Chapter 10
Evan had refrained from visiting the storage facility—he knew that perpetrators often revisited the scenes of their crimes, and Evan was smart enough to know that law enforcement was also aware of the tendency.
While he was eager to find out what was going on, he wasn’t in any hurry to risk being caught and spending his life in prison.
Evan sat on his couch in front of his laptop, waiting for the video call to the online therapist to connect.
He’d never used the service before, but a free fifteen-minute call might be just enough time to get an answer to his question from whatever “wellness expert” came on the line.
The call connected, and a woman’s face popped up on Evan’s screen.
“Hello,” the therapist said. “I’m Hillary. You’re Evan?”
“Yes. Hi. How are you?”
“No complaints here,” she said. “Is this your first time calling in?”
“It is.” Evan reached for the lemon-ginger tea on his coffee table and took a sip.
“And have you ever spoken with a therapist before?” she asked.
“I have,” Evan said, setting his drink down and clasping his hands in his lap.
“Okay. Well, real quick, let me tell you how this will go today.”
Evan listened as the shrink told him the process of getting to know him and said the free call was basically just a meet and greet, but if he had a specific topic that he wanted to broach, they could take a few minutes to kick it around.
Evan nodded and agreed to everything she’d said.
He would tell her whatever she wanted to hear to get to the point where he could ask his question and get a professional’s take on things.
He would have called his own therapist, but the story he’d crafted wouldn’t work with someone who knew him or was familiar with his life.
Hillary asked about Evan’s family. Evan told her that he was an only child and his parents were dead—which was somewhat truthful.
She asked about Evan’s job. He told her that he’d just been fired but wasn’t overly concerned about it, as it was an entry-level job that could easily be replaced.
He answered questions about his home life and pets and told her about his town house and cat.
When she wanted to know whether Evan was in a relationship, he had his opportunity to ask his fictitious question.
“Well, that is actually the reason I was calling today.” Evan scooted forward on the edge of his couch so he was closer to the laptop on the table. “I have a somewhat unusual situation that I can’t really make heads or tails of.”
“Okay. Let’s take a little time to explore that,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
The story Evan had fabricated began to come from his lips. “I’ve been in a relationship with a woman for a number of years. It’s comfortable, albeit nothing that I couldn’t do without. Not really any excitement day to day.”
“Sex life?” Hillary asked.
“Nonexistent,” Evan said.
“Hmm, okay. Are you in love with this person?”
“That’s kind of a separate issue,” Evan said. “And while I don’t want to bombard you with stuff, seeing as how this is supposed to just be a meet and greet, I think it may be relevant to my current issue.”
“Okay,” Hillary said. “Feel free to go on.”
“You asked if I was in love with this woman that I’ve been seeing. The truth is, I just don’t have those kinds of feelings. For anyone or anything. Well, sometimes I do, but right now, I don’t. I guess you could say that I’m in a funk.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “Has that been an issue for you in past relationships?”
“My entire life,” Evan said. “Sometimes I’m normal. Sometimes not. I’ve been diagnosed with all kinds of stuff. But that’s not important right now. I just want to know why I’m having the feelings that I currently am. Because I normally don’t have these feelings.”
“I’m all ears,” Hillary said.
“All right. Well, I’m not the most proud of this, but I’m just going to get into it.
I’ve been cheating on my girlfriend with someone else.
And this has been going on for some time now.
I don’t really care about the other woman.
She’s married. And I don’t really care about my actual girlfriend’s feelings or our relationship ending.
But after I’m with this other woman, the danger of us being found out and how we might get caught actually gives me, I don’t know, excitement or intrigue.
Like I said, I don’t even care about her.
I care about the possibility of being caught and how it would happen.
I mean, I know I’m a terrible person for this, but I can’t imagine that I’m the first person who was more intrigued by the danger of being caught than anything else. ”
“No, you definitely aren’t alone in this,” she said.
“And you aren’t a terrible person. Things happen.
But can I ask you why you felt the need to pursue this relationship with this other woman to begin with?
