The portal

I think there is something wrong with me, emotionally." I nodded. She'd said this before. In almost every session. Lucy Delrey had been in therapy with me for two months. Every Tuesday evening at 6:00 p.m. she arrived at my office on Manhattan's Upper East Side, sat opposite me, and we chipped away at her defenses.

"Why do you feel there's something wrong?" I asked her.

"I just don't feel anything, Dr. Snow. Not even in the most extreme circumstances."

"What are the most extreme circumstances?" The conversation we were having was almost identical to the conversation we'd had last week, and every week before that. We always got to this point when Lucy would shut down, sit silently for a few minutes, and then change the subject and talk about how as a child she'd wanted to be an artist and about the man who had inspired her.

Tonight she answered me, for the first time.

"When I destroy someone. Even then, Dr. Snow. I don't feel anything."

She paused. Looked at me. Waited. Tried to read my face. But I was sure I hadn't shown any shock or surprise. I was used to confessions. Even overly dramatic ones, like this.

I persevered. "What do you mean, destroy someone?"

In the few seconds it took until she answered, I anticipated she meant that she was speaking of destruction metaphorically. I waited, curious.

"Destroy. You know. Assassinate." Her voice started out as a whisper and became softer with each additional word. "Annihilate." And softer still so that the last word, "Kill," was barely audible.

There was no change of expression while she spoke, but as soon as she finished, a look of exhaustion settled on her face. As if just saying the words had been tiring.

It was this expression that made me wonder for a brief second if it was actually possible that she was‑no. In all the time she had been in therapy, nothing she had ever said suggested she was capable of killing anyone. She was using these words as a metaphor for the psychological destruction of people she loved.

"I should feel something. I should be upset." Her voice was back to its usual timbre.

This was the longest Lucy had ever gone without mentioning Frank Millay‑the artist she had known when she was a child‑ who had painted watercolors on the boardwalk in Brooklyn Heights.

Some sessions she described the paintings: how they captured the essence of the river and the cityscape, how they moved her and made her want to learn how to use the brush and the pigments to create washes that would mean something. Other nights she told me about the painter himself and how it had taken her, a girl of seven, months to get him to talk to her and then finally to show her how to use the brush on the thick paper that had a texture created to capture the merest hint of color.

During all those sessions I had become aware of my patient's attention to detail. Her obsession with color. Her memory that retained every nuance of those days.

But even after all those months I did not know why Lucy had come to me.

Oh, I knew she was troubled by what she perceived about her lack of emotion. But we never got further than the fact of it. The only real emotion she ever exhibited was when she spoke about the painter and the paintings and her impression of them.

Now, finally, she had broken the repetition of her childhood memories with a revelation that caught me off guard.

"What do you think about when you are‑while you are destroying someone?"

"Just that it's a job. I'm concentrating on the steps. On the work."

I still didn't believe that she was serious. Nothing in her character suggested it. I had worked with men and women in prison. I'd listened to descriptions of cold‑blooded murders and crimes of passion. I'd watched patients' faces contort with anguish as they described breaking out of a fugue state and finding a knife or a gun in their hand or their fingers around someone's throat, the skin a milky blue‑white streaked with finger burns.

"I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm not sure I understand. 'It's a job'? Do you mean that literally? I thought you were a photographer."

"I am. But in addition…people hire me…" Lucy's words trailed off.

I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

"It's not something I talk about in polite society. I'm not used to talking about it. But I think you need to know so that you understand me better. So that you can help me figure out why I don't even care about how I fuck up people's lives. Destroy them."

I put my right foot out in front of me instinctively.

To press down on the panic button.

But there was no such button in my office‑it was in the small room where I used to conduct therapy sessions at the prison. Lucy was so convincing that she actually was a killer that I'd responded the way I would with a criminal in prison and extended my foot to call for help. This prickling realization‑that Lucy might indeed be a killer and not just speaking in metaphor‑chilled me.

But I didn't have the luxury of focusing on how I was feeling. I had to say something. To get Lucy to keep talking. To get more information from her. To figure out what I was going to do because the one time a therapist can break a client's confidentiality is if a life is in imminent danger.

The one time.

"I don't believe that you don't have feelings about what you do," I offered. "Usually when we don't feel it's because we are blocking our emotions."

"Why would I do that? It's how I make my living. I'm not ashamed of it. I kill them with their own passions."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know that if you offer a man sex he won't pay a whole lot of attention to who you are? The same man who would run a Dun & Bradstreet before he'd take your business call will take a woman to bed without even knowing her last name. It's that lust that I count on. That hard‑cock need that makes what I do so easy. Too easy really. I don't think that a man should be that easy to murder. He should fight. He should be scared. He should know his life is in danger‑not just be lying there bare‑assed and spread‑eagled with a blonde giving him head. They don't even know…" Lucy stopped here to take a sip from the coffee cup she'd brought in with her.

