Line of Fire (14 page)

I changed the phone from my right ear to my left ear. Changing ears with the phone is something I did when conversations took unexpected twists. I never really understood why I did it. It was as though my right ear had untwisty listening abilities that my left one lacked.

I said, “Excuse me.” It was something else I did when conversations took unexpected twists. I had a little more insight into why I did that: I said excuse me so the person would repeat what they said so that I could be sure I heard it right the first time.

I suspected both habits were annoying to whomever I was speaking with.

Diane responded by becoming more graphic. She said, “I think Raoul is fucking around.”

Not screwing, fucking.

From Diane’s lips, an important distinction.

22

I
handed Lauren my speeding ticket—I had a fantasy that since she was a well-connected deputy DA she would tell me in an offhandedly affectionate way not to worry about such a mundane thing, that she would have an assistant take care of it when she arrived at her office in the morning. But like many of my marital fantasies, that one didn’t come to fruition. She did offer a consolation prize—a soft, wet kiss on the lips that lingered for a second or two beyond the usual greeting peck—before she said, “Major bummer. Though I can’t believe you were speeding on that stretch of Foothills. There are always cops there. You know better.”

I did know better. I told Lauren I had to go back out to see Diane.

“Can’t wait?” she asked, already knowing my answer.

Lauren and I had both been alarmed by Diane’s deterioration after her friend’s arrest for homicide the previous winter. Though less traumatizing than her own hostage experience, the recent tragedy had seemed like the proverbial straw. Diane was struggling to hold on.

I shook my head. I promised to fill Lauren in when I got back home.

I lifted the traffic ticket off the counter. “Any chance you can help with—”

“No. No chance,” she said with a smile.

• • •

Diane and Raoul lived in what residents of the Front Range call the foothills. In most other parts of the country, our foothills might be called mountains. Front Range foothills life provides a residential experience that is comparable to mountain living, but with training wheels. Elevation—with all the positives and negatives that altitude brings to the home-owning equation—is present in the foothills, though to a lesser degree than in the real mountains. Wilderness experience is plentiful in the foothills, too, though it tends to be less in-your-face than in the high country. Requisite gorgeous mountain and canyon views are present in both locations. Overall, when the foothills are compared to the high mountain communities in Boulder County—up Sugarloaf or Magnolia or Coal Creek, or near Nederland, Gold Hill, or Ward—the foothills provide a less challenging lifestyle.

One primary reason for the reduced challenge is that foothills communities tend to be much closer to urban centers than are mountain communities. From Raoul and Diane’s home north of town, for example, I could be in the urban edge of Boulder in minutes. Fewer than five certainly, fewer than three if I broke a traffic law or two.

Lee Hill was, however, a long way from my home in Spanish Hills; if a square were superimposed over residential Boulder, Lee Hill and Spanish Hills would be found in opposing corners. The distance between our homes meant that I didn’t pull into the steep driveway behind the Lee Hill hogback until almost nine o’clock.

Diane had not turned on any lights for me. That evening’s moon was either hidden behind clouds or it was in one of those phases that render illumination inconsequential. Once I stepped outside I was standing in the kind of absolute dark that city dwellers—and edge-of-urbanity dwellers like me—tend to forget exists.

I stumbled twice on my way to the door. At the threshold, I couldn’t see the doorbell, but I could make a guess about the location of the door. I knocked.

I ended up knocking a few times. I pressed the lever on the door handle. The door opened. I stepped into a dark foyer. My eyes, accustomed to the complete absence of illumination outside, found the light washing in from the distant kitchen to be more than adequate for navigation.

I called Diane’s name over and over again as I walked toward the source of the light. Finally, I heard, “Alan? I’m back here. Just a second.”

Back where?
I wondered. The house was built just below the peak of an uphill slope, with the main rooms on the upper two floors enjoying views both east and west. I had never known there was a “back here” anywhere in the house. The bedrooms were on the highest level. I had never seen a basement.

