“That’s what the shrink my defense team hired said I was. Narcissistic and a junkie. The key was to make me look intensely screwed up so I could avoid responsibility. I wasn’t supposed to read the report but I insisted they show it to me because I was paying for it. It makes sense to you?”

“Legally, it was yours—”

“Not that,” she said. “What the turkey wrote about me. ‘Narcissism, histrionic, dope.’ That fit your diagnosis?”

“Let’s talk about Chad.”

Her eyes fluttered. She fiddled with the air hose. “Just tell me this: How narcissistic am I if I devote the last six years of my life to my child? How histrionic am I if I never show him anything but a calm, happy face? How big of a dope fiend am I if I’ve been clean and sober for seven fucking years?”

“Good point.”

“But I’m stuck with that damn diagnosis. In my head—like that bastard passed a sentence on me. Like it’s my eye color and I’m stuck with it.”

She cleared her throat, coughed, swooned, adjusted a valve on the air tank. “I wanted to kill that shrink. Judging me. Now I’d be happy if what he put down was my only diagnosis.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, up and down goes the head,” she said. “Been to a lot of you guys, my parents didn’t give up on me till I was fourteen. I have to tell you, most of your colleagues were losers. So how could I respect their opinions? Know why I picked you? It wasn’t because I remembered you from when your gay buddy hassled me. I mean I did remember, but that wasn’t the point. Know what it was?”

“Not a clue.”

“A woman I used to do yoga with, one of the few people who still has the balls to keep visiting me, referred you. Marie Blunt.”

Marie, now an A-level interior designer, had once been a showgirl. The court had asked me to evaluate her kids for custody. The showgirl years had come out, but nothing more. Now I wondered if she’d dabbled in Gretchen’s world.

“Silent treatment, Doc. Yeah, yeah, you can’t admit you know her, I get it. But I’m sure we can both agree Marie’s a saint. Even her idiot ex recognizes that now, but she’s too smart to take him back. She said when the court hired you to do her child custody, she freaked out because he had all the money, she was scared you’d be corrupt like everyone else and take his side. Instead, you were fair and managed to get both of them not to victimize the kids. No mean feat, considering the ex is a total rat-bastard.”

I crossed my legs.