“What happened?”
“My dad said we didn’t need another mouth to feed.”
She turns away.
I don’t know why I’m perpetuating the lie. Maybe because it’s like an express train: once the journey’s started, there’s no changing tracks until the end of the line. Or maybe I’m just a bad person. But I don’t really believe that.
“I dreamed about the jar again last night,” I start, and then I stop, spread my fingers wide enough that I can massage both temples with my thumb and middle finger. “Actually, no. No, I didn’t dream about the jar at all.”
He’s wearing his business face: smooth, nonjudgmental, eyes bright with awareness. Nowhere can I catch a glimpse of the man who showed interest in knowing more about who I am when I’m not playing a basket case on this couch. He glances down at the notepad, scribbles, lifts his gaze to meet mine.
“Do you feel like that’s progress?”
“What did you just write?”
He stretches back in the chair and, in a blatantly male move, rubs his hand across his stomach. Through his shirt, I can see it’s hard, flat, lightly defined.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“Probably not. I’m just curious.”
His laugh is tight.
“What?”
“I can’t convince you to open the jar, but you want to look at what I’m writing.”
“Maybe I want to know what you really think about me.” My legs cross. I lean forward. Give him a look Sam once told me was equal parts trouble and seduction. Guilt flashes like lighting in my mind, then disappears. We’re doctor and patient. No,
“So tell me: Am I crazy?”
He breathes deep through his nose then laughs. “Here.” The pad flies across the short distance. My insides crackle with trepidation and excitement.
The words drip-filter into my brain.
“It’s a shopping list.”
“My secret’s out. I need a shopping list. Otherwise I get to the store and forget what I need. Don’t tell anyone my weakness. My reputation’s on the line.”
“You make shopping lists during our session?”
“Not just yours. And not just shopping lists. Sometimes I doodle. Or I make notes for a research project that’s been floating around in my head since college.”
“So you don’t listen?”
“I listen.” His smile unfurls slowly until I’m awash in its beam, but it’s like sunshine on a winter day, impotent to thaw the growing freeze inside me. “I just don’t take notes. Many psychologists don’t. It’s just that clients feel better if we do.”
“The jar is real,” I blurt. “As real as that chair you’re sitting on.” I rub my face in my hands. “It’s not a dream. It’s never been a dream. It just showed up one day out of nowhere.”
My words tear a hole in our rapport. Like shutters closing, his smile, his warmth, his wanting, flip out of sight, leaving the detached doctor in his place.
“It was never a dream?”
“No.”
Tap, tap, tap. Pen on paper. Not making a list this time.
“Tell me about it.”
We hang in a chilly cocoon of silence. I can’t tell if I’m the only one experiencing the freeze.
I tell him everything. The facts. He already knows how it makes me feel. In return, he watches me with regard so cold I shiver in the patch of afternoon sun creeping across the building.
“Why now?”
“I had to tell you. I couldn’t keep it in anymore.”
“Why lie to begin with?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy. Or worse: stupid. It snowballed from there. I didn’t know how to untangle the web.”
“I was on your side, Zoe.”
Tap, tap, plonk. He drops the pen onto the pad, sets it aside.
“I don’t know what I can do for you. You need the police, not a psychologist. Unless you make a habit of lying, in which case I can give you a referral.”
I stand, back ramrod straight, shoulders back, chin up, and tuck my purse up under my arm.
“Not necessary. Thank you for your time, Dr. Rose.”
I’m out in the hall, almost to the elevator, before I remember I’ve forgotten to pay him. Hastily scribbling a check, I try not to care that our time together is over, that I’ve brought this upon myself.
When I slink back into his office, he’s still there, sitting in his chair, forehead furrowed. He doesn’t look at me as I come in. He doesn’t look at me when I stand in front of him. And he doesn’t look at me when I hold out the check and let it flutter to the floor.
He looks at me when I grab the collar of his shirt with both hands and kiss him like I’ll die if I don’t.
And he watches me when I walk away without speaking a word. At least, that’s what I hope as I stride down the hall with my heart in my shoes.
The Swiss catches up to us a mile down the road.
“What’s in Brindisi?”
“A boat.”
“Ah. So there is a man.”
“Sometimes a boat is just a boat.”
“So you’re a doctor?” I ask, sometime later.
“Yes.”
I wait but he doesn’t offer more. “What’s your specialty?”
“Your people would call me a killer, America.”
It takes a moment, but the penny drops and circles the wishing well before clinking onto the pile. “You’re a…” I flail around searching for something not made of blunt, crude edges. “Reproductive health specialist.”
His laugh is a dry hack. “Americans. Afraid to call things what they are. Abortion. Amongst other things. Mostly I am a scientist.”
“You are pregnant.”
I neither confirm nor deny.
“You should get rid of it.”
Lisa has lagged behind, her hand resting on the bicycle’s metal tail. The Swiss watches me watching
