Lying on the Couch (41 page)

"Other stuff?" asked Marshal, though he knew full well what other stuff.

"You know. The stuff we were working on last time. The tells. Want to try all that again? Refresh your memory? Ten dollar-bill. . . you guess five times, I'll guess five times."

"No. No. Won't be necessary. I've gotten the concept . . . you made your point effectively. But you said at the end of the last session you had some ideas about how to continue the work."

"Very definitely. Here's my plan. Just like you had some tells last time and it cost you forty bucks in our little game, well, I am certain I am flashing tells all the time in my game, poker. And what's the reason I'm flashing tells? Because of stress, because of all Dr. Pande's 'errant therapy'—wasn't that the way you put it?"

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"Something like that."

"I think those were your words."

"Errant methods, I believe I said."

"Okay, 'errant methods.' Same difference. Because of Pande's errant methods I've developed bad nervous habits in poker. Just like you had your tells last week, I've got a ton of bad tells in poker. I'm sure of it—that's absolutely got to be why I lost that forty thousand dollars in my friendly social game."

"Yeah, go on," said Marshal, growing wary. Though absolutely committed to placating his patient in every possible manner and to bring therapy to an immediate and satisfying conclusion, he was beginning to smell real danger.

"How does therapy fit in with this?" he asked Shelly. "I trust you're not expecting me to play poker with you. I'm not a gambler, certainly not a poker player. How could you possibly learn anything from playing poker with me?"

"Hold on. Doc. Whoever said anything about playing poker with you? Though I won't deny it passed through my mind. No, what's needed is the real situation—to have you observe me play in a real game, with the high stakes and the tension that goes along with it— and use your observation skills to point out to me what I'm doing to give away my hands—and my money."

"You want me to go to your poker game and watch you play?" Marshal felt relieved. As bizarre as this request was, it was not as bad as what he had feared a few minutes ago. Right now he'd accede to any request that would get Dr. Sunderland off his back, and get Shelly out of his office forever.

"Are you kidding? You come to the game with the guys? Man, that would be a scene—coming to the game with my own private shrink!" Shelly slapped his knees as he guffawed. "Oh man . . . great . . . Doc, that would make us legends, you and me—me bringing my shrink and his couch to the game ... the guys would be talking about that into the next millennium."

"Glad you find this so amusing, Mr. Merriman. I'm not sure I get it. Maybe you ought to tell me: what's your plan?"

"There's only one way. You have to come with me to a professional gambling casino and observe me play. No one would know us. We'd go incognito."

"You want me to go to Las Vegas with you? Cancel my other patients?"

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"Whoa, Doc. There you go again. You are jumpy today. First time I've seen you like this. Who said anything about Las Vegas or can-ceHng anything or anybody? This is simple-Uke. Twenty minutes south from here, just off the highway to the airport, there's a first-class game room called Avocado Joe's.

"What I'm asking from you—and this is my last request of you— is one evening of your time. Two or three hours. You watch everything I do at the poker game. At the end of each hand I'll flash you my down cards so you will know exactly what I was playing. You watch me: how I act when I've got a good hand, when I'm bluffing, when I'm pulling for a card trying to make a boat or a flush, when I'm set and don't care what cards get turned. You watch everything: my hands, gestures, facial expressions, my eyes, how I play with my chips, when I pull my ear, scratch my balls, pick my nose, cough, swallow—everything I do."

"And you said 'last request'?" Marshal asked.

"That's it! Your job will be over. The rest is up to me—to take in what you give me, to study it, and then use it in the future. You're off duty after Avocado Joe's; you'll have done all that a shrink can possibly do."

"And ... uh ... we could formalize that somehow?" Marshal's wheels were turning. A formal letter of satisfaction from Shelly might be his salvation: he'd fax it immediately to Sunderland.

"You mean some kind of signed letter saying it's been a successful course of treatment?"

"Something like that, something very informal, just between you and me, something saying that I've treated you successfully, that there are no remaining symptoms," said Marshal.

