The Cracker Factory by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt

Author:Joyce Rebeta-Burditt [Rebeta-Burditt, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie
Published: 2010-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

15

I HESITATED AT THE DOOR, FEELING LIKE AN INTRUDER. Alexander stood with his back to me, one arm resting on the dingy window, shoulders slumped slightly forward. I coughed in a dry, self-conscious attempt to announce myself, fearful that I’d caught him unawares and unprepared.

So sometimes we do get to you, don’t we, Edwin? C’mon, friend, don’t stand there looking vulnerable. Sit down, tap your pencil, clear your throat, say “hmmm,” look omniscient— anything. Where would we be if I should begin wanting to comfort YOU? Where would we be if I should succeed?

“What’s wrong with Cara?” I asked peremptorily. “She’s very upset.”

He turned and sat heavily in the large swivel chair. “You needn’t concern yourself with Cara’s problems,” he said, patting his pockets. “You have enough problems of your own to occupy your mind.” He frowned and continued to frisk himself. “Say,” he said, “I seem to be out of cigarettes. Could you—?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, pushing the pack across the desk at him. “But Cara is my friend. I care about her.” “Fine,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Continue to be her friend. It’s good for both of you. But I’m her doctor and I don’t discuss my patients with other patients.”

Stuffy bastard.

“Wouldn’t you be even angrier than you are now if I discussed you with anyone else, even Cara?” he asked. “Well, yes, I suppose I would,” I admitted reluctantly. No matter how I arrange my face and craft my monologues, you read my emotions. Perhaps it goes with the profession, like a mechanic’s wrench. Maybe in the final year of Shrink School you’re all implanted with Emotion Detectors. At graduation you totter past the podium with nerve endings aquiver, clutching your diplomas and emitting a high-pitched whine. Maybe that’s what causes me to short-circuit when you look at me. Maybe that’s what causes the wavy lines on my television set. Maybe—

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

He frowned. “You are not thinking nothing. I know you. You are always thinking something.”

I squirmed. “You know me.” What a truly noxious and appalling thought, Edwin. What an unnerving hypothesis. “As well as anyone knows you,” he amended, leaning back in his chair. “Why are you smiling?” Go ahead, Cassie. He doesn’t bite. Come to think of it, he doesn’t even nibble. Wouldn’t you like a taste, Edwin, just a light and tickly lick?

“It’s possible that you know the wonderful creature you see sitting before you,” I said, wondering where I was going. “But you’ve never met the killer lady I keep locked in the closet, the one who snarls and growls and batters at the door.”

“She’s that bad?” he asked.

I nodded. “Monstrous.”

“What would happen if you let her out?”

“She’d run amuck. She would butcher everyone who made her feel guilty or angry or afraid. She’d make an invasion by the Huns look like a sophomore cotillion. Havoc, havoc everywhere.”

Alexander picked up a pencil and began to tap on the phone, a reassuring return to normalcy. “I’ll wager,” he said, “that your lady is not as dangerous as you think.

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