“Can’t complain, I guess,” Malcolm says, baring his straight white teeth when he smiles. Paul knows it’s an understatement: Malcolm’s fit, handsome, and married to a gorgeous girl. He has a thriving psychology practice in Midtown, too, and Paul has always envied him as much as he’s liked him. But things are different now. Paul has been released from his former envy, all thanks to Judith Stanley.Thanks to Judith Stanley’sdeath, he corrects, before batting the thought away.
“How’s your fancy art show going? Saw the piece inHarper’s. You’re moving on up, buddy,” Malcolm says, grinning. Paul grins back.
“Hardly. But yeah, it’s exciting. I mean—Judith, my student, should be here to see it. The glory is all hers—but yeah, it’s still gratifying.”
“Think you’ll make some big bucks?” Paul laughs uncomfortably and doesn’t respond. He shrugs it off, the way he’s tried to shrug off those nagging words:fucking parasite. Does Malcolm think the same of him? No. He can see from Malcolm’s face that he’s happy for him—maybe too happy, in fact.Thank god Paul has gone and done something, at last.It irks him so he plays it up, tells Malcolm that yes, “big bucks” might be in order, even though his 30 percent is purely imaginary right now, except for theHarper’scheck that has yet to arrive. The show will have to succeed, and people will have to buy a lot of Judith’s prints for any whiff of “big bucks.” But he keeps that to himself for now.
The two men catch up for a while longer, but when they signal the bartender for their second round and light fresh cigarettes, Paul’s impatience gets the best of him. He clears his throat.
“Listen, Malc, I have something to ask you. As a—you know, a shrink, not a friend. In strictest confidence.” Malcolm raises two fingers in the air in a mock Boy Scout pledge. “It’s about Judith Stanley.”
“What about her?”
“Well, it turns out she experienced something traumatic as a teenager, then stuffed it under the rug—”
“Was she raped?” Malcolm asks bluntly.
“Uh, maybe.” Paul is taken aback. But he reminds himself that hearing of rape must be commonplace in Malcolm’s line of work. “Something like that. Look, it’s easier if I just show you the article.” He unfolds the copy he got from the library and hands it to Malcolm, eyes darting around the bar as if someone might be spying. He knows it’s comical to suspect his fellow bar patrons, some of whom he’s known for years, of being the least bit interested in this conversation, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling ill at ease.
“This is in strictest confidence right now, of course,” Paul repeats nervously, unnecessarily. His friend nods, still immersed in his reading, then shakes his head when he’s done and looks up, handing the article back.
“Could you see the scars?” he asks.
“No. No clue…how he disfigured her. Or where.”
“It’s all very sad,” Malcolm says after a long drink of beer. “And I’m guessing she didn’t visit a psychiatrist after this happened, back in 1934?” Paul shrugs but says he assumes she didn’t. He clears his throat.
“Is it possible this experience could have made her…see things, imagine things, later in life?” His face reddens just the way it did with Detective Schuyler, as if he were guilty of something. Malcolm stays in pure professional mode, though, looking thoughtful.
“Are you asking if it’s possible she made up the stalker story?”
“I am,” Paul says, giving a quick nod. Malcolm gives a long, low whistle under his breath.
“Who killed her, then? The husband?” Paul doesn’t answer. He stares at Malcolm until he gets it, which doesn’t take long.
“Jesus. You think she did it herself. Stabbed herself.”
It isn’t a question. Paul shivers to hear Malcolm say it—to hear it spoken aloud, made a part of the world. Even if it’s only the cloistered, muggy world of King’s End Tavern.
“I went to the station yesterday and talked to the new lead detective. He said he had questions for me, and I thought I might be a suspect again,” Paul says, trying to chuckle lightly, as if it didn’t rattle him.“But then he showed me this article and started asking me questions—about Judith’s mental state, about how I perceived the psychological content of her photographs. He emphasized the lack of evidence they had, too. He never said it aloud, and I didn’t put it all together until I’d left, really—then it shocked the hell out of me. I thought it was bullshit at first—IknewJudith, you know?—but then I kept turning it over in my mind, seeing how it made sense in a fucked-up way. If it were even possible, probable. That’s where you come in.” Malcolm nods, looking deadly serious.
The two men stub their cigarettes out in the ashtray at the same time. Paul immediately lights another to steady himself as Malcolm asks questions.
“Did you ever see any sign of it in the way she acted? What was she like in class?”
“Normal. Perfectly friendly, but reserved. She was a deeply private person.”
“Not anymore,” Malcolm says, lifting his eyebrows and giving Paul a brisk stab of guilt.
“Hey, I’m carrying out a last wish. She wanted me to publish those pictures,” he says convincingly, through the bitter taste in his mouth. Malcolm says he understands.
“Look, repressed trauma can really come back to haunt you—even years later. If the police—and you—are right, it sounds like she could have had something called dissociative identity disorder,” Malcolm explains.
“If she did, would she have known what she was doing? The Judith I knew wouldn’t have done this intentionally. I didn’t know herthatwell, but I do know that much.”
“Technically no, she wouldn’t have. But there’s a lot of controversy about this. About dissociative episodes. About dissociative identity disorder in general. Some practitioners in my field dismiss it entirely. I don’t. I think it’s possible that her past trauma could have triggered out-of-body experiences or hallucinations. Strong ones. But whythen,why that particular moment in her life?” he wonders out loud, turning his nearly empty glass on its coaster. “Did anything happen in her life that might have triggered them?”
“No clue,” Paul says. He regrets not having more access to Tom now, probably the only person who could answer Malcolm’s question. But it’s moot; Tom has closed and locked the door against him. Paul might even have exhausted Junior’s patience by now.
