The Inquisitor: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

Spring, New York, about an hour away.
    “What do I think that was about?” said Geiger. “I’m not sure. What do you think it was about?”
    “Well,” said Corley, “it could’ve been about control. Power.”
    Geiger’s fingertips tapped the couch in shifting combinations of sequence, speed, and rhythm. For Corley, the sound had become part of the sessions, a soft percussive accompaniment to spoken words. For the first four months of therapy, Geiger had called for an appointment only after a dream-migraine event, and that was the only subject discussed. But gradually the irregular sessions evolved into a weekly visit, sometimes twice a week, and lately Geiger seemed less strict about his first rule. Sometimes, as he’d done today, he would even chronicle a real-life event.
    “Maybe it was about completion,” Geiger said.
    “Interesting.”
    “Is it?”
    “I think so,” Corley replied. “You might have said ‘destruction,’ which could be considered the opposite of completion.”
    “Good point, Martin.”
    Before Geiger, no patient had ever addressed Corley by his first name, in thirty years of sessions. The first time, it had sent ripples skipping across the calm surface between them, leaving the psychiatrist unsettled and shifting in his chair. It had stirred something in him, the unforced familiarity in the gesture so contradictory to Geiger’s basic inscrutability. Corley had never said anything about it, and ultimately he’d embraced it as part of their unusual dynamic.
    “Everything’s a process,” Geiger said. “Beginning, middle, end. That’s what works best for me. You know that. Completion.”
    Geiger’s gaze drifted to the ceiling. Years ago there had been water damage. His eye was always drawn to the subtle change in texture caused by the repair. He knew, step by step, exactly how they’d gone about the work, because he’d done the same kind of job hundreds of times himself.
    “Why do you think we’re talking about the spider?” said Corley.
    Geiger bent his right knee and pulled the leg slowly up to his chest. Corley waited for the familiar, soft pop in the sacral joint.
    “The spider had finished its web,” Geiger said. “So why did I torch it? I’m not sure. Because it’s in my territory?”
    “And only you decide when something’s finished in your domain?”
    “King of all I see?” A soft sound slipped out of him. It could have been a sigh. “That’s a line from something, isn’t it?”
    “ Richard the Third ?” said Corley. “ Yertle the Turtle ?”
    “What?”
    “The children’s book.”
    Corley waited, scraping fingertips down one bearded cheek and then the other. But Geiger’s silence was like the sound of a door slamming shut.
    “Do you remember any children’s books?” Corley asked. “Or songs? Does anything come to mind? Maybe toys, or—”
    “No. Nothing comes to mind.”
    Over time, Corley had come to think of Geiger as a lost and beleaguered boy who had somehow remained undaunted. Because Geiger’s dreams were virtually the sole context in which Corley could work, he knew almost nothing about the man and could only guess at what lay beyond the borders of their sessions. Even so, Geiger’s story about the spider and conversations like this one convinced him that the child in Geiger was buried beneath so much traumatic rubble that it was more ghost than real. Sometimes Corley felt like a medium at a séance trying to contact the dead.
    Corley glanced at his watch. It was the last gift his wife had given him. Engraved on the back was Where does the time go? Love, Sara.
    “We’re almost out of time,” he said, “so let me put something out there for you to think about—about the spider.” He straightened the pad on his knee and wrote, Empathic? “Maybe setting fire to the web wasn’t about completion or dominion.” He noticed the dance of Geiger’s fingers becoming more intense. “Maybe you didn’t want the spider to kill the