Diane emerged from the short hall that led from the kitchen toward a room that she and Raoul used for watching TV. She was dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing earlier during our visit to the downtown flat, but had changed from heels into the kind of furry house slippers that guests are usually not permitted to witness.

Diane’s were a shade of green that would flatter only a frog.

Her eyes, in Christmas-color contrast, were red and puffy.

I stepped forward to offer a hug. She stopped me, not with a greeting but with a hands-in-the-air question. “Why can’t I get on the Internet?” she asked.

Diane was a digital illiterate. It was a state of ignorance that caused her no dysphoria. Given the typical, sometimes incom- prehensible, nature of her technological queries at our office, I found myself impressed that she had asked the question about Internet access with such, well, clarity.

“What are you trying to use to get online?” I asked. I was aware that with my question I was not only complicating things but was also granting Diane the benefit of some significant doubt. The primary grant I was making was that she had understood what her original question meant.

A befuddled stare was all I got back. I went back to the beginning. “Are you trying to use a computer to get online?” I asked. “Some other device? Did you get a new smart phone?”

Diane’s lower lip began to quiver. I pulled my own mobile from my pocket as I moved in and wrapped my arms around her. As I hugged her, I checked the screen over her shoulder to see what kind of signals my phone was receiving. It turned out that I was getting between one and two bars from some cell tower, but no Wi-Fi signal.

I said, “We’ll figure this out, Diane. Don’t worry. Show me what you have.”

She took my hand and led me to the TV room and then through a door that I had always assumed led to a closet. It didn’t. It led to a spacious utility and storage room. At the back of the room was a glass door to a temperature-controlled wine cellar.

Diane flicked on an overhead light and pointed toward a bare concrete wall on the left side of the room. Along the wall was the electronic equipment that provided the digital brains for the home. Alarm panel. Satellite TV decoders. Landline telephone boxes. DSL modem. High-speed router. Backup hard drive.

On a plywood table below the equipment sat an open laptop. A cable—it looked like USB—was strung from the backup hard drive to the laptop. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“I was trying to use it to make it . . . work. The laptop. I was thinking if I got it closer to the . . . you know . . . those things, those boxes, then it might work. Better. At all.”

“And that gray cable? That’s for . . . ?”

“I saw Raoul do that once when we couldn’t get online. He hooked it up like that.”

Diane’s explanation made no sense. If Raoul had been troubleshooting the Wi-Fi, he would have been using a Cat 5 cable, not a USB cable. And he would have connected it from the laptop to the router, not from the laptop to the backup hard drive.

I said, “Are you certain that he connected the laptop to the backup hard drive? To that box? Like this? Or did he, maybe, connect it to the router—this box, here—with a different kind of cable than the one you’re using?”

She shrugged her shoulders. I might just as well have been asking her if her abductor’s spaceship had been equipped with hyperdrive. “Maybe,” she said.

“Well, we can work this out. Right now? You have the laptop connected to the backup hard drive. That’s not going to help you get online.”

She shrugged again. One piece of good news was that the modem in the setup was the same model I had at home. I recognized that one light on the panel that was supposed to be solid was instead flashing. “May I try something?”

“Please.”

I am not reliable tech support, but I have a reliable strategy for establishing how little I know in a circumstance like the one I was facing. I disconnected the power cable to the DSL modem. I counted to thirty. I plugged it back in.

We waited. When the modem cycled back on, the light that had been flashing went solid. “I think you’re golden now,” I said. “You’re cooking with gas.”

“Is that good?” Diane asked.

She thought I was talking in some tech code.

23

W
e settled in the kitchen. Diane had been making tea before I arrived. I finished the process and carried two mugs to the table.

“Want to talk about it?”

“The Internet? Or my fucking husband?”

If it were really my choice, I would have picked the Internet.

I asked, “What makes you think Raoul is involved with someone?” My use of her earlier words was intentional.