Was it just an attraction thing or due to the lack of sexual relations with your current girlfriend? ”
Evan paused. He didn’t have an answer lined up. He sat in thought, perhaps for too long.
“Are you still with me, Evan?” Hillary asked.
“Yeah, sorry.” Evan again scooted closer to his laptop.
“Okay. You were just kind of sitting there and didn’t respond, so I thought the connection might have frozen. I asked about why you felt the need to be unfaithful. Is there something that is lacking in your relationship with… I’m sorry. I’m not sure that I ever got the name of your girlfriend.”
“Um, An… Angela,” Evan said. Trying to come up with something, he stumbled over the name.
“All right. So what made you decide to cheat on Angela?”
“I’m not sure,” Evan said. “Searching for something to make me feel something, I guess. But like I said, I don’t really have any strong feelings at all about the infidelity or how that makes anyone involved feel.
The only thing evoking any feelings for myself, which I actually seem to be having, is the possibility of getting caught. ”
“Okay. Interesting,” she said. “Real quick, I just want to touch on something.”
“Sure,” Evan said.
“You mentioned that you’d just been fired from your job. What was the reasoning there?”
“The manager didn’t seem happy that I wasn’t selling as much as the other employees. This was a sales job at a furniture store, for context.”
“So not performing to their expectations,” she said.
“Essentially, yes. The manager told me I was last in sales and wanted me to do more or they’d have to let me go.
He mentioned that I wasn’t making a lot of money on straight commission, and I told him that thankfully, I didn’t require a lot of money to live on.
And I told him that I didn’t really care if I was let go because, again, it was a furniture sales job, and I could go across the street and get another that would pay me more.
The way that these stores work, they pay you a salary plus a reduced commission when you are training.
So if you don’t sell a lot, you get paid more while training before they move you to straight commission.
There wasn’t really any downside for me personally if they let me go. ”
“I don’t imagine that conversation went well after you told your manager that,” she said.
“He terminated me, so I guess not. But I can just go get another job doing the same thing and make more, so it doesn’t matter.”
“But you recognize that what you said is what actually led to the termination, right? It sounds to me like the manager was giving you a chance to try to do better.”
“I didn’t need the extra money that the extra work would produce,” Evan said. He again had another sip of his tea. “And like I said, I can make more by working for someone else.”
“I think that you are kind of—”
“Can we get back to the relationship thing?” Evan asked.
“Mainly, why do I care more about being caught than my decision to commit the act itself? Or not so much the caring about being caught. It’s more like the interest in how I’d get caught, like what would get me caught and then what would happen afterward.
Maybe ‘care’ isn’t the best word. I think ‘intrigued’ is probably better,” Evan said.
“I guess I’m intrigued by the possibility of being caught and am looking for a logical reason why that specific part of my actions is what interests me.
Sorry for cutting you off, I just don’t want to get too far off topic. ”
“Well, I think that you getting fired is directly related to the infidelity thing.”
“How is that?” Evan asked.
“Not only do you lack your own personal emotions, you seem to not have empathy for how others feel either.”
“Sure,” Evan said. “That sounds right. But I’m kind of looking more for an answer to the topic that I called about, as opposed to trying to worry about how others feel about my actions.
I mean, I can’t even figure out my own emotions, or lack thereof.
I’m not sure worrying about other people’s issues before my own is beneficial to me. ”
“Evan, I’m going to be straightforward with you,” Hillary said.
“Just from the couple minutes that we’ve been on, I think that we have quite a bit to unpack before we can get to the root of anything.
I understand that you’re looking for a quick black-and-white answer here, but I just don’t see that coming to light until we get much deeper.
I’d like to schedule a couple more sessions if you’re open to it. ”
He again asked for an answer to his question, and again, the woman didn’t answer him and only pitched more sessions. Evan told her sure, scheduled a couple of follow-up calls that he had zero intentions of participating in, then closed the laptop when she sent him to the payment portal.
He would figure things out on his own.