Chapter 5

Nikki whispered in a low voice, "So that's what all this is about."

I said, "Yes."

Dr. Chivago said, "You mean like a threesome?"

Rachel said, "No, not exactly," and laughed mirthlessly. "You are not a very good listener after all, Dr. Chivago. I don't want to have a threesome with them - I really don't fancy my daughter sexually, and I am pretty sure she doesn't either." Nikki nodded her head, as if agreeing. For some reason, I felt relieved - do not ask me why. If I knew why, I would not have said, 'For some reason' now, would I? The hypocrisy of my reaction never occurred to me until much later, when I would laugh at it. I gave Rachel my full attention, even though I was certainly sensitive to anything Nikki did at the same time.

"Then is it like a time-share? You know, you get him for four days and Nicole gets him for three?"

"Not unless she wants to share him," Rachel said, a statement that I felt would have been ludicrous on any other day. Today, though, it just seemed so appropriate. "No, I don't want to step in between them like that. When I was young, about the time I lost my father, there was a period when I was quite depressed. A time when I started to fantasize about all those extremes, you know. Bondage. Submission. Being forced to do something. I think the whole point of it was giving somebody else the power to abuse you as they pleased, and it appealed to me." She paused for a beat before clarifying, "I want to give them the power to do with me as they please. Live out their darkest fantasies through me, things they might not want to impose on each other."

"Wow," he said, sounding suitably stunned. It was the first time in my life that I had come across a speechless psychiatrist - except for the one who had killed himself by jumping in front of a truck - but I could understand where he had come from. I had lived with her for close to two decades and I was finding out an entirely new side of my wife I had never even had a fucking clue about. Nikki turned towards me at that moment and mouthed, "Did you know about this?" I am sure my face was flushed when I shook my head. Nope, no fucking clue.

The rest of the conversation was a bit anticlimactic after that, with the doctor asking her exactly when she had started feeling that way and my wife replying that it was something that had jumped out at her when she had read about it in a book. There were no more earth-shattering revelations after that. Dr. Chivago segued into her attitude towards us - rather than her fantasies - but all his efforts were in vain. Towards the end of the tape, she reiterated that Nikki and I were sleeping together and that all she wanted Dr. Chivago's help for was to a) ensure that Nikki was okay with my 'advances, ' as she called it and b) find out if Nikki and I were sympathetic to her involvement in our relationship. As I said, given the build-up, it was anti-climactic.

The tape ended with Dr. Chivago's promise that he would set up an appointment with Nikki for the next day, and with me the day after. She thanked him for his time and left.

Shortly after that, Nikki and I were back home. Nikki offered to make dinner and ordered me to bed for an hour's nap. I went along because she was a good cook and more so because I wanted to make my own research into solving this mess. Everything seemed different now from the way it had been before; every time I looked at her, I was no longer able to visualize her lithe, young body as somebody else's, such as Britney Spears or Demi Moore. I was looking at the same body, but it was no longer a sexy figure that had my daughter's face - it was a sexy figure that belonged to my daughter, period.

I was ashamed of the sudden change in my feelings for her, despite her admission earlier in the day, and resolved to find a solution to everything before my life, as I lived it now, changed forever. I told myself it was the responsible thing inasmuch as I was still her father and not her lover. Yet. I fired up my desktop and started looking.

The obvious place to try, I thought, would be one of those story sites where surely, among their hundred-odd stories, there would be at least one plot that I could associate with my own situation. Do not laugh - I would like to believe Sherlock's statement that there were no new crimes, 'only old ones committed by new criminals, ' applied to other aspects of life too. I typed in a few keywords into Google, and presto! I had a list of sites just like that.

As anyone who is familiar with the Internet will tell you, searching is never the problem - it is the sorting where lies the devil. For the better part of five minutes, I followed click after click after click into sites that ostensibly catered to requirements such as mine only to find myself, at some point, facing a page that asked for my credit card details. I never subscribed to any of them. As Martin of the Vice Squad used to say, the only thing free these days is porn on the 'Net if you know where to look. I kept looking.

