Case File # 12 chapter2
Chapter 2
I look at the watch on my office. I’ve never been fond of those digital-type watches. I’m not really sure why; somehow, it seemed that those types never really tell what time it is. So, all of my watches have the three-arms with the face on them; and this particular one on my table is no exception. Through the soft glow of the lamp next to it, I saw the current time; 2:30. Morning. The darkness outside my window confirmed this.
I reach for another cigarette. 2:30am, three hours after Mrs. O’Hara left my office. The notes I’ve written are on the table, staring at me. Every detail of the case is written there. Or at least, any detail I needed to know, and what I came up with a few hours ago, while speaking to this beautiful client. I tried reviewing the notes, but I can’t. Just thinking about this case makes my head swirl, and my stomach turns unnaturally. I can taste bile on my tongue. For the first time, I felt that this case will be too much for me to handle. Instead, I poured myself another shot of bourbon, while lighting my Marlboro’s. I closed my eyes, and I let loose a deep sigh, forcing myself to clear the all the clutter bothering my mind. Yet, even after a few minutes, the pieces are still scattered, floating around in my consciousness, like fish food in an aquarium. Just floating around the water lazily. Until a koi decides to have dinner. There is only one reason why I feel this way: this is one puzzling case.
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Q: “When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. O’Hara?”
A: “Five months ago, I guess. The last week of September.”
Q: “Does he have any enemies? Someone who may wish to do him harm?”
A: “Let me tell you 2 things about my husband, Detective. First, he is unbelievably rich. Don’t ask me how he managed to accumulate his current wealth. He never tells me anything, and more than once, did he insist that I should not know. When we got married, he told me that I can have half of his total assets, if I keep my curiosity sealed.”
I stood up, and looked outside my window. The February deluge didn’t stop.
Q: “Okay. What’s the other one?”
A: “About 2 years ago, my husband got in a terrible car accident. It rendered him in a coma. Brain-dead, a sleeping vegetable. And the last time I saw him, he is still very much in the same state.”
I turned around, and looked at her. Her face, still a blank canvas. The soft glow of her cigarettes radiating her supple lips, a bit shiny due to her lip gloss. She puts her cigarette down on the ashtray, giving it a slight flick to get rid of the ashes. Her right hand fixed her hair, revealing her right ear. She did all these, without averting her eyes from me.
************************************************************************
After jotting down her address and telephone number, we concluded our meeting. As she stood up, I asked her.
“So… how do you feel about all this, Mrs. O’Hara?”
She hesitated for a few minutes, her lips slightly parted, a silent yet audible sigh escaping from them. She sat down once again, then she told me her story on how she met her husband. This is a long story, so I got on my chair again.
“I was a college student in K university, majoring in psychology. Even when I was a small child, I wondered a lot on the how and why of people’s actions. When someone burns their hand, why do they pull it back so quickly? Of course, I learned in elementary school that that is called a “reflex action”, a response to an outer stimuli. Still, my fascination was held by such ideas. So, against the will of my parents, I decided to take psychology. It was in the university when I first set eyes on him.
Mind you, detective, I didn’t have much on emotions. I am a very single-minded person. I know very well that I was in the university to study and learn. Yet, deep inside, maybe by instinct, I know that he felt an attraction towards me on that day. Please don’t ask me the specifics; what day was it, or what time. I don’t remember them.”
As she crushed her cigarette on the ashtray, it dawned on me that there is something peculiar about her, so unlike from the other girls. They say that women are more emotional than men; ordinary housewives remember the day and time when they met their husbands; but this O’Hara person is otherwise. A pure intellectual who didn’t dilly-dally on those kinds of things, it was clear that the head ruled over everything else. The fact that she asked for my help concerning her husband didn’t prove it otherwise.
As I look at her, sitting across from me, I wonder about her motives, in asking for my help. Does she miss her husband? I don’t think so. Mrs. O’Hara is not the emotional type; she is more like the accept-everything-as-facts type. If her husband disappears, even if the circumstances are… unexplainable, then that is that. To shed tears for someone who leaves, it wouldn’t help. Only the sappy ones would insist that tears help in the recovery process. If that is so, then we are all better off with puffy eyes; we live in a world where everyone moves ahead, or left behind, all the time. Eye drop sales all over the world would sky-rocket.
And even if marriage is a probable proposition, this doesn’t mean that love is all around. At this day and age, people get married for a number of reasons. Love is not just a factor for marriage. This is what I think about Mrs. O’Hara.
Still, I feel that inside of her there is at least a sprout of emotion. It seems that she suppresses it, or at least hides it from others. And she hides it very well.
“At first we were just classmates, associates in a common goal. He is very much like me, detective. He holds little value on emotions, always looking on the goal. The only emotion I see in him is his drive, his urge towards success. When we are in a study group, I can feel the hairs on my arms standing on end, just by watching him. I can see the intensity in his eyes, the way his brows are furrowed, the sweat beading on his head. As if his life hangs by the thread. What animates him towards consummation, I didn’t really know back then. Only when we finally got married did he tell me his motivations.”
************************************************************************
2:35 AM. I stand up from my chair, my bourbon in one hand. I look down from my office window. The drizzle from a few hours ago is still there. When will this storm ever end? I check the streets. The street lights are on. There’s nobody there. Even the hobos are away, driven away by this February storm. I felt disappointment; I’ve never felt so alone.
