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  “A professional hazard.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m a sex therapist. One of my client’s husbands was an avid collector. She was really embarrassed by the hobby, but we worked through it. As a gift, at the end of her time with me, she gave me my first book. I was hooked. I prefer 18th and 19th century to the earlier stuff. Unfortunately, that’s also what’s most expensive. But I also like some later work—specifically Oscar Wilde’s drawings.”

  “I’d be happy to keep my eye out for anything you’d be interested in.”

  “That would be great. I’ve thought a lot about why I like these books, why I’m fascinated by them. I think it’s their secretiveness.”

  “I can relate to that. I like secrets, too. They can actually get me into a bit of trouble from time to time.”

  “But not sexual secrets?”

  He took an imperceptible step backwards and didn’t answer.

  The most important time to ask a patient a question is when you know they would prefer you not ask. “Don’t you think sexual secrets are the most revelatory?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask that.”

  “You don’t have any?”

  He blushed, and seemed surprised by my forwardness. Then recovered and said, “I’m an open book.”

  He smiled at his own pun.

  “Most of us have something in our pasts … often in our childhoods … that we’ve buried deep and keep well-hidden. Mine is that my grandfather was too familiar with me—nothing that could be called predatory, but it was suggestive. He’d whisper off-color jokes in my ear. Touch my hand a fraction of a second too long. Smile in a not-so-grandfatherly way.”

  I laughed, wanting him to know I was okay despite what I’d told him. Confessions can make some people uncomfortable. So the silence that followed was no surprise.

  I turned another page in the book.

  The illustration showed a priest, in full regalia, standing at the pulpit. Before him in the first pew were two nuns, habits opened to reveal bare breasts.

  They were fondling each other.

  Malone glanced, then looked away.

  “These are pretty lascivious,” I said.

  “Especially for an altar boy.”

  Curious non sequitur, I thought.

  “Is that what you were?”

  He nodded.

  “There are so many terrible stories about incidents being hushed up. I hope nothing serious happened to you.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I waited a few moments, then asked, “Did you enjoy it?”

  “I loved the pageantry of the mass. The solemnity and ritual. The idea it had been going on for thousands of years the same way, and I was part of that history. I liked the smells, too. The candle wax. The incense.”

  He smiled as he remembered, and I smiled with him.

  “What didn’t you like about it?”

  He glanced down at the book. “That’s curious. You asking that now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The coincidence.”

  “My mentor, Dr. Nina Butterfield, who heads up the institute where I work, says there are no coincidences. She believes, like Jung did,” I nodded towards the book of his drawings, “that the same way events are grouped by cause, they can also be grouped by meaning.”

  “Father Matthew …” He started, stopped, and then pointed to the book on the table. “Let’s just say that our parish priest would have liked this volume.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a molester, or anything like that. He was a good man. A good priest. He just enjoyed an occasional magazine.”

  I knew what he meant. “Masturbation?”

  He nodded. “Something a twelve-year-old doesn’t forget.”

  “You saw him?”

  “One time. He didn’t even know I was there.”

  “Did you know what he was doing?”

  He shook his head. “No way. And why am I telling you this?”

  “I’m a therapist.”

  He smiled. “And you’re pretty good at disarming people.”

  “What’s the harm? It’s like this book here. An interesting diversion. But let me guess. You probably were mystified. What was he doing? You were twelve and had no idea. Sure, you knew it was something unusual. You and your friends probably talked about dirty books and used the language heard from older siblings—but none of you really knew what any of it meant.”

  “You’re good.”

  “It’s not my first dance. Tell me the rest.”

  “Who said there was anything more?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “I did what any curious twelve-year-old would do. A few days later, while he was busy somewhere else, I stole into his office for a look at the magazine. A copy of Penthouse. I’d never seen anything like that. I was too frightened to stay for long, but I have to say, I kept thinking about it. So I went back to see it a few more times.”

  “Until your luck ran out?”

  He nodded. “The good father caught me. I was sitting on the floor under his desk with the magazine open.”

  I let him gather his thoughts.

  “He yanked me out and threw the magazine across the room. Then he spanked my ass, the whole time yelling that what I’d been doing was evil, I was turning myself over to the devil. That I wouldn’t go to heaven.”

  He paused.

  Remembering.

