Chapter 10

Pain gnawed at the edges of April's brain and for a while nothing made sense. A voice buzzed in her ears like a hive of mad hornets and rough hands felt her here and there, poking and probing until she wondered if the Inquisition had been reactivated for the sole purpose of making her die a slow and terrible death. Madness surrounded her, while the hot daggers of agony continued to stab and slice at her tormented flesh.

Her mind screamed, Stop hurting me, you sadistic son of a bitch! And the scream was heard.

Rough hands turned gentle and someone with a strangely familiar fuzzy voice asked, "Are you all right, baby?"

April heard but made no answer. She couldn't. Not yet. She lay there on the bathroom floor, drugged with confusion. A tug of war was going on inside her brain and both sides seemed to be winning. She made no effort to stop the senseless game.

Fuck it.

She relaxed.

Floated.

And kept floating.

But not for long.

The strangely familiar but still fuzzy voice asked again, "Are you all right, baby?"

April stopped floating through limbo and opened her eyes to find a worried face she recognized immediately, hovering over hers. Gordon Archer's face. Her breasts heaved as she blinked, gasped, blinked again and fought to control the uncertainty in her voice as she asked, "Where the hell am I?"

"On the bathroom floor."

"That isn't what I meant. I'm talking about this whole damned place. Where are we?"

Gordon Archer spoke with that tense control of someone desperate to avoid a hairy scene. "You still don't remember, baby?"

April opened her mouth and started to say, "Remember what, you oversexed son of a bitch?" A heartbeat later she checked her words and now her dark eyes resembled two windows in hell. And then there was a reaction to the fall she had taken. Skeletons started rattling their dry bones in the closet of her mind. Suddenly, deep within her brain, the memory key turned, unlocked and the closet door opened to release the rattling skeletons. Yesterday collided with today and for a wild moment she thought she would be sick, but then her stomach settled down and so did her voice as she locked glances with Gordon Archer and said, "I remember being bugged by your not carrying the black leather bag doctors usually carry all over hell with them, but I'm not bugged anymore."

His eyebrows lifted. "Oh?"

A faint chill darkened her eyes. "Psychiatrists don't need to carry the damned things."

Gordon's shoulders sagged a little. Breath hissed out of him like air from a slow-leaking tire in a quiet garage and then he asked quietly, "What else do you remember, little one?"

April's breasts trembled violently as she exhaled loudly, then said, "Almost everything."

A puzzled look crawled over his face. "Almost?"

Her eyes showed slanted lights. "There's a slight time gap I can't seem to account for, Dr. Archer." She frowned thoughtfully. "The last thing I recall before waking up here naked as the day I was born was tripping over something in your office ... after you tried to prove that determinism was something more than a theory that all human action is the result of innate urges although they may not be conscious ones ... by trying to put your cock to me."

Gordon said, "Hmmmmm."

April sat up suddenly, red lips parted, eyes glittering, her naked breasts tossing tumultuously as she hissed, "You finally made it, didn't you, Dr. Archer?"

He locked glances with her. "Made what?"

"Me, you cloven-hoofed bastard!"

A slow smile spread across his ruggedly handsome face. "That I did, sweet April."

"In what way?"

"In every way."

"You mean I sucked your cock?"

"You did."

"And took it in my cunt?"

"You did."

"Is my asshole hurting for the reason I think it's hurting?"

"It is."

"I'll be damned!"

He grinned. "Well, at least I didn't rape you, April. It wasn't necessary. A touch of visual amnesia brought your secret self bubbling to the surface."

April looked as confused as she sounded. "Secret self? What the hell are you talking about?"

Gordon treated her to a lopsided smile and said quietly, "The girl on the swing ... remember?"

April shook her head. Then she closed her eyes and momentarily she envisioned the girl, her tiny hands clutching ropes of smoke as she swung through the fairyland sky on the swing of indecision. Confusion dissolved. Truth hit her like a knee in the cunt. The girl on the swing was a symbol. The pendulum of her own emotions, moving from hot to cold, from dispassionate to passionate.

From queasy to bed to easy to bed.

Swinging.

Back and forth, back and forth.

And then, suddenly, freezing.

April opened her eyes and said quietly, "The damned pendulum just stopped swinging, Dr. Archer."

There was a genuine note of deep concern in Gordon's voice as he asked, "For better or for worse?"

April shrugged and made her breasts tremble. "My husband will have to be the final judge of that." She paused, frowned, then said, "Which reminds me ... why did you lie to me about Peter being a pimp?"

Embarrassment crawled across Gordon Archer's face. "You had this feeling of having killed someone, April."

"So?"

He sighed loudly. "So purely for selfish reasons I turned your husband into a pimp on the hunt because you scarred his face with a broken bottle."

