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May 10 (London)
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Kyle tapped the gray Birchwood floor with his shoes in synchronized taps, rat a tat, 0 and 1, 0 and 1— a binary code tune in his head. Listening to Dr. Marcel Lane drone on about why the BirdsEye board wanted Kyle to get therapy was like watching a turtle climb Everest. He could not wait to get out of these sessions and get back to his life. Twice a week, he was forced to halt work and his time with Juniper and be dumped in the shrink’s fishbowl.
Marcel smiled. “How are you this week, Kyle?”
“I wasn’t aware I was unwell.”
Marcel said nothing, and Kyle took advantage of this and drifted into silence. He craned his neck, eyes drifting over the darkened blinds and the fawn wallpaper that must have muffled many crying bouts. He took in the dull, framed posters and read one of them aloud, “We are so made that we can only derive intense enjoyment from a contrast, and only very little from a state of things. Freud.”
“Ah. That relates to you.”
Kyle made a great show of dragging himself out of a deep ennui as he looked up. “How does that relate to me?”
“I think you get intense joy from contrast and very little from the banal.”
“That is not true.”
“It isn’t?” Marcel asked with a polite smile.
“I do like the...banal.”
He thought of Juniper and how she made him feel. At first, he had assumed she was going to be banal. Basic and easy to control. But she gave him intense enjoyment from her rebellion. Why was she always on his mind? He needed to make sure he didn’t blurt her name out. Marcel did not need to know about her.
“What did you mean by contrast?”
“I look at you as a man surrounded by controversy. You think you have attracted a lot of negative energy around you. You say people trying to take over your company. There were people who in the past who wanted to hurt you. Do you think you get enjoyment from the energy this brings to your life?”
Why do psychiatrists get paid if we are supposed to answer all the questions?
Kyle shrugged. “Well, I’ve always been a fighter. I don’t run away from my problems. I run to them and I try to fix things. If I see a problem, I have to fix it. If I see a glitch, I have to fix it. Force of habit.”
Juniper does the opposite. She runs.
“Do you think we are getting somewhere, Kyle?” Marcel nodded, his black eyes twinkling.
“I think so.”
“Good. Tell me, do also you feel the need to fix people? Fix lives?”
Why am I here?
What a waste. Of. My. Freaking. Time.
Stretching his legs out on the dull carpet, he spent 36 seconds studying the rubber-studded leather soles of his left shoe. He liked his new shoes, his only splurge since coming to London. Hermes derby shoes with mottled hand-stitched Epsom calfskin. So British. So comfortable. Staring at them gave him a chance to be a jackass and avoid Marcel’s question. Then he had a thought...
Can I dupe him?
Be the model patient. Talk about my childhood.
Get my life back.
“Perhaps I do.” He fixed Marcel with a sad stare. “Maybe this has to do with being abandoned as a child by my mother and father. I guess, if I can fix lives...it means I can control what I couldn’t as a child.”
There, now we can spend time talking about that crap and get out of here.
“Tell me about your father...” Marcel smiled, as if he’d made a breakthrough.
“You know...I was thinking the other day why I crave apple pie. It was because it reminded me of my father.” He suppressed the laugh that almost gave his game away to the Rugrat exorcist.
That’s the stuff. Let him think that you are really spilling your guts.