Finally, I short-listed about five sites that seemed promising and professional. One of them was a pay-site that looked as if it really did offer the contents it advertised, tempting me with a library that boasted over seven hundred stories. I signed up and started reading everything that suggested it had the father-daughter-incest theme thrown into it, with the occasional one involving the mother as well. Or another relative. Or a friend. Or a gang. Or the family pet.

You might probably dismiss this as the most verbose excuse anyone has ever given for perusing porn, but I was really serious - and hopeful - about finding an inspiration among all those literary works written by people who hid themselves behind a pseudonym. Until.

The problem, I soon discovered, was not that there was a lack of imagination, although it did seem as if certain plots - 'daughter caught masturbating fucks daddy' and 'drunk daughter fucks daddy' - were actually downloadable stuff that you customized by changing the names of the participants and submitted. It was the kind of mass-produced literature that made you wonder why people even bothered with the effort of writing and submitting it.

Or there would be guys - I assume most of these kind of authors are guys - who would actually hinge their whole stories on their characters falling unconvincingly in love with each other - "Oh, Dad... I just realized that I loved you. And the fact that your dick is eight inches long really helps." or "When her 32D boobs winked at me, I knew I had fallen for my own daughter" - and then live happily ever after. I mean, come on - if daughters and fathers jumped into bed just like that, they would have legalized incest a long time ago.

There was this particular author who seemed to end every single one of his stories with the daughter getting knocked up by her own father. It was so repetitive that after the fourth story, all I had to read was the blurb to understand the entire line of bullshit that passed of as his - I confirmed from his profile that it was indeed a person of the masculine persuasion - work. And as if this were not enough, another wise guy even had the temerity to have his character declare, a la Caesar, "I came, I saw, I cum-covered."

How do people even read this stuff? Why would they even want to?

As I said, simple hypocrisies - like the fact that I was browsing them myself - usually escape me.

Finally, after about half an hour of searching, I gave up. I was almost convinced that I should whip out my erection - did I mention that I sported one? - and wait for Nikki to walk through that door and swoon at the sight of her daddy's lightning saber. (I made that one up myself, although I would not be too surprised to find it mentioned in one of the stories sometime in the near future.) That would really bring everything to a head, I suppose. I was almost convinced that we would have sex anyway because I had seen her naked, and when a father sees his grown-up daughter naked, it is a given that they will start fucking like jackrabbits before his wife - if she is not blessedly dead because of a drunk driver - comes home to join them. I was almost convinced that if I went downstairs right now, I would find Nikki wearing an old shirt of mine, sans panties, and stretching for that one ingredient that is just out of her reach.

Leaving my desk, I picked up my phone and rang Dr. Chivago. He picked it up on the second ring fading into the third. "Mr. Kane?" he inquired instead of the universal 'Hello.'

"This is he," I said and immediately wondered whether it was grammatically correct. Screw it, I thought to myself, I was talking to a shrink, not my high school teacher. "Can we talk, or do you need me to come down there for another session?" I did not intend for my question to come across as threatening, but apparently, it was intimidating enough for him to agree, quite readily, that we could chat over the phone. "I assume you've listened to the entire tape," he said when I failed to respond.

You might have probably guessed - correctly, I might add - that my usual cockiness had returned. That is probably because I had not listened to a single, shocking revelation in the past thirty minutes that related, personally, to me. I remembered to curb my natural sarcasm at the last moment. When you call someone for help, it does not really help your cause if you insult him or her at the same time. I would have probably said something funny, like, "Wow! You MUST be a psychiatrist." if I had wanted to. "Yes, I did," I told him. "I've got a couple of questions for you."

"Shoot," he said readily, and then gave a nervous laugh. "I mean that metaphorically, of course."

"Why did you give me the cassette in the first place anyway?"

"I didn't give it to you. You took it yourself."

It sounded as if he was suddenly wary about being trapped into admitting that he had passed on a taped session with a patient to a third party. For a second, I thought about carrying on in the same vein. Just for a second. "I am not recording this. There. Now nobody can use this conversation in a court of law. Now tell me why you let me take the cassette."

