tell her to stay away—but damn it—do not need complications now!
Floria went down to Broadway with Lucille to get more juice, cheese, and crackers for the clinic fridge. This week it was their turn to do the provisions, a chore that rotated among the staff. Their talk about grant proposals for the support of the clinic trailed off.
“Let’s sit a minute,” Floria said. They crossed to a traffic island in the middle of the avenue. It was a sunny afternoon, close enough to lunchtime so that the brigade of old people who normally occupied the benches had thinned out. Floria sat down and kicked a crumpled beer can and some greasy fast-food wrappings back under the bench.
“You look like hell, but wide awake at least,” Lucille commented.
“Things are still rough,” Floria said. “I keep hoping to get my life under control so I’ll have some energy left for Deb and Nick and the kids when they arrive, but I can’t seem to do it. Group was awful last night—a member accused me afterward of having abandoned them all. I think I have, too. The professional messes and the personal are all related somehow, they run into each other. I should be keeping them apart so I can deal with them separately, but I can’t. I can’t concentrate; my mind is all over the place. Except with Dracula, who keeps me riveted with astonishment when he’s in the office and bemused the rest of the time.”
A bus roared by, shaking the pavement and the benches. Lucille waited until the noise faded. “Relax about the group. The others would have defended you if you’d been attacked during the session. They all understand, even if you don’t seem to: it’s the summer doldrums, people don’t want to work, they expect you to do it all for them. But don’t push so hard. You’re not a shaman who can magic your clients back into health.”
Floria tore two cans of juice out of a six-pack and handed one to her. On a street corner opposite, a violent argument broke out in typewriter-fast Spanish between two women. Floria sipped tinny juice and watched. She’d seen a guy last winter straddle another on that same corner and try to smash his brains out on the icy sidewalk. The old question again: what’s crazy, what’s health?
“It’s a good thing you dumped Chubs, anyhow,” Lucille said. “I don’t know what finally brought that on, but it’s definitely a move in the right direction. What about Count Dracula? You don’t talk about him much anymore. I thought I diagnosed a yen for his venerable body.”
Floria shifted uncomfortably on the bench and didn’t answer. If only she could deflect Lucille’s sharp-eyed curiosity.
“Oh,” Lucille said. “I see. You really are hot—or at least warm. Has he noticed?”
“I don’t think so. He’s not on the lookout for that kind of response from me. He says sex with other people doesn’t interest him, and I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Weird,” Lucille said. “What about Vampire on My Couch? Shaping up all right?”
“It’s shaky, like everything else. I’m worried that I don’t know how things are going to come out. I mean, Freud’s wolf-man case was a success, as therapy goes. Will my vampire case turn out successfully?”
She glanced at Lucille’s puzzled face, made up her mind, and plunged ahead. “Luce, think of it this way: suppose, just suppose, that my Dracula is for real, an honest-to-God vampire—”
“Oh shit!” Lucille erupted in anguished exasperation. “Damn it, Floria, enough is enough—will you stop futzing around and get some help? Coming to pieces yourself and trying to treat this poor nut with a vampire fixation—how can you do him any good? No wonder you’re worried about his therapy!”
“Please, just listen, help me think this out. My purpose can’t be to cure him of what he is. Suppose vampirism isn’t a defense he has to learn to drop? Suppose it’s the core of his identity? Then what do I do?”
Lucille rose abruptly and marched away from her through a gap between the rolling waves of cabs and trucks. Floria caught up with her on the next block.
“Listen, will you? Luce, you see the problem? I don’t need to help him see who and what he is, he knows that perfectly well, and he’s not crazy, far from it—”
“Maybe not,” Lucille said grimly, “but you are. Don’t dump this junk on me outside of office hours, Floria. I don’t spend my time listening to nut-talk unless I’m getting paid.”
“Just