The Analyst Read online

  Ricky slid out of his clothes, taking time to carefully fold his slacks and hang up his blue blazer. The button-down shirt he wore went into a laundry hamper. He dropped his tie on the bureau surface. Then he plopped down on the edge of the bed in his underwear, thinking that he wished he had more energy. In the bedside drawer, he kept a vial of rarely used sleeping tablets. They were significantly past their expiration date, but he guessed that they would still be potent enough for him that night. He swallowed one and a tiny piece of another, hoping that they would quickly deliver a deep and deadening sleep.

  He sat for a moment running his hand across the rough cotton sheets and thought it oddly hypocritical for an analyst to face the night and desperately long that his rest not be marred by dreams. Dreams were important, unconscious riddles that mirrored the heart. This he knew, and they were generally welcome avenues to travel. But this night he felt overwhelmed, and he lay back dizzily, feeling his pulse still moving swiftly within him, eager for the medications to push him beneath the veil of dark. Utterly exhausted by the impact of a single threatening letter, he felt far older in that moment than the accumulation of his fifty-three years.

  His first patient on this final day before his projected monthlong August vacation arrived promptly at seven a.m., signaling her arrival with the three distinctive peals of his waiting room buzzer. The session went well, he thought. Nothing particularly exciting, nothing dramatic. But some steady progress. The young woman on the couch was a third-year psychiatric social worker, seeking to gain her psychoanalytic certificate while bypassing medical school. It was neither the most efficient, nor the easiest route to becoming an analyst, and was a course frowned on by some of his stodgier colleagues because it didn’t include the traditional medical degree, but was a method he’d always admired. It took real passion for the profession, a single-minded devotion to the couch and what it could accomplish. He often conceded to himself that it had been years since he’d been called upon to utilize the M.D. that followed his name. The young woman’s therapy centered around a set of overly aggressive parents who’d created an atmosphere in her childhood charged with accomplishment, but lacking in affection. Consequently, in her sessions with Ricky, she was frequently impatient, eager for insights that dovetailed with her textual readings and course work at the midtown Institute for Psychoanalysis. Ricky was forever reining her in, trying to get her to see that knowing facts is not necessarily the same as understanding.

  When he coughed slightly, shifted in his seat, and said, “Well, I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today,” the young woman, who had been describing a new boyfriend of questionable potential, sighed. “Well, we’ll see if he’s still around a month from now . . .”—which made Ricky smile.

  The patient swung her feet off the couch and said, “Have a nice vacation, doctor. I’ll see you after Labor Day.” Then she gathered her pocketbook and briskly exited the treatment room.

  The entire day seemed to fall together in routine normalcy.

  Patient after patient entered the office, bearing little in the way of emotional adventure. They were mostly veterans of vacation time, and he suspected more than once that they unconsciously believed it wise to withhold feelings that were going to be delayed a month in examination. Of course, what was held back was as intriguing as what might have been said, and with each patient he was alert to these holes in the narrative. He had immense trust in his ability to precisely remember words and phrases uttered beside him that might lurk profitably over the month hiatus.

  In the minutes between sessions, he busily started to backtrack over his own years, starting to create a list of patients, jotting down names on a blank steno pad. As the day lengthened, so did the list. His memory, he thought, was still acute, which encouraged him. The only decision he had to make that day was at lunchtime, when he ordinarily would have stepped out on his daily walk, just as Rumplestiltskin had described. This day, he paused, part of him wanting to break the routine that the letter writer had so accurately portrayed, as some sort of act of defiance. Then, he’d realized that it was far more defiant to stick to the routine, and hope that the person watching him saw that he was uncowed by the letter. So out he went at noontime, walking the same path as always, putting his feet down in the same sidewalk squares, taking breaths of heavy city air with the same regularity as he did each day. He was unsure whether he wanted Rumplestiltskin to follow him, or not. But he discovered that every pace he took seemed to be echoed, and more than once he had to fight the urge to pivot quickly and see if he was being trailed. When he returned to his apartment, he was breathing heavily with relief.

