Nothing but the Night Page 7

  “You said you aren’t into pain. Are you positive of that?”

  “Of course I’m positive. I’m not a masochist.”

  “Yet haven’t you allowed yourself to be continually battered by the events of your childhood?”

  “So now we’re back to that.”

  “Do you see any relationship between your childhood trauma and your compulsion to commit adultery?”

  “No.”

  “Take a moment to consider it.”

  “I don’t see any relationship,” he said, but he was lying. He saw it clearly enough. He’d seen it all along.

  “Isn’t it possible this new crisis is linked to all the others in your life, that it has the same source?”

  Cam shifted position again. His eyes shifted, too, so that he was looking at the couch across the room. Did any of Beloit’s clients ever lie on that couch? Probably not. It looked brand new, virginal, like a stage prop. People expected a psychoanalyst’s consulting room to have a couch, so there it was.

  “I’m not self-destructive,” he said.

  “Why did you use that term?”

  “Why? It’s what you think I am, isn’t it?”

  “As I’ve said, Mr. Gallagher, it is what you think that matters.”

  “All right, then. I just said I’m not. No way.”

  “Have you ever had a self-destructive impulse?”

  “Suicide? No. I couldn’t do that to my family.”

  “Yet you feel you could commit adultery.”

  “It’s hardly the same thing.”

  “Do you think about dying?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “About death in the abstract?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “Death as a release from pain, a source of peace.”

  “No. Didn’t we go over all this once before?”

  “We did, yes.” Without consulting his notes.

  “And my answers were the same?”

  “Yes, I believe they were.”

  “Well, then? Why go through it all again?”

  “Do you believe in God? In the concepts of heaven and hell?”

  “Oh, come on, doctor. What do my religious beliefs have to do with anything?”

  “They have bearing on your state of mind,” Beloit said. “A man who believes strongly in God and an afterlife will react differently to physical and emotional stimuli than a man whose beliefs are weak or nonexistent.”

  I shouldn’t have made this appointment, Cam thought. This is why I quit seeing him, all this glib psychobabble. He isn’t helping me. He can’t help me. I ought to get up and walk out of here right now.

  “I believe in God,” he said. “I can’t tell you how strongly, because I’m not sure myself. I’ve never been much of a churchgoer.”

  “A merciful God or a vengeful God?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Both?”

  “Depending on circumstances.”

  “In your parents’ case, a vengeful God?”

  “I suppose so. Against my mother for her sins.”

  “And your father?”

  “The instrument of her destruction.”

  “A man without sin, then?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “He was the object of divine vengeance, too, wasn’t he? To have committed a cardinal sin and then to die by his own hand?”

  “I… can’t answer that. All I know is that my father was a victim. Just like my sister and I were victims.”

  “Of your mother?”

  “Of her deceit, that’s right.”

  “Do you believe her soul was consigned to hell?”

  “I don’t know what hell is.” That’s a lie, he thought immediately. I’ve had glimpses, haven’t I?

  “The Old Testament variety, let’s say. Eternal damnation in fire and brimstone.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Your father’s soul?”

  “I don’t know … no.”

  “Most religions believe murder and suicide are mortal sins, punishable by—”

  “I don’t care about that. What kind of questions are these, anyway, all this metaphysical stuff?”

  “Pertinent questions, if you accept the fact that you have a deep, unresolved hatred of your mother and that you pity your father. That seems quite clear. Do you accept it?”

  “Yes. Except for the unresolved part.”

  “You don’t feel you need to resolve your hatred for her?”

  “Resolve it how? How can I not hate her, after what she did? How can I forgive her?”

  “Resolution doesn’t necessarily mean forgiveness.”

  “Then what does it mean?”

  “You loved your father as much as you hated your mother. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are sorry he’s dead.”

  “Sorry he died the way he did, yes.”

  “And you are glad your mother is dead.”

  “She got what she deserved.”

  “Do you feel any guilt for being glad?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Isn’t it possible you do without being aware of it?”

  “I don’t buy that. Why should I feel guilty?”

  “You might if at a subconscious level you feel responsible, at least in part, for what happened to your parents.”

  There it was again, the same baseless half-accusation Caitlin had thrown at him last Saturday. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was seeing Beloit, too. He sat forward, his hands gripping the chair arms, a band of tightness beginning to pull behind his eyes.

  “What could I have done to prevent it?” he said thinly. “Tell me that. I didn’t even know what was happening until I heard the shots, until it was already over and done with.”

  “I did not say you could have prevented the tragedy.”

  “You said I blamed myself—”

  “I suggested you may feel a sense of responsibility and guilt.”

  “And I told you I don’t.”

  “Perhaps not where the tragedy itself is concerned,” Beloit said, “but in the events leading up to it. Your mother’s relationship with the man you call Fatso. We have already established that you knew about the affair prior to that fateful night.”

  Fateful night. Beloit had missed his calling; he ought to be writing scripts for bad TV psychodramas. Cam pressed knuckles tight against the bone above his eye sockets, eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them again, the doctor’s Potato Head face swam fuzzily before it settled into focus.

