circular table. For the most part, they were a smiling, convivial group. Was it possible, after all these months, that she’d been at fault, too, and ought to have tried harder to get to know them? Further, what would that sixteen-year-old in torn coveralls have said if she’d seen this dream job snapshot of her own future? She’d have giggled with her hands cupped over her mouth, then given up the ghost of subtlety and jumped for joy.
She elected not to acknowledge that none of them seemed particularly equipped for the work, that only half had requested it, and that they’d probably resent her when they realized how much needed to get done. She decided to save those worries for later, and instead, clinked her half-drunk glass against Collier’s, then David’s, then Simon’s—one person to the next, and saw this happy moment through a certain sixteen-year-old’s eyes.
11
This Petty Pace from Day to Day
The rest of the afternoon was a slog. She delegated the entire lower engineering and plumbing plans to Simon, David, Mark, and Craig, and to her shock they were grateful to have something to do. After that, she sat at her cube, refining the roof-garden plans for the brainstorming session Jill had scheduled for the next morning (they needed to position return drains in a way that kept mold to a minimum), and thought about what had happened during the night. She’d sleepwalked, obviously. It could happen to anyone, given enough stress. Still, those cut wires. That lunatic cardboard door. And the man in the three-piece suit with the bone finger today, at the meeting. She hadn’t guessed she was capable of imagining something so bizarre.
She looked down at her paper, and saw that over the mourning wall, she’d drawn a rectangle with a handle. A door.
“That’s it,” she mumbled aloud, as the plans rolled together, and she visited her health-care plan online. Three local shrinks looked best. She made appointments with each of them. The earliest she could schedule was Wednesday afternoon.
“Sleepwalking? Delusions?…Siamese twins. Like Chang and Eng?” the last woman asked.
“Who? No. Like De Palma. Sisters. But forget that part,” Audrey whispered. “I’m under some stress, obviously.”
“Is there a possibility you’ll hurt yourself?” Her accent was Staten Island: Ya gonna hoit yaself?
“I don’t know. Is that a thing people know?”
“Yeah. Ya’d know,” the woman said.
“Then I doubt it,” Audrey told her. “But I do have OCD. The kind that can’t be medicated.” She whispered this part and made sure no one nearby was listening. It was four o’clock, and everyone was playing with the new espresso machine in the kitchen. It infused chocolate, apparently. Jealous Simon, pleased with the role she’d given him as manager of all nonroof floors, asked her to join them, but she’d decided to make this call instead. “When I got diagnosed, they told me I didn’t need pills or therapy. It’s psychological only. Not physical,” she said to the shrink.
“Who told ya that?” the woman asked.
Audrey prairie dogged over the cube wall, but she didn’t see anyone nearby. “My nurse practitioner in training at the University of Nebraska…about fifteen years ago. She told me I could fix it myself—I’m just a nervous person,” she whispered. Even as she said it, she knew her mistake. A diagnosis that serious, you get a second opinion. From a real doctor, and not the kid with the clipboard.
“Sweetie, I don’t know what kinda Kool-Aid they fed you, but all obsessive-compulsive disorders are physical.”
Audrey blushed. “Really? What about the kind where you’re so nervous that you change your own neurons and give yourself the disease because you had a traumatic childhood?”
“That’s the nuttiest thing I’ve heard in…twenty minutes. There’s no extraspecial self-created disorder. It’s not your fault if you got blue eyes, is it? OCD is OCD. If you’ve got records, bring them. See you Wednesday, honee.”
“Okay,” Audrey said. She must have sounded shaken because the woman softened.
“Hey. It’s life. Ya learn, right? You can’t start off a genius, or there’s no point.”
“They pay you to be an optimist. That’s your job,” Audrey said, then squinted. Sweet Jesus, she was socially inappropriate.
“Sure,” the lady said. “Between the malpractice insurance and Blue Cross, I’m a billionaire. Take care, and go to the hospital if you have an emergency. Bellevue’s the best, if you live near there. If they’re full, try NYU at 34th and First.”
“Thanks.”
Audrey hung up, then looked at the black phone. Her desk walls were adorned with a David Hockney calendar for creative inspiration, two