  The afternoon patients followed the same pattern as the morning group.

  A few had some bitterness toward the upcoming vacation; this was as he expected. Some expressed a bit of fear and more than a little anxiety. The routine of daily fifty-minute sessions was powerful, and it was unsettling for several to know that even for a short time they would be without that particular anchor. Still, they and he knew that the time would pass, and as with everything in analysis, the time spent away from the couch could lead to insights about the process. Everything, every moment, anything during the day-to-day of life, might be associated with insight. It was what made the process fascinating for both patient and doctor.

  At one minute before five, he glanced out his window. The summer day was still dominating the world outside the office: bright sun, temperatures creeping up into the nineties. The city heat had an insistence to it, demanding to be acknowledged. He listened to the hum of the air conditioner, and suddenly recalled what it was like when he was first starting out, and an open window and a rattling old oscillating fan was all the relief he could afford from the hazy, stultifying atmosphere of the city in July. Sometimes, he thought, it seems as if there is no air anywhere.

  He tore his eyes away from the window when he heard the three peals of the buzzer. He pushed himself to his feet, and walked over to the door, pulling it open quickly to allow Mr. Zimmerman with all his impatience to enter immediately. Zimmerman did not like to wait in the anteroom. He showed up seconds before the session was to begin, and expected to be admitted instantaneously. Ricky had once spied the man marching up and down the sidewalk outside the apartment building on a bitter winter evening, furiously glancing at his watch every few seconds, trying to will the time to pass so that he did not have to wait inside. On more than one occasion, Ricky had been tempted to let the man cool his heels for a few minutes, to see if he could stimulate some understanding on Zimmerman’s part as to why being so precise was so important. But he had not done this. Instead, Ricky swung open the door at exactly five o ’clock every weekday, so that the angry man could barrel into the treatment room, toss himself down on the couch, and launch immediately into sarcasm and fury over all the wrongs that had been perpetrated on him that day. Ricky took a deep breath as he opened his door, and adopted his best poker face. Regardless of whether Ricky felt inside he was holding a full house or a jack-high bust, Zimmerman got the same noncommittal look each day.

  “Good afternoon,” he started, his standard greeting.

  But it was not Roger Zimmerman in the waiting room.

  Instead, Ricky was suddenly eye-to-eye with a striking and statuesque young woman.

  She wore a long black belted raincoat that dropped to her shoes, far out of place on the hot summer day, dark sunglasses, which she removed quickly, revealing penetrating vibrant green eyes. He would have guessed her age at somewhere just on the better side of thirty. A woman whose considerable looks were at their peak and whose understanding of the world had sharpened past youth.

  “I’m sorry . . .” Ricky said hesitantly. “But . . .”

  “Oh,” the young woman replied airily, shaking shoulder-length blond hair and gesturing smoothly with her hand. “Zimmerman won’t be here today. I came instead.”

  “But he . . .”

  “He won’t be needing you any longer,” she continued. “He decided
to conclude his treatment at precisely two-thirty-seven this afternoon. Curiously enough, he was at the 92nd Street subway station when he reached this decision after the briefest of conversations with Mr. R. It was Mr. R. who persuaded him that he no longer needed or desired your services. And to our surprise, it wasn’t all that difficult for Zimmerman to reach that conclusion, either.”

  And then she pushed past the startled doctor into his office.

  Chapter Four

  So,” the young woman said breezily, “this is where the mystery unfolds.”

  Ricky had wordlessly trailed her into his office, where he watched as she surveyed the small room. Her eyes lingered on the couch, his chair, his desk. She walked over and inspected the books he had on the shelves, nodding her head as she absorbed the thick and stodgy titles. She ran a finger along the spine of one text, then noted the dust that came away on her fingertip, causing her to shake her head. “Not used much . . . ,” she muttered. She lifted her eyes to his once, saying reproachfully, “What? Not a single volume of verse, or work of fiction?” Then she approached the cream-colored wall where he’d hung his diplomas and several small pieces of art, alongside a modestly sized oak-framed portrait of the great man himself. In the picture he was holding his ubiquitous cigar, staring balefully out with his deeply recessed eyes, white beard covering the precancerous jaw that would prove to be so unbearably painful in his last years. She tapped the glass over the portrait with a long finger, tipped with nails painted a fire-engine red.

