“Your sister Ana’s on Line 2,” Margo told me as I walked into the office carrying my breakfast in a McDonald’s bag. “She said that she’s been calling your cell phone, but it keeps going straight to voice mail.”
“Oh, crap,” I mumbled the epithet to myself. I’d obviously forgotten to turn my cell on when I’d gotten into the car. Or maybe it was on and the battery was dead because I’d forgotten to recharge it again? I’d been so distracted lately I was becoming downright ditzy.
“I’ll take it in my office,” I said, heading in that direction.
“Ana?” I put her on speakerphone so that I could have my hands free.
“Pilar, finally!” I could hear the sound of my nephews fighting with each other in the background. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. First, I called the house and woke up Izzy, who was her usual charming self. Then, I tried to catch you in the car.”
“Yeah, I heard.” I dropped my briefcase and purse on the floor. “Sorry. My cell phone must be out of juice. What’s up?”
“I’m calling about Mamá.”
Oh, brother. I sat down and removed the lid from my coffee cup, figuring that I was going to need some caffeine to get me through this conversation.
“What about her?” I dumped two creams and a sugar into the dark liquid and used a plastic stirrer to mix it all together.
“She’s sick.” The high-pitched shriek of a three-year-old almost pierced my eardrums. “Charlie, don’t pinch your brother,” my sister ordered.
“Really sick, or nobody’s-paying-me-any-attention-so-I-need-to-fake-a-crisis sick?” I drank some coffee and winced when it scorched the tip of my tongue. Great, now I wasn’t going to be able to taste my food.
“Really sick. I got concerned when I realized this morning that I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days. George, where do you think you’re going with that butcher knife? Give that to me and go put a DVD in for your brothers. They’re giving me a headache.”
“Come to think of it, she hasn’t called me since Monday either.” The absence of hysterical rants and critical commentaries on my life had been quite pleasant actually.
“And that’s totally bizarre, right? Unless she’s mad about something, Mamá usually calls us both every day.”
“Well, she was in a snit about the whole burning couch incident, and I wasn’t very sympathetic . . .” I reached into the McDonald’s bag and pulled out my Egg McMuffin and hash browns.
“She didn’t even mention that when I called her this morning, so she must be over it.”
Not likely. I was sure that my mother would be telling the tale of her arsonist grandson ruining her fiftieth birthday party at every family gathering until the day we buried her, and then she’d probably have ‘Luisa Escobar Alvarez, Loving Wife and Mother, who lost the will to live due to the tragedy that befell her beloved sofa on 6/6/12’ etched on to her headstone.
“What’d she say then?”
“Not much. Just that she has some kind of flu.”
“Well, there you go. Nothing to worry about. She’ll be fine in a few days.” I squirted some ketchup on to the crispy end of my fried potatoes, then bit into them.
“I offered to drop by and bring her some soup this afternoon, but she said ‘no.’ She thinks she might be contagious and she didn’t want me to catch anything and take it home to the kids.”
“That was thoughtful . . .,” and completely out-of-character for my mother, who loved to be waited on hand and foot when she was ill and didn’t generally concern herself with the welfare of her servants.
“It just seemed weird to me. Maybe what’s wrong with Mamá is more serious than the flu, and she’s trying to keep it from us? When I spoke to her, she sounded sort of spacey . . . like she was drugged or something.”
“She probably just took one of those over-the-counter flu medications that make you drowsy.” I chomped down on my egg sandwich.
“You should call her, Pilar. You’re the closest thing we have to a doctor in this family.”
“Even if I had a medical degree, I couldn’t diagnose her over the phone.”
My intercom beeped.
I swallowed the sip of coffee I’d just taken and said, “Hold on,” to my sister.
“Yes, Margo?”
“Your 8:00 is here.”
My 8:00? Oh right, I had a new patient scheduled for my first appointment.
“Give me two minutes, then send her in.”
I stuffed some more hash browns into my mouth before switching back to Ana. “I’ve got to run. There’s a patient waiting,” I mumbled.
“But—”
“I’ll check in with Mamá later. I promise.”
A child started to wail on the other end of the line.
“God, I hate parent/teacher conference days! Having all three boys home is just a nightmare. What happened, baby? Oh, my God! Charlie, did you Super Glue your brother’s hands together? Why would you do something like that? It’s alright, David. Mamá will get the sticky glue off.”
“Try nail polish remover,” I suggested.
There was a knock on my door, which made me jump. “Be right there,” I yelled. “Ana, I’ll call you tonight.”
