1:38 p.m

The oppressed-workers prints were predictable. The comely receptionist affirmed that Dr. Lesnick enjoyed young women. I was the only analysand in the waiting room; I wore a college-coed ensemble designed to tweak the doctor’s susceptibility and introduce myself as a swoony huntress of the Left. Wool skirt, white blouse, fitted navy blazer. Scuffed saddle shoes for collegiate bonhomie, and bright red knee sox. A black beret pinned with a FREE THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS button. Most of the boys had been freed, and several of the boys were by all accounts guilty. It didn’t matter. I was impervious to political reason and giddy with my own neuroses.

I was early for my appointment. I came early to acclimate to my huntress’ habitat. I had created a narrative for my first session, based on Jung-like archetypes. I would thus designate the men in my life and both enchant and enrage Dr. Lesnick. He would be impressed that I possessed some knowledge of Jung and appalled that I had co-opted his theories so self-servingly. The sexual subtext would drive him mad and get me in like Flynn.

A radio broadcast served up distraction. U.S. flyboys sank two Japanese destroyers. President Roosevelt would soon initiate the wartime draft. Japanese submarines were now prowling our shoreline waters. Fletch Bowron weighed in on tonight’s all-city blackout. Captain William H. Parker will meet with civil defense authorities later today. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt will attend the wingding at the Hollywood Plaza Hotel.

The inner-office door opened. Dr. Lesnick entered the waiting room and looked at me.

He was sixty-five years old, frail and thin. He wore a Freud beard. His fingers were nicotine-stained. He had that haunted-Jewish-refugee look. He said, “Miss Lake?” and ushered me into his office.

The analyst’s chair, the analysand’s couch, the WPA murals. Beverly Hills meets the Dust Bowl. Lesnick closed the door behind us.

I took the couch; Lesnick took the chair. We lit cigarettes and pulled ashtrays close. Lesnick said, “May I ask who recommended me?”

“I went to some Young Socialist Alliance meetings a few years ago. There was a consensus that you were very good at interpreting dreams.”

“Would you say that your dreams possess consistent themes?”

I shut my eyes and crossed my legs at the ankles; I wanted the doctor to ogle me and gauge my suitability for the Red Queen’s cell. We were both police informants. I knew that he was; he did not know that I was. I had the upper hand.

The office was pleasantly cool. I blew smoke rings and burrowed into the couch. I said, “The unifying theme is sex.”

A long silence percolated. I had preannounced my faux narrative off the doctor’s first query. Lesnick gave the Feds intimate dirt on Claire De Haven. His informant role surely suffused him with self-loathing. I represented a quid pro quo. He could vouch me to the Red Queen and recoup on his perfidy.

The silence extended. I pictured the doctor enjoying my college-girl-recumbent pose. Sex equals social consciousness equals politics. I’ll tie it all up inextricably. He’s astonishingly arrogant. He’s every intelligent man who’s not really brilliant and must convince the world that he is. He’ll tell Claire De Haven all about me. He’ll turn my pre-scripted monologues into disengaged ramblings. He’ll tell the Queen that he rapidly deduced the key to my soul.

He said, “Describe your dreams.”

I put out my cigarette and laced my hands behind my head. I said, “Five men from my life pass through my dreams, interchangeably. I’ve given them archetypal names, based on my survey of Jung. There’s ‘the Chaste Lover,’ ‘the Boxer,’ ‘the Unruly Boy,’ ‘the Authoritarian’ and ‘the Japanese.’ I live with ‘the Chaste Lover.’ We’ve had a few dashed sexual encounters and have settled into an arid domesticity. The Chaste Lover is a policeman, and I’m incongruously very much a part of his world. The Unruly Boy is a recent conquest, who may be going off to the war. The Boxer is a local celebrity, and a man I’ve been drawn to for some time. The Authoritarian and the Japanese are men I am in no way sexually compelled by, but they are the most gifted of the men, and gifted men compel me more than any other male type.”

Lesnick said, “You think in types, then? Your survey of Jung has led you to organize your internal life in that manner?”

I said, “Yes. I think in types. I grew up in the Depression, and I’ve seen how the inability to think clearly and act decisively has hobbled our leaders and sustained oppressive conditions in this country. I made up my mind not to be that way. Thinking in archetypes has helped me grasp political situations as well as personal ones.”

Another silence followed. My incomplete response laid the bait. Nail me, Doctor.

He said, “Your critique of oppression is quite incomplete. Especially so, given that button you’re wearing.”

He took the bait. I let him win. I made him think, This callow child, she’s so young.

“I was only citing an example of how I think. I organize my external life rigorously, but my internal life and dream life are quite something else.”

“It’s very rare to have a patient begin analysis with their dreams. They usually begin by describing a current crisis or with a short autobiography.”

I shifted on the couch. I was off in a stage performer’s calm. I said, “My dreams undermine my self-confidence in the world. That’s why I decided to begin a course in analysis. My external state remains static, but my unconscious state is currently in upheaval.” He said, “Do you see the exterior world as a manifestation of your thoughts?”

“My personal world or the world at large?”

“Both.”

“My personal world, certainly. The world at large, quite often.”

