Boyfriend from Hell (24 page)

“Even if you’re saying I did this subconsciously, I still can’t draw.”

“Inwardly, evidently you can. A talent lost within you. Would we find that you actually drew well when you were little? And when your mother died, you stopped.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“And your father’s not here to ask. It could be that. Something else concerns me, though, how overloaded you are with this imagery. It’s leaking out of you, Veronica.”

Kaufman revisited what she considered the crucial source of Ronnie’s preoccupation with Satan as a symbol, Ronnie’s belief that she was the bad girl whose bad behavior caused her father to be distracted, the accident to occur, and her mother to die.

“You keep stressing various elements had to take place and I wasn’t at the center of it. But what you don’t have an answer for is if I didn’t cause my father to turn around, the accident wouldn’t have happened.”

“I do have an answer. I still don’t place you at the center of the events. Who told him to turn around, Veronica? People talk to children in the backseat of cars all the time without taking their eyes off the wheel. That was his responsibility, not yours. But we’ll keep discussing it. We have to.”

“I guess time is up.”

“It’s painful, I know.” She looked closely at Ronnie. “Something else I must say. I don’t like this book for you, Veronica. A person bedeviled, to choose an appropriate word, bedeviled by images of Satan, doing a book on satanic possession—by my estimation you’re the worst possible person to write a book like this. Do you have a contract?”

“Yes. I made a commitment. I have an advance.”

“I think you should consider terminating the book. You could give back the advance. If there’s a legal issue, I’m an MD, I could give you a letter that will vouch for the injurious nature of your doing this book.”

“That is pretty strong.”

“I mean it to be. The Cummings article, all right, it seemed like a good idea for an article and it was, and you didn’t get drawn in. But possession, bombarding yourself with satanic ideology and images, it’s not good for you, a person with a deep affinity for Satan as evil, with feelings of yourself as an evil, bad little girl. Veronica, it would be criminal of me to sit here aware of your personal history and to know you’re working on this particular book and not advise you to give it up.”

“It’s my work.”

“This book isn’t your work.
Writing
is. It’s a project, one project, and for you, the wrong project, as I see it.”

“I wonder if you’re within professional bounds to come down so strongly—”

“I’d go so far as to say you shouldn’t even postpone it. I think all it would accomplish is postpone these reactions. This is not the material for you, Veronica.”

“A writer doesn’t build a career abandoning projects.”

“You could do articles again. You do them very well. You could do other books. This book, in my judgment, is overloading you with images of Satan, the worst possible images for you. Please consider what I’ve said to you.”

Ronnie and Nancy sat in Ronnie’s bedroom, Ronnie sitting up in the bed, Nancy on the floor, the two friends with various talks in the past between them about men and dating and single life and work, now with a crisis that went beyond anything in their experience. Kaufman’s explanation for the drawings was close enough to their first instinct about it—Ronnie illustrated her research—and they found that plausible. Ronnie did not find plausible her technical ability to create the renderings. The dots seemed to connect on the Satan images in Ronnie’s dreams—Ronnie thinking of herself as bad, hence, evil, hence, images of Satan. What she was supposed to do with the therapist’s insight was elusive and she didn’t feel immediately better for the therapist suggesting cause and effect. On whether or not to discontinue the book as Kaufman recommended, Ronnie and Nancy could deal with practical considerations. Ronnie had already spent some of the advance money for the work she had done. Nancy dismissed the money as a problem. If Ronnie wanted to get out of the project, she and Bob would lend her the money to drop it. Nancy called Bob for confirmation and he agreed. The money was off the table, leaving the core issue—was the book having a harmful effect on Ronnie and would dropping the book have an adverse effect on her career as a writer? Nancy sided with Kaufman, she didn’t like the idea of the bad dreams, and the drawings were bewildering and frightening. She was troubled that her friend was capable of such dark imagery. If the book was pushing her in that direction, she didn’t see Ronnie continuing it. What that meant professionally, abandoning your first book assignment, she couldn’t tell, and suggested they talk to Jenna Hawkins.

