Mystery (8 page)

“Good point.”

“But I’m stuck with that damn diagnosis. In my head—like that bastard passed a sentence on me. Like it’s my eye color and I’m stuck with it.”

She cleared her throat, coughed, swooned, adjusted a valve on the air tank. “I wanted to kill that shrink. Judging me. Now I’d be happy if what he put down was my only diagnosis.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, up and down goes the head,” she said. “Been to a lot of you guys, my parents didn’t give up on me till I was fourteen. I have to tell you, most of your colleagues were losers. So how could I respect their opinions? Know why I picked you? It wasn’t because I remembered you from when your gay buddy hassled me. I mean I did remember, but that wasn’t the point. Know what it was?”

“Not a clue.”

“A woman I used to do yoga with, one of the few people who still has the balls to keep visiting me, referred you. Marie Blunt.”

Marie, now an A-level interior designer, had once been a showgirl. The court had asked me to evaluate her kids for custody. The showgirl years had come out, but nothing more. Now I wondered if she’d dabbled in Gretchen’s world.

“Silent treatment, Doc. Yeah, yeah, you can’t admit you know her, I get it. But I’m sure we can both agree Marie’s a saint. Even her idiot ex recognizes that now, but she’s too smart to take him back. She said when the court hired you to do her child custody, she freaked out because he had all the money, she was scared you’d be corrupt like everyone else and take his side. Instead, you were fair and managed to get both of them not to victimize the kids. No mean feat, considering the ex is a total rat-bastard.”

I crossed my legs.

She said, “Nonverbal signal to annoying patient: Quit avoiding what we’re here for. Fine—oh, yeah, let me get you your money up front. I’m sure you don’t mind cash, do you? I’m a cash gal from way back.” Winking. “Old habits and all that.”

“Let’s deal with that later,” I said.

“No, let’s deal with it now.” Hard voice. So was her smile. “I want to make sure I don’t forget.” She touched the side of her head. “I forget a lot, could be tumors migrating into the old noggin, huh? Or maybe there’s just not much worth remembering in the first place? What’s your take on my encroaching senility, Doc?”

“It’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t know me well enough. Okay, payment with a smile coming up.”

Rising with effort, she hobbled through a doorway, was gone for several minutes, came back with a thick, bright red envelope that she thrust at me.

Unless it was packed with singles, way too thick to comprise a session’s worth. I put it on an end table. “In terms of Chad—”

“I
told
you, this is all about little old narcissistic addictive
me
. Count the moolah, make sure I’m not shorting you.”

I opened the envelope, flipped through a collection of fifties. Enough for twenty sessions. “This is way too much, Gretchen. Let’s go session by session.”

“What, you think I’m going to kick tomorrow?”

“No,” I said. “It’s the way I do business.”

“Well, let’s do it differently—be flexible, you know? If we go session by session, you can leave whenever you want. My situation, I need a commitment.”

“I’m committed to helping you. How you pay me won’t make a difference.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I didn’t respond.

She said, “You’re different from anyone else? Then why the cashmere blazer and the English slacks and those cute loafers, what are they, Ferragamo?”

“I like stuff as much as the next guy, Gretchen. And that’s irrelevant. I’m here for Chad and you don’t need to buy me in advance.” Taking a session’s worth of cash out of the envelope, I resealed it, placed it beside her.

“I don’t believe you. You want to feel free to leave.”

“If that was the issue, I could refund unused dough and book on you at any time. Now, how about we stop wasting time and talk about Chad?”

She stared at me. Gasped. Let out a strangled laugh.

“Jesus, I got myself a serious one.”

The urge to prattle never left her but I kept steering her back to a structured history. Starting with Chad’s birth and continuing into the toddler years, preschool, and the boy’s current placement in one of the most expensive grade schools in the city, an intimate place originally based on psychoanalytic theory but now eclectic. I’d lectured there a few times, thought it was overpriced, no better than any school, but not harmful. If need be, the director could be counted on.

No need for that now, but it might be interesting to see how Dr. Lisette Auerbach’s impressions gibed with Gretchen’s description of Chad as a meld of Louis Pasteur, Leonardo da Vinci, and Saint George.

Despite her troubled past and her foreshortened future, Gretchen could’ve been any proud, nervous, overprotective, overindulgent Westside mom.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “he’s a killer athlete, too. Soccer and basketball. Mr. Cup in Hand must’ve been some kind of stud. Brad and Albert
and
Pelé.”

I said, “You contributed half of Chad’s chromosomes. You also created his environment.”

“Three cheers for me. I’m just hoping some of those chromosomes don’t mess him up. Like my ADD, my propensity to—”

“Gretchen, what specifically are you concerned about?”

“What do you think?” she shouted. “What to tell him.”

“What have you told him so far?”

“That I’m sick.”

“Did you name the sickness?”

“No. Why would I?”

“When kids don’t have facts they sometimes supply their own.”

“And?”

“Their fantasies can be worse than reality.”

“What can be worse than the fact that I’ve got fucking cancer and am going to screw him up royal by abandoning him?”

“What measures have you taken for his care?”

“What a way with words you have,” she said.

“Have you planned?”

“Hell, yes. My plan is my sister. I have two of them. Katrine’s a bigger asshole than me, total washout, but Bunny’s solid-gold. Maybe being the middle child helped her avoid family shit in some way. Whatever made her who she is, she’s great and she’s taking Chad.”

