Unzipped (33 page)

by Lois Greiman

On sale March 2006

“Matrimony and fire fighting. They ain’t for cowards.”

—Pete McMullen,
shortly after his first marriage

Y
OU MARRIED?”

I hadn’t known Larry Hunt thirty-five minutes before he popped the question. But the fact that he was scowling at me as if I were the devil’s handmaiden suggested our relationship would never work out. The fact that he was sitting beside his wife also posed a problem for our connubial bliss. Weighing all the signs, I guessed they’d been married for about twenty-four years.

But I’m not a psychic. I’m a psychologist.

Mrs. Hunt had called my clinic, L.A. Counseling, two weeks prior for therapy. As a result, Mr. Hunt now seemed to be wondering what the hell he was doing in some shrink’s office, and had decided to fill his fifty minutes by probing into my personal life.

According to the forms they’d completed, he worked for Mann’s Rent ’n’ Go. Judging by his slightly rumpled dress shirt and loosened tie, he had left his place of employment just minutes before for this inauspicious introduction to couple’s therapy. Judging by his attitude, I suspected what he really wanted to know was what made me think I was qualified to counsel him and his heretofore silent wife.

“No, Mr. Hunt, I’m not married,” I said.

“How come?”

If he hadn’t been a client, I would have told him it was none of his damned business whether I was married, ever had been married, or ever planned to be married. Ergo, it was probably best that he was a client, since that particular answer might have seemed somewhat immature and just a tad defensive. Not that I secretly long to be married or anything, but if someone wanted to lug salt downstairs to the water softener for me now and again, I wouldn’t turn down the offer. Even my thirty-seventh ex-boyfriend, Victor Dickenson, sometimes called “Vic the Dick” by those who knew him well, had been able to manage that much.

“Larry!” Mrs. Hunt chided. She was a smallish woman with sandpaper blonde hair and a lilac pantsuit. Her stacked platform sandals were of a different generation than her clothing and made me wonder if she had a disapproving teenage daughter who had taken it upon herself to update her mother’s footwear. Her eyes were sort of bubblelike, reminding me of the guppies I’d had as a kid, and when she turned her orbicular gaze in my direction it was pretty obvious she’d been wondering about me herself.

It’s not uncommon for clients to think a therapist has to be half a couple in order to know anything about marriage. I soundly disagree. I’ve never been a lobster, but I still know they taste best with a half gallon of butter and a spritz of lemon.

According to the data forms the Hunts had filled out before entering my cashew-sized office, Kathy was forty-three, four years younger than her husband of rumpled dress shirt fame. They both sat on my comfy, cream-colored couch, but to say that they sat together would have been a wild flight of romantic fancy. Between Mrs. Hunt’s polyester pantsuit and Mr. Hunt’s stiff-backed personage, there was ample space to park a Mack truck hauling a butt load of toxic waste.

I gave them both my professional smile, the one that suggests I am above being insulted by forays into my personal life and that I would not murder them in their sleep for doing so.

“You’re an okay looking woman,” Mr. Hunt continued. “Got a good job. How come you’re still single?”

I considered telling him that, despite the availability of men like himself, I had managed to retain a few functioning brain cells. But that would have been unprofessional. It would also have been untrue. Then again, it was five o’clock on a Friday evening, and I hadn’t had a cigarette for five days and nineteen hours. I’d counted on my way to work that morning.

“How long have you two been married?” I asked, deflecting his question with the stunning ingenuity only a licensed psychoanalyst could manage.

“Twenty-two years,” said Mrs. Hunt. She didn’t sound thrilled with the number. Maybe she’d been doing a little math on her way to work, too. “This May.”

“Twenty-two years,” I repeated, imbuing my tone with a suggestive whistle of admiration while chiding myself for over-guessing. It was her pastel ensemble that threw me. What woman under sixty wears lilac pants? “You must be doing something right, then. And you’ve never had any sort of therapy before today?”

“No,” they answered in unison. By their expressions, I guessed it was one of the few things they still did in tandem.

“Is that because you didn’t feel you needed help or because—” I began, but Mr. Hunt interrupted.

“I don’t believe in this crap.”

