Burning Time

13

Jason slammed his appointment book shut on the five worrying letters to Emma that had come in the five days since his return from Toronto. Then he masked the movement by rearranging a few things on his desk and checking the answering machine to make sure it was on. As he did this, he realized it was absurd. Harold wouldn’t notice his office under any circumstances. Harold never commented on anything but himself. Jason looked quickly around anyway.

His was the usual sort of psychiatrist’s office, with a leather analyst’s couch, a leather Eames chair behind it, a large desk covered with papers, and a rolling desk chair, also leather. He had covered the windows to the outside world with bamboo blinds, but left open a few tiny windows into himself for those patients who truly needed to find him. Antique clocks came and went as he added to his collection and moved them about. But none in here distracted by ticking loudly or chiming the hour. A number of prints, needlepoint pillows, knickknacks, and mementos in a wide variety of tastes and quality, given him over the years by his patients, companionably coexisted with his books on every available surface in the room. Years ago he used to hide everything away, as if personal things from his patients might reveal their names and crowd the space with their voices. But now he knew therapy did not require empty spaces and blank walls to be successful.

For people like Harold, the walls were as good as blank anyway. He didn’t care what was on them. Today he nodded at Jason, but didn’t actually greet him, look at him, or ask how he was. As far as Harold was concerned, his psychiatrist had absolutely no life beyond taking care of him. Jason knew this, and knew that Harold didn’t see the dark shadows under his eyes or the turmoil behind them.

He stood as Harold crossed the room with a loping walk and sat in the Eames chair next to the desk. Harold had always been meticulously dressed and was now. Very distinguished. He was wearing a dark suit with a gray silk tie, a white shirt, and black shoes. His hair was cut very short. He was an inch or two taller than Jason, and ten years older. His hair was almost all gray now. Two years ago when Harold first came to Jason, his hair had been black. He had been a big beefy man. Now he was caved in. His cheeks looked as if they had been deflated. His mouth had thinned out into a line. Often—several times in a session at least—he sucked his lips inside his mouth and closed his teeth over them as if to stop himself from saying or doing something. Jason had a French clock on the shelf that was a brass bull standing on a clock face. That was Harold two years ago, bullish on himself.

“I had a dream about Marilyn last night,” Harold said.

Jason sat in his chair and rolled it away from his desk into the center of the room, trying to quell his anguish. Emma had appeared in a quirky and sexual movie, and now somebody was writing upsetting letters to her. He shifted in his seat but couldn’t relax.

One letter came every day on the dot, very strange and rambling letters that no psychiatrist could read without being concerned. They were signed, The Friend That Saved You. Jason kept asking her to think, think about what this might mean, but Emma drew a blank on ever being saved by anybody.

“Tell me about the dream,” Jason said to Harold, and thought about the letters.

There was a lot of Right and Wrong in them. Maybe they were some religious thing. They mentioned right path, wrong path, the fire that burned but didn’t consume. In the Bible that might be the burning bush. But hellfire also burned without consuming. Once saved, now damned to burning. That sounded pretty vengeful to him.

Emma thought they were equal to the kind of chain letters they got as kids that threatened bad luck if you didn’t copy them and send them to fourteen friends. Curses like, your mother wears army boots. Drop dead. Burn in Hell. She argued there was nothing to it. Jason knew she was wrong; there was something to this. He just didn’t know what.

“How long will this go on?” Harold asked.

“A long time.”

“I thought when she died I would get some relief. But, I don’t know. I feel worse.” Harold let his chin sink down on his chest.

“You’ll feel worse for a while, and then you’ll feel better,” Jason murmured.

“I don’t know. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I walk around at night. I can’t even concentrate on a movie or anything. I just keep thinking about those nights, you know, when she was so sick. She didn’t want anybody else to touch her. I told you that. I had to take her to the bathroom. And she—” Harold covered his face with his hands.

“What was the dream?” Jason asked again.

There was another letter sitting with today’s mail on the table in the hall. Emma was out having lunch with someone, and hadn’t seen it yet. Jason felt a deep pang of jealousy over the lunch. He never had lunch. Now she was always out at lunch, had lunch every day and was never hungry for dinner. He looked at the bull clock on the shelf. Definitely still at lunch.

“I was with a prostitute. We were having drinks. We were negotiating her price. Marilyn came in. She was very angry. Then she went into the kitchen and started washing dishes. I think we were on an ocean liner. But it had no captain. It was sort of drifting, wallowing in the water. I took the prostitute out on deck. It was, like, all foam rubber. We started, uh, doing it on the foam rubber deck. She was very skinny and small. She felt like a little girl. My dick was tiny, about as thin as a pencil. It was … horrible. It didn’t feel like my own.”

Jason sighed and shook his head.

“I mean really numb.” Harold frowned. “What do you think?”

He couldn’t understand why Emma wasn’t alarmed by the intrusion of the letters into her life. It didn’t take years of training to see they came from a disturbed mind. Jason didn’t like the idea of a disturbed mind fixated on Emma.

“What do you make of it?” Harold demanded.

The postmarks were all impossible to read. You couldn’t see where they came from, or even the date. That didn’t worry her either. Maybe it was the military upbringing. You just didn’t withdraw from danger in the military.

“Dr. Frank, why are you looking at me like that?”

Jason focused. Harold’s face was red. His lips were caught between his teeth, and he was breathing loudly through his nose. He was being frowned at by his doctor. He didn’t like that.

“Am I going crazy? Is that it?” he demanded wildly.

“No,” Jason said, alarmed that once again he had slipped away in the middle of a session. “You’re not going crazy.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just concentrating,” Jason said. “I wasn’t looking in any particular way. Tell me about the dream.”

“I just did, didn’t you hear me?” Harold gnawed his lips again.

Shit. Jason bit the inside of his own lip with fury at himself. He was having trouble concentrating. It was his fault, not Harold’s. There was steam coming out of Harold’s every orifice. Jason could see it. Harold was an important man. Very few people dared to thwart him in any way. That was one of the reasons Marilyn’s death hit him so hard. Death hadn’t spared him, and he couldn’t take it.

“Can you remember anything else about the dream? Any other details?” Jason asked. He hadn’t been listening to the whole thing and couldn’t begin to comment on it. Shit and shit again.

“What does it mean? You really think I’m in trouble, don’t you?” Tears filled Harold’s eyes.

Jason shook his head with horror. He was making his patients cry. One after another. They were having dreams about ships without captains and rudders, about trains off the rails. Pilotless airplanes. Wallowing in quicksand. Jesus.

Jason had been thinking about the letters in his appointment book, and the unopened letter on the mail table. Harold had lost his wife. She died after a long and terrible decline. Harold was trying to get over it. But he, Jason, was the one in trouble.

“I did go to a prostitute.” Harold wept. “First time in my life.” He blew his nose. “And I couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel a thing. You think I’m disgusting, don’t you?”

“No,” Jason said empathically. Normal, all normal. “We’ll have to talk a lot about this.”

There was a click on the phone, the answering machine kicking in. He wondered if it was Emma, calling to say she was back from another glamorous lunch. His eyes moved to the carriage clock on his desk. He had fifteen minutes to get Harold’s ship back on course. He got the ship back on course and ushered Harold out, then punched the button on his answering machine.

“Jason, it’s Charles. Listen, Brenda and I would love to have you and Emma over for a social day. We’re in town this weekend. How about Sunday?”