Page 49 of Play Dirty

You don’t knock. She buzzes you in from her office and then you wait until she’s ready to see you. Kinda pretentious, but whatever. It’s her system and I respect it.

After about five minutes she opens her door, says a few soft words to the patient leaving, and waits for the lobby door to close before she looks at me and says, “Come in, Jordan.”

I follow her in, take a seat in a chair in front of her desk and wait for her to sit at her desk.

“So what’s going on?” she says.

“You know Augustine and Alexander are back.”

“Yup. Are they talking to you yet?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Great,” she says, beaming a smile at me.

“Uh, no. Not great. You see… they’re having marriage problems and for whatever reason they figure bringing me in is the cure.”

“OK,” Lucinda says, steepling her fingers under her chin, like she’s thinking hard about this. “Not conventional,” she says, and lets out a small laugh. “But I don’t judge.”

“That’s not even the half of it,” I say. “They have a really weird fetish. One I’ve never heard of.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“It doesn’t have a name as far as I know. But they get off on… like… fighting each other.”

“Like S&M-type stuff?”

“No. This is the confusing part. There’s no top and no bottom. Neither of them is in charge. So it’s not S&M and it’s got nothing to do with dominant-submissive stuff either. It’s just… fighting turns them on. Like he slaps her face, but instead of wanting her to take it, he wants her to hit him back.”

“Hmmm,” Lucinda says.

“Weird, right?”

“Well… maybe. I think the way it’s manifesting is… interesting. I’ve never heard of that one either. However, their relationship problem-solving—while unorthodox—is mature. They see a problem and think they have a solution.” Lucinda shrugs. “It makes sense.”

“But what is it? This Fight Club shit?”

“It’s not about the fighting, Jordan. It’s the push-pull dynamic. The adrenaline and dopamine release that occurs when they feel the excitement of… violence, I guess. Which is slightly disturbing. But I think it falls over on the ‘normal’ side of things. It’s chemical, that’s all.”

“So listen. The reason they want me is because apparently Alexander is afraid of losing control in these fights. Or possibly had lost control at one point and hurt Augustine. So now he’s afraid he’ll do it again and he refuses to fuck her. Like at all, Lucinda. Last night, when I was there as their… buffer, I guess… that was the first time he’s fucked her in years. And we did her together.”

“Hmmm,” she says again. “This is a complicated one. But they have come up with a clever defense mechanism to protect each other. So they have a good chance of surviving.”

“Should I play this out with them?” I ask.

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then why do you need my advice?”

So I explain the part about the building and how I want it back, as well as how Augustine is holding it over my head.

“Sexual blackmail,” Lucinda says. “That’s not right.”

“No,” I say. “It sucks.”

“So you can’t walk away but you don’t want to participate either?”