“That’s a baby thing to do, to tell an agent, ‘My therapist says this book is bad for me, I’m being emotionally disturbed by it and I should drop it.’”

“I haven’t been at it long enough. I don’t want to be offering wrong advice.”

“It’s unprofessional. Asking her. Dropping the book. It’s all unprofessional.”

“Talk to Bob. Not his field, but he’s a smart guy, he can give a practical opinion.”

“Let’s get him over here.”

Bob came bearing a pizza and a bottle of red wine for dinner. He listened to Ronnie’s presentation of the arguments pro and con, then asked to see the drawing in question. She brought it out and his forehead furrowed when he examined it.

“You drew this and you don’t remember and you never had any skills for drawing anything like this?”

“Looks that way.”

He reached across the table and gently touched Ronnie’s hair.

“Such images churning around inside you. You’ve got to listen to the therapist, Ronnie. She’s got your best interests at heart. And then …”

“And then what?” Ronnie asked.

“There’s the other problem.”

“What other problem?”

“Richard, he got you the book contract, didn’t he?”

“Basically. Jenna made the deal.”

“I don’t like him, I don’t trust him, I don’t think he’s the guy for you. And if you’re working on a book that may be messing you up, makes sense to me he’s the one who got you into it.”

“What’s in it for him—for me to be messed up?”

“Who knows? I’m just saying it’s no big surprise that something bad for you comes from this guy. Maybe he likes his women messed up or insecure or vulnerable so he can come off the masterful stud.”

“The assumptions here—” Ronnie said.

“Look at the way he treats you. He’s dangling you like you’re a puppet on a string. He’s in town, he’s out of town, he’s in Europe, he’s back, then he’s gone, you don’t know much about him. I Googled the guy and I went on his Web site, too.”

“Really?” Ronnie said.

“I did it after the bowling. Does she know about it?”

“I never said anything.”

“You should know about it. He wasn’t great at the bowling if you recall, just average. When you were in the ladies’ room, when no one was watching, he threw a perfect strike, like he could bowl a perfect game if he wanted to.”

“So he was being accommodating with us,” Ronnie said. “He didn’t want to throw off the curve. It was social.”

“It was strange. And I’m not sure but he
wanted
me to see it. An in-my-face kind of thing. Any way you look at it, it wasn’t honest. So I tried to find out a little more about him. There are gaps in his bio. And his Web site, he comes off as an absolute true believer in Satan.”

“Reasoned,” Ronnie offered.

“Reasoned, yes, but a true believer. Okay, I’m Jewish, so most of the Christian God versus the Christian Satan doesn’t speak to me, but he’s in there, mainline. Can you really be serious about someone who truly believes the devil is not in the details, Ronnie, but in our lives? How much do you know about him?”

“Not a lot.”

“Well, you know what you know, how he treats you.”

“He says he’s settling in, starting a book of his own, and he’ll be around more.”

“God help you. Drop the book, Ronnie, and then drop him. No charge for the advice.”

Ronnie wasn’t prepared to act on the advice; his assumptions were too extreme, the leaps too great, that it was in some way within Richard’s interest to have her thrown off balance. Richard did get the book assignment for her and she didn’t see how it was a negative thing; a natural outgrowth of the Cummings article, a step up for her writing career, an excellent contract, a fascinating subject. If the material was so fascinating that it was somehow getting into her psyche, that may have been a reason to soldier on; readers would find it fascinating, too. And there was also the raw work. She thought the outline was solid and that the pages she had written were well done. Bob was looking out for her, but she couldn’t dismiss the possibility of some serious male-to-male competitiveness operating there.

Ronnie came to Jenna Hawkins’s office and Nancy sat in on the meeting.

“Nancy tells me you’re having nightmares over this book?”

“Nightmares would cover it,” and deciding to go directly at the heart of the issue, “and the therapist I’m seeing, Martha Kaufman—”

“Yes, she’s well known.”

“She’s advised me to drop the book, that there’s an unfortunate conflict between my emotional DNA and the subject matter of the book.”

“What would that be?”

