Читать книгу Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Jeffrey Round - Страница 9

The morning passed with little excitement. The bottle of Scotch did not put in an appearance. Just before one o’clock Dan went off to the coroner’s office on Grosvenor Street, but the body of the missing person fifty-five Division claimed to have a possible match for turned out to be someone else. Someone who didn’t even vaguely resemble the person in Dan’s file, apart from being human and male. There were doubts even about the latter, considering the raised mammaries that appeared to have been a botched home job injecting silicone under the skin with a hypodermic. Another victim of do-it-yourself beauty school etiquette. All went well for these home-style girly-boys until they misjudged the position of an artery and sent the polymer mainlining into their hearts and lungs. By then it was too late. Death came grisly but swift, and the rictus masks left for their discoverers weren’t too pretty either.

At least the Serbian boy would be going home soon. When he’d left, it had probably been a merry send-off — women in babushkas and kerchiefs smiling and sipping Turkish coffee, bristle-faced men offering their worldly wisdom and passing the šljivovica from hand to hand while the children romped around the room, not understanding why they were celebrating their older cousin’s leave-taking, but glad for the sweet rolls. Dan didn’t want to think about the bumpy coffin ride back in the bottom of a cargo plane, the seven-hour flight to repatriate him, the teary return that awaited him in his homeland two years too late.

The sky threatened drizzle as he walked north on Yonge Street, keeping his distance from passersby who seemed to have nothing better to do than throng the intersections looking fashionable. He stopped for lunch at Spring Rolls. The downstairs was filled with a noisy young crowd who seemed to think it a glamorous social event rather than simply a quick, cheap eat. He bypassed the clamorous lunchers and went upstairs, where it was only slightly less crowded. A waiter waved him curtly to a window table. The man’s face betrayed annoyance at having one customer take up a spot for two. Dan could remember when the place barely got half full. Whenever he found a convenient location to eat, it turned trendy in a couple of months. Then the wait time increased, the food went downhill, and the service got snarly. So much for Toronto’s exalted dining experience.

He ordered a drink before he was seated. One beer to take the edge off. It wasn’t that he needed it, he reassured himself. Just holding the tumbler in his hand made him feel better.

Two tables over, a rugged-looking guy in denim caught Dan’s eye. Black T-shirt, chiselled cheekbones, thick moustache. Face like a motorcycle cop from the backend of a seventies porn catalogue. He looked familiar. Dan wondered if he was undercover, possibly someone he’d worked with before. He kept catching Dan’s glance. The third time it happened the man smiled unexpectedly. Dan blushed and turned away.

He sipped his beer and kept his gaze averted, wondering how long the guy would keep at it before he gave up.

The waiter returned for his order. Dan stumbled over the name of one of the Asian fusion dishes. The waiter corrected his pronunciation and regarded him gravely, as though he’d asked for a side order of blowfish.

His meal had just arrived when the denim-clad mannequin laid a bill on the table. Dan kept his head turned as he walked past and dropped a slip of paper beside Dan’s fork. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan watched him disappear down the stairs before turning it over — the name Chuck and a phone number. He finished his lunch and left the number on the table. Maybe his hurried waiter would think it was for him. The two of them could work it out.

Outside, the day had turned bright. The sun made a sudden appearance as Dan crossed through Allan Gardens, noting the unusually large number of addicts looking up uncertainly at the light, like seals left stranded by a retreating tide. He thought over the early morning meeting with his former neighbour at the donut shop, and wondered again why Steve had given Glenda the house, especially since she made more money than him. Is that what straight men did?

There was no reply from Bill when he reached the office. He tossed his coat over a chair then made a few calls about the young runaway, Richard Philips. At four o’clock he signed off on the file of a woman missing for five years who’d recently turned up — schizophrenic and amnesiac — on a Hawaiian island. She’d been living in an abandoned milk truck. Her appearance had altered so radically, it had taken a DNA test to convince her relatives she was the same woman. Sometimes that was as good as it got.

He opened another file and read over his notes without taking anything in. A fourth cup of coffee failed to revive his concentration. He’d been staring at his computer for some time without registering a thing. Just before six, he closed his laptop and left the office.

