In the Way Ch. 01

*Author's Note: All characters referred to in this fictional story are - you guessed it - fictional characters, and any resemblance to any person living, dead or otherwise is probably stretching your fantasies a wee bit too far. However, in the event that you do come across my characters in real life, please do remember that I don't exist. Oh, and nobody was harmed - at least, permanently - during the making of this hopefully-incredible fictitious account of some people and their shenanigans.

"Dr.Chivago will see you now, Mr. Kane," said the nurse with the pretty legs, pronouncing his name as Shee-vago, with a hint of European ancestry in her voice. "Please do come in." Since there was nothing interesting to read in the waiting room - deliberately, I suppose - I obliged. I have always held psychiatrists to be somewhere near as useful as a lawn-mover in winter and snowshoes in summer. Contrary to what the nurse with the pretty legs (there was really nobody else there, but how else can I tell you how pretty the legs of the nurse with the pretty legs were) had said, the good doctor was not doing me a favor by seeing me, because I had never heard of him before he called me up the previous day to fix up an appointment.

The only reason I showed up was because he said my wife was his patient. And that he had already spoken to my daughter. Two facts - assuming they were true - which I did not know until then. He wouldn't say anything more about what it was except that it related to the mental health of my wife, to which I had retorted that a specialist of his kind was hardly qualified to talk about anything else. True, she had been shopping for a good shrink for some time now, but she never told me she had found one with a nurse who had pretty legs. I figured it was some kind of a con where he could bill her a few extra hours spent asking me how many beers I had a day.

I was undecided until he told me that he had already billed her for an appointment with me the next day, and it would have to be paid whether I visited him or not. "And my nurse has pretty legs," he said, finally convincing me.

So I kept my eyes on the ground - or thereabouts, you could say - as I walked into his room, my hand accidentally brushing against the heavy bosom of the nurse with the pretty legs, until I had passed her and there was no longer a reason to look like a blushing bride. She went out, closing the door behind her, cuing Dr.Chivago to step forward and shake my hands. He gestured to a couch placed against the glass wall on the other side. It would have been a nice view of the ocean except for the few other buildings that crowded around us. I hoped the glass was thick enough, because those concrete walls right across the street were enough even to make a regular guy like me claustrophobic.

"Didn't I tell you?" he said, handing me a can. "Pretty legs."

"But the tits are fake," I told him.

He shrugged. "This is LA. Aren't they all?"

We didn't say anything for a few minutes as we sipped our beers. My opinion of the slim, bald man sitting across me went up a notch - it was good beer, just the right temperature. You can tell a lot about a man from his beer, my dad had always told me.

"Nice view," I told him. Simply because I wanted to say something.

He winced. "I bought it without seeing the place. The brochure promised a startling view of the downtown. It took me a few days to realize that they took that picture from the top of the Hollywood sign." He shook his head sadly. "These real-estate guys are pros at the con game."

I was about to tell him about pots and kettles when he smiled and stole my line. "I know, kinda like the pot calling the kettle black, right?"

Now it was my turn to shrug. "Like you said, this is LA. Everyone's got a con."

"That's an interesting point of view." He pulled out a small tape recorder from his pocket and shook it. "Do you mind if I record our conversation?"

"As long as I get to take the tape home when I leave," I told him.

That made him laugh. He left the device on the table between us without pressing the red button and held out his arms at his sides. "You want to pat me down?"

I shook my head. "You can keep your secrets. Mind if I smoke?"

"Thanks. I've got my own." We both lit up at the same time. "I don't usually offer drinks or cigarettes to my patients. That should tell you I don't see you as a patient."

"That makes us even. I don't see you as a doctor either."

He refused to get mad. "I can understand how you feel about me. You were a private investigator for what, fifteen years? You are understandably cynical about what you see around you, about a guy who calls himself a shrink and offers you beer and does not ask you to start talking the minute you step into his room. I understand -"

"You use that word a lot, don't you?" I asked him, dropping ash on the carpet as I shook my hand. "Understand."

