Dust

  Chapter 12 - Shrink

  “Good afternoon Phillip.” Greeted Ambrose Volkov, psychologist, a middle-aged gentleman with a square bearded face and a belly plump from too many beers and bagels.

  “Doc. Thank you for seeing me on an unscheduled day.”

  “Make yourself comfortable. What is it that’s bothering you, Phillip?”

  "This has been one hell of a day. Let me trace back what has happened to me. I just came from a two-hour interview with the Fort Detrick Police.”

  “Good grief. What happened?”

  “Rolling back my day one more notch. I was questioned because I reported the death of Doctor E. Steven Rice.”

  “He's the head guy, right? What happened?”

  “Looked like a suicide or was staged to look like suicide. It’s pretty traumatic to find someone you know with his brains on the wall.

  “I'm not done with my day. First thing this morning I got fired. You know, from “that” agency neither of us can mention.”

  "Oh! How terrible. You’ve accumulated enough stress points to put you most of the way to a justified nervous breakdown. You are troubled of course. There is nothing abnormal about being emotionally traumatized by events such as you have experienced today. I can help."

  "There is something else that is tearing me apart. I am very conflicted."

  "Is this something other than the usual bipolar tendencies and today’s traumas?"

  "Yes. It’s getting very intense. There is this woman."

  "Ah! So it is a woman and not the trauma of the day that conflicts you?"

  "She’s gorgeous and I’m physically attracted to her and she is very nice to me."

  "This is a problem?"

  “I find that I’m not nice to her.”

  “This is a problem!”

  “I keep thinking about my ex.”

  “Explain what you feel.”

  "Well, I told you I was divorced and it was bloody. Well, I was married to this very pretty woman. But she became more and more paranoid. She was convinced I was seeing other women. Truth was, I was working my ass off at the university. I was at Cornell at the time.

  "She filed for divorce. New York has the no fault divorce, so she didn’t have to prove anything. Her lawyer got her a very good deal. But we had to dispose of all our assets to settle."

  "Ah huh."

  "I had bought real-estate to rent to students in Ithaca. You’d be surprised how much credit you can get when the rental business is strong and real estate cheap. One by one, I acquired a dozen properties. All of these had to be sold in the settlement. The deeds were all in both our names but my wife would not sign to sell them."

  "Strange”.

  "Her lawyer got the court to also impound the rent receipts so I couldn’t pay the mortgages or utilities."

  "What was your lawyer doing?”

  "This family court is very bias toward the non breadwinning wife in these cases. The judge told me once that she had already written her finding before I showed up for the hearing."

  "Tisk tisk."

  "To make a long story short, the bank took all the properties in foreclosure. But I still had to pay my ex half of our assets at the time of filling. I had to declare bankruptcy. She took everything that was left and sued me for legal fees when her lawyer stopped accepting sex as payment."

  "Oh dear. I can see why this would leave you with a sense of trauma. I think I understand the situation with your ex.” Said the psychologist. “If she was a high maintenance woman she would have needed a lot of attention. You weren’t giving it to her in the way she wanted. So she chose as the truth the possible scenario that placed the least amount of blame on herself. She believed you were perfectly capable of giving her all the things she wanted and all the attention she wanted, or she wouldn’t have expected it from you. Therefore, you must be purposely ignoring her and had something going on the side. And you, you too thought you were capable of providing her with everything she wanted. You were wrong. She was wrong. The two of you didn’t compromise on the achievable. The relationship exploded.

  “And now you associate your ex wife’s behavior with this new woman?"

  "Yea. She looks something like my ex. I fell in love with that look once. I fear doing the same thing again because I fear the same outcome. I guess I push Nan – that’s the new girl – away by being rude when I really don’t want to. I’m doing things I don’t want to do. That scares me. I work so very hard all the time not letting my emotions dictate my actions. It’s the only thing that keeps me going. Why should this be different?”

  “You must really like this lady. That’s what’s different. You should have told me this story earlier. Your depression is likely part situational. Although it’s been years now, emotions are remembered longer than facts usually. We may be safe to back off on the drugs and step up the sessions instead.

  Controlling your emotions and working as if they can’t be trusted is one thing. Work usually doesn’t have the highest emotional content. Relationships on the other hand are different. If you try to suppress your negative emotions in this case you will likely come across as insincere. You could discharge the whole conflict by telling Nan, was it, what you just told me.”

  “There is the chicken and the egg problem. If I felt comfortable with her, I could but… "

  "You can’t and you won’t feel comfortable with her until you do. I understand.

  "Well, just practice being nice to everybody. It never hurts. You are nice to everyone else right?"

  "Well I have problems with lots of people. And I hate myself for being such a jerk. I only act human when I’m working really hard. When I’m concentrating on a problem, I settle down.

  "Now I have the other problem. I got fired, I think because my boss and this woman who works, worked, for me have something going. Now the boss has fired me and put his girl friend in my job."

  "That sure sounds like an actionable complaint to management."

  "I went to see the director this morning. He would have straightened things out but that's when I found him with a bullet hole in his brain. I think I have all the right in the world to feel shitty."