His counselling was an hour off. It seemed to be a day for wasting time. On a lark, he left his car in the underground garage and walked west on Wellesley Street through the downtown core. He ducked into a video arcade burgeoning with teens and pre-teens — kids who liked to hang out on the strip. He watched them in the half-light, silhouetted like an army of overactive gnomes labouring underground. A crazy quilt of sound came at him, the jabbering voices of boys and machines. The variety of games boggled his mind, newer versions at the front, older ones farther along the warren of blinking lights. Shooting games, driving games, even a fast-paced step-dancing game. Movie themes dominated: Lord of the Rings followed by Star Wars and The Matrix. Near the far end stood Roger Moore, as dashing as ever — James Bond is immortal, after all. Closer up, a perennial favourite: a Playboy Bunny with a waggling set of ears. Elsewhere, Nancy Reagan’s much-quoted plea hung over a flaming bridge: Just say no to drugs. But what if they said yes to you?

Dan kept his eyes peeled for Richard Philips. He’d seen a million boys like the ones here today, all variations on a theme. He was the kid next door with the Popsicle smile or the ten-cent grin, a skateboard beneath his feet, a baseball cap on a crow’s nest of hair, and a comic book tucked beneath his arm. You know him. He’s the boy who got all As, or sometimes Bs or even Fs. The future baccalaureate or the wearer of the dunce’s crown, the one who stupefied his teachers or failed miserably at his studies. He’s the boy who cheered others on in their endeavours and threw matches at cats. Who won or lost at aggies, who skipped classes and lobbed crusts at other boys in the lunchroom. You know every variation of him. And every now and again one little thing went wrong, one screw fell out of place, and he was no longer that charming boy you thought you knew but a conniving criminal, a survival-minded sharp waiting on the other side of the lamppost, on the far side of midnight, leaning against the doorframe and taking your measure. But you know him. Because somewhere deep down inside, he is you or your son or your brother or maybe even your future father. You know him.

Dan watched the kids jockeying for place, aiming guns in the air, at the screens, at each other. Blam! He listened to the sharp yells as the boys won or lost, then started new games that took them to the far reaches of space, the depths of the ocean, or the deepest jungles. Losing themselves as successfully as they could.

Apart from Dan and the arcade manager, there was only one other adult in the room. At first Dan didn’t recognize him. He was a bag of bones, an old haunt Dan hadn’t seen in years. At forty he’d been a chronic predator; at sixty he was a fright. Dan watched him move among the boys like an aged shopper browsing the aisle of some fancy specialty shop, hands trembling with hunger. The boys all seemed to know him too — Wicked Uncle Ernie with his bag of magic tricks, all for kicks. Come home with me, kiddies. We’ll watch some television, snort a little blow. Smoke some crack. Aren’t I a charm? We’ll have fun. Whatever turns up. And P.S. Don’t tell Mom. The voice paced, the tone measured: here was sincerity, surprise, and now and then a little calculated enthusiasm. Great shot, Tim! What a score. Keep it up, Bennie! Whatever was required came tripping off his tongue in calculated increments, plotted to the needs of the moment. Now smile for the camera because: these premises are monitored 24-hours. Let the means determine the ends. Each according to his need. And now and then a gentle laugh, nicely modulated. Every syllable a sure step, one foot placed squarely in front of the other.

Dan caught the predator’s eyes, tossed him a knowing nod to unsettle his dreams, and let him know he’d been noticed — who knows, maybe the former hustler had gone undercover after all these years — then left, heading for his counselling session.

Dan’s work offered the weekly sessions to help employees deal with the supposed stress of their jobs. His employer was considered progressive. Words like “wellness” and “holistic” were floated freely around the office. Currently, however, Dan’s counselling had also become “compulsory” after he dented a filing cabinet with his fist.

Two days before that incident, he’d successfully tracked down the spouse of a client who warned him that her husband, a manic-depressive, had left home without his meds. Twelve hours after being freed from a rehab centre, the man turned up a suicide in a west end back alley. It came as a complete shock to himself and everyone else when Dan spun around and slugged the cabinet.

