Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues (5 page)

Dr. Klein sits down across from Roy, turning a chair to face his new patient. “I’m glad you came today, Roy. I understand your old therapist moved away.”

“Wasn’t a therapist,” Roy mutters. “Just my shrink.”

“It’s about the same thing, isn’t it?”

“No. Doc Mancuso gave me my pills. That’s the end of it.”

“I see,” says Dr. Klein. “So you didn’t talk things over with him.”

“Like what?”

“Like … your problems, your thoughts. Trying to get to the heart of things.”

Roy sighs, leans into the chair. “My partner—my buddy Frankie—he said he knew you, said I could come to you, and you could get me the pills I need. Doc Mancuso had me on a
hundred and fifty milligrams of Anafranil and seventy-five of Zoloft. If you can’t do that, this session’s over before it’s fucking started.”

Klein smiles. “You certainly get right to the point.”

“And you skirt it. Can you get me the pills or not?”

“Yes,” says the doctor.

Roy relaxes. “Then let’s get that prescription pad out.”

“I tell you, Roy, I don’t usually prescribe medicine until I’ve had a little chat with the patient first.”

“How long’s that take?”

“You’ve got somewhere else to be?”

“I’ve always got somewhere else to be.” Roy’s feeling good now, not worrying about the carpet as much. Not worrying about the vomit. Much. He’ll be getting the pills soon, and that helps.

“A few minutes of your time, then. I’ll keep it short.”

“Good,” says Roy. He sits back in the chair. It’s comfortable. Padded. Like the recliner at home. “You wanna talk about my mother?”

“Do you?”

“No, but that’s how Doc Mancuso started things out. My mother, my father, my sisters.”

“Are you close with them?”

“They’re dead. All of ’em. You give me a family member, I’ll tell you they’re dead.”

Dr. Klein shuffles in his seat. “That’s—that’s not necessary.” He picks up the thin file folder on his desk, runs a finger down the side. “Says here you’re an antiques dealer.” Roy nods. “Do you enjoy that line of work?”

“ ’Sokay.”

“Business good?”

“Up days and down days.”

“You know,” Dr. Klein begins, stepping out of the chair, “I bought this piece a few years back at an estate sale. Chippendale, they told me, but I think I may have been—what’s the term?—snookered. Can you tell if it’s—”

“I’m off the clock, doc. Can we get on with this?”

Klein sits back down. “Fine,” he says. Upset, maybe? Roy can’t read him. “Married?”

“I was.”

“What was her name?”

“Heather.”

“And you’re … divorced?”

“Brilliant,” says Roy.

“Any kids?”

Roy shrugs. The doctor repeats his question. “Maybe,” Roy answers.

Klein raises an eyebrow. “Maybe. Maybe. That’s a new one.”

“Glad to help.”

“Maybe as in they might be yours, maybe as in …?”

Roy had to go through this with Doc Mancuso, but that man knew when to drop an issue. “Maybe as in she was pregnant when she left me. So maybe I got a kid, maybe I don’t.”

“You haven’t seen them.”

“What am I saying here? Yeah, I haven’t seen them.”

The doctor nods. Writes something down. “Have you tried?” he asks.

“Have I—what do you care?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you better. Get some sense—”

“What’s the point in trying if—Look, look, my wife left me on
a Tuesday morning, divorce papers sent through the mail. For all I know, she got hit by a crosstown bus that night. For all I know, there ain’t no kid to see. End of story. Get on with the drugs.”

Dr. Klein seems to understand. He sits back in his chair, looks at the file. “You say you’ve got some obsessive-compulsive behavior, coupled with depression.”

“That’s why he had me on the pills. Doc Mancuso, that’s what he said it was. That’s why the Anafranil and the—”

“I know, I understand. It’s just hard for me to make a diagnosis and dispense medication to a patient without getting a full grasp of—”

Roy scootches forward; the chair drags furrows in the dark red carpeting. He’s a foot away from the doctor, eyes locked. He stands. Places his hands over the doctor’s hands, locking them in place. Strapped down. Klein doesn’t struggle. “I spent the last week of my life in my living room recliner,” Roy says, his breath heavy, fogging the doctor’s glasses. “Watching the carpet. Watching the fibers on the goddamned carpet. Now I know this ain’t normal, but I can’t do a thing about it. When I try to leave my house, I can’t, because I don’t know if I turned off the burners. So I check them to make sure they’re not hot, and then I get ready to leave, but suddenly I’m thinking, uh-oh, what if when I was checking them the last time, I accidentally flipped one of them on? And even if I manage to get out of the door, I can’t leave the front step, ’cause I don’t know if I locked the door right, and I don’t know if I shut all the windows. So I stay inside and go through my routines and the whole time I’m doing that, I’m worrying that I’m gonna vomit. And the whole time I’m worrying that I’m gonna vomit, that there’s nothing that can stop me from letting loose right there and then, I’m thinking at the same
time that I’m a grown adult, that I should know what the hell is going on inside my own mind, and the more I think about it the more I realize I should just blow my fucking head off, and the more I want to blow my fucking head off, the more I think about what that’s going to do to the goddamned carpet.

“And that’s a good day, doc. So gimme the fucking pills and let me get on with my life.”

Roy washes down the medicine with a swig of soda. One little green pill, that’s all it takes. New medication, Doc Klein said, a better class of drug. Effexor, something like that. One pill takes care of the OCD and the depression. New inhibitors, he said. Anafranil is out. Zoloft is out. Roy doesn’t care. He’s glad to take anything.

“He just gave ’em to you?” Frankie is saying. “At the office?”

Roy nods. “Said the pharmacy would have to special-order it, said it would take a few days. He gave me a week’s worth.”