Diane’s eyes flared fire. “I was in for my annual Pap yesterday. My gynecologist is a friend. She called me tonight personally to tell me I have”—Diane emitted a growl like an unhappy terrier—“an STI. Actually, she said I have two STIs, that I might have had them for a while.” She growled again. “Two!”

Before I could say
What?
—that is something else I do when I’m flummoxed during a conversation—Diane burst into tears.

I figured that STI stood for “sexually transmitted infection” and that it was synonymous with the more familiar STD
,
or “sexually transmitted disease.” I was hoping that Diane’s STIs were the kind that could be cured with a course of antibiotics, though I knew that remedy would address only the bacteriological part of the current problem.

“I didn’t even know I was sick. But my doctor said many women don’t.”

I was nodding a lot, hoping to keep Diane talking. I was also hoping to dissuade her from crying. I could tell she had cried plenty; a break in the tears wouldn’t hurt.

“What is ‘a while’?” I asked. “Weeks? Months?” I was realizing that I was in a phase of my life when STDs weren’t part of my experience. I treated a caseload that didn’t raise venereal disease issues much in therapy sessions, and I hung out with friends who didn’t often discuss the clap or its cousins. I was, I feared, becoming STI ignorant. Since I hadn’t studied STDs in a while, I didn’t know how long it was common, or even possible, for women to remain asymptomatic with a garden-variety infection. “Did your doctor say anything about that?”

Diane opened her eyes and spread her hands wide simultaneously. “A long time,” she said. “But I don’t know.” Diane was able to recall only one of her two diagnoses. She was pretty sure she had chlamydia. I was left to hope that her second diagnosis was equally treatable. I’d read bad things recently about drug-resistant gonorrhea.

“I need to call her at the office tomorrow. You know what? I should make a list of questions. What else should I ask her? I should get a piece of paper or I won’t remember. I was trying to look stuff up online. That’s why I need your help figuring out how—”

“I’ll double-check your Internet access before I go,” I said. I rested my hand on top of hers on the table. Diane’s strong hand had held mine through many crises over the years. I feared that I might be failing to provide whatever comfort or support she needed from me. I found it heartbreaking to feel the vulnerability that was radiating from her.

“She called in antibiotics. Said I have to tell anyone I’ve been . . . intimate with about . . . my infections.” She looked at me with doleful eyes. “‘Intimate’? She means sex, right? My gynecologist is asking me whom I’ve been fucking? Has my life come to this?”

Diane inhaled suddenly and held the breath. Her eyes went wide. I flashed on my recently deceased patient’s expression in the instant before she collapsed on my office floor.

Finally Diane exhaled. She looked away. I was still taken aback by Diane’s use of that particular profanity. It wasn’t like her to choose the word
fuck
to describe intercourse. On rare occasions she might spice a conversation with the word in less-literal contexts, but in sexual terms she was much more likely to use a less-controversial coital verb.

In the current context, I was not inclined to offer a single argument that the profane choice was not the most fitting one.

She added, “I don’t want to tell Raoul. Do I really have to tell Raoul?”

I opened my mouth and closed it. I had been proceeding under the assumption that Raoul was playing the role of the bad guy in the current tale. Bad guys typically know that they are the bad guys. “If he’s really having another relationship,” I said, “then I would imagine that he’s the one who infected you. Right?”

Diane looked puzzled, as though she were trying to do multiplication in her head and wasn’t confident about carrying numbers. Her lips were parted and her eyes looked blank.

“Our marriage isn’t . . . simple, Alan. Not how it seems. I think.”

“Whose is, Diane? Marriage is hard.”

She shook her head, rejecting my banality. I moved to an argument devoid of blame and responsibility. “If only one of you gets treated, you’ll just pass the infections back and forth again. Right? That won’t work.”

“If we have sex,” she countered.

“If we have sex”
? I made a quick assumption that she was implying that she was so angry or so hurt that she never planned to have sex with Raoul again. I recognized the statement for what it was: Diane was understandably furious. I tried to clarify. “Raoul and you are not . . .” I was at a loss about how to finish my sentence. I actually visualized that roster of coital verbs.

