Free Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake Page B

shrugged. “The point is, he comes to the city on a regular schedule.”
    May said, “I was just thinking about special medicines or treatments or something that we might have to have.”
    â€œHe looks healthy, May,” Kelp said. “Besides, we’ll only have him a day or two. He probably won’t even miss a session.”
    â€œI’d still like to know who he sees,” May said. “Just what kind of specialist. Just to know.”
    10
    J IMMY H ARRINGTON, LYING on the black naugahyde couch in Dr. Schraubenzieher’s office, looking over at the pumpkin-colored drapes half-closed over the air-shaft window, said, “You know, for the last few weeks, every time I come into the city I keep having this feeling, someone is watching me .”
    â€œMmhm?”
    â€œA very specific kind of watching,” Jimmy said, “I have this feeling, I’m somebody’s target. Like a sniper’s target. Like the man in the tower in Austin, Texas.”
    â€œMm hm?”
    â€œThat’s obviously paranoid, of course,” Jimmy said. “And yet it doesn’t truly have a paranoid feel about it. I think I understand paranoid manifestations, and this seems somehow to be something else. Do you have any ideas, Doctor?”
    â€œWell,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said, “why don’t we study the implications? You feel that you are being watched, that you are somehow a target. Is that right?”
    â€œThat’s right. A very specific sensation of eyes, of being observed for some purpose. It’s like that well-known phenomenon of being on a plane and feeling that one is under observation, and then looking around to see that some other passenger actually is looking at you.”
    â€œAnd in the current situation? Is anyone actually looking at you?”
    Jimmy frowned at the drapes. They moved slightly, stirred by the quiet air-conditioner in the wall below. “I don’t know,” he said. “So far I haven’t caught anyone at it.”
    â€œ Caught anyone? A very suggestive phrase, that.”
    â€œBut that’s the way it feels.” Jimmy concentrated, trying to get in touch with his feelings. He’d been in analysis for nearly four years, and was very professional about it by now. “There’s an element of … sport in it,” he said. “As though it’s a game, and I win if I catch them looking at me. I know that sounds childish, but that is the sensation.”
    â€œAs I am forced to remind you frequently, Jimmy,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said mildly, “you are a child. A childlike response, even from you, is not necessarily a negative event.”
    â€œI know,” Jimmy said. One of his unresolved and so-far unstated disagreements with the doctor concerned this aspect of childlike behavior; Jimmy felt that his own disapproval of such behavior in himself was so instinctive and so strong that it simply had to be trusted. He was not, however, prepared as yet to debate the issue with Dr. Schraubenzieher, so he altered the subject slightly, saying, “Why did you say that ‘caught anyone’ was a suggestive phrase?”
    â€œYou know very well why,” the doctor said; he himself knew very well why Jimmy was veering away from the topic of childishness, but he wouldn’t push the matter. In the course of the analysis the debate must eventually arise, and it would be better to wait for Jimmy to feel strong enough to raise the subject himself.
    At the moment, Jimmy had hared off after this semantic scent. “I don’t see that ‘caught anyone’ is a particularly pertinent phrase,” he said. “It’s merely the standard idiom in that circumstance, normal American usage: ‘I caught him looking at me’ is simply the way that’s said. I suppose it’s the mind’s instinctive aversion to the duplication of idea implicit in ‘I saw him looking.’ On the