Chapter Nineteen
All over Eastern Europe, first-time voters were electing republicans. At the same moment, here in the USA, Americans from coast to coast were jumping into taxis to go buy drugs. Communism hadn’t worked out anywhere and Doc was sorry. Maybe this was the perfect time to become a Communist, when it would all be theoretical again. When it would just be about dreams.
“Hello?”
“Would you accept a collect call from Leon Stevens?”
“Yes.”
“Hello, is this the doctor?”
“Yes?”
“This is Leon Stevens, Elijah Timothy’s father. He told me that he was in therapy with you and I wanted to call and spill my guts too. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Doc, I got two problems. One is my son and the other is a woman. Which one first?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Here’s the thing, Doc. My son only calls me when he wants money. He never calls for anything else. I’m old now. I worked all my life and my wife is married to another man. I’ve got one son, Elijah Timothy Stevens. And when he calls me, it’s only for money. It makes me feel bad, Doc. It makes me want to cry.”
“Mr. Stevens, I have to tell you something. You son is a drug addict. That’s why he calls you for money. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. He probably does love you. But your son is a drug addict and he needs drugs. He had to get some money so he could get drugs. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
“Doctor, what is it with these drugs? I walk down the street surrounded by nodding people. Half the city is nodding.”
“I noticed,” Doc said.
“Can’t he get in a program and get off that stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Doc said. “Then what would he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t have the answer,” Doc said.
“No wonder you’re cheap. Tell me, Doc, do you actually help people?”
“Not really, I’m just a good listener.”
“And who do you tell your thoughts to?”
“Right now, Mr. Stevens, I just don’t have anything very important to say.”
“Strange world, ain’t it, Doc.”
“Yes sir, very strange. Now, about that woman.”
“Yes, that woman.”
Doc leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. On the radio there was nothing but racial killings, all by Italians.
“Her name was Lupita,” Mr. Stevens said. “All the ways she didn’t die but aaah, almost did. She ate that fruit. The fan crashed down onto the bed. Lupe rolled over but the minister was mangled. Then there was that crazy kid with the stick.”
“Go on.”
“One day, eating her corn chips with painted nails, Lupita says, ‘You are the fifteenth person in my life to whom I’ve said “You’re fucking me so good. How can anyone fuck me so good?”’ Doc, it changes you to realize things like that.”
“Brings it all down to scale,” Doc said.
“Her greatest moment, her shining youth. They all applauded at the Mexican Opera. They cheered when she sang ‘My Way.’ They were all there - Jorge, Hector, Hank (the secretary of tourism), the three Trotskyites in a pickup truck. She wore a red dress, of course.”
“Is she involved with someone else?”
“Her boyfriend’s name is Raoul. She lives upstairs on Avenue B. She only takes medication. She went to the bodega in her bathrobe. She buys vitamins over the phone. She had one great night. At the opera. The opera.”
It flashed, in Doc’s mind, that this could be the same woman Anna O. had mentioned in her list of past lovers. He almost asked, “Is she insatiably multiorgasmic?” But he decided it would be tacky. Therapists are supposed to have blank slates, not coincidences.
“Mr. Stevens,” said Doc, barely overcome, “that was so poetic. You must have loved her very much.”
“Well, Doc, sometimes I’m obsessed with my love for her. And then again, sometimes I tell myself that there is no need to take desire and dress it up as beauty.”
“Why not?” Doc asked.
“You mean it’s okay?”
“Sure. Desire and beauty? What’s the difference anyway?”
“Don’t know. Anyway, later I looked back and discovered that my moments with Lupe Colón were really the best. I remembered how good they felt and how much I enjoyed them.”
“That’s wonderful, Mr. Stevens. I envy you there.”
“But Doctor, I didn’t think you were allowed to make statements like that. I’m the patient. I thought you were supposed to be a blank slate.”
That blank slate again.
“Well, Mr. Stevens, my theory of therapy is based on the belief that we may as well tell everything we know. So, what happened, Mr. S? What happened to you and Lupe Colón?”
“This is the sad part, Doc. The part that haunts me. One night, I was lying in her bed while she was walking around the apartment naked, looking at her own body in the mirror. I reached under some pillows to prop up my head and pulled out a long, thin rod. I held it round in my hand for a minute trying to imagine what it could possibly be doing there. Then I realized that this woman was jacking off with an iron rod. She was two-timing me with a pipe. A pipe! I knew that girl was tough but I didn’t like the idea of her sitting on machinery when I was home with my wife. So I started looking around the apartment - snooping, you know. And there was metal everywhere. Everywhere. I’d been so blind. All the evidence was sitting right under my nose but I never put two and two together. She had metal radiators, silverware, window gates, a file cabinet, and she was using them all for sex. For sex! Doctor, this was fifteen years ago and it still haunts me at night. I can’t help but imagining, over and over again, Lupita in bed with a muffin tray, tweezers, an iron. It makes me sick. I suffer every night. Doctor, I can’t sleep.”
“Mr. Stevens,” Doc said, “did it ever occur to you that the iron rod might have been a weapon? It might be a weapon?”
“A weapon?”
“Many women sleep with weapons. Did you know that, Mr. Stevens?”
“No, Doc, I did not.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“You mean she wasn’t cheating on me with a tube?”
“Possibly not.”
“She was so beautiful that night, Doc.”
“Which night?”
“At the opera, the opera.”