I look at the watch on my office. I’ve never been fond of those digital-type watches. I’m not really sure why; somehow, it seemed that those types never really tell what time it is. So, all of my watches have the three-arms with the face on them; and this particular one on my table is no exception. Through the soft glow of the lamp next to it, I saw the current time; 2:30. Morning. The darkness outside my window confirmed this.
I reach for another cigarette. 2:30am, three hours after Mrs. O’Hara left my office. The notes I’ve written are on the table, staring at me. Every detail of the case is written there. Or at least, any detail I needed to know, and what I came up with a few hours ago, while speaking to this beautiful client. I tried reviewing the notes, but I can’t. Just thinking about this case makes my head swirl, and my stomach turns unnaturally. I can taste bile on my tongue. For the first time, I felt that this case will be too much for me to handle. Instead, I poured myself another shot of bourbon, while lighting my Marlboro’s. I closed my eyes, and I let loose a deep sigh, forcing myself to clear the all the clutter bothering my mind. Yet, even after a few minutes, the pieces are still scattered, floating around in my consciousness, like fish food in an aquarium. Just floating around the water lazily. Until a koi decides to have dinner. There is only one reason why I feel this way: this is one puzzling case.
************************************************************************
Q: “When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. O’Hara?”
A: “Five months ago, I guess. The last week of September.”
Q: “Does he have any enemies? Someone who may wish to do him harm?”
A: “Let me tell you 2 things about my husband, Detective. First, he is unbelievably rich. Don’t ask me how he managed to accumulate his current wealth. He never tells me anything, and more than once, did he insist that I should not know. When we got married, he told me that I can have half of his total assets, if I keep my curiosity sealed.”
I stood up, and looked outside my window. The February deluge didn’t stop.
Q: “Okay. What’s the other one?”
A: “About 2 years ago, my husband got in a terrible car accident. It rendered him in a coma. Brain-dead, a sleeping vegetable. And the last time I saw him, he is still very much in the same state.”
I turned around, and looked at her. Her face, still a blank canvas. The soft glow of her cigarettes radiating her supple lips, a bit shiny due to her lip gloss. She puts her cigarette down on the ashtray, giving it a slight flick to get rid of the ashes. Her right hand fixed her hair, revealing her right ear. She did all these, without averting her eyes from me.
************************************************************************
After jotting down her address and telephone number, we concluded our meeting. As she stood up, I asked her.
“So… how do you feel about all this, Mrs. O’Hara?”
She hesitated for a few minutes, her lips slightly parted, a silent yet audible sigh escaping from them. She sat down once again, then she told me her story on how she met her husband. This is a long story, so I got on my chair again.
“I was a college student in K university, majoring in psychology. Even when I was a small child, I wondered a lot on the how and why of people’s actions. When someone burns their hand, why do they pull it back so quickly? Of course, I learned in elementary school that that is called a “reflex action”, a response to an outer stimuli. Still, my fascination was held by such ideas. So, against the will of my parents, I decided to take psychology. It was in the university when I first set eyes on him.
Mind you, detective, I didn’t have much on emotions. I am a very single-minded person. I know very well that I was in the university to study and learn. Yet, deep inside, maybe by instinct, I know that he felt an attraction towards me on that day. Please don’t ask me the specifics; what day was it, or what time. I don’t remember them.”
As she crushed her cigarette on the ashtray, it dawned on me that there is something peculiar about her, so unlike from the other girls. They say that women are more emotional than men; ordinary housewives remember the day and time when they met their husbands; but this O’Hara person is otherwise. A pure intellectual who didn’t dilly-dally on those kinds of things, it was clear that the head ruled over everything else. The fact that she asked for my help concerning her husband didn’t prove it otherwise.
As I look at her, sitting across from me, I wonder about her motives, in asking for my help. Does she miss her husband? I don’t think so. Mrs. O’Hara is not the emotional type; she is more like the accept-everything-as-facts type. If her husband disappears, even if the circumstances are… unexplainable, then that is that. To shed tears for someone who leaves, it wouldn’t help. Only the sappy ones would insist that tears help in the recovery process. If that is so, then we are all better off with puffy eyes; we live in a world where everyone moves ahead, or left behind, all the time. Eye drop sales all over the world would sky-rocket.
And even if marriage is a probable proposition, this doesn’t mean that love is all around. At this day and age, people get married for a number of reasons. Love is not just a factor for marriage. This is what I think about Mrs. O’Hara.
Still, I feel that inside of her there is at least a sprout of emotion. It seems that she suppresses it, or at least hides it from others. And she hides it very well.
“At first we were just classmates, associates in a common goal. He is very much like me, detective. He holds little value on emotions, always looking on the goal. The only emotion I see in him is his drive, his urge towards success. When we are in a study group, I can feel the hairs on my arms standing on end, just by watching him. I can see the intensity in his eyes, the way his brows are furrowed, the sweat beading on his head. As if his life hangs by the thread. What animates him towards consummation, I didn’t really know back then. Only when we finally got married did he tell me his motivations.”
************************************************************************
2:35 AM. I stand up from my chair, my bourbon in one hand. I look down from my office window. The drizzle from a few hours ago is still there. When will this storm ever end? I check the streets. The street lights are on. There’s nobody there. Even the hobos are away, driven away by this February storm. I felt disappointment; I’ve never felt so alone.
posted by Gendo Ikari at 4:30 PM
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