Dr. Cole's Casefiles - Vanessa

[Sorry about the Session numbers. I decided that the really long session should be designated as one number and three sub-parts, 9a, b, and c. Sorry about the confusion.]

Session 10

I slept poorly from Friday to Tuesday. Vanessa hadn't called. If she were sticking to our agreement, that boded well, but I couldn't help worrying about her. Such a hard situation, some of it her fault, some not, but even the part she could be blamed for was completely understandable.

Psychologically, it started with her mother. The love that woman failed to give her daughter was a necessity, not a luxury of any childhood. Mrs. Fontaine's behavior to her daughter and her husband had been disgraceful. The husband had paid the ultimate price and Vanessa might have followed him had I not intervened. Vanessa finding me had been more luck than anything else, and I had done the best I could for her. Even more, I had cast my entire career into danger for the lovely and desperate young woman. If even a hint of our affair got out I would be finished as a psychiatrist and what would I do then?

Wednesday found me visibly agitated. Would Vanessa keep her four o'clock appointment? Was she even still alive? I had nearly called her a dozen times. What stopped me? Fear of appearing silly? Afraid to hear bad news? Afraid that her phone would just go on ringing because nobody was there to answer it?

I had four patients that day, regulars with standing appointments. I found myself constantly going back in my notes during their sessions, unable to remember where we had left off or what had been said just a moment before. I was tempted to offer these four women a refund because of my poor performance. When my three o'clock was done and I stood to walk her to the door, I had to consciously restrain myself from hurrying to let her out, so anxious was I to look into the waiting area and see if Vanessa sat there.

I opened the door, let my patient out, breathed deeply and looked at the row of chairs meant to be occupied by those waiting to see me. When I saw that lovely head of long and wavy blonde hair I sighed. I smiled and motioned Vanessa in.

Refraining from hugging her required a profound act of will. She smiled slightly, walked to the couch, sat, pulled off her shoes, and lay down. I took my usual seat facing her, turned on the recorder and picked up my pad and pen. I said, "I'm happy to see you. I hope you're feeling well."

She shrugged. "I'm okay, I guess. Maybe I should've called, but you said to call if things went bad or if there was anything you could do. Turns out there wasn't, but I'm still trying to figure things out."

I said, "You mean you didn't tell Aaron?"

She shook her head. "No, no, not that. I told him just like we agreed. It was his response that was, well, unexpected."

I asked, "What did you expect?"

She widened her eyes. "Maybe for him to be angry with me. For him to yell, or kick me out, or fire me. Or to take me in his arms and comfort me and tell me everything would be all right, as if nothing had really happened."

I said, "But none of those things would have been useful toward resolving your issue with Judith. From what you've told me, Aaron is a good problem solver. And intelligent and cool under fire. If that's true, losing his temper or ignoring the problem, both counterproductive, would have been entirely out of character."

She shrugged and said nothing.

I pushed. "You've told me what he didn't do. Why don't you tell me what he DID?"

She sighed and related the rest of her story.

***

Observation mode.

***

Judith's awful treatment of Vanessa had been on Tuesday. Vanessa had kept her appointment with Dr. Cole on Wednesday that lasted into Friday morning and during which Dr. Cole had convinced Vanessa to tell Aaron everything.

Aaron called from the New Orleans airport at six o'clock that Friday. Vanessa had been waiting by the phone and snapped it up on the first ring. She said, "Hello."

He said, "Well, do you feel like some company tonight?"

She said, "Yes, please. When can you get here?"

"About half-past seven. Eight, if you want me to stop and order something for us to eat."

"No. I'll go get something and have it ready. Get here as quick and you can, please."

With a little worry in his voice, he said, "Are you okay?"

She said, "Yes. Look, we have to talk. Please get here as fast as you can."

He didn't argue or try to get more information out of her. He simply said, "Okay," and hung up.

His concern for the lovely blonde urged him to flout the speed limit. He made it to her front door in just under seventy-five minutes instead of his usual ninety. She answered his knock and the smell of gumbo wafted to his nostrils. He sniffed and said, "From Boudreaux's?"

She nodded.