Diane, however, was ready with a conclusion. She said, “In the same time zone with much frequency. These days. My husband is well-endowed, Alan, but not across-state-lines well-endowed.”

Well.
We had just edged over the imaginary demarcation between me being uncomfortable with the conversation and me being certain I had just learned more information about the intimate details of my friends’ marriage than I ever wanted to know.

Though, given Diane’s precarious emotional situation, I did find the cogency of her retort impressive.

I tried to recover my bearings before she flooded me with new, unwelcome revelations. I said, “You’re saying that you guys aren’t—”

She winced. I really did not want to be having this conversation with her. Given all that she’d been through in the recent past, and all the sequelae that I had witnessed to the Las Vegas trauma, could I believe that her marriage might be fraying a little? Of course I could. Did I believe that the marital fabric was actually torn? No, I did not.

Raoul and Diane had one of those relationships that made people believe in marriage. They had one of those marriages that I had relied on as a model to quell the doubt that threatened to consume my own relationship during difficult times.

Did I have any desire to know anything about the frequency with which she and Raoul had intercourse?
Please.

Diane said, “It’s not been a good time. For us. There have been problems. He’s probably made some mistakes. Since . . .”

“Since . . . ?”

“The truth is I haven’t been the same since . . . And Raoul has had a hard time dealing with my . . . Oh God. Oh God. Reaction? Withdrawal? How about anxiety? Depression. Call it whatever. We adjust. We do the best we can. And now there’s this
Daily Camera
development problem, which was supposed to be a solution and not a problem at all, but instead it’s become part of this big . . . problem I’m having right now. See? Do you see?”

She glanced up at me with eyes pleading for understanding.

“The truth? Raoul doesn’t understand the urgency of my need to move. Not really. He likes this house. He”—her voice began to rise in volume and pitch—“doesn’t understand why I feel so strongly that I have to just get the hell out of . . . this place. Right now!”

I was, I admit, wondering how Diane and I had moved from the discussion of a truly acute crisis—the sudden introduction of multiple STDs into her marriage—to what felt to me like the subacute crisis of moving from the foothills into town. I was about to point out to Diane that it might be helpful to talk a little more about the venereal issues that were on the table in front of her than about a long-term real estate issue that would likely prove immune to a course of antibiotics.

I had to be missing something. I asked, “Did your doctor say anything else?”

Diane’s response? With a motion as natural as a kid tossing a softball across the room to a friend, she flung her mug of tea against the stone hearth of the breakfast-area fireplace. The tea splattered. The clear glass shattered.

For a few seconds, I sat stunned. My next instinct was to jump up and do something. Run to her. Ask her if she was okay. Start cleaning the mess, something. But I didn’t. I sat. The only thing I moved was my mug—out of her reach.

“All right,” I said. “I get it. You want to move. I already knew that. I suspect that Raoul knows that, too. Raoul is doing what he can to facilitate the move. Yes?”

What,
I was wondering,
does this have to do with Diane’s STDs?

“He says he understands. He’s . . . supportive. Tonight? He told me to see if the owners of the flat would lease it to us for a year. Kevin said the place has been on the market for seven months, with no real offers, and he thinks the sellers are motivated. They’ve already dropped the price almost ten percent. Raoul thinks they might be getting desperate enough to consider renting instead of selling. He thought it would be a good interim solution for . . . me. He said ‘us’ but he meant me.

“In another year, he thinks the questions about the future of the
Camera
development will be resolved. And renting in a great location, even if it’s someplace that isn’t perfect, would get me out of”—she looked around for something else to throw; I fixed both my hands around my mug—“this house that much faster. Definitely before next year’s fire season.”

Although I hoped that a resolution was on the horizon, I wasn’t focused on the potential short-term solution to Diane’s housing problem. I was more interested in the rest of her conversation with her husband. I asked, “You spoke to Raoul tonight?”

