Chloe, twenty-one, had maroon hair, an entire wardrobe rendered in black, and a sapphire nose ring. Val had begun treating the girl in her teens for bulimia, then hired her when the volume of appointments skyrocketed after the placebo went into effect. Chloe worked in exchange for therapy; Val had thought it would be a good financial move. Frankly, she’d liked her better when she just threw up a lot.

Val was still trying to figure out exactly what to do when there was a soft knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“Sorry,” Chloe said through the door.

“Uh, Chloe, that is not appropriate office behavior.”

“Well, your last appointment had left. I thought that you would be working on your notes or something for a while. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s it? My last appointment leaves, so let the wild rumpus begin?”

“Am I fired?”

Val thought for a second. There were twenty more patients to see tomorrow and twenty the day after that. If the weirdness didn’t kill her, the workload would. She couldn’t afford to lose Chloe now. “No, you’re not fired. But please, no more of that in the office.”

“Do you have time to talk? I know my next session isn’t until next week, but I really need to talk to you.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to go home and, uh, think about things?”

“You mean finish? No, I’m finished for now. That’s what I want to talk to you about. That wasn’t the first time today.”

Val gulped. It was highly unprofessional to talk to a patient through a door. She steeled herself and opened it. “Come in.” She returned to her desk without looking at the girl. Chloe took a seat across from her.

“So this wasn’t the first time today?” Val was the psychotherapist now, not the boss. If she’d been the boss, she would have come over the desk and strangled the little slut.

“No, I can’t seem to get enough. I, well, it started about two in the morning, and I went straight though until time to get ready for work. Then once or twice while each patient was in session.”

Val’s jaw dropped. Sixteen hours of intermittent masturbation? The other patients she had seen had cited two in the morning as when their sexual adventures had started too. She said, “And how do you feel about that?”

“I feel okay. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carpal tunnel?”

“Chloe, if you think that you’re going to file a workmen’s compensation claim for this…”

“No no no, I just want to stop.”

“Did something happen to set this off? Something at two in the morning? A dream perhaps?” Her other patients had described various sexual dreams. Winston Krauss, the pharmacist with the sexual obsession for marine mammals, confessed to dreaming of having sex with a blue whale, riding it through the depths like Ahab with a hard-on. Upon awakening, he’d abused his inflatable Flipper until it would no longer hold air.

Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her long maroon hair hid her face. “I dreamed I was having sex with a tank truck, and it blew up.”

“A tank truck?”

“I came.”

“Sexual dreams are completely normal, Chloe.” Right, a tank truck? That’s normal. “Tell me, was there fire in your dream?” Pyromaniacs de-rived sexual pleasure from setting and watching fires. That’s how they caught them, look in the crowd for a grinning guy with a woody and gas stains on his shoes.

“No, no fire. I woke up at the explosion. Val, what’s wrong with me? All I want to do is, you know, do it.”

“And you feel that you might do something impulsive?”

Chloe put on her cynical Goth-girl face. “If you mean something like buffing the muffin while I’m at work, yes, Dr. Riordan, I’m a little worried. Can’t you adjust my medication or something?”

There it was. In the past, that would have been the answer. Increase the Prozac to eighty milligrams, about four times the dose for the average de-pressed patient, and let the side effect of reduced libido do the work. Val had used the method to treat a nymphomaniac when she was an intern and it had worked marvelously. But what now? Duct tape oven mitts to her receptionist’s hands? Although her typing probably wouldn’t suffer much, it might make the patients nervous.

Val said. “Chloe, masturbation is a natural thing. Everyone does it. But obviously there are appropriate times and places. Perhaps you should just cut back. Allow yourself to masturbate as a reward for controlling your urges.”

Chloe’s face went slack. “Cut down? I’m worried about driving home safely. I have a stick shift. I need both hands to drive, but I don’t think I’m going to have them. Do you have a patch you can prescribe, like they do for smoking?”

“A patch?” Val suppressed a laugh. She imagined a twitching, moaning line of people around the block at the pharmacy, there to pick up their prescriptions for the orgasm patch. It would make heroin look like Gummi Bears. “No, there’s no patch, Chloe. You’re just going to have to try to control yourself. I have a feeling that this is a side effect of your medication. It should pass in a day or two. I want to hear more about this dream of yours. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

Chloe stood, obviously not satisfied with the help her therapist was offering, which was none. “I’ll try.” She left the office, closing the door behind her.

Val let her head fall to the desk. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, why didn’t I go into pathology? she thought. It would be so peaceful sitting around, boiling up beakers of urine and culturing bugs. No wackos. No stress. Okay, occasionally you’d be exposed to some deadly anthrax spores, but at least other people’s sex lives stay in the bedroom and the tabloids where they belong.

Her appointment with Martin and Lisbeth Luder rose in her head. They were in their seventies, had been in counseling because they hadn’t had a decent conversation since 1958, and today they had come in and dumped a half hour of explicit sexual narrative on her, an account of perversions they’d indulged in the night before, starting at around 2 A.M. The visual conjured in Val’s mind—all that parched, wrinkled flesh in furious fric-tion—culminated in flames, as if some giant cosmic Boy Scout had decided to rub two old people together to make a fire. The worst of it, the absolute worst of it, is that she’d found herself getting turned on while listening. She’d had to change her panties between appointments four times today.

She considered pouring herself a hefty tumbler of brandy and settling down in front of the television, but that wasn’t going to do it. Batteries; she needed four C-cell batteries and she needed them now. Then it was time to dig through her lingerie drawers and find a long-forgotten friend—and hope that it still worked.

Long past dark and Molly was still staring though the gap in the curtains at the trailer that ate the kid. The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don’t always feel as if you’re nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door. Not that she was ready to go out and pro-claim that fact to anyone, because no matter how sane you feel, some stuff just sounds too crazy. So she watched, still wearing her Warrior Babe outfit, hoping someone else would come along and notice. Around eight, someone did.

She saw Theophilus Crowe going from door to door in the park. He came into view two trailers down at the Morales home, spoke briefly with Mr. Morales at the door, then headed for the dragon trailer.

Molly was torn. She liked Theo. Yes, he’d taken her to County once or twice, but he’d always been kind to her—warned her about the guy in the day room who cheated at Parcheesi by eating the marbles. And he never spoke to her like she was a crazy woman. Theo was a fan.

As Theo was raising his black Mag lite to tap on the dragon trailer’s door, Molly saw the two windows on the end slowly open, revealing the cat’seye pupils. Theo obviously didn’t see them. He was looking at his shoes.