I’m early for my session with Dr. Springe. As I open the door to her building, a woman comes out whom I recognize. She’s middle-aged, scruffy, a little funky-smelling, wearing an expensive track suit that has seen better days, a giant diamante brooch with “Beulah” written on it in sparkles, and a seriously expensive pair of sneakers. There are no laces in the sneakers. Their dirty tongues flop as she walks.
“Oh, hello!” she says, smiling a familiar, warm, irresistible smile. Now I have to admit I recognize her. She’s Dr. Katterfelto’s receptionist.
“Have you been seeing Dr. Springe?” I say, thinking, she can’t be crazier than I am.
“Yes. I’m Beulah,” says the scruffy lady.
“Hel.” We shake hands.
“I remember.” She smiles again and steers me down the sidewalk, away from the building. “Dr. Springe will need just a few minutes of solitude,” she says serenely, as if she just left our shrink in a state of collapse.
I don’t think I can handle seeing Dr. Springe in a state of collapse. I let Beulah lead me a few steps away.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, “Have you known Dr. Katterfelto long?”
“About a year. He invented the self-love elixir, you know.”
“Did he.”
“I helped convince him to try it,” Beulah says, not bragging, just setting the record straight. “He has saved so many. Ah, and here’s one.”
A bum is crossing the street to where we stand. He looks clean but manifestly homeless. When he spots Beulah, the bum’s face lights up. It really does. I’ve never seen anybody look so happy to see another person. He looks halfway normal.
“Dave,” Beulah says warmly, shaking hands with him. “This is Helen, who is working with Dr. Katterfelto.”
Dave turns to me and lights up again. Now I think he’s homeless again, and I can tell why. He’s happy, so freakin’ happy he must be crazy.
“Isn’t the doc something?” Dave says.
Dave hauls a fanny pack out from under his many layers of clothes and hands it to Beulah. She pulls something out of her industrial-size purse, a plastic sandwich bag full of tiny little bottles. The bottles are way too small to contain enough hooch to satisfy a man in his situation.
They exchange these objects and stow them away. The fanny pack goes chink! as it hits the bottom of Beulah’s purse. I picture Dave panhandling for change to get his fix from this woman, his connection to Dr. Katterfelto.
The kindly old doc seems a little less kindly.
“I’ve been telling Helen about Dr. Katterfelto taking the elixir,” Beulah says.
Dave laughs. “Lucky guy.”
I look at him, a question in my eyes.
Dave explains. “The day you take it, that day is lucky, whatever day it is. He was this close,” Dave holds up thumb and finger, “to running for mayor. He dodged that bullet, though.” He shakes his head. “Lucky guy.” He looks me over with shrewd eyes. “You haven’t had it yet, have you?”
“Uh.”
He nods. “The elixir’s not for everybody.”
“It certainly makes having teenagers easier,” Beulah says.
I’m getting a little freaked out. Dr. Katterfelto seemed like such a nice old duffer. Now I’m picturing Beulah with a kid, a kid who is no doubt trying to pretend her family is normal.
And good luck with that, you poor schmuck. My mom’s a head case, too.
“And here are the others,” Beulah announces, while I contemplate bolting.
A whole gaggle of homeless guys comes swarming toward us from all directions. They are not all as sweet-smelling nor as tidy as Dave, but they are all, to a man, happy. They greet one another and Beulah and me in glorious good humor. They all hand over what I have to assume are troves of panhandled coins, and receive more plastic bags of the little bottles.
“How much does it street for?” I say, finally unable to pretend I’m not watching this.
“It’s not for sale,” Dave says. “We give it away, when we can. Not everybody wants it.”
“But what does it do?” Besides make you all bughouse.
Of everyone here, I am the only person who isn’t in a perfect mood.
“It lets you love yourself,” says Beulah.
Then I notice something else. The prana right here is incredibly tasty. It’s like being surrounded by Jillys, only presumably not all drunks.
