Angel Landing Read Online Free PDF Page B

here,” Finn agreed. “I can’t talk here.”
    â€œNo one is comfortable at the very beginning of therapy,” I said. When Finn didn’t answer I tried another tactic. “Maybe you don’t really want to start therapy at all.”
    Finn studied me carefully. “Meet me tonight,” he suddenly said.
    â€œAre you kidding?” I said. He had caught me off guard; my hand shook as I reached for my appointment book. “I can see you, starting next week, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sometime in the afternoon?”
    â€œTonight,” Finn said. “If you really want to talk, if you want to know what happened, you’ll meet me tonight.”
    â€œIf you’re the bomber, if you’re really serious, you’ll tell me what happened right now. Right this minute” I challenged. But Finn smiled and shook his head no. “Why should I believe you?” I asked. “Why should I meet you?”
    Michael Finn stood. “At the high school,” he said as he reached over and crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on my desk. “Behind the bleachers at eight o’clock,” he told me as he walked to the door.
    â€œIt’s out of the question,” I said.
    Finn shrugged and opened the door into the waiting room. “I’ll be there,” he said before he walked out of my office, “even if you’re not.”
    â€œWait a minute,” I called, but he kept right on walking. I went to the door, Finn was on the far side of the waiting room, he had already opened the door. “What about Tuesday?” I cried.
    He left the door open behind him; leaves and sand drifted over the floor. At her desk, Emily was deeply engrossed in a paperback novel; a client, a young girl, waited on the couch until the time for her appointment with Lark. My voice still echoed, calling Finn back, but neither Emily nor the girl bothered to look up at me. Neither had even looked up as Finn walked across the room; it was possible that I had imagined him, perhaps nothing had crossed the linoleum in those few minutes but a few faded birch leaves, sand the color of pearls.
    I went back into my office and closed the door. Finn had disappeared as suddenly as he had come. In his file were white sheets of paper, clean, hungry for facts. If he was telling the truth, if he was a man with no loyalties, a stranger with smoke on his hands, he might very well soon be quite famous. If he were to be my client I might be interviewed during the course of his trial; the New York Times would contact me, Newsweek would telephone, the Fishers Cove Herald might ask for a daily psychology column.
    In the chair where Finn had sat, the impression of his body remained; the odor of his brand of tobacco clung to my clothes. Even hours later, when other clients sat in the chair, Finn still seemed to be there, no one erased the lines he had left behind.
    Later, between appointments with the anorectic, who refused to eat anything more than grapefruit, and an elderly shoplifter who could not ignore the urging of vague demonic voices whenever she set foot in a department store, I called Carter to cancel our Wednesday night together.
    â€œIt’s not that I don’t want to see you,” I explained, “I just have too much work.”
    â€œI understand perfectly,” Carter said. “I don’t have time to breathe. A busload of demonstrators is coming out from Manhattan tomorrow. We’re going to storm the power plant at midday. I wish you could be there with me.”
    â€œToo much work here at Outreach,” I said. “Much too much.”
    Tonight, while Carter arranged a protest at the power plant, I might be meeting with the bomber himself. I would hear information so privileged no one else could be told; I would be as close to the truth as an accomplice. If Finn was indeed the bomber. If he was not merely trapped by delusions, a man who wanted to confess but did not