A superior with fifties hair, a Father-Knows-Best attitude, and a pro-counselling bias decided to make Dan an example. “You’re letting this get to you,” he said from the far side of the room where Dan stood nursing his knuckles.

Dan was livid. “You’re goddamn right I’m letting it get to me! This should never have happened. Who ordered this man released?”

“Calm down, Daniel.”

“Fucking hell I’ll calm down!” This time he kicked the cabinet, caving in one of the lower drawer fronts as though it had been to blame.

The others moved away, leaving him alone to carve out his self-destruction.

“It’s unfortunate, I agree. But these things happen.” The supervisor moved in on Dan as though he were a dangerous psychopath he intended to disarm.

“That’s bullshit! Anyone with a history of mental illness is a critical case. This is a fucking tragedy. He should never have been let go without someone telling me or his wife!”

All his years of service would not buy his way out. The die had been cast, the hammer set to fall with a resounding crash. The incident got him six months’ mandatory counselling and replacement costs for the cabinet. He’d resisted the counselling but, faced with the alternative of suspension, he relented. At least they were paying for the sessions. Reluctantly, he attended the weekly meetings, though it was seldom his work Dan wanted to talk about.

He approached Queen’s Park, a miniature forest in the city’s heart. A mounted statue of Edward VII towered over crisscrossing paths, transported from Delhi when India left the Commonwealth, like the prize in a prolonged custody dispute from a messy divorce settlement.

It was here that Dan had slept on the hard benches his first night in the city, while crepuscular figures flitted like moths in the dark. It wasn’t till later he’d learned the intent of the men prowling the darkened pathways like vampires, but in search of a different kind of life-giving fluid.

Through the trees the sky was a honed blue, a nice ending to the day if you had nothing troubling you, but Dan knew by the time he finished his counselling session it would be dark, in keeping with his mood. After his hour with Martin, he’d walk back across Wellesley to the bars on Church Street and show them the picture of the young runaway. After an hour with Martin, he’d need to spend time in a bar.

He passed the brown brick residence at Whitney Hall where he’d met Arman and Kendra. After all this time the apple tree outside the porter’s office still flourished in the back courtyard. A few crabbed globes clung to its scaly branches. It felt strange to look up at the corner window and know his son had been conceived there out of his own macho drunkenness.

Arman was currently in Dubai. A brilliant IT worker, he was shipped from port to port at great expense. He’d slipped out of Dan’s world completely and married a woman chosen by his family, though by all accounts they were happy. Unlike his renegade sister, Arman had no compunction about doing what tradition expected of him. If things had been different in a very different world, Dan wondered, would Arman have been just as happy in an arranged marriage with a man if tradition ordained it?

Kendra lived a few blocks north on a tree-lined street in a hundred-year-old stone house. She’d become a success too, living life on her own terms and alone, as Dan knew she would. They may have been alike in looks and upbringing, but Kendra was a very different creature from her tradition-upholding brother.

He crossed through the heart of the university, past St. George and Spadina with their popular student pizzerias, to the euphemistically named Harbord Centre for Well Being, which was actually located on Brunswick Avenue. Like Edward VII, it too had been displaced, but kept its name after being transplanted to this little backwater street, like a deposed royal living out its life in an anonymous hamlet far from the cultural centres of its heyday.

Dan walked up to the decrepit building that showed at least three colours peeling through a brown topcoat like a bad tan. Someone had made a stab at beautifying the outside by placing pots of geraniums along the windowsills, but these had failed to bloom in the absence of direct sunlight. In fact, Dan wondered if anything could blossom along this rundown stretch of street. The scraggly, light-starved stems presented a pathetic welcome to anyone looking up from the sidewalk.

He checked his watch: he was twenty-three minutes early. He didn’t want Martin to think he was anxious to see him. On the other hand, there was nowhere else to go in this neighbourhood of shabby student-chic housing. He spent the next ten minutes perusing the walls papered in notices for used textbooks, political rallies, flats to let, roommates wanted (and unwanted), descriptions of missing items with hopeful phone numbers beside them, as well as a plethora of numbers and email addresses of arcane purpose, the relevant notices having faded or been cut off or covered over by others clamouring for attention and demanding to be heard above all else.

