Whittaker 01 The Enemy We Know (2 page)

“
Maybe the roof?” Mary Kate ventured. She handed me my keys.

“
First place they looked,” Marshall said.

“
The dumpster? No,” I shot down my own suggestion. “That was emptied yesterday; the back-up beeping almost drove Mr. Nilson nuts.”

Marshall raised his eyebrows.

“
Um, I mean he was irritated at the interruption. Anyway, all the police would have to do is look inside and maybe shift a few bags around. They would have found it.

“
I don’t know what he did with it,” I continued, suddenly tired. “Maybe he flung it away. All I know is he had it pointed at my neck one minute, then took off when he heard the sirens.

“
He’s denying it all.” Marshall looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him. Either hospitals gave him the willies or there was something going on I was unaware of.

“
That’s crazy. Why would I lie?”

“
I
believe you, Letty. But after all, the police don’t take anyone at face value, and they can’t seem to find it. They’ve been interviewing clients and staff at the clinic. You were the only one who saw the knife.”

“
How do they think I got this?” I pointed to the cut on my neck, shivering. “Nobody else saw it because he had it tucked under his shirt. Behind him. Great, big, honkin’ buck knife.”

“
I’m sure they’ll find it. After all, they’re professionals. For now, they have enough to charge him with Drunk and Disorderly, at the very least.”

“
We can press charges for trespassing or breaking in or something, can’t we?”

“
You mean the clinic?” Marshall suddenly looked embarrassed. “There is that option, but administration would prefer to keep the clinic out of it as much as possible.”

“
What? How is that possible?”

Marshall’s discomfort grew more obvious. Turning to Mary Kate, he asked her to step outside. Still an intern, she wasn’t experienced enough to control her expressions; her face registered a burning curiosity. She’d have her ear plastered to the door, sure enough.

“
Letty, I’m sure when things have calmed down and you’ve had a chance to think about it, you’ll see their point. I’m not saying I agree with them. But the fear is that the public might assume you—and by extension the clinic—are responsible for this guy’s acting out, some kind of misconduct or something.” Marshall licked his lips, his eyes on the floor. “Or they’ll be afraid to come in for services. We’re already going to have an issue with the clients who were present during this incident. I’m sure we’ll have to make some arrangements for trauma counseling.”

“
Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” I interrupted his to-do list. “Are you saying admin thinks
I’m
to blame here?”

“
Of course not, but that wouldn’t stop some lawyer from making that claim, would it? They just want to keep a low profile, if at all possible.”

“
And that means what? Not pressing charges after I’ve been attacked by a complete stranger?”

There was a pause, an uncomfortable one.

“
A complete stranger, Letty?” Marshall’s voice grew soft, gentle. He finally made eye contact.

My face flushed red, my heart pounding in protest. This felt accusatory, but I wasn’t sure where to go with it.

“
Okay, not exactly a complete stranger,” I conceded. “We met together twice, but he lied about everything. I didn’t even know his real name.”

“
Why? Why would someone do that? Why would someone pay over a hundred bucks a session out-of-pocket and waste it by telling lies?

The realization that Marshall had already been digging into Wayne’s file shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. Wayne had paid cash, which
was
a little unusual. At the time, he’d claimed he didn’t have insurance. Not an unlikely situation these days.

“
I don’t know why he did it. He was probably spying on his girlfriend. I don’t know.” My eyes filled with tears and I turned away, ashamed of my weakness.

“
Look, this isn’t the time to worry about all this. It will work out, I promise. And besides, that’s not why I came.”

“
Why did you come?” I sounded prissy and sullen.

“
To see you,” he said. “To make sure you were okay. And, well, I know it sounds lame, but to tell you how amazing I think you are.”

I rolled my eyes, making him laugh. “That
is
lame.”

“
I’m serious. Not everyone could have made it through all that in one piece.” My mind flashed again on the hunting knife—not Marshall’s intention, I knew—but my stomach rolled at the thought of “pieces.”

