Chapter 37 #2
He keeps fidgeting, keeps switching, which might be even worse than bad music or no music at all. I never noticed that “Matt” was so fidgety before. Worse than me.
He returns to the jazz station. “This better?”
“Yeah. It’s . . . relaxing.”
He looks over at me, smug as fuck. “It irritates you.”
“Not really.”
“You’re a bad liar, generally. An omitter, yes. That’s not the same. But don’t worry. It’s learnable. Everything is learnable, if you’re high intelligence, as we are.”
Dr. Matt is still staring at me. From our sessions, I know the guy can stare a long time.
But we were sitting in his office before, just listening to the tick of the clock.
This is different. I’m getting nervous now, seeing how close we are getting to the big semi ahead of us with the mud flaps and a chain dragging on the highway, throwing sparks.
“It’s easier to lie to my mom—omit, whatever—than to you.”
He smiles and makes this sort of gee-whiz face, tucking his chin down for a second. I guess he’s flattered.
“I just mean she’s gullible,” I say.
“She’s steered by her emotions. If she wants to believe something or avoid believing something, she’ll throw her whole heart into it. That makes her easy to deceive. Like most women.”
It’s another theme of his. Matt’s divorced. He told me that a while back, but he starts getting angry when it comes up and he never makes it to the end of his story.
“But you and I were talking about music,” he says. “I want you to think about something you like, something that relaxes you. Nice blue water at the bottom of the pool, a girl’s breasts, whatever.”
I crack up at “breasts,” but I can tell he’s serious.
“And stop digging the tips of your fingers into your jeans like you’re trying to pry your kneecaps off,” he says.
“Okay.” I hadn’t realized I was doing it. Relax the hands. Relax the jaw. Tits make me smile so I go for the water, instead. I’m down there, holding my breath, but it feels good. Weightless. Deep.
“Tell me you like jazz.”
He called me a shitty liar, so I try the truth. “I don’t like jazz.”
“No, Benjamin. You’re missing the point. Tell me you like jazz.”
“Fine. I really like jazz.”
“You forgot about what I was saying before. Blue water. Or breasts.”
I fight the urge to crack up. Fine. Blue water. And breasts.
“Tell me you like jazz.”
“I . . . really like jazz.”
He laughs and turns his attention back to the dirty semi.
He swerves into the left lane, directly in front of another car that was trying to pass.
Cutting it close. The guy behind us lays on his horn.
Who gives a fuck? The Jag accelerates effortlessly.
Then we’re back in the right lane, hard swerve, right in front of the big semi until he gasses it.
Matt laughs. “How’s your pulse?”
“Um, high.”
“Some people thrive on adrenaline. Some people actually think better in a state of high arousal.” He smiles.
“And some people—men—can’t be aroused when there’s not something at stake.
A bit of risk. Resistance. The chance of being caught.
The chance of something going wrong. Something .
. . extra. What’s your extra, Benjamin?”
“I don’t know.”
He’s already given me the porn talk. That was the first week of sessions, back in Pleasant Park.
I couldn’t believe when he started going on about the smuttiest possible situations and explaining that he had no problem with fucking or fisting or whatever people wanted to do.
The problem was that it wasn’t real. I thought that was the point.
It wasn’t real, so it was okay. Actors versus—you know—versus the girl you’d actually ask to the prom.
He said it was the opposite. It wasn’t real, so it was wrong. Men who watched too much porn couldn’t deal with reallife sex with real-life women, Dr. C—Matt—told me. They become weak.
“Predator or prey,” he says, out of the blue. “That pieceof-shit Audi didn’t even belong in the left lane.”
I’m just glad he’s back to talking about cars. But then I sneak a look over at his face and I get that sinking feeling. He’s not.
“A year from now,” he keeps going, “maybe you could have done okay with Izzy Scarlatti, but you were punching above your weight. You never could have outperformed a man like Christopher Weber. Older, more suave. Not such a good driver, though . . .”
He pauses, chuckling, which is an improvement.
Usually when he talks about Weber it’s like when he talks about his ex-wife, and he gets all sulky.
I guess Weber was a big disappointment to him.
