Inside Passage. Burt Weissbourd

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      And that was that.

      So she was back to sweet and sour pork. The little light was on in the waiting room. She figured that it went on when the office door closed, so you would know not to interrupt. She wondered why he didn’t just lift one of those motel “do not disturb” signs, leave it on the waiting room door. Too cheesy, she guessed. The guy’s mind didn’t work like hers, she was thinking. The light went off, and there he was. Same wool jacket. His hair was too long and mussed up, like an orchestra conductor’s. She walked right into the office before he could make that little gesture with his palm.

      Corey sat in the leather chair and looked at her work boots. This was going to be hard, she realized. She waited, unsure what to do. The silence lasted a long time. She inspected every thread of the faded gray rug around her feet.

      “Perhaps.” Dr. Stein paused. “Perhaps you’d prefer to see someone else?” he finally asked.

      Right, that’s why she was sitting in his worn-out old chair.

      “They are supposed to give you other choices…other names.”

      The guy slowed down between words, like he wasn’t born here. She glanced up. His eyes were on her now. Locked on. The bushy brows were furrowed in that “V,” she remembered; and now that “V” seemed to laser those locked-on pale blue eyes right into her head. How could an out-of-it guy you could hardly hear be so intense?

      “You’ve already seen them.”

      Intense and smart.

      He came around the desk and waited for her to look up again. His eyes were kind now. The lines on his brow had rearranged themselves so that he seemed more relaxed.

      “We’ll do the best we can,” he said.

      She looked down and thought about that. Finally, she offered, “Thanks.” And looked his way again.

      He was leaning against the edge of his table, reviewing her file.

      He could use a new, lightweight jacket, she decided, and his hair needed cutting too.

      Eventually he set the file down, lifted one of his blackened pipes, a question.

      She shrugged. “Your landlord know about this?”

      “He lives in Hong Kong.”

      “You got a fire extinguisher?”

      His laugh was a low rumble. “I prefer Diet Coke.”

      The guy was trying to make a joke, she decided. “No problem.”

      “I’m absent-minded,” he explained. “Not a good quality for a pipe smoker.”

      Absent-minded? Lost in space was more like it. She liked his rumbly laugh, though. And she liked that he had explained.

      For maybe half an hour, he asked the routine questions. Easy stuff—address, phone numbers, medical history, more or less the bare bones facts of her life. It made her feel a little more comfortable, almost like she could talk to this guy.

      When she finally settled into her chair, he lit a fresh pipe. Then he leaned toward her. “Can I ask some more difficult questions?” It came out kind of tentative, as if he was afraid she might say no.

      She thought about saying speak up, but didn’t. “You’ve read my file. Do your worst.”

      “That’s actually a good idea,” Abe said.

      The “actually” pissed her off.

      “It says here,” he tapped her file with the stem of his pipe, “that you stabbed a woman in prison.”

      “Yeah. She came at me with some kind of knife.”

      “You stabbed her with a pencil.”

      “What I had.”

      “They never found a knife.”

      “So?”

      “You’re sure she had a knife?”

      “Mister, how can this ever work if you don’t believe what I tell you?”

      He looked at the ceiling, took a puff. “Point taken.”

      Corey wasn’t done. She touched the scar on her neck. “You think I did this to myself?”

      “What happened to her knife?” he asked, his voice flat.

      She decided to give him a chance, tell him the whole story. “Okay. It was about seven at night. I was finishing up my shift in the laundry, folding sheets. Two of them came at me from behind. The one gal had a shank, like the pointy part of a screwdriver, filed sharp, and duct-taped to a piece of wood. She cut me. I had this pencil I used for the laundry list. I stuck it into her neck. I didn’t even think about it. Agh.”

      Her face tightened, an involuntary reflex. “She went down, bleeding, you know…” She was frowning now, trying to get this right. “You ever kill an elk, or a deer?”

      He shook his head.

      Corey nodded. Dumb question. She was starting to sweat. “Anyway, the woman I stabbed started gasping and shaking. The other one went for the shank. I scrambled over the table. I was bleeding pretty badly. Next thing I know, my one friend is there. She’s got me down on the floor, and she’s standing over me with a long mop handle. This other gal takes one look at Suze, that’s what we called my friend, and she backs off. Before I know what’s what, Suze’s gone and I’m being cuffed. The one that got away must have grabbed the shank.”

      “Who’s Suze?”

      “Great big girl. I listened to her stories. We got to be friends.”

      Abe was taking notes. “I see.” And after a short silence, “Why were they trying to hurt you?”

      “They weren’t trying to hurt me, they were trying to kill me.”

      “But why?”

      Nick Season was why. But she couldn’t tell him that. Un-unh. Not ever. Corey closed her eyes, massaged the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. When she was back on track, she opened her eyes. “Have you ever been inside a prison at night?”

      “No.”

      “Guy doing your job, he should spend a night inside.” She hesitated. “People kill each other in prison over little things. I don’t know what I did. Maybe it was just a mistake…some kind of unmeant insult, or a gang deal. Happens all the time.”

      “How did you feel after you stabbed her?”

      Every shrink she saw asked her that. What did he think she would say…“great?”

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