I turned toward him, wondrously even-tempered, which shows how mature I’ve become. Five years ago I would have taken offense to that kind of remark. Twenty years ago I would have called him a moron and given him a wedgie. “Whyever are you here then, Mr. Hunt?” I asked, my tone a dulcet meld of curiosity and caring.

“Kathy says she won’t . . .” He paused. “She wanted me to come.”

So ol’ Kat was withholding sex. Uh-huh.

“Well,” I said, “as I’m sure you’re aware, you don’t have to tell me anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

I glanced from one to the other. Mr. Hunt beetled his brows. Mrs. Hunt pursed her lips. They didn’t really look like they’d be comfortable with much. Maybe a noncommittal, how-was-your-day kind of exchange—if no prolonged eye contact was required.

“And of course,” I continued, “everything hinges on your own specific goals.”

“Goals?” asked Mr. Hunt, and rather suspiciously, I thought. As if I were trying to trick him into mental health and conjugal happiness.

“Yes.” I swiveled my chair a little and crossed my legs. I was wearing a ginger-hued sleeveless sheath and matching jacket by Chanel. By purchasing it second-hand, I had still been able to afford my flax colored sling-back sandals for twelve dollars and ninety-five cents without taking out a second mortgage on my soul. The shoes matched the ensemble’s piping and did good things to the muscles in my lower legs. I looked fantastic. Who needs a husband when you’re wearing Chanel and look fantastic? “What are you hoping to accomplish with these sessions?” I asked.

Mr. Hunt stared at me with a mixture of irritation and absolute stupefaction. I turned toward Kathy, hoping for a bit more acumen.

“What is
your
main purpose for coming here, Mrs. Hunt?”

“I just . . .” She scowled and shrugged. I got the feeling she might have had quite a bit of practice at both. “I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

A ringing endorsement. Some day I’d have to have that embroidered and framed above my desk.

“So you’re not entirely content with your current relationship?” I guessed.

“Well . . .” She throttled the strap of her beige handbag. It was the approximate size of my front door. “No one’s completely happy, I suppose.”

I gave her an encouraging smile and turned to her husband. “And what about you, Mr. Hunt? Is there anything you’d like to see changed in your marriage?”

“Things are okay,” he said, but he was still glaring at me.

I gave him my “aha” smile, as if I knew things he didn’t. Maybe I did, but chances were he didn’t care where my house key was hidden or how to wax his bikini line without screaming out four-letter expletives.

“So you’re here just to make your wife happy,” I said. It was a charitable way of saying I knew she’d dragged him in kicking and screaming. Nine times out of ten, that’s how it works. Men tend to think everything’s hunky-dory so long as the little woman hasn’t put a slug between his eyes within the past seventy-two hours. So apparently, Mrs. Hunt’s Glock was still in the gun cabinet. But judging by her tight-lipped expression, Larry might want to sleep with one eye open. “It was very considerate of you to agree to come. Is he always so considerate, Kathy?” I asked and turned toward the little woman.

Her lips pursed into an almost indiscernible line and her eyes narrowed. For a second I wondered if she’d brought her Glock with her. God knows, her purse was big enough to house a cannon and the man o’ war that carried it.

“He leaves used Kleenexes in the living room,” she snarled. Her tone was suddenly terse—as if she’d caught Larry sans pants with the woman in charge of weed whacker rentals.

I realize that for the uninitiated her statement might seem like a strange opening gambit, but I’d been in the game long enough to realize it’s not the sordid affairs that most often end a marriage. It’s the toothpaste left in the sink.
Psychology Today
says the human psyche is a complex and fragile thing. Personally, I think people are just funky as hell.

“I have a sinus problem,” he said, by way of defense.

“So you can’t put your Kleenex in the waste basket?” Her tone was becoming more shrill by the moment.

“You leave your wet towel on my side of the sink every morning. You don’t see me making a federal case of it.”

“That’s because you don’t care.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said, his voice rising. “I bring home a paycheck every other week to buy the groceries you don’t even bother to cook. You think I’d do that if I didn’t care? You think I give a damn how many floor grinders Mann’s rents out per week?”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, her cheeks red and her eyes popping. “I think you care more about floor grinders than you do about me.”

