I look over to Gabriel to see if he’s buying what Richard Trofino is selling. By the narrowness of his eyes, it’s obvious that he’s not. It’s a viewpoint that I wholeheartedly endorse.

20. ELLA BRODEN

20.

ELLA BRODEN

When Allison initially told me that she’d like to meet every Wednesday and Thursday, I assumed I must be in much worse psychological condition than I’d thought.

“No,” she assured me. “I just find that the work is really jump-started when you double up for the first little bit.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed her then, and I’m even less certain now. That’s because the “first little bit” has lasted six months so far, and there’s no end in sight. The last time I asked her if she thought we could go to one day a week was about a month ago. She said we could discuss the topic whenever I wanted, but her advice was to keep this schedule for “a little while longer.”

After I’d resigned myself to the fact that we’d be meeting two days a week for maybe forever, I asked her why we met on back-to-back days. It seemed to me I would have more to discuss if we met on a Monday and then a Friday, for instance.

“The work we do here,” she said, “is not about you telling me what’s happened in your day or week. Rather, we’re trying to dig down into your subconscious, which requires breaking down the various walls and other defense mechanisms you’ve established so you don’t let anyone—even yourself—go there. The reason I like to meet in close succession is because it’s the normal human reaction to begin to rebuild those walls right away. So the pattern is that we chip away at them here, and then you start rebuilding when you leave. If we meet the next day, the walls are still weak, so we can make much better progress.”

“Then why don’t we just meet for three hours on one day?”

“Because the chipping away, if you permit me to continue the metaphor, loses its effectiveness after a while. Think about the ax blade becoming too dull to continue the work. It gets sharpened overnight.”

Today I have a lot of wall breaking to do. In fact, I’m going to need a goddamn wrecking ball.

Allison shows me an off-kilter smile when she opens the door. I wonder if that’s because she already knows what I’m going to share. Although Lauren’s murder was a full-fledged media event, especially on cable news, I sometimes question how closely Allison pays attention to what I’m saying. I can’t be certain she even made the connection that the murdered ADA and the ex-boss I’ve talked about during the past six months are one and the same.