Rachel said Dr. Pasternak left New York every weekend, so I waited until late Friday night to make an unsolicited visit to review his files. It was a bitch climbing in the window with my bad arm. But at least there was a toehold to ease my way up to the ledge. And all the while I kept thinking this used to be a lot easier in Parris Island when I was a green youth, full of energy and innocent enthusiasm. Then I had the same flashback I always got of clawing my way up an incline in the Au Shau valley while we took enfilading fire, scrambling for a crevasse to squeeze into, shaking like a madman with palsy, dirt in my face, cursing Charlie, smelling acrid napalm from the treeline, half-deaf from incoming, wishing, just wishing we were home, warm and safe. Every time I climbed, that same godforsaken scene came back to me.
Once I got onto the ledge it was easy. I cut the glass, opened the latch and slid the window open. Inside the house I skirted the ancient motion detectors without any trouble. There was nothing of interest on the first floor. The house was so cold and spare and devoid of any sign of humanity that it looked like it had never been inhabited. The file cabinets weren’t in the consulting room on the second floor where Pasternak had started bawling like a little old lady, but after a quick search I located them in his private office. It was furnished in the same way as the rest of the house-sparse and uncomfortable. The desk was just a glass top with saw-horse chrome legs, and the chair was a couple of leather thongs on a metal frame. The decor was what you could call early masochist.
There were three metal file cabinets. The kind where the drawers swing out. I tried a few master keys before I found one that worked. Obviously he didn’t think anyone was interested in breaking into his files. They were locked for privacy-not security.
Alicia’s file wasn’t there. It wasn’t where it should have been alphabetically. I tried every possible combination for her name. There was plenty of time so I went through every patient’s file, but it was missing all right. In my search I came across Rachel’s file. Was I human? Sure, I was human. Were human beings curious? Does a fish swim? Does a bird fly?
Later, I said.
There was no other place in the office where Pasternak could have put Alicia’s file. There were no drawers in the desk.
I scanned the bookcases, but there were no files tucked away between the books. Everything was neat and clean and in its proper place. The books were even arranged by subject. The guy was evidently fastidious about cleanliness and order.
The file wasn’t in this room.
Pasternak could have removed it or the police could have subpoenaed it. I’d make a search of the house later but, for now, Rachel’s file kept calling me like a big slice of chocolate cake with a side of vanilla ice cream.
There were many pages of handwritten notes in a tiny tortured scrawl, densely packed, difficult to read. She must have been seeing him for some time. I didn’t understand most of the terms and the notes were in some kind of shorthand that probably only he could decipher. But I got the gist of the analysis.
What I read added a new twist to my perception of that delightful little creature. Laura had been speaking literally, not figuratively, when she referred to Rachel as a whore. She had been a dues-paying member of that noble profession for a few years. It wasn’t clear if she was actually practicing her calling when she started going for psychotherapy.
Anyway, that’s when Daddy’s trust fund kicked in. The notes showed that Rachel was thirty when she was able to have access to the money. She didn’t have to be a working girl anymore and she settled into retirement without a pension or a gold watch. But the profession had left scars on her psyche, and I guess on her body too.
Her condition, as she delicately put it, was obviously the result of her work. And Dr. Pasternak was trying to exorcise the twin demons of lust and greed. To open up those tightly grasping labia.
Jesus, what a story. Poetic, wasn’t it? She could do it when she didn’t enjoy it, had to do it to survive in a style she wanted to become accustomed to. She didn’t want to work in a normal job or couldn’t earn enough for that style, so she earned it the easy way-on her mattress. Now, when she wanted to enjoy the good old in-out, she couldn’t. Fate had decreed, now that she had all the money she wanted, no one could get into her.
It was a tough one to accept. I thought of those eyes.
I closed the file. I’d have to sort it out with her.