Leading from
the Affair
“Come in,” the graying blond woman said, after we made our introductions at the threshold. “Have a seat.”
Three padded blue chairs around a low triangular table made up the furnishings of the small office. No desk. No bookcase. The blinds were pulled down over the window. A nonintrusive tan and blue carpet covered the floor from wall to wall. The sounds of traffic could be heard quite clearly, as Dr. Quarterly’s room was on the first floor facing onto East Eighty-First Street.
Noting the hiss of tires racing on the wet streets outside, I took the chair set off a little to the right. She remained standing a moment.
Dr. Agnes Quarterly was maybe five eight and slender. In her late forties, she seemed older but not worn or unattractive. There was a gravitas to her bearing, in spite of the smile.
She wore a dark blue dress suit and a white blouse that buttoned up like a man’s shirt. Her shoes were dark, dark red with one-inch heels, the leather hard and shiny—almost like plastic.
She sat across from me, her spine erect, not resting against the back of the chair. This caused me to sit up a little straighter.
“So,” she began, “Mr. Lassiter, you’re looking for a therapist.”
“Yeah . . . uh, yes, I am.”
Her salt-and-butter hair was combed but only just. It wasn’t coiffed or done. There was a slight indentation on the bridge of her nose. I wondered where the glasses were and also where was the book or papers that she’d been reading before I’d arrived.
“Have you been in psychotherapy before?”
“No. Never.”
“So, what makes you feel you need it now?” She was watching my eyes, looking, I believed, for signs of depravity.
“It’s . . .” I said and then hesitated.
“Yes?” Her voice was mild, not commanding or insistent.
“I’m stuck.”
Slightest insinuation of a smile appeared on her lips.
“How are you stuck?”
“I . . .” My heart was beating fast, and I could feel my ears getting hot. I hadn’t expected this reaction. For a moment I thought I might be experiencing the beginnings of a heart attack.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. It’s just that, I guess I’m a little nervous.”
“There’s no need. Everything we say in this room is confidential. You are free to speak your mind.”
“And can I keep my secrets too?”
“You only need say what you feel comfortable saying,” she said. “And what you did say was that you feel stuck. In what way?”
“It’s like,” I said, falling into an old, familiar groove, “everybody in the world was standing at a line at the start. Millions and millions of people preparing to get on with their lives. A signal was given, and we all began to move forward. Almost everybody was traveling at the rate of ten miles a year. That’s like the normal rate.”
I realized that I was looking at the floor, so I raised my head. Dr. Quarterly was gazing at me with what I can only call intense passivity.
“Everybody but me,” I continued. “Me, I’m racing ahead at fifty miles a year, but at the same time I’m going backward at forty-nine point nine miles. And so at the end of each year, almost everyone around me has traveled ahead ten miles, while I’ve gone ten times that but am only a tenth of a mile farther from the starting line.”
I could see in the therapist’s expression that she was impressed with the explanation. She had no idea that I was a fraud.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Lassiter?”
“I’m a copy editor for about a dozen online magazines run by the Din-Pro Consortium.”
“What kind of magazines?”
“Everything from political news reports to sex stories,” I said. “Sometimes the magazines morph into different kinds of content. It sounds technological, very twenty-first century, but it’s not. I just do what copy editors have been doing for the past two hundred years.”
“Do they pay you well?”
“I know your fee,” I said. “I can pay.”
“I’m not asking that. I’m wondering why you feel that you’re not making headway. I mean there must be others around you who would love to have a job like yours. So many people are unemployed nowadays.”
“It’s not my job,” I said. “Somebody else might love doing what I’m doing. That person would be traveling at a normal rate. Another person might have just gotten fired, but he has a wife who tells him that it’s OK and maybe a child, so he sees hope for the future.
“I have a job I don’t care for and a studio apartment with a TV and a computer, a girlfriend who I think is looking for a better relationship, and no way out.”
“You feel lost,” she said, and I had to clench my jaw to keep from crying.
“Yes.”
We talked about my father, who is dead; and my mother, who no longer recognizes me; my age, which is near sixty; and my girlfriend, whose name is Jool.
“Does Jool live with you?” Quarterly asked.
“No. She owns a condo in downtown Brooklyn. She’s very good with money . . .”
I got home at 4:17 by the big digital clock that I have framed and mounted on the wall like a painting. I sat next to the window, with its light-and-dark-gray frame, gazing onto Lexington Avenue. Snow was dancing in the breeze, undecided, it seemed, whether it was falling or maybe just hanging there, twirling.
Night was almost come; the darkness was filtering into my brain.
“Hello?” I said, answering the phone on the first ring.
It was dark outside, and the same flakes still seemed to be spinning, now in lamplight, like some Einsteinian law made manifest through slapdash serendipity.
“I called this afternoon, but you weren’t there,” Jool said.
“What time is it?”
“Seven forty-five.”
“I’ve been sitting here for hours.”
“You didn’t call back.”
“I wasn’t here.”
“I left a message.”
“I didn’t listen to the messages.”
“What’s wrong, Frank?” Jool asked.
We were lying side by side, not touching, in my queen-size bed. We’d had sex, showered, and then brushed our teeth, side by side.
“I’m stuck,” I said.