Magdalena. Her heart was racing. The words came out in an odd husky whisper.
Dr. Lewis seemed to have no such problem. “Oh, certainly,” he said. “Think about it for a moment. His cycle has now reached eighteen times a day, mostly in the office. He has no time left for anything else, and he can’t concentrate on anything else. He only has his intervals while he’s building up energy for more spasms. Other things—if he can’t take care of them in some kind of routine, rote manner, they don’t get done. He’s in another world, completely out of control, and that world is called Onanism.”
“Onanism.” Magdalena could only whisper it… in a husky manner. She was so aroused, she could barely speak.
All at once Dr. Lewis picked up her chair, with her in it, and turned it ninety degrees away from the desk—
“Norman! What are you doing!”
—and didn’t put it down until there was room enough for him to move in front of her and step between her legs. He said nothing and she said nothing. He looked down at her, smiling ever so slightly. She looked straight up at him. Dr. Lewis unbuttoned his white cotton I’m-a-doctor coat. His khaki pants bulged in the crotch, no more than six inches from her face. He began to unzip his pants slowly slowly slowly. He beamed a sly sly sly smile at Magdalena, like a grown-up about to give a little girl a present she had always wanted so-o-o-o bad. Slowly slowly slowly slyly the zipper—
A low-pitched burbling ring… It meant someone was pushing the bell at the entrance. You could hear the voices and laughter of men outside.
“Norman! That’s them! That’s 60 Minutes!”
“Now—while they’re at the door!” Dr. Lewis’s voice was suddenly more constricted and breathless than hers. “Do it now!”
“No, Norman! Are you crazy? I’ve got to let them in—and I’m already half naked! There’s no time!”
“This is the time—” croaked Dr. Lewis. “While they’re—at the—gate—”
He was having a hard time getting his breath. “Be an eternity before a moment like this—ever again! Just do it!”
Magdalena recoiled, thrusting the chair backward, and sprang to her feet. Her white nurse’s uniform was unbuttoned almost to the bottom. She felt completely naked.
Norman still had both hands on his zipper. He stared at her with a look that implied he was… hurt… baffled… betrayed.
“My God, Norman,” said Magdalena. “I think you really are crazy.”
The interview took place in Norman’s office. There were two cameras, one aimed at Norman, the other at the Grand Inquisitor, Ike Walsh. They sat across from each other in the side chairs that patients usually sat in. Already good and paranoid about the savage wiles of the Inquisitor, Magdalena suspected the idea was to keep Norman from sitting behind his big desk, with its aura of authority. She was very worried about what might be about to happen to Norman at the hands of the Inquisitor. After all, Ike Walsh was the pro. He had been through this sort of thing over and over. If he were to humiliate Norman—after all Norman’s big talk about the Pissing Monkey, it would be just horrible… Her heart was beating like a bird’s.
Ike Walsh was much shorter than he appeared to be on television. But come to think of it, he was always sitting down on 60 Minutes. He looked even more ominous, however. His perpetually tanned skin, his narrow, steely eyes, his high cheekbones, his wide jaws and low forehead, which was a stony little cliff beneath his mane of thick black hair, very thick inky black—he looked like a real savage, barely constrained by civilized clothes, his jacket and tie. Those narrow little robot eyes of his did not blink once, but, then, Norman’s didn’t, either. He seemed quite comfortable—in his patient’s chair. He wore a slight, friendly, hospitable smile. Magdalena’s heart raced even faster. Norman’s relaxed demeanor only made him look more unwary, more vulnerable, fresher and fatter for the kill.
Some sort of director began counting, “… six, five, four, three, two, one… we’re rolling.”
Walsh cocked his head to one side, the way he always did when he was setting someone up for the kill. “Now, Dr. Lewis, you say that pornography addiction is not a true physical addiction, like an addiction to alcohol or heroin or cocaine…”
He paused. A red light lit up on the camera trained on Norman…
Norman spoke! “I’m not convinced that addiction to alcohol, heroin, or cocaine is physical in the sense I take