Читать книгу Klick, the Dick - Milam Smith - Страница 4

Clyde Klick breathed in, then out gingerly, trying to decide which hurt worse. He winced. Exhaling was definitely more painfu. Maybe he should’ve listened to the surgeon and stayed in the hospital a couple weeks more.

No, he was a tough guy. If I’m so tough, what am I doing sitting in a shrink’s office? Not something done for people from his neighborhood.

But he had to talk to someone. He knew if he didn’t he’d end up sucking a bullet from his pistol.

Clyde watched the secretary. She had a mean look on her face, although he wasn’t sure why. Was it because he hadn’t said please or thank you?

Hey, listen to me. Do I need help or what?

***

Dr. Robert Rivkin hoped his next and last patient wouldn’t be the kind to make jokes about his size. He’d heard them all, the worse being ‘how’s the weather up there?’ But he liked what he was doing, being a shrink, listening to the stories people would tell. There were some seriously sick people out there, man. Most of them he could patch up and send back into the world without worrying about them going amok and shooting up some burger joint.

Some of his patients, though, made him wish he’d gone to play basketball in Utah with the Jazz, where he’d been drafted in the second round. He could’ve been the first seven-and-a-half footer in the NBA. Given Shaq a run for the money.

He looked at himself in the special full-length mirror built on the inside of the door in his walnut file cabinet and adjusted his red tie just so. He flashed his big smile that melted women at the West Side Stories, waiting for the question that always came – ‘So, are you size proportionate?’ Yes indeedy I am…

Just one more patient and he’d be on his way.

Dr. Rivkin flipped through his appointment book and looked at the name of his last patient for the day. Clyde Klick, possible depression, refused to give occupation, his secretary had written. Usually there were pages of notes with each patient, but that was all she had been able to get out of him. Clyde Klick. Strange name. Polish or German?

He touched the red button on his intercom and said, “Ms. Hayden, send in Mr. Klick please.”

“Gladly,” Ms. Haden’s voice returned. There was true relief in her voice, highly unprofessional of her.

Dr. Rivkin looked up as his heavy walnut door swung open, and then he jumped back. The man in the doorway had the meanest look on his face that Rivkin had ever seen. And that included the patient that claimed to be a mass murderer.

There was menace in his physical presence, too. Look at the shoulders on him. So much bigger than the rest of his body he almost looked deformed, like some weightlifter that had worked on that muscle group alone. Long dark hair framed a sour, tanned face. And was that a frown or a sneer on his lips? Wearing faded jeans, yellow t-shirt and yellow deck shoes. Not exactly dressed to impress.

Dr. Rivkin stood. Even though he was more than a foot-and-a-half taller than — what was it, Clyde Klick, yes, he shivered, his nape-hairs stood on end.

“Mr. Klick?”

“You okay, Doc? Look like you seen a ghost.”

“What? Oh, yes, it’s been a long day. Have a seat.” Rivkin waved a hand towards the black leather seat facing his desk. He could’ve sat in a chair facing Mr. Klick, but he felt safer behind his desk.

Dr. Rivkin noticed that Mr. Klick sat straight and stiff, leaning a bit forward, towards the doctor, almost like a panther ready to pound on his prey. He also noticed that Mr. Klick’s brown irises smoldered, floating in red, sleepless eyeballs.

“How can I help you today, Mr. Klick?”

“Fact is, I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I just know I’m tired of the way things always end up, and now I may have something good, I don’t want to lose it again. I thought I had it good anyway, before all this happened. You understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Perfectly. Just try to remember you’re paying me eighty dollars an hour.” Rivkin allowed himself a smile.

“Oh yeah! Thanks for reminding me Doc. But since I’m the one doing the paying, maybe I could get a little sympathy here, huh?”

“It was a joke. Did I sound unsympathetic, Mr. Klick?”

“You sound as if you’d just soon I not be here, tell you the truth.”

“You came here looking for approval? I’m sorry, but that’s not what I do.”

“I came here ‘cause I’m not sure I’m right about anything anymore. I…I caused someone to get killed that shouldn’t have. Plus my wife’s filed for divorce, I’ve been shot, and one of my best friends ain’t speaking to me.”

See? You hear the damnedest things. Rivkin relaxed some. Mr. Klick sounded sincere. And hurt. Maybe he really wanted help.

“Start where you like.”

“I wish I knew where to start. Don’t I have to go all the way back to when I was an itty-bitty baby? You know, how I hate my mother and all that?”

“Do you hate your mother?”

“I don’t even remember her, to tell you the truth. Hardly, anyway. And I don’t understand that, either. I was twelve years old when she died. But I only remember a few things that happened in those years. And anything I do recall is out of time, you know, out of sequence. Sitting beside her on wooly, brown sofa looking at pictures of Vietnam, showing me where a brother served in the Navy. Sitting on a ramp on our porch, falling, getting caught by a neighbor while Mom laughed. Breakfasts. Suppers, her cheese and onion enchiladas.”

“What does that tell you?”

“What? What do you mean what does that tell me? You’re the one getting paid for this, what does it tell you?”

“Have you always been so belligerent, Mr. Klick?”

“Yeah, pretty much. At least since the fourth grade when I got kicked out of school for calling Mrs. Neal unheard-of-names.”

“And what were those?”

“Don’t ask. It might embarrass you.”

“Ah. I shouldn’t have asked. Losing your mother at such a young age meant there was no one there to reinforce your past, to imprint those younger memories. A mother continues all through our lives to tell us the things we did as a child. So not remembering her too well, that probably means no one filled the gap she left, no one reminded you of what she was like. You were also probably told to ‘go on with your life.’ That’s common enough.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Like maybe I’m just like anyone else, huh?”

“Don’t you feel like everyone else?”

“No, I’ve always felt…different. I’ve never fit in anywhere.”

“That’s not at all uncommon with people who’ve lost a parent early in life.”

“Anyway, the heck with the past. I don’t want things to go bad on me again.”

Rivkin had to smother his laugh. People were always trying to forget the past when it was actually the most important part of understanding one’s self.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Life has a way of kicking my teeth in when I pause to turn around and see just how good I have it. It’s always waiting there like Big Mike at the Fort Worth Zoo.”

“You mean the gorilla, Mike?”

“Yeah. He’s been there ever since I was a kid.”

“Mr. Klick, Mike died a few years back.”

“Really? Hmm. See, there you are. Life just did it again. It just rolls over everyone and never stops. Leaves behind anybody. And everybody. A few weeks back it snuck up on me and kicked me in the shins. Then the balls. Then when I was dazed, Life paused to give me a sweet kiss, just when I thought it was over. Hell, I was praying it was over. I wanted life to say goodbye, ka sa-ra sa-ra. Life’s sadistic.”

“But…?”

“You kidding? It was going all right, my job was beginning to pay off because of the hours I put into it. Had a new house, the kids going to a good school. Wouldn’t you know it, though? That was the problem. It always is. I should stay poor and just be some red neck that don’t care ‘bout nothing.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I guess it really started one morning a few weeks ago. Yeah. My best friend had called me, told me to meet one of his men at a warehouse until he could get there. You might say he’s in the security business. So I went…”