half hour Claudia reviewed three files where the clients’ handwriting was not particularly noteworthy or remarkable. She made a few notes, but the samples looked normal and emotionally healthy enough that she didn’t bother to read Andy Nicholson’s reports. She knew instinctively that these were not problem clients.
Another short break. She took a small bottle of white wine from the minibar and poured it into a water glass from the bathroom. It wasn’t up to the standard of Grusha’s Cabernet, but it was drinkable.
The next client was a man named Marcus Bernard. Thirty-six, he’d listed his vitals as six two, two-ten, but Claudia was sure he must have fudged his weight by about ten pounds. In his head shot he wore a red baseball cap. His smile, hidden behind a full, graying beard, seemed open and affable. Something about him reminded her of the actor Sean Connery at a younger age, though Marcus Bernard’s lips tended more to thinness.
In his biographical notes under Occupation , he’d entered “real estate developer, hotels.” Several snapshots showed him outdoors in natural settings—hiking with a tall walking stick; standing in front of an open pit at a groundbreaking. In one he wore a tuxedo, a silk scarf draped with studied carelessness around his neck.
Claudia turned to his handwriting sample in the back of the folder. He had scrawled only a couple of lines that said he was looking for a woman who was sexy in the boardroom or the bedroom. How original.
“Someone who is fun to be with,” he had penned. “Loyal, passionate, adventurous, and flexible.”
The word flexible was underlined several times. That kind of heavy underlining often meant that the writer was dogmatic and tended to pontificate. What kind of flexibility did he expect to find? In the context of this handwriting sample, she thought it might be referring to a partner who would be tolerant of indiscretions. Or maybe his desire was for a woman who would participate in exotic activities, such as group sex. That was something his handwriting couldn’t tell her.
The sample displayed many of the hallmarks of a smooth talker: slack rhythm; thready, indefinite letter forms. Some words were illegible. Bernard had left little space between words and lines. The upper loops were too tall, the long lower loops too long and pulling to the left.
In some ways, the handwriting reminded Claudia of another writer—Lyle Menendez, who had been convicted of helping his younger brother murder their wealthy parents back in the mid-1990s.
The capitals in Bernard’s signature were large and tall, which indicated that he thought very well of himself—maybe too well. The final stroke on the capital M in Marcus plunged below the baseline and curved under the a, which was the next letter to the right. A long beginning stroke on the a crossed the downstroke, creating a form that resembled the letter X.
Claudia had researched this “X formation,” and had discovered that in most cases, those who made it had a fatalistic attitude or had been close to death in some way. She wondered whether Bernard had lost someone close to him.
What she saw in the handwriting suggested that he was something of an action junkie who threw his energy around, sticking his fingers into a dozen pies. He needed excitement and stimulation, but small details were unimportant to him. He would need a strong support staff to follow behind and pick up the pieces. Experience told Claudia that he would use diffuse activity to help him avoid dealing with things he would rather not face.
By this time, she figured she knew what she would find in Andy’s report: sex, sex, and more sex. This was one case where she couldn’t disagree with him. With the disproportionately long lower loops as part of the whole picture, Marcus Bernard would constantly be seeking new experiences and possibly new partners, but emotional satisfaction would elude him. The question was, knowing that, would Grusha
Another short break. She took a small bottle of white wine from the minibar and poured it into a water glass from the bathroom. It wasn’t up to the standard of Grusha’s Cabernet, but it was drinkable.
The next client was a man named Marcus Bernard. Thirty-six, he’d listed his vitals as six two, two-ten, but Claudia was sure he must have fudged his weight by about ten pounds. In his head shot he wore a red baseball cap. His smile, hidden behind a full, graying beard, seemed open and affable. Something about him reminded her of the actor Sean Connery at a younger age, though Marcus Bernard’s lips tended more to thinness.
In his biographical notes under Occupation , he’d entered “real estate developer, hotels.” Several snapshots showed him outdoors in natural settings—hiking with a tall walking stick; standing in front of an open pit at a groundbreaking. In one he wore a tuxedo, a silk scarf draped with studied carelessness around his neck.
Claudia turned to his handwriting sample in the back of the folder. He had scrawled only a couple of lines that said he was looking for a woman who was sexy in the boardroom or the bedroom. How original.
“Someone who is fun to be with,” he had penned. “Loyal, passionate, adventurous, and flexible.”
The word flexible was underlined several times. That kind of heavy underlining often meant that the writer was dogmatic and tended to pontificate. What kind of flexibility did he expect to find? In the context of this handwriting sample, she thought it might be referring to a partner who would be tolerant of indiscretions. Or maybe his desire was for a woman who would participate in exotic activities, such as group sex. That was something his handwriting couldn’t tell her.
The sample displayed many of the hallmarks of a smooth talker: slack rhythm; thready, indefinite letter forms. Some words were illegible. Bernard had left little space between words and lines. The upper loops were too tall, the long lower loops too long and pulling to the left.
In some ways, the handwriting reminded Claudia of another writer—Lyle Menendez, who had been convicted of helping his younger brother murder their wealthy parents back in the mid-1990s.
The capitals in Bernard’s signature were large and tall, which indicated that he thought very well of himself—maybe too well. The final stroke on the capital M in Marcus plunged below the baseline and curved under the a, which was the next letter to the right. A long beginning stroke on the a crossed the downstroke, creating a form that resembled the letter X.
Claudia had researched this “X formation,” and had discovered that in most cases, those who made it had a fatalistic attitude or had been close to death in some way. She wondered whether Bernard had lost someone close to him.
What she saw in the handwriting suggested that he was something of an action junkie who threw his energy around, sticking his fingers into a dozen pies. He needed excitement and stimulation, but small details were unimportant to him. He would need a strong support staff to follow behind and pick up the pieces. Experience told Claudia that he would use diffuse activity to help him avoid dealing with things he would rather not face.
By this time, she figured she knew what she would find in Andy’s report: sex, sex, and more sex. This was one case where she couldn’t disagree with him. With the disproportionately long lower loops as part of the whole picture, Marcus Bernard would constantly be seeking new experiences and possibly new partners, but emotional satisfaction would elude him. The question was, knowing that, would Grusha
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