The building’s elevator was perpetually out of service. He took the three flights of wheezing, complaining stairs that announced visitors by their tread. Dan imagined the long queue of clients — timid or brave, world-weary or hopeful — who passed over this threshold and down the hall to the large oak panels behind which the eminent Martin Sanger and his dry, probing intellect waited. Dan had experienced moments of both hope and resignation as he approached these doors, but today he was what he usually was: irritable and angry at having to be there.

He reached the office and let himself in. The receptionist listened, blank-faced, as he stated his name. He wondered if she really didn’t remember him when he walked through these doors every week at this time, or if this was part of his training to help him learn to be patient with what Martin had labelled his “perceived stupidity of others.” Dan waited while she looked down at her appointment book, nodded as she discovered his name and asked him to take a seat.

He watched through the glass as she bent to speak into the intercom to relay notice of his arrival to Martin’s office. She always struck Dan as nervous and unhappy. He wondered if she was also a patient here. Maybe reception work was how she paid for her therapy. This was the only time Dan saw her. She was gone by the time his sessions ended, and he emerged to a semi-darkened waiting room, as though she’d been compelled to take the light with her wherever she went.

Dan settled into what he’d determined was the most comfortable of three waiting room seats: a faded green club chair. Or in this case the least uncomfortable. The room was silent, with that surprising mixture of stillness and anticipation. From one floor above, he heard a sharp humourless laugh followed by a thump. A car passed outside the window and then, after a pause, another. He wondered why there was no music to provide comfort or distraction. Maybe this was part of his therapy too, his little wait in limbo while he was observed through a spy hole in the opposite wall.

He went over the list of topics he had lined up, imagining Martin’s reactions. The tale of Steve and Glenda would elicit an anticipatory glance; it might also earn him a point for compassion at having met with Steve at four a.m. to talk over his troubles. He could follow this up with his annoyance at Bill’s unreturned calls. No point in mentioning the lousy drivers he encountered daily in the city. They were par for the course; no one was exempt. He could also mention Ked’s new friend Ephraim, the ruffian. Or would Martin think he was being racist? He could simply not mention the boy’s colour, if it came to that. But wasn’t this session supposed to be a safe place for Dan to unburden himself? Didn’t he have the right to express concern over his son’s future?

If that failed to feed Martin’s interest, he could delve into his childhood, that old stand-by. Martin seemed to like it when he did. During their initial session, the awkward getting-to-know-you of pre-interrogation invasiveness, Martin had asked him what triggered his anger as a child. Dan couldn’t remember being angry as a child and Martin seemed to think that in itself was unusual. How could anyone get through childhood without experiencing anger? It spelled repression. Try being the child of a violent alcoholic and you’d probably repress your anger too, Dan said.

“Then why do you think you’re so angry now?” Martin had asked.

“It beats depression.”

Martin pencilled furiously on the sheet in his lap. After that, he brought up Dan’s early years till Dan was sick of rehashing his childhood, as though the key to who he was now lay in some mysterious past time that had had the door closed on it forever and could only be viewed by coming to this man’s office and peering inside its cage like visitors to the zoo.

In fact, Dan seldom thought about his childhood. He’d come a long way from his past and he intended to keep on going as far as he could. The best thing you could do with the past, he told himself, was forget it. Though if everyone thought like that, he’d be out of business. His job depended on other people wanting him to dig up the past and conjure it before their eyes: the young wife who hadn’t returned from a trip to the bank; the father who left work and was never seen again; the sixth-grader who ventured out between Algebra and French and dropped off the face of the earth.

It wasn’t till his third session that Martin asked him about his mother’s death when he was four years old. Dan replied truthfully that he recalled little apart from a gathering of relatives in his apartment and the hush around them whenever he came into the room. He remembered briefly being shipped off to a neighbour’s, and later being given Popsicles before returning to live with his father.

