Even so, I told Eva one more week and that was it for me.
“Two more weeks,” she urged me.
“Two more weeks and that’s it,” I said.
When two more weeks passed I wasn’t ready to quit. Maybe Eva suspected this all the time. Anyway, I began to like the job as well as anyone can like any job. I felt the Empire Medical Center was my home away from home. I no longer felt fraudulent. I can’t explain why. The feeling just went away. I was a staple of the place and everyone around was very nice to me. And though I didn’t altogether know what I was doing, I worked very hard at it. Conducting interviews for job openings, conducting lie detector tests for new employees.
I told Eva that I thought I’d stay a little longer. “I’m proud of you,” she said. No one, so far as memory allowed, had ever been proud of me before. It made me feel guilty to have her proud of me, but I swallowed it.
Klotzman thought I had turned a corner in my life. I knew better. It was just a temporary upside and I told him so. It made me nervous to have all these people happy with me. My dreams reflected the ambiguity. There were five versions of me in a lineup and the real me was the one choosing the winning candidate. “Not fair,” someone yelled, and two plainclothes police came along and dragged me away.
“If I’m not there, who’ll choose the right one?” I said.
“Don’t worry,” cop one said. “The right one will choose himself.”
I woke in a sweat, wondering how the right one of the five would know to choose himself.
“You have some ambivalence being an authority,” Klotzman said, in his analysis of the dream. “You want to be chosen for whatever but you don’t want full responsibility for choosing yourself.”
“I’d rather go unnoticed,” I said. “It makes me uncomfortable having everyone noticing me.”
“It may make you uncomfortable,” he said, “or it may make the former you uncomfortable, but you seem to be handling it.”
His remark sounded true but I didn’t want to believe it. “Like everything else, it’s an illusion,” I said.
“What else is an illusion in your book?” he asked. “What does the everything refer to?”
I couldn’t answer that one. “It means,” I said, straining to justify myself” just because I feel like a fraud some of the time, it doesn’t mean I am no longer a fraud.”
“It could also mean,” he said, “that just because you felt like a fraud didn’t mean you were a fraud. You never allow yourself to be in the right.”
I was in a feisty mood. “It could also mean that, but it doesn’t,” I said. Then I apologized for disputing his perception, the apology undermined by a certain irony.
“You have a right to dispute what I say,” he said, “if you don’t believe it. I’m not asking you to take my perceptions on faith.”
“And I don’t,” I said.
“I saw Ron again for the first time in awhile, standing outside Eva’s door. We nodded at each other. The door opened and he went in.”
Though it wasn’t my day — it wasn’t Thursday — I was angry at his being there.
What did I expect? Well, I thought, now that I didn’t need him, maybe she had dropped Ron. Apparently, she hadn’t and there was nothing I could do about it. I was ready for Ron to disappear. The new me was more aggressive than the old one who was super passive. On my next walk with Eva, I brought Ron’s name into the conversation.
“Do you ever see Ron?” I asked her, pretending I hadn’t noticed him in the hall.
She was slow to answer. “It’s my recollection,” she said, “that you didn’t care whether I saw Ron or not.”
“It’s my recollection,” I said, “that at some point you were eager to stop seeing him.”
“I don’t recall saying that exactly,” she said. “I wanted at some point to see less of him. which is different. I like Ron in small doses.”
“You said if I wanted you to, you would stop seeing Ron,” I said.
“I did say that,” she said, “and you said you didn’t care. Isn’t that right?”
I was stymied for a moment. I wasn’t ready to ask her to stop seeing Ron altogether, though I was ready to accept it if she made the offer.
No such offer was forthcoming, which soured my mood.
She wanted to know why I was so down in the mouth. “This couldn’t be about Ron, could it?” she asked.
I was not about to tell her that it was. I let my glumness speak for itself.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“What do you want of me is what I’m asking. Do you want to see more of me?”
We had been taking our walks about three times a week and I was sleeping with her on Thursdays. That seemed sufficient.
“I can’t tell you what to do with yourself when you’re not with me.”
“No you can’t,” she said. “I like you, Mel, but I’m my own person.”
When we got back to her apartment there seemed a kind of uneasiness between us. I gave her an awkward hug.
“You seem displeased with me,” she said. “You know I’ve been a good friend.”
I couldn’t deny it and if I felt displeased it had more to do with me — with my resentment of Ron — than with her. Ambivalence froze me and I had nothing to say to her remark. “See you soon,” I said, turning to go into my own place. I noticed that Eva was still standing in her own doorway.
“I don’t like us to separate like this,” she said.
“Like what?” I said, though I knew what she meant. I thought of going over and giving her a kiss or a more convincing hug, but I didn’t move.
Eva came over and put her arms around me. “Please say something.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Is it?”
“It’s okay,” I repeated, wanting to tell her just how much she meant to me, though afraid to give myself away.
She went back to her apartment, not exactly overjoyed with me and I went inside to my new couch.
I dreamed of a lineup with three Evas and two unfamiliar older women. I wanted to choose the first Eva but was told by police presence that it was not my part to choose.
“Whose part is it?” I asked.
And then Ron, wearing a white suit, emerged. “I’ll take it from here,” he said.
“Is it his part?” I asked the two plainclothes cops.
One of them looked at his notes. “You can be backup,” he said, “if it means that much to you.”
I was outraged. “I will not back up that clothes horse. I will not be any part of anything he is in charge of. I hope that’s clear.”
“Get him out of here,” Ron said. and tThe two cops took me, one on each arm out of the room where my old red couch, springs sticking out, awaited me.
I told Klotzman that if Ron was still in the picture, then I was thinking of not seeing Eva anymore.
“Isn’t that a kind of spiting your nose move,” he said. “From what I understand, you enjoy Eva’s company.”
“I won’t be second fiddle to Ron,” I said.
“Who said you’re second fiddle?” Klotzman said. “Maybe you’re first fiddle. From what you tell me, it sounds to me as if you’re first fiddle.”
Again he had me. “I don’t want Ron in the orchestra,” I said, straining the metaphor.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “I’m on your side. Tell Eva.”
“I can’t,” I said. “She’d say it was none of my business.”
“Of course it’s your business,” he said. “A while back you wanted Ron in the picture.”
“That was a mistake,” I said. “Besides things have changed.”
“I can see they have,” he said. “Be subtle. Ask Eva if you can see her more often than the current arrangement.”
That made sense, but was that what I wanted? “I’d have to see her seven days a week to exclude Ron.”