justine said, still half-asleep.

I got up and headed to the door.  I pressed the
SPEAK
button on the intercom panel.  "If it’s a package and it isn’t ticking, leave it," I said.  I hit
LISTEN
.

"It’s North."

I squinted at the intercom.  I thought I had gotten more distance on my past.  I should have known better.  Anything you run from turns up in front of you, usually sooner than rather than later.

"Frank?"

"I’ll be right down," I said.

"Who is it?" Justine asked.

"An old friend," I said, getting into my blue jeans and black turtleneck.

She sat up, gathering the comforter around her.  "So early?"

I slipped on my boots.  "He needs some advice."

She swung her legs to the side of the bed and got up.  She was naked.  She reached for her clothes where I had left them, draped over a leather armchair.

I stood there watching her.

"What?" she asked, noticing my stare.  She pulled on her pants, nothing underneath.

"You’re magnificent."

"Your friend’s waiting," she said, feigning irritation.  She put on her top, glanced at me.  "Do you have food?  Eggs, bacon?  I could make breakfast."

"Pop-Tarts, if there are any left." I wanted her to stay.  "There’s a 7-Eleven up the street.  I’ll be back with everything in thirty minutes."

"No.  I’ll go.  That way everything will be ready when you’re finished with your friend."

"Perfect."

We took the elevator to the lobby and walked outside.

North Anderson stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, in black jeans and a black T-shirt.  He looked pretty much the way he had two years before.  His shoulders, chest, and arms were still overbuilt from working out.  He still had the habit of planting his feet wide apart and clasping his hands behind his back, as if his wrists were cuffed.  The only change in him was a three-inch, jagged pink scar over his right eye.  On a white man, the wound would have been less noticeable.  Against Anderson’s black skin it was arresting.

"Jealous husband?" I asked, running a finger along my own brow.

He acknowledged Justine with a nod, then looked back at me.  "My life’s not that interesting.  Run-of-the-mill car thief.  Just before I left Baltimore."

"Some souvenir."  I extended my hand.  He shook it.  Then we pulled one another close, holding on long enough to respect what we’d been through together.  "This is Justine," I said, as we broke.

"My pleasure," he said.

"And mine," Justine said.  She navigated the moment effortlessly.  "I’m off to the store.  Will I see you later?" she asked him.

"Probably not this visit," Anderson said.

"Next time, then."  She smiled and walked away.

He glanced after her.  "I should have guessed I wouldn’t find you alone.  Some things don’t change."

"You want to grab coffee?" I said.  "There’s a place not too far."

"Let’s just walk."

We started down Winnisimmet, toward the Fitzgerald Shipyard, a stretch of asphalt and seaworthy docks where Peter Fitzgerald worked magic on injured ferries and Coast Guard cutters.  I noticed that the limp Anderson struggled with, the result of taking two bullets from would-be bank robbers several years before, was more pronounced than I remembered.  There was a new outward arc to the swing of his right leg.  That quirk, combined with his new scar, made me glad he’d left Baltimore before dissolving completely into its streets.

We sat on a stack of lumber at the water’s edge.  A lone barge made its way toward Boston Harbor, carrying a mountain of silt from a dredging operation downstream.  "How are Tina and Kristie?" I asked.

"Great," he said, without much conviction.  "The island’s good for a family, you know?  Different than the city."

"Night and day," I said.

"We’re in a little place in Siasconset, right near the beach.  Sunsets.  Clean air."

"Nothing better."

He smiled, but tightly.  "She’s pregnant again.  Tina is."

I kept watching his face.  "Congratulations.  How far along is she?"

"Six months."

"Boy or a girl?" I asked.  "Or don’t you know?"

"A boy," he said.  His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to see his future through the mist.

Anderson was both brave and sensitive, and I liked thinking of him fathering a son.  But I couldn’t tell how much
he
liked the idea.  "How do you feel about it," I asked.

He focused on me.  "Feel about what?  What do you mean?"

"I mean, about having a child.  Are you happy?"

"Of course."  He shrugged.  The tight smile reappeared.  "How could I not be happy about it?"

"
A whole bunch of ways
," the voice at the back of my head whispered.

"People feel all kinds of things about having kids," I said.

He shook his head, looked out across the water.  "I didn’t fly here to lie on your couch, Frank.  Do you ever turn it off?"

I never do, which has cost me more than one friend and countless dinner invitations.  At some point in my training in psychiatry, I lost the ability to stay on the surface of things.  I became a relentless burrower — so much so that even after Anderson’s plea to let his unconscious off the hook, I was wondering whether ambivalence about his unborn child was driving his interest in the death of the Bishop baby.  "Sorry," was all I said.