“
Your courage is impressive. And,” he smiled again, “somebody’s got to take you home.”

Home sounded heavenly; I smiled in return. Marshall was right. There was enough time to worry about the fall-out tomorrow and nothing I could do about it tonight. One day at a time, after all.

I turned down Marshall’s offer of a ride and Mary Kate’s offer of continued chauffeur services, and drove myself home. Probably a mistake since I sailed through a red light without so much as tapping the brakes. By the time I made it home, I felt too jittery to stay there, so I called a friend to give me a ride over to the club. It was either that or drink.

Tuesday wasn’t my usual night for a meeting, but even though I’d only been sober a handful of months, it was long enough to know I needed to be in a safe place. Ugly, but safe.

The HP & Me Club is a testament to the fact that sobriety doesn’t guarantee good taste. By virtue of living in denial and manufacturing a steady stream of excuses, drunks are some of the most creative folk I know. In recovery, however, our energy goes into day-to-day survival while most of our money goes for coffee and cigarettes. There was never enough left over of either commodity for beautification. The decor at HP & Me was a queasy melange of church rummage sale items, leftovers, and “found” items. The find usually materialized on the side of the road on trash day and was generally considered upholstered manna from our collective Higher Power. If HP thinks threadbare, velveteen, orange love seats are good enough for the club, who could argue?

First thing I did when I got there was head behind the counter to the rows of members’ coffee mugs hanging from pegs on the wall. Like everything else, the cups were a weird assortment; the wall displayed equal amounts of basic brought-from-home cups, those decaled with local business ads, and mildly obscene joke mugs.

As I poured coffee into my
Alice in Wonderland
mug, I sensed the presence of a warm body, way too close, behind me. I jolted, splashing coffee over the counter and down the front of my shirt.

“
Whoa! Cut her off.” Ben, an auto mechanic who four years ago had passed out and set his house on fire with a dropped cigarette, slid behind the counter, grabbing paper towels to help mop up.

Ignoring Ben’s helpfulness, I spun, anger flaring. Scared the hell out of the new guy lurking behind me. Sober only a week, Paul was already a trial. Tall and skinny with a tuft of blond hair sprouting from the top of his head, the only thing differentiating him from a corn stalk was the black framed glasses that repeatedly slipped down his narrow nose. My fear-induced anger drained away.

“
Wow! Hi.” Paul seemed surprised by the reaction he’d caused. Most people just yawned when he spoke to them.

“
Hi, Paul. How are you doing?”

“
I’m sober another twenty-four, right? One day at a time.”

“
That’s great, Paul.”

“
Yeah, well, I’m doing ninety in ninety so I’ve only got eighty-one more to go. But this is where I’ll learn to walk the walk, right? Not just talk the talk.”

Hopefully when he’d completed the suggested ninety meetings in ninety days he’d have found his own voice instead of parroting AA slogans. Still, he was sober and working the program—huge accomplishments, both.

One of my friends from the Wednesday night women’s group eased up on us. Stacie and I had stumbled into AA on the same night nearly five months ago. Sobriety twins—we got a lot of Mutt and Jeff remarks. Stacie stood 5‘2” in her three-inch heels, but her abundance of body art, piercings, and orange-dyed hair kept her in the limelight. Tonight she was wearing a red plaid skirt along and a bright purple T-shirt with the legend
Love Goddess
scrawled across her boobs. This was her demure look.

“
Hey, girl. How’s it going?”

A ghost memory of the knife slashed through my mind at her question, setting off chain-reaction shivers.

“
It’s been better.”

Stacie looked a question, but I didn’t want to get into it in front of Paul. Not having an insightful bone in his body, he had no clue we wanted him gone. Stacie was going to have to wait. Normally, neither of us would have had any difficulty shoving past a guy to have a girl-chat, but Paul was equal parts vulnerability and annoyance, and he was just too new to sobriety to risk hurting his feelings. Instead of rescuing me, Stacie had likewise been ensnared.

