The Analyst by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online

cream-colored wall where he’d hung his diplomas and several small pieces of art, alongside a modestly sized oak-framed portrait of the great man himself. In the picture he was holding his ubiquitous cigar, staring balefully out with his deeply recessed eyes, white beard covering the precancerous jaw that would prove to be so unbearably painful in his last years. She tapped the glass over the portrait with a long finger, tipped with nails painted a fire-engine red.
    “Isn’t it interesting how every profession seems to have some icon hanging on the wall. I mean, if I went to see a priest, he’d have a Jesus on a crucifix somewhere. A rabbi would have a Star of David, or a menorah. Every two-bit politician puts up a picture of Lincoln or Washington. There really ought to be a law against that. Medical doctors like to have those little plastic cutaway models of a heart or a knee or some other organ within easy reach. For all I know, a computer programmer out in Silicon Valley nails up a portrait of Bill Gates on the wall of his cubicle where he worships daily. A psychoanalyst like you, Ricky, needs the picture of Saint Sigmund. It lets everyone who enters here know who truly created the ground rules. And it gives you a tiny little bit of legitimacy that might otherwise be called into question, I suppose.”
    Ricky Starks silently picked up an armchair and moved it to the space in front of his desk. Then he maneuvered to the opposite side, and gestured to the young woman to take a seat.
    “What?” she asked briskly, “I don’t get to use the famous couch?”
    “That would be premature,” he replied coldly. He gestured a second time. The young woman swept her vibrant green eyes over the room again, as if trying to memorize everything contained within, then she plopped herself down in the chair. She slumped in the seat languidly, simultaneously reaching into a pocket of the black raincoat and removing a package of cigarettes. She removed one, stuck it between her lips, ignited a flame from a clear butane lighter, but stopped the fire just inches away from the cigarette tip.
    “Ah,” she said, a slow smile lingering across her face, “how rude of me. Would you care for a smoke, Ricky?”
    He shook his head. Her smile remained.
    “Of course not. When was it you quit? Fifteen years ago? Twenty? Actually, Ricky, I think it was 1977, if Mr. R. informs me correctly. A brave time to stop smoking, Ricky. An era when many people lit right up without thinking, because, although the tobacco companies denied it, people actually did know that it was bad for you. Killed you, no lie. So people pretty much preferred not to think about it. The ostrich approach to health: Stick your head in a hole and ignore the obvious. And there was so much else happening, anyway, back then. Wars and riots and scandals. I’m told it was a most wondrous time to be alive. But Ricky the young doctor-in-training managed to quit smoking when it was ever so popular a habit and not nearly as socially unacceptable as today. That tells me something.”
    The young woman lit the cigarette, took a single long puff, and languidly blew smoke out into the room.
    “An ashtray?” she asked.
    Ricky reached into a desk drawer and removed the one he kept hidden there. He put it on the edge of the desktop. The young woman immediately stubbed the cigarette out.
    “There,” she said. “Just enough of a pungent, smoky smell to remind us of that time.”
    Ricky waited a moment, before asking, “Why is it important to remember that time?”
    The young woman rolled her eyes, tossed her head back, and let loose with a long, blaring laugh. The harsh sound was out of place, like a guffaw in a church or a harpsichord in an airport. When her laugh faded, the young woman fixed Ricky with a single, penetrating glare. “Everything is important to remember. Everything about this visit, Ricky. Isn’t that true for every patient? You don’t really know what it is they’ll say