My own hand was shaking slightly. I hoped Lucy didn't notice.

Yes, I'd heard confessions like this before, but always before in the prison, with guards watching. Not here in my office.

"Does it give you pleasure?"

She nodded. "If I know enough about the man. And if he's enough of a scum. Yes. You could say I'm some sort of avenging angel. I only kill men who deserve it. Who have done the unforgivable. Who need to be punished."

I was watching for any sign of psychosis, still trying to tell if this was fantasy or reality. But her pupils were not dilated. Her breathing was regular. There was no sweat on her upper lip or forehead. No sheen to her skin. Her fingers did not twitch in her lap. Her feet did not tap. She spoke in the same even voice I'd heard for a long time. She seemed in full control and connected, very much in the present moment.

"The painter," she said. I nodded. "When I was a kid, he made me realize that anything could be made into something else. He'd look at that water that I just saw as some stretch of muddy blue and he'd find a hundred colors in it. Some of them brilliant."

"Did the painter die?"

"I don't know. He moved away. He didn't tell me. One day, he was just gone. I went looking for him. But no one knew what happened. I look in galleries when I can. He'd be about fifty now. Fifty‑year‑old men are easier to fool than thirty‑year‑old men. The younger men aren't always sure. They succumb but they can be a little suspicious at first. Like, why is she coming on to me? To me? But the older guys are so damn flattered you can see their eyes getting erections. They are too damn easy."

I nodded. "Maybe the painter died. Maybe he didn't move away."

She didn't say anything. But suddenly her eyes filled with tears. One rolled down her cheek and she reached out to brush it away. Her surprise at her tears was clear.

"I never thought about him dying."

"Why not? Why did you assume he moved without saying goodbye?"

She shook her head as if she were getting rid of the question I'd raised. And then she changed the subject. "I should be upset about what I do. I know I should. But it's like these guys deserve it. I mean most of them are doing something to someone. They are abusing someone somehow. It's not like they are all nice guys. But I give all of them a chance. Before I take them back to the room, I give them a chance to turn me down. I ask them if they are married or if they have a girlfriend. And then ask them if they really want to do this. If they really want to hurt the women they are with."

"Some of them must say no."

"Not very many. Maybe two."

I wanted to ask her out of how many. But I didn't want to stop her.

"One man stroked my skin. His fingertips were as soft as a woman's. He had blue eyes. I remember his eyes. Because of those damn fingers that ran up and down my arm making me shiver. Usually, I don't feel anything. That's what I meant. Before. I don't feel anything when they touch me. Or when I pull the trigger."

"You use a gun?"

I hadn't meant to ask that bluntly‑as if I doubted her. It was unprofessional. I'd wanted to ask her how she killed them, not blurt out the worse‑case scenario I could imagine.

She looked at me as if I were the one who was crazy and needed help. "A gun?"

"When you kill them?"

"Dr. Snow, I set them up. I pump them up. I am a hired assassin. I expose them and ruin them. My whole apartment is a camera. I destroy them by taking pictures of them and then turning them over to cops or detectives or the tabloids. Character assassin." She smiled.

And for a few seconds there was no question in my mind that a man would go with her and not think twice.

"Do you think I should try to find him? Find Frank Millay, finally?"

It was the end of the session, but I didn't stand as I often did to signify that Lucy's time was up. She had arrived at a crucial point in her therapy and I didn't want to cut her short.

"I think you want to find him. And that's what's important."

Typically, I preferred to ask, not to answer, questions. In fact, I'd told Lucy, the same way I told all my patients at some point, that only by answering one's own questions could one come to terms with personal truths. But she had finally expressed a need, a desire. And that was a breakthrough for her. From everything she'd described, she hadn't given in to any real emotion since that last time she was with him. She called him the portal. After he was gone, her emotional life effectively stopped.

"There's one thing, Lucy. We need to make sure that if you do go find him it's to understand. Not to act out."

She smiled, slyly, seductively, slipping into the pose she used when she needed to hide from me. From anyone, I guessed. I'd witnessed her do this in almost every session. We'd get close to something critical and she would shut down.

Was Lucy ready to go find Millay?

Was it within the realm of my responsibility to hold her back?

"I'm sure that I'm going to understand. Not to act out. Aren't you sure, Dr. Snow?"

