“Of course,” she said.
When I got into my apartment, I took a hot shower. I was lying down on my new couch when I wondered whether Eva expected me to come back after I changed my clothes. The question was, did I want to go back. As usual, I didn’t and I did. As usual, I went back and forth, nagging myself about what to do.
After an hour or so of going back and forth, I decided to go over to Eva’s place. I knocked and waited for her. I thought to say, “It took a while for me to dry off” She never answered — was it that Ron had come — and I knocked again before returning to my own place. Now that I had decided to visit, it was disappointing not to be allowed in.
I worked myself up into a state of outrage. Outrage leads to irrational acts. I returned to Eva’s door and knocked heavily on it. This time she did answer. “I can’t talk now,” she said, “I have a guest.”
“You invited me in for a cup of tea,” I sputtered.
“That was awhile ago,” she said. “Besides you rejected my offer.”
“Sorry for disturbing you,” I said, and went back to my place, outrage barely assuaged. I didn’t ask if her guest was Ron but who else would it be?
I lay down on my couch, thinking of a sentence I might add to my new story, which had stalled, rewrote it in my head and fell asleep, dreaming of beautiful sentences. There is always, or mostly always, comfort in sleep. Sometimes I dream of stories to write and then wake to find the story not what I thought it was — the dream story fading into nothing.
I need to get a job again, to go back to work outside the house, but I postpone doing anything. The thing is I don’t like to work for anyone. I don’t like being under anyone’s arbitrary authority. Who does? I walked out of my last job because my immediate boss seemed to take pleasure in ordering me around.
Later I had a dream in which I worked for Ron as his personal assistant. I refused in the dream to take an order to bring him a cup of latte and he threatened, never raising his voice, to have me demoted. Demoted from what? How low can you get? He said he had heard from others that I was unreliable and he was sorry now he had taken me on.
“Get your own fucking latte,” I told him.
In some situations it’s a virtue to be unreliable.
I studied the prospects for self-employment. There were ads here and there for selling various products over the phone. That seemed a possibility, but I’m not very adept at talking to strangers and I needed a job that would get me out of the house. Now it seemed that Klotzman had the ideal job. After awhile a patient no longer seems like a stranger. The problem is that it would be hard passing myself off as a therapist without the proper credentials. I could take the appropriate courses or, as I’ve done with so much else, fake it. First I’d have to complete my B.A. I was only eight hours short (or was it twelve hours?) when I left school. I had put B.A. in English on all my applications when I applied for jobs in the past and no one had thought to question the claim.
I asked Dr. Klotzman how many years of study it took to become an analyst.
“In all, probably four years, maybe five. Why do you ask? Are you thinking about becoming an analyst?”
That stopped me short. “Thinking about it,” I muttered.
“Well,” he said, “you don’t need to get an MD or a Ph. D. You could take a two year course in psychoanalysis.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, though I had already ruled it out. “You were right the other day about what I said about Ron. I’d just as soon see him disappear from Eva’s life. I think of him now as my nemesis.”
“Do you want to elaborate on that?”
“It may not be literally true, but he seems always in my way.”
“Didn’t Eva offer to drop him if you wanted her to,” he said.
He had a good memory. “That was several weeks ago,” I said. “That offer hasn’t been repeated. What I did, I think, was solidify Ron’s relationship with her.”
“You don’t really know that, do you?”
“He’s around more than he used to be. It feels like he’s around all the time.”
“He appears to want a relationship with Eva,” he said. “On the other hand you’re not sure what you want. What do you want?”
“It changes from day to day,” I said. “All I want is access to Eva when I want to see her.”
“And Eva wants some kind of commitment that you’re not willing to give here. That’s what it sounds like to me.”
He had me there. “I realize I’ve messed things up.” I said. I felt tears form in my eyes, but I fought them off.
“From where I sit,” he said, “you’ve been standoffish and rejecting with Eva while Ron has pursued her unambiguously.”
“I’m sorry about that now.”
“You can always change your approach,” he said. “It just depends on knowing what you want and acting on it.”
“That’s just it. What I want changes from day to day. Sometimes from hour to hour.”
“That sounds accurate,” he says. “Sometimes you have to compromise with immediate feelings to get what you want in the long run.”
“Why can’t Eva see me once in a while.? I just want to be her friend.”
“It sounds to me that she wants more than that from you.”
“That’s just not fair,” I said. “That’s not right.”
“We’re talking about feelings,” he said. “Fair and right have nothing to do with it.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” I said.
“Mel, I am on your side. I’m trying to give you a clear picture of the situation. You see that, don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “Yes.” And that’s how our session ended.
When I got home, I tried to figure out what I wanted and to pursue a course of action in my own best interest. I was lying on the red couch mulling things over and fell asleep.
I dreamed of a lineup of five Ron look-alikes, though not one of them was exactly Ron.
“I can’t tell them apart,” I said to the policeman next to me. “They’re almost identical.”
“That’s why you’re here,” the cop said. “Only you can tell them apart. One of them is your so-called nemesis.”
I looked carefully at the five figures in the lineup. One of them was probably the real Ron, but which? I figured it was a trick and the one that looked least like Ron — for example three had a mustache which looked fake — was the real one.
“Is the mustache on candidate three real?” I asked. “Since I’ve known him, Ron has never worn a mustache.” I thought of getting closer and pulling it off. “Eva would know better than I do,” I said.
“She was not available,” the policeman said. “Indisposed. You’re our only hope, but if you pull number three’s mustache, we’ll have to arrest you for tampering with evidence.”
I backed up. “I don’t like any of them,” I said. They were all except three smiling now.
“According to the rules, you can only choose one,” he said. “If you don’t choose, you automatically become the choice.”
With heavy heart — I didn’t want to incriminate the wrong man — I was about to choose three when I woke, thinking I had my chance to get rid of him and I didn’t take it.
As it turned out, I didn’t (not at the moment) have to make the dreaded decision as to what to do. Iit was all out of my hands. Eva showed up at my door all smiles and apologized for having been abrupt with me. “I had been having a fight with Ron when you came to the door and I took it out on you. Shall we take one of our walks?”
I didn’t see why not and we went off together. “I’m glad we’re friends again,” I said.
“We never stopped being friends,” she said. “It was my anger at Ron that I let carry over to you.”
“Thank you for telling me that,” I said. I wanted to say more but I was silent as we walked another two blocks.