He smiled and said, "Good."

She closed her eyes, threw her arms around his neck, and buried her face in his chest. Her "I love you," sounded muffled.

He put his arms around her waist and squeezed. She was bare-foot and dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. No makeup. all signs that she didn't want sex. That meant trouble.

He said, "Let's eat and chat first. Then you can tell me whatever's on your mind."

She smiled wanly. "Mr. One Thing At A Time. I like that about you. You're the most focused person I know."

Her lovely eyes proved too much for him. He kissed her lips and said, "Concentrating on you is the easiest thing in the world."

She dropped her arms as tears welled in her eyes. She turned and walked to the table, already set with a plate of French bread and soup bowls. She took the insulated package containing the gumbo from the oven, put it on the table, and spooned some out for each of them. He pulled two beers from the refrigerator.

As they ate, he told her about the progress on the new Atlanta store. "The renovations are ahead of schedule. We'll have no trouble making the planned opening on time. How about you come with me and stay there next week? You've never been to Atlanta. We could go to a Braves' game. They're out of competition for the playoffs, but I know how much you like baseball."

She said, "Maybe. That sounds like a good idea. It'll depend on how you feel after tonight."

He gave no sign of a response. She started clearing up and he fetched two more beers for them and sat on the couch. She joined him.

He looked at her. His opinion of women wearing makeup was decisive and succinct. While it improved some women, for others it merely showed that they were making an effort, and for more than a few, he thought it made them look clownish. Vanessa was the type that used little and needed none. Nothing could detract from her beauty in Aaron's eyes.

But tonight she had frown lines. Whatever she wanted to discuss bothered her badly. She cleared her throat several times, but couldn't find the words to begin. He wondered how much he should reveal about his knowledge of her problems. Not too much, but she needed to be prompted.

He held her hand and gazed into her eyes. He said, "I think you already know, but I'll say it anyway. I don't care a whit about your past. Whatever happened in your life before the evening I met you can't possibly affect the way I feel about you. Just relax and say whatever you want."

She shook her head. "You only say that because you don't know what I've done." She couldn't bring herself to start.

He shrugged and thought, "Time to push this along." Aloud he said, "If you're referring to Judith, then I already know quite a lot."

She jerked her hand away and backed over to the other side of the couch. Her voice raised an octave, she said, "How do you know that name? What do you mean? How could you know anything?"

He kept his voice level and calm. "Don't get upset. I do a routine background check on everyone who works for me."

She said, "What do you mean routine?"

He noticed her hands were shaking. He said, "Please, stay calm. Nothing that I discovered matters a bit to me."

She said, "Then you don't know anything."

He decided that gentleness and reaffirmation weren't getting the job done. He put on his neutral business face and hit her with the facts.

"A routine background check involves verifying past addresses for the three years prior to employment. Yours revealed that you moved from the dorm to a house about ten miles outside of Forrestburg owned by a woman named Judith Samovar and lived there for about a year until you graduated. That name, Samovar, struck me as odd."

Vanessa asked, "What's so odd about it?"

He answered, "A samovar is a contraption that Russians use to brew tea. It's not a name. So, I looked into Miss Samovar's background. No such person existed before she bought that house five years ago. I hired detectives to set up surveillance on the house. Once I got photos of her, I contacted a friend of mine in London. He works for Interpol. He ran a search for me, off the books as they say. The photo matched a Soviet national named Dzhudit Smirnov.

"There's an open arrest warrant on that name in the Soviet Union. He got a copy of that file, no matter how, and compared the photo with the one I sent. It looked like the same person, but the warrant and the picture in the file are thirty years old, so he couldn't be sure of an identification without fingerprints."

Vanessa sat there, wide-eyed and dumbfounded.

He continued, "I needed fingerprints and could only think of one way to get them. I sent in a blackbag team one day when Judith left the house. They dusted several likely places and lifted several sets. All of them were from hands smaller than a typical man's, so it was likely that they were all female. I picked the ones found on an antique wooden desk. It was in excellent shape and highly polished. It was obviously cleaned often, so the prints had to be fresh and the desk was in a room of the house fitted out as an office. That made it highly likely that they belonged to Judith.