"It is what I do, Mr. Kane. My job is not just listening, it's about understanding. It's about reading between the lines, knowing what is being said and what is being conveyed. I need to know what makes each person tick, and I have to understand everything about a person for me to do that. Because every single person who walks through those doors need me for a reason even they may not have fully understood themselves." He paused. "Do you know what I bill my patients?"

I told him.

"Yeah, that's right. A hundred dollars a week. Which means that my time with you was paid for before you even agreed to see me. And the same goes for your daughter too. And your wife can call on me at any time as long as I am free... Does this still seem like a con job to you? I do this because I care, Mr. Kane. You must have checked me out with your sources. I've got an inheritance I can live off without ever having to lift my finger, without having to take the trouble of listening to, of understanding, people with problems. People like your wife."

He took a deep breath. "Like I said, you are not here as a patient. You are here because your wife needs you to understand a lot of things she hasn't been able to tell you in person. Things that I can explain to you if you'll only allow me the slightest credibility. You need to trust me - or, at the very least, not mistrust me. It has to be Gerard Kane, the husband, who I talk to, not Gerard Kane, the retired private investigator. We can't move forward unless you want it to."

I stared at him and he stared right back with a surprising amount of defiance. There was something in his eyes that spoke the same thing that he had said, that he cared, that he wanted me to accept what he said, no matter how tenuous my acceptance was, but at least an acceptance. Not the outright dismissal of a retired PI who had seen too many things to take things at face value anymore.

I took a sip of my beer. It tasted smoky, reminding me that I had taken just a couple of puffs on my cigarette that hung its burnt ash in front like a limp... I tapped it on the potted plant next to the couch, there being no ashtray, and placed it in my mouth. It tasted a bit like beer.

I looked at him again. Dr.Chivago was busy grinding out his piece on the soil of the plant nearest to him. He caught me looking at him and grinned. "I am not really much of a smoker."

I followed his example and put out my smoke. I leaned back on his couch, getting myself comfortable. Whatever it was that he wanted to say about my wife, I was already sure I wouldn't like it. The only question was, what would I have to not like?

"Go on," I told him. "You have my full attention and a bit of my faith."

He began by mouthing a line about his not being a judge, merely a counselor. I said nothing when he waited expectantly for a smile, and the message finally got across that I was no longer interested in idle chit-chat, even if his nurse had pretty legs. He cleared his throat and asked me if I knew what the Electra complex was.

"Sure," I told him. It was an insult to my intelligence, but I let it pass. What the hell, my intelligence has been insulted more times than I can count - what's one more? "It's that Playboy chick, right? The one who's acted in a couple of movies?"

There was a strange look on his face, as if he was unsure whether I was pulling his chain. He shook his head when I said nothing more, and pulled his chair closer. "Let me get this straight," he said, all serious now. "You really don't know what the Electra complex is? A guy who's put fifteen years on the road as a detective has no idea what it is?"

I shrugged. You learn something new everyday. I made a mental note to myself that I should look it up when I got home, which I erased when the resident Dr. Freud - Dr.Chivago here, in case you were wondering - explained it to me a few seconds later. But I am getting ahead of the script here, so let me go back to my shrug after his question.

"What about the Oedipus complex?"

If this were a cartoon, a bulb would have gone off over my head. If it were a sci-fi movie, you might probably see all those currents zipping across the circuits as the AI came up with the answer. In real life, though, the only thing that happened was his sigh as I told him.

"Him I know. The guy who killed his father and married his mother, right?"

"You got it. The term Oedipus complex is used to refer to a man's infatuation with his mother, or sometimes a person in a motherly role to him. Dr. Freud - that's Sigmund Freud, I assume you've heard of him - suggested that there was a similar, shall we say, proclivity in females as well that tends to an obsession about their fathers or other father figures. Actually, the jury's still out whether he coined the phrase or not, but he was certainly the first one to give an explanation that could be accepted as science."

"You are wrong," I interrupted him.

"What?" He had that same expression on his face he had had a few minutes earlier, one of surprise and puzzlement.

"He's not alive anymore."

"Yes, he died in 1939."

"No, he didn't. That must have been her grandfather."

"Whose grandfather?"

