12

Richard Parrish kissed his wife goodby after slamming the BMW’s trunk. She would be gone for the weekend, off to New York with girlfriends to see a hot new play and descend on Bloomingdale’s like piranhas on a dead cow. On Monday she would return, breathless and gift-laden. She would talk and talk, assuming, he supposed, that sheer volume would cover the lie. She didn’t realize that she could, as easily, have told in detail every nuance of the multiple fucks she had received during her spurious New York jaunt.

Parrish wasn’t interested. He knew she was sleeping with someone, knew almost exactly when it had begun, two weeks earlier. If anything, he was relieved. It kept her busy fashioning her needless lies, and so she left him alone.

He watched the car drive away and then he walked back into the house. The phone rang. It was Parrish’s father-in-law.

As usual, the old man wasted no time coming to the point. “I got a call from a crazy man today,” Dr. Solomon said. “This fellow calls up out of the blue, and what do you think he says? He says, ‘I want Richard Parrish to resign.’”

Silence while the old man let this statement—in all its absurdity—settle. Parrish felt a stillness in his bones, a wary animal listening.

Solomon continued, “Turns out this fellow is named John Walker, runs some kind of commune out on the edge of town. I checked up on him later on, and the man does have some money, so maybe he can make some noise, hire him some lawyers and raise a stink, but he’ll regret it if he does. Likely it’s all wind, and we’ll never hear from him again. He’s shouting malpractice; one of his flock has been brutalized. You ever hear of a Hannah Shockley?”

“Anna.”

“What’s that?”

“Anna Shockley. Her name is Anna Shockley.” Richard found that he was nodding his head. Yes. Yes. This was what he had been waiting for. The ugliness. The scandal. The vultures. You could almost hear the sound of their wings.

“You there, Richard?”

He nodded his head, realized that that wouldn’t do, and said, “Yes, I’m here. I was treating Anna Shockley for schizophrenia. She left the hospital with a friend. I have reason to believe she is in Virginia.”

“Well, that may be. I got the impression that she was with this Walker fellow, but that’s beside the point. The point is, there isn’t anything special I should pass on to our legal department in case this Walker follows through with a malpractice suit?”

“There’s no basis for such a suit, if that’s what you mean.” Richard heard the prim righteousness in his voice. It wasn’t assumed. It was real; he was genuinely offended.

“Don’t get hot, Richard. That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I just thought you might be able to anticipate the direction such a suit would take.”

“Anna Shockley is a deeply disturbed woman. She is inclined to fixate on bizarre conspiracy theories. No telling what she thinks. I’m surprised that anyone would be taken in by anything she said.”

“That is odd. But Walker is the lunatic fringe himself. Maybe he’s as gullible as all those aging hippies that worship him.”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know what’s happening in case this unpleasantness escalates. Has Jane left yet?”

“You missed her by about half an hour.”

“Give her my love when she gets back.”

“I will.”

Parrish hung up the phone. Well, there it was. He had expected it. A month had passed since Anna Shockley had left the hospital, and the passing of time hadn’t settled his mind. With each passing day he had grown more aware of the danger, the inevitable explosion of her will. She had bit him once. He smiled wryly. Her teeth were still good. The phone call from Solomon had confirmed his intuitive conviction. She meant to destroy him.

He went into the study and unlocked the desk drawer. He took out the latest volume in his diary, but didn’t open it. There was no salvation in these black volumes anymore. Upstairs in the attic, dozens of these little black books were stored in a locked trunk. He dreamed of that trunk exploding, pouring forth rotted corpses, ugliness beyond belief, naked things with purple sores and skin like yellowed cheesecloth.

His solitude was violated forever. Something was happening within him, as though subterranean armies were gathering, their shouts filling the air. Now it seemed that everyone else possessed secrets, powerful secrets. Jane had her secret lover, and Anna had her secret protectors.

His own secrecy was no longer a source of power. He had tried to live a decent, self-contained life, but events had refused to let him live an ordered existence.

He poured himself a drink and drank it quickly. He refilled the glass.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.