When she died, what little connection Dan had had with his father died along with her. His father seemed to have frozen over, ice covering the distance between them. It had stayed that way till his death ten years ago, though the ice was all on Dan’s part by then. Even Kedrick’s birth hadn’t changed things. There’d been just one family visit, a brief, guilt-tinged appearance supervised by Dan’s Aunt Marge, made at her request. Dan had watched, wary, as his father took the boy in his hands and sat him on his knee. The scar on Dan’s right temple throbbed, the one he’d gotten when his father threw him against a doorjamb returning home late from school not long after his tenth birthday.

Since then he’d successfully covered the past with a shroud, convincing himself it had few holds on him apart from the ones dictated by genetics. As far as he was concerned, the legacy was unremarkable on both sides of the family. He was the son of a miner who was also the son of a miner. His father’s relatives had lived in Sudbury for more than three generations. His mother had migrated there from Manitoba, no one seemed to recall why or when, and had been variously a waitress, a beautician, and a cashier at Woolworth’s until her early death from pneumonia one Christmas.

As far as Dan knew, he was the only one in the family who had attended a post-secondary institution. He’d never been in trouble at school or with the law. Until he left home, he’d never lived anywhere but Sudbury. The only home he recalled had been the second floor of a rundown walk-up in the Flourmill District, an area uniquely devoid of distinctive features apart from the six squat cement cylinders that had lain unused for decades before being turned into a museum of dubious distinction not long after Dan was born.

“Do you have any nice memories of your father?” Martin asked unexpectedly one day.

Dan thought about it. After a moment, he nodded. “My father was sometimes nice to me when he drank. That and Christmas. Usually the two coincided. I guess he was sentimental about certain things.”

“Did it change after your mother died?”

“That was when he stopped drinking.” Dan paused. “You’d think it would be the opposite, wouldn’t you? You might expect that he’d drink more when she died.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, a normal person would.”

Martin ignored the jibe, if he noticed it.

“My father didn’t drink for a long time after she died, but he started up again during a mining strike in the late seventies. The strike went on for nearly a year. That’s when I realized he resented me. Otherwise, I suppose he could have sat around getting drunk instead of working to support me.”

Of his parents together, he had one small memory that might have been nothing more than a dream. A Christmas tree filled with lights and tinselly ornaments figured prominently. A glittery green and red bird with a shiny fibreglass tail caught his attention. He recalled reaching up and stroking it, only to have his hand slapped. From there, the memory shifted to an argument between his parents that seemed to go on a long time while he cried. He recalled his father’s angry outburst as a hush overtook the house. Outside, snow was falling. Later, a worried knocking had come at the door, followed by a strange pathetic scratching. The details were hazy. There might have been more crying. Somewhere in there was the knowledge that his mother was not coming back. Then later, definitely more crying, this time from his aunt. Whatever else was there faded out of memory. He’d dreamed the event many times and took it as being symbolic of the death of his mother rather than any sort of reality.

How did he feel after having the dream? Martin asked. Terrible, of course. Dan wondered why Martin had to ask. What child wouldn’t feel terrible on losing a mother? He wanted to ask if Martin had been glad to lose his.

Remembering his parents’ arguing wasn’t surprising, since that was the hallmark of their relationship, according to his Aunt Marge. She and her daughter Leyla were his only remaining relatives. He remembered the matronly Marge with fondness as the aunt who snuck him into the Empire Theatre for Saturday matinees and as the woman who raised him after his mother died. He thought guiltily of her now — she’d been in poor health for several years and he hadn’t seen her in some time. His cousin Leyla he recalled as the first person in his sexual landscape, a dimly lit mural of touch-and-feel one night when they were forced to share a bed. He’d been impressed by the size of her breasts. In the family, it had been touted that “Leyla failed grade eight because she went boy crazy.” He always smiled to think of it. He’d carried on the tradition, he supposed.

The receptionist stirred in her glass cubicle and glanced nervously about as though she sensed a seismic tremor coming down the hall. Dan looked at his watch. It was exactly seven. Martin opened the door and nodded.

“Come in, please, Daniel,” Martin said in the same spiritless tone he always used.

