Warning Signs

Lucy's heart felt as though it were a new thing in her chest. The suddenly rapid beating got her attention like a loud knock at the door. She swept her hair off her forehead. "Concerning me how? What's the story about?"

When he started talking again, Lucy thought Salomon's inflection had changed, as though he was reading, or reciting something that he'd rehearsed. He said, "Detective Ta

Lucy pressed the mouthpiece of the phone into her right breast and told herself to breathe. The room was dark and the foot of her bed faced the wall. She thought she saw brilliant flashes of light, like flames, erupt in three or four places where she should be seeing nothing but the familiar shadows of her room at night.

She could still hear Brett Salomon's voice. It sounded disco

Lucy hung up the phone and then she vomited all over the sheets.

CHAPTER 27

I misled my wife in order to get out of the house after midnight. An emergency, I said. Lauren, half asleep, assumed that I meant an emergency with my practice. And now, sometime shortly after midnight, I was sneaking down the street, head down, collar up, hoping no photographers' lenses were pointed my way as I hustled into the old house on Pine Street where Lucy Ta

I was surprised how cold it was outside.

Lucy had been crying. A pile of spent tissues marked the place on the sofa where she'd been awaiting my arrival.

Her flat was dark, a solitary light from the kitchen spilling shadows into the living room. Even in the muted light I could tell that the room was elegant yet comfortable, a pleasant mixture of the modern and the ancient. An alluring step tansu filled much of one wall. A gorgeous old highboy secretary marked off the transition to the kitchen. The sofa where she was sitting was covered in a rich tapestry. It was the kind of room that took either serious bucks or an exceptionally high credit limit from Visa.

"Thanks for coming," she said. "I didn't know who else to call." Lucy was wearing a black robe that reached to mid-thigh. As she sat on her sofa, she had to tug the hem of the robe carefully into place to maintain modesty. She grabbed a wadded tissue from beside her and stretched out one corner of it as though she were about to use it to blow her nose. She didn't. She said, "My fiancé is in Wyoming," as though that explained why she'd called me instead of him.

"Sure," I said.

"After I left your office today, I drove around for a while. I do that sometimes. Just drive around. It helps me relax. You ever do that? Just drive around? Does that make me weird?" The last question informed me that she was aware at that moment that she was talking to a mental health professional.

She pulled on a different corner of the tissue, and it ripped. She slipped a fingertip through the hole.

I shifted my weight so that I was leaning forward, closing the space between the chair where I was sitting and Lucy.

She went on. "During my drive I went, well, I went a lot of places, but one of the places I went was the Peterson house. Susan's moved back home. Did you know that? I saw the lights on upstairs. The TV screen was flickering."

I said, "I didn't know she was back home."

"Me neither. I was kind of surprised, actually."

For a split second she lifted her eyes and looked at me. "I don't have many friends, Alan. Did Sam tell you that about me? That I don't get close to very many people?"

"I think he's told me that you're a private person, Lucy. That's all."

"Sam's nice," she said. Here in the dark with something important on her mind, her voice was almost girlish. "My boyfriend says that I seem to love it when he's intimate with me but that I don't want to be intimate with him."

Almost reflexively, I said, "You say that in a way that makes me wonder whether his words make sense to you." It was a shrink phrase. In that room at that time it was as out of place as a bright red clown nose.

She exchanged the ripped tissue for a fresh one and dabbed at her left nostril. "I've heard it before-things like my boyfriend said-from other men. But I always thought that when they were talking about intimacy, they were really talking about sex. That when they complained that I was too distant, they really meant they were unhappy that I wasn't sleeping with them. Or wasn't sleeping with them as often as they wanted."

I wondered where we were heading. I honestly didn't have a clue. I assumed the reason that I'd been summoned from my bed was weightier than this. Lucy had to be warming up for something.

"But it's not that way with Grant. Grant really wants me to be open-you know, to talk to him." She laughed. "Don't misunderstand. He wants to sleep with me, too. But he says that he wants me to tell him… things. What's going on. How I feel about what's going on. You know."

I didn't want to repeat my mistake. I said, "He sounds like quite a find, Lucy." It's something I never would have said in therapy. I know that's why I said it then-to remind myself that I was meeting with Lucy as a friend, not as a therapist. Maybe I wanted to remind her, too.

"He doesn't want me to tell him what's going on right now, I promise you that. Anyway, he's not around."

Here it comes, I thought. The reason I'm not home in bed.

She narrowed her eyes and continued. "You know what that means for you and me? It means that tonight, instead of being intimate with my fiancé, I'm going to be intimate with you."

I thought her words carried layers of meaning that weren't readily apparent, and I wasn't sure Lucy was even aware that there were stowaways on board whatever trip she was inviting me on.

Again I said something that I would ordinarily say in psychotherapy, and almost immediately I regretted it. "Intimacy isn't the same as ope

She looked at me. Her eyes seemed smaller without makeup. She said, "What? What do you mean?"

I debated whether or not I should answer. Finally, I said, "Let's say you go to Denver and you meet somebody in a bar, and let's say they buy you a drink, and you tell them every deep dark secret in your soul-"

She sighed. "For me that would take more than one drink."

"Well, you do that, you open up like that to a stranger-that's not intimate behavior. That's not what intimacy is."

"I don't get it. It sounds like intimacy to me."

"Let me give you another example. You go to that same bar and meet the same guy and without telling him a thing about yourself, about what's in your heart, about what's dear to you, you go home with him. You sleep with him. Then you leave. You don't even know his name. He doesn't know yours. Well, that's not intimacy, either."

She bit her bottom lip. "Okay, I can buy that."

"But put the two experiences together, and you may-you may-have intimacy."

"You've lost me again, Alan. I'm sorry."

I sat back. "I'm not sure this is that important, Lucy. I'm digressing and you have something you need to talk to me about."

"No, go on, please. This is all part of… something."

"Intimacy requires two things to happen. Both are necessary. Neither, alone, is sufficient. One is ope