"While we've considered that something may have happened with Frank Millay that both closed you up emotionally and caused him to disappear, I wish you would give it some more time here. But I understand your frustration. How long are you going to give yourself to find him?"

"I don't know. Maybe a couple of weeks?"

"Would you think about coming in for another session? Or two? So we can make sure that if you find out what happened, you will be prepared."

Lucy grasped the implication immediately. She sat with her back pressed into her chair, all defensiveness now, her legs tightly crossed and turned sideways. "I've already done regressive‑analysis hypnosis with my last therapist," she said. "We didn't uncover anything like that."

"Like what, Lucy?"

"Like rape."

"But that doesn't mean you haven't buried the bare facts."

"The bare facts." Moisture was evident in Lucy's eyes and her voice came hot with anger, although she, too, modulated her volume. "Frank Millay did not rape me."

"All right."

"Please don't 'all right' me, Doctor. I would remember that. I promise you."

I nodded, drew in a breath. I couldn't hold her here. "You're searching for something that you've lost, and whatever that is has had a profound effect on your ability to feel things. If you can find that something in the real world, rather than in my office, or with some other psychoanalyst, yes, Lucy, yes, it might start the healing."

"Law offices of Bascom, Owen, Millay." "Oh. Could I speak to Frank Millay, please?" "Certainly," the cultured female voice said. "Can I tell him who's calling?"

"An old friend. I'm not sure if he'd remember me. My name is Lucy Delrey." "Just a moment."

On the one hand, it had been too easy; and on the other hand, impossible. Before Dr. Snow's suggestion that she try to physically locate Frank Millay, Lucy had looked in a haphazard fashion through gallery openings in the newspapers, or stopped in at galleries when the art struck her in some way that seemed vaguely familiar. She never consciously considered the fact that the street artist had given up on his first love and entered another field. Similarly, she had never before considered Googling the name Frank Millay.

Where the name came up in two seconds.

An attorney in San Francisco.

It couldn't possibly be the same man. But she had to call and find out. She had to be sure. "This is Frank Millay."

For an instant, she found herself tongue‑tied. But then, afraid that he'd hang up if she didn't speak, she found her voice. "Is this the Frank Millay who used to be an artist in New York?"

Now the pause came from the other end. "Who used to paint anyway. Yes." Another hesitation. "I'm sorry. My secretary gave me your name, but."

"Lucy," she said. "Lucy Delrey. I was a little girl."

"Oh my God," he said under his breath. "Little Lucy, of course. How little were you then?"

"Seven. I'm thirty now."

"Thirty? God. Thirty is impossible."

"Not if you're about fifty. That would be about right." She couldn't hold back a small, nervous laugh. It was his voice. She'd have recognized it anywhere. Although it had an unaccustomed seriousness to it, an adultness that she thought befit his new profession. "You're a lawyer now?"

"Only for the past twenty years," he said. "Wow, Lucy." Words seemed to fail him. "You looked me up?"

"Googled you actually, yes."

"But.what are you doing? Where are you?"

"I'm home, still in New York. I'm a." But her business didn't lend itself to easy explanation. "I'm a photographer," she said.

"So somebody's still doing art," he said. Then, in an awkward tone, filling in the space, "That's good to hear."

"Yeah, well." A silence settled for a minute, until Lucy surprised herself. "Listen, Mr. Millay," she began.

"Frank, please."

"Okay, Frank. It just happens that I'm coming out to San Francisco next week on some business. Would it be too weird if I came to see you? If we had lunch or something?" Sensing his reluctance over the line, she pressed on. "I wouldn't blame you if you said no, but in spite of this call, I promise I'm not a flake or a stalker or anything. I just still remember what an incredible impact your paintings had on me. Still do, as I remember them. It.it would mean a lot. I just feel like I need to see you."

Silence for a long beat. "I'm married now," he said. "I've got three children. I don't know if my wife…" He let the sentence hang.

"Please," she said. "She doesn't have to know. It's so important. We need to talk, that's all."

"You know I don't paint anymore, Lucy. I haven't touched a brush in twenty years."

"No, it's more than that. It's you, who you were." Then, unsure of exactly what she meant, she added, "It's not just that, either."

"No," he said. "No, I suppose not." Finally, when he did speak, his voice was nearly unrecognizable, constricted with that adult quality. "I'll find some time," he said. "What day next week?"

She didn't sleep well over the next five days.

Frank Millay's colors, particularly that muddy blue, seeped into her dreams and woke her over and over again. It was a cold blue under a cold sky and she woke up, paradoxically, dripping with sweat. And sexually aroused.