Shelly hesitated while his wheels turned, too. "I could agree to that, Doc ... in exchange for a letter from you expressing your satisfaction with my progress. Might prove useful in patching up some marital wounds."

"Okay, let me go over it again," said Marshal. "I go to Avocado Joe's, spend two hours there observing you play. Then we exchange letters and our business together is at an end. Agreed? Shake hands on this?" Marshal extended his hand.

"Probably closer to two and a half hours—I need time to prepare you before the game, and we need some time after the game for you to debrief me."

"Okay. Two and a half hours, then."

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The two men shook hands.

"Now," asked Marshal, "the timing of our rendezvous at Avocado Joe's?"

"Tonight? Eight o'clock? Tomorrow I leave for the week at La Costa with Willy."

"Can't tonight. I have a teaching commitment."

"Too bad, I'm really primed to get started. Can't finesse the teaching?"

"Out of the question. I've made a commitment."

"Okay. Let's see, I'm back in a week; how about a week from Friday—eight o'clock at Avocado Joe's? Meet you at the restaurant there?"

Marshal nodded. After Shelly left he collapsed in his chair and felt a wave of relief sweep over him. Amazing! How had this happened, he wondered. That he, one of the world's premier analysts, should feel relieved, should look forward with gratitude to a rendezvous with a patient at Avocado Joe's?

A knock on the door and Shelly entered and sat down again. "Forgot to tell you something, Doc. It's against the rules to stand around and watch poker at Avocado Joe's. You will have to play in the game with me. Here, I brought you a book."

Shelly handed Marshal a copy of Texas Hold 'em — the Texas Way.

"No sweat. Doc," said Shelly in response to the look of horror on Marshal's face. Simple game. Two down and then five open common cards. The book will explain all. I'll tell you what you need to know next week, before we play. You drop out of every hand—you just lose the ante. Won't amount to much."

"Are you serious? I have to play?"

"Tell you what. Doc—I'll share your losses. And if you have a ballbreaker hand, stay in and bet and you can keep the winnings. Read the book first and I'll explain more to you when we meet. It's a good deal for you."

Marshal watched Shelly rise and saunter out of his office, caressing the orange globe as he passed it.

A good deal, he calls it. Mr. Merriman, what I call a good deal is when I will have seen the last of you and your good deals.

NINETEEN

/^ //or weeks Ernest sweated through hour after hour with ^'jT Carol. Their sessions crackled with erotic tension and, ^__,>^ though Ernest strove mightily to defend his boundaries, Carol began to breach them. They met twice weekly but, unbeknownst to Carol, she occupied far more than her allocated fifty minutes. On the days of their appointment Ernest awoke in the morning with a keen sense of anticipation. He imagined Carolyn's face in his mirror observing him as he scrubbed his cheeks with extra vigor, shaved more closely, and splashed on the Royall Lyme aftershave.

"Carolyn days" were dress-up days. Ernest saved his best pressed pants for Carolyn, his crispest, most colorful shirts, and his most stylish ties. A couple of weeks ago Carolyn had attempted to give him one of Wayne's neckties—her husband was now too ill to go out, she explained, and, since their San Francisco apartment contained little storage space, she was discarding much of his formal

wardrobe. Ernest, to Carolyn's great irritation, had, of course, declined the gift, even though Carolyn had spent the entire hour trying to persuade him to change his mind. But the next morning, while dressing, Ernest had the strongest craving for that necktie. It was exquisite: a Japanese motif of small dark glowing flowers layered around a bold central forest-green iridescent blossom. Ernest had gone out shopping for one like it, but in vain—it was clearly one of a kind. At times he puzzled about how he might learn where she had gotten it. Perhaps, if she were to offer it again, he might say that a necktie at the end of therapy, a couple of years down the road, might not be entirely inappropriate.

Carolyn days were new clothes days as well. Today it was a new vest and pair of trousers he had purchased at the Wilkes Bashford annual sale. The beige-heather hopsack vest was superb over his pink button-down shirt and brown herringbone trousers. Perhaps, he thought, the vest might be better displayed without a jacket. He would leave the jacket draped over a chair and wear just a shirt, tie, and vest. Ernest inspected himself in the mirror. Yes, that worked— a bit daring, but he could carry it off.

