Chapter Fifty-six
“This is a nice office,” Henry said, nodding approvingly. “Really pleasant. And this easy chair, so comfy. I’d like to thank you again for squeezing me in. Very nice of you.”
“Happy to be able to do so, Howard.” Natalie sat in an identical easy chair arranged at a forty-five-degree angle to her client’s. Earlier, she’d worn jeans, polo shirt, and sneakers to her office, but after lunch with Claudia she swung by her house so that she could put on a blouse, skirt, and shoes, and be in a professional attire for seeing a client. “Let’s discuss your issues with your marriage.”
“I need to fill you in about my history so this makes sense.” Henry took a sip of the chamomile tea Natalie had made for him when he first arrived, and then held the cup so that it warmed both his hands. “I like this,” he said. “I never had chamomile tea before. Heck, I don’t think I ever had any tea other than what they serve at Chinese restaurants. But I’m procrastinating, which doesn’t make much sense since my history is staring you right in the face. It’s no secret that I’m an ugly guy, and I was just as ugly a kid.”
Henry smiled inwardly as he waited for her to argue with him about that, but she didn’t, and he appreciated it. He guessed most therapists would’ve tried convincing him that beauty and ugliness were subjective and that inner beauty was what really mattered, and he would’ve just found that condescending as well as a lie. This one, though, just looked at him in a caring and empathetic way that seemed sincere, and waited for him to continue, and he liked that.
“It might surprise you to know that my parents weren’t ugly,” he said. “My pop was sort of doughy and lumpy like me, but he was also this strapping tall man. Big, wide shoulders, someone who looked like a brawler. He might’ve been one in his younger days, I don’t know, I only knew him as a gentle and decent man, a guy who worked as an assistant dispatcher for the New York subway system. If you made a life-sized clay model of him, and squashed it down about ten inches, you get me, but with him, he looked like he could’ve been a movie star. My ma was a dainty thing. Petite and slender, like you. Different than you in that she was fair skinned and a redhead, and not as beautiful as you, but still very pretty. With them as my parents, somehow I ended up like this.”
“You used weren’t to describe them. Are they still around?”
“No. My ma died of cancer when I was twenty-two, and my pop, well, even though he wasn’t even fifty and I always thought of him as being as strong as an ox, he dropped dead of an aneurysm only a month after she was buried. I guess he didn’t want to live without her, and I can’t blame him for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. They were good people, both of them. But I brought them up more so you could understand my background. As a little kid, you don’t think of yourself as ugly, even when all the other kids are always teasing you about it. You still think that someday you’re going to grow up and be at least okay looking, at least enough so that a nice woman falls in love with you, especially when you got parents as good-looking as mine. The old ugly duckling growing into a swan story. But with me that never happened. As I grew older, I only got uglier, and it didn’t take me long to learn that women found me physically repugnant.”
Henry took another sip of his tea, more to see if she’d try arguing with him about the last thing he had said. Maybe he would’ve preferred an argument this time, but she wasn’t about to demean herself by lying to him about something so obvious. He could understand that, but still, he breathed in deeply and let out a hurt sigh before continuing.
“After a while I became okay with that, and accepted that I would live my life alone. About six years ago I let my best friend convince me to lose weight, get a better haircut, yada yada. This was back when I lived in New York, and I ended up dropping about seventy pounds, all of which I’ve since put back on. I also bought new clothes, saw a hair stylist, and used a tanning salon. After all that, I went on a few blind dates, and each of these women when they met me looked as if I was pulling some sort of cruel joke on them. So on the very night that I was about to give up for good and accept what fate had dealt me, I met my future wife. The most gorgeous woman I ever could’ve imagined. My best friend Joe who pushed me into doing all this used to tell me there’s someone for everyone, and I used to think he was full of it until I met Sheila.”
Henry put his tea cup down on the table next to his chair and held his hands out in a what-are-you-going-to-do kind of gesture. “If I had never met Sheila, I’d be okay living out the rest of my life alone, but I can’t go back to that now. It’s not just the loneliness part of it, but that she’s the one and only person in this world who was meant to be with me, and somehow I found her. I can’t lose her now. I can’t.”
“You’re afraid she’s going to leave you?”
Henry’s expression turned dour. “Yeah, but not the way you think. She can’t walk out on me. After we were together only four months she had an accident that left her a cripple, not that I’m holding her hostage or anything. But I’m afraid she might die if I don’t do the things she demands of me. It’s more than I’m afraid. She threatens to die if I don’t do these things, and I believe her. And her demands are so unreasonable, but what choice do I have? Whew! I’ve been keeping all that bottled up. It feels better than I would’ve thought to let it out.”
Natalie tensed, her voice stilted as she asked how he knew Erica Pines.
“I don’t know her,” he said. “That was a white lie on my part. She left you a Yelp review. A lot of your clients have. They seem to really love you, and I can understand why. You’re good at what you do.”
“Leave my office immediately!”
Henry made a face at that. “Or what? You’ll scream? I don’t think so, especially not after you see a photo I took a couple of hours ago.”
He struggled for a moment to pull an iPhone out of his pocket, then after fiddling with it he held it up to Natalie so she could see a photo of her daughter Rachel lying in a car trunk with her wrists bound by duct tape and a gag in her mouth.
“I’m a pretty strong guy,” Henry said. “Quick, too. I’d have no problem overpowering you, but the problem would be getting you to my car afterwards. There’s just no way I could do that without someone trying to stop me. So I need you to cooperate.”
Natalie’s voice trembled as she said, “You expect me to leave here willingly with you?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m expecting. If you don’t, I’ll beat you unconscious, maybe kill you, and then I’ll drive away and do terrible things to your daughter. If you survive what I do to you here, you’ll have to live knowing that you did nothing to try to save her. And if you try screaming now, it won’t last very long. I promise you. So are you going to be a good girl?”
Natalie’s face crumbled.
“Good. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to leave your office together, walk to the end of the hall, go down the fire stairs, all seven floors, and when we get to my car, you’re going to climb into the trunk without a fuss. If you say a word to anyone, your daughter’s dead. If you try fighting me or drawing any attention to us, ditto. Understand?”
Natalie bit hard on her lip to keep from crying. Even though she knew the answer, she couldn’t help herself from asking in a sick whisper, “Why are you doing this?”
Henry shrugged. “It’s one of those things you do for love. As I explained earlier, I got no choice. Now stand up.”
Natalie did as she was directed, although she had to reach back for the chair for support to keep from falling. Henry joined her and clamped his hand tightly around her narrow wrist.
“Remember what I told you,” he said. “I’m not joking about any of it.”
He tugged her along after him as he headed for the door.