C. Lawrence - Silent victim

There she is-just look at her with her chic little itsy-bitsy leather knapsack and her oh-so-hip camel coat and her CFM boots. Well, she wasn't so approachable as those boots might suggest, now, was she? Too bad-if she hadn't been so uppity and above it all, maybe she would live to see another day.

But it's too late for that. Even if she got down on those skinny, leather-clad knees and begged for mercy, we wouldn't listen, would we? No, because bad girls must be punished, and she has been a very naughty girl. Very naughty indeed. She couldn't be bothered with the likes of us-not even enough to be polite. Thought it was oh-so-funny that we would approach her, and wanted everyone around to know how amused she was by it.

She'll soon be laughing out the other side of her mouth-what's left of it. She has to be taught a lesson in manners, one she'll never forget.

The phone call was unexpected-unbidden and out of the blue. It took him so much by surprise that Lee Campbell found himself stumbling for words. The last thing he expected on a Friday night was a call from a former patient-and certainly not this former patient.

"Is this Dr. Lee Campbell?" The voice was high and breathy, petulance lurking underneath the seductiveness, like a bad Marilyn Monroe impersonator. He recognized it at once.

"Uh-yes." Yes, Ana, he wanted to say, but some part of him still hoped that it wasn't her.

But of course it was.

"This is Ana Watkins."

"Oh, yes-hello, Ana. How are you?" His professionalism clicked in automatically, keeping his tone steady and objective-or so he hoped.

"I'm downstairs-can I come up and see you?"

"Downstairs?"

"At McSorley's, actually."

How did she know where he lived?

As if reading his mind, she said, "You're in the directory."

Not true, but never mind. His explanation that he wasn't in private practice anymore didn't seem to put her off. She insisted that she wouldn't take up much of his time, but that it was very important to her.

"Please? I wouldn't ask, but-"

But what? he thought irritably. You didn't cause enough trouble the first time around?

"I'll come down and meet you at McSorley's."

"It's too loud in here," she said, and he could hear the din of clanking glasses and boisterous laughter in the background. McSorley's was always loud on a Friday night.

He glanced at the clock. It was just after six.

"I have a dinner meeting at seven."

"I won't take long-I promise."

He peered out the window down at the street. It was August, but as evening drew in a cold rain whipped the naked branches of the trees on East Seventh Street. They shivered in the chilly gusts, shaking like frightened skeletons. He caught a glimpse of his own ghostly image staring back at him-curly black hair, angular face, intense, deep-set eyes. He knew it was a face many women considered handsome, and wished that Ana Watkins weren't one of them.

Lee had an impulse to pour himself a Scotch, but decided against it-he needed his mind clear for the encounter. When the downstairs bell rang he took a deep breath and buzzed her into the building.

Her footsteps on the carpeted stairs were light and quick, the tread of a young person. He opened the door and fixed a smile on his face. She entered in a cloud of lilac perfume, and as soon as he breathed the aroma, he inhaled the memories of that time in his life along with it. It all felt so long ago.

She had changed very little-tall and thin and so pale that she always reminded him of an albino. She wasn't an albino, she had told him in their first session together, but her pallid skin lacked the shade and depth of ordinary skin; it looked two dimensional, like paper. She wasn't exactly pretty-her nose was too big and her lips were too thin-but she was striking, and she knew it.

She took in the apartment with one nervous glance, probably noticing more than she appeared to. Lee remembered her IQ was 160, or so she had claimed. That could have been a fiction, of course-much of what she had told him was. She was one of his earliest patients, and he had not yet acquired the skill of seeing through the myriad lies and obfuscations of the narcissistic personality. Still, there was no doubt that Ana was bright-very bright. Her sessions may have been frustrating, but at least they were never dull.

She slipped off her gray raincoat and dangled it from her outstretched arm, as though she expected Lee to take it from her. That was so like her-her helplessness always had an aggressive quality, and she could turn even a small gesture like removing her coat into a demand. Evidently years of therapy had failed to change this. He suppressed a sigh and took the coat, hanging it on the antique bentwood coatrack his mother had found at an estate sale in Bucks County.

"Do you have any coffee?" she asked, rubbing her thin hands together and blowing on them.

Another demand. Lee was flooded with relief that they would not be continuing their sessions together. He had always done his best to disguise one of the uglier truths of the therapeutic relationship: there were some patients he just didn't like. If his enmity toward a patient ever threatened to compromise his effectiveness, he would find an excuse to suggest they seek out another therapist, but in the case of Ana Watkins, his dislike of her didn't become entirely apparent to him until after their last session together.

"I can make some coffee," he said in response to her question, though from the way her fingers twitched and her eyes roamed restlessly around the room, he thought coffee was the last thing she needed.

"Never mind-I'll be all right," she replied, the familiar tone of self-dramatization in her voice, as if instead of coffee, she were speaking of a rare and lifesaving drug.

"It's no trouble at all," Lee insisted. He wasn't going to let her win this first stab at manipulation-she had requested coffee, and coffee she would have.

Instead of thanking him, she tossed her tiny red leather knapsack on the nearest chair and flopped down on it as though this were her apartment, not his. It was, of course, his favorite chair-but that was probably why she had instinctively chosen it.

"Make yourself at home," he said, knowing she couldn't miss the sarcasm in his voice. He turned and went into the kitchen, glad for the opportunity to collect his thoughts and steel himself for what could be a very sticky conversation. Ana Watkins was, he felt, his first major failure as a therapist.

She was also the first patient who tried to seduce him.

And she had tried hard-very hard-and very nearly succeeded. And now she was sprawled out in his living room, in his favorite armchair, with God knows what in mind. He wasn't normally afraid of his patients-even the violent ones-but he was afraid of Ana Watkins. There was something about her, an undercurrent of needy malice, which had made it very difficult to be her therapist. Even her attempted seduction had been more of a conquest, like a declaration of war.

As the coffee beans rattled around in the Krups grinder, he wondered what had brought her here, and whether she would tell him the truth or only her version of it. When the coffee grinder stopped, the silence made him wonder what she was up to in the living room. He shoved the filter into the coffeemaker, dumped some water in, jabbed at the ON switch, and ducked back into the living room.

Sure enough, she was standing in front of his bookshelf, a thick volume of poetry in her hands. Like a lot of narcissists, she had boundary issues: what was yours was hers, as far as she was concerned. As he entered, she turned and smiled at him, one lock of blond hair falling artfully over her pale blue eyes. He wouldn't have put it past her to have planned that moment the whole time she was standing there. If she inclined her head just so, the hair would fall over her eyes, and then all she needed was to cap it with that sultry, come-hither smile.