Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“The voice on the phone has given you an address?”

“No, I just somehow know where I’m supposed to take the briefcase. Hell, I ought to know, I’ve been there every night for months. Maybe the first time I was given an address, it’s hard to remember, but by now I know the route and I know the destination. I park in the driveway, I ring the bell, the door opens, a woman accepts the briefcase and thanks me—”

“A woman takes the briefcase from you?” Loebner said.

“Yes.”

“What does this woman look like?”

“That’s sort of vague. She just reaches out and takes the briefcase and thanks me. I’m not positive it’s the same woman each time.”

“But it is always a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I don’t know. Maybe her husband’s out, maybe he works nights.”

“She is married, this woman?”

“I don’t know, ” said Hackett. “I don’t know anything about her. She opens the door, she takes the briefcase, she thanks me, and I get back in my car.”

“You never enter the house? She does not offer you a cup of coffee?”

“I’m in too much of a hurry,” Hackett said. “I have to get home. I get in the car, I backed out of the driveway, and I’m gone. It’s another two hundred fifty miles to get home, and I’m dog-tired. I’ve already been driving four hours, but I push it, and I get home and go to bed.”

“And then?”

“And then I barely get to sleep when the alarm rings and it’s time to get up. I never get a decent night’s sleep. I’m exhausted all the time, and my work’s falling off and I’m losing weight, and sometimes I’m just about hallucinating at my desk, and I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it.”

“Yes,” Loebner said. “Well, I see our hour is up.”

“Now let ustalk about this briefcase,” Loebner said at their next meeting. “Have you ever tried to open it?”

“It’s locked.”

“Ah. And you do not have the key?”

“It has one of those three-number combination locks.”

“And you do not know the combination?”

“Of course not. Anyway, I’m not supposed to open the briefcase. I’m just supposed to deliver it.”

“What do you suppose is in the briefcase?”

“I don’t know.”

“But what do you suppose might be in it?”

“Beats me.”

“State secrets, perhaps? Drugs? Cash?”

“For all I know it’s dirty laundry,” Hackett said. “I just have to deliver it to Cleveland.”

“You always followthe same route?” Loebner said at their next session.

“Naturally,” Hackett said. “There’s really only one way to get to Cleveland. You take I-71 all the way.”

“You are never tempted to vary the route?”

“I did once,” Hackett remembered.

“Oh?”

“I took I-75 to Dayton, I-70 east to Columbus, and then I picked up I-71 and rode it the rest of the way. I wanted to do something different, but it was the same boring ride on the same boring kind of road, and what did I accomplish? It’s thirty-five miles longer that way, so all I really did was add half an hour to the trip, and my head barely hit the pillow before it was time to get up for work.”

“I see.”

“So that was the end of that experiment,” Hackett said. “Believe me, it’s simpler if I just stick with I-71. I could drive that highway in my sleep.”

Loebner was dead.

The call, from the psychiatrist’s receptionist, shocked Hackett. For months he’d been seeing Loebner once a week, recounting his dream, waiting for some breakthrough that would relieve him of it. While he had just about given up anticipating that breakthrough, neither had he anticipated that Loebner would take himself abruptly out of the game.

He had to call back to ask how Loebner had died. “Oh, it was a heart attack,” the woman told him. “He just passed away in his sleep. He went to sleep and never woke up.”

Later, Hackett found himself entertaining a fantasy. Loebner, sleeping the big sleep, would take over the chore of dreaming Hackett’s dream. The little psychiatrist could rise every night to convey the dreaded briefcase to Cleveland while Hackett slept dreamlessly.

It was such a seductive notion that he went to bed expecting it to happen. No sooner had he dozed off, though, than he was in the dream again, with the phone ringing and the voice at the other end telling him what he had to do.

“I wasn’t goingto continue with another psychiatrist,” Hackett explained, “because I don’t really think I was getting anywhere with Dr. Loebner. But I’m not getting anywhere on my own, either. Every night I dream this goddamned dream and it’s ruining my health. I’m here because I don’t know what else to do.”

“Figures,” said the new psychiatrist, whose name was Krull. “That’s the only reason anybody goes to a shrink.”

“I suppose you want to hear the dream.”

“Not particularly,” said Krull.

“You don’t?”

“In my experience,” Krull said, “there’s nothing duller than somebody else’s dream. But it’s probably a good place to get started, so let’s hear it.”

While Hackett recounted the dream, sitting upright in a chair instead of lying on a couch, Krull fidgeted. This new shrink was a man about Hackett’s age, and he was dressed casually in khakis and a polo shirt with a reptile on the pocket. He was clean-shaven and had a crew cut. Loebner had looked the way a psychiatrist was supposed to look.

“Well, what do you want to do now?” Hackett asked when he’d finished. “Should I try to figure out what the dream means or do you want to suggest what the dream might mean or what?”

“Who cares?”

Hackett stared at him.

“Really,” Krull said, “do you honestly give a damn what your dream means?”

“Well, I—”

“I mean,” said Krull, “what’s the problem here? The problem’s not that you’re in love with your raincoat, the problem’s not that they potty-trained you too early, the problem’s not that you’re repressing your secret desire to watch My Little Margie reruns. The problem is you’re not getting any rest. Right?”

“Well, yes,” Hackett said. “Right.”

“You have this ditsy dream every night, huh?”

“Every night. Unless I take a sleeping pill, which I’ve done half a dozen times, but that’s even worse in the long run. I don’t really feel rested — I have a sort of hangover all day from the pill, and I find drugs a little worrisome, anyway.”

“Mmmm,” Krull said, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair. “Let’s see now. Is the dream scary? Filled with terror?”

“No.”

“Painful? Harrowing?”

“No.”

“So the only problem is exhaustion,” Krull said.

“Yes.”

“Exhaustion that’s perfectly natural, because a man who drives five hundred miles every night when he’s supposed to be resting is going to be beat to hell the next day. Does that pretty much say it?”

“Yes.”

“Sure it does. You can’t drive five hundred miles every night and feel good. But” — he leaned forward — “I’ll bet you could drive half that distance, couldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” said Krull, “is there’s a simple way to solve your problem.” He scribbled on a memo pad, tore off the top sheet, handed it to Hackett. “My home phone number,” he said. “When the guy calls and tells you to go to Cleveland, what I want you to do is call me.”

“Wait a minute,” Hackett said. “I’m asleep while this is happening. How the hell can I call you?”