Amazingly, these guys haven’t been drinking. I would know, I would smell it in their blood, in the pee on their clothes.
One guy smells like cigarettes, but not his breath, just his jacket.
I breathe deep. I want to wallow in their grand, happy energy. I feel a bit like a virgin at her first pot party.
Beulah and Dave and their homeless buddies exchange glances, as if I have answered a question they were waiting to ask.
“Well,” Beulah says, patting my arm. “In case you ever think you might try it.” She fishes one tiny bottle out of her purse and balances it delicately on her palm.
I should get out of here.
I put the bottle in my backpack.
I should run.
“And this is you loving yourselves?” I say.
“Everyone has a lot to forgive themselves for,” Dave says solemnly. He looks at me, his eyes moist with sincerity.
I shrink inside. I can never forgive myself.
“I don’t have a job,” one of his buddies says, not seeming to care.
“I have poison ivy,” says another, “but I don’t scratch. That way it gets better.”
My eyes widen. “That’s spooky.”
“I know,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Every other time I got it, I had to get cortisone from the free clinic.”
“We let go of blame,” Beulah says.
I look them over. It really is very like being surrounded by Jillys. Jilly who never blames herself. Jilly who may itch, but she doesn’t scratch.
“No thanks,” I say, although I feel the bottle, a lump in my backpack. The last thing this city needs is a well-adjusted vampire who has forgiven herself. I’d be like Jilly on magical steroids. “I have Dr. Springe to support anyway.”
If I stand here any longer, I’ll start hyperventilating prana like a carp out of swamp-water, and somebody will end up in the DustBuster.
“It’s nonaddictive,” Beulah calls after me as I reach for Dr. Springe’s office door. “You’ll never want another dose!”
“Great! Thanks!” I wave and scram for my therapy session.
o0o
It’s not an easy session. To start with, Dr. Springe freaks me out. She looks a little different. Her eyes are open wider, or less focused, or something. I decide not to mention it. Instead I remark that I met one of her clients outside her office, someone I know, who is one of Dr. Katterfelto’s ... associates? employees?
“She is my therapist,” Dr. Springe says calmly.
I am pardonably boggled. “She seems like a bag lady.”
Dr. Springe smiles. “Even therapists need therapists of their own. She has a unique point of view. I get most of my ideas for my radio show from talking to her.”
This makes perfect sense, since Dr. Springe, when talking on the radio about how happy thoughts will keep you from disappearing into the pink during rush hour, sounds at least as batty as Beulah. It puts a bit of a dent in my urge to confide in her, however.
Then I remember telling my mother to quit drinking. I tell my shrink about that. “I feel so guilty. She actually looked depressed when I told her!”
“This is good,” Dr. Springe says. “Things will not change if you do not change. You are already changing, I think.”
A chill passes through me. I’ve made it this far by not changing. What if that was the wrong thing to do? I’d thought of seeing Dr. Springe as one way to make it possible for me to tolerate staying the same.
I may have been looking at all my problems backwards.
“I think I’m ready to change,” I say gloomily. “I don’t know how not to. It’s just happening.”
“It must be very uncomfortable,” Dr. Springe says sympathetically. “What is different?”
“For one thing, this Federal agent. He’s a pest. He came to the bout the other night and then he turned up at the after party and he kissed me. And then Dr. Katterfelto said one my chakras has turned itself back the right way around again. And I think Nick’s not sleeping with me because I seem so young.”
Dr. Springe leans forward. “What is this I see on your face?” She touches the outside corner of her own eye.
I touch my own face, and then I remember. “Crow’s feet,” I say. “I’m sick of being treated like a teenager. My own mother,” I add, thinking of Jilly manipulating me from her sickbed.
“Your own mother has crow’s feet? You are envious of her, perhaps?”