“Where does Bunny live?”

“Berkeley. Her husband’s a physics professor, she teaches English, both her kids are off in college. Chad always likes visiting her and Leonard, they’ve got a funky house in the Berkeley Hills, nice view of the Bay. Got a great dog, mutt named Waldo, Chad loves him, too.”

She sniffed. Caressed her oxygen tank. “From their backyard you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.” She teared up. “Bunny will be a great mom for Chad. Better than me.”

“Have you talked to Chad about living with Bunny and Leonard?”

“Why would I even bring that up? It would freak him out!”

“You think he’s unaware of how ill you are?”

“I think he doesn’t pay much attention as long as he gets his attention.”

I stayed silent.

“You think I’m full of shit.”

I got up and touched the tank. “This isn’t hard to miss, Gretchen.”

She burst into sobs.

She allowed me to dry her eyes. Grabbed me around my neck and held on for a while before sinking back, wheezing.

“Thank you. For not letting go. Everyone lets go.” Sniff. “No one takes care of me, I’m going to be lost.”

“I can talk to someone about hospice care.”

“That’s not what I mean, I’ve done that already, there’s a service, visiting nurses, they’re totally into pain control, all that good stuff. I meant … whatever … why not more dope?”

“What then?”

“People don’t like me,” she said. “I’d say it was my fault, but it’s always been that way. As long as I can remember.”

“I like you.”

“Fucking liar.”

“You do make it kind of hard.”

She glared at me. Burst into boggy laughter. “Oh, you are something. Stud of the psyche.”

I took her hand. “It sounds as if you’ve done everything practical that you need to do. But my hunch is Chad knows a whole lot more than you think he does. I can meet with him to try to get a sense of what’s on his mind. If there are fallacies, we’ll correct them—”

“What kind of fallacies?”

“Sometimes kids blame themselves for a parent’s illness.”

“No way, impossible, he’d never do that.”

“You may be right but it’s worth exploring.”

She squeezed my knuckles. Slid out of grasp. “But I may also be
wrong
because what the hell do I know about kids and you’ve worked with thousands, right? You really think Chad’s blaming himself?”

“I don’t think anything but it needs to be looked at.”

“Okay, okay … but I do need a guarantee that you’ll be here for me.
That’s
why I wanted you to have the money up front, I need you … need you
 … tethered
to me. ’Cause let’s face it, money talks, bullshit walks.”

Snatching the red envelope, she dropped it in my lap. “Take it, dammit, or I won’t sleep at night and you’d be harming a poor pathetic terminal cancer patient.”

I picked up the envelope.

“Thank you,” she said. “Not for that. For drying my damn eyes.”

he girl in white was scheduled for the evening broadcast but got cut. Heavy news day: two separate actresses beaten up by their boyfriends.

The following morning at nine a.m., Milo and I sat in my kitchen watching a network affiliate flash the drawing for ten seconds.

He said, “Blinked and missed it,” went and helped himself to a half-gallon milk carton from the fridge. “With their ratings, no big deal. ’Bout as useful as underwear on an eel.”

But before he began gulping, his cell beeped Handel’s
Messiah
and he listened, wide-eyed, as Detective Moe Reed delivered a message so loudly even I could hear.

“Anonymous tip, sir, saying you should check out a website called SukRose.net.”

“Sounds exotic, Moses. Spell it.”

Reed said, “S-U-K, rose as in flower, dot net.”

Milo hung up and repeated that.

I said, “Before he spelled it, I heard
sucrose
as in sugar. Maybe as in daddy?”

He put down the milk and left the room. Was seated at my computer before I reached my office.

SukRose.net’s home page flashed purple and gold with bright red lettering.

“Classy,” he said. “What it lacks in subtlety it makes up in vulgarity.”

SUKROSE.NET
FOR UPPER-CRUST SUGAR DADDIES
AND STAR-QUALITY SWEETIES

Why we are a cut above the rest.

You’ve seen the others. Perhaps you’ve experienced them. And found out that making promises and delivering upon them are two separate things.

Nowhere but at SukRose.net will you find Sugar Daddies prescreened for financial, medical, as well as moral net worth.

Nowhere but at SukRose.net will you encounter Sweeties who really are sweet—brainy, sophisticated, lovable, and
loving
young women who desire more than the superficial and respond from the depths of their beings.

Nowhere but at SukRose.net will you personally benefit from rigorous geographical screening. Sure, it’s a big country. But not for discerning Sugar Daddies and Sweeties.

That’s why SukRose.net limits its membership to two clusters of meticulously researched zip-code databases: the elite environs of New York City and the elite environs of Los Angeles. And if that sometimes means a transcontinental flight on a Daddy’s Gulfstream while sipping Moët & Chandon and nibbling on beluga caviar?

Well, you know the answer:
C’est la vie
.

So cross our gilded portal and learn what SukRose.net has to offer. No obligations to potential Daddies who want to browse. No obligations
ever
to Sweeties. If you pass our rigorous screening, consider yourself accepted at one of the most exclusive clubs in the world.

ENTER

“Brainy
and
lovable,” he said.

I said, “And oh-so-loving when they respond from the depths of their beings. Who knew discussing Proust would be so popular?”