Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [2]
Ruby waited ten or so seconds after the settling sounds had stopped. Then she waited longer. She enjoyed forcing The Psychiatrist to speak first.
“So,” The Psychiatrist finally succumbed, “how was your week, Ruby?”
“Oh fine,” Ruby said, wondering why she was lying. “How was yours?”
There was a tiny intake of breath followed by a startling response. “I’ve had better weeks, to be quite frank.”
“Oh?” Ruby said, feeling a small thrill at the revelation.
“Yes. But please talk about yourself now.” The Psychiatrist scowled at Ruby and, in that moment, looked old. Though the casting agent would have urged Jody Ray to claim herself barely thirty, The Psychiatrist, Ruby knew, was forty-five. Dr. Jody Ray took excellent care of herself. There was probably an exercise regime, vitamins, regular full-body exfoliation, and vigorous use of a drawer full of sex toys in addition to the appealingly dark and scruffy husband Ruby had met once. Ordinarily, Jody Ray looked to be in her mid-thirties. But just then, with a beam of afternoon sun snaking its way through the Venetians, spotlighting a network of wrinkles around The Psychiatrist’s eyes, Jody Ray looked old.
Ruby started feeling like a heel for playing games with The Psychiatrist. She launched into the first complaint.
“Ed is obsessed with that new horse I mentioned last session,” Ruby offered. The Psychiatrist nodded slightly. She was used to hearing about Ruby’s horse-trainer boyfriend’s workaholism. How he lived and breathed horses. How he talked horses in his sleep. How he forgot to eat or bathe sometimes because his head was clouded with horses.
“He’s spent two nights sleeping at the barn with the damn horse instead of coming home. I’ve been thrown over for a knock-kneed horse,” Ruby said.
“Knock-kneed?” The Psychiatrist asked.
“Yes. Juan the Bullet is a knock-kneed New York breed. And he’s tiny. He’s a nice horse, but not that nice. Maybe Ed’s obsessed with the horse because there’s something missing between us.”
Life had come into The Psychiatrist’s eyes. She liked horses. It wasn’t a girls-and-horses thing. Ruby found the whole girls-and-horses thing offensive and degrading to horses. No. As far as Ruby knew, The Psychiatrist did not walk around harboring erotic feelings for horses. The Psychiatrist’s husband owned several racehorses trained by Ruby’s friend Violet. It was Violet who’d introduced Ruby to The Psychiatrist after Ruby had watched Attila Johnson being murdered. Yes. Ruby’s murdered lover had been named after a Hun. Ruby didn’t remember how the original Attila had met his end, but her Attila had been shot by a sociopath. In front of her. After shooting Attila, the sociopath had left the scene of the crime. He had never threatened Ruby herself. He had left her there with her dead lover. There hadn’t been a working phone in the place, and Ruby had stayed for hours, cradling Attila’s lifeless head in her hands. Afterward, this image had haunted her. The blood from the small, neat bullet wound drying on her fingertips. The once vivid blue eyes paling as death did its work. Now, after sixteen months of visits to The Psychiatrist, the image was beginning to fade. The haunting would never stop, but the image was fading.
“All Ed thinks about is that damned horse,” Ruby added after a pause.
“But it’s probably not even about the horse,” The Psychiatrist offered.
“Well then what?” Ruby asked. “He’s sick of me, and the horse is an excuse?”
“Not sick of you. But avoiding something.”
“Yeah. Me.”
“Maybe you two need to talk.”
Ruby shrugged. She felt something then. Something crawling down her neck. Maybe someone was walking on her grave. Maybe someone was talking about her. Maybe Ed was talking about her. Or thinking about her. One could only hope. The crawling went all the way down her spine and tucked itself into her tailbone.