Ernest loved to observe Carolyn: that graceful walk as she entered his office, the way she moved her chair closer to him before she sat, that sexy swishing sound of her stockings as she crossed her legs. He loved that first moment when they looked into each other's eyes before starting the hour's work. And, most of all, he loved the way she adored him, the way she described her masturbatory fantasies about him—fantasies that grew ever more graphic, ever more evocative, ever more thrilling. An hour never felt long enough, and when the session was over Ernest, more than once, hurried to his window to snatch one last look at Carolyn as she descended his front steps. One surprising thing he noticed after the last two sessions was that she must have changed into sneakers in his waiting room because he saw her jog down his front stairs and up Sacramento Street!

What a woman! God, what bad luck that they hadn't met socially at that bookstore instead of becoming therapist and patient! Ernest liked everything about Carolyn: her quick intelligence and intensity, the fire in her eyes, her bouncy walk and limber body, her sleek, patterned stockings, her absolute ease and candor in discussing sex— her longings, her masturbation, her one-night stands.

And he liked her vulnerability. Although she had a tough and quick external persona (probably necessitated and reinforced by her

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courtroom work), she was also willing, with a tactful invitation, to enter the areas of her pain. For example, her fears of passing on her bitterness toward men to her daughter, her early abandonment by her father, her grief for her mother, her desperation about being trapped in a marriage to a man she detested.

Despite his sexual attraction to Carolyn, Ernest clung resolutely to his therapeutic perspective and kept himself under continuous personal surveillance. As far as he could tell, he was still doing excellent therapy. He was highly motivated to help her, had stayed focused, and, time and again, had brought her to important insights. Lately he had confronted her with all the implications of her lifelong bitterness and resentment—and her lack of awareness that others experienced life differently.

Whenever Carolyn introduced distractions to the therapy work— and it happened every hour, with extraneous inquiries into his personal life or pleading for more physical contact—Ernest had skillfully and vigorously resisted. Perhaps too vigorously in the last session, when he had responded to Carolyn's request for a few minutes of "couch time" with a dose of existential shock therapy. He had drawn a line on a sheet of paper, denoted one end of the line as her birthday and the other end as her death day. He handed her the paper and asked her to put an X on the line to indicate where in her life span she was at this moment. Then he asked her to meditate a few moments on her response.

Ernest had used this device with other patients, but had never encountered such a powerful response. Carolyn placed a cross on the line three-quarters of the way to the end, stared at it silently for two or three minutes, then said, "Such a small life," and burst into tears. Ernest asked her to say more, but all she could do was shake her head and say, "I don't know. I don't know why I'm crying so hard."

"I think I know, Carolyn. I think you're crying for all the unlived life inside of you. I hope, as a result of our work, we'll help unshackle some of that life."

That had made her sob even harder, and once again she left the office in a hurry. And without a hug.

Ernest always enjoyed the good-bye hug that had become a standard part of their hour, but he had staunchly refused all of Carolyn's other demands for touch, aside from her occasional request to sit next to him for a brief period on the couch. Ernest invariably ended

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these sitting interludes after a few minutes, or earlier if Carolyn edged too close or he got too aroused.

But Ernest was not blind to disturbing warning signals from within. He realized that his excitement about the Carolyn days was portentous. And so was Carolyn's insidious incursion into his fantasy life and particularly into his masturbatory fantasies. And the self-observing part of Ernest found it even more ominous that the setting of his fantasies was invariably his office. It was irresistibly exciting to imagine Carolyn sitting across from him in his office discussing her problems and then for him to beckon her closer with a mere hook of his finger, instruct her to sit in his lap and continue talking as he slowly unbuttoned her blouse, uncoupled her brassiere, caressed and kissed her breasts, gently removed her panty hose, and slowly slid to the floor with her, deliciously entering her while she continued to speak to him as a patient, and then taking long slow strokes toward muffled orgasm.