Dan followed Martin to an office almost obsessively devoid of personality. Eggshell walls and off-white trim enclosed a cream-coloured carpet with a glass table placed precisely in the centre. On a desk in the corner, a whirling screen-saver offered glimpses of what outer space might look like from the POV of someone heading resolutely away from earth. Not drowning — waving goodbye. A narrow window looked out onto the pitch of other rooflines. A Piet Mondrian reproduction — a quilt-like abstraction of crosshatches — offered the only colour in an otherwise almost obsessively bland room. It floated on the wall above Martin’s head like a cartoon image of the contents of his mind.

The client chair seemed purposely set at a lower angle than Martin’s. Dan sat and studied the thin face he couldn’t quite bring to mind outside this unremarkable room. “Invisible” didn’t begin to cover it. Even Martin’s wardrobe seemed designed for camouflage. An oatmeal vest covered an ecru shirt tucked into light-brown trousers with immaculate creases. Half the time in these sessions Dan spent wondering what made this man so indistinct he could disappear right before your eyes. The shrink who shrank. Maybe if Martin lost his temper or betrayed an emotion, he might give off some vital signs.

After the formality of offering Dan a glass of water, which he always refused, Martin sat back with his hands tented and eyed Dan over his fingers.

“So what brings you here today?”

As always, Dan was tempted to say it was a choice between seeing Martin and losing his job, and that he almost hadn’t come. Instead, he went into his preamble about his late-night talk with Steve Jenkins and his uncharitable neighbour, Glenda. Before he could get far, Martin cut him off.

“How do you feel about that?”

Dan wanted to say, “I think she’s a selfish cunt. The kind who makes living in this city even more unbearable.” Instead he said, “It’s not fair. Here’s this poor schmuck who loves his wife more than anything and she’s taking advantage of the situation.”

“So you feel a sense of injustice,” Martin said, with a flash that might have been interest kindling behind his eyes.

Dan nodded.

“Do you see how you’ve removed yourself from the emotion and put yourself at a distance?”

“How is that?” Dan said. He was unsure whether agreeing with Martin’s assessment might be a good thing. Surely feeling an emotion was better than observing it?

Thankfully, Martin was willing to enlighten him. “It’s a rational judgment you’re making about the situation. You’ve separated yourself from the emotion to view it with detachment. Whereas you might normally feel anger over a perceived injustice, you’ve distanced yourself. I think that’s good.”

Dan tried to look pleased.

“How are you feeling about life in general these days?” Martin said.

“Good. Fine. A little less irritable than usual.”

“Why is that?”

Dan reflected. “Bill and I are going away for the weekend. We’re going to a gay wedding.”

Dan had stopped hypothesizing on Martin’s sexuality and simply assumed he had none, though Martin always showed a keen interest in anything to do with Dan’s sex life. Sometimes Dan went on at length when Martin showed curiosity, feeding him tidbits of information to see how he would react, though he’d tired of the game quickly.

“This will be the first time we’ll be together for an entire weekend,” Dan continued.

“And you feel positive about this?”

“Yes,” Dan said, surprising himself.

“Is it a matter of feeling you have more control over the relationship?”

“Not really. Bill’s always been in control of the relationship — when we see each other, for how long, et cetera.”

Martin inclined his head. “I seem to recall you once said he was in control of every aspect of the relationship except for the bedroom….”

Dan leaned in. “Well, he calls the shots there too, more or less. What I meant was, he lets me be in control when we have sex.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Obviously I’m willing to go along with it or I wouldn’t be with him.”

Martin waited.

Dan cleared his throat. “I’m learning to be patient,” he said.

“That’s good. Very good.” Martin nodded encouragingly, like a grade school teacher rewarding a student for a correct answer. “Have you had any difficult moments since you were here last?”

“Not really.”

“Not really or no?”

“No.”

Martin made a mark in his notebook. “Good,” he said. “No banging with your fists or yelling?”

Dan remembered the incident with the dog. It seemed funny in hindsight. Surely it was a sign he could laugh at himself. “I got a bit upset with the dog, but it was just the excitement. I didn’t mean to yell.”

