“Benjamin.” He has to say the name twice, the crowd noise scrambling the syllables in her brain.

“Benjamin,” she repeats with a shake of her head. “I’ll never remember that in the morning.”

He laughs. “No.” He shakes his head with a wide smile. God, he has pretty teeth. “You probably won’t.”

It was 12:02 a.m. Nine hours later she would wake up in a hospital.

CHAPTER 43

“THE GUY DOWN the hall has become a problem.” I floss my teeth, talking through a long string of peppermint dental hygiene. I shut the medicine cabinet door, hiding eleven more containers of the floss. The downfall of shopping exclusively online. Bulk inventory of everything.

“In what way?” Dr. Derek’s voice is calm. It’s always calm. For once, I’d like to see him freak the fuck out.

“The I’m-gonna-fucking-kill-him way.”

“Which guy are you talking about?”

I roll my neck, the muscles sore from a ridiculously long blow-job session with a client who I will never service again. Forty-five minutes of plastic dick in my mouth cost him three hundred bucks and a front row seat on my block list. The taste of cyberskin is still on my tongue. I lean over and spit, rinsing out my mouth before refocusing on Dr. Derek. “Simon. The one who locks me in at night.”

“What’s the problem?”

“He saw me. In the hall one day. So now he’s trying to flirt with me.” It had happened again. A knock on my door, at an evening hour. I didn’t respond to it this time. Instead I unplugged my microwave, hefted it above my head, and stood to the side of the door with it raised high. Waited and prayed that he would try the knob. Find it unlocked. Walk in. Let me slam the thirty-some pound appliance on his head. He hadn’t tried the knob. He’d knocked again. Waited. Knocked. Waited. Waited so long that my arms ached and I developed a cramp somewhere in my upper back. When he finally gave up, wandered back down the hall to his apartment, my arms were so weak they could barely carry the damn thing back to its normal place on the counter. I had collapsed on the floor, shaking out my arms and cursing my lack of muscle tone.

“This is why you shouldn’t leave the apartment. If he hadn’t seen you, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

“You try staying in your bedroom for years at a time.”

He is silent for a moment. “Your concern is that you will be able to talk him into unlocking the door?”

“Yes. Or just invite him in during the day. And it’s not a concern. It’s a fact.”

“And you want to kill him?”

I scrunch my face in incredulity. “Do you think I like paying you money? Why the fuck would I hire you if I don’t want to kill people?”

He sighed in a manner that reminds me of my father, and I suddenly have the urge to cry. Can feel the swell of emotion that used to push its way out in tears. I was grateful when he spoke, grateful to have something to focus on other than the memory of my father. “I don’t understand why you suddenly think you can rejoin society. Hang out in the hall. Go on dates and have sex and cross the damn street for snacks. You’re living as if you don’t have these urges. As if you don’t need me. Why? Why the sudden changes? Have you improved? Because from my end of the line, you seem the same.”

I blink in surprise. A good part of my sessions with Derek is spent trying to goad him into emotion. Because I’m bored, or because it’s fun, there is no rhyme or reason why. Hell, five minutes ago I was lamenting his lack of reaction. For him to snap at me, his tone laced with irritation and frustration, and a dash of… was that damaged ego? The tones are completely foreign, and I grin.

“I apologize, O great psychologist. Yes, I want to kill Simon. I want to cut his stomach open and reclaim every white pill I’ve ever paid him with.”

“You realize those pills don’t stay there. They are digested by stomach acids, pass through the body in a matter of hours. You’d be lucky to find a small part of a pill, even if you sifted through his entire long intestine all afternoon.” His voice is so matter-of-fact, so instructionally Derek, that I almost miss the humor. I gawk at the phone, the man on the other side a stranger.

The man doesn’t rant. Doesn’t get emotional, or frustrated, or jealous. And he doesn’t joke. Not even a little bit. And certainly not about anything as macabre as killing.

Who was this stranger? And could I, despite the lectures, be actually enjoying our session?

I hang up on him just for the hell of it. It helps me convince myself, in some small way, that I have the upper hand. At times it seems my whole life is a fight for the upper hand.