  “Yes. I knew about it.”

  “You told me, I believe, that you actually caught them in flagrante delicto.”

  “So?”

  “And that you told your father what you saw.”

  “You bet I told him.”

  “When?”

  “The next day. As soon as I saw him again.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “He was mad as hell, naturally. Wouldn’t you have been?”

  “Did he confront your mother?”

  “Yes. I heard him yelling at her.”

  “You were not in the room at the time?”

  “No, they were in their bedroom with the door shut.”

  “Did he threaten her?”

  “… I don’t remember.”

  “Did you know he owned a handgun?”

  “Yes. He used to take me shooting. Target shooting.”

  “Did he ever threaten your mother with the weapon?”

  “I don’t remember. What—”

  “Try to remember. Did your father ever threaten your mother with death or physical violence in your presence or hearing?”

  “I don’t… Maybe. Once.”

  “Before or after you told him of your mother’s affair with Fatso?”

  “Before. What’re you getting at now?”

  Beloit took off his glasses, squinted myopically while he polished them with a monogrammed handkerchief, put them back on. �
��What was your exact reason for telling your father about the affair?”

  “I wanted him to know.”

  “Why did you want him to know?”

  “He was my father, she was cheating on him in his own house, our house—he had a right to know what was going on.”

  “What did you believe he’d do?”

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Not consciously, perhaps. But it is possible, isn’t it, that you told him because at a deeper level you felt it would provoke him into an act of violence against your mother, the woman you hated? That you wanted him to carry out his threat, to—”

  “No!”

  “—to shoot and kill her because you wanted her dead?”

  “It wasn’t my fault! None of it was!”

  “Of course not,” Beloit said quietly. “The point is, such destructive desires in a child can lead to repressed feelings of guilt in the adult. Guilt in turn may lead to self-hatred, which in turn—”

  “I don’t blame myself, I don’t hate myself.” The office seemed to have grown unbearably stuffy; he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “None of this … I don’t like where this is going. It doesn’t have anything to do with Jenna Bailey. I came here for help—”

  “Help is what I am attempting to offer, Mr. Gallagher. Insight into your motivations past and present, including those regarding Jenna Bailey.”

  “By trying to get me to admit I have some sort of death wish?”

  “By asking you to consider a possible core reason for the psychological problems that continue to plague you—an escalating pattern of self-punishment brought about by your childhood trauma and your subsequent unresolved feelings of hatred for your mother and culpability in her death. Emotional dysfunction, the migraine headaches and periods of depression, the borderline alcoholism, and now the urge to commit adultery might all be part of such a pattern. If left unchecked, the subconscious urge for punishment can lead to a disintegration of one’s defenses and result in more overt acts of self-destruction …”

  There was more, but Cam no longer listened. Babble, just babble. When Beloit finally ran down, Cam said, “Your theory, core reason, whatever it is, is wrong, doctor. Wrong. Yes, I hated Rose, she was a slut and a lousy mother and I’m not sorry she got what was coming to her, but I never wanted her dead. Never wished it, never prayed for it, never once even thought about it let alone colluded in it. I wasn’t that kind of boy. I’m not that kind of man.”

  Big solemn eyes stared back at him, magnified by the thick lenses, like disembodied eyeballs floating in a pair of jars. Compassion in them? No, nothing in them. Nothing.

  “So now we’re right back where we started,” Cam said. “I’ve still got a compulsion to sleep with Jenna Bailey, and I still don’t know why. You haven’t helped me one damn bit.”

  “I am sorry you feel that way.”

  “Not half as sorry as I am.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do about your desire to commit adultery, no matter what the motivation. The decision is entirely yours. I can tell you this: If you give in to it, you will be hurt. Your wife and family are likely to be hurt as well, but you most of all. Perhaps irretrievably so.” Beloit’s glance sideslipped to his desk clock. He folded his hands together and said, “I am afraid our time is up for today, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “Just like that? Time’s up, good-bye, come back next week if you haven’t self-destructed by then?”

  “I have another appointment at five o’clock.”

  “And you need fifteen minutes to get the taste of me out of your mouth.”

  The silent stare.

  Cam’s headache had worsened. “What am I going to do?” he thought and then realized he’d said the words aloud.

  Beloit didn’t respond to that, either. Beloit didn’t know or care, bottom line, because he was one of the lucky ones, the well-adjusted ones—Beloit didn’t have a head full of ghosts and furies that were eating him alive. So how could he know, really understand, what it was like to be snack food for demons?

  19

  Nick followed Gallagher for a week, off and on, varying the places where he picked him up. Sunday, Gallagher took his family down to the marina on the Los Alegres River; four of them got into a white cabin cruiser, big and shiny new, and went off down the river. His boat. Another rich bastard’s toy. Nick hung around there for a while, looking things over, thinking maybe the boat and marina would work out for him. Didn’t feel right, though. They had wire-enclosed ramps leading down to the slips, and you couldn’t get into them unless you had a key. Only other way out there was by swimming. Besides, he was a farm boy, mountain boy, truck jockey. He didn’t know diddly about boats.

