Dave Zeltserman - Bad Thoughts

As it was she wouldn’t have sex with him for six months, and after that only with condoms for another year. And there were his periodic HIV tests. And time fixed things, at least it dulled the hurt.

That was three years ago. The year after that was when he came home with the rat bites up and down both legs. And then last year

…

It was all starting up again…

Of course, he would never tell her what triggered his yearly breakdowns. Whenever she pressed him, he’d become silent and distant. He knew what was behind it, but he wouldn’t trust her with the knowledge. That was the one thing she couldn’t forgive him for. Maybe more than anything that was why she thought constantly about leaving him.

Susan dried her face with a paper towel and then gave a quick glance in the mirror before leaving. She didn’t like the look in her eyes, but under the circumstances she looked as normal as she could expect. On her way back to her desk, Sid Lischten, having been laying in wait, sprung out at her.

“You were in there twenty minutes!” he accused. He was an old man without much flesh around his face or body. As he stood staring at Susan, his mouth twisted unpleasantly.

“Excuse me?”

“What the hell were you doing in there, your laundry?” he demanded, his voice booming throughout the office. It didn’t seem possible for so much noise to come out of such a withered body. Susan could feel heads turning towards them.

“No, I wasn’t doing my laundry,” she stated slowly, her own voice trembling.

“What else could you’ve been doing in there for twenty minutes?” Lischten asked sarcastically. The unpleasantness around his mouth had spread throughout his face, leaving his small eyes bulging. “Unless you just needed to get away from it all. Is that it, a little vacation, huh? You’ve had over an hour and a half to get me the Haines contract. I could’ve typed it myself in half that time.”

“I’ll have it for you as soon as I can.”

Susan turned and started towards her desk. Lischten yelled out to her back that if she thought she was too pretty to lose her job then she’d better think again.

By the time she sat down she was shaking. Donna leaned over and whispered to her that it would do the old bastard right if someone slipped Ex-Lax into his coffee. “Maybe it would loosen him up,” she added. “He looks constipated, doesn’t he? Anyway, we all know he’s full of shit.”

“I hope he chokes on it,” Susan muttered.

“Yeah, you’re not the only one. What do you call a hundred dead lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?”

“A good start.”

It was a lame joke, one that they told each other whenever things got unbearable. Donna gave Susan’s arm a little squeeze before turning back to her work. Susan was still shaking. She hugged herself tightly trying to stop. She couldn’t afford to lose her job now, not if she was going to leave Bill.

The thought stopped her. Had she already made the decision?

The phone rang. It was Joe DiGrazia calling to tell her what had happened to her husband. She listened quietly and then thanked him. After getting off the phone, she sat for a minute and then forced herself to type up the Haines contract.

As Bill Shannon lay on Dr. Elaine Horwitz’s couch, he turned his head and caught her fidgeting with her pants, trying to smooth out a crease that had formed. The sight of her brought a genuine smile to his lips. She was pretty, maybe not as much as his wife, Susie, but in her own way very attractive. Frizzy red hair, dazzling green eyes, and the softest, most alluring smile he had ever seen. Maybe her complexion was a bit too pale, and her lips too full, and maybe there was a slight awkwardness to her body, but it all seemed to add to her sensuality.

He knew he made her nervous; he also knew she dressed up for him. On the days of his scheduled appointments she’d usually be wearing short skirts, sheer stockings, a soft rose-colored lipstick, and always her contacts and faint traces of Giorgio perfume. Whenever he would show up unscheduled she would almost always be in pants and wearing wire-framed glasses, barely any makeup and never any perfume.

She caught him smiling at her and she smiled back. “You seem to be feeling better,” she said.

He nodded and kept smiling at her.

“I wish you hadn’t missed your last appointment.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t feeling up to it.”

“Those are the times you have to come here,” she reprimanded, her smile weakening. “Tell me why you were so angry at being put on short-term disability?”

“I felt betrayed,” Shannon said. “Sonofabitch should’ve cut me some slack.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of the job I’ve done for him over the years.” His lips curled into an angry smile. “He owes me that.”

“You don’t see the danger-”

“That’s bullshit. If I’m able to go in, I’m able to do the job.”

“But not today.”

Shannon didn’t answer her.

“It might be a good idea for you to rest the next two weeks.”

Shannon was shaking his head. “I need the work,” he said. “It helps get me out of bed in the morning. It gives me something to focus on. To keep my mind off things. I think it’s my only shot to beat this thing.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Elaine Horwitz said. “There may be better ways for you to heal yourself. Maybe keeping your mind off of murder investigations might be one of them.” She reached over and started the tape recorder on her desk. “Tell me about the dreams you’ve been having. How much of them do you remember?”

Shannon thought for a while, his face rigid. “Not much at all. I really only have a vague impression of them.”

Horwitz waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she asked about his impressions.

Shannon shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “That I was somehow responsible for my mother’s death.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that boy today, the one who murdered his mother, he’s thirteen?”

“Yeah.”

“The same age you were when your mother was murdered?”

“That’s right.”

“And in your mother’s death the body was found with a knife stuck in her mouth. In this case the woman had a knife left in her throat.”

Shannon didn’t say anything.

“Do you think that’s why seeing that boy had the effect it did on you? That it reinforced your feelings of guilt towards your mother?”

“Maybe,” Shannon shook his head. “I don’t know. But I didn’t kill my mother. This kid did.”

“No, you didn’t. But you could still be feeling guilty about it. Maybe feeling if you’d come home earlier, instead of hanging out with your friends, you could’ve saved her. Do you think that’s possible?”

“That I could’ve saved her?”

“No, that you think you could’ve saved her.”

“Maybe I could’ve,” Shannon admitted.

“Except the man who murdered your mother was twenty years old. You were only thirteen. What chance would you have had against him?”

A slow anger started in him, and he could feel the heat rise up his neck. “Maybe I could’ve done something-”

Elaine Horwitz had gotten up from her chair and moved over to him so she was kneeling by his side. She took hold of his hand with both of hers.

“Bill, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything. He would’ve overpowered and murdered you, also. That’s all that would’ve changed if you had come home earlier. I guarantee you, your mother wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Shannon looked into Elaine Horwitz’s eyes and felt his heart skip a beat. Her hands felt nice holding his. There was a warmth, a softness to them that he didn’t want to let go of. He found himself momentarily lost in her green eyes.