Martin looked up from his notebook. “Isn’t that how you described the incident at work when you hit the filing cabinet? You said you yelled at your superior without meaning to.”

Dan shrugged. “Okay.”

“Would you say this is a common response you have in tense situations?”

“This wasn’t a tense situation. I was walking in my front door.”

Martin was rapt. “Tell me what happened. Does the dog have a name?”

Of course the fucking dog has a name, Dan thought. “It’s Ralph,” he said slowly.

“Ralph,” Martin repeated, making it sound like a foreign word. “Is Ralph a male? May I refer to Ralph as ‘he’?”

“Sure.”

Dan rubbed his temples. A nice fat glass of Scotch would drown out how much he detested sitting here with this emotionally repressed insect dissecting his every thought and word, as though using the wrong adjective to describe a reaction or labelling a dog by the incorrect gender might be a crime.

Martin pondered his words as Dan explained how he’d yelled at the dog.

“When you think about what Ralph did now, in this moment, how do you feel?”

“I don’t feel anything now. At the time I was pretty pissed off,” Dan said. “I’m sure he does it on purpose.”

Martin made an elaborate note in his book. He looked up. “Of course you realize a dog isn’t conscious of its actions the same way humans are?”

Dan shrugged. “Actually, I’m convinced he does it to annoy me. It’s a big ‘Fuck You’ when he does it at the front door. When it’s an accident, he tries to hide it in the basement.”

The pencil jogged around the page. Martin looked up. “Do you know that for a fact or do you just imagine you know what the dog’s motivations are?”

“He’s a smart dog and he’s been through obedience training. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Can we talk about how Ralph might feel in these circumstances?”

Martin looked over his shoulder as though conferring with the Mondrian. Maybe it talked to him, Dan thought. Maybe it prompted him on what train of thought to follow.

“How would I know what the dog feels? Do dogs even feel?”

Martin tented his fingers again and leaned back. “Try to imagine what it might be like for Ralph. You said he does it to annoy you. Why do you think that is? Was he feeling neglected? Had he been left alone without access to a place to defecate?”

Dan tried to imagine Martin bending and scooping up Ralph’s big turd with a teaspoon, balancing it as he made his way across the office to a wastebasket.

“My son said that even dogs need love.”

“Good!” Martin said decisively. “And do you agree?”

“He’s probably right.”

“So how did Ralph respond when he perceived himself to be neglected? When you didn’t give him the love and attention he wanted?”

“You just said dogs weren’t conscious in the way humans are. How could he ‘perceive’ anything?”

“Unconscious perception can be even stronger than conscious perception. If you believe the dog was ‘acting out,’ then clearly the dog perceives when it’s been neglected. Do you see?”

In Dan’s mind, he saw Martin’s hand tremble and drop the turd. It landed with a soft thud and rolled across the carpet, leaving a faint brown trail. “This is really stupid.”

Martin untented his fingers. “Is it stupid, Daniel — or do you perceive it to be stupid?”

“Either — both — Martin.”

“And why does stupidity, perceived or otherwise, justify your anger?”

Dan felt his face flush. “Because it just does.”

“Was your father a stupid man?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Can we change the subject?”

Martin stared like a man watching something squirm at the end of a hook. “Don’t you think we should explore what made you so angry about the dog’s disobedience?”

“No. Let’s change the subject.”

Martin made a few more scribbles in his book. “Fine,” he said. “I understand that you don’t feel like being challenged on this issue today.”

Dan’s teeth were clenched, but he kept his voice low. “Look, Martin, you don’t have to tell me that you understand or that you don’t understand. I don’t care. I just don’t want to talk about the fucking dog.”

Martin paused then said, “All right. Can you tell me at least why you don’t want to talk about it?”

Dan looked out the window over the rows of roofs. The clouds folding into one another. The oncoming darkness. “No.”

Martin scribbled another note. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Have you felt violently angry at any time in the past week?”

Dan turned his gaze to him. “Other than right now?”

Martin eyed him warily. “Yes. Other than right now.”