possibility. Now, sit down and eat. That is eminently good advice.”
Ricky pulled out a chair, but his stomach clenched at the thought of putting food inside.
“I need to know that you are on my side.”
The old analyst shrugged. “Will not the answer to that question come at the end of the contest?” He poked at the casserole, then stuffed a large forkful into his mouth.
“I came to you as a friend. As a former patient. You were the man who helped train me, for Christ’s sake. And now…”
Dr. Lewis waved his fork in midair, like a conductor with a baton, facing an out-of-synch orchestra. “The people you treat, do you consider them friends?”
Ricky stopped, shook his head. “No. Of course not. But the role of training analyst is different.”
“Really? Don’t you have a patient or two now in more or less the same situation?”
Both men were silent as this question hovered in the air. Ricky knew the answer to the question was yes, but wouldn’t speak the word out loud. After a moment or two, Dr. Lewis waved his hand, dismissing the question.
“I need to know,” Ricky demanded sharply in response.
Dr. Lewis wore an infuriating blank look on his face, appropriate for a poker table. Inwardly, Ricky steamed, recognizing the vacant appearance for what it was: the same noncommittal look that spoke neither of approval or disapproval, shock, nor surprise, nor fear, nor anger that he used with his own patients. It is the analyst’s stock in trade, an essential part of his armor. He remembered it from his own treatment a quarter century earlier and bristled to see it again.
The old man shook his head slowly. “No you do not, Ricky. You need to know only that I am willing to help you. My motives are irrelevant. Perhaps Rumplestiltskin has something on me. Perhaps he does not. Whether he wields a sword over my head or perhaps over one of my family members, is extraneous to your situation. The question always exists in our world, does it not? Is anyone safe? Is any relationship without danger? Are we not often hurt the most by those we love and respect more than those we hate and fear?”
Ricky did not reply, but Dr. Lewis did, for him.
“The answer you are currently unable to articulate is: yes. Now, eat some dinner. I anticipate a long night ahead.”
The two physicians ate their meal in relative silence. The casserole was excellent, and followed by a homemade apple pie that had a touch of cinnamon in it. There was black coffee, as well, served hot and seemingly speaking of hours ahead that needed to be energized. Ricky thought that he had never had such an ordinary, yet strange meal. He was equally famished and infuriated. The food tasted wondrous one instant, then would go chalky and cold on his tongue, another. For the first time in what seemed to him years, he remembered meals he’d eaten alone, minutes stolen away from his wife’s bedside in moments when pain medication had sent her into some half-sleep reverie, in the final days of her dying. The taste, he thought, of this dinner was much the same.
Dr. Lewis removed the plates to a sink, leaving them stacked and dirty. He refilled his coffee cup a second time, then gestured for Ricky to return to the study. They went back to the seats they had occupied earlier, facing across from each other.
Ricky fought his anger at the older physician’s oblique and elusive character. He told himself to use the frustration to his own benefit. This was easier said than done. He shifted about in the armchair, feeling like a child who is being reprimanded for something he wasn’t to blame for.
Dr. Lewis stared across at him, and Ricky knew the old man was perfectly aware of every feeling coursing through him, just as clever as some sideshow psychic. “So, Ricky, where would you like to begin?”
“In the past. Twenty-three years ago. When I first came to you.”
“I recall you were filled with theory and enthusiasm.”
“I believed I had the ability to save the world from despair and madness. Single- handed.”
“And did it work out that way?”
“No. You know that. It never does.”
“But you saved some?”
“I hope so. I believe so.”
Dr. Lewis smiled, catlike. “Again, the practicing analyst’s answer. Noncommittal and slippery. Age, such as I have reached, of course brings other interpretations. Our veins harden, and so do our opinions. Let me ask you a more specific question: Whom did you save?”
Ricky hesitated, as if chewing his response. He wanted to stifle his first reply, but was unable, the words falling from his tongue as if coated with oil. “I couldn’t save the person I cared the most for.”
Dr. Lewis nodded. “Continue, please.”
“No. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
The old analyst’s eyebrows arched slightly. “Really? I presume we are speaking of your wife?”
“Yes. We met. We fell in love. We married. We were inseparable for years. She grew ill. We had no children because of her sickness. She died. I continued on all alone. End of tale. She isn’t connected to this.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Lewis said. “But you and she met, when?”
“Shortly before we began treatment. We met at a cocktail party. We were both newly minted; she an attorney, me a physician. Our courtship took place while I was in analysis with you. You should recall that.”
“I do. And what was her profession?”
“She was an attorney. I just said that. You should remember that, as well.”
“Again, I do. But what sort of attorney? Specifically.”
“Well, at the time we met, she had just joined with the Manhattan Office of the Public Defender as a low-grade criminal defense attorney. She worked her way steadily up into the felony divisions, but then tired of seeing all her clients go to prison, or worse, not go to prison. So she went from there into a most unique and modest private practice. Mostly civil rights litigation and work for the ACLU. Suing slum landlords and filing appellate briefs for wrongfully convicted prisoners. She was a liberal do-gooder who did good. She liked to joke that she was one of the small minority of Yale Law graduates that never made money.” Ricky smiled at this, hearing in his mind’s ear his wife’s own words. It was a joke they shared happily for many years, he thought.
“I see. In the course of the time you started your treatment, the same time that you met and courted your wife, she was involved in defending criminals. She followed this up dealing with many angry fringe types whom, no doubt, she further enraged by bringing legal action against them. And now, you seem involved with someone who fits the category of criminal, albeit seemingly far more sophisticated than those she must have known. But you think there can be absolutely no possible link?”
Ricky stopped, mouth open to reply. This thought chilled him.
“Rumplestiltskin has not mentioned…”
“I merely wonder,” Dr. Lewis said, waving a hand in the air. “Food for thought.”
Ricky paused, memory working hard. Silence grew around the two men. Ricky began to picture himself as a young man. It was as if abruptly some fissure in some granitelike brick within him had opened. He could see himself: far younger, filled with energy. At a moment when the world was opening for him. It was a life that bore little resemblance and little connection to his current existence. That discrepancy, so denied and ignored, suddenly frightened him.
Dr. Lewis must have seen this in his face, for he said, “Let us speak of who you were twenty-odd years ago. But not the Ricky Starks looking forward to his life, his career, and marriage. The Ricky Starks who was filled with doubts.”
He wanted to respond swiftly, dismiss this idea with a quick brush of the hand, but