A good student at the institute place, and maybe okay for a while once he left, but then he got out of control.
That’s the part I don’t like to hear about, now that I know who Weber is, or was.
The shithead who gave Sid drugs and had sex with her.
The pervert who was in the motel with Izzy.
“What are you thinking about, Benjamin?”
I don’t want to say Weber, so I say, “Izzy.”
“Still mad at her?”
“Kind of.”
“Try some positive thinking. If people didn’t make stupid choices, where would the rest of us be? You’re one or the other. Predator . . .”
“Or prey,” I say, giving him the answer that ends the stupid word game.
“What’s your extra, Benjamin?” Matt asks again. We’re back to that.
“I don’t know,” I say. Honestly.
He laughs. “Fair enough. How could you?”
He reaches across a hand and brushes my bangs, messing them up, like I’m about ten years old.
“Go for the single girls, the ones the other guys ignore,” he says. “Not the ugly ones—I’m not saying that, though there’s a good argument for it. The grateful ones. The strays.”
I do my best to stare ahead and look bored. Menomonee Falls. Germantown.
“And here’s a thing about virgins, if you happen to like younger girls, which I do. Far less trouble. They may not know how to say yes, but they also don’t know how to say no. I know, you’d think they would. But chemistry is on our side. You’ve probably heard about the fight-or-flight response.”
I nod.
“Overrated. I can tell you how many girls have ever fought me or run away.” He holds up a hand, fingers splayed. “This many. Out of more than I can count. So what’s the third response?”
“I don’t know.”
“Freeze. That’s the one we want. Lower heart rate, dropping temperature, inability to respond. I don’t understand wannabe necrophiliacs like Weber, personally. The truth is, a terrified girl seems dead already.”
I swallow and look out the window.
He says, “You think a Jag costs a lot, but it’s all about the maintenance. That’s the real expense, when it comes to a car.”
Thank god. A normal conversation.
“I budget two thousand a year.”
“Not bad,” I say. I was thinking he’d say something insane, like ten thousand.
“Oh, ‘not bad.’ You think you can afford two K in regular maintenance?”
“I just meant I thought it would be more.”
We’ve taken an off-ramp onto a smaller highway now.
Lots more trees and fields. Still some trucks but not as many.
He gets a faraway look, picking out the next car way ahead, a nothing-special red car that looks like the sort of banged-up commuter car my mom might drive, his foot heavy on the gas as he closes the distance. Here we go again.
“When I say maintenance, I don’t mean the year you can afford it. I mean every year, in and out. That’s the problem with anything.”
Ninety. Ninety-five. One hundred.
“You buy something or you start something, and you know you have to do it right or there’s no point doing it at all. But you can’t slip up. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s a commitment.”
He looks over at me and rolls his eyes because he can tell. I don’t get what he’s talking about.
He steers hard to the right. I was so preoccupied with that red car ahead of us I didn’t see the rest stop sign and the exit until he’s barreling down it. He pulls into the big lot and whips into a parking space, two slots down from the next car.
He kills the engine. “Let’s go see what they’ve got for us.”
Like, besides toilets?
But then I see a girl who’s close to my age or I guess a year younger—fourteen, fifteen—sitting on the grass with a sign that says STEVENS POINT over a childish-looking rainbow done in streaky markers.
Next to her is a golden retriever puppy with a rope instead of a regular leash. Matt’s staring at her.
Maybe he just means a pop machine.
“You go ahead in,” he says. He didn’t even ask me if I have to pee. “Wait, here’s a couple of dollars.” He pulls two worn ones from his wallet, then puts them back and hands me a black credit card instead. “Just tap it. Whatever you want.” He flashes white teeth. “And get her one, too.”
“Really?”
“When someone offers you something, the correct response is thank you.”
“Right. Thank you, Dr. . . . Matt.” It’s never going to sound right.
“If she asks, tell her I’m your uncle or your cousin. Don’t mention the word doctor. Ever. It makes girls uptight.”
“I don’t think she’ll ask.”
“Yes, she will,” he says, reaching for a pair of sunglasses and sliding them onto his face. “Especially when you tell her we’re giving her a ride.”