Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 56. Where from Here?

I didn’t see Jim or talk to him until our next session, two days later. Dos Arbolitos looked at me as if she’d never seen me before.

‘Don’t give me that,’ I said. ‘We go way back.’

But I was wondering what Jim was to me now; could a lover still be your shrink? Was he now my lover? Or had it just been a one-boat stand?

When I went inside Jim was wearing a cardboard smile.

‘Hi,’ he said, syncing his lips with his voice.

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘You look as if you’re expecting my dad to turn up with a shotgun.’

‘Nothing as simple as that.’

‘What, then?’

‘What did you dream last night?’

‘Ah! I see where this is going. Let’s do it like the song — you tell me your dream and I’ll tell you mine.’

‘I dreamed of your hippogriff, the same as you, right?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because it felt as if it was coming from you.’

‘What was he doing in your dream?’

‘Looking at me with tears in his eyes. Was that your dream?’

‘Yes, exactly the same. Does that surprise you?’

‘Not really. When people are tuned to each other, that kind of thing can happen. It’s a sort of telepathy.’

‘Has it ever happened to you before?’

‘No.’

‘So then we’re tuned to each other, right?’

‘As I’ve said.’

‘Are you comfortable with that?’

‘I think there are things we need to sort out.’

‘Like what?’

Jim had his notebook in his hand and was leafing through it.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘The session where you said you had a reality problem and I said, “That’s called life.” Which seems to me now a little flippant. The fact is that I’d never had a client with your looks before and I was showing off. Trying to be cool.’

‘Go on.’

‘You said you were living in two realities, maybe more, and you were trying to understand them so you’d know how to deal with them. And I said that was a waste of energy, that it didn’t matter how many realities there were, you just had to handle them one at a time and do whatever had to be done.’

‘Perfectly sound advice, I thought. Still do.’

‘Wait, now we’re coming to the heart of the matter: I said that everything that happens to you — even a hallucination — is real; it’s part of your reality.’

‘So?’

‘The thing is, Angelica, sometimes you have to let go of part of your reality. Life is, after all, a succession of losses.’

‘How can you say that! Was it a loss that you and I found each other?’

‘I’m talking about the loss of such things as youthful illusions; and adult delusions.’

‘Get to the point, Jim.’

‘Your Volatore thing, for example.’

‘My Volatore thing? I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you jealous, is that it?’

‘I don’t want your Volatore reality to interfere with the reality you and I share.’

‘Are you afraid that Volatore is stronger than you are?’ All sorts of thoughts were running through my mind when I said that. I remembered Vassily Baby and the ease with which he had expelled Volatore. ‘Jim, are you afraid of Volatore?’

‘I don’t want to have to compete with him.’

‘What about coexisting with him?’

‘A ménage à trois with an imaginary animal! What a great idea! Or we could bring in the Tooth Fairy and make it a foursome, how about that?’

‘All right then, you tell me what we should do.’

‘I already have: lose Volatore.’

As I looked at Jim, his face didn’t seem to be the one I had kissed aboard the Mariposa. I remembered my heartfelt relief when he climbed back on deck after being knocked overboard. Where was that relief now? And who was this stranger laying down the law for me? I knew in my heart that there was something wrong in Jim’s rightness and something right in my wrongness. I may be crazy, but I feel I have a moral obligation to be true to my craziness. No matter what happened I wasn’t about to give up Volatore.

I must have been silent for a while because Jim said, ‘So where do we go from here?’

‘Home,’ I said, and left.