“Along the lines that Satan is a heavy symbol for me, since I was a child, since my mother died when I was young, and doing a book on Satan brings out a lot of loaded responses, such as Satan showing up in my dreams, really bad dreams. And other things, too. She just thinks this project is not what I should be doing.”

“I’m not in the psychology business, I’m in the book business. Martha Kaufman wrote a wonderful book, but that doesn’t put her in the book business. So let’s try to look at this in terms of the book business. Do you want to get out of this contract?”

“Everything I’m about says I should do it, finish, do the job. I signed the contract. I have a responsibility, and it’s a terrific contract for a potentially terrific book. On the other side, a therapist with a good reputation is taking the position that I absolutely shouldn’t be doing this book.”

“If you drop the book is it that you’ll never work again in this town—is that your concern?”

“I’d like to know that.”

“You can get out of the book. Authors do it all the time. You
will
have to give back the advance. And in this case, you’ve just begun, it’s not like it’s even in their catalog. Probably Burris won’t be keen on doing another project with you, but this won’t disqualify you from working with other houses. How was the book going up to now?”

“Good.”

“Would you like to talk to Burris about it, get an extension?”

“The therapist is saying I should just let go of it.”

“As I said, I’m not in the psychology business. In terms of the book business, it’s a good opportunity, but you don’t have to do the book if you don’t want to.”

“I appreciate the advice.”

“I would suggest if you decide not to proceed to get right back on the horse, start writing other things immediately, articles, perhaps try for a different book; don’t create a writer’s block for yourself.”

“I won’t.”

She e-mailed Richard:

Been having really, really bad dreams. Seeing a therapist, Martha Kaufman. Strongly advises me to drop the book, says it’s “bedeviling” me, bad images of Satan flooding in on me. Would like to proceed. I think it’s going well and I love the idea of the book. But this is not good.


She suspected, with his general remoteness, he was not the kind of man likely to respond to any of the news bulletins contained in her e-mail, that she was in distress, sleeping badly, in therapy, and the big news, she was considering dropping the book. Her sense of him was that he abhorred complications and liked things one-foot-out-the-door clean. And yet if she couldn’t tell him for fear he would disappear permanently, what
was
she doing in the relationship? Sometimes you need to reach out, you’re in difficulty, and if the other person can’t reach out to you, then you shouldn’t be in the relationship; it isn’t anything substantial, it’s just sex, which is okay, except there are times when you need more.

Just when she had talked herself into having set in motion an end to the affair, she checked her e-mail to find:

So sorry you’re not great. You are great and should always be great. Will be on the 7
P.M.
shuttle. See you by 9. Will come to your place. Work here can hold for a day. We’ll talk this out.


She was taken by surprise. He was dropping everything to see her. Ronnie asked Nancy if she would stay at Bob’s that evening, and Ronnie bought ingredients for a salad for dinner and waited out the day. Unable to work and not knowing if she still was doing this project, she caught up on magazines, assessing the writers, then rereading her piece on Cummings. Good work, she concluded. But he didn’t have to die.

Richard appeared in his blazer and jeans, carrying an overnight bag. He entered and without saying a word, placed his arms around her and embraced her, holding the back of her head with his hand, drawing her head to his shoulder, an enveloping, warm embrace that said, Don’t worry, I’m here.

She was completely open with him. She showed him the drawings, told him about the dreams, the recurring images of Satan; reported Kaufman’s view of the relevance of Satan imagery to her feelings of guilt over the death of her mother; spoke of her father; and then of blacking out, winning the race, and losing the day with Cummings, her voice breaking from time to time. His eyes narrowed several times in concentration as she presented herself in her vulnerability. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

“So much to go through. Too much,” he said.

And in a parallel gesture, she took his hands in hers and kissed them.

“I’m higher maintenance than you ever would have imagined.”

“So am I, I suppose. You’re a complex person with a complex life. And it does make you interesting,” he teased.

She gave him an account of the meeting with Jenna Hawkins, and expressed how she was still conflicted. On one side was her sense of the right thing to do, finish the book, fulfill your obligation, and beyond that, write a terrific book on a good subject. On the other side was a respected therapist strongly opposed to her continuing the book because the project was dramatically ill-suited for her.