Butts happily stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth, picked up his chocolate milkshake, put the straw to his lips, and sucked deeply on it, his eyes half closed with pleasure. Lee shuddered and looked away. He had never understood chocolate milkshakes with cheeseburgers—it struck him as excessive and rather revolting. He glanced at his watch. It was half past three—they would be driving back to the city during rush hour. At least they would be going against the traffic, though that didn’t always work out, as the middle lanes on both the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels would be switched over for the outbound commuters.
“Well,” he said, tossing his sandwich wrapper into the metal trash can, “shall we pay Dr. Perkins a house call?”
Butts gave his milkshake a final mighty slurp and wiped his mouth with a satisfied flourish. “Now that was worth waitin’ for!” he declared, and shuffled behind Lee to the car. As they arrived at the green Saturn, Lee caught a movement out of the side of his eye, over in the woods next to Dilly’s Corner. Probably a deer, he thought—they were in abundance this time of year. In fact, they were hazardous to motorists, especially after dark—it was easy to hit one as it leapt out of the woods into the glare of headlights. He had a number of friends at school who had totaled their parents’ cars that way.
“Whatchya lookin’ at?” said Butts, noticing Lee peering into the thick green canopy of leaves.
“I saw something—probably just a deer,” Lee said, climbing into the car.
“You sure?” Butts remarked sarcastically as he climbed into the Saturn. “You sure it wasn’t an alien or something?”
“Very funny. We should remember to tell Dr. Perkins about it.”
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll get abducted if we’re lucky.” Butts stretched his seat belt across his body and patted his bulging belly. “Jeez, I shouldn’t ‘a had that second order of fries.” He sighed. “I just know the wife is gonna put me on a diet this month—I can see it in her eyes. She’s got that look, you know? Ah well, I might as well live it up while I can. It’s broccoli and black beans from now on.”
Lee smiled and started up the engine. Dr. Martin Perkins had an office in downtown Stockton—not that there was much of a downtown to speak of. It consisted of little more than a liquor store, a grocery store called Errico’s Market, a gas station, and a couple of restaurants. One of the restaurants was the historic Stockton Inn, which contained the wishing well made famous in the Rodgers and Hart song “There’s a Small Hotel.” Lee’s mother never tired of pointing this out to visitors. Lee had a job there one summer as a busboy when he was a teenager, riding his bike the mile and a half from his mother’s house to get there.
Driving down the tiny main street pulled at his already raw emotions—it held so many memories of him and Laura. He thought about all the times they walked across the footbridge to Pennsylvania, or strolled along the canal towpath toward New Hope, or dipped into the Delaware for a quick swim. They loved doing errands for their mother, picking up groceries at Errico’s, racing their bikes back along the towpath and up the hill to the stone house with its sweeping lawn and weeping willow trees.
Dr. Perkins’s office was across from the gas station on the main street, next to the row of shops housing both the liquor store and the grocery store. It was a handsome turn-of-the-century Victorian, not too fussy. He had walked by it a hundred times as a boy, but in those days it was just a private home, with no business of any kind that he could remember.
Lee parked on the street in front of the building, and he and Butts walked up the steps to the spacious front porch. The sign underneath the buzzer read DR. MARTIN PERKINS, L.C.S.W.—BY APPOINTMENT and listed a phone number with a 609 area code. L.C.S.W. stood for licensed clinical social worker, which meant that even if Perkins was a crank, he was at least certified by the state. Lee knew from his own experience how much study and training was involved—enough so that anyone receiving certification had to at least do all the required reading and pass the courses. You had to have at least a master’s degree to qualify. He wondered,