  “It sure sounds pretty melodramatic. The director committed suicide then?“

  “Could be. It could have been murder. I tried to stick around but my ex-boss saw me and had the police take me away with hints that I should be questioned about the death. What a prick! He’s the one who needs an alibi. He moves into the big office now and his girlfriend could take his old job. That was a pretty convenient death for them.

  "The Fort Detrick police started an investigation and were questioning everybody anyway. They let me go when they finished and I came here.

  "I don’t drink but this would be a good time to start."

  "This is intense. You are a strong man, Phillip. It shows in the way you presented your problems. You didn’t need my help with death or redundancy but with relationship.

  "We should talk again soon but I don't know if we can. I'm paid by the department of defense and it seems you are no longer a government employee.

  "Practice being nice to people. It can’t be worse than actually not being nice. Ok? Let me know how you are doing. I have an opening… leafing through a small notebook, Friday 9 am. Is that OK for you? I'll see if I am allowed to treat you further on the government's dime. You may be billed directly."

  "Sure. Thanks. Looks like I have a lot of free time now. And I may never see Nan again."

  "Let’s not back off on the drugs just yet, shall we? We’ll talk about it next time."

  Phillip left the office of the government psychologist feeling as he usually did. He had been helped more by what he was allowed to say than what the doctor said. Although, once he had been told that Winston Churchill had suffered from depression even during his nation's 'darkest hour'. That news had given him confidence
that he, Phillip, might prevail in the hour of the planet's peril. Now, as concern for himself faded, he felt depressed for the fate of the world at the hands of Charles.

  Phillip had until the end of the week to find a new place to live and remove himself from the fort. Now that he was alone and the adrenaline was burned out of his system he felt miserable. He had liked Steven and he was dead. He had liked his job, the importance of it, and it was gone. He liked this house, it was one of the nicest places he had ever lived, -- not that he spent much time there with the long days at work. And he liked Nan, now cut off from him.

  He also worried about the outcome of the project. With Steven gone and Charles in charge, the world was in deep shit trouble.

  He wanted company in his misery. He decided to go see how Jon was doing. He didn't even know if Jon had been given the news of Steven’s death.

  Jon had been given a house in Fredric two miles from the GNI building partially to distance him from the GNI because of the hoax thing, and partially to downplay the relationship with Steven that would have highlighted the first reason.

  It took thirty-two minutes to walk the distance. Walking with a destination in mind helped Phillip clear the despair from his mind at least so long as he was walking.

  The house was a raised ranch house on a street of nearly identical raised ranch houses. The next street looked just like this one. The houses formed rank and file formations mimicking the nearly identical elements of the formations of uniformed military personnel on the parade field.

  Phillip thought that if he were still that trouble maker of a kid that he had been when he was young he would spend the night prying the numbers off the identical houses and reapplying them one house down the street just to see how much confusion it would make and as a statement on the housing developer's lack of imagination.

  There was no one home. It looked like no one had been here for a while. Phillip peeked in the mailbox. It was stuffed with third class mail. He was about to peer in a window of the house when a city patrol car drove past. Phillip gave up on the idea. He did not want a discussion with the police twice in one day. He walked back to the fort more slowly. It was dusk when he arrived back at his billet, tired, frustrated, and hungry.

  There was nothing to eat in his kitchen. He had been taking all his meals at the GNI cantina. He ordered delivery Pizza — the perfect way to end a perfect day. Yet he could not get to sleep with thoughts of how horrible Steven’s death was, what an ass hole Charles was, and what a manipulating bitch Brenda was. Oh and how screwed he was. Instead of sleep, he had invented sixteen perfectly plausible ways to kill Charles and Brenda.

  In the morning, he would have to decide which dastardly method he would use to rid the planet of some of its less useful consumers. He would also have to start calling around for an apartment. He wasn’t planning to move out of town. He had been told not to and he didn’t want to. He had nowhere to go anyway.

  Morning came after an interminably long night. After two cups of instant coffee and left over pizza for breakfast he still needed to talk to Jon and it occurred to him that Jon would probably be at Steven’s house on post. He walked over to the large impressive home on the North-West part of the fort reservation. He found the front door barred with tape crisscrossing the entrance announcing “CRIME INVESTIGATION DO NOT ENTER”. It hadn’t occurred to Phillip that the police would have sealed the house. Steven hadn’t died here. Phillip had run out of ideas about where Jon was.

  Next priority was finding a place to live. He stopped at the post motor pool and signed out a car. He drove around town and the surrounding area most of the day calling numbers he found on ‘for rent’ signs. Those that were available to move into by the weekend were nothing Phillip could see living in.

  As he was driving around he had one more idea about where Jon might be. He brought up his phone’s address book and looked up Steven’s Pasadena phone number. A recording informed him that this was a nonworking number please hang up and…. yea, yea…

  He returned the car to the motor pool and had a brilliant idea — considering the state of his brain with no sleep last night and a particularly rugged day yesterday. He called the post housing office. They should have connections. If they still accepted his ID at the motor pool, maybe the other post facilities could help him too. They were very interested until he told them why he needed a new abode. They would call him back.

  He went to the PX and used his valid ID while it still worked for him. He carried all the beer he could carry back to his kitchen. ‘It’s a sleep aid' he told himself. And he was right.