There was never anyone waiting in Dr. English’s waiting room.
Apparently Janet English was the one doctor in the western hemisphere who didn’t stack her patients’ appointments on top of each other. Gave herself a half an hour between sessions to have a cup of tea, clear her mind. Whatever the reason, Hannah was grateful for it. Never anybody to play eye-games with. Everybody wondering about everybody else. Afraid that one of the kids would erupt, start speaking in tongues or have a seizure, unzip his pants, flash his privates.
Or maybe Dr. Janet English only had one client per day. God knows, she charged enough to stay afloat on that.
There was one couch, gray nubby material. A green leather chair. A good magazine selection on the coffee table. The latest People, Time, then some weird ones you’d never look at otherwise. A tattoo magazine. A skateboarder monthly. A couple of teenage fashion rags and a couple for the computer crowd.
There were two Andrew Wyeth reproductions on the walls. The Bermuda scene. A pretty Key West house on the edge of the wind-tossed Atlantic, a single coconut palm along the seawall bending against pre-storm winds. The other Wyeth was done in muted whites and featured a golden lab curled up on his master’s king-size bed. Tassels hanging from the edge of the bedspread. Late-afternoon light suffusing the room with a serene glow.
The waiting room always made Hannah feel relaxed, which was a hell of a feat since every week when they came here, she inevitably circled back to that July morning five years ago when her parents were murdered, the second-by-second unfolding of that day, and the days that immediately followed.
They’d only been sitting for half a minute, Randall paging through the tattoo magazine, when Dr. Janet English came out of her back office. She was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a black and red Miami Heat T-shirt. In her early forties, she had close-cropped hair, not a buzz cut exactly, but way too short for a part. It was black, graying around the temples. No jewelry, no makeup. Cherub cheeks, gray eyes that never seemed to blink.
Last week Gisela said she’d heard that Dr. English was a lesbian. “Why should that matter?” Hannah said. “I’m not saying it matters,” Gisela said. “I’m just saying I heard she was a same-sex lady.” Hannah said, “But the implication is that it’s bad. That this woman with a medical degree from Harvard is somehow compromised because of her sexual orientation.” “Hey,” Gisela said. “That’s your spin. I’m just saying I heard from a reliable source, the child psychiatrist treating your son for posttraumatic stress is not one hundred percent kosher heterosexual. What’s wrong with you? You join the PC police or something? You been memorizing the lists of things you can’t say anymore? Look, Hannah, I’m just passing along some information. Do with it what you will.”
Hannah was doing nothing with it. She liked Janet English. Liked the way she put her hand on Randall’s shoulder. Liked the way she smiled, and most of all liked the way she talked. Which was a lot like the way she dressed. No frills. Comfortable with the language of normal folk, not throwing around a lot of medical jargon. At first, it’d worried her. Seemed unprofessional. But Randall took to Janet immediately and that was good enough for Hannah.
“How we doing?” Dr. English asked. More to Hannah than Randall, but including them both. “Everybody behaving themselves?”
Hannah gave Randall a chance to respond. But he was staring down at the floor, eyes hidden.
“Randall’s decided he needs a new wardrobe.”
He shook his head, but wouldn’t look her way.
“New wardrobes are important,” Janet said. “Gotta have the right uniform or they’ll throw you off the team.”
“And I’m not sure we’ve got full compliance on the pharmaceutical front either.”
“I know what you’re saying, Mom.” Randall lifted his head and gave her a reproving frown. “I’m not some little kid.”
“So have you been taking your Xanax, Randall?” Janet had her hand on his shoulder. He was leaning lightly against her hip. A tingle of jealousy fluttered in Hannah’s chest. The closeness, the familiarity between these two. “Have you been taking the pills I prescribed?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Oh,” Janet said. “Because. Now there’s the great all-purpose answer.”
“I didn’t take them because I shouldn’t have to take medicine. Because I should be all right without any medicine.”
Dr. English looked at Hannah. A small smile growing on the doctor’s lips. Like, see how easy this is? This is how to talk to your son, how it’s done. But Hannah didn’t like it. Two adults double-teaming the anxious boy. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t natural. And certainly nothing she could repeat at home alone.
“Good answer, Randall. Very good answer. And I totally agree. You shouldn’t have to take any medicine at all. And that’s what this is all about. Trying to get you to that place where not taking medicine is the norm.”
She looked at Hannah again. A bigger smile now, like this had been a minor epiphany. A glimpse, for Hannah’s benefit, of what went on behind the closed door of Janet English’s office. She didn’t allow Hannah to sit in. The doctor reserved ten minutes at the end of each session to go over anything that may have come to light during the forty minutes she was alone with Randall.
“I’ve got an errand up the street,” Hannah said. “Shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I’ll be back before you two are done. Okay, Randall?”