“Would you explain ‘the world at large,’ please?”

I seized the moment. We had unconsciously colluded; it had forged his archetype of me. I was the Child Megalomaniac.

“I’ve comported in the world erratically and come to a point of self-knowledge that has given me uncanny insight. There are certain people who carry fire in the world and cause the world to shift in dramatic, inexplicable and rarely detectable ways. People like that, like me, create political shifts and effect changes of the social climate. So you see, Doctor, that is why the contradictions of my dream life are so disturbing.”

Lesnick shifted in his chair. I sensed him keying up. He said, “Tell me about your dreams, then. Why is sex the unifying theme?”

This was my time to soliloquize. Lesnick’s snitch duty had secured his daughter’s prison release. Wayward Andrea Lesnick, wayward Katherine Lake. A drunken girl drives her car into a car filled with Rotarians. A South Dakota girl steals money and catches a bus to L.A. Politics, dreams, sex. Newly revealed megalomania. A clock was ticking toward the end of my fifty-minute hour. I performed with brevity.

I went straight to my archetypes and stitched them up. They were all policemen and policeman manqués. Why am I so drawn to men who rule by hobnailed boot? I’m a megalomaniac, but I’m confused.

I’m a woman in a man’s world. They won’t let me in. I tried to join the Marines on Sunday; I was smeared with red paint and rebuffed. I’m surrounded by atrocity and am enraged that I cannot make it stop. I carry fire in the world and sense my own complicity in the horror we all live as one soul united. My inner and outer worlds have merged. I make love with and fixate on all these men because it’s all women have to make the horror stop.

I interpreted my own interpretations. I exuded megalomaniacal self-absorption. I described my girlhood, my sojourn with Bobby De Witt, my relationship with Lee Blanchard. Get it, Doctor? My external life is chaotically disordered and has led me to a point of intransigent mental resolve. Aren’t people like me malleable at their core? Don’t you think that Claire De Haven will go for me and see how faithfully I will serve the Red Cause?

Captain Parker was there, expurgated. I portrayed him as a police-world acquaintance and ghastly rightist theocrat. Hideo Ashida exposited my enlightened racial stance and outrage over the roundups. Scotty Bennett gave me raw sexual details; I merged them with some choice Bucky Bleichert fantasies. I held my voice to a monotone. It told Dr. Lesnick that this intimate revelation in no way discomfited me. I give good value, don’t I, Doctor? You don’t know that it’s all by design and all for effect.

Lesnick interrupted me. He said, “Our time has concluded, Miss Lake.”

I stood up. Lesnick stood and faced me. I couldn’t read his expression.

“I’d like to schedule another appointment.”

He said, “Please call my secretary.”

I said, “Thank you, Doctor,” and opened the door. Claire was sitting in the waiting room.

She had a new upswept hairdo and wore a tan twill suit. Her eyeglasses subverted her patrician look. One man in twenty would get her—and she always knew who those men were.

She looked up from her magazine. I caught a blink. Oh, really—it’s you.

I dug in my purse, pulled out my cigarettes and looked in mock vain for matches. I pretended not to see her stand or to sense her shadow. Then she pounced with a gold lighter and a ready flame.

I accepted the light. She smiled just as I looked up and started to thank her. She caught my Scottsboro Boys button.

“I saw you at the Robeson concert. You brought down the house.”

I blushed on cue. A drama teacher taught me the trick. Think mortifying thoughts and hold your breath.

I said, “I ended up in jail. I had a cell all to myself. The other cells were filled with Japanese women. They were too embarrassed to use the toilet. I watched them squirm all night.”

The Queen lit her own cigarette. “Until the morning? When your parents bailed you out?”

I said, “No. Until my cop lover came to the station and the jailer told him his crazy Bolshevik girlfriend was in the you know what again.”

She smiled and slipped the glove off her right hand. I extended my hand as she extended hers; it was gorgeously synchronized. She said, “Claire De Haven.” I said, “Kay Lake.”

She said, “Robeson sang ‘Ol’ Man River’ again, after they carried you out. The standing ovation acknowledged you more than him.”

I said, “It was foolish of me. No political good came of it.”

Claire De Haven shook her head. “It was provocative and theatrical. You raised a valid grievance and may have caused people to consider it.”

She’s older and more worldly. Social class divides you. Feign subservience.

I studied my scuffed saddle shoes. Cheerleader Kay, Phi Delt fuckup. Claire De Haven said, “I’m having some people to my house tonight. It’s the white Colonial at Roxbury and Elevado. 9:00 would be lovely, and I do hope you’ll come.”

I smiled. “Will Mr. Robeson be there?”

She smiled. “Not if you are, dear.”

The doctor’s door opened. Claire De Haven touched my elbow and walked away. I stepped out to the hallway; a tall man was leaving the office next door. I recognized him. It was Preston Exley, the policeman turned construction king. He smiled and stepped aside. I walked downstairs and outside.

It all caught up with me and sent me giddy. Preston Exley walked to the curb and talked to another tall man. I looked up at Dr. Lesnick’s window and saw the curtains part.

Claire De Haven scanned the sidewalk. She saw me and studied me. I resisted the urge to blow her a kiss.