  “How did you feel about the photographs you saw?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you have a sexual response to them?”

  He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. I knew.

  “I thought it strange that I got spanked, but he could look at it.”

  “It’s a valid contradiction.”

  “I liked Father Matthew. My own dad died when I was ten.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “We’ve gotten this far, why not?”

  “I imagine that incident left a mark. I don’t know you, but I can guess the results. I’d say, sometimes you find yourself embarrassed by your sexual responses. Maybe you can make love in the dark, but not in the light. Or you enjoy having sex, but can’t talk about it. Or while you’re showing a client a book of erotic drawings, you feel terribly ashamed without knowing why.”

  “That obvious?”

  “Like I said, it’s not my first dance. The past affects the way we act. That’s basic psychology. It would be normal for you to react to a traumatic episode, like what happened with Father Matthew. It affected you. But your present-day reaction—the one you’re still having—is still that of a twelve-year-old. You don’t have to be ashamed anymore.”

  Malone lifted the L’Adamite book from the table. This time he didn’t hold it as far away. He seemed more comfortable with it.

  A small, but symbolic step.

  He stared at me.

  I’d seen the look before.

  The light that switched on at the moment of realization.

  He smiled, then carried the book to the counter and wrapped it with butcher-block paper. I watched how careful his movements were.

  Then, he handed it to me.

  “I’m sorry, it’s more than I can afford,” I said.

  “It’s a gift.”

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Why not?”

  And then I saw that he was right. I had to take it.

  His payment to me.

  For pointing out something he should have realized long ago.

  ______________________________

  Outside, a pleasant Baltic breeze ushered in twilight. I walked half a block, then stopped by a canal. I found my cell phone and dialed my client’s number. A therapist never talks about what goes on in therapy with a patient.

  But Cotton Malone hadn’t been my patient.

  Cassiopeia Vitt, the woman who loved him, was.

  I heard her voi
ce as she answered, the same warm tone from my office two months ago. I could still picture her simple elegance.

  “I just left his bookstore,” I told her.

  She’d known I’d be here today. That was why the two “thieves” were there, ready to cause a scene, generating those “extenuating circumstances” which just might drop Malone’s guard enough. That was also why I’d requested specifically to see L’Adamite. During those five sessions with Cassiopeia she’d told me of how Malone had hinted to his childhood and time as an altar boy. Seemed like the best place to start. Nothing better to free up a person than some relevant show and tell.

  “I gave him the opening he needed,” I told her. “He’s going to be fine. Go slow and easy. Don’t pressure him. But the door is ajar now. With someone as smart as he is … he’ll work it through.”

  “How can I thank you?”

  I tucked the precious book under my arm.

  “Already done.”

  And I strolled off into the night.

  ______________________

  II

  DECISIONS, DECISIONS

  John Rain

  ______________________

  A good therapist would never ask an ex-patient to introduce her to an assassin. But I wasn’t sure I could qualify as a good therapist anymore. I was too scared. In a way I had never been before.

  It had started two weeks earlier.

  A patient I’d been seeing for the last two years—Sarah J—was married to a wealthy politician named Michael who, before taking office, had made a fortune in New York City real estate. Michael was surrounded by rumors—mob connections, CIA connections, high-ranking cops who owed him favors. None of the talk had impeded his political ascent, which suggested the substance of it was true.

  The Butterfield Institute has its share of celebrity clients—the rich, the famous, the powerful—and, to accommodate clientele for whom discretion is critical, has a back entrance that leads to a tunnel connecting to a garage half a block away.

  Sarah and Michael were bad for each other. It was a co-dependent relationship involving sexual practices she found demeaning but that she craved. And that he demanded.

  I don’t believe in normal or abnormal sex. Other than extreme pain or practices that are dangerous, I believe we are all entitled to our fantasies and should be empowered to have fulfilling sex lives. I’ve been doing this long enough to know what is good for one person will be insufficient, or too extreme, for another. I don’t judge. I try to give my patients the tools to enable them to decide for themselves what they want and don’t want. To empower them either to get it—or leave it.

  With Sarah, it was the latter. Michael needed to be degraded during sex. Physically and verbally. He liked her to urinate on him. To berate him. To tell him how worthless and vile he was. Sarah knew Michael was bad for her, and desperately wanted to leave him, but she didn’t want to give up her financial or social position. She was invested in her image as the wife of this powerful man. But more than that—in the dark and shadows of her soul—she was obsessed with and addicted to her husband sexually. No matter how bad she felt afterward, she always craved more. She loved that he needed her to satisfy his needs.

