I Told My Therapist About My Stalker, but He Already Knew novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Barred Seven

Eli returns to the dark glass office with the proof; the doctor does not deny it, and Eli orders his hands behind his back.

The security guard called up, and Dr. Vandermeer said to send him up.

Eli rode the elevator alone with a cleaner and her cart.

He watched his own face in the steel doors, white and set, with the photograph in his jacket and the card in his fist.

"I'm going to make him say it," he told the doors, quietly.

The cleaner hummed along to her earbuds and did not look up.

On the nineteenth floor the lights were off in the waiting room.

The office door stood open, and the only light was the glow of the city on the lake, silver and black and moving.

Dr. Vandermeer sat behind the desk with his tie loosened and a glass of water in front of him.

He had not been working.

There was nothing on the desk but the glass.

"I expected you at nine-forty," he said.

"Why nine-forty?"

"You read the card in the elevator, and you drove here from Capitol Hill. That is about as long as it takes."

Eli crossed the room.

He took the photograph from his jacket, the one from the second week of June, and laid it face down on the desk.

On the back, in pencil, it said Jun 17, and the seven had a bar through its stem.

He laid the follow-up card beside it.

Next session: Monday, 4 p.m.

The two sevens looked up at the ceiling.

"Say it," Eli said.

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"The notes were mine," said Dr. Vandermeer. "The photographs. The gifts. The latch."

His voice was as even as it had been in session, and his hands lay flat on the blotter.

"Last night," Eli said. "You came through my window."

"Yes."

"I was asleep."

"Yes."

The word went through Eli.

For six months he had lain awake picturing a stranger, a pale thing with a camera and no face.

The face had been sitting across from him twice a week, taking notes.

"You barred that seven on purpose," Eli said.

"I have been writing it for six months. I forgot to stop in front of you." Dr. Vandermeer looked at the card. "Or I didn't forget. I don't know which."

Eli grabbed his tie.

He wound it once round his fist and hauled.

The doctor came up out of the chair, long and light and not resisting at all.

They stood nose to nose over the desk.

"Six months," Eli said. "I have not slept in six months."

"I know. I counted."

Eli slapped him.

It cracked in the glass room, and the doctor's head turned with it and stayed turned.

Then he turned it back, slowly, and looked at Eli with a red mark rising on his cheekbone and an expression that was not pain.

"Again," he said softly, "if you need to."

Eli's hand was shaking.

He had not known he could hit a person.

He did not know why his body was loud with something that was not only rage.

"Call the police," said Dr. Vandermeer.

He took his phone from his pocket and slid it across the desk.

"Nine one one. Or Detective Keogh at the county, he handled the Coburn case, his number is the first one in the favorites. Tell them the whole thing. I will not move."

Eli looked at the phone.

He looked at the doctor's hands, which were flat on the desk again, and which were trembling, finely, from the wrist.

He looked lower, because he could not help it, and saw that the grey wool of the doctor's trousers was not entirely at rest either.

He had come here to be afraid, and he could not find the fear.

All he could find was a tall, calm, beautiful man who had been looking at him for half a year and was now standing very still to be looked at back.

"Why?" Eli said.

"I can tell you everything I have done," said Dr. Vandermeer. "Every night, every photograph. I will not lie to you about any of it. I cannot tell you why."

"Why can't you?"

"Not tonight."

"That isn't a reason."

"No." The doctor held his eyes. "It is a request, and you may refuse it."

The rain ticked on the glass.

Eli let go of the tie, and smoothed it once flat against the doctor's shirt, and felt the heart under it going like a fist on a door.

"You'll answer every question I ask," he said. "Except that one."

"Yes."

"And in this room you'll do exactly what I say."

"Yes."

Eli left the phone where it lay.

He stepped back and looked at the long dark shape of him.

There was the clean line of the jaw, and the mark of his own hand on that cheek.

"Stand up straight," he said. "Hands behind your back."

Dr. Vandermeer did it at once.

He put both arms behind him and laced his fingers, and his chest rose and fell.

He looked at Eli.

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