Free Displacement by Michael Marano

dollars.
    “Take a cab,” I say to the woman, and hand her the money. “There’s a taxi stand around the corner.”
    I don’t hear what the woman says. It could be “Thank you.” All I’m aware of is her eyes, because they’re suddenly empty of despair. The change in her eyes makes me feel warm and human as she turns and walks away.
    When I meet Catherine’s eyes, they brim with fury I’ve never seen before.
    Our bus comes, stinking of soot, the brakes making an asthmatic grunt as it pulls to the curb. She boards without paying, takes a seat in the rear. I pay for us both and join her.
    Her gaze is fixed on the inky view of the window. I look at the back of her head as the bus pulls out and the other couple at the stop is left behind, fading to shadow.
    “You want an Oscar, or something?” she says to the glass, her words misting the window with each syllable.
    I say nothing.
    “For your theatrics.”
    “I wasn’t being theatrical.”
    “Don’t you be condescending to me . . . don’t you dare!”
    She turns to me. The soft blues of her mascara run in streaks down her face.
    “You did that to embarrass me. Did you enjoy embarrassing me? I hope it was worth it.”
    “No.”
    “Then why did you do it?”
    “Do what?”
    “Give that woman money for a cab? While we take the
bus
? Was it because of what I’d said about your cynicism? You had to do something nice and humane to show me wrong, didn’t you? Well that’s the most cynical fucking thing you could have ever done, you fucking misanthrope!”
    In her apartment, in the prison of her possessions, in the Victorian four-poster bed that had been a graduation gift from her grandmother, to the tune of the sound machine mimicking the fauna of an endangered rainforest, we lie naked and distant from each other, invisible barriers raised against each other’s touch.
    I feel awful, and wonder what I can do to make amends.
    —Catherine had a victim in you, but you’ve had victims yourself. With the sudden absence of the dusk-world I’d been defining with
hard and shadowed words
, the room seemed naked as I felt. Our stage hollowed itself to the brutally minimalist.
    —I’ve taken eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth.
    The echo of my voice returned from a greater, emptier distance than it had before, a distance void of props. My hypocrite twin, sheltered by his curtain of silvered glass, felt further away as well. He was our audience, who himself had yet to be cast in the role I now played.
    —You’ve victimized people to feel better about yourself. You and Catherine are the same.
    To deny what he says would lead to a too-deep and detailed reiteration of the chess games of our First Act. I needed to push forward our drama, and so surrendered a pawn to him. I had no interest in his insights to make me well. How was there any possibility for the years of therapy it would take to make me well by his standards? Why bother? Life’s too short.
    —How they victimized me was more insidious than what I’ve done. They each betrayed a trust, abused power I’d given them. I just killed them.
    Doctor Johansson leaned back. I envied his ability to move that way, to make leather cushions creak and groan. His eyes narrowed. He was drawing something into focus, as would a good actor playing Sherlock Holmes, weaving strands into a solution for the crime. Was this a
new
role he played? Or a new layer to the role he’d been playing?
    —Dean, I have to be direct. Everyone deals with abuses of power and trust. But not everyone does what you have. I need specifics. Contexts. The D.A. wants a preliminary hearing in the next two weeks. So I have to ask, were you an abused child?
    His asking this long-expected question was invasive, despite his decorum and the shift in his demeanour that told me he was about to ask that very question.
Of course
I’d been abused. Even if I hadn’t been, the enchanted cloak in which I’d mantled myself would require me to say I was.