All the dreams had the same setting. Millay's whole room was a womb enclosed in that dark, muddy blue‑the river as he'd painted it endlessly flowing along the windowless walls over the bed.

Which made no sense.

She had no memory that she had ever been to his bedroom. She had never seen his bed.

But something was stirring things up.

The last dream was different. It started with the smells of must or animal or mold, and there was a bright light at the end of a dark green tunnel. Then she turned and walked through a red door and suddenly was in Millay's muddy blue room. She felt the skin on her thighs rubbing together and realized that she didn't have any clothes on. She was standing on a golden storage box and he was painting her picture, although she could only see his head behind the canvas. He had a blond beard that looked wet somehow. He kept saying something in a deep voice that seemed to echo in her bones and make her weak. Stepping around the picture, he walked right up close to her. He smelled like that other smell, and now she recognized that it was semen. He wore an orange tie‑dyed T‑shirt, but no pants and no underwear. Because she was standing on the storage box, their faces were at almost the same height and he held her eyes while he put his hand between her legs. Then she looked down and something muddy and blue was coming out of his penis and he was painting her with it. Stroke after stroke after stroke.

She woke up, sobbing, in the middle of an orgasm.

And finally it all came back.

She knew now that in a fundamental way, she had at last begun to heal. The recurring waves of what had been repressed memory now throbbed with the persistence of a bone bruise, painful enough on two more occasions to bring her to tears, but at least she was no longer numb. She almost called Dr. Snow to tell her that she'd begun to feel things again. If much of it was negative and painful, that was okay. It was the price to get back to normal. But she knew that she wasn't quite finished yet. To complete the recovery, she would have to assassinate one last man. The one who'd all but destroyed her so many years ago.

Frank Millay clearly didn't want her to come to his office. He'd e‑mailed her to say they should meet at the Slanted Door, a terrific and easy‑to‑find Vietnamese restaurant located in San Francisco's newly renovated Ferry Building, at the foot of Market Street. He had one o'clock reservations there under the name York. He'd explained that it wasn't a place where they were likely to run into too many of his colleagues on a weekday afternoon. She realized with a bit of a thrill that he was already afraid of exposure, even of being seen with her. And this led to the understanding that he only could have agreed to the meeting with her for one of three very different reasons‑to somehow try to explain what he'd done, to beg her to forgive him, or to get the details of her blackmail.

But Lucy knew fifty‑year‑old men. Once she started coming on to him, in spite of what he'd done to her, he would never suspect her true motive. He would believe that, sick as it might be, she was still, after all, attracted to him. She had her story down, her cameras and microphones hidden and primed in her hotel room at the Four Seasons a couple of blocks away.

She was ready.

Lucy, braless, and further turned out in a black slit skirt, low heels and a tightly fitted red silk blouse, arrived and got seated at their table‑tucked away in a corner‑twenty minutes early. It was a cool day, and cool in the restaurant. It calmed and somewhat gratified Lucy to realize that no man who looked her way seemed to be able to avoid a glance at her erect nipples.

When Frank Millay came to the greeting station, she recognized him immediately, even though he was now the quintessential lawyer‑clean‑shaven, short‑haired, dressed in a three‑piece suit. He was still trim, still handsome, although slightly gone to gray. But the face had no slackness to it, the jaw was firm. Close up, she could see that the deep blue artist's eyes still might have the power to captivate. But not her. Not anymore.

When the hostess left him, he sat, assayed a bit of a worried smile and said, "My God, you're beautiful."

"Thank you."

A waiter came by, introduced himself and presented menus, saying he'd be back in a couple of minutes. A busboy poured water. Out the window, on the Bay, the Sausalito ferry with its complement of screeching seagulls steamed out from its mooring under the scudding clouds.

Millay's eyes darted down to her breasts, then came back up to her face. He sighed. "This is awkward."

Lucy reached out her hand and placed it over his for an instant, then withdrew it. "It's all right," she said. "I guess I should have told you on the telephone. I contacted you because I wanted you to know that I forgive you."

"I don't know why." he began. "It's why I left New York, to get away from what I was doing. It was all getting out of control, what I did to you was just part of it. I was going through a crazy time." He brought his hand to his face, rubbed the side of his cheek. His look was something more than chagrin, touched by a brush‑still‑of fear. "I can't explain it."

"You don't have to," Lucy said. "We all make mistakes."

"Not like that. I've got a seven‑year‑old daughter right now. The thought of what I did to you still makes me sick. I'm so sorry. So sorry."

"Were there others?"

"No!" Frank Millay nearly blurted it out. "No," he said again.

"It was just you, the pretty little girl who loved my paintings. The only one who loved them, to tell you the truth. And who made me take her up to my room one time to see them."

