Stephen White - Blinded

“How about you and I cut her a little slack, Angus? How about that? She’s working stuff out.” Sherry and I had our problems, but gang-tackling her with her father didn’t seem like a fair way to confront them.

He harrumphed. “You okay? Your ticker?”

“It’s ticking fine. I’m following all the rules, and the docs think I’m a star. Simon sounds good.”

I didn’t like lying to Angus, but there it was. Not the part about Simon, the part about following all the recovering-from-a-heart-attack rules. Buried somewhere in the fine print there had to be a rule about no nonstop road trips to the land of deep-fried everything.

Yep, that was probably prohibited. That’s the one I’d broken. That one and maybe a few others.

“Simon’s good. He’s a great kid. A little on the wild side, but a great kid. Though he should be in school. You and I both know that.”

“Stay cool, Angus. This will all work out.”

“Ask me, it’s goofy. They should both be in Boulder with you. But nobody asks me. You get to be seventy-five, and everybody thinks you’re an idiot. You wait until you get old.”

“You know I agree with you,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“Now there’s an endorsement.” He laughed. “There’s something I got to ask you, Sammy.”

“Yeah.”

He laughed again, a deep roar. “Are those Avalanche of yours ever going to score more than one goal in the same game? I mean ever? The point of the game is to put the puck in the net, isn’t it?” Angus’s laugh exploded into a guffaw.

All I said in reply was “Let’s see whose team is still playing in June, Angus, what do you say?”

He was laughing so loudly, I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear me.

The bathrooms in the truck stop were surprisingly clean. The restaurant seemed to be run by a group of women my mother’s age-two black, two white-who were suspicious about a guy my size ordering egg whites and grapefruit and decaf coffee. As soon as my order made it over to the kitchen, one of the waitresses came by and asked me where was I from, honey. When I told her Colorado, she nodded knowingly.

I didn’t even have to say “Boulder.”

She’d seen my kind before, apparently.

The matrons kept a careful eye on me after that. I figured they were waiting for me to call them over to the table and order some tofu, or a kiwi smoothie, or maybe a grande cappuccino.

Despite their suspicions they were kind women, all in all. Even brought me a side of grits I didn’t order. There was a big fat orb of butter melting like a setting sun right in the center of the grits. I ate around the circle of butter so that what was left on the plate when I was done looked like a cool caricature of a sunny-side-up egg that my kid might have drawn at school.

I dropped enough money on the table to leave the ladies a hundred-percent tip on the meal, filled the tank out at the pumps, checked my maps, and pointed the Cherokee toward Georgia.

I hadn’t looked in my rearview mirrors-not intentionally, not once-since I’d headed east on I-70 out of Denver. I didn’t look at the mirrors when I pulled away from that Alabama truck stop. Nor did I bother to wave good-bye to the matrons who’d made and served my meal.

I’d told myself from the beginning of my trip that I would only know that I’d really finished leaving someplace when I passed a sign that was promising me that I’d arrived at someplace new. That was the way my life seemed lately, so that was how I was going to travel.

My current plan, always subject to revision, was to cross the border into Georgia right about where Phenix City, Alabama, ended and a highway sign said that Columbus, Georgia, was beginning. Then I would drift southeast toward Albany. Farther south than that, Rand McNally said I’d find the legendary wilds of the Ochlockonee River.

When I got there?

The answer to that question eluded me, I must admit. For well over a thousand miles I’d been trying hard not to think about it. Instinct had rarely failed me in life, and I was counting on a visit from the instinct fairy sometime after I crossed the border into Georgia.

On the short stretch of frontage road between the truck stop and the highway I drove over some railroad tracks that were protruding high above the roadbed. I felt the sharp jolt from the rails as a punch below my sternum, and my pulse immediately popped up a good twenty percent.

Since I’d left the hospital, it seemed that I felt almost everything that happened to my body right in the center of my chest. It was as though any physical sensation was amplified and focused right below my ribs, centered a couple of inches down from my man-boobs.

A belch? Heart attack.

Indigestion? Heart attack.

Roll over in bed? Heart attack.

I knew that the next time I stubbed my toe, I was going to finger that damn brown bottle of nitro.

I thought about my injured heart, and about my broken heart, until I saw the sign for Phenix City. What I was close to deciding was that neither assault on my heart was going to kill me.

I was thinking maybe I was going to be okay after all.

I didn’t know where Gibbs had grown up. I didn’t know what her family of origin was like.

Siblings? Dog? Cat?

Didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know.

Had her parents loved each other? What did her dad do? Had her mother worked? What was school like for her? Did she wear braces? Had she lived in the same house her whole life or had she moved a dozen times? Did she play the piano or enjoy playing any sports?

Did she yearn for children?

Or a career?

Had her heart been broken? Had she endured wrenching losses?

I didn’t know.

Typically, after a handful of conjoint sessions and a few individual appointments, I would be able to construct a pretty reliable social history of any one of my patients. But not with Gibbs.

With Gibbs, I didn’t know much at all that didn’t have to do with St. Tropez yachts and Wilshire Boulevard balconies.

I gave that state of affairs some thought.

What did I know?

I knew about an old murder that purportedly involved her husband, and I knew that voyeuristic sex turned her on. I knew that her husband sometimes said “catch me” during lovemaking. I knew about a magical night in St. Tropez.

And oh yes, I knew about Louise Lake and the other dead women. Gibbs kept reminding me about them.

Did I actually forget about the victims in between her reminders? Hardly. I just kept telling myself that when the chaos quieted, Gibbs and I would get back to it.

The chaos? Yes.

Murder, sex, multiple murder, sex, search warrants, sex, coffee with my friend the detective, sex.

In psychotherapy that kind of progression constitutes chaos.

And now she’d moved us again back to multiple murder.

Damn.

Psychotherapy rule number six: If you want to understand the motivation behind an act, first examine its consequences.

The consequences of Gibbs’s chaos-creation proclivities? Her therapist-me-would end up way too off balance to focus on the big picture, whatever the big picture was.

Was that Gibbs’s intent?

I didn’t know.

But I suspected that my not knowing was her intent.

“Gibbs?” I waited until she focused her eyes on me.

“Yes?” she said pleasantly.

“Why don’t you tell me about the other murders?”

She fingered her wedding ring. “Just between us?”

An interesting response. I replied, “Of course.”

“What difference does it make now? If Sterling is really gone, what difference does it make?”

“I could answer that question for you, but I think it’s better if you answer it for yourself. You keep bringing up the other women whom you think Sterling killed. You brought them up again just now. It apparently makes a difference for you that he killed more than one woman. That’s what difference it makes.”