"My team found a lot of things in another room of the house that made it plain that Judith participated in, let's say, 'exotic sexual practices.' They picked the locks on the desk drawers and found files containing explicit photographs. They also found several ledgers dating back to just after the purchase of the house.

"I sent the prints I had chosen to London and my contact confirmed the identity. Judith Samovar is Dzhudit Smirnov. She's wanted for murder by the Russians. Apparently she accused a low level party apparatchik of rape. Not only was nothing done to the apparatchik, her lover was sent to a gulag in Siberia on a trumped up charge and she undoubtedly was in line for similar treatment. But before the heavy hand of Commie justice could land, she got her blows in. She killed the sorry bastard with a pistol. This was all in Odessa, a port city in Ukraine.

"She disappeared without a trace. My contact thought she got smuggled first to Turkey and then to Greece and then to Italy. There is no record of her entering the U.S., but Italy is in NATO so it would've been, well, not easy but certainly not overly hard. Five years ago, a woman calling herself Judith Samovar bought the house under discussion. She paid the asking price with a check, no mortgage.

"My investigators had put the house under surveillance after they lifted the prints and found the files. They confirmed that several women a week, sometimes in pairs, visited that house, stayed for anywhere from one to two hours, and left."

Vanessa couldn't meet his gaze. She sat with her head bowed, silent.

After a long pause, he continued. "It's obvious that the woman has been running a prostitution business out of the house. I suspect that some of the prints found are yours and some of the photos have you in them. There was a file with your name on it. So, you lived in a house for a year with a woman who conducted a lesbian prostitution business and she has a file on you that contains pictures of you engaging in a variety of sex acts with women." Still, Vanessa said nothing.

He continued, "My men know nothing about you, your name is just one among a list of others, and they're sworn to secrecy. Afterall, breaking into that house was a crime, so we can count on their continued silence. I paid them in cash, so it can't be traced back to me. But, under the circumstances, I kept up a light surveillance on Judith.

"Now comes the part that DOES concern me and I'm willing to listen to your explanation. A couple of months ago, closer to three, really, I got a report stating that Judith drove from Forrestburg to Beauchamp and rented a cabin at the Bayswater. Then she drove to this building, stayed about thirty minutes, and returned to the cabin. The next day at two, a woman fitting your description arrived at the cabin dressed in a provocative manner, entered the cabin and stayed until after five.

"When I got back from Atlanta on the following Friday, you weren't yourself and told me you wanted to talk to a doctor. I gave you one of my credit cards. The bills say you've been having weekly sessions with Dr. Suzette Cole in Forrestburg. You've been moody most of this time and now you want to talk about a serious matter, but can't seem to get started. Those are the indisputable facts. Do you wish to continue now?"

He sounded cold to Vanessa. Panic gripped her chest and tears streamed down her face. She opened her mouth but no words came, only a wail of grief. Aaron moved toward her but she stood and backed further away. She didn't know what she felt, but her emotions manifested in anger.

She said, "What gives you the right to investigate me?"

His glance had been soft and his expression sympathetic. Most men would have responded with anger also, but he didn't. His face muscles relaxed into neutrality and the tone of his voice remained even.

He said, "I understand you're upset. But you have to calm down. There's too much at stake. Haven't I already told you more than once that nothing, and I mean NOT a THING about your past matters to me. What are you afraid of? Have you done something that makes you feel guilty?"

She lost all control. "What am I afraid of? Christ, you've got ice water in your veins, not blood. Don't you understand that I was a lesbian whore? And now I've been fucking my old mistress for nearly three months? All the while living here in your building, working for you, going to bed with you, loving you. I'm nothing but trash. I've ruined my life. Jesus God, I want to die."

She collapsed to her knees, unable to stand, hugging herself and sobbing uncontrollably.

He said, "I assumed that, for some reason, you renewed a past relationship with Judith. I've detected anxiety in you, but no lack of desire for me. It's reasonable for me to require an explanation from you, not about what you did with Judith before I met you, but what you've done with her over the past few months. Don't you think that's reasonable?"

