"What do you think you are doing?" - I hissed and withdrew to the top of
the bed - "If you don't leave the room this instant, I will scream!"
He looked hurt and baffled as he slid off the mattress and stretched his
monolithic corpulence.
"What's wrong?" - He enquired - "Anything I did to offend you last
night? You shouldn't have asked all these questions if you didn't want
to hear my answers, you know!"
"Where's Isabel?" - I demanded.
He eyed me queerly and pleaded sadly:
"We are not going to go through all this again, are we, dear?"
"Go through what and I am asking you for the last time: where is Isabel,
your wife?"
He sighed and collapsed on the bed, depressing it considerably as he
held onto one of the bedposts:
"I will call Dr. Milton. Promise me you won't do anything stupid until
he has had the chance to see you."
"I am going to call the police on you. Isabel announces her intention to
disinherit you and the next morning she is mysteriously gone. Dead, for
all I know!"
"Isabel is alive and well, I give you my word." - Said her husband and,
for some reason, I believed him. He sounded sincere.
"Then why can't I see her?"
"You can, once Dr. Milton arrives. Is that too much to ask? He will be
here in less than half an hour. Edward already apprised him of the
situation last night."
"Last night?" - I felt confused - "What situation? And who's Dr. Milton?"
He got up and made to leave when I noticed that my makeup compact was gone.
"Where are my things? What have you done with my things?"
"They are in the next room. Dr. Milton will let you have them after he
has made sure that they include nothing dangerous."
"Dangerous?" - I exploded - "Am I a prisoner here? I insist to use the
phone! I am going to call the police right now!"
"Please, for your own good, don't exit the room." - Said my uninvited
visitor - "I have covered the mirrors here and have removed your make up
pouch but I can't well take care of all the reflecting surfaces: windows
and such."
"Mirrors? What are you going about? You need professional help. I am a
therapist. Won't you tell me what the problem is? What have you done to
Isabel? Are you afraid to look at yourself in the mirror? Are you
terrified of what you might see there? Have you killed her? Are you
tormented by guilt?" - It wasn't very professional behavior but I
decided that I had nothing to lose by abrogating the therapeutic
protocol. Clearly, I was being held hostage by a gang of killers or a
murderous cult.
"Isabel." - Said a familiar voice from across the threshold.
"Thank God you have arrived!" - Cried Isabel's husband - "She is having
one of her attacks."
Into the chamber came Milton, clay pipe, eternal dungarees and all. He
was accompanied by a young woman that looked startlingly familiar. She
glanced at me from across the room. She smiled. She appeared to be
friendly, so I reciprocated, hesitantly.
Milton said:
"I hope you don't mind that I have asked your therapist to join me. She
told me everything about last night. You invited her here as your guest,
you remember?"
I didn't remember anything of the sort. Still, I appraised my
"therapist" more attentively. She was a mousy, inconsequential thing
with an excruciatingly bad sartorial taste. She stared at me through a
pair of dead, black, enormous pools that passed for eyes. Her hands were
sinewy and contorted and she kept fidgeting, clasping and unclasping my
makeup purse, and rearranging a stray curl that kept obscuring her view.