Travels by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online Page B

You’re chain-smoking. Am I making you nervous?”
    “Not that I’m aware.”
    “That’s good. I don’t want to make you nervous. I appreciate your helping me.”
    She wore miniskirts all the time. She liked to curl herself in chairs. She would wait for just the right moment, then curl her body and show me her pink underwear. I had to quickly look away, but when my eyes met hers again, I saw that she was laughing at me.
    “So? Did you make her pregnant yet?”
    “No,” I said to Dr. Geller.
    “Tell me how it’s going.”
    I told him what I knew so far. Her story sounded terrible. I interpreted it as a cry from a young girl for the attention of her father, a man who obviously wasn’t capable of giving her the love and care she required. Instead he was harsh and punitive. Two pregnancies, then dismissed, sent off to various foster homes … It was amazing, I felt, that Karen had done as well as she had—had gotten into college and so forth.
    “Why are you so protective of her?”
    “I’m not.”
    “Dad’s a bastard and she’s a victim?”
    “Well. Isn’t she?”
    “How does Karen relate to you?”
    “She seems very open.”
    “Ask about her mother.”
    Karen didn’t have much to say about her mother. Her mother was a retired schoolteacher, crippled in one leg from an automobile accident. Her mother was a weak person who let her father walk all over her, abuse her. And her mother didn’t stand up for Karen, even when she knew—
    She fell silent and stared out the window.
    “Knew what?” I said.
    She shook her head, continued to stare out the window.
    “Knew what?” I said.
    She sighed. “About my father.”
    “What about your father?”
    “My father used to fool around with me.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “He used to, you know, fool around with me. He told me not to tell my mother.”
    “You mean your father had intercourse with you?”
    She smiled. “You’re so
formal
.”
    We had been talking about her father for a week. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
    “I don’t know. I thought you would be mad at me.”
    She curled in the chair again, in her kittenish way. This time beneath the miniskirt she wore no underwear at all.
    “How does she relate to you?” Dr. Geller said.
    “I would say, seductive.”
    “How?”
    “Well, she usually doesn’t wear underwear under her miniskirts. And one day she wanted to come to our session in her nightgown.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I made her go back to her room and change.”
    “Why?”
    “I thought it was better.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m trying to control her flirtatiousness.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, I still have a lot to find out about her.”
    “What don’t you know?”
    After the second pregnancy, her mother found out that Karen had been having sex with her father. Her father then decided that Karen must go to a foster home. Karen lasted only six weeks at the first one.
    “Why?”
    The guy had a problem. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.
    “And then?”
    Another foster home. This time the woman threw her out, because she saw what was developing between Karen and the husband.
    “And then?”
    A minister and his family. She lived with them for almost a year. He was a very strict man, a very pure man, and he told her that she should stop it, that he would never be tempted by her.
    “And?”
    “He lied.” She shrugged. “One day his wife came home early and caught us. But by then it was time for me to go to college anyway.”
    She found college boring, she said. It was so stuffy. She got good grades even though she cut most of her classes. She liked to take trips, to go skiing, or to go to New York. Anywhere, just to get away. School was so boring.
    “Did you talk to those people at school?” she said. “The administration people?”
    “No, why?”
    “Just wondered.”
    “Should I?”
    “I don’t care. They don’t know anything about me, anyway.”
    * * *
    I interviewed the mother, a bland, worn woman of