Disconnecting the speakerphone, I grabbed the trash can underneath my desk and swept my half-eaten breakfast into it. I wiped my greasy hands off on a napkin, then hurried to the door. I opened it to find a tall, sharp-featured brunette in a power pants suit.
“Hello,” I greeted her. “I’m Dr. Alvarez. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was on the phone.”
“I understand. I run a successful business myself. Ariane Wylie,” my new patient introduced herself, extending a well-manicured hand as she did so.
“Nice to meet you,” I shook her hand. “Please, come in.”
Closing the door behind her, I said, “Have a seat,” gesturing towards the couch.
Ariane sat down on one of my plump sofa cushions and rubbed her hand across its textured fabric. “This is nice. It’s Kreiss, right?”
I reached for my steno pad and pen. “You know your furnishings. Are you an interior designer?”
“No, I’m in commercial real estate.” She pulled a small gold case out of the front compartment of her pricey-looking, leather handbag, flipped it open, and extracted a business card, which she handed to me.
I scanned it quickly and saw that she was the president of Wylie Realty Corp.
“My company handles prime commercial real estate listings and offers investment property services. I founded WRC less than five years ago, and it’s already the sixth most profitable, female-operated business in South Florida.”
“That’s very impressive.” She made me feel like a serious underachiever.
“It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to reach the level of success I have.”
“I can imagine.” I jotted down the words ‘workaholic, driven, and goal-oriented.’
Ariane’s handbag started to vibrate. I looked at it with a puzzled expression.
“That’s my BlackBerry. Excuse me.” She pulled the handheld device out of her purse and checked the incoming e-mail message.
“Ha! They call this an offer? Cheap SOBs trying to lowball me.” She used her thumbs to type in a fast reply, then shut the phone off and returned it to her purse.
“Sorry for the interruption. Where was I? Oh yes, my work is everything to me, Dr. Alvarez, and that’s why I’m here. You see, I’ve been having some personal problems that are crossing over into my professional life.”
“How so?”
“Long story short. I’ve been married twice. My first husband was twenty years my senior and rich. We divorced after four years because he was a controlling bastard. I got a healthy settlement and used that to start my business. I focused on WRC to the detriment of my social life until last year when I met Julio at a Christmas party that was thrown by one of my clients.”
“And Julio was a friend of your client’s? A business associate?”
“He was a waiter.”
“I see,” I murmured with an understanding nod of my head, which is what all psychologists do when they’re not sure how to respond to something that a patient’s said.
“As you can imagine, Julio and I had absolutely nothing in common. He was 12 years younger than me, he’d just moved here from Colombia, and he could barely speak English, but he was gorgeous and eager to please if you know what I mean. So, I thought, ‘Why not? I deserve a fling.’ Hot sex turned to love, or, at least, I thought it did, and a month later we were husband and wife.”
“That’s quite a story.” In fact, it was more engrossing than anything I’d read in a while.
Ariane smoothed out a non-existent crease on the leg of her black trousers. “Unfortunately, there was no happy ending. We hadn’t been married for long before Julio began to show his true colors. He had no ambition, no desire to better himself . . . he just wanted to lay by my pool all day and get loaded on expensive rum. We had argument after argument about his laziness and his drinking, but he refused to get a job. He said that I was the one with all the money, so I should support him. And when I refused to continue giving him an allowance, he started stealing things around the house - jewelry, objets d’art, electronics - and selling them.”
“You must have felt very violated and betrayed.”
“I did. It was terrible. I kept threatening to throw Julio out, but he’d always talk me out of it. He’d give me some sob story about growing up dirt-poor in Colombia, blah, blah, and I’d feel sorry for him. That all ended when I came home early from a meeting one afternoon and found Julio in the Jacuzzi with two whores. And by ‘whores,’ I don’t just mean girls with loose morals. I mean, actual straight-from-the-street-corner, get-paid-to-bang-strangers whores. I was so irate that I just lost it. I pulled out the high voltage stun gun I carry for protection, turned it on, and hurled it at the water.”
My jaw dropped.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Ariane waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t electrocute anybody, although I wouldn’t have been sorry if I had. That little weasel deserved to have his balls fried. But, sadly, my aim was off, and I overshot the water, which gave Julio and his skanks a chance to jump out of the Jacuzzi. I picked up the stun gun and chased them out to the street. Julio’s girly screams of terror every time I came thisclose,” she indicated an inch with her thumb and forefinger, “to zapping his wet, naked ass are one of my most cherished memories.”
