TheRapist (10 page)

‘If you’re sure Ms. Cage,’ said the alert girl.

‘I am. I’m sure.’

The crowd had been waiting patiently outside. Naturally they had, after all they were British and everyone knows that the Brits love to queue.

The crowd let out a small dignified yelp and a cheer when Devon reappeared. She smiled at them, ‘Sorry guys, jet lag and a lack of food, a dangerous combination!’ They laughed obligingly as she sat down and went back to signing their books. By now the queue was longer than ever, but she had recovered and spent the next hour autographing the books and charming the crowd. She was good at that. Had she learnt that particular kind of charm from Adrian, or was it she that had taught him?
As she wrote her name on the firs
t page on every unread book, throwing
out disarming glances
to an adoring public
, she
began to
let part of her mind drift back to the past,
wrenching it almost instantly back to the present, stop
ping
the intense pain before it fish-hooked itself into a never ending spiral.

She succeeded.

Just.

*

Jezzy

Adrian had left for Los Angeles
that evening with the promise that he would return soon, if Jezzy didn’t get to him first.
Jezzy
was
lay
ing
on a large blue
mat on the floor of her gym,
her
right arm at right angles to her body, her head to
the left
and she noticed, in her peculi
ar position, that the mat had a glossy
sheen to it. A trainer called Baz
, with
his
peroxide blonde crew cut
, small teeth as white as freshly laid snow
and a slew of curved tattoos woven around his arms,
was standing above her, bending her leg towards her head as far as it would go, which was incredibly uncomfortable but she tried to move beyond the pain, a little like she had been trying to move through the uncertainty in her mind to find out what was on the other side.
Could it lead her to
a fragrant stroll down the yellow brick road to
Oz or would she end up
prostrate and whimpering
in the cuckoo’s nest? She looked at the man lying next to her on the mat. His cheek was squashed into the floor and his complexion was bright and florid, seemingly growing redder before her eyes. Raging red, writhing on the floor. He was on his stomach and had a burly trainer on top of him, digging at his ribs. Every so often he grunted. Then he opened his eyes to find
Jezzy
staring at him across the mat. His eyes were surprisingly bright and as blue as the mat beneath them.

‘Feel good?’ she asked, almost breathless as Baz was still pushing her leg as far as it would go.

The man with the blue eyes grunted.

‘What’s he doing to you?’ she enquired of the stranger’s trainer. The trainer answered for him, pushing the man’s cheek a little further into the floor. ‘Rib articulation,’ he offered.

Jezzy
thrust her chin towards Baz and asked, ‘Do you do that?’

Baz shook his head. She looked back at the man on his belly. ‘Still feeling good?’

He grunted again and there they lay. Two strangers being manipulated by two more strangers, grunts, puffs and heaves coming from four directions.

Baz had finished with
Jezzy
. He looked down at her
as he stroked his tattoos
and said, ‘Do you want to book a bundle of sessions? Discount for five.’

She struggled to get up. ‘I might, if I can walk in the morning.’ She had been given a voucher for a free trial, but didn’t know if she wanted this to be a regular thing. What if she ended up in LA with Adrian? What if she bought a ‘bundle of sessions’ and never used them? What if every time she came here she would end up lying cheek to cheek with the same man on the mat? What if she never saw Adrian again? What if? If being the little word between life, according to her Grandmother. She could not waste her life by constantly contemplating about ifs
and possibilities. Feeling the need
to get away to live her life, she left the man on the floor, still grunting. Left Baz consumed by the appointment book. Left the gym.

On her way home she stopped at Tesco for a few things. Skimmed milk, which she usually took from the back of the fridge where the dates were always fresher, but this time grabbed the bottle at the front so as not to waste time, Weetabix, a
box
of white sugar cubes,
a crusty white roll,
a bag of ready-to-go salad, two Granny Smith apples and a long, thin carrot. Her basket grew heavier so she made her way to the till. The queue was always too long in Tesco. She suddenly had a craving for avocado on melba toast with salt, so she went back to the fruit section and the cracker aisle. Adrian called
from Heathrow
while she waiting in the queue but she couldn’t hold the phone and her basket and have a conversation and then her mobile began to get very hot against her ear and only the day before she had read something in the paper about not letting the phone get hot against your ear
because it was dangerous and it made her panic
, so she said she would call him back
before he boarded
. She didn’t.