“Yeah. Before Tara called.” She saw the puzzlement in my eyes. “Tara’s my ob-gyn. I called Raoul to tell him about the place near the Mall. I got his voicemail, of course. He’s in Cleveland. He called back and told me I had to look past the problems with the apartment. To begin to view it as . . . a temporary solution. He called it a bridge.”

She’d spoken the word
Cleveland,
her husband’s midwestern location that night, with abject wonder, as though she considered the fact that he was spending the night in Cleveland to be akin to learning that he was bunking down on Jupiter.

“This is my fault, Alan. I used to be fun. A fun wife. Wasn’t I fun? I was, right? I used to be a lot of fun. Raoul didn’t used to go to Cleveland.”

Fun? This has to do with fun?
“You were fun. You are fun.”

“No. I’m not fun. I’m this far”—she held her two index fingers a few millimeters apart—“from being a complete bitch.”

“Diane, no. It is not true. And it’s not your fault that you have—”

“It is. True. And it is my fault. Not just now, but since . . .”

Vegas? Or since her girlfriend’s arrest for murder? I didn’t know where Diane would assign responsibility. “You’ve been through a lot, Diane. It would be the same for anyone who went through what you’ve gone through. Give yourself a break.”

She waved a hand at me, dismissing my attempt at comfort. “I know I’m not handling things well. I haven’t been able to move on. It’s been hard for Raoul. I don’t want to travel. Plan things. He’s been patient. Raoul has. But he’s not patient anymore. He’s in Cleveland. I have to do something.”

“Are you getting any help, Diane? Seeing someone?”

I had asked Diane the same question a few times before. She’d brushed me off every one of them. I waited for her to answer.

“I tried,” she said. “It didn’t work. Therapy is bullshit.”

I weighed her assessment of our profession for irony. I found none. “Hey, Diane—”

“No!” she said. “Cleveland, Alan?”

She was looking at me as though she wanted something from me.
Does she think I know something?
I said, “He’s looking at some start-up there, right? The next Facebook or something? The next PayPal? That’s what he does. That’s why he’s in Cleveland.”

“Is there someone in his life? Do you know?”

Her question did not seem perfunctory. I said, “I don’t have that kind of relationship with your husband. We’re not that open with each other. He cherishes you. I have never had a moment’s doubt that he loves you . . . deeply.”

She countered, “He’s never given you any reason to . . .”

She did not want to hear that Raoul and I had a relationship that did not include sharing indiscretions, nor did she want for me to tell her what she already knew: that Raoul understood that my allegiance to Diane would always be stronger than my allegiance to him. I offered an unequivocal, “No, he has not.”

“And he’s never introduced you to some woman? One you were curious about? Wondered if he was . . . hitting that?”

Hitting that?
“Never. Women flirt with Raoul all the time. You see that. He is never anything other than a complete gentleman every time it happens. He loves you.”

“Of course. It’s all in my head.”

I didn’t bite. “Is there something else to this? Another piece that you want to tell me?”

“Things were fine. For a long time. Now it’s a mess.” She stood. She said, “I’m tired.”

I embraced her. “You need to talk with your husband, Diane. Soon.”

• • •

When I am on my game clinically, I can be astute. I can take almost invisible threads from a patient’s life, almost undetectable affective lint from a patient’s story, and weave the wisps of psychological reality into a lifeline that can guide her back to the place and time where the fabric began to unravel.

When I’m dense, though, I can be a master of obtuseness. In those instances when I—ultimately—recognize my density, the awareness of my blindness often comes with a comical stumble and a clunky
aha
moment.

I had one of those as I was driving in the dark down Lee Hill from Diane’s house, approaching the location of an auto accident that years before had claimed the life of a patient of mine. The culprit that distant night was a sharp curve and wet roads. And an evil hand.

The woman who died had, literally, been my introduction to Michael McClelland.