From Time to Time

2

THE YOUNG WOMAN looked up from her computer keyboard, smiling pleasantly, and gestured the next patient into the doctor’s office. He appeared to be in his late thirties, was bald, with red-blond hair at the back and sides, and—crossing the small room purposefully, very nearly belligerently—looked to be just under average height. Heavy shoulders, though, and thick through the chest.

Waiting at his desk, the doctor said pleasantly, “Sit down, please,” nodding at a small couch that faced his desk. “Be with you in a sec. Just looking over your sheet.” The doctor looked thirty-five, wore a faded green tennis shirt, and his hair was yellow brown and thick. But not air-blown, the patient decided, approving. No goddamn alligator on the shirt either.

He sat down to wait, his back barely touching the cushion behind him, sitting almost bolt upright, not accepting the offered softness and comfort. His hands lay unmoving on his thighs, and he kept his pink-skinned face placid as he looked around. More like a living room than an office, he thought: overlapping miniature rugs; the entire wall behind the desk bookshelves; a wide window ledge at the side scattered with publications; framed photographs of sailboats; wooden shutters darkening the room, secluding it from the world. He didn’t like it. Then he made himself sit back, and forced his shoulders to release their tension. Hostility at the self-imposed necessity of being here was unproductive.

The man at the desk tilted head and paper simultaneously to read along a margin. “My secretary has noted that you prefer not to give your name.”

“Well, we’ll see. Tell me something first. Are you a regular doctor?”

“I’m not an M.D. I have a doctorate in psychology.”

“I’ve always understood that what a man tells a doctor is confidential. That apply to you?”

“Absolutely.”

He considered that, nodded thoughtfully, then unexpectedly smiled, so warmly and genuinely that the man at the desk felt an immediate response, a surge of wanting to help; but aware, too, that the patient was taking charge. “We can add my name later if need be,” the patient said. “The thing is, I’m an officer in the Army.”

“I thought so.”

“Oh?” he said in a prove-it tone.

“Well, I don’t want to come off as Sherlock Holmes, but there are no cuffs on your pants. A solid-color knit tie. White shirt. And you haven’t unbuttoned your coat. There’s a neatness about you that says Army to me. If your suit were khaki instead of blue, I’d salute.”

“Well, you’re pretty good. A brother officer claims my pajamas have epaulets. I like the Army. Only reason I’m out of uniform is the work I’m doing these days. And the only reason I’m here instead of an army shrink—sorry.”

“That’s okay. I say it too.”

“I don’t want it in my jacket, my army file, that I consulted a, uh—”

“Psychologist: I’m not a psychiatrist. And this won’t be in any record but mine. So come on now. You have to tell me, you have to make a start.”

“I know. All right. About ten days ago I was working. I’m a historian, an infantry major assigned just now to the Center of Military History. I’m a specialist in World War One. These days I work at the main branch of the New York Public Library at Forty-second and Fifth, and one day something happened.

“I had a stack of books in front of me. Taking notes. I was copying out names, German names and military titles. Going slow, printing carefully, getting the Kraut spelling absolutely right. And out of the blue I felt a sudden”—he hesitated—“well, rage. And I mean rage; absolutely unexplainable. It just took me over. Instantly. Like somebody had walked up and slapped me across the mouth. And I said—this was out loud, you understand; me sitting there at one of those long tables they have, heads all over the place turning to look at me. I said, ‘Damn you. Oh, God damn you!’ And I was kind of struggling, fighting to push the chair back and get to my feet.

“Then I more or less came to. Just standing there, everybody staring; I must have been loud. Well, I walked out of there pretty fast, and stood out on the Fifth Avenue steps for a while, cooling off. Thing is, I don’t know why I said that. I just do not know. After a while I made myself go back, staring everyone down, and resume my work.” He stopped, waiting.

“Go on.”

“Well, not the next day. There was the weekend, and then it must have been Monday I was back at work. In the main reading room again. I’m there when they open, every weekday and Saturday. And I stay till they throw me out. But this time, thank God, I’d taken a break. I was out on the steps having coffee. There’s guys out front with carts selling coffee and stuff.”

“I know.”

“Miserable coffee. But something to do. I give myself a ten-minute break, by the clock, in the middle of the morning, and another in midafternoon. And the quickest lunch I can manage. And I drink the lousy coffee because I don’t smoke. I did, but I quit. It’s been—”

“Come on now.”

“Okay. It happened again. A terrible anger. Sudden. Out of nowhere. A rush of it. I could feel my face go red, my collar choking me. Raw emotion with nothing to explain it. And I said, ‘You son of a bitch. Oh, you bastard. You did it, you did it!’ There was a woman standing next to me—those steps get crowded—and I just trotted down the stairs, tossed my cup at a trash basket, coffee and all, and got the hell out of there. I couldn’t help but look back, and you know”—he smiled—“she was still there, not even watching me. I was just another New York crazy far’s she was concerned. But I was still wild. Walking along, going fast, headed north but going nowhere I knew of. And if I could have grabbed him by the throat, I’da never let go.”

“Grabbed who! Quick!”

The patient shook his head. “I don’t know. Just don’t know. But the feeling did not go away; for a while it got worse. Finally it eased off, but I didn’t go back. Not that day. Quit early and went home, first time in years. I keep a little apartment in the East Village; I’m up here a lot; the Army pays for it. My real place is in Washington. And that’s about it. I don’t know what the hell is going on. Do you?”

“Not yet.”

“I see. I gather you think I’ll be coming back.”

“For a time maybe.” The doctor picked up the patient-information sheet from his desk. “Maybe we should get this finished up. You married?”

“No.”

“Ever been?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He made a check mark. “And you’re how old: thirty-seven, thirty-eight?”

“Thirty-nine, and if you’re really asking how come I’m nearly forty and never been married, it’s simple: I haven’t time. I like women; quite a lot. Sexually, and just for themselves. Women are nicer than men, they’re better people; I have women who are friends, and women usually stay my friends. I’ve had a lot to do with them, and expect to continue, and I hope that takes care of that. But what I like most—better than women, men, cats or dogs—is work. Life is work, and work is life, that’s my opinion. It’s why we’re alive; procreation is just to keep the thing going. I have fun, I have pleasure apart from work. I go to movies, have a drink, see friends, men and women; I do what everyone does. But that’s only recreation. What I really do is work. Sixteen hours a day often, and for day after day when I know I should. Twenty hours if need be. There’s no way I could be married.”

“Well. You haven’t asked me this, and it’s not why you’re here. But there are other years to come, you know, other kinds of years.”

“I know it. And I’ll be old and lonely, all that. But these are the years that matter. And this is how I’m going to spend them. Nothing is more important: I’ve got things to do, and they’re going to be done. I’m a ruthless son of a bitch, Doc, and I’m not kidding. Ruthless with myself, too.”

“Yes. Okay.” He stood, so did his patient, and—skilled at ending his sessions—the doctor led the way to his office door, the other man following, opened it, then waited for the almost inevitable last question or, occasionally, the final withheld-until-now revelation.

This time it was a question. “You have any clue at all on this?”

“No. And you don’t want guesses.”

“Okay, Doctor. I call you Doctor, by the way?”

“My name is Paul. Call me Paul.”

“Okay, and my name is Prien, Ruben Prien. Call me Rube.”

“Okay, Rube. Make an appointment with my secretary as you leave. I’ll see you soon.”

But he was wrong. Rube Prien never came back.