He hesitated for just the appropriate length of time again. "I really don't think I would have allowed the tape -"

"Christ," I interrupted, getting slightly exasperated. "You could have insisted that I leave the tape with you - hell, you did not even need to tell me that you had a record of Rachel's session. Why don't you just tell me why you thought I should hear all of it with my daughter?"

"With your daughter?" Evidently, that surprised him. "You listened to that tape with your daughter."

"Of course," I told him. "What else was I supposed to do?"

Now it was his turn to take the Lord's name in vain. "How did she take it?"

"With salt and pepper," I retorted. "How do you think she took it? She's - never mind that," I was deliberately stringing him along. I was feeling like a detective again. "Just tell me why you thought I should know."

He let out a whoosh at the other end before answering. "It's as if the three of you were in three different worlds. Rachel was convinced that you were sleeping with your daughter. Who, on the other hand, has no idea anybody else is privy to her deep feelings about you. And you were simply too caught up in your own holier-than-thou life to see what was going on around you. I wanted to let you know what was happening because you are in the middle of everything, whether you want to or not. It was not just enough that you hear the words - you had to hear them from her lips. Capisce?"

"Yeah," I said. That remark about me staying ignorant hit home. "That brings me to my second question."

"What is that?"

"What should I do now?"

"Apologize to me for all the nasty things you said to me?"

"Don't be a jerk," was what I wanted to tell him. I amended it to a "No, how should I convince my wife that I am not having an affair with our daughter?"

"Have you tried talking to her?" he asked.

"No," I answered.

"Then do it. She won't trust it coming from you as much as she would if Nikki were to tell her, but I am sure you will agree that Nikki doesn't need it on top of all this right now. Is there anything else?"

Deflated, I told him there was nothing more I needed from him for the moment. He wished me the best of luck with my wife and hung up.

Nikki was in the kitchen downstairs, telling me dinner was at least another thirty minutes away from getting ready, as I climbed down the stairs. I was slightly disappointed to see that she was not wearing an old shirt of mine and nothing else; in fact, she had changed out of her earlier attire into something a bit more conservative. Her white, sleeveless blouse contrasted quite nicely with the dark skirt she wore that just about covered her knees. Her apron was tied loosely around her waist as she continued chopping the vegetables for the stew. "What are you doing up so early?" she asked, coming over and giving me a peck on the lips, giving me a quick peek down her cleavage.

"Need to get some toiletries," I lied. I did not think it would be a good idea to put the two of them together just yet, even as I felt that Nikki did owe her mother an apology of sorts. At the same time, I needed to speak to Rachel before anything else developed. Like me giving in to my desires as well and transforming all those allegations into facts. I was finding my own daughter sexy even in her present attire. It was slightly worrying that I was no longer worried about such thoughts. Go figure.

I asked her if she wanted anything, to which she replied that she wanted me back in about half an hour if I wanted a hot dinner. "Nothing else," she added, studying me, "but are you sure you want to be driving with that head of yours?"

"It's no big deal. Besides, the fresh air might be good for me," I told her as I grabbed the car keys and left the building through the same door that had delivered a KO to me earlier. I was careful not to smash into it a second time.

As I headed down the block in my car, I asked myself once again why I wanted to see Rachel. Of course, there was this matter of the kiss to clear up - which, come to think of it, paled in comparison to all of its implications, which she had already accepted as fact. But was that really the reason I wanted to talk to her? Could I lie to her face, promise that there was nothing sexual between Nikki and me, when the reality - which I accepted now - was that there would always be something there unless she wised up, or I did something stupid.

Did I believe that we were now on course for the two of us - Nikki and I - to become lovers? I could not think of a reason it would not happen. Rachel wanted it to, or assumed it already was happening. Nikki had made it perfectly clear she wanted it as well. And there was yours truly, and I would like to tell you that I was the kind of man who could turn down the chance to make love to a gorgeous girl - with my wife's permission, mind you - whom I already loved with all my life. The society we lived in - to borrow from some of the stories I had gone through earlier - had no bearing on the matter for the same reason murders happen even though they are banned in every society.

