Music of the Night by Suzy McKee Charnas Read Free Book Online Page B

sorry. I absolutely cannot have a client who makes it his business to spy on other clients. You already have a list of replacement therapists from me.”
    He gaped at her in slack-jawed dismay, his eyes swimmy with tears.
    “I’m sorry, Kenny. Call this a dose of reality therapy and try to learn from it. There are some things you simply will not be allowed to do.” She felt better: it was done at last.
    “I hate you!” He surged out of his chair, knocking it back against the wall. Threateningly, he glared at the fish tank, but, contenting himself with a couple of kicks at the nearest table leg, he stamped out. Floria buzzed Hilda: “No more appointments for Kenny, Hilda. You can close his file.”
    “Whoopee,” Hilda said.
    Poor, horrid Kenny. Impossible to tell what would happen to him, better not to speculate or she might relent, call him back. She had encouraged him, really, by listening instead of shutting him up and throwing him out before any damage was done.
    Was it damaging, to know the truth? In her mind’s eye she saw a cream-faced young man out of a Black Thumb Vodka ad wander from a movie theater into daylight, yawning and rubbing absently at an irritation on his neck . . .
    She didn’t even look at the telephone on the table or think about whom to call, now that she believed. No; she was going to keep quiet about Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland, her vampire.
    * * *
    Hardly alive at staff meeting, clinic, yesterday—people asking what’s the matter, fobbed them off. Settled down today. Had to, to face him.
    Asked him what he felt were his strengths. He said speed, cunning, ruthlessness. Animal strengths, I said. What about imagination, or is that strictly human? He defended at once: not human only. Lion, waiting at water hole where no zebra yet drinks, thinks “Zebra—eat,” therefore performs feat of imagining event yet-to-come. Self experienced as animal? Yes—reminded me that humans are also animals. Pushed for his early memories; he objected: “Gestalt is here-and-now, not history-taking.” I insist, citing anomalous nature of his situation, my own refusal to be bound by any one theoretical framework. He defends tensely: “Suppose I became lost there in memory, distracted from dangers of the present, left unguarded from those dangers.”
    Speak for memory. He resists, but at length attempts it: “ ‘I am heavy with the multitudes of the past.’ ”
    Fingertips to forehead, propping up all that weight of lives. “ ‘So heavy, filling worlds of time laid down eon by eon, I accumulate, I persist, I demand recognition. I am as real as the life around you—more real, weightier, richer.’ ” His voice sinking, shoulders bowed, head in hands—I begin to feel pressure at the back of my own skull. “ ‘Let me in.’ ” Only a rough whisper now. “ ‘I offer beauty as well as terror. Let me in.’ ” Whispering also, I suggest he reply to his memory.
    “Memory, you want to crush me,” he groans. “You would overwhelm me with the cries of animals, the odor and jostle of bodies, old betrayals, dead joys, filth and anger from other times—I must concentrate on the danger now. Let me be.” All I can take of this crazy conflict, I gabble us off onto something else. He looks up—relief?—follows my lead—where? Rest of session a blank.
    No wonder sometimes no empathy at all—a species boundary! He has to be utterly self-centered just to keep balance—self-centeredness of an animal. Thought just now of our beginning, me trying to push him to produce material, trying to control him, manipulate—no way, no way; so here we are, someplace else—I feel dazed, in shock, but stick with it—it’s real.
    Therapy with a dinosaur, a Martian.
    *
    “You call me ‘Weyland’ now, not ‘Edward.’ ” I said first name couldn’t mean much to one with no memory of being called by that name as a child, silly to pretend it signifies intimacy where it can’t. I think he knows now that I believe him.