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Gallagher went straight back to Los Alegres after work. Goodwill let Nick off at four, so he had plenty of time to drive over to the Paloma Valley, get into position. Thing he couldn’t figure was why Gallagher hadn’t hooked up with the brunette with the Lexus again. Could be he’d read the situation wrong and she wasn’t Gallagher’s bimbo. Except the way she’d been snuggling up to him in the hotel bar, it sure looked like they were getting it on together. Must be some reason he hadn’t been to see her. Made Nick curious, even though it probably didn’t mean much as far as his planning was concerned.

  Thursday, when he drove by Paloma Wine Systems at four-thirty, the BMW wasn’t there. Left early. To see the bimbo, finally? Nick drove around for a while, didn’t spot the WINEMAN license or the white Lexus, gave it up and headed back to Los Alegres, and set up on the street below where Gallagher lived, the only way up to Ridgeway Terrace. And here he came at six-ten, looking grim in the frame of the driver’s window as he flashed past. Must’ve been a quickie, Nick thought, if he was with the brunette. Or else they’d had an argument and he was going home without it.

  Friday was the same as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—Gallagher went straight home after work. Halfway through the hills that day, Nick turned off, turned around, and headed back to Paloma. Feeling restless, wanting to drive instead of sit and wait. Circled the square, keeping a sharp eye out, and what do you know—there was the white Lexus slotted in up the street from the Hotel Paloma. He parked a few spaces away, walked back to double-check the license number. The brunette’s, all right.

  He crossed to the hotel, went into the bar. She was there. Different table this time, two guys in suits and another woman with her, all of them sipping wine and laughing it up. Nick wedged himself at the bar, ordered a beer, paid three bucks for it—man, these prices—and watched the brunette.

  She kept sipping and laughing, and a couple of times she put her hand on the silver-haired guy next to her, and once she leaned up close and whispered in his ear and then kissed his mouth when he turned toward her. Slut. Nick had seen her type before. Her classiness was the kind some women put on like lipstick, along with their fancy clothes. Underneath she was hard, no mistake. He could see how hard she was all the way over here. Guys like Gallagher, all they saw was the body and the hot eyes and the white smile. Didn’t look any deeper. All they wanted was sex. She’d be plenty good in bed, this one. Do anything a guy wanted and some things he wasn’t even expecting. But that was all it was, all it’d ever be—just fucking. Her kind only loved one person, only cared about one person. The one living inside their own skin.

  Watching her made him miss Annalisa so much he could feel the hurt like fire down low in his belly, same kind of pain he’d felt when he was thirteen and his appendix had almost burst and he’d had to have an emergency operation. He turned away, looked at his beer until the pain eased and he was okay again. When he looked back at the table, one of the waitresses was over there and the four of them were ordering another round.

  He maneuvered along the bar until he was next to the waitress’s slot when she came up. “Four more Fenwood chard,” she said to the bartender.

  Bartender said, “At least they drink their own. What’s the occasion?”

  Waitress shrugged. “W
ho knows. TGIF.”

  Nick watched the bartender pick up a bottle. Backbar lighting was bright enough so he could real the label: Fenwood Creek Reserve Chardonnay, 1997. He shifted his gaze to the waitress, caught her eye, smiled at her.

  “Is that Fenwood Creek a good wine?” he asked.

  She looked him over, decided he was just being friendly, and shrugged again. “So they say. I can’t afford it myself.”

  “Me, either, if it costs more than five bucks a bottle.”

  That got him a small, crooked smile. “Costs five bucks a glass in here.”

  “Ouch. All those people work at Fenwood Creek?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Dark-haired woman in the green suit. Her name’s Linda, isn’t it?”

  “Linda?” Waitress glanced over her shoulder. “No, that’s Jenna Bailey.”

  He repeated the name. “She somebody important there?”

  “Acts like she is.”

  “Sounds like you don’t like her much.”

  Another shrug. “I don’t like anybody who leaves chintzy tips.” Bartender put four full glasses on her tray. Waitress hoisted it without looking at Nick again, took the refills to the table.

  Lull in the conversation over there as the waitress served them. And then the Bailey woman was looking up and across, straight at Nick. He saw her stiffen, the smile wiped off her mouth; she said something to the silver-haired guy next to her, and the guy looked, too. Hell. She’d noticed him watching the night she was in here with Gallagher, caught him watching again, and now she was starting to get up. Nick shoved away from the bar, pushed through the crowd. Not hurrying, not taking his time.

  Outside he crossed the street, went halfway to the Mazda before he glanced back. Jenna Bailey hadn’t followed him out. Nor any of the people she’d been sitting with.

  Nick took the wheel. Wait around, trail her home? Better not. Might be a long time in there, might not go straight home when she left. Might be wary enough to spot him, too—ID the car, get his license plate number. He knew her name, where she worked; that was enough for now. Find out where she lived later on, if he needed to know.

  20

  It’s the laughter that wakes him up.

  He knows right away what’s going on. Her and Fatso, downstairs in the spare bedroom. When did Fatso show up? He’s not supposed to be here. Didn’t Dad warn her she better not let Fatso come around here anymore?