The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove(15)

“A footprint. Or what’s left of one.”



Ten minutes later they sat over frosty mugs of beer at Pizza in the Pines, Pine Cove’s only pizza parlor. They’d taken a window table so Gabe could keep an eye on Skinner, who was bouncing up and down outside, giving them an ever-changing view of the street, then the street with dog face (ears akimbo), then the street, then the street with dog face again. Other than to order a beer, Gabe Fenton hadn’t said a word since they’d gone to the creek bed.

“Will he just keep doing that?” Theo asked.

“Until we take him a slice of pizza, yes.”

“Amazing.”

Gabe shrugged. “He’s a dog.”

“Always the biologist.”

“One needs to keep the mind limber.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think that you obliterated most of what you thought was a footprint.”

“Gabe, it was a footprint. A talon or something.”

“There are a thousand explanations for a depression in the mud like that, Theo, but one of them is not an animal track.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, there hasn’t been anything that large on this continent for about sixty million years, and for another, animals tend to leave more than one track, unless it’s a creature especially adapted for hopping.” Gabe grinned.

The flying dog head pogoed by the windowsill.

“There were a lot of people and vehicles around there, the other tracks might have been wiped out.”

“Theo, don’t let your imagination run away with you. You’ve had a long day and…”

“And I’m a pothead.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“I know, I’m saying it. Tell me about your rats. What will you do when you find them?”

“Well, first I’m going to keep searching for the stimulus of their behavior, then I’ll catch a few of the group that migrated and compare their brain chemistry to those that headed toward the shore.”

“Does that hurt them?”

“You have to blend up their brains and run the liquid in a centrifuge.”

“I guess so then.”

The waitress brought their pizza and Gabe was severing cables of cheese from his first slice when Theo’s cell phone rang. The constable listened for a second, then stood and dug into his pocket for money. “I’ve got to go, Gabe.”

“What’s up?”

“The Plotznik kid is missing. No one’s seen him since he left on his paper route this morning.”

“Probably hiding. That kid is evil. He rigged up something with his remote control car that affected the chips in my rats once. I spent three weeks trying to figure out why they were running figure eights in the parking lot outside the grocery story before I found him lurking in the weeds with the controller.”

“I know,” Theo said. “Mikey told me that if he wired ten of your rats together, he could pick up the Discovery Channel. I still have to find him. He has parents.”

“Skinner is a pretty good tracker. Want to take him?”

“Thanks, but I doubt that the kid had a pizza in his pocket.”

Theo folded his phone, snagged a slice of pizza for the road, and headed out the door.





Ten




Val Riordan leaned against her office door, trying to catch her breath and maintain her temper. Nothing in her clinical experience compared to the sessions she held on the day after the Texaco exploded. She had seen twenty patients in ten hours, and every one of them had wanted to talk about sex. And not abstract sex either, not issues or attitudes about sex, just squishy, thumping sex itself. It was unnerving.

She’d anticipated a spike in libido among her patients (it was a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants), but the books said not more than five to fifteen percent would have a reaction—about the same number that experienced a loss of libido upon taking the drugs. But today she’d hit one hundred percent. It was as if she were running a kennel for hopeless horndogs rather than a psychiatric practice.

After the last patient, she’d come out of her office to find her new receptionist, Chloe, furiously masturbating, her feet hooked into the edge of the desk, her steno chair squeaking like a tortured squirrel. Val had excused herself, turned on her heel, walked back into her office, and shut the door.

Chloe, twenty-one, had maroon hair, an entire wardrobe rendered in black, and a sapphire nose ring. Val had begun treating the girl in her teens for bulimia, then hired her when the volume of appointments skyrocketed after the placebo went into effect. Chloe worked in exchange for therapy; Val had thought it would be a good financial move. Frankly, she’d liked her better when she just threw up a lot.

Val was still trying to figure out exactly what to do when there was a soft knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“Sorry,” Chloe said through the door.

“Uh, Chloe, that is not appropriate office behavior.”

“Well, your last appointment had left. I thought that you would be working on your notes or something for a while. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s it? My last appointment leaves, so let the wild rumpus begin?”

“Am I fired?”

Val thought for a second. There were twenty more patients to see tomorrow and twenty the day after that. If the weirdness didn’t kill her, the workload would. She couldn’t afford to lose Chloe now. “No, you’re not fired. But please, no more of that in the office.”

“Do you have time to talk? I know my next session isn’t until next week, but I really need to talk to you.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to go home and, uh, think about things?”

“You mean finish? No, I’m finished for now. That’s what I want to talk to you about. That wasn’t the first time today.”

Val gulped. It was highly unprofessional to talk to a patient through a door. She steeled herself and opened it. “Come in.” She returned to her desk without looking at the girl. Chloe took a seat across from her.

“So this wasn’t the first time today?” Val was the psychotherapist now, not the boss. If she’d been the boss, she would have come over the desk and strangled the little slut.

“No, I can’t seem to get enough. I, well, it started about two in the morning, and I went straight though until time to get ready for work. Then once or twice while each patient was in session.”

Val’s jaw dropped. Sixteen hours of intermittent masturbation? The other patients she had seen had cited two in the morning as when their sexual adventures had started too. She said, “And how do you feel about that?”

“I feel okay. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carpal tunnel?”

“Chloe, if you think that you’re going to file a workmen’s compensation claim for this…”

“No no no, I just want to stop.”

“Did something happen to set this off? Something at two in the morning? A dream perhaps?” Her other patients had described various sexual dreams. Winston Krauss, the pharmacist with the sexual obsession for marine mammals, confessed to dreaming of having sex with a blue whale, riding it through the depths like Ahab with a hard-on. Upon awakening, he’d abused his inflatable Flipper until it would no longer hold air.

Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her long maroon hair hid her face. “I dreamed I was having sex with a tank truck, and it blew up.”

“A tank truck?”

“I came.”

“Sexual dreams are completely normal, Chloe.” Right, a tank truck? That’s normal. “Tell me, was there fire in your dream?” Pyromaniacs de-rived sexual pleasure from setting and watching fires. That’s how they caught them, look in the crowd for a grinning guy with a woody and gas stains on his shoes.

“No, no fire. I woke up at the explosion. Val, what’s wrong with me? All I want to do is, you know, do it.”

“And you feel that you might do something impulsive?”

Chloe put on her cynical Goth-girl face. “If you mean something like buffing the muffin while I’m at work, yes, Dr. Riordan, I’m a little worried. Can’t you adjust my medication or something?”

There it was. In the past, that would have been the answer. Increase the Prozac to eighty milligrams, about four times the dose for the average de-pressed patient, and let the side effect of reduced libido do the work. Val had used the method to treat a nymphomaniac when she was an intern and it had worked marvelously. But what now? Duct tape oven mitts to her receptionist’s hands? Although her typing probably wouldn’t suffer much, it might make the patients nervous.

Val said. “Chloe, masturbation is a natural thing. Everyone does it. But obviously there are appropriate times and places. Perhaps you should just cut back. Allow yourself to masturbate as a reward for controlling your urges.”

Chloe’s face went slack. “Cut down? I’m worried about driving home safely. I have a stick shift. I need both hands to drive, but I don’t think I’m going to have them. Do you have a patch you can prescribe, like they do for smoking?”

“A patch?” Val suppressed a laugh. She imagined a twitching, moaning line of people around the block at the pharmacy, there to pick up their prescriptions for the orgasm patch. It would make heroin look like Gummi Bears. “No, there’s no patch, Chloe. You’re just going to have to try to control yourself. I have a feeling that this is a side effect of your medication. It should pass in a day or two. I want to hear more about this dream of yours. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”