blond hair and squeeze-me tits. He smiled when he thought about her back then. She could excite a man from four hundred paces. Beautiful and dirty with wide hips and a come-to-bed smile.
Yeah, he loved her still. Hell, yes, he did. He stubbed his cigarette out on the back of the packet and watched the smoke twirl in a dying flourish. He felt the scab on his lip with his tongue. It was still cracking every time he moved.
You fall in love with your libido, whatever anyone says. You want the proof? How many young bucks go head-over for an old woman? None. Only with women they want to bed. Is that coincidence or is that just the basic fact?
No one disagreed with him. He was alone in his little office, but he liked to talk to himself. He found himself interesting. He knew that he’d fallen in love with his wife because she was the woman he most wanted to screw. But he didn’t fall in love with a 45-year-old woman and that’s what he had at home now, while in his own head he was not a day older than twenty-five.
He still wanted to stay married to her, no question. Life was easy and comfortable. Like his job. His motto was: don’t succeed, as success brought responsibilities and even more work. Be a nobody and enjoy it. He lived with his wife but just had his fun elsewhere. And anyhow, women liked him. They smiled at him in the street, they giggled when he joked, they had a whole battery of alluring and suggestive looks to make it clear to him how they felt. God knows why. He was an egotistical womanizing pig and he knew it. An old-fashioned tits-and-ass guy. But it was the simplicity they liked. No messing about, no new man tagging along for the emotions and philosophical discussion. He liked them, showed them he wanted them and that was all it took — everyone wants to be wanted, right?
He also had classic good looks and knew how to make a woman howl with pleasure, so they could live with the old-fashioned attitude. When it came to a flat choice between a man who could empathize or a good time, he knew what women chose every time.
His latest affair was a 26-year-old semi-depressive office manager with nice looks, an underused libido, a quiet urban desperation and a need for self-esteem. She was a real annoying date but good in bed. What he called a dilemma-lay. You like the afters but will you sit through the main course?
It was all fine and dandy in the life of Marty Fox. All fine and dandy except for one small fact. And that was that his dear wife had caught him in bed with the office manager.
The thing was, psychologically speaking, his wife had known about his affairs for years, but they existed in some strange shadowland that she could pretend didn’t exist. The previous day she had been confronted by the sight of her loving husband slap-bang in between some strange woman’s thighs. It was a confrontation with reality that she couldn’t ignore.
This was a whole other fucking ball game. No way could she switch off the image in her head or what it released inside her. Pure, red-blooded fury. She’d punched Marty. It was the first time in her life she’d hit anything. His lip split with a dramatic flood of blood. Then she went one better and grabbed the depressed office manager by her hair and threw her out of the house. She pushed her naked into the street and threw her clothes out after her. It wasn’t going to help the poor girl’s depression or self-esteem a whole lot. Then his wife returned indoors. As Marty nursed his lip in the bathroom, she locked herself in the den and took Marty’s rare vinyl jazz records and smashed his entire collection one by one. Marty was outside scratching and pleading at the door as his cherished Art Tatum albums met the 22-ounce hammer.
The day had started nice and ended like a car wreck. All in all, it wasn’t a satisfying day. And now his wife had given him the ultimatum he’d dreaded. One more strike and you’re out.
He lit another cigarette. Was this as far as he had come in his life? From an overeager sexual teen to an overeager sexual mid-lifer? Maybe Freud was right. Sex was about it, really. All else was footnotes. He was a prize jerk. His wife was the one thing in his life not open to his child-like whims. Without her, he’d fucking die — he knew it.
A buzzer screeched on his desk. He leaned back and pressed the intercom.
‘Go ahead, Keren.’
Outside his office, his receptionist smiled up at the tall gentleman in the lobby. He smiled back, nervous and twitchy. She could tell he wasn’t used to coming to see a therapist.
‘Your ten o’clock, Dr Fox.’
‘Well, send him in,’ said Marty with a mock Southern accent. He hadn’t ever bagged his secretary and now it didn’t look as though he would. His world was turning from a land of endless opportunity to a sad landscape of things he couldn’t have. There was silence on the other end of the intercom.
Marty stood up. God, he hated clients. He wanted to drown them all. He often sat there listening to their long rambling self-indulgent diatribes imagining terrible fates for them. He pulled Nick’s file out of his in-tray and opened it.
‘Oh, yeah, Mr Nick Smith, the fantasist! Lucky me.’
As a rule, Marty preferred female clients; at least he could distract himself from their tedious problems by imagining some sordid sexual adventure. Not so with Nick with his little domestic issues and his fake surname. The tall gentleman entered. He was wearing a smart black suit. They’d had two previous sessions and were yet to feel comfortable with each other.
‘How you been, Nick?’
Nick looked up. ‘I’ve not been feeling so good, Doctor.’ He sat down heavily in the leather chair. He fidgeted with his hands as he stared out of the window in silence. It wasn’t easy for him to be there at all, really. He felt a sense of betrayal as well as fear, but he wanted to get down to business. He wanted to know what was happening to him. His visions and dreams were so vivid they terrified him. ‘Will you sit down, Doctor? I don’t know where I am. I’m feeling down and confused. I need your help.’
‘I like to float, Nick. I need to keep my mind active.’
‘Please sit down.’
Marty hadn’t heard this tone before. It was different. Military almost. He looked at his client. ‘Okay, Nick, you’re feeling fragile. That’s no problem. I’ll sit down for you. So, last week we touched on a problem you felt you have with women. Your wife and you have been having some domestic issues. You want to pick it up at that point?’
‘I have a problem respecting women. I know that.’
‘I do too, Nick.’
‘Not like me,’ said Nick.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ smiled Marty.
‘I’m very sure, but that’s not what I want to talk about.’
The two men looked at each other. Marty decided to let the guy twist himself up in his little world of self- importance if that’s what he wanted. The only psychological cure Marty ever really believed in was not taking yourself so goddamn seriously — but his jokes were never appreciated. Clients wanted to know that even the colour of their shit was psychologically relevant and pertinent to their current position in the world. ‘Go on, Nick, I’m listening,’ he said, smooth as silk.
‘I woke up in my car. I’d passed out again like I said happened before. I get this drumming in my head like I’m dying and then I just feel my brain squeezing tighter and tighter. The pain is too much, I guess. It’s killing me.’
‘You had this checked out with a doctor?’
‘You’re my doctor.’
‘I mean a medical doctor.’
‘No. Got no insurance or nothing like that.’
‘You have intense pain and then you black out?’
‘Yeah. Pain and white lights all across my eyes.’
‘How often do you pass out?’
‘Been happening for years but it’s worse now, I think. I can’t remember too well any more. I just don’t seem to remember much for long. I really can’t. I just feel drained. Look at me.’
Marty looked. Nick’s skin was pale and his eyes were sunken. He looked like he’d had a few rough weeks. ‘What started it? Do you remember that?’
‘Listen, Doctor, I haven’t even told Dee this, but I lost my job. They locked me out of the office, left my things
