John Katzenbach: The Analyst

The young woman called Virgil held up her hand. “Ricky, try not to sound so pompous.”

Ricky stopped and stared harshly at the woman.

She ignored this look, and with a small wave of her hand, added, “Zimmerman was elected to become part of the game.”

Ricky must have looked astonished, because Virgil added, “Not so eagerly at first, I’m told, but with an odd sort of enthusiasm after a short time. But I wasn’t a participant in that particular conversation so I can’t help you with those details. My role was different. I’ll tell you who did get involved, however. A middle-aged and somewhat disadvantaged woman who calls herself LuAnne, which is a pretty name, admittedly unusual and not very fitting given her precarious position on this planet. Anyway, Ricky, when I leave here, I think you’d be wise to have a talk with LuAnne. Who knows what you might learn? And, I’m certain you will pursue Mr. Zimmerman for an explanation, but I’m quite sure he will not be so readily available. As I said, Mr. R. is very wealthy and accustomed to getting his way.”

Ricky was about to demand a better clarification; the words were partway formed on his lips, when Virgil stood up. “Do you mind,” she said huskily, “if I remove my raincoat?”

He gestured widely with his hand, a motion that spoke of acceptance. “If you like,” he said.

She smiled again, and slowly unbuttoned the front snaps and unfastened the belt around the waist. Then, in a single, abrupt motion, she shrugged the coat from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

She wore nothing beneath.

Virgil placed one hand on her hip and cocked her body in his direction provocatively. She pivoted about, turning her back momentarily, then swung around again, facing him. Ricky took in the entirety of her figure in a single glance, eyes working like a photographer’s camera, capturing her breasts, her sex, her long legs, and then finally returning to her eyes. These glowed with anticipation.

“See, Ricky,” she said softly, “you’re not so old. Can’t you feel blood rushing about inside you? A little stirring between the legs, no? I have quite a figure, don’t I?” She giggled once. “You don’t have to answer. I’m well aware of the response. I’ve seen it before, in other men.”

Her eyes continued to lock onto his own, as if insisting that she could control the direction his vision took.

“There’s always this wondrous moment, Ricky,” Virgil said, grinning widely, “when a man first takes in the sight of a woman’s body. Especially a woman’s body he hasn’t seen before. A view that is all adventure. His eyes simply cascade like water over a cliff, right down the front. Then, just like now, for you, where you’d rather be staring between my legs, there is this guilty bit of eye contact. It’s as if the man is trying to say that he still sees me as a person, looking at my face, but in reality he’s thinking like a beast, no matter how educated and sophisticated he might pretend to be. Isn’t that what’s happening now?”

He did not reply. He realized that it had been years since he’d been in the presence of a naked woman, a realization that seemed to be making a loud, reverberating noise deep within him. His ears rang with every word Virgil spoke and he was aware that he felt hot, as if the day’s heat outdoors had burst uninvited into the office room.

She continued to smile at him. She pivoted about a second time, displaying her figure again. She held her pose, lingering first in one position, then another, like an artist’s model trying to find just the correct posture. Each turn of her body seemed to increase the temperature in the office by a few more degrees. Then she slowly bent down and picked the black raincoat off the floor. She held it out in front of her for a second, as if she were reluctant to put it back on. But then, in a swift motion, she slid her arms into the sleeves and began to fasten it tightly in front of her. As her naked form disappeared, Ricky felt almost as if he were emerging from some sort of hypnotic trance, or, at least, what he thought it must feel like when a patient emerges from under an anesthetic. He started to speak, but Virgil held up her hand, stopping him.

“Sorry, Ricky,” she said curtly. “The session has ended for today. I’ve given you lots of information, and now it’s up to you to act. That’s not something you do well, is it? What you do is listen. And then nothing. Well, those times have ended, Ricky. Now you’ll have to get out into the world and do something. Otherwise… well, let’s not think of the otherwise. When the guide points, you have to take the path. Don’t get caught sitting about. Idle hands-blah, blah, blah. The early worm catches the whatever. There’s some extremely good advice. Be sure you take it.”

She strode quickly toward the exit door.

“Wait,” he said impulsively. “Will you be back?”

“Who knows?” Virgil replied with a small grin. “Maybe from time to time. We’ll see how you do.” Then she tugged open the door and exited.

He listened for a moment to the click-clack of her heels in the corridor, then he jumped up and raced over to the door. He pulled it open, but Virgil had already disappeared from the hallway. He paused a moment, then retreated back into his office, heading toward the window. He thrust himself up to the windowpane, staring out, just in time to see the young woman emerge from the front of the apartment building. As he watched, a long black limousine slithered to the front, and Virgil stepped from the curb, into the vehicle. The car slid away down the street, moving too suddenly for Ricky to observe the license plate or any other identifying characteristics even if he had been organized and clever enough to think of doing this.

Sometimes off the beaches of Cape Cod, up in Wellfleet near his vacation home, there are strong rip currents that form, and which can be dangerous, and occasionally fatal. They are created by the repetitive force of the ocean pounding against the shore, which eventually digs a bit of a furrow beneath the waves in the sandbars that guard the beach. When the space opens up, the incoming water suddenly finds a new location for its return race to the sea, pouring back through this underwater channel. On the surface, the rip current is established. When one is caught in the rip, there are a couple of tricks one must adhere to, which make the experience unsettling, perhaps scary, certainly exhausting, but primarily inconvenient. Ignore the tricks, and one is likely to die. Because the rip is narrow, one should never fight the flow. One should merely swim parallel to the shore, and within seconds the fierce tug of the current will slacken, leaving one with a simple haul to the beach. In fact, rips are generally short, as well, so one can ride them out and when the pull diminishes, adjust location accordingly and swim back to the beach. These, Ricky knew, are the simplest of instructions, and spoken on firm ground at a cocktail party, or even standing in loose and hot sand at the side of the ocean, makes it sound as if extracting oneself from a rip current is no more trouble than flicking a sand flea from the skin.

The reality, of course, is significantly harder. Being inexorably swept toward the ocean, away from the safety of the beach, creates panic instantly. Being caught in a force far stronger than any one individual is terrifying. Fear and the ocean are a lethal combination. Terror and exhaustion follow quickly. It seemed to Ricky that he read about at least one drowning every summer in the Cape Cod Times where the doomed swimmer had died only a few short feet from shore and safety.

Ricky tried to grip hard on his emotions, because he felt caught in a rip.

He took a deep breath and fought against the sensation that he was being tugged toward something dark and dangerous. As soon as the limousine bearing Virgil had departed from his view, he had seized his appointment book and found Zimmerman’s number where he’d written it down on the front page, and then forgotten about it, never once having been forced to call the patient. He’d rapidly dialed the exchange, only to be greeted by empty ringing. No Zimmerman. No Zimmerman’s overprotective mother. No answering machine or service. Just a steady, frustrating ringing.