about. But hey, you’re so hyped up on this adoption thing, I’m not sure you’re even hearing me.
Perhaps you are right, said Dr. Schussler.
Then I’m leaving, said the patient.
If you must, said Dr. Schussler.
I guess I have to pay for the session anyway.
(Ah, money, I thought. The patient’s revenge: reminding the therapist we’ve paid for her, like a whore.)
Yes, you must, the doctor said.
6.
What an exciting session! I could barely contain myself while the patient slammed the door behind her and the sound machine came on again. Beautiful legs in stomping boots! Women in high heels! Old- and new-style lesbians! As if sex had a fashion that waxed and waned with the design of shoes.
Throughout the long week that followed, I waited with almost unendurable anticipation for the patient’s return. For I wondered what new drama would ensue. I was certain I had come in on her therapy at just the right moment, one of those mysterious fulcrum points: a pure, Aristotelian shift in the plot wherein the therapeutic story of the patient’s life was about to turn. All my years of therapy told me this was true. Something had pressed up against her denials and evasions for two long years, and now—with all the inevitability of Oedipus killing his father—she must give way.
On the following Wednesday, therefore, I arose early and took special care to dress in comfortable, loose-fitting clothes (the better to sit absolutely still during any inadvertent titillation). I brought with me a small seat cushion (also for comfort during my immobility). It was barely nine in the morning when I boarded the N Judah; quarter of ten when I came within sight of our building’s eyeless gargoyles.
It was a dangerous time, hard upon the interclient interval. Dr. Schussler often left her office between patients, for a restroom visit, I assumed, or a coffee at a nearby cafe, and it was imperative that she not encounter me entering my office. My presence in the hallway, my body before the door so close to hers, would force upon her the very fact of my existence, my face and physique giving visual form to any sound she might hear. Yet she must not imagine a body in Room 807; she must believe the room holds nothing but air.
Accordingly I slowed my steps. Upon entering the lobby, I scanned the persons about, wondering if one woman or another was Dr. Schussler. Over the weeks, a certain picture of the doctor had grown in my mind—nearing sixty, a slight limp (which I heard as she walked by my door), gray hair, perhaps a bun—an image simultaneously particular in certain details but vague overall, the way a character in a novel, barely described, can yet occupy a distinct place in one’s mind. In short, I thought I should recognize her. Yet it was necessary that she not notice me in any particular way, even as a regular presence in the building. I had to be part of a crowd, an ordinary man in gray clothing: nothing. I was practiced at this; my nervous condition had given me a wealth of experience in the art of nonbeing.
I waited before the three elevators, watching the eyes of the cherubs circulate, an effect that had not entirely ceased to unnerve me. Eight other people waited. None among them was a woman who agreed with my image of the doctor; neither did she appear as one elevator and then another disgorged its passengers.
I therefore took the next car to the eighth floor and softly walked to my office. As I had practiced for the last weeks, I took extraordinary care with the keys and the lock and click of the door—always a tense moment. The mechanisms were old and not entirely reliable; I had learned to use a plastic card to control the release of the latch. Now having entered, I appointed my chair with the cushion, and then sat down to wait, listening all the while to the whir of the sound machine and the doctor’s shushuations.
The ten o’clock patient left. At the stroke of eleven—a nearby church bell bonged out the hour—the doctor’s sound machine promptly ceased. I stilled myself. Nothing but silence issued from Dr. Schussler’s office. A minute went by, then two, three, four: excruciating minutes for anyone expectant and immobile, as I was. The time moved on to five past, six past, seven past, eight. And now from the other side of the door came an odd, teasing, slippery sound. It