Psychic Junkie (26 page)

Unfortunately, the feeling better part was short-lived, as soon I became crazily jittery, a fact that made sense when my boss finally strolled into the kitchen, silk robe flowing, and told me I was to start off with half a pill a day for the first week.
Oops. Oh well,
I thought,
perhaps I’ve just given my brain chemistry a jump start on the process. I’ll be better in no time!

I was religious about my pills. Never had I been a good pill taker, especially not when it involved remembering to take something at the same time everyday, but this was different. Each pill was one pill closer to peace of mind, and I urgently, dreadfully,
frantically
wanted peace of mind. So there I was, each morning, ready with a glass of water and my little blue happy pill, just waiting for the clock to strike ten. Ten o’clock and down went the pill. Then I’d wonder, would
this
be the day? Would this be the day my long-lost friend Sanity returned? I pictured the little smiley bouncy ball turning into Pac-Man and coursing through my brain, gobbling up little demons of obsession, making a right turn and then a left and gobbling up some more.

Sadly, progress was slow. I managed to eradicate my Saturday call, but Thursday still involved a phone, my credit card, and a dollar-a-minute psychic. And Wilhelm’s e-mail? Sometimes I could go a whole day without checking, then there I was, first thing the next morning, popping my blue happy pill and typing in “HugBoss.”

One fateful Saturday, I’d made it through the day without a reading (despite an incredible urge to call Erlin, scream at him for his failed predictions, and then ask if maybe Wilhelm was miserable without me) and had
almost
made it without checking his e-mail, but then something—perhaps my being alone on a Saturday night or my own rusty intuition—
something
commanded me to the computer and made me log into his account.

At first glance I didn’t see anything unusual, so I clicked on sent mail. There, the third e-mail down, was one addressed to
me
, which I’d not yet received because it must have just been sent.

This was it. I was certain. The plea to give him another chance, the revelation that he’d been suffering and missing me and that these last two and a half months had been the darkest he’d ever known.
Click.

Okay. Clearly this wasn’t the big push to give him another chance…but more important, “Thanks for the good times”?
Thanks for the good times?
Great. The heads-up that soon he’d no longer be infecting my city with his presence was nice, but “Thanks for the good times”? I found that disturbing and insulting, akin to having barely survived a plane crash with someone, only to get a note from them with the words “Thanks for the fun flight!”

Thanks for the good times, my ass. Now let’s check out the e-mails he sent after mine. Click.

It was strange. One of my first thoughts, after reading this note that clearly indicated the man I’d thought was the love of my life was dating other women, was,
Wow, I don’t feel like hurling myself off the balcony. How strange.
The Zoloft, I realized, was
working
. Granted, I was still horrified, my heart was still pounding, and I still sort of felt the need to puke, but I also felt slightly removed, as if my life had turned into some strange soap opera I was watching on TV. And, oddly, I was sure that if I tried hard enough I could change the channel. Before there’d been only one channel. One channel and no volume control and no knobs on the TV. But now, now I had a mental remote. I was getting
better
.

But alas, I wasn’t ready to change the channel. I mean, Greta?
Greta?
Was he purposefully picking women with names he knew would torture me? Greta, in my still rather frenzied mind, was a beauty queen hailing from the land of ABBA and IKEA, a stunning Swede with long blond braided hair, a crazy white fur cap, and a pair of wooden clogs that with my luck would turn my demented ex
on
and morph him into the sex fiend I’d always longed for him to be. Briefly I pictured Greta and Nadja battling it out, blond pigtails pulled, lederhosen tearing, Swedish meatballs sailing, steins smashing. Strangely, I realized, I was now rooting for Nadja. This Greta chick had crashed our party, and I wanted her
out
.

Wait, though, back to the hot tub. What was he doing in there with this girl? Who was this girl, where had he met her, and did he have his arm around her? Oh, and most important,
did he not know about mourning periods
? It had been just over two months since we’d broken up! That was way too soon! And what, I had to ask, was he doing referring to himself as “Willy”? That was just wrong.

I couldn’t think about Greta the Swedish Slut any longer. I was about to go lie down and smother myself with a pillow when I decided, again rather fatefully, to check that one other sent e-mail. After all, maybe it was Wilhelm e-mailing Dustin, saying something like “Hey, Dustin, Grandma Greta’s in town and hurt her back, so I gotta help her into the hot tub. Oh, and it’s her birthday, so we’ll be celebrating with a tasty bundt cake. Join us if you want, but don’t get freaked out if she calls me Willy. You know grandmas.”

All right, even
I
didn’t think it was really going to be like that, but I certainly didn’t think it would be this:

I stopped. I couldn’t read any more. I didn’t have to be told there was no way Miss Simons was his grandma. I didn’t have to be told he was moving on, or that he was dating, or that he was kissing girls who weren’t me. The knowledge pushed against my skin; it twisted my stomach, stung my eyes. There was something else too, something else I felt that was quickly surfacing, climbing, climbing, climbing, rising like a torpedo….

Ah. Anger.

Lovely, happy, wonderful
anger
.

This Miss Simons had gotten an all-out love letter, and I’d gotten “Thanks for the good times.” I was still recovering, and he was dating. I was still reeling from all the false promises he’d told about our future, and the secrets he’d kept, while he had Greta in a hot tub.

