Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“We’re not making progress with your memory,” Dr. Schneider announced at her next visit.

A genuine assessment or a clever interrogator sensing his suspicions?

“Come, Mr. Randolph, stop glaring at me! I know you’re impatient. Those casts must be as itchy as hell, and you’re obviously not a man used to being pent up.”

Reading and reflecting his emotional mood. Intuitive? Or manipulative?

“Bottled up, maybe?” She smiled shrewdly. “Is that the proper expression? You don’t like your emotions to be obvious or to be read. Am I in your bad graces for noticing?”

“I didn’t know I had any bad graces.”

Her smile deepened. “Very few, but you’ve always known that. I’m glad that you remember enough to be suave.”

“Thank you.”

“I have decided to try a mnemonic device. Just a little game. It might . . . crack . . . some unconscious memories loose.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing to go poking around in, the unconscious?”

“I don’t know. Is it in your case?”

“I’m not a ‘case.’ ”

She shifted in her chair uneasily. “You’re quite right. I apologize.”

She folded her hands in her lap. She wore the shortest skirts of any doctor he’d seen, even on Grey’s Anatomy commercial clips. He wouldn’t dream of watching that show, not even now that he was a hospital habitué. Lord, he was starting to think in French words! The woman was a venereal disease, easily transferable.

He decided to put her on notice. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply I expected more than the usual medical abracadabra from you, shrink or not.”

“‘Shrink’?”

“Like your skirt. Very skimpy. Miniaturized. Reduced from the normal size. It comes from the cannibal habit of shrinking the heads of their dead enemies. An American expression.”

“You like my skirt?”

“I shouldn’t? Why else do you wear it? Not for me, of course, but for men. All these poor, mentally confused men. You are quite the tease, Doctor.”

“Most of my patients are too devastated to notice what I wear. Besides, are you so sure I’m not wearing what I do just for you?”

He snorted. “Those are three-thousand-dollar suits. You have them altered to your preferences. You were in bed with those suits long before you came to my bedside.”

“Why not a special wardrobe for you? You are an obviously wealthy man. An adventurer. Charismatic. Oh, yes, you are, and you know it. My parents were civil servants. Why shouldn’t I set my chapeau for you? Your mind is muddled. Any women you knew or loved are forgotten. Certainly none has appeared here to succor you in your illness. As far as I’m concerned, you may be the world’s most eligible bachelor, and therefore, worth flashing.”

He laughed. “You earned an advanced degree. You get paid plenty for your expertise and time. You know your way around the male ego, and inside a subconscious, not to mention a conscience. You don’t need anyone, least of all me, ogling your knees. You like being an attractive woman, period. The reasons for that would be something I might like to explore, had I the time. Perhaps it was the low expectations of those civil servant parents.”

“And your parents?”

“The American equivalent of civil servants.”

He knew that was true, but not why it came out and sounded so right. And why he felt a sharp pang of failure and shame at mentioning his parents. And how he could have disguised that emotional weakness fast enough for her, which he hadn’t.

“You are, you know,” she said softly.

“Are what?” His pulse was pounding. What was he? What had he done to feel this wave of self-disgust and guilt? He was glad his face was scabbed, it might hide the inner turmoil better.

“Charismatic,” she said. “Perhaps I should excuse myself from your . . . service,” she added, avoiding the word case. “I am here to help, not irritate. Not to tease, and I have been, a little.”

“What would be ‘a lot’ for you?”

Her laughter was free, loose, and apparently genuine. “I can only think of teasing answers to that.” He found her knowing hazel eyes irresistible, and scary.

“How about,” she went on, “I ask you these long-established psychologically analytical questions, and you can have some fun at my expense? You will enjoy exercising your brain and your suspicions.”

“What is this?”

“Free association.”

“No associations are free,” he said, dead serious.

“Ah. I agree. The purpose of this exercise is to startle your mind into remembering. Perhaps you don’t wish that process to be shared. I could leave you the list, and you could . . . play with it mentally.”

And take those lovely legs away? Not to mention the lovely acrobatics she was putting his mind through?

“I’m cool with it.”

“ ‘Cool.’ Americans are always ‘cool’ with everything. All right. I start now. Freedom.”

“No such thing. A common illusion.”

“Responsibility.”

“A snare and a delusion, and a major necessity for a human conscience.”

“Everest.”

“High and mighty.”

“Women.”

“Warm.”

“Horses.”

“Big, beautiful, and stupid.”

“Money.”

“Useful.”

“Father.”

“Priest.”

Her eyebrows raised. So did his. “Where did that come from?”

“Mountains.”

“Molehills.”

“Love.”