“Okay,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at her. Sulking now. She’d embarrassed him again, made him self-conscious, treated him like a kid. One or the other of the litany of offenses she was continually guilty of.
“You do your errands,” Janet said. “We’ve got to discuss Randall’s fall wardrobe.”
Hannah watched them walk into the dusky room. She waited till the door shut. Stood there a minute more, staring at the white dog curled on the white bed. That quiet bedroom where everything harmonized, everything made sense.
“It’s called a petition for modification.”
“He can do that? He can reopen the case? Snap his fingers, get a judge to reconsider.”
“It’s the law, Hannah. He has rights like anyone else.”
“He’s not even a U.S. citizen. He’s a goddamn Norwegian. What rights does he have to come here and try to take my child from me?”
“Doesn’t matter what color his passport is. He’s the boy’s father, Hannah. That gives him rights.”
“Not in my book, it doesn’t.”
“Unfortunately we’re not playing by your book.”
Two blocks down Ponce de Léon Boulevard from Janet English’s office, in the one-story white stucco office building, a cute Mediterranean restaurant on one side, more lawyers’ offices on the other, she was meeting with Brad Cohen, her family-services attorney. Mid-thirties, pink shirt, green tie with spewing volcanoes on it, and a haircut so bad it made his curly black hair look like a cheap wig. He came with the highest recommendations. Big-time rep around the courthouse, the great white shark on domestic issues. Divorce, alimony, child custody. This was the number-one guy in Miami. Jaws for in-laws.
“Hey, I don’t write the rules, Hannah, I just try to bend them in the right direction to suit my clients.”
She’d used fifteen of her thirty free minutes trying to read and make sense of the document Brad had received from Pieter Thomasson’s New York attorney. Pieter was safely back home in Oslo. Having fled the statutory rape charges stemming from his multiple encounters with a fifteen-year-old high school freshman twelve years ago, a period of time which coincided with his brief marriage to Hannah. A union that lasted all of eight months.
“This guy’s got a warrant out for failure to appear in the molestation case. Unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”
“Even criminals have rights.”
“You don’t know the whole story, Brad. My father lawyered the divorce and the custody case too. At the custody hearing Pieter threw a violent tantrum in the courtroom, had to be restrained by a marshal, screamed obscenities at the judge, and got tossed out. Now, five years later, the asshole pops up, thinks he has a shot at half-time custody?”
“The court disposed of the statutory rape case. There’s no more warrant for failure to appear or unlawful flight.”
“Disposed of it? You’re kidding. When?”
Brad tapped the document that lay on the table before him. The one Hannah had tried to read. Indecipherable legalese.
“Last week. An out-of-court settlement,” Brad said. “Money changed hands, the girl and her family signed the papers. His record is clean, everything’s whited out.”
“He can do that? Drop some cash, walk away from something like that? He fucked a fifteen-year-old girl in the backseat of his Volkswagen bug. Tore her green plaid skirt, her goddamn school uniform, ripped her panties, deflowered this Catholic girl, and now he slips them a few thousand bucks and all is forgiven, come get your son, take him away to fucking Norway.”
“I’m not saying we’re giving up. All I’m saying is Florida law favors custody by both parents. Now that he’s no longer a wanted felon, what the judge wants to know is: Has there been sufficient rehabilitation? Has the guy cleaned up his act?”
“You mean, has he raped any more kids lately?”
“Apparently he hasn’t. At least no one’s come forward to complain. Barring that, all we can really do is delay. Make the guy wait.”
“That fucking bastard.”
“I hear that a lot,” Brad said. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, showing her his armpit stains. “You wouldn’t believe it, Hannah. Those three little words, it’s like an echo in here. All day long. I open at ten, close at six-thirty, eight and half hours that’s what I hear. ‘That fucking bastard.’ It’s wormed into the woodwork now. ‘That fucking bastard. That fucking bastard.’ Those words, they’re lurking in the bookshelves, hiding out in my silk palm tree over there. Like spider mites, the words are everywhere.”
She sat there in the client’s chair. Padded black leather. Probably a thousand dollars. Gold studs, beautiful shined mahogany. In the last month she’d paid for ten chairs just like it. Fending off Pieter Thomasson. Her major life mistake. Marrying her goddamn math professor at the University of Miami. Hannah, a freshman, falling for the tall blond Nordic prof with golden hair, deep blue eyes, enormous white teeth. And that accent. That suave European way he had. He carried a pipe, for chrissakes. He wore smoking jackets. He buffed his nails and boffed his students. Didn’t let a little thing like a marriage vow change his mating rituals.
“That fucking bastard,” Brad said again. Hands laced behind his head.
“Okay,” Hannah said. “I get it, Brad. So give me a week, I’ll work up something more creative.”
On the sidewalk heading back to Dr. Janet English’s office, still fuming, Hannah felt something tickle across the skin of her neck. The brush of eyes following her. She fought it for a few steps, this attack of dread, but it wouldn’t cease.
