The Analyst

He drove hard and fast, heading back to New Hampshire, trying to assess how compromised his existence truly was. Random fears and contentious thoughts reverberated throughout him.

But one idea was paramount. Ricky could not return to the passivity of the psychoanalyst. That was a world where one waited for something to happen, and then, before acting again, tried to interpret and understand all the forces within. It was a world of reaction, of delay. Of calm and reason.

If he fell into its trap, it would cost him his life. He knew that he had to act.

If nothing else, he had to create the illusion that he was as dangerous as Rumplestiltskin.

He had just passed the welcome to massachusetts sign on the roadway, when an idea came to him. He saw an exit up ahead, and just beyond that the common American landscape marker: a shopping mall. He steered the rental car off the thruway, and into the mall’s parking lot. Within a few minutes, he was shoulder to shoulder with all the other people, heading in to the array of stores, all selling more or less the same things for more or less the same prices, but packaged in different ma

It did not take him long to find a gathering of telephones, near the food court. He remembered the first number easily. Behind him, there was a low buzz of people at tables eating and speaking, and he half covered the receiver with his hand as he dialed the number.

“New York Times classified.”

“Yes,” Ricky said, pleasantly. “I’d like to purchase one of those small one-column ads for the front page.”

In rapid order, he read off a credit card number. The clerk took the information and then asked, “Okay, Mr. Lazarus, what’s the message?”

Ricky hesitated then said:

Mr. R. game on. A new Voice.

The clerk read it back. “That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Ricky said. “Make sure you uppercase the word Voice, okay?”

The clerk acknowledged the request and Ricky disco

You know who I was, not who I am.

That is why you’re in a jam.

Ricky’s gone, he’s very dead.

I am here, in his stead.

Lazarus rose, and so have I,

And now it’s time for someone else to die.

A new game, in an old place,

Will eventually bring us face-to-face.

Then we’ll see who draws the last breath,

Because, Mr. R., even bad poets love death.

Ricky admired his work for a moment, then returned to the bank of telephones. Within a few moments, he’d co

“No problem-o. I can take that information,” this new clerk said. Ricky was mildly amused that the person in classified at the Voice seemed significantly less stuffy than their counterparts at the Times, which, when he considered it, was more or less as expected. “What sort of heading do you want on the message?”

“Heading?” Ricky asked.

“Ah,” said the clerk. “A first-timer. You know, the abbreviations like WM for white male, SM for sadomasochism…”

“I see what you mean,” Ricky replied. He thought a moment, then said, “The top should read: WM, 50s, seeks Mr. Right for special fun and games…”

The clerk repeated this to Ricky. “Okay,” he said, “something else?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Ricky said. He then read off the poem to the clerk, making the man repeat the message twice, to be certain that he had it correctly. When he’d finished reading, the clerk paused.

“Well,” he said, “that’s different. Way different. This will probably bring them all out of the woodwork. The curious, at least. And maybe a few of the crazies. Now, do you want to pay for a box reply? We give you a box number, and you can access the replies by phone. The way it works, while you’re paying for the box, only you can get the answers.”

“Please,” Ricky said. He heard the clerk clicking on a computer keyboard. “All right,” he said. “You’re box number 1313. Hope you’re not superstitious.”

“Not in the slightest,” Ricky said. He wrote down the number for accessing the answers on his napkin and hung up the phone.

For a moment, he considered calling the number that he had for Virgil. But he resisted this temptation. He had a few more things to arrange first.

In The Art of War, Sun-Tzu discusses the importance of the general choosing his battleground. Occupying a position of mystery, seizing a location of superiority. Taking the high ground. Being able to conceal one’s strength. Creating advantages out of topographical familiarity. Ricky thought these lessons applied to him, as well. The poem in the Village Voice was like a shot across the bows of his adversary, an opening salvo designed to get his attention.

Ricky realized it would not take long for someone to arrive in Durham searching for him. The license plate number noticed by the dog ke

He returned the rental car, stopped briefly at his room, and then went directly in to his night job at the crisis hot line distracted by these questions, thinking that he did not know how much time he had purchased for himself with the ads in the Times and the Voice, but a little. The Times would run the following morning, the Voice at the end of the week. There was a reasonable likelihood that Rumplestiltskin would not act until he’d seen both. All the man knew, so far, was that an overweight and physically scarred private investigator had arrived at a dog ke

He asked himself: What do I want to achieve?

Did he want to kill the man who had driven him to fake his own death? Who threatened his distant family and destroyed everything that had made him who he was? Ricky thought that in some of the mystery novels and thrillers that he’d devoured over the past months, the answer would have been a simple yes. Someone caused him great harm, so he should turn the tables on that someone. Kill him. An eye for an eye, the essence of all revenges.