  “Isn’t it interesting how every profession seems to have some icon hanging on the wall. I mean, if I went to see a priest, he’d have a Jesus on a crucifix somewhere. A rabbi would have a Star of David, or a menorah. Every two-bit politician puts up a picture of Lincoln or Washington. There really ought to be a law against that. Medical doctors like to have those little plastic cutaway models of a heart or a knee or some other organ within easy reach. For all I know, a computer programmer out in Silicon Valley nails up a portrait of Bill Gates on the wall of his cubicle where he worships daily. A psychoanalyst like you, Ricky, needs the picture of Saint Sigmund. It lets everyone who enters here know who truly created the ground rules. And it gives you a tiny little bit of legitimacy that might otherwise be called into question, I suppose.”

  Ricky Starks silently picked up an armchair and moved it to the space in front of his desk. Then he maneuvered to the opposite side, and gestured to the young woman to take a seat.

  “What?” she asked briskly, “I don’t get to use the famous couch?”

  “That would be premature,” he replied coldly. He gestured a second time. The young woman swept her vibrant green eyes over the room again, as if trying to memorize everything contained within, then she plopped herself down in the chair. She slumped in the seat languidly, simultaneously reaching into a pocket of the black raincoat and removing a package of cigarettes. She removed one, stuck it between her lips, ignited a flame from a clear butane lighter, but stopped the fire just inches away from the cigarette tip.

  “Ah,” she said, a slow smile lingering across her face, “how rude of me. Would you care for a smoke, Ricky?”

  He shook his head. Her smile remained.

  “Of course not. When was it you quit? Fifteen years ago? Twenty? Actually, Ricky, I think it was 1977, if Mr. R. informs me correctly. A brave time to stop smoking, Ricky. An era when many people lit right up without thinking, because, although the tobacco companies denied it, people actually did know that it was bad for you. Killed you, no lie. So people pretty much preferred not to think about it. The ostrich approach to health: Stick your head in a hole and ignore the obvious. And there was so much else happening, anyway, back then. Wars and riots and scandals. I’m told it was a most wondrous time to be alive. But Ricky the young doctor-in-training managed to quit smoking when it was ever so popular a habit and not nearly as socially unacceptable as today. That tells me something.”

  The young woman lit the cigarette, took a single long puff, and languidly blew smoke out into the room.

  “An ashtray?” she asked.

  Ricky reached into a desk drawer and removed the one he kept hidden there. He put it on the edge of the desktop. The young woman immediately stubbed the cigarette out.

  “There,” she said. “Just enough of a pungent, smoky smell to remind us of that time.”

  Ricky waited a moment, before asking, “Why is it important to remember that time?”

  The young woman rolled her eyes, tossed her head back, and let loose with a long, blaring laugh. The harsh sound was out of place, like a guffaw in a church or a harpsichord in an airport. When her laugh faded, the young woman fixed Ricky with a single, penetrating glare. “Everything is important to remember. Everything about this visit, Ricky. Isn’t that true for every patient? You don’t really know what it is they’ll say or when they’ll say it that will open up their world to you, do you? So you have to be alert at all times. Because you never precisely know when the door might open to reveal the hidden secrets. So, you must always be ready and receptive. Attentive. Always vigilant for the word or the story that is slipped loose and tells you much, right? Isn’t that a fair assessment of the process?”

  He nodded in reply.

  “Good,” she said brusquely. “Why would you think that this visit today is any different from any other? Even though it obviously is.”