"Was it only once?" Again, she touched his hand. "I really don't remember."

"Just once," he said. "Once was enough."

The waiter arrived and took their order. She said she'd like to have some wine, but only if he'd join her. By the time the waiter left, Frank Millay had visibly relaxed. Pushed back from the table, he sat with his ankle resting on the opposite knee. He wore stunning black shoes of knitted leather, black socks that disappeared into his pants leg. Lucy, fidgeting now as though she were slightly nervous, managed to undo the second button on her blouse.

"So," she said, "you're married now?"

"Yes." "Happily?"

"Well, seventeen years. We're okay." "That doesn't sound very romantic." "It's really not very romantic." "Do you miss it? Romance?"

"Not really," he said. Then, "Sometimes, I guess. Who wouldn't?"

"That seems a shame. You're still a very good‑looking man. You must know that. You must hear it all the time."

A small embarrassed chuckle. "Thank you, but I wouldn't quite say that I hear it all the time. And I for damn sure wouldn't call me good‑looking anymore."

She put her hand on his again, and this time she left it there as she met his eyes. "I would," she said. "Why do you think I've remembered you after all this time? Do you think, that day, it was all your idea?"

After that, it was easy.

At the Four Seasons, they went straight up from the hotel entrance to her two‑room suite. As soon as they were inside, Lucy excused herself for a moment, leaving Frank Millay in the living‑room section while she went, ostensibly, to use the bathroom. One of her cameras that looked like a pen she had arranged on the dresser‑it would automatically snap a picture every minute until she turned it off. The video camera was her cell phone, which she arranged and propped on one of the bed tables.

In the bathroom, she flushed the toilet for verisimilitude's sake, then stepped out into the bedroom, undoing her blouse now, taking it off, laying it on the bed. "Frank," she said, "aren't you going to come in here?"

"Sure."

He appeared in the doorway and stopped, taking her in.

She saw the hesitation now. He still had his coat and tie on. And it was one of her inviolable rules‑she would give each of her victims one last chance to save themselves, to prove to her that they were better than they appeared. Even Frank Millay might still escape, although she didn't want that to happen.

She gave him what she knew was her finest smile. Winsome and seductive at once, playful but with a serious edge of promised passion underneath. "Are you sure you're comfortable with this?" she asked him. "I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do."

He broke a small smile that seemed to mock himself. "If you hadn't wanted to force me," he said, "you would have left your shirt on."

She unclasped the hook on her skirt and let it drop to the floor. "Well, then," she said, stepping out of it, sitting on the bed where she knew the cameras would capture everything. She patted the mattress next to her. "Why don't you come over here?"

Still, he seemed to hesitate for one last moment before he started moving toward her. When he got in front of her, she reached for his zipper, traced her finger down the bulge in the front. "Oh, my," she said.

She felt his hands in her hair, traveling down the sides of her head to cup her face, which he lifted so that she looked up at him.

"I'm so sorry," he said as his hands slipped lower.

"No. You don't need‑" But suddenly she felt the hands pushing down on her shoulders, holding her where she sat, then slowly, almost as though he were caressing her, closing around her neck.

"Don't you see?" His face suddenly inches from hers. "I can't take the risk. Someday you might tell."

"But no, I‑"

And then there was no way to make any more sound. She tried to call out, to straighten up off the bed, to kick at him, but he was nearly twice her size and now seized with an irresistible power. He pushed her back onto the bed and fell upon her, his hands closing tighter and tighter around her windpipe.

Her vision exploded into yellows and purples and greens and then they all blended to a muddy blue, then a darker, colder blue.

And then no colors at all. Only black.

I hadn't heard from Lucy for two weeks when I turned on the news late one night and watched her face appear on the screen while a reporter described the brutal murder that had taken place in San Francisco.

"The killing was recorded on Lucy Delrey's cell‑phone camera, which the police discovered at the scene."

Immediately in the hours, days and weeks afterward, Millay's PR machine went into action and it was clear that by the time the case went to trial, his attorneys would have spun it so that the world at large would perceive Lucy Delrey as a psychotic nymphomaniac who got pleasure from setting up men sexually in order to destroy them. Frank Millay had been her hapless victim.

The sympathy would be with him by then, but I've got to believe that even in San Francisco, if you strangle a woman on videotape, you're looking at some kind of a stretch in prison. Mil‑lay's career‑his entire life‑would be ruined. It could never be the same.

And the strange thing was, just as I had asked her to, Lucy had found the complicated truth. No matter what had happened in those final minutes, she had gone out there to destroy him and she'd done it.