“You’ll meet people,” I say lamely. “Outside of work. Who wants to talk shop all the time, anyway? That’s all those guys know how to do.” I just can’t be mean to this guy, no matter how much I realize it would make my life a lot less complicated.
Another huge sigh escapes him. “Right.” Hesitantly, he adds, “You’re right about them, though.”
I try to remember what I’ve said. “About them talking shop?”
He rolls his hand in a circle. “Yeah, that. But the other thing, too.”
I have no choice but to look at him to try to figure out what he’s getting at.
Ducking his head, he laughs shyly. “They do talk about… you know.” He draws a set of breasts on himself in the air in front of him. A big set.
“Oh,” I say, trying to sound like I don’t care. “Of course they do.” Even though I want to, I don’t force him to admit or deny that he’s right there with them when they do. Instead, I skirt danger by saying, “Well, we talk about them too. Only”—I lift my chin defiantly—“it’s the inverse. We speculate just how little their peckers are.”
He cracks up, putting his hand on my shoulder to steady himself as he staggers through his laughter. The touch is casual, but it makes me tingle in some serious places. I smile in spite of myself.
We’ve arrived at the office building. My smile dies. “If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it,” I tell him, moving away from his touch.
“Same here about the other thing,” he says, still chuckling.
I know I can’t get into that elevator and walk into the office with him if I want to have any peace this afternoon, so I make up something about needing to look for my MP3 player in the building’s Lost and Found and tell him I’ll see him later. Thankfully, he doesn’t offer to help. Grinning, he stands at the bank of elevators and waits for the next available ride up while I slink over to the security desk, where I paw through the box of junk for a lot longer than it really takes to see everything in it.
Funny thing is, though, I think I found Jude’s missing key.
5
I wish Dr. Marsh would change the picture in that frame. Or at the very least, rearrange the items on that shelf so that I’m not always looking at the picture. I have the damn thing memorized, and I’m sick of looking at it.
On a whim, I tell him so. I want to keep him off the subject of LFW, anyway.
“Does that picture bother you?”
“It bothers me that I’ve been staring at it for five years,” I answer.
“I like that picture,” he says. “It reminds me of a really happy day in my life. Don’t you have any pictures like that?”
“No, I don’t.”
He cocks his head to the side, waiting for me to expound on the subject. I turn my attention to him. “You know I don’t.”
“Why not?”
He’s in full therapist mode today. Sometimes our sessions feel like we’re just two acquaintances (not friends, necessarily) having a conversation. But on days like today, it’s clear that he’s the head doctor, and I’m the head case.
I sigh, knowing it’s easier to answer his questions when he gets like this, even though he already knows the answers. “Because my parents never saw me graduate from college. There was nobody there to take my picture. And it wasn’t really a happy day, anyway. It was just… an end.”
“What about Hank?”
“What about Hank?” I retort, being intentionally difficult.
“Wasn’t your brother there to take your picture?” he asks.
I level my best you’re a moron look at him. “He was sixteen. And in a foster home. He wasn’t there.”
“That must have been lonely.”
Lonely. That word never fails to make me cry. It’s why I refuse to ever admit to myself that’s what I am. I say I’m “single,” or I call myself a “hermit.” I might describe myself as “by myself,” even. But never “lonely.” It’s such a black, plaintive word. And scary.
Annoyed by my automatic response to his saying that word, I roughly grab a tissue from the box on the table next to me, pressing it against my eyes before the tears can spill over. “Big deal,” I say, talking tough. “There are worse things to be.”
He pulls the corners of his mouth down in a contemplative expression. “I guess.” After a pause, he asks, “Don’t you have any pictures that you keep around that make you smile? Anything?”
I refuse to admit that I have a box full of pictures of Sandberg that I paw through every once in a while when I’m truly bored. Somehow that’s more pathetic than not having any pictures at all. “No. Where would I get these pictures? I don’t have friends; my brother lives thousands of miles away; I never go anywhere.”
“Any pictures of you and your boyfriends?”
I tap my chin and say sarcastically, “Let’s see… Have I ever had a boyfriend? A real one, that is? Whose picture I could take? Hmm, that would be a no.”
“How are you and”—he consults his notes—“Jude doing?”
I can’t help it. At the mention of that name, I feel my whole face brighten. “Oh, I have a lot of fun with Jude,” I state, not feeling ridiculous at all when I say it.
“What kinds of things do you do together?”
I think for a second. “Well, we go to baseball games. And the beach. He takes me for drives in his red MG convertible. He reads poetry to me.”
“Are you sexual?”
His question is so matter-of-fact that I’m almost tricked into answering it. My ferocious blush makes a verbal reply unnecessary anyway. Before I can recover and say something to bury my mortification, he
