Page 8 of The Wickedness of Man

“Gag, no!” Katie shook her head so hard it looked like it was going to snap off. “The lady is a certified psychiatrist and therapist, and she deals in sexandmental health. She also said she’s had a lot of clients suffering from religious trauma, especially when it comes to bedroom matters. She was really interested in meeting you, actually.”

Face flaming, my first thought was to run all the way back to my apartment, but I looked over the pamphlet. The picture of the doctor on the inside page… there was something in her eyes I couldn’t really put a finger on at first. Her portrait was professional; a headshot taken of her from the waist up, presumably in her office, with a lot of textbooks behind her. She wore a business suit jacket over a white button up blouse, a single thin gold chain hanging around her neck. No earrings, but she wore a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses perched delicately on her nose, her luscious blonde hair trundled up into a thick bun. She was barely smiling, but her perfectly shaped lips seemed to intonate that she would know absolutely everything about me before I even said a word.

“Her eyes,” I said aloud, touching the small picture reverently with two fingers.

“What? Whose eyes?”

I stared back up at Katie, realizing that she hadn’t been privy to my thoughts about the strange magnetism this woman’s photo had over me. Her eyes—it was like they were looking directlyatme. Like she wasinthe pamphlet. They were… calling to me. Beckoning me.

“She’s very pretty,” I finally said, handing the pamphlet back to Katie, “but then I suppose you’d have to be for that line of work, right?”

Katie opened it and then looked back up at me, a confused look on her face. “I mean, I guess? In an older woman kind of way…?” She turned the pamphlet around and pointed to wherethe gorgeous woman’s headshot had been just moments before, but to my shock, there was now a white-haired, wrinkled old woman’s photo. Same type of clothes, same gold chain, same wire-framed glasses, but…

I squinted, sputtered a nervous laugh, and then said, “I guess I must be drunker than I thought. I did tell you to go easy on the Bailey’s.”

Katie snorted, then handed the folded paper back to me. “Just go talk to her, okay? I paid for three sessions.”

“You already paid?” I stared up at her in surprise. “I mean…”

“Mags, I love you, babe, you know I do, but you’ve got to get past this… thing… you know? I only want what’s best for you. So yes, I set you up to see the doctor tomorrow?—”

“On a Saturday?”

“She said she’d make an exception for you to come in while there’s no one else there,” said Katie, lifting the remote back up and scrolling through the movies once more. “I’m dropping you off in the afternoon, no ifs, ands, or buts. You’re going, okay?”

“It’s just that this is so sudden, and I don’t know if I’m ready to?—”

“Mags,” Katie cast a no-nonsense look in my direction. “It’s already settled. It’s only three sessions—worst case scenario, you decide not to go back, right? But other than that, discussion closed. You’re going.”

My mouth snapped shut of its own accord. If Katie saw the hurt in my face, she didn’t say a word about it. “Okay,” I demurred.

“Good. Now. Movie time! How about the usual:Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” she said, smirking at me as she scrolled down and selected the title.

“Sure,” I responded, even though the movie had already started.

While the classic Audrey Hepburn film was definitely one of my favorites, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to watch a movie about a woman who wouldn’t allow herself to fall in love—or be intimate with—the man she so desperately wanted. She just kept running, pretending like nothing ever bothered her, even though inside, she was constantly terrified because other people were making choices for her and all she wanted was a little bit of safety.

It was only about ten minutes after the movie started that Katie passed out, but I still didn’t move; I stayed there, listening, watching it without seeing it, as tears poured down my face.

I blinked myself back to attention toward the end, in the scene where Holly cries for her cat, Cat, in the rain, and Paul tries to convince her to just admit that she wants to stay with him.

“Life’s a fact. People do fall in love; peopledobelong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness…”

I looked back down at the pamphlet; opened it back up. Inside was the same blonde-haired vixen, her eyes staring at me knowingly, alluringly welcoming, as if she was watching me through the paper itself.

“You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage,”continued Paul on screen, to a shivering, rain-soaked Holly.“Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself.”

I picked up my cell phone, which had been left on “do not disturb” so I wouldn’t have to deal with my parents or anyone else for a bit. There were two texts from Danny, one apologizingfor the card, a second asking if we could talk in private. He’d called about four times in the last hour, so either he’d temporarily blocked Katie earlier, or he’d just turned his phone back on, figuring she was probably asleep by now. There was also a missed call from an unrecognized number—I frowned at the screen. According to the time, the missed call had come in a mere five minutes ago, but it was nearly one in the morning. There was a voicemail. I clicked it and put the phone to my ear.

“Hello,” began a voice that was more purr than an actual speaking tone. It sent a pleasant thrum along my spine that forced a tiny, involuntary clenching of my thighs. “This message is for Magdalene Church. This is Dr. Lowe, from Intimates, Inc. I’ve set up your appointment tomorrow afternoon at 3:30. I dosolook forward to meeting you.”

I listened to the voicemail again, surprised to find that her voice continued to send those little sparks of energy through me. I played it three times before I realized the movie credits were rolling, and when I looked down at the pamphlet in my hand, it no longer held a portrait of a woman at all—just a picture of a bedroom.

Caleb

“Damn,” I whispered, watching through the telephoto lens of my camera as my target got into her car in the parking lot and headed not toward the gym she normally went to, but toward her home.

Deviations in a target’s schedule were always frustrating.

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