Mystery Dance: Three Novels by Scott Nicholson

How dare those children be happy and healthy when all those tomorrows ahead were denied to Mattie and Christine? Through the whitewashed fence, he could see the swing sets, tangled hair, and pale, dirty faces.
    He stopped, his lungs like stone.
    Mattie stood behind the fence, her arm thrust between the tall pickets. Her upturned hand was curled into a small fist.
    Her fingers slowly uncurled, and gray ash poured from her palm.
    Jacob reeled, the sky spun, and he found himself on his hands and knees, his face pressed against the grass. Vomit sluiced up from his gut, razing a raw path through his throat and stinging his nasal cavity. Tears filled his eyes as he coughed and spat the dregs of undigested liquor and bile. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked back at the fence.
    Mattie was gone. A dark red ball floated over the playground fence, hung a moment at the apex of its arc then fell as if gravity held a grudge. The giggles continued, an adult supervisor shouted, and one of the kids began bawling. Someone was watching Jacob from a window, and he forced himself to stand and head for the counseling center.
    They would think he was just another drunk putting in a court-ordered visit. The disguise fit too readily. He swallowed and the acid burned its way back to his stomach. A drink would help, but he was dehydrated and knew the liquor wouldn’t stay down. Jacob staggered through the double doors.
    A woman with a pinched face slid open a glass window at the counter and sniffed like a rodent. “May I help you, sir?”
    Help. That was a good one . “I have an appointment.”
    “With whom?” She flipped through a notebook. “Or are you looking for the AA meeting? That’s in Room 117, down the hall to your left.”
    “I’m in no shape for quitting,” he said. “I’m with Rheinsfeldt.”
    “Oh.” The clerk checked the book. “Excuse me, Mr. Wells. I didn’t recognize you.”
    Jacob was sure he’d never met the woman. But his photo was on file at the local newspaper, and between the Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis Club, he appeared in its pages at least twice a year. His development projects often came before various planning boards, sometimes bringing opposition from the neighborhoods where M & W’s bulldozers disturbed morning sleep and residential character. And, of, course, the fire had been front-page news.
    He licked his chapped lips. “Has Mrs. Wells arrived?”
    “No, sir, but if you’ll have a seat, I’ll let Dr. Rheinsfeldt know you’re here.”
    “That’s okay, I’ll do it myself.” Jacob pushed open the door that led to the private offices, feeling the clerk’s stare on his back. He wanted to show up for the appointment early and chat with the doctor for a couple of minutes, so that Renee would walk through the door already on the defensive. Jacob had learned from past experience that psychologists naturally gravitated to whichever side seemed most in need of “curing.”
    Jacob read the names on the doors as he went down the hall. A cadre of wise and caring souls sat behind those doors, with leather chairs and computers and rows of books on the shelves. Their heads were filled with questions and they deluded themselves into thinking they served a noble purpose. Their meat was anger and pain, their drink was pity disguised as sympathy. They had all the crude hunger of vampires and slightly less moral conscience.
    The patients were perhaps even more complicit in the cycle of mutual dependency. They sat, wept, shared personal troubles that would be worthy of canned laughter if displayed in a television sitcom. The best part was they only had to open their souls for a single hour, and then they could stumble into the sunshine believing they had shed themselves of a bothersome skin. They could pretend they were a step closer to wholeness, but Jacob knew the whole was always less than the sum of its parts.
    Because, where he went, so did Joshua.
    He took a drink from a water fountain in