Suddenly I felt calm. I knew what I needed to do; I was on a mission. My mental gearshift had kicked into stealth mode, and all of a sudden I possessed the methodical mind and steel heart of a secret agent. I scanned the last line of the e-mail to the smoking, wall-leaning Miss Simons (“Please call me, for I long to see you before I leave”), copied the entire thing, opened up a new e-mail in his account, typed in Greta’s address, then hit paste and send.

Next mission. I created a phony Hotmail account, hit the write message button, and started typing.

I stared at what I’d written. My mind was beginning to come out of stealth mode and was debating whether this was wise or healthy or perhaps just wrong—though my hand must still have belonged to the secret agent, because it ignored everything and simply hit send.
Oh no,
I thought once the e-mail was gone,
I should’ve been more specific.
She might not realize that when I referred to his giving me crabs, I’d meant seafood, as in sautéed soft-shell crabs, fried king crab legs, and imperial crabs! I mean, Wilhelm
loved
to cook crab.
Bad Sarah, that was very unclear of you.
Heh-heh.

I sat back. I could practically feel the e-mails spiraling their way toward the Swedish beauty queen and the beautiful, smoking, smiling Miss Simons. Surely they’d be miffed, especially Greta, who’d realize that as she was turning into a prune in the hot tub, good ol’ Willy was writing e-mails to other girls, and not doing a very good job addressing them either, I might add. But you know, e-mails get sent to the wrong people all the time. These things happen. Greta, I’m sorry he was so careless. May I hand you a towel?

The great thing about the meds, I was learning, was that in a situation like this they held me upright, whereas unmedicated I without a doubt would’ve been reduced to a heaving mass on the floor. But now? Now I was sane enough to fully explore my insanity.

I figured I’d have some time to kill before the shit hit the fan, so I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. Upon my return I noticed that Wilhelm had a new e-mail. Greta. Apparently she hadn’t left for the hot tub yet and had just received Willy’s latest e-mail.

I opened it. I leaned in. Boy, I noted right away, that Greta sure had a temper. It was truly beautiful. She mercilessly railed against him for being so stupid as to send her an e-mail intended for another woman, made catty comments about the girl with the beautiful smile, and then demanded to know just how he could be so cold as to be romancing more than one woman.
Yep,
I thought,
I’m with ya on that one, sister.
But then I kept reading and discovered, with dismay, that at the end she actually apologized for being angry, saying she realized she had no right. No right? Was she serious? I wanted to shake her. I wanted to scream, “He’s got you all lined up for the hot tub while he e-mails other girls! Just how low is your self-esteem that you don’t think you deserve better?”

Greta was pathetic. I checked my phony account, but of course Miss Simons hadn’t replied. And why would she? She was obviously a very beautiful woman; there was no reason she’d be at home, alone, drinking wine and checking e-mails on a Saturday night.
Sigh.

Over the course of the next few days I was gifted with endless entertainment at the hands of Greta and Wilhelm. With something I could describe as fevered joy, I’d race to the computer for updates several times a day, thrilled to catch up on the latest drama, the newest installment in their saga. It seemed that what Greta had meant in saying she had no right, was that she had no right to ask Wilhelm not to see other women
since she herself was married.
That was a twist I hadn’t expected. Also, within a matter of time her I-have-no-right attitude quickly disappeared and instead she became simply
mean
. Her poor husband. Not only was he being duped, but from what I could tell, he was married to a very bitchy woman. Still, her evil comments and digs gave me great pleasure, as Wilhelm had obviously been in need of having a lesson pounded into him.

On the fourth day my fake e-mail account had a reply from Miss Simons. I admit, I was shocked at her response. I thought for sure she’d be angry or suspicious or even just dismissive, but instead she was grateful. She was touched that I had gone out of my way for a total stranger, and went on to say she doubted she would’ve seen him again anyway, but hoped one day she could return the favor. In fact, she added, she was a great listener and would be there for me if I wanted to talk about “that loser.”

I wanted to cry.

Miss Simons was really, really nice. I liked her and knew, with a sinking feeling, that what I’d done was
very
wrong…but as a matter of fact yes, yes I
did
want to talk about that loser.

I hit reply.

I wrote and wrote and wrote, my hands flying across the keyboard as my brain struggled to keep up. When finally done, I grabbed the mouse and moved the cursor to the send button, the little hand now hovering over its target. What was I doing? It was amazing I’d thus far escaped unscathed from my cyber-acrobatics. What was I thinking, taking such a risk by calling myself Bridgette (hey, if everyone else got sexy names, I wanted one too) and pouring out my heart to a woman Wilhelm was trying to date? What was I doing trying to strike up a friendship based on lies, just so I could vent? Though I may not have been completely sound yet, it was as if I’d finally grabbed the edge of sanity, my fingers scraping to get a grip, nails digging, and I knew this opus I’d just created was counterproductive. Sending this would render my grip even more tenuous, like a steel-toed stomp on my unprotected hand.

I clicked the
X
in the corner of the e-mail, and agreed that yes, I did want to discard the changes. There. Done. Miss Simons had been spared.

To mark my first major step toward sanity, I decided to put an end to the Internet shenanigans. Truthfully, I was beginning to tire of the drama between Greta the Adulteress and Wilhelm the Immoral. The two just went at it nonstop, and they didn’t seem to be making any progress in addressing and working out their issues. This, I decided, wasn’t healthy for either of them, nor, I had a suspicion, was it healthy for me. Knowing what I had to do, I created yet another phony e-mail account and popped off a quick anonymous note to Greta, informing her that if she didn’t end things with Wilhelm pronto, her husband would be informed.
There,
I thought with pride,
I just saved a marriage.