In front of a delicatessen she halted abruptly and swung around. A couple of men in white shirts and ties passed by, neither of them looking her way. Lawyers talking shop. She peered across the street at the five-story parking garage. Nothing there either. A guy sitting at the counter in the deli with a motorcycle helmet in front of him was drinking a Coke through a straw. The traffic was light, the sky clear, a breeze was stirring the American flag planted in the small yard of an art gallery across the street. The scent of garlic and onions whisked down the block from Marco’s Sicilian Restaurant.
The wave of uneasiness slowly subsided, but she stood a moment more, leaning against a parking meter, watching the traffic flow by.
She was having a minor flash about Erin Barkley in Fifth Story.
While tracking the would-be assassin of the twelve-year-old girl, Erin realizes she is being stalked herself. Someone who knows who she is, what she’s been doing. Possibly the killer, who senses her drawing near, has decided he must kill her. Or was that a cliché? It felt good, but it also felt familiar. Well, she could call up Max Chonin, her agent. The guy had read every mystery novel ever written and he could quote the plots of any of them. She could ask him. He’d probably reel off half a dozen stories where the detective is being followed. The watcher watched. Still, she liked it. And she wasn’t afraid of clichés. Everything was a cliché anyway. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl. A man goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town. There were only five plots. Or maybe six. It all depended on the words, how fresh they were. The language.
She looked back down the street in the direction she’d come. That fucking bastard. That pus-sucking son of a bitch.
Cursing had never been her strength. She’d ask Gisela. She’d have one suitable for Pieter Thomasson, something Hannah’d never heard. One of those good Cuban curses. May Jesus and his donkey defecate in unison on your morning oatmeal. One of those.
But for the moment, “that fucking bastard” would have to do.
She’d told Brad to prolong this any way he could. Stretch it out. Use Randall’s fragile psychological condition as an excuse for delay if he had to. Anything to give her time to figure out some counterattack. Hell if she was going to let that child-raping son of a bitch spend a second with her boy. She’d hire a goddamn hitman before she let that happen.
Hal sat at the counter of the deli and drank his Coke. He chewed the crushed ice and looked out the window and watched Hannah Keller halt briefly outside the window and look around. She was blond. She was pretty. Hal wasn’t stupid. He knew a pretty woman when he saw one. Like the ones in the magazines. The ones on television. That’s how you knew, you compared the real ones to the ones on television. They had to be slender with smooth skin, straight noses, large eyes. These women were the most desirable. They attracted wealthy and powerful men who wanted to mate with them and create more blond children with straight noses. Powerful men gave these women money, they gave them fancy cars and big houses and lots of jewelry.
Hal understood how it worked. He wasn’t mentally retarded. He knew things.
“Ready for another Coke?” the young woman behind the counter asked.
She had stringy brown hair and a large nose and her eyes were small and close together. She was fat. This woman would never be in a magazine.
“Have you heard of the kusimanse?” Hal said.
“The what?”
“Kusimanse,” Hal said. “It is a West African dwarf mongoose, a small creature, not very strong. Not even strong enough to crack open an eggshell. But the problem is, this creature loves eggs.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So what the West African dwarf mongoose does, when he finds an egg, he takes it, and he bends over like the center on a football team and puts his front paws on the egg and he hikes the egg through his back legs right into a rock or a tree. And he breaks the egg open and he eats it.”
The woman looked at Hal like there was more to his story.
“There are many ways to accomplish a task,” Hal said. “Even the weak can find ways to satisfy their needs.”
“Ooo-kay,” the woman said, lifting her eyebrows slightly. “That mean you want another Coke or not?”
Hal watched Hannah Keller pass by. He watched her go into a door across the street. She shut the door and was gone.
“I do not,” Hal told the young woman. “I am finished.”
The woman scribbled on her pad and tore off the sheet and set it on the counter in front of him.
“Have a nice day,” she said.
But she didn’t mean it. She did not care about him or how the rest of his day would go. She did not want to mate with him or ever see him again. He could tell this from her eyes and her tone of voice and the way she stood. Hal could see inside people. There was nothing difficult about it. He could read their bodies. He could tell who was dangerous and who was not. He could tell when someone was lying. He could tell who would be easy to kill and who would be difficult. Who would struggle, who would give in easily.
Hal tried to stay attentive to everything around him. He watched and listened and was aware. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t mentally retarded or demented. He wasn’t an idiot.
He counted out the exact change and set the money beside the bill. This was how it was done. You gave a tip if the service was good. Fifteen percent. Hal decided that the service he had received was good. It was prompt and polite and nothing was spilled. He counted out more money so that the coins added up exactly to the bill plus fifteen percent.
He could do math. He could read. He wasn’t learning disabled.
He sat at the counter and watched the door across the street. The door that Hannah Keller had entered. The door that soon she would exit.