“So, where do things stand between the two of you now?”
“I filed for divorce, but Julio is being a greedy bastard. He signed a prenup that entitles him to a cash settlement of $20,000, but of course, that’s not enough. He’s lodged charges of spousal abuse and he wants my Jaguar, half of everything that’s in the house, and alimony for ten years as recompense. So, either I pay up, or he drags my name and reputation through the mud in a court of law.
It’s so unfair!” She pounded a fist on her knee indignantly. “We weren’t even together for six months, and he thinks I ‘owe’ him a living? He’s nothing but an opportunist, a sleazy, useless, self-serving opportunist. I hate that man with every fiber of my being and I hate myself for ever getting involved with him. I lay awake at night and think about how happy I’d be if Julio got hit by a bus, or someone dropped a piano on his head. I could make it happen, too,” Ariane assured me with a cold smile that sent a chill up my spine. “It would actually be cheaper for me to hire a hit man to do away with Julio than it would be to keep on paying my team of divorce lawyers to fight him.”
“But, you won’t, right?” I prayed her answer would be ‘no’ because I didn’t fancy being called to testify in a Conspiracy to Commit Murder trial.
“No.”
I breathed an inward sigh of relief.
“But just knowing that I could makes me feel better.”
“It’s normal to have negative feelings about an ex. It takes time to work through the anger and disappointment when a relationship ends badly.”
“The problem is that I don’t have time. My rage towards Julio has turned me against anyone who has a Y chromosome, and that’s bad for business since most of my clients and colleagues are men. A competitor bought a property out from under me earlier this week, and instead of taking it in stride like I normally would, I stormed down to his office and reamed him out for being a sneaky, unscrupulous asshole. I actually threw a stapler at him, Dr. Alvarez. It was so unprofessional.
And my assistant of three years quit yesterday because I went ballistic on him for putting Equal in my coffee and saying that it was Sweet n’ Low. I accused him of being a serial liar and a lazy ingrate. It was awful. I knew I was acting like a lunatic, but I just couldn’t control myself. I see Julio and all his character defects in every man I deal with now.”
“At least, you understand why you’re behaving the way you are, and that’s the first step towards change. Here, in our sessions, you can vent your feelings of hostility and anger in a safe environment, rather than repress those emotions and have them emerge at inappropriate times.”
“Alright, I’m game.” She leaned back against the sofa cushions, relaxing her rigid posture.
The rest of the session went smoothly, and I felt confident that Ariane had a tighter rein on her homicidal tendencies by the time I led her out to the waiting area. While she was settling her bill with Margo, I asked, “How did you hear about my practice?”
Ariane finished scribbling her signature on a check, then looked over at me. “I was referred to you by that psychiatrist across the hall, Dr. Fordman.”
“Fordham?”
“Right, Fordham.” She ripped the payment out of her checkbook and gave it to Margo. “I’d gotten his number from a friend of a friend whose ADHD son is a patient of his. So, I called and had a brief phone consultation with him. He said that a psychologist would be better able to provide the type of counseling I needed, then he recommended you.”
Ford had sent a patient my way? I was flabbergasted. Every time I turned around, he was doing something nice to try and help me. He really was the kindest, most generous man on the planet.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I offered my effusive gratitude to Ford as he and I stood at the 11th Street crosswalk a few hours later.
“You’ve said that like a hundred times now.” He gave me a sideways smirk.
“Well, it bears repeating. And you wouldn’t let my buy lunch, so I have to show my appreciation in some other way.”
When we’d met in the corridor between our offices at one o’clock, I’d been sorely tempted to throw myself into his arms and hug the breath out of him. But decorum had prevailed, and I’d simply squeezed his hand instead.
“It’s no big deal,” he downplayed his good deed. “I just thought that Ms. Wylie’s problems were more up your alley than mine.”
“And you weren’t wrong about that.” The light turned green, and we stepped into the street with the other pedestrians. “I have plenty of personal experience with sexually carnivorous exes who make you want to tear your hair out.”
“Still having Victor problems?” Ford deduced.
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Looks like you’re not going to have a choice.”
“Huh?” I raised my sunglass-covered eyes to his, and he pointed up the street, where Victor could be seen leaning back against a white stretch limo that was parked illegally in front of our office building. He was holding a dozen long-stemmed red roses in one hand and a bunch of pink heart-shaped balloons in the other.
“And I was having such a good day,” I grumbled.