"My wife's. Rachel's. Her father died only in 1979."

He groaned. I kid you not, the guy in front of me actually clutched his hair and groaned. I pulled out my pack of Anta-Mintz and passed it on to him. He said he didn't need it. "I was talking about Dr. Freud. He died in 1939. I know Rachel's father died in 1979, she told me herself." He took a moment to compose himself, while I used that same moment to put the mints back in my pocket. "Now, where were we?"

"You were telling me my wife was lusting after her own father..."

"Did I say that? I don't think I did. Maybe -"

"Sure you did. You said it your way, obsession or something, I said it my way."

"You've misunderstood me."

I lit up, you could say, both literally and metaphorically. "You've got balls, I'll give you that. You shyster my wife into paying for counseling she doesn't need, then have my daughter brought in - and that's made me mad enough - and now you have the guts to sit there telling me my own wife admitted to you that she wanted to get nasty with her old man!" I wasn't as mad as I pretended to be (which should explain why I was pretending - because I was not mad enough. Gotcha!) I already knew about her feelings towards her father, a secret we had shared for over two decades. I just didn't know that it was a complex.

He seemed to shrink in his seat. I should have made a comment then about shrinks shrinking in their seats but I didn't want to ruin the moment. "Oh, yeah?" I said, using the tone I usually reserved for crack addicts down at the pier who wanted to borrow things from me. Like my wallet and watch. "Then why don't you tell me exactly what you've brought me here for instead of talking Psychology for Dummies?"

He relaxed slowly, which is to say I had to take my eyes off him and look at the certificates framed and hung on the wall. There were quite a few diplomas which I had already known about through my only 'live' source these days - Google. Most of his research and papers were on human sexuality. "Why don't they call it husbandry?"

"Huh?"

I gestured to a particular frame of his. "Awarded to, blah blah, on the subject of human sexuality. Why don't they call it human husbandry and animal sexuality, instead of the other way around?"

It took him a few seconds to get the joke. He laughed loudly at first, too loudly, before reducing it to a chuckle. The fear of being pounded into his sofa's leather - or being thrown off the glass walls into the street below - had suddenly evaporated. I wasn't sure if it was a good thing, but I was still curious why I was here. It was definitely not to see another man piss in his pants or pass out on me or both.

"I get it. You were razzing me, weren't you?"

I shrugged. So sue me, I do it a lot. I am a married man. "Just trying to figure out whether you paid for these," indicating the diplomas, "or you earned them."

"I usually deal with people who are depressed. People who know they've got a problem, but not what it is. You are not that kind of a person, Mr. Kane. I must say I made the mistake of underestimating you. You are simply a guy who's confident about himself."

"I assumed we were here to talk about Rachel."

"And we will. But I think I have made such an impression on you that it would be infinitely better if you listened to what your wife herself said. I have a tape of our consultation from two days ago, and I will play it back for you. If you have any questions, feel free to interrupt at any point."

"Isn't that a breach of your ethics? Recording the conversation?"

"She knew it was being recorded, Mr. Kane. I have her approval on tape, as you will presently confirm for yourself. As for ethics... as long as the use I put it to are in her best interests, the means I choose are irrelevant, at least from an ethical point of view. Unless you have a problem with that, I think we can proceed,"

I shrugged. He smiled conspiratorially and pressed the button that played the tape. I prepared myself to imagine, to conjure up a video of sorts from the audio available. The only sound in the room was the whirr of the mechanism as it rotated the spool and fed the tape over the head. I give this information so that those of you who thought I was an imbecile can disabuse yourselves of that notion. After all, detectives and tape-recorders are synonymous with each other - why do you think they make them so small and concealable, anyway?

And then it was interrupted by the sound of a door opening.

"Please come in," boomed the voice that belonged to Dr.Chivago. Of course, somebody else could have mimicked it - the detective in me had to come up with that theory - but I did not dwell on it. If it was not his voice on the tape, Dr.Chivago would, I am certain, have had a different expression on his face than one of who is in love with his own speech.