*

Her and TheR
apist

‘See, the thing was that I don’t think I ever liked him that much at all. Not really. Not at all really, I don’t think. I mean, when we first met, you know the first time I saw him, I sort of bypassed mostly everything that was right in front of my face and just decided to think what really pretty eyes he had, you know, for a big guy. So then I didn’t look at him much, not properly. I mean, I did, but not so I’d notice. I tried to arrange every date in a dimly lit place and never meet him in the daylight. The daylight sucks. Everyone looks like they really look in the daytime. His features looked a bit lost in his face, if you know what I mean, even though he sometimes looked good. I suppose, looking back, I thought I should find the good in everyone and I’ve always been attracted to guys who had something weird about them. I mean, don’t all men have something, even just a little tiny thing about them that’s weird? I could go through the whole list of all of them, right from when I turned thirteen! Do you want me to? I could. I know it’s not what I’m paying you for, not what’s right there in my mind, but then I guess it must be because I’m talking about it. Do you think? I think I will go through them all with you. Just not this week. I just couldn’t believe that after all the men I’d had to choose from, I would end up with a guy I was barely attracted to! I mean, turn the lights out and hold my breath and it was doable, you know! But that’s not my dream. I still want that. My dream. My dream man. He was OK. Kind and sweet. But he was picky too. Let me tell you something. I’ve had no complaints from men. Nobody’s ever complained about me before, not in a physical way anyway. Some have said I didn’t have much of anything to talk about that was worth listening to, or that I wasn’t intellectual or anything, but nobody ever complained in the bedding department………listen, where I’m from that’s what it’s called. There was a department store called Fodgers and they had a big sign in their bedding department that said, ‘Bedding Department’, in huge orange letters, and so that’s where everybody got that saying from. You might have sex with hundreds of guys, but you don’t talk dirty about it. Certainly not in the daylight. Not to people you don’t know very well anyway. Like you, you know? I mean, I know you, I tell you everything don’t I! But it’s not as if we would meet for coffee or do a spinning class together or meet up to go paint a piece of crockery. Right? Shit. So you see what I mean? Hah! As if I have to ask! I am just so, so glad that I have you in my life to advise me and help me get things right and everything. Wow, is that the time already, well, OK, I’d better be going I guess, but thanks. Really, thank you so much. See you next week and I’ll start telling you about all the others too. Ciao!

*

Jezzy

Jezzy
sat at her desk
at work
, realizing that she felt more serene without
Adrian
than with him, liking the thought of him being six thousand miles away and feeling quite content at being linked by spirit alone. Now he was gone she had time to think. Proper time, to really decide what she wanted. What should she do? Marry him and have kids? Marry. Marriage. Married. It was such a strange word when repeated over and over again. Tied. Bound. Constricted. Suffocated. She had a sudden vision of a chicken, its legs strung together with twine. Why was that? She had once heard on a cookery show that the legs of a chicken
should be
trussed before roasting so that they didn’t open up, flap around and burn whilst in the oven. Would she? Did she need to be tied in order to be happy, to prevent her from being hurt? Was she akin to a chicken? Her mind was racing. Things didn’t seem quite so serene anymore. She needed a break. Some air. It was almost time for lunch. She hated being a temp. Her thoughts were broken by a voice. Receptionist interrupted. Temporarily, of course.

‘Where’s my one o’ clock?
’ Spoken in the gruff tones of D
r. Kampf.

Jezzy
shuffled in her seat. ‘She’s late Dr. Kampf.’

He leaned over the desk and looked into her eyes. ‘Hate that,’ he breathed. Old musty smells carried the words from his throat, landing right in the path of
Jezzy
’s nostrils. She flinched and moved her chair back, the legs catching along the scuffed carpet. She looked down at the ratty, faded coral wool. Two channels that had been carved into it by the same chair legs. Time and time again. The reason for the scuffing. Obviously.

‘Would you like me to call her again?’ offered
Jezzy
,
leaning down to pick up a fictit
ious object from the floor, so as not to breathe in any more of her boss’s
foul
breath.

D
r. Kampf turned back to his office, thankfully breathing his fumes in front of himself and away from her.

‘No. Take your lunch. Be back by five to two.’ He slammed the door.
Jezzy
threw her small, black leather pouch bag across her chest
, tapped a phone button
to send the calls to the answer service
and headed out the door towards Pret.

She managed to snag one of only six seats in the sandwich bar and looked down at the lunch she had chosen. A BLT. Cheese and onion crisps. Pomegranate juice. Maybe the juice would compensate for the rest of the lunch in terms of goodness. She wondered, if Adrian were here, what she would choose. Half a slim tuna or was that too smelly? Tuna may be deemed a healthy option but it stinks, lingering
hatefully on the breath
. No spicy or interesting crisps, only the mundane ready salted. The pomegranate juice passed everytime. She looked at her watch. 5.15am in Los Angeles. Maybe Adrian would be getting up to go to the gym? Pret was bulging at its granary seams. She stuffed a handful of crisps into her mouth, too many really for one mouthful, when a man approached her tiny table.

‘Excuse me, is anyone sitting here or may I?’ He spoke with an American accent and was tall with dark skin and blue eyes that looked as though they had the consistency of ice cubes.

‘No, it’s fine.’ A small spray of cheese and onion flew from her lips, highlighted even more by the sunlight that at that moment had decided to shine through the window on Wigmore Street. She wiped her mouth. Why were serviettes in sandwich bars and coffee shops always rough and the colour of hay?

He sat opposite her with a fat sandwich stuffed with crayfish, a slice of lemon cake and a Diet Coke. She looked at him from behind the safety of the juice bottle. He had beautifully smooth skin but looked a little weary under the eyes. She had always thought that men looked their most attractive when a little worn and weary.

‘Jet lag,’ he offered, as if she wanted to know. Which she did. ‘Just flew in from LA and hoping to surprise a friend pretty soon, but that jet lag gets you every time.’

‘I
recently
got back from New York. Are you from LA?’ She took a sip of juice and felt a little easier.

‘
I am, but not many are
,’ he smiled. ‘
Most
people are
just
bred there.
Some would say Los Angeles is a bree
ding ground, for many things. Not fo
r regular people like you and me.
’

‘How do you know I’m regular?’ she asked.

‘I don’t, I was just hoping you were,’ his smile was slow and easy.

She realized that he was flirting with her, right in the middle of Pret for goodness sake! How can a good looking guy happen to even be in a place like this, let alone try and pick you up? How could she even contemplate another man with Adrian back in her life? Wh
at was wrong with her? Anything o
r everything?