“
Yeah, I’m not doing so good either. I asked some of the guys to be my sponsor, but they all said no. Too busy, you know?” His eyes skittered sideways, not wanting our looks of disbelief to confirm the lie he told himself.

The rejections he’d received in his sponsor hunt pissed me off. Although working the AA program did wonders for teaching guys empathy and compassion, there were plenty of sub-Neanderthals around, fighting extinction. I’d seen several actively avoid Paul’s company, and the few who let him join the conversation spent their time making sly comments that, fortunately, went over Paul’s head. Finding a man willing to put up with Paul’s eccentricities would be difficult. I made a note to talk to a few of the more evolved men. I wasn’t optimistic.

As the time for the meeting approached, Stacie and I, with Paul trailing along, went to claim seats around the tables in the side room. I zoned out during the usual readings of
How It Works, The Promises,
and
The Traditions,
tuning in just in time to stick a dollar in the donation bowl when it passed. When it finally got to the point where the group was asked if anyone had a “burning desire to speak,” I was ready.

I passed.

The old-timers eyeballed me pretty heavy, wheels turning as they mentally put a check mark next to my name under the “to be watched closely” column. I abandoned my recent quit-smoking vow, bummed a cigarette from Stacie, and hid behind the smoke. Nobody calls you on your crap as skillfully—or with as little hesitation—as a group of recovering drunks. Tough love was invented around the tables.

After the meeting, a bunch of folks decided to head out for coffee and pie, but I declined that, too, and headed for home. Stood in the parking lot for five minutes before remembering I didn’t have my car. I ended up having to bum a ride from Paul, which really put the icing on the cake. One of us was pleased.

A pile of messages awaited me on my voice mail when I got home. Robert, my boyfriend of three months, was the first. He knew nothing of my day, and I was too exhausted to catch him up to speed. I’d call him tomorrow. Marshall had called to tell me to take the next few days off, and Mary Kate had checked in on me. The next four messages each recorded a few seconds of silence before clicking off. I checked Caller ID, but it’d been blocked.

Frowning, I deleted the whole mess, then crawled into bed.

“Letty, what are you doing here? I thought Marshall gave you the day off.” Lisa, our office manager, looked peeved at the glitch in her seamless schedule.

I’d always envied Lisa’s crisp, put-together style, although whenever I tried to copy it I ended up looking more icy-dominatrix than was advisable for a therapist. She favored chilly blues and wintery whites and wore spike heels that could drill a hole in concrete. Her hair was clipped short with frosty, blond spikes that—rain, shine, or tornado—did as they were told and looked like they could hurt you. We liked to keep Lisa happy.

Unfortunately, I discovered that Marshall had also given word for Lisa to cancel my clients’ appointments. It upset me that the decision had been made without my input, but I tried convincing myself he had meant well.

“
Lisa, can you try to reach my people and tell them there was a slight misunderstanding?” Her efficient eyebrows gave me silent attitude. I sighed. “A misunderstanding on
my
part, and see if any would still like to come in.”

“
I can try, but I’ll tell you now, your morning is shot. I’ll work on the afternoon folks and see what I can do. The Thursday and Friday client list should be a lot easier.

“
Thursday and Friday! Everyone got canceled?” Now I understood her irritation. She’d probably spent the better part of the morning making phone calls and would have to repeat the process all over again with suitable apologies.

“
Just do your best. I’m sorry about the inconvenience. If you see Mary Kate, could you ask her to set up a meeting with me? We were supposed to have her supervision yesterday, but…”

“
No problem,” Lisa breezed over my explanation. “She comes in at ten; I’ll catch her then.”

As I escaped down the hall, Marshall stuck his head out of his office. From this angle, he looked decapitated.

“
What are you doing here?” he asked.

“
I work here. Why did you cancel my clients?”

A frown creased his face as he stepped into the hall. “I’d think that was obvious.”

“
I just wish you’d asked me first. That’s all.” I sounded petulant, which only increased my agitation. Although he didn’t see clients in therapy, I could feel him scanning my words and actions, sorting them out, searching for clues and nuances to my state of mind.