Free Lucky Leonardo by Jonathan D. Canter Page B

room…” She released her brassiere and discarded her panties and showed full frontal nudity to the back yard without any further prompting or pawing from Leonardo.
    â€œHubbada,” said Leonardo.
    So he knew from the start she had a window issue, which under the circumstances he found more exciting than pathological, but which he kept an eye on, and when she periodically sat bolt upright at the sound of the wind, or ran to the window when a distant dog barked, he did employ a little shrinking to talk her down, and in the process wormed out the story of her high school boyfriend Roger LaFlamme who, unbeknownst to her mother who knew him, and his father before him, and couldn’t stand either, sneaked to her first floor bedroom window when they were passionately dating and helped her out for the night or helped himself in, and continued to sneak to her window when they weren’t dating anymore, particularly when he’d been drinking, and scared her to death. Sometimes he just stood outside in the dark and watched and waited, and left soiled tissues and empty beer bottles. Other times he tapped on her window, or taped messages on her window, or peed on her window. One drunken time he smashed her window with a stone and jumped through the jagged glass into her room and grabbed her by the hair as she screamed and as he bled, and spun her around until he passed out. She obtained a court order that he stay away.
    â€œMaybe I should have married him,” Chrissie told Leonardo. “If he stopped drinking I might have. He was cute. He still tells people he loves me.”
    â€œHigh school romances are profound,” Leonardo commented. He wanted to share the story of Barbara and Stan’s high school romance, but didn’t because it hurt and made him look like a fool. Chrissie didn’t need to know how he happened to be hiding in the bushes in front of Stan’s porch. Unlike his other private parts, he kept his life history zipped and out of Chrissie’s reach.
    Likewise he didn’t think she needed him to remind her that she was the one who opened the window, which Roger LaFlamme, if he happened to be flying by on the wings of the wind, might take as an invitation to love and terrorize her. Like she was asking for it.
    So Leonardo waited for Chrissie’s initial intensity to pass, and for her to be amenable to gentle talk. “Sweetheart, it was just the wind,” he said as her ears reclined a little, and her nipples diffused. “It’s strong tonight. It needs strength to push away the fall and pull in the winter.”

Chapter 16
    The man spoke to the man in the cool, dark room, which was closed and fastidiously sealed from the outside like a womb or a tomb so that it might be midnight, and long ago and far away. The walls were decorated with cave paintings and plaster stalactites which appeared and disappeared in the flicker of the flame at the tip of a very long and slender white candle rising like the neck of a swan in the center of the room. Except for the words passing back and forth, the room was very quiet, so quiet you could hear the feet of the dancing flame.
    â€œI take it that this atmosphere is intended to free my mind of inconsequential details, like time and place,” the man in the patient’s chair commented.
    The other, his body in shadows but his fleshy face to the flame, red and grotesque, nodded.
    â€œDo you still use your couch?” the man in the patient’s chair asked. He sensed but could only dimly see the horizontal bulk of the ancient couch lying low against the wall.
    â€œSometimes,” the other answered. “Would you like to try?”
    â€œNo, doc. It still feels too dangerous.”
    â€œIt’s just a couch.”
    â€œLike a cigar is just a cigar. I could make myself walk over to it, and lie down on it. But you know and I know I’m not supposed to…”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œâ€¦because if I