Chapter 5
Doctor Pat Saxon leaned on the low parapet and stared over the grounds and distant mountains that curved before his eyes like a magnificent panorama. He was on the sunroof, the highest plateau of the main building, where guests could relax under the warm Mexican sun. It was deserted now; the Doctor had the sunroof to himself. He looked ten years younger than his age, thirty-seven and the blue eyes, set widely apart in the unlined face, were kind and strangely sad. His skin was smooth, tanned, healthy-looking and when he moved, the movements were lithe, easy and quick.
His five-foot-six frame was slender, boyish almost and the clothes that covered it were immaculate. His eyes roamed over the trees, water and grassland between him and the mountains and he thought again how fortunate he had been that this place was available five years before when he had opened his research center. He had given the center a name, Hillside and people were never quite sure if it was a hospital, convalescent home, institution or what. Someone had once suggested it was an asylum for mental patients!
A wry smile curved the doctor's mouth at the memory. Hillside was a little of everything, he reminded himself. But when he had started his project, he hadn't meant it to be any of those things. It was to be and actually was, a research center.
Hillside was specifically designed for research into the psychology of sex. It was a place where sex, normal and aberrant, could be observed, recorded and evaluated.
And this had been done. More than five hundred cases had been researched, documented and dispatched to various psychiatric bodies throughout the world. That part of Pat's project had paid well. That had been his objective, his only objective, in the beginning. Pat Saxon had not had any intention of effecting cures or rehabilitation. That was outside his qualifications. He was not a doctor of medicine! Even though patients, or guests and associates believed that! Pat Saxon was a doctor of psychology.
His only objective, his only interest, had been to observe and document. Then he had found that there were so many sidelines that his original project had developed side effects, lucrative side effects!
He had not known that there would be so many people who would want members of their families to become patients, or guests (as they called them) at Hillside! He still marveled at the number of people who would shudder at the idea of committing someone to a State institution, yet thought nothing of putting a member of their family in Hillside and sometimes leaving them there seemingly forgotten.
Doctor Saxon charged a fee, of course. A fee that varied (he thought grimly) according to the circumstances. That was one unexpected source of income. And there was another. He was thinking of the other at the moment.
Hillside was a nearly unique type of research center, but he hadn't expected an unasked for and exclusive clientele to contribute towards it! Doctor Saxon sighed. His success was responsible for some of his problems. The name of the place became well known in certain circles and when someone in the family became just too, too much ... well, then they'd send them away to Hillside or, as it was even better known, the Saxon place!
"Doctor Saxon!" A sweet, young voice uttered his name in pleasure and surprise.
He turned. "Phoebe, were you looking for me?"
"I was," she answered, then laughed, "but Marianne told me all I wanted to know."
Doctor Saxon looked thoughtful. "Oh, the new guests I suppose?"
"Yes. Will I have to do an analysis on them? The man, I mean the anal compulsive, as Marianne called him?"
He shrugged. "Who else?" he asked.
Phoebe frowned, then reached for the Doctor's pack of cigarettes and took one. "You know, Pat," she spoke quietly, intimately, "we've got too many guests here."
He lit her cigarette.
"They're not crowded," he said, "this is a big place; we could get twenty more in easily."
Phoebe shook her head. "I didn't mean that! Since Carson left a month ago, there's only you and me to do analysis."
He nodded, then sighed. "I know," he glanced at her face. "Are you tired? How many hours did you put in yesterday?"
She waved the question aside. "I'm not worried about that."
"You ought to get more money," he added quickly. "I'll tell Marianne to mark you down for an extra two hundred a month."
Phoebe laughed. "You're crazy, Pat. You can't go 'round giving two hundred dollar raises just like that."
"I don't," he smiled, "just to you."
She placed her hand on his arm in a strangely old-fashioned gesture. "I don't need more money, Pat, but we need another analyst. You're working about twenty hours a day."
"Where can I get an analyst, our kind of analyst just like that? It's not easy."
"I know," she nodded.
"Marvin is trying to locate one, but I don't know where the hell he's going to look."
"Marv'll find you one, Pat," she said confidently.
Pat Saxon looked at her. "Marv's a pretty lucky guy having you," he murmured.
The top button on the chaste, white blouse that Phoebe filled so delectably was unfastened. He stared down at the smooth, white mounds. "I hope Marv appreciates you," he said, reaching for her blouse and carefully buttoning it up. "You'd make quite an interesting piece of research," he murmured.
Phoebe giggled; the twin hills bounced. "Why don't you research me, Doctor?" she asked coyly.
"It's an idea," he said as if interested, then added, "but it'd be no good ... you know too much. Anyway I don't think that Marvin would approve. Or," he asked with a gleam in his eye, "did you want me to research you both together?"
Phoebe blushed red despite her profession. "You'd be wasting your time," she said very quietly.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he murmured. Then he moved towards the stairway after a glance at his watch. "It's close to five o'clock," he explained, "so I must go and see Jacqueline, our guest in room twenty-four."
"Observed?" she asked, "or?"
"Unobserved, of course," the doctor replied, "you see every day at five o'clock, Jacqueline becomes activated."
Phoebe drew in her breath sharply. "I see," she breathed.
"D'you want to come with me?"
She shook her head reluctantly. "Not today, but tomorrow?" She raised her eyebrows.
He nodded.
"I have to prepare for the new guests," she said.
He paused at the head of the stairway.
"You'll do an analysis tonight?"
"Yes," then she asked, "This girl that Marvin is bringing in; what is she like?"
"Physically? Emotionally?" he asked.
Phoebe blinked at him. "Both," she said softly, "both."
"Well," Doctor Saxon seemed to consider, "I don't know very much about her. Her mother spoke to me on the phone." He seemed to concentrate. "She's a sweet, lovable, fifteen-year-old girl."
"And?" prompted Phoebe.
"Cunnilingus is her thing!" he finished, as he started down the stairs.
Phoebe stared after him with color flooding her face. Then she moved towards the stairway with short, stiff steps. She tried not to press her thighs too tightly together as she squeezed down the stairs but the words kept repeating themselves in her head with every move that she made. She took a deep breath, tried to hold it. He'd said: Cunnilingus is her thing! Her thing, too, she whispered to herself, her, too?