Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

I needed advice. I knew Michael had been home since eight that morning, but I also knew what his advice would be: stay out of it, mind my own business, cooperate with the law. I needed advice from somebody who cared about me but could be objective. Somebody like Reba Chandler.

Reba is a retired psychology professor with an African grey parrot named Big Bubba that I sometimes take care of. Big Bubba is one of the smartest birds in the world, most likely because his human is one of the smartest women in the world. Bubba is arrogant about it, but Reba hides her smarts under a calm friendliness. You only know she’s way ahead of you when you try to feed her a line of baloney. She’ll nail you every time.

I found her and Big Bubba on their lanai. Big Bubba was in his cage slinging seed hulls through the bars and muttering to himself, and Reba was on a chaise with her feet up, a book in her lap, and a tall glass of iced tea on the table beside her. When I tapped on the screen door, she and Big Bubba raised their heads as if I were a welcome distraction. Big Bubba flapped his wings and squawked, and Reba put her book aside and offered me iced tea. I declined the tea, went to Big Bubba’s cage to give him a proper greeting, and then took a chair beside Reba.

She said, “I hear you were at the house where a murder happened.”

That’s Reba for you, she doesn’t circle around things.

I said, “I guess it’s all over the news.”

“Well, not you so much, but the model and the football player.”

I said, “Briana and Cupcake Trillin. I wanted to talk to you about them.”

“Yes?”

That Yes? is how shrinks open the door wide enough for you to drive through with a truckload of stuff you wouldn’t let anybody else see. She tilted her head a bit when she said it, a gesture she’d used with me since I was in high school. I had taken care of Big Bubba then, too, and gradually came to tell Reba every secret I had. She may be the reason I ended up with enough core strength to snap back to sanity after Todd and Christy were killed and I went seriously nuts.

I didn’t tell her the investigation into the murder had taken a weird turn. That was law enforcement business, a line I wouldn’t cross even with Reba. But the personal stuff was fair game. Personal stuff as in my own confusion about the story Briana had told about her history with Cupcake.

I said, “Briana’s official story is that she’s from Switzerland, and that her parents were killed in an accident when she was a child. Then a nice American couple adopted her and took her to a remote rural area in Minnesota where they home-schooled her. In other words, no school records, no neighbors to remember. She used to refuse to give her last name to avoid embarrassing those alleged adoptive parents, but now she says they’ve died.”

Reba listened closely. Big Bubba had stopped muttering to himself, and I felt as if he was listening, too.

I said, “I won’t go into how it happened, but yesterday I met with Briana at the beach pavilion, and she told an entirely different story. She said she was from the same little Louisiana town as Cupcake Trillin, and that they had been good friends when they were kids. Not ordinary good friends, but kids that broke into houses together and stole things. Petty stuff, but enough to sell for cash. She says she left there when she was sixteen, and that she’s never seen Cupcake again. Except when she stalked him.”

I leaned back in my chair. That was it. That was all I could tell. And I sounded like an idiot for telling it.

Reba said, “You don’t like being lied to.”

For some stupid reason, my eyes smarted as if tears were trying to break through.

I said, “I’m just trying to understand why a woman who became internationally famous would be stupid enough to stalk a man and break into his house.”

“Sounds like the woman is determined to undermine her own success, doesn’t it? She had a hard childhood, escaped privation, became rich and famous, and then ruined it all in a particularly public way. It’s hard to watch somebody self-destruct that way.”

I wondered if she thought I was guilty of the same self-destruction. Was she implying that I was ruining my life by not moving to New Orleans with Guidry?

I said, “Why would she do that?”

She shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “She’s older now, so she requires more drugs to get the same high.”

Disappointed, I shook my head. “I don’t think she does drugs.”

“We all do drugs, Dixie. We’re all drug addicts. Some of us are addicted to prescription drugs or street drugs, the rest of us are addicted to drugs we manufacture inside our own bodies. We like to believe our actions are based on logic or need, but in reality we’re all ruled by our individual addictions.”

My face must have shown that I didn’t know what the heck she was talking about. She pulled her knees up and hugged them.

“Okay, a quick course in psychochemistry. Every emotion a person has creates a chemical in the brain that is instantly in every cell of the body. Each emotion creates a specific chemical. Opiates, depressants, sedatives, dopamine, we create them all.”

She peered at me. “You’re with me so far?”

“I think so, but—”

“No matter what it is, if we get a continuous supply of a chemical, our bodies will become addicted to it.”

She stretched her legs out and waited a beat for me to catch up.

“Now imagine a child who grows up in a situation that causes her constant anxiety. Maybe there’s not enough to eat, or maybe there’s abuse. Whatever it is, constant anxiety means a constant supply of chemicals created by anxiety. The result is a child addicted to those chemicals. As she grows older, her circumstances may change, but the addiction to anxiety drugs will remain. To get the drugs, she will put herself into situations guaranteed to make her uneasy, or she’ll interpret neutral events as threatening. However she does it, it’s to ensure that her anxiety drugs continue.”

I could imagine that child. I had known people who seemed to stir up unnecessary problems for themselves. Maybe I did it myself.

Reba said, “If that same child is praised for excelling at something, she’ll also become addicted to the chemical that comes with the feeling of success. With those two addictions, she’ll do everything she can to succeed in life so she can get more of the success drug, but no matter how successful she is, she’ll create ways to feel anxious so she can get the anxiety drug.”

Her eyes had taken on a new spark. It occurred to me that Reba was probably addicted to the chemicals she created while she was teaching.

She said, “Skydivers get addicted to the endorphins that come from free-falling, soldiers in combat get addicted to the chemicals created by episodes of intense danger, retirees feel lost without the old adrenaline rush of competition. It isn’t the behavior that’s addictive, it’s the drugs created by the emotions that accompany the behavior.”

I said, “That’s kind of sad.”

She laughed. “What’s even sadder is that we can get the same hit of drugs by imagining the feelings that release them. People addicted to the drugs created by anger go around imagining angry confrontations. People addicted to drugs created by great sex spend a lot of time imagining sex. Or, conversely, if they’re addicted to the drugs created by sexual guilt, they may go around thinking of shameful sexual experiences that are purely imaginary.”

“So you think Briana—”

“Imagine what it would be like to be a poor kid breaking into houses to steal. Your heart would pound, your eyes and ears would be hyperalert. If you got into a tight spot you’d have to think fast to get out of it, and your only resources would be your wits and an agile body. You’d have to keep quiet about it, too, have a sly secret when you were with your family and friends. You would live with fear, excitement, triumph, relief, arrogance—emotions that would create a host of addictive chemicals.”