There was the sound of the door closing, and I could imagine the nurse with the pretty legs pulling it shut behind my wife, who must have extended her hand as she spoke to the doctor. "Dr.Chivago... it is so good of you to see me on such short notice. Jenny - Ms.Catterson - spoke very highly of you."

"I am flattered that she did, and quite pleased to make your acquaintance," he replied. I could see him shaking hands with my wife. Did he linger too long, or was it a professional, a perfunctory handshake? Had he already noticed the wedding ring? Was she wearing it? She must have been... "Would you like to have a coffee or something?"

"No, thanks," she said, hesitation in her voice. I assumed it was because of suddenly finding herself committed to counseling, of having put herself in a position where she would be forced to confide to a stranger things she couldn't tell even her loving and supportive husband of close-to-twenty-happy-years.

Dr.Chivago stepped in, chivalrous as usual, or just trying to be smart and impress my wife. "I assume you are here... because of intimacy issues, aren't you? That is what I usually deal with, and without violating her confidence, it is why Ms.Catterson had consulted me. But I am sure you know more about that than I do, being her close confidante and all that."

"Not really," Rachel said, laughing nervously. "But you are right about me. I do have some..." a pause, "intimacy issues, as you call them."

"Before we proceed," interrupted Dr.Chivago, his tone polite and gentle. Was he still holding her hands? Was he across his desk, or were they on this couch, sitting beside each other? "I would like to record this session on audio tape for later reference. In fact, it was switched on when you entered... Do you mind?"

"Whatever I tell you is confidential, right?"

"Absolutely." I shot him a look. He shrugged. It must be contagious. I decided to let it go. "In fact, it's been running since you entered. If you want, I can put in a fresh tape."

"No, that's okay," Rachel said. "I haven't said anything incriminating. Yet." Another nervous laugh. I wondered where he had been keeping the recorder. The voices were clear and loud, so it had to have been in the open. Where were they sitting?

"Is that it?" she asked.

"Yes."

"My husband has one like it. It's got those tiny tapes inside, doesn't it?"

"Your husband, is he a doctor?"

"Oh, no, not Jerry. He's a PI - I mean, he was. Until he retired a couple of years ago. He used to carry one of those around all the time he had his agency." She lowered her voice. Maybe moved closer to the table, closer to Dr.Chivago. "I gave it away to a charity when he retired. He's been searching for it ever since." So that's what happened to my little black box. I still missed it, especially when I wanted to record one of Nicole's promises. She always forgets them the next day.

"So what does he do now?"

"He finds things to keep himself busy. You know, chores that need to be done, laundry picked up, repairs, gardening."

"You mean to say that he is always around."

"Yeah, except when I need him to lay down the law for Nikki."

"Nikki would be... I presume, your daughter?"

"Her name's Nicole, but Jerry's always called her Nikki from the day she was born. Now she answers only to Nikki - and usually only to Jerry."

"Hmm," hummed the male voice. A short pause, and then, "Exactly what do you mean by intimacy issues, Mrs. Kane?"

The tape rolled in silence for a few long seconds. He broke it by prompting her again. "Is there any tension between your husband and yourself?"

"Exactly what do you mean by intimacy issues?" she threw his question right back at him. She did the same thing when we argued, and she was pretty good at it.

He was quick with his reply, giving me the distinct impression that it was standard fare. "I don't mean to be crude, Mrs. Kane, but I find that intimacy issues usually occur when 'he has a hard-on all the time' or 'she has a headache all the time' or both. In broader terms, it's hard for people to remain a couple when one - or sometimes both - participants feel that the other is encroaching their private space, or demanding too much, or too little. It is my personal belief that the most relationships fail the moment the partners no longer feel a need to give in to the raw animal urges of lust."

"Hmm," hummed the female voice now. "You mean like, if they no longer have sex or want to?"

"It's not quite that simple," he answered. "But it's acceptable if you want to start from there."

Another pregnant pause. He let her break the silence this time. "Maybe it's better if I tell you what I've been going through. I've never been good at organizing things. It's always been Jerry's talent."

"By all means, let's get started," said the doctor, and I had visions of him reaching for my wife's hands again. That was the problem with imagination - you never knew when it was running wild.