Deja Who (Insighter #1)(19)

“Hey!”

“—you can get help, somewhere good like Chicago-Read—”

“Good? Really?” Marcia, who had the hips and butt of an anorexic teenager and the breasts of an artificially augmented porn star, spun so fast her chest took an extra second to catch up. “You’re gonna lock me up to be starved to death?”

“That was in 1901.” Do not roll your eyes. And definitely don’t hit her with the tape dispenser.

“Are they even accredited anymore?”

“Your HMO takes them . . .” Not what she would call a ringing endorsement. “Very well, I’ll send you somewhere else. The point is, you’ve proven you won’t take steps to manage your illness. You’re like a cancer patient who refuses treatment and then is astonished when the cancer progresses.”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“Yes, well. Part of the problem. Don’t you want to get better?” A rookie question, but she couldn’t help it. She honestly couldn’t tell. “Don’t you want to control your urges instead of the other way around?”

“Why? So I can be a better person in my next life?”

“Well, yes, that is the general—”

“I got screwed—hilarious, kind of, since I didn’t get screwed but was found guilty of treason and executed anyway.”

“Yes, but—”

“So in my next life I was super careful, followed all the rules, did everything I was s’posed to—and got screwed again! Without getting screwed! Again!”

“All right, but—”

“The only thing following the rules got me was unjustly executed again. So you, and society, can fuck right off. Next you’ll tell me if I’m a good girl for the next six or seven lives, I’ll come back rasa.”

“Well—”

“Honk the other one.”

After ten minutes of cajoling, threats, pleading, threats, and lectures, Marcia sullenly agreed to an outpatient program and no jail time, provided she could . . .

“Keep my nose clean?” her patient suggested, her good humor restored now that she wasn’t going back to jail.

“It’s not your nose I’m worried about.”

“Ha! Good one, Ms. Nazir.”

“I wasn’t joking!” she shouted after her, but now she was shouting at a closed door. “Dammit.” It’s a cliché, but won’t someone think of the children? Several were traumatized—or at least hopelessly confused—by the sight of Marcia’s rake-thin thighs wrapped around her date’s head like a bony muffler. On the other hand, prisons all over the country had no room at the inn for serial rapists and pedophiles, never mind a rich exhibitionist, so locking Marcia up seemed wasteful at best, and ineffectual at worst.

She knew her eleven thirty was there before he spoke; she sighed as she gestured for him to come in. “Harry, now really.”

“I can’t help it.” Harry Aguan scratched his thick beard, the bristly hair several shades darker than the hair on his skull. He was a trim brunet of average height immaculately dressed in a spotless sky blue short-sleeved button-down, pressed navy slacks, socks that still had the sale sticker on them, and new black loafers. And it was all a waste of time and money, because Harry smelled like seagull shit on fire. “Every time I get in the shower—gaaaaah!”

“Baby steps.”

“Which reminds me, the kiddie pool idea didn’t work.”

“Then we’ll have to come up with something else,” she said firmly. “Because you certainly can’t go on like this.”

“I can’t drink coffee on the street anymore,” he complained. He stretched, then plopped into the easy chair across from her desk, and the motion stirred enough body odor around to make her eyes water. “People keep dropping money in my cup.”

“Well, you do reek to the heavens, Harry,” she said kindly.

“You say that like I don’t know it.”

“I say it like you aren’t trying as hard as you could to overcome it.” There was that niggle in her brain again, the

(oh look who’s talking—you’re just killing time until your murder)

annoying voice pointing out that she was, at best, a hypocrite, and at worst, a terrible human being. Deb had reminded her of that with her usual cheer (“Yet another dissatisfied customer and if you were a restaurant, critics would give you minus stars.”) just that morning. Am I terrible out of self-defense? Or laziness? Are all Insighters in the wrong line of work, or is it just me?

“You’re actually ahead of the game, Harry.”

“That must be why all the ladies want me,” he snapped.

“We know the root cause of your ablutophobia. Some people never find out why they’re afraid.”

Or they do, and they don’t care. Like you, Leah!

“That’s enough.”

“Sorry, Ms. Nazir?”

“Nothing, just scolding myself.”

“Does it work?”

“Hardly ever. Your paralyzing fear of bathing and washing is perfectly understandable.” It certainly was; in 1819, Harry’s stepbrother had drowned him in the upstairs bathtub when he was six. These kids today. And also back then. “But you can overcome it. You can. Look, keep up with the sponge baths in the kitchen, and I want you to get a sitz bath.”