Projection by Keith Ablow Read Free Book Online Page B

case.  But he ended up pleading insanity himself."  I paused.  "He seems to have actually gone insane.  I think being locked up drove him over the edge."
    "Where is the woman?"
    "Somewhere she can get help — somewhere she can't leave."
    Cynthia looked away several seconds, then stared directly into my eyes.  "Why are you telling me all this?"
    "I had to tell someone.  My instincts told me I could trust you."  I glanced up at the painting of the angel over her bed.
    "So what do your instincts tell you to do now?" Cynthia asked.
    I thought about that.  The picture my mind painted wasn't of the violence I had just witnessed, but of Lucas being carried out of the courtroom the morning before.  "Help him," I said automatically.
    "Lucas?"
    "Yes."
    "How?"
    "I don't know."
    She touched my face.  "You'll find a way."
    "What makes you so sure?"
    "Because I know you."
    I wanted to believe that.  I wanted to believe that, even after losing Rachel, I could find another angel.
    "You're a shaman, Frank.  A healer," Cynthia was saying.  "It’s the reason you suffer so much.  You feel your own pain, and everyone else's — including Dr. Lucas."
    "Well, I didn't feel anything but contempt for him before, and now..."
    "And now you know you're human."  She put a finger to my lips before I could answer.  "You don't need to say anything else.  I understand."  She stood up, slowly pulled her T-shirt over her head and let it drop to the ground.  "I can feel other people's pain, too."
    I was still lost in the beginnings of a day overshadowed by nightmares of bloodletting.  I took hold of Cynthia's hips, so smooth and firm and far from death, and pulled her to me.
     
    *            *            *
     
    I stumbled through three broken hours of sleep, awakened at least a dozen times by screams — sometimes Winston's, sometimes Lucas’, sometimes my own — that evaporated as soon as my eyes found the lighted billboard for Camel cigarettes outside Rachel's window.  I rode the camel back into my uneasy slumber, the way Spider-man had carried me there when I was a boy, when my night terrors were of my father chasing me up the stairs of the triple decker we lived in, shouting obscenities.
    At 6:20 I woke up for good.  The morning light was starting to drown out the spotlights over the billboard.  Cynthia's hand was resting on mine.  I lifted it gently and set it down on the hospital-style, woven white blankets that covered us.  She swallowed once and took a single, deep breath, but her eyes stayed closed.  I unclipped my pager from the bed frame where I'd left it and carried it with me to the bathroom, hoping a shower would make me feel like I'd slept the night.
    I wasn't three minutes under the spray when the mustard-colored, plastic curtain slid open, and Cynthia stepped in next to me.  She pushed me against the tile wall behind the shower head, then knelt in front of me.  The water fell on her face and shoulders as she took my penis in her mouth.  The room had fogged up, so that even with my eyes open, looking down at her, I could imagine Rachel there.  I took her hair in my hands as she took me inside her again and again.  The pleasure started crashing deep in my groin and brain at the same time.  I had to lean hard against the wall to stay on my feet.  She held me tight.  My body crested in spasms, then relaxed like an outgoing tide, the way your arms float away after being pressed against the sides of a doorway.  I knelt down, the hot water showering both of us, and kissed her ears and neck, the curves of her shoulders, her breasts.
    My pager started chirping.  I wanted to stay right where I was.
    "Better check," Cynthia whispered.
    I groaned in protest, but helped her to her feet and stepped out of the shower.
    The number on the pager was for Emma Hancock's cellular.  I toed a towel around my waist and walked into the bedroom.  There was no phone there.  I stepped back into the bathroom