Everybody Called Her a Saint by Cecil Murphey

Author:Cecil Murphey [Murphey, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781942356042
Publisher: TKA Distribution
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

The third person to come in was Pat Borders. I knew him slightly. I remembered that he wasn’t a member of the church but attended regularly. He was a moderately successful real estate broker in the area. He was tall, quite thin, with sandy hair that just missed being red. He always looked malnourished to me, as if he needed a dozen good meals to make him look healthy.

“I’m surprised you came on the cruise,” Burton said to him. I think those words were as much for my benefit as for Pat’s.

“Yeah, well, I wanted to come. You see, Antarctica is the one place I’ve always wanted to visit.” He explained that he was a world traveler, had been on all the other continents except this one. “This seemed like a good time to come.”

“So Twila invited you for that reason?”

“Oh no, I begged her. And I insisted on paying my own way. You know Twila. She didn’t like that, but I finally talked her into letting me come on the cruise.”

He lied, and I couldn’t figure out the reason. He was one of those people who constantly talked about what a great salesman he was—maybe that was part of being successful in his field.

“You paid your own way?” I asked.

“Okay, I didn’t.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But I tried. I really tried.” He looked away and finally said, “All right, the truth is, she didn’t want me on this cruise. You know how I got on it? Only because Judson Knight broke his leg in a ski accident three weeks ago.”

“So she already had the space filled and—” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Why didn’t she want you?”

He shrugged.

“Were you a patient of Twila’s?” Burton asked.

“Why would you think that?”

I smiled. “That’s a good evasion.” I decided to flatter his ego. “Very good answer, Pat.”

He smiled in return.

“So were you a patient?”

“Yeah. Well, I had been. I wasn’t currently a patient.”

“You felt you were cured?” Burton asked, and his eyes told me he knew the answer.

Pat shrugged a second time and looked away.

I became aware of the waves lashing against the ship. The rough waters had increased.

“No.”

“Tell us about your situation.”

“You can check her records when you get back. I was a patient for about three years.” He held up his hands. “Okay, I play around with drugs, but I’m not an addict.”

“But you use?”

“Sometimes. Yeah, now and then.”

“Did Twila say you were an addict?”

“Oh yeah, sure, but she’s a shrink—you know, that’s how they’re supposed to talk.”

I smiled. “I’m a shrink.”

“Yeah, but you’re different, you know. You don’t keep trying to make me say things like ‘Hi, my name is Pat, and I’m an addict.’ ”

“Oh, so you mean you use, but—”

“I don’t like being called an addict. It sounds demeaning, you know.” He went on to say that he liked to consider himself an occasional user. “Or you can call me a recreational user.”

He told us that he saw no cure for himself, and Twila had reluctantly stopped treating him.

“That’s surprisingly insightful,” I said.

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