  When he called and asked when he could come and see me, I told him I’d have to ask Sarah if it was all right. At that, he told me he didn’t need anyone’s permission and hung up. A few hours later, a bouquet of white lilacs was delivered to my office with a note apologizing.

  At her next session, Sarah told me it was all right with her if her husband came to see me. Would I agree?

  “If you’re sure it’s what you want,” I said.

  She nodded, a light in her eyes I hadn’t seen before looking like relief. “I think he’s ready to start working on our problems. He said I’ve been doing too much of the heavy lifting on my own.”

  “That’s an important step,” I said. “Do you think he’s ready to come in for joint counseling?”

  “I don’t know—I didn’t bring it up this time. I was just happy enough that he wants to see you.”

  I agreed. Every time Sarah had broached the subject of joint therapy with Michael, he’d become furious. He accused her of betraying him. “We don’t have problems. You might have issues but they go back to way before you met me!” And for weeks afterward, he would turn away whenever she tried to touch him. Those stretches were brutal on her, Michael’s deliberate cruelty bringing her to the edge of a breakdown before he’d finally relent.

  When Michael called, I agreed to an appointment for the next afternoon. He arrived twenty minutes late and offered no apology.

  “It’s good of you to come,” I told him. “It’s always better when both partners are willing to confront the issues.”

  “There are no issues I have a part in,” he said.

  Not a surprising response from a husband whose wife has been in therapy as long as Sarah. I’ve seen other spouses hesitant to confront issues they know have been discussed without them present.

  If you saw him on the street, you’d probably notice Michael. He’s six feet, in good shape, with beautiful, black curly hair. His clothes are impeccably tailored. But it’s not his looks or clothes alone that would draw your attention—it’s his presence, his charisma, the light in his eyes. He’s the kind of politician who gets votes because men want to have a drink with him and women want to go to bed with him. Most people don’t even know which side of the issues he’s on.

  But in my office, sitting on my couch, the public magnetism I’d seen on television was replaced with surly anger.

  “It’s not about blame,” I said. I was in the chair in front of my desk, my back to a wall of bookshelves. He was looking past me at the books. “What matters,” I continued, “is that you and Sarah acknowledge there are parts of your relationship that need work.”

  Suddenly, Michael got up and walked past me. I turned around. He was inspecting the titles of my books. I had the unsettling sense that he was searching for something he might use against me.

  “Michael, could you sit down?”

  A moment passed while he continued reading the spines.

  “Michael?”

  He turned toward me but again didn’t look at me—now he was standing behind my desk, his hands on the back of the empty chair where I sat to do paperwork and use the phone. He was examining my desktop. Looking at all the personal items I had there that patients couldn’t normally see from the couch.

  “I’m going to have to insist.”

  He looked at me and smiled just slightly, as though to let me know he knew I was bluffing. And I realized, uncomfortably, that I was. What power did I have to compel him? And he seemed to revel in silently letting me know it.

  Apparently, his silent demonstration was enough, because he returned to his seat.

  I tried a few more opening salvos, but couldn’t get Michael to open up at all.

  “Michael, can you tell me why you decided to come in to see me if you aren’t willing to talk about what’s going on with Sarah?” I finally asked.

  “I just want to know how much you’d charge to give me back all my wife’s files.”

  “Give them back?” Was he trying to buy his wife’s files from me?

  “I don’t want the files to be kept here. They’re not secure. I have enemies, and those files could be used for blackmail.”

  It wasn’t the first time a spouse or family member expressed concern about information that had been shared in therapy. I do keep notes. And there are files. If anything were stolen, the information could be used to embarrass many of our clients.

  But I explained to Michael that the files were safe. That we code the files with numbers, not names. That it would be virtually impossible for anyone who got their hands on anything to figure out what any of it meant, or to whom it applied.

  “I appreciate your efforts,” Michael said, “but I can’t let you keep the files.”

  “They belong to your wife. The only person I can give them to is
her.”

  He said nothing, but a cold rage seemed to emanate from his whole body. He got up and walked out without saying a word.

  ____________________________