She wouldn't look at him, but she didn't resist his efforts to lift her to her feet and guide her back to the couch. He hugged her, shushed her, kissed her head, and rocked her.

When his efforts had calmed her, she began talking. She told him everything, from her failed attempts at sex with men, to her relationship with Karen and then with Judith, and all the way to the awful scene that past Tuesday when the dominatrix had sodomized and humiliated her.

She felt his arms tighten as he growled deep in his throat. When he spoke, it was more of a croak. "The sadistic bitch. I'll settle her hash. Yes indeed, just as sure as shit stinks, I'll settle with her once and for all."

Vanessa said, "What will you do?"

Aaron said, "I've already got a plan in place. Don't worry. You've seen the last of that bitch."

That frightened her. She said, "No. Please. You can't kill her. Maybe she deserves it, but, please, no. I can't have a murder on my conscience and I don't want one on yours. That would change us forever. It would ruin everything. Please don't."

He said, "I have no such intentions, but this has to be handled with finesse. I don't want all this being widely known anymore than you do. No, don't worry. My plan most definitely does NOT include assassinating a woman. God in Heaven, do you think so little of me?" He sounded insulted.

She said, "I'm sorry. I'm so upset. You don't hate me, then? You're not disgusted with me?"

He said, "No. Under the circumstances, I can see why you let Judith use you again. I would've reacted differently, but I'm a man and I have resources. I would have protected you in a different way. But I understand that you were trying to protect me, or, at least, our relationship. Of course, it didn't serve in the end, did it? You can't give a bully an inch. But, I need to know, do you desire other women? I mean while we've been together? Or were Karen and Judith special cases? What do your experiences with women mean for you and me in the future?"

She pondered the question for a long while. "Dr. Cole says that I'm bisexual, which I don't really know what that means. I don't ogle women like men do. I never considered being intimate with a woman before that first night with Karen. Based on how she made me feel, and how you made me feel the same way only a lot stronger, I think, maybe, I'm more likely to develop those kinds of feelings based on how I'm treated by the other person, man or woman. Being with a woman is different, but not better than being with you.

"I was so lonely when Karen approached me. And she was so sweet about the way she did it. I only went to Judith's because I trusted Karen. And, I guess, having discovered sex, really for the first time, I mean enjoying sex, with Karen, I was more open to experimenting.

"Now Judith, she's a professional and beautiful and has a strong personality. I never loved her, not even a little like I did Karen, but she has a power that you've got to experience to believe. Karen told me that some people just have that much charisma. And, I had all these student loans to pay off, and, well, I know that it sounds like I'm making excuses, but the money was good and Judith approved and her approval meant a lot, until Karen left. That really opened my eyes. I never did anything harder than bide my time until I could run away from Judith.

"And then I met you within a few weeks. You've got the looks and the charisma, but there's a light within you. Judith is all darkness."

Aaron said, "Darkness can carry its own temptations, in addition to Judith's other qualities."

Vanessa nodded. "Yes. I enjoyed being bad, you know, rebellious for a while. But losing Karen that way made me realize how negative it all was. Then I found you."

He said, "We found each other."

She nodded. "Yes, that's the way it was. Like a miracle. You understand why I would do anything to protect it?"

He said, "Yes. I don't especially like it, but I do understand. So, where does that leave us? Is this thing with Judith going to stand between us, or do we put aside and move on?"

She wept again. Her shoulders heaved as she sobbed. She croaked, "Can you forgive me?"

His answer showed a keen understanding. "I can forgive you, but can you forgive yourself?"

She continued to weep. He patted her back and kissed her head. He said, "Talk it over with Dr. Cole. You have an appointment on Wednesday?"

Vanessa nodded.

He stood and said, "You need to rest."

He walked her to the bedroom, pulled back the covers, and got her into bed. He didn't try to join her. He kissed her lips and said, "I'll call you when I have something to report. Until then, do NOT leave this apartment. Do NOT open the door to anybody but me. I'll write Jan's number on the pad next to the phone. If you need groceries or anything else, call her. And under no circumstances are you to keep your usual rendezvous with Judith this coming Tuesday. Any questions?"