“That’s it?”

“Said he wants me to come back,” says Roy. “To talk. Nice fucking shrink you put me on.”

“Hey, he’s a good guy.”

“He’s a real chatterbox, wants to talk for an hour.”

Frankie steers his car into the parking lot of a small convenience store. “There’s other guys in town.”

“Other guys’ll make me talk for
two
hours. Fuck it, I’ll go, I’ll go.”

As they walk through the convenience store, Roy can already feel the medicine starting to work inside his body. Knows it’s not possible. Doesn’t care. He hasn’t thought about the bile in his
throat for ten minutes. No carpet in the store to worry about. Linoleum, scuffed. Dirty. That puts him out a little. Best to think about other things.

Frankie moves through the aisles, pulling down the worst that the food industry has to offer. Chips. Doughnuts. All the things that should kill him in time, but probably won’t. Roy doesn’t understand how Frankie stays so thin. Doesn’t particularly care, so long as he cleans up after himself. Frankie feels about food the way he feels about money: It’s there to be consumed, so what’s with all the worry?

When the store is cleared out, they approach the cashier. Behind the counter is a lottery board announcing the available games and the previous day’s winning numbers. “Gimme one of them pick fives,” Roy says. He pays a dollar and marks off the ticket with the exact same numbers that won the day before. “I want to play this for the drawing on the twenty-second.”

“Sir,” says the clerk, noticing the ticket, “the odds of the lottery hitting the same numbers in the same month—the same numbers ever—they are astronomical.”

“You my financial advisor?”

“No, sir—”

“You my mother?”

“No, sir—”

“No, sir, you are not. So take your dollar, gimme a ticket for the twenty-second, and clean up this joint before I report you to the board of health.”

Roy can’t believe what’s happened to customer service these days.

Back in the car, on the drive over to the Laundromat, Frankie starts in. “I talked to Saif again, he still wants to meet up.”

“Who?”

“Saif,” says Frankie. “Saif, the guy from the docks.”

“What is he, an Arab?”

“Or something. I think he’s from Turkey.”

Roy examines the lottery ticket, crumples it between his fingers. Scratches up the date, wears out the first number, so the ticket looks like it’s for the second instead of the twenty-second. Puts it on the floor of the car, steps on it. Gets it dirty. Used. “And he’s looking to …”

“Art. Fakes. He wants to unload some stuff.”

“Whadda we know about that?” Roy asks.

“Let’s just meet with the guy.”

“For what?”

“To meet with him. To make nice.” Frankie rips open a bag of potato chips and shoves a handful into his mouth. “Jesus, Roy, you don’t budge.”

The Laundromat is across the street. Roy sits up in the car seat, straightens his shirt. Tucks the lottery ticket back in his pocket. “We’ll discuss it later.”

“It’s always later—”

“Task at hand,” Roy says. “Focus.”

“Can I get a maybe outta you? A single fucking maybe?”

Roy knows this will be easier if he just gives in. Over in a second, no more conversation. It’s always this way with Frankie. That makes Roy want to stand his ground even more, but there’s a job to be done. “Maybe. Drop me off on the corner.”

Frankie pulls over, and Roy steps out of the car. He considers
putting on a tie, then drops the idea. White collar, but not too white collar. That’s the look. Frankie pops his trunk, and Roy grabs the clothes inside. They’re clean, but they could be cleaner. Either way, they’re getting washed today.

The sun is out, and the rays beat down on Roy’s face. It was supposed to be cool this week. Roy doesn’t like the heat. He doesn’t like to sweat. Even if it’s not a tell, he doesn’t like to sweat. Maybe it helps the part, though. Maybe today it’s not so bad.

The Laundromat has big fans blowing the hot air in circles, enough to cool it down a notch. Make it bearable. Small place, maybe twenty washers, ten oversized dryers. Not too crowded, either.

A single man, a black man, sitting on a washer, reading through a magazine. Not what Roy wants.

A couple, laughing, foreheads together, noses touching. Kissing. Not what Roy wants, either.

At the end of the aisle, a middle-aged woman separates whites from colors. There are shirts in there, women’s blouses, but there are also small cotton undies. She has kids. The jewelry is minimal, but what there is seems average enough from a distance. Clothing is discount rack, but put together with a degree of care. Bleached blonde. Eyebrows still black. This is what Roy is looking for. This is the place to be.

Roy drags himself down the left aisle, looking at the washers, searching for a good one to use. He’s humming beneath his breath, a happy tune. Nothing concrete, just happy. A set of washers two down from the woman with the kid’s clothes is open, lids gaping wide.

“These taken?” Roy asks.

“No,” says the woman. Her voice is low, scratchy. She yells a lot, Roy figures.

“You don’t need it, I mean? You’ve got a lot of laundry.”

She smiles, and a few years vanish from her face. “This is nothing,” she says. “You oughta catch me after baseball practice.”

“Kids?”

“Three boys, two girls.” She’s happy to talk, Roy can tell. Wants adult conversation. “And the washer in our building is broken, so I have to haul out here between dropping ’em off at school and picking ’em up.”

“Hard run, but they’re a blessing. Came from a big family, myself. Seven of us. All tight as we can be. Got so where we didn’t know when the next meal was coming, but …”

“But you gotta have faith,” she finishes.

“That’s the truth. Now we get together, family reunions—you know, a weekend here, a weekend there—nobody closer than me and my brothers and sisters. Kinda thing that bonds you, you know?”

The woman smiles, and Roy turns to his laundry. Piles the shirts, the pants, the boxers, gets it all ready to go. He doesn’t want to put it in the washer yet. Maybe he won’t need to. This feels right. She feels right.