Free Me, Myself and Why? by MaryJanice Davidson

asked, then yawned in my ear. “I can think of a lot of things about this situation—”
    “What situation?”
    “—but funny isn’t one of them.”
    “Listen,” I said, striving for patience, “when you see Cathie, tell her I got the rest of the day off, so I’ll be over early.”
    “I’m actually out the door five minutes ago.”
    “Five minutes ago?”
    “I’ve been having a weird conversation with someone who may or may not be Cadence Jones, which is why I didn’t leave five minutes ago.”
    “So?”
    “So I’m still here instead of at my lunch meeting. Of course, if I have to choke down one more stale bagel over spreadsheets and P&L reports, I may begin gagging uncontrollably.”
    “So.” I was confused; I admit it. “So you stayed on the phone with me to avoid gagging?”
    “It sounds cold when you put it like that,” he admitted. “Also, I’m late. Anyway—I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’ll leave Cathie a note.”
    “Well. Thanks.”
    “It’s the least I can do. Actually that’s not true. I hate when people say that, don’t you?”
    “Well . . .”
    “The least I can do is nothing. So I’ll leave a note. The second-to-least thing I could do.”
    “Great. Well. Bye.”
    “Bye, Agent Jones.”
    I hung up and wished I could say that was the oddest phone conversation I’d ever had. But that fight with the dry cleaner on Lake still had first place.

Chapter Eighteen
    A word about Cathie, my best friend (but not about her mysterious brother, who is weirdly coy during telephone conversations).
    We met at my home, of course, the MIMH (rhymes with “NIMH,” as in the Rats of, which is ironic if you think of it) back when we were teenagers and Cathie got a little too carried away with her cutting. Her family thought it was a suicide attempt, so there she was, admitted against her will and forced into, among other unsavory things, group therapy and mass-produced meals (to this day, she can’t stand to so much as look at Jell-O). I had been at the institute for years when she arrived.
    She was as fascinated by my lifestyle (“You live here? You’ve always lived here? Who takes care of you?”) as I was by hers (“Your parents voted Republican? In 2004? How did you manage to hold your head up high, knowing that?”). She was fun and high-strung and creative and deeply moody. Within a year she’d met my two sisters . . . and stayed friends anyway! Once she had done that, I knew she was doomed to be my best friend.
    And finally, I was going to meet Patrick. He was ten years older than she was, so she almost never saw him when she was growing up. He was away at college when she started cutting, and only came back to visit a couple times a year, always when I was on the road for work (or seeking new and intriguing therapies). Her parents were both in early-stage Alzheimer’s, and Patrick paid for the luxe nursing home they’d been living in for the last six years, ditto Cathie’s rent when she couldn’t swing it.
    He loved his family, I figured, but he didn’t know them. Maybe he’d stick around awhile this time.
    I headed right to Cathie’s from work. She had a beautiful house in Hastings, a town on the Mississippi River. It had been built during the Civil War (the house, not the town), and sometimes I’d find myself looking at the wooden banister or the built-in shelves and think. This was being built while Lincoln was president, while Shiro would think, This built-in shelf was installed the same year Lincoln got shot in the head by a sorry-ass actor, and Adrienne would gouge divots out of the beautifully polished hardwood floor in the dining room. Neat.
    I pulled up to her carefully tidy brick house and stepped around the hedges to go to the front door. I liked the woodwork; Cathie liked the hedges. She loved the fact that people couldn’t see her even from the front sidewalk. She babied those hedges and practically buried them in Quick Grow. Soon they would reach the