April shook her head. "But I didn't do any such thing to Peter ... or to anyone else."

Gordon nodded wearily. "I know, little one. I lied to confuse you and then added to your bewilderment by assigning the role of whorehouse madam to your mother, Lena Black."

April's voice frosted. "God, I never thought you would turn out to be such a sorry prick with one of your patients."

"Nor did I, little April." A sad smile twisted his lips. "I'm sorry."

April grimaced. "You certainly are."

Gordon continued as though she hadn't spoken. "But about this strange feeling you had of having killed someone ... "

April broke in. "Never mind, Doctor. I've read enough books on psychology to recognize a guilt symbol when I see one. The only thing I was killing was my marriage to Peter Gibson. That's why I came to see you in the first place. I was hoping you would be able to help me with my problem."

"What problem?" Pop Westrum growled as he popped out of nowhere and joined them in the bathroom.

"Ah," April hissed, "here's the other liar."

Pop Westrum tried to look as innocent as a child playing in mud. "What's the kid talking about, Doc?"

Gordon Archer smiled sheepishly and grumbled, "You can stop pretending, you senile old son of a bitch. The game is over. Mrs. Gibson's memory has returned."

Pop remained unruffled. He glared at Gordon and said a bit irritably, "Told you it wouldn't last, Doc. Nothing does when you take charge. Telling this smart pussycat she was seventeen and then clobbering her with names of real people and places was a damn fool thing to do." He made a derisive sound. "Proves what I always said about you is the naked truth ... that you're a lousy shrink."

"Feeding this young lady straight lines had nothing to do with it, you son of a bitch," Gordon said without anger. "April slipped in some water and struck her head on the edge of the sink and that's what brought her memory back."

Pop Westrum frowned at the puddle of water on the floor and swore softly. "I take back the insult I just tossed your way, Doc. You didn't fuck up, for a change. April's memory coming back is my fault. As caretaker of this here dump I should have replaced that damned mat when I chucked the old one out."

April was unable to contain herself any longer. She laughed at the disgust that mirrored Pop Westrum's face, then said, "Replace it tomorrow, you old goat."

Pop stopped frowning and blinked at her in surprise. "Tomorrow? You mean I ain't fired as caretaker of this dump you and your husband use during the deer hunting season?"

"No," April said as she stood up, then reached inside the shower stall to turn on the faucets, "but if you aren't naked and ready to spank the daylights out of this twenty-one-year-old ass of mine by the time I finish taking a shower and a douche ... you will be."

Pop chuckled and started undressing.

"As for you," April told Gordon Archer as she reached out and treated his hardening prick to a quick hug with her slender fingers, "keep this big thermometer of yours handy-I do believe my temperature is starting to rise again."

Gordon bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "Want me to take it out now, little minx?"

April released her grip on his now petrified cock, shook her head. "Not until I make myself clean for you and Pop." She backed toward the shower stall, breasts dancing. "Be right back."

Gordon winked and shook his prick at her.

April laughed and stepped under the shower. This time the lukewarm water didn't bother her. She soaped her pubic beard, then stopped to listen as she heard Pop Westrum drawl, "I know you ain't a blabbermouth where your couch customers are concerned, but would you mind breaking a confidence between doctor and patient just this once, long enough to tell me something?"

Gordon Archer made a sour face. "I think I can anticipate your question, but ask away, Pop."

Pop stared at Gordon, a puzzled expression on his time-wrinkled face as he asked, "What in the fucking hell were you treating April for anyhow?"

Gordon drew back for an instant, bristling. "None of your goddamned business, you nosy prick."

"Aw, come on, Doc."

"Kiss my ass."

"Don't be like that, Doc. You know you can trust me to keep my yap shut." His voice turned wheedling. "Come on, fill me in before I bust a gut wonderin' about it."

"Get fucked."

"Doc."

"Go to hell."

April fought like mad to keep a straight face as she popped her head out of the shower and said, "Go ahead, lover. Tell the old reprobate what he wants to know."

"Yeah, Doc," Pop said, "lay it on me. What the hell were you treatin' our girl for anyhow?"

"An ailment normally associated with whores, old maids, sexual cowards and intellectual medical secretaries like April," Gordon said solemnly. "An inhibited libido."

Pop Westrum grimaced as though he had just received a vicious kick in the balls from an invisible foot, then growled, "Goddamn your educated hide, Doc, talk English!"

April giggled. "Tell him, lover."

"Yeah, Doc," Pop said in a whining voice that brought another giggle from April, "tell me."

"Frigidity," April said as she stepped out of the shower stall with bouncing tits and led both men into the bedroom by their rock-hard cocks. "Gordon was treating me for frigidity."

Pop Westrum blinked at the honey-haired girl who was holding a stiff cock in each dainty hand. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.