The Analyst

Ricky shifted about uncomfortably. His face was flushed, and he felt a little like a teenager, with adult thoughts and adult feelings, who is still considered a child.

Dr. Lewis rubbed a hand across his chin, still thinking. “I do think your tormentor is a psychologist of sorts,” he said, almost idly, as if making an observation about the weather. “Or in a profession close to it.”

“I think I agree,” Ricky said. “But your reasoning-”

“The game, as defined by Rumplestiltskin, is like a session on the couch. It just lasts a little longer than fifty minutes. In any given psychoanalytic hour, you must sort your way through a dizzying series of truths and fictions.”

“I have to work with what I have.”

“Is that not always the issue? But our job is often to see what the patient is not saying.”

“True enough.”

“So…”

“Maybe it is all a lie. I’ll know in a week. Right before I kill myself, or buy another ad in the Times. One or the other.”

“It is an interesting idea.” The old doctor seemed to be musing. “He could achieve the same end and protect himself from ever being traced by a cop or some other authority simply by lying. No one could sort their way through, could they? And you would be dead or ruined. This is diabolical. And nifty, too, in its own way.”

“I don’t think this speculation is helping me,” Ricky said. “Seven women in treatment, one of whom mothered a monster. Which one?”

“Recall them for me,” Dr. Lewis said, gesturing slightly with his hand toward the outdoors and the night that seemed to enclose them tightly, as if he were trying to usher Ricky’s memory out of darkness, into the well-lit room.

Chapter Fifteen

Seven women.

Of the seven who sought him out at that time for treatment, two were married, three others were engaged or in steady relationships, and two were sexually adrift. They ranged in age from their early twenties to early thirties. All were what used to be called “career women” in that they were brokers, executive secretaries, lawyers, or businesswomen. There was an editor and a college professor in that mix, as well. As Ricky concentrated, he began to remember the array of neuroses that brought each of them to his door. As these illnesses began to formulate in his memory, so did the treatment.

Slowly, voices returned to him, words spoken in his office. Specific moments, breakthroughs, understandings, all forced themselves back into his consciousness, prodded by the simple, direct questioning of the old doctor perched crowlike on the edge of his chair. The night swept around the two physicians, closing off everything save the small room and Ricky Starks’s recollections. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed in the process, but he knew the hour was late. Ricky paused, almost in midrecall, suddenly staring at the man across from him. Dr. Lewis’s eyes still gleamed with an otherworldly energy, fueled, Ricky thought, in part by the black coffee, but more by the array of memory or perhaps something else, some other hidden source of eagerness.

Ricky felt a damp sweat on his neck. He attributed it to the humid air that had crept in through the open windows, promising a cooling shower, but not delivering the same.

“She is not there, is she, Ricky?” Dr. Lewis suddenly asked.

“These were the women in treatment,” he replied.

“And all treated more or less successfully, too, from what you say and what I recall your telling me in our own sessions. And, I will wager, all still living relatively productive lives. A detail, I might add, that a little bit of detective work would uncover.”

“But what…”

“And you remember every one. With precision and detail. And that is the flaw, is it not? Because the woman you seek in your memory is someone who does not stand out. Someone who is blocked from your powers of recollection and lost.”

Ricky started to stammer a reply, then stopped, because the truth of this statement was equally apparent to him.

“Can you not recall any failures, Ricky? Because that is where you must find your link to Rumplestiltskin. Not in successes.”

“I think I helped all those women sort their way through the various problems they were facing. I can’t remember anyone who left in turmoil.”

“Ah, a touch of hubris there, Ricky. Try harder. What did Mr. R. tell you in his clue?”

Ricky was startled slightly when the old analyst used the same abbreviation that Virgil liked to employ. He rapidly tried to remember whether he had used the phrase Mr. R. throughout the evening, but was unable to recall a single instance. But of this, he suddenly wasn’t certain. He thought he might have. Indecision, inability to be sure, loss of conviction, were like contrary winds within him. He felt buffeted, and dizzy, wondering where his ability to remember a simple detail had so precipitously disappeared. He shifted about in his seat, hoping that the alarm he felt within wasn’t visible on his face, or in his posture.

“He told me,” Ricky said coldly, “that the woman I was searching for was dead. And that I promised her something that I could not deliver.”

“Well, focus on that second part. Were there any women whom you declined to treat, who came to you in this time frame? Perhaps briefly, a dozen or so sessions, then dropping out? You continue to want to examine the women who were the start of your private practice. Perhaps someone in the clinic where you worked?”

“I’m sure that’s possible, but how would I-”

“This other group of patients, they were somehow lesser, in your mind, were they not? Less affluent? Less accomplished? Less educated? And perhaps they did not register quite as firmly on the young Doctor Starks’s radar screen.”

Ricky bit back any answer, because he could see both truth and prejudice in what the old physician was saying.

“Is it not more or less the essence of a promise when a patient enters the door and begins to speak? To unburden themselves. You, as analyst, are you not simultaneously making a claim? And subsequently a promise? You hold out the hope for improvement, for adjustment, for relief from torment, just like any other doctor.”

“Of course, but…”

“Who came, but stopped coming?”

“I don’t know…”

“Who did you see for fifteen sessions, Ricky?” The old analyst’s voice was suddenly demanding and insistent.

“Fifteen? Why fifteen?”

“How many days did Rumplestiltskin give you to uncover his identity?”

“Fifteen.”

“A fortnight plus one. An unusual and antique construction of time. I think you might have been more sensitive to the number, because there is the connection. And what is it he wants you to do?”

“Kill myself.”

“So, Ricky, who saw you for fifteen sessions and then killed herself?”