  He did not reply. Again, he remained quiet for a second or two, just eyeing the young woman, hoping to unsettle her. But she seemed oddly cold-blooded and even-tempered, and silence, which he knew is often the most disturbing sound of all, seemed to not affect her. Finally, he spoke quietly, “I am at a disadvantage. You seem to know much about me, and at least a little something about what happens here in this room, and I don’t even know your name. I would like to know what you mean when you say Mr. Zimmerman has ended his treatment, because I have had no contact from Mr. Zimmerman, which is extremely unlikely. And I would like to know what your connection is to the individual you call Mr. R. and whom I presume is the same person who sent me the threatening letter signing it Rumplestiltskin. I would like the answers to these questions promptly. Otherwise, I will call the police.”

  She smiled again. Unflustered.

  “Practicality intrudes?”

  “Answers,” he replied.

  “Isn’t that what we’re all searching for, Ricky? Everyone who steps through that door into this room. Answers?”

  He did not respond. Instead he reached for the telephone.

  “Do you not imagine that in his own way, that is what Mr. R. wants, as well? Answers to questions that have plagued him for years. Come now, Ricky: Don’t you agree that even the harshest sort of revenge starts with a simple question?”

  This was intriguing, Ricky thought. But the interest he might have had in the observation was overcome by his growing irritation with the young woman’s manner. She displayed nothing except a confident arrogance. He put his hand on the receiver. He was at a loss for anything else to do.

  “Please respond promptly to my questions,” he said. “Otherwise I will turn all this over to the police and let them sort it out.”

  “No sense of sport, Ricky? No interest in playing the game?”

  “I fail to see what sort of game is involved with sending disgusting, threatening pornography to an impressionable girl. Nor do I see the game in demanding that I kill myself.”

  “But, Ricky,” the woman grinned, “wouldn’t that be the biggest game of all? Outplaying death?”

  This made him pause, hand still hovering over the telephone. The young woman pointed at his hand. “You can win, Ricky. But not if you pick up that telephone and dial 911. Then someone, somewhere, will lose. That promise has been made, and trust me, it will be kept. Mr. R. is, if nothing else, a man of his word. And when that someone loses, you lose, too. This is only Day One, Ricky. To give up now would be like conceding defeat right after the opening kickoff. Before you’ve even had time to run a single play from scri
mmage.”

  He pulled his hand back.

  “Your name?” he asked.

  “For today and for the purposes of the game, call me Virgil. Every poet needs a guide.”

  “Virgil is a man’s name.”

  The woman who called herself Virgil shrugged broadly. “I have a girlfriend who goes by the name Rikki. Does this make a difference?”

  “No. And your connection to Rumplestiltskin?”

  “He’s my employer. He’s extremely wealthy and able to hire all sorts of assistance. Any kind of assistance he wants. To achieve whatever means and ends he envisions for whatever plan he has in mind. Currently, he is preoccupied with you.”

  “So, presumably, then as an employee, you have his name, an address, an identity which you could simply pass on to me and end this foolishness once and for all.”

  Virgil shook her head. “Alas, no, Ricky. Mr. R. is not so naive as to fail to insulate his identity from mere factotums, such as myself. And, even if I could help you, I wouldn’t. Hardly be sporting. Imagine if the poet and his guide had looked up at the sign that said ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here! . . . ‘ and Virgil had shrugged and said, ‘No shit. You don’t want to go in there . . . ‘ Why, that would have ruined the poem. Can’t write an epic about turning away at the gates of Hell, can you, Ricky? Nope. Got to walk through that doorway.”

  “Why, then, are you here?”

  “I told you. He thought you might doubt his sincerity—though that young lady with the stodgy and utterly predictable dad up in Deerfield who had her teenage emotions rearranged so easily should have been message enough for you. But doubts sow hesitation and you have only two weeks left to play, which is a short enough time. Hence, he sent a bona fide guide to get you jump-started. Me.”

  “All right,” Ricky said. “You keep talking about this game. Well, it is not a game to Mr. Zimmerman. He has been in analysis for slightly less than a year, and his treatment is at an important stage. You and your employer, the mysterious Mr. R., can screw around with me. That’s one thing. But it is altogether something different when you involve my patients. That crosses a boundary . . .”