The room went abruptly silent. I refrained from grinning like a euphoric monkey.

The first half hour had been the conversational equivalent of pabulum. But this . . . this was something I could sink my teeth into.

Twenty minutes later I was ushering the Hunts out the front door. They still looked less than ecstatic, so apparently I had failed to work my usual therapeutic magic, but they had agreed to try a couple of my suggestions. He would pick up after himself and she would make him breakfast on Tuesday and Thursday.

I waved congenially, then turned with a sigh and slumped into one of the two chairs that faced the receptionist desk. My receptionist was behind it. Her name is Elaine Butterfield. We’d bonded in fifth grade, agreeing that boys were stupid and stinky. In general terms, I still think they’re stupid. But sometimes they smell pretty good.

“Want to pick up some Chinese?” I asked.

Elaine stuffed a file in the cabinet and didn’t turn toward me. “Can’t,” she said. “I have an audition tomorrow morning.”

Elaine is an actress. Unfortunately, she can’t act.

“So you’re not going to eat?”

“Chinese makes my face puffy.”

Elaine’s face has never been puffy in her life. At ten she’d been gangly and buck-toothed; at thirty-two she was gorgeous enough to make me hate my parents and every fat-thighed antecedent who had ever peed in my gene pool.

“What are you auditioning for?” I hadn’t heard a single hideous line in several days, which wasn’t like my Laney. Usually she spewed them about the office like pot smoke at a Mick Jagger concert.

“It’s just a little part in a soap.”

“A soap opera?” I asked, managing to shuffle straighter in my chair. “You love soap operas. They’re steady work.”

“Yeah, well . . .” She shrugged and stuffed another file. “I probably won’t get the part.”

“Laney?” I tried to see her face, but she kept it turned away. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She was fiddling through the V’s. The only file left out was Angela Grapier’s. Elaine had an IQ that would make Einstein look like a shaken infant victim. I was pretty sure she knew Angie’s name came before Vigoren.

I stood up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.”

“You don’t get tired.”

“Do, too.”

“Laney,” I said, and rounding her desk, touched her shoulder. She turned toward me like a scolded puppy.

“It’s Jeen.”

I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. Her face
was
puffy. And her nose, flawlessly shaped and perfectly pored, was red. “What?” I said.

“It’s . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I just—”

“Jeen?” I repeated dumbly, but then the truth dawned. For nearly two months now, she’d been dating a myopic little geek to whom I’d had the bad manners of introducing her. It had been patently cruel on my part, but I’d been in a bit of a bind. In fact, I’d been accused of murder and he had helped me out by doing a little “creative investigating” on the Internet. His name was J.D. Solberg. I could only assume his real name was Jeen, since Elaine wasn’t vindictive enough to think of such a nomenclature on her own. Unfortunately, the same obviously couldn’t be said of his parents. “What’d he do?” I asked, imagining the worst. “He didn’t touch you, did he?”

She didn’t answer.

Anger flared up like fireworks. Some people think I have a little bit of a temper. “Damn that nerdy little troll! I warned him not to—”

“No.” She glanced at the floor and cleared her throat. “That’s not the problem.”

Oh dear God, did that mean he had touched her? Did that mean she’d liked it? Did that mean the world was crumbling beneath my very . . . but then another thought struck me. “Dammit, Laney, he didn’t hit you, did he?”

“Of course not.” Her gaze rose to mine. Her gigantic eyes were filled with puppy dog dejection. If I wasn’t a raging heterosexual I would have begged her to marry me on the spot.

I relaxed a little. “Then what’s the problem?”

“He just . . . he hasn’t called me, that’s all.”

I waited for the bad news. She wasn’t forthcoming. “And?”

She gave me a disapproving glance as she shoved Grapier’s file somewhere in the XYZ group. I refrained from comment. “I haven’t heard from him since he left for Las Vegas.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. I remembered her telling me about NeoTech’s esteemed presence at some big-ass technology convention. J.D. was supposed to be some kind geek master there. I probably should have been paying attention when she first told me about it, but I’d been trying to deal with a few issues of my own. My septic system, for instance. It had been installed sometime before the Miocene Epoch and kept threatening to spill its venom down the hall and into my antiquated kitchen.