In all honesty, I was not really fighting fate and temptation here. In retrospect, I have to admit that seeing Rachel was not about changing our lives as much as a cover-my-ass-operation in case things went wrong and all the blame was laid at my feet. I was not blind to the possibility that things could go wrong - no relationship can ever be perfect - but the consequences of that happening were what kept me from going back to my house and give my daughter exactly what she wanted. I was more than twice her age, going to rot while she was only going to get more beautiful in the years to come. I fought for the remote. I could be churlish and sulky when I wanted to be.

In short, I suspected that I was not quite the Prince Charming she must have painted in her fantasies. Enough said.

I called Rachel on her mobile after I had found a parking space close to the Memorial. I always take it as a good omen whenever I am able to park within five blocks of my destination in LA. It is a sign The Man's with you. She was on her break; otherwise, she would have let it ring and called back only later. I asked her to come down to the statue by the entrance. I did not offer an explanation as to why I was there, and she did not ask. She simply said, "I'll be there in a moment."

It took her about a couple of minutes to appear, during which time I had already asked myself a few hundred times if I should have told her I had come alone. I had an impression that she was more surprised about my being there at all rather than being there without Nikki. I took a couple of steps towards her and we embraced where we normally would have hugged. It felt quite formal to me, as if she were keeping her distance, and the only way I could react to that was by asking her if she would like to take a short walk.

"Can't," she said apologetically. "I really have to be back in a few minutes for a major surgery. You know, for prepping the patient and all that."

I nodded. "Okay, that's cool."

"I am really sorry," she repeated, placing her hand on my arm for emphasis.

"I said that's fine. I mean it. Stop being so damned apologetic all the time."

"Sorry," she said before she could stop herself.

Though it did not thaw the ice all the way through, it did manage to reduce the tension that had been in the air between us. I took a deep breath and plunged in with a 'Sorry' of my own for the way Nikki had behaved with her.

Rachel dismissed it with a shake of her head. "She's entitled to," she stated simply, letting it hang in there without any explanation. If that was the cue, I missed it deliberately. It was not what I had come here to discuss, and with the limited time that we had, I intended to make every second of it count.

"Dr. Chivago gave me a tape of your session," I told her instead, watching her intently for a reaction.

Her face lost its composure for just an instant before a mask of resignation came over it. "I see," she said. "And why did he do that?"

"He said he wanted me to have the complete picture," I answered, pulling a cigarette out of my pocket. "Apparently, he thought there was a breakdown in communication among the three of us." I took my time lighting up, giving her the chance to say something.

She did not speak until I had taken a deep lungful of smoke. "Why are you here, Jerry? What more do you want to know?"

"Why do you find it so hard to believe that Nikki and I have nothing going on between us? Nothing. Nada. Zip."

To my relief, she did not snort at the question. Instead, in a lower voice, she gave me her answer. "I don't know. I really don't know, but for some reason, I find it more natural to think of you as lovers than otherwise." I was about to say something when she held up her hand. The women in my family never let me speak when I want to. I was reminded of Nikki using exactly the same gesture an hour or so earlier. Like mother, I suppose, like daughter. "I have known - or maybe I should say felt - Nikki's feelings towards you for a long time, perhaps even before she herself was aware of them. Maybe it was as Dr. Chivago said, that I was superimposing my own feelings on her. I would have believed him... if I hadn't read her diary too. It convinced me that she really did fall in love with you."

She paused before adding, "But if you ever hurt her, I swear you won't know what hit you. Just so you know." I was surprised at how hard her voice had become.

"Come on," I told her, holding up my palm in a placating gesture. "I don't get it. That was uncalled for. Either you trust her with me, or you talk her out of it. You can't have it both ways."

She smiled wanly, and now spoke with softness. "I didn't mean that the way it came out, Jerry. I just meant that, you know, even after everything's been said and done, she's still a kid. She's not used to being in a relationship. I don't want you getting angry with her or getting irritated, you know, have a fight like a regular couple." She gave me an impish grin that told me the Rachel I had fallen in love with was still in her. "If you've really listened to the tape, you know that's what I am there for. Let me absorb all your punishment and anger. Let her have all the love you have to give."