Sheesh, the way shrinks think. “Yes, I am envious of her,” I snarl. “She’s seventy years old, she has liver cancer, she’s penniless, and she’s still having fun. I think she’s having an affair with her married surgeon,” I add, hearing the envy in my own voice and kicking myself for it.
“She should not be screwing a married surgeon?” Dr. Springe says.
“Well,” I admit a little shamefacedly, “I suppose it’s no worse than me screwing a Fed who will put me away if he figures me out.”
“You’re screwing the Fed!” Dr. Springe says delightedly. “At last! Congratulations!”
“I’m not!” I say, and burst into tears. “I wish I was dead!” My insides are twisting in a way that makes me wish even more passionately for a drink.
Great. Is this Jilly’s secret? She can stay happy if she simply never gets far from the next drink?
Dr. Springe waits out my tears in silence. Eventually I’m just hiccupping into a tissue. Then she looks me in the eye. “You don’t wish to be dead.”
I throw my tissue at the wastebasket. “I think I do,” I say.
“That’s very serious,” Dr. Springe says. She says it very well, as if she isn’t just saying what she’s supposed to say. “You never mentioned it before.”
“I know.” I let my arms lie on my thighs, staring at the pale, veined skin. “I wasn’t sure what kind of obligation it would put you under if I said.”
“Even in death, you are considerate.” She sounds amused.
“No, I’m not. I’m a horrible coward. I’d like to be dead, but I’m afraid to try. What if it doesn’t work? What if it hurts? I’m sick of hurting.”
“What, precisely, hurts?”
I think of young Breck listening to Dr. Katterfelto in mad scientist mode explain how his love comes up and sticks in his throat instead of coming out. Just like Breck’s, my tears well up and spill over.
I say, “I think it’s my heart.”
Dr. Springe says nothing.
“If I can’t express my love, I hurt. When I hurt, I drink. When I drink, I get very, very afraid I’m going to kill someone. Every now and then I do — about every seven to ten years.” That’s a lie. It’s oftener. “But it’s not because I’m trying to express love. It’s always some asshole I’ve trolled for.”
“Trolled?”
“Bar hopping. Looking for a predator who thinks I’m easy pickings.” I watch my hand close on my knee. My fingers clench until they’re bloodless. I open the hand with a snap, as if I could show Dr. Springe how quickly they die.
“Nobody deserves to die. Do they?” I’m so pathetic. Asking my shrink for absolution. Hell, I’m paying for absolution. It’s embarrassing how much I am willing to ignore that, how eagerly I would accept purchased absolution from her.
“Not even you, Hel,” she says, thank goodness.
I blink at her. “I’m not so sure.”
She lets that lie. I think she ought to be trying harder to talk me out of suicide. Maybe she can tell what a coward I am.
“What would decide it for you?” she says now.
Now I feel alarm, as if she’s pushing me toward suicide. “If I can’t have Nick.”
“Is he an asshole?” The word sounds funny in her prissy, not-really-American mouth.
“Do you mean, is he the kind of predator I kill? No,” I say, and then I reconsider. “I thought he must be, when we met. He’s so bossy.” I think of how it feels to be near Nick. How I can’t control my urge to drink as much of his prana as I can hold.
How it hasn’t hurt him yet.
“He—I—”
I feel like a fool. We’ve met how often? And I’ve sipped at him, tentatively at first, then harder and harder, trying to dent his bossiness.
“I think I can’t kill him.” I rush on, “That’s why I want him. Because he just gets hornier, the more I take from him. That’s not the real problem, though. The real problem is, he’s a Fed. If he found out, if he arrested me — I think I’d be ready to die then.”
“And if he found you out but did not arrest you?”
I try to imagine this. It would be like being near Jilly and wanting her to hug me and not daring to let her. Like wanting a steak or a big plate of bacon and eggs and just staring at it, staring and wanting and knowing it’s wrong, until my insides pinch right up.
I daren’t.
I want it so much. So very much.
I put my hands over my face. “I’m such a coward.”