Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,66

called first, and I said it was all right, but I shouldn't have. I really didn't want to see them, didn't want to hear about Tamsin's multiple problems. But she had helped me, so I was obliged to her, a yoke I found nearly intolerable. I reminded myself not to ask for help again.

I should have been ashamed of my grudging attitude. And maybe I was, a little. But being close to Tamsin now seemed a risky thing.

"How are you feeling?" Tamsin's question seemed on the perfunctory side, especially since she didn't meet my eyes to hear my answer.

"I'm all right. You and Cliff?" I motioned them to chairs and offered them drinks, as I was obligated to do. Jack got Cliff a Coke, but Tamsin waved the query off.

"You can imagine how strange it is to find out that this policeman was really a famous writer," Tamsin told me.

I nodded. I could imagine that.

"And then I finally recognized that woman last night. Detective Stokes."

Jack reached over my shoulder to hand Cliff his drink.

"And, Lily, what I want to know is, why me?"

I couldn't believe I'd heard her correctly. Tamsin Lynd, of all people, was asking the unanswerable. Was this something some victims were just bound to go through, no matter how smart or clearly victimized they were?

That couldn't be true. And why had she decided to talk to me about it? Because I was Supervictim?

I thought for a minute, but I decided there was no way to get around this but to talk to Tamsin about it.

"Why are you different?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?"

"Would you let us ask that question in counseling group?"

She flushed red. "I see what you mean."

"Do you think you're better than us, because you're being stalked instead of being raped?"

Cliff looked horrified and upset, and his hand moved as if he were going to get my attention to signal to me, but I gave him a quelling look. Tamsin had dragged him along, and Jack was in the room, but this conversation was between me and her.

"Oh, Lily, I hate to see that in myself!" Tamsin was really upset, now. But upset in a more intelligent way.

"Why not you, Tamsin? What makes you superior or invulnerable?"

"I've got it, now," she breathed. "I see that. But I guess what I was thinking, was not that I should be spared because I was superior, but because I'm not. I'm an overweight, nearly middle-aged woman in a crowded and poorly paid profession. There's nothing remarkable about me. How did I attract the attention of someone so determined?"

"There is plenty special about you, honey," Cliff said, his voice desperately earnest. "You are the most sweet-natured, kindest - "

"Oh, Cliff." Tamsin's face was radiant with pleasure, but deprecating. "You're the only one who believes that," she added with a little laugh.

I wasn't going to sit here and bathe Tamsin in compliments. She was quite right. I liked her - a little - and I appreciated her, but there was nothing exceptional about Tamsin Lynd in my eyes . .. except her victimization.

"You just got picked by the Claw." That was as good an explanation as I could come up with.

"The Claw?"

"You know that game they have out in the Wal-Mart entry way? The one where you put in some quarters and the metal claw swings down over a bin of stuffed animals and swoops down at random, and maybe picks one up, maybe not? That's the Claw."

"Lily!" Tamsin looked at me with the oddest quizzical, expression. "That's the most depressing philosophy I've ever heard."

I shrugged. I wasn't in the Pollyanna business. "The Claw picked you up, Tamsin. So you have a stalker, and Janet doesn't. I got raped, you didn't. Saralynn was murdered, Carla wasn't. The claw passed her over."

"So you don't believe a divine plan runs the universe?"

I just laughed. Some plan.

"Don't you believe that most people are innately good?"

"No." In fact, I found the fact that some people did believe that to be absolutely incomprehensible.

Tamsin looked really horrified. "You don't believe that we're only given the burdens we can handle?"

"Obviously not."

She tried again. "Do you believe in the eventual punishment of evildoers?"

I shrugged.

"Then how do you go on living?" Tamsin was tearful, but not as personally tearful, as she had been before.

"How do I go on living? A day at a time, like everyone else. A few years ago, it was an hour at a time. For a while, it was minute by minute."

"What for?"

Cliff looked