Jimmy The Kid

10

JIMMY HARRINGTON, lying on the black naugahyde couch in Dr. Schraubenzieher’s office, looking over at the pumpkin-colored drapes half-closed over the air-shaft window, said, “You know, for the last few weeks, every time I come into the city I keep having this feeling, someone is watching me.”

“Mm hm?”

“A very specific kind of watching,” Jimmy said. “I have this feeling, I’m somebody’s target. Like a sniper’s target. Like the man in the tower in Austin, Texas.”

“Mm hm?”

“That’s obviously paranoid, of course,” Jimmy said. “And yet it doesn’t truly have a paranoid feel about it. I think I understand paranoid manifestations, and this seems somehow to be something else. Do you have any ideas, Doctor?”

“Well,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said, “why don’t we study the implications. You feel that you are being watched, that you are somehow a target. Is that right?”

“That’s right. A very specific sensation of eyes, of being observed for some purpose. It’s like that well-known phenomenon of being on a plane and feeling that one is under observation, and then looking around to see that some other passenger actually is looking at you.”

“And in the current situation? Is anyone actually looking at you?”

Jimmy frowned at the drapes. They moved slightly, stirred by the quiet air-conditioner in the wall below. “I don’t know,” he said. “So far I haven’t caught anyone at it.”

“Caught anyone? A very suggestive phrase, that.”

“But that’s the way it feels.” Jimmy concentrated, trying to get in touch with his feelings. He’d been in analysis for nearly four years, and was very professional about it by now. “There’s an element of… — sport in it,” he said. “As though it’s a game, and I win if I catch them looking at me. I know that sounds childish, but that is the sensation.”

“As I am forced to remind you frequently, Jimmy,” Dr. Schraubenzieher said mildly, “you are a child. A childlike response, even from you, is not necessarily a negative event.”

“I know,” Jimmy said. One of his unresolved and so-far unstated disagreements with the doctor concerned this aspect of childlike behavior; Jimmy felt that his own disapproval of such behavior in himself was so instinctive and so strong that it simply had to be trusted. He was not, however, prepared as yet to debate the issue with Dr. Schrauhenzieher, so he altered the subject slightly, saying, “Why did you say that ‘caught anyone’ was a suggestive phrase?”

“You know very well why,” the doctor said; he himself knew very well why Jimmy was veering away from the topic of childishness, but he wouldn’t push the matter. In the course of the analysis the debate must eventually arise, and it would be better to wait for Jimmy to feel strong enough to raise the subject himself.

At the moment, Jimmy had hared off after this semantic scent. “I don’t see that ‘caught anyone’ is a particularly pertinent phrase,” he said. “It’s merely the standard idiom in that circumstance, normal American usage: ‘I caught him looking at me is simply the way that s said. I suppose it’s the mind’s instinctive aversion to the duplication of idea implicit in ‘I saw him looking.’ On the other hand, I could merely be evading the issue, analyzing it away.”

“One of the great problems in analysis,” the doctor said, “is that the patient may merely become cleverer at avoiding self-comprehension. To evade my suggestion by offering the titillation of a friendly discussion on idiomatic usage is wily enough, but then to suggest yourself that you are trying an evasion technique is almost too clever. The idea being, of course, that we will now go off on the tangent of your evasion mechanisms, and therefore safely avoid discussion of either your dislike of childhood mannerisms or your fear of competition.”

“Fear of competition?” Once again Jimmy avoided the childish-behavior problem, this time realizing just a second too late that in dodging away from that he had landed himself squarely in the topic the doctor really wanted to discuss. Before seeing the trap, though, he had already blundered ahead by asking, “Where does that come in? We weren’t discussing my fear of competition.”

“Oh, but we were,” the doctor said, and Jimmy could hear the smugness of victory in the man’s voice. “You spoke of being someone’s target. You said it was like a sport or a game. You said you hadn’t caught anyone yet, but that you felt if you did catch someone you would win.”

“I think you’re just playing semantics with me.”

“You mean you’d rather I would play semantics with you. But I won’t. I will instead point out that in being in the top two percentile of IQ, you naturally know that you stand out from your peers, even among the boys of Bradley School. Being wealthy also sets you apart. You are inevitably and naturally the target of many eyes. You have been taught that much is expected of you, and you are aware of the level of performance that you should be capable of maintaining. Your competition is with your own excellence, it is played out very much in public, and you fear your inadequacy to maintain your own standard. Thus your desire to make motion pictures, to be the director and have the opportunity to safely be in charge; first to define the action and then to capture it permanently on film, where it can’t get out of your control.”

“I thought we’d agreed,” Jimmy said coldly, “not to mention that ambition of mine.”

“You’re right,” the doctor said. “I do apologize.”

The fact was, the only time Jimmy had ever demonstrated real anger toward Dr. Schraubenzieher had been on this subject of movies. He knew that he wanted to make movies because he was an artist; the doctor, assuming him to be a child, assumed the desire to be childish. He had asked for movie equipment, and the Christmas before last he had been given a Super 8 silent camera and projector. Super 8! Would they have given Mozart a toy piano? Wasn’t Mozart a child?

Well, he’d been through those arguments, to no effect. Except that this last Christmas he’d been given some basic 16mm equipment, with a potential capacity for sound. Still, it wasn’t home movies he was interested in, it was film art.

But they weren’t going to talk about that; it had been agreed, after his one outburst, to let the subject lie. The doctor had made a mistake in bringing it up, but had immediately apologized, and that at least was something. Jimmy, who had gone rigid, relaxed again and said, “I’m sorry. Where were we? Competition with myself, wasn’t it?”

“Exactly. Competition with your own high standard. Thus your fear of being childlike, as though to act your age would be somehow to fail to live up to your potential. You have a brilliant mind—for your age. You are extremely imaginative and resourceful—for your age.”

“But isn’t there a fallacy,” Jimmy asked, “in the concept of competition with one’s own capabilities? There can’t be failure, because an apparent failure would merely indicate a faulty original estimate of the capabilities. The estimate should then be geared down to the actual accomplishment, thus obliterating the apparent failure. And if failure is impossible, ipso facto victory is also impossible. Without the potential for either victory or failure, how can there be competition?”

Dr. Schraubenzieher smiled at the back of the boy’s head. Very well, he would give the child a rest; particularly since Jimmy had behaved so decently about the motion picture slip. For the remainder of the session they played word games.

At the end, when Jimmy was leaving the consulting room, he paused in the doorway, looked at the doctor with a troubled frown, and said, “Do you suppose by any chance somebody is watching me?”

The doctor smiled indulgently. He’s projecting the motion picture director theme, he thought, but of course didn’t say that. “Certainly not,” he said. “We both know better, don’t we?”

“I suppose so. See you Friday.”