“Or maybe she had really high standards,” Simon interjected.
“I never got the chance to find out. While I was away, she got married and had a kid. I’m not proud of it, but I sometimes check up on her when she goes to pick her daughter up from the nursery. And every time I watch them walking away together, I imagine how that happy life could have been mine. But anyway, I’m alive, at least,” Alvin sighed. “Totally depressed, sure. But alive. My shrink at the Center claims it’s normal for me to be depressed. Shrinks are funny. You tell them you’re not coping, and they tell you that’s normal.”
“Why would it be normal?” Melly asked.
“He said that emotional memory is the most complex and the most hard-wearing of them all. I’m sorry; I’m not sure I’ve been any help, telling you about my life, but it feels good to talk about it. Maybe it would do you good too. If you want his number . . . I made fun of him just then, but this shrink’s a really good listener.”
“They’re paid to be,” Simon said.
Alvin seemed to miss the sarcasm.
“It’s not easy for any of us, but one thing’s for sure: we’re survivors.”
Melly felt an electric shock course down the nape of her neck. Her head started spinning; her vision blurred. She gripped the table, on the brink of passing out.
Simon caught her before she fell, holding her tight in his arms. He begged her to keep her eyes open and lightly slapped her cheeks.
She saw a pontoon, stretching out into the open sea. Her own silhouette walking down it, and a man next to her. She turned her head to see his face, but the image dissipated before she had the chance.
“Are you okay?”
“The color is coming back to her face,” said Simon.
“Yours too,” Alvin added.
“It’s okay,” Melly stuttered as she tried to sit up.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“My blood sugar must be low. I haven’t eaten since this morning.”
Alvin ripped open three packets of sugar and poured them into Melly’s cup.
“Drink up.”
Simon thanked Alvin for his time and flagged down a cab. Melly swore she could get home on her own, but he insisted. He was taking her back.
While Simon was paying the bill, Alvin scribbled out the name of his shrink on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
“Tell him I told you to call.”
“What if I delayed my flight?” Simon suggested on the way back.
“No, don’t do that. I just got a little dizzy. I didn’t even faint.”
“You went white as a sheet; your eyes were rolling back—”
“It was strange,” Melly said, cutting him off. “It’s like I was reliving the past.”
She told him about the brief scene she had witnessed.
“I need to find a way of investigating my past.”
Just as the cab pulled into the Barnett estate, Simon gave her the number Alvin had scrawled out for him.
“No messages tonight—I’ll be on the plane. You should go and see that therapist. Maybe talking to him will help you remember something. Anyway, think about it. That’s the whole point of therapy, after all.”
Melly took the number and hugged Simon tightly.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “But when you’re playing tomorrow, think of me. I’d like that. I’ll stay up late, waiting for your email. You can tell me all about the concert. I want to hear everything, every last detail.”
Simon gave Melly a kiss and asked the driver to wait until she had shut the front door behind her before driving away. She made to leave, but then turned around and bent down to smile at him.
“Thank you, Simon, for being the friend you are.”
Melly had dinner with her parents. She was almost entirely quiet for the whole meal. She didn’t say anything about meeting Alvin, nor did she mention the dizzy spell she’d had. She promised her mother that she’d taken her drugs, which was a lie, and pretended to be tired so she could be excused before dessert.
Throughout dinner, she had the distinct, unsettling sensation that she was sitting alongside two strangers. The more her mother smiled, the stronger the feeling grew.
As soon as she closed her bedroom door, she checked her phone and was thrilled to see a message waiting for her.
Three thousand feet high, above the clouds. The weather’s going to be bad when you wake up tomorrow. I can’t look too closely out the window—I get vertigo. Super gross meal, but it’s no biggie. There’s zero legroom. Snoring woman next to me. Really bad idea to catch the red-eye. I hope you sleep better than me. Talk to you tomorrow. I’ll write from Atlanta. Simon
Melly kept her eyes locked on the screen. She thought back on her day, her dizziness, that awkwardness over dinner. Something weird was going on, and it was only getting worse.
She rifled through her pocket, pulled out the card Simon had given her, and sent an email to book an appointment with Alvin’s shrink.
21
Dr. Schneider was in his sixties. He styled his hair in a comb-over to hide the fact he was balding, and this combined with his still-brown beard lent him a certain elegance. He was quick to smile, with an almost affable demeanor as he herded Melly into a small room that looked nothing like a psychoanalyst’s office. As he explained to her, he wasn’t a big fan of the whole couch setup. He was here to listen
