“You’re okay.”
Of course I’m okay, I want to snap. But the words won’t come. There’s just this bone-crushing fatigue, this wobbly, foggy, vague feeling. Something’s not right. The world starts to brown around the edges. Oh, no. Not now.
“She’s okay,” he says, laughing. His voice sounds distant and strange. “Just one too many I guess.”
Who’s he talking to?
“Let go of me,” I manage, my voice an angry hiss.
He laughs; it’s echoing and strange. “Take it easy, sweetie.”
He’s moving me too fast up the street, his grip too tight. I stumble and he roughly keeps me from falling.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
Fear claws at the back of my throat. I can’t wait to get away from this guy. He pulls me onto a side street; there’s no one around.
“Hey.” A voice behind us. He spins, taking me with him. There’s someone standing there. He looks distantly familiar as the world tips. Somewhere inside me there’s a jangle of alarm. He has a dark hood on, his face not visible.
It’s him.
He’s big, bigger than—what’s his name? Reg, or something. Rex? The big man blocks our path up the sidewalk.
“Hey, seriously, dude,” says Rick. Yes, Rick, that was it. “Step aside. I’ve got this.”
But the world is fading fast, going soft and blurry, tilting. There’s a flash, quick-fire movement. Then a girlish scream, a river of blood. Black red on lavender.
Then arms on me.
Falling.
Nothing.
Hypnagogia
Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference.
—Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious
“I think someone’s following me.”
I almost kept this to myself, but toward the end of our session it just tumbles out.
Dr. Nash wrinkles her brow with concern. “Oh?”
Her office is a cozy living room, all big furniture and fluffy throw pillows. There are shelves and shelves of books and pictures, and trinkets, small art objects from her travels. It’s exactly the kind of office you’d want your shrink to have. Warm, enveloping. I sink deeper into my usual corner on her plush couch, leaning heavily on the overstuffed armrest. I resist the urge to curl up in a ball and cover myself with the cashmere blanket that’s tossed artfully over the back. A grouping of those faux candles flicker on the coffee table; she made me some tea when I arrived. It sits in front of me, untouched.
“The other night when I left the gym, there was someone standing across the street. I think I saw him again this morning on a park bench near my office.”
Even thinking about it, there’s a flutter of unease.
The doctor shifts in her leather Eames chair; it’s too well made to creak beneath her weight. She’s a wisp of a woman. The leather just whispers against the fabric of her pants. Afternoon light washes in, touching her hair and the side of her face. There are these longish pauses in our conversation where she chooses her words, letting mine ring back to me. She takes one now, considering me.
“Are you certain it was the same man?” she asks finally.
A cool October breeze wafts in the open window, street noise carrying up from nine floors below. A horn, the rumble of a manhole cover wobbling beneath the weight of passing vehicles, the yipping of some small dog. I imagine a Yorkie in a little sweater, straining against a slender leash.
“No,” I admit.
“But certain enough that you’re uneasy about it.”
I’m already sorry I brought it up. I did see someone, a man in a black hoodie, sneakers, faded jeans. He stood in a dark doorway across the street when I left the gym last Tuesday. Then on Thursday as I headed to my office clutching my daily quadruple espresso, I saw him again. I felt his eyes on me, the details of his face hidden in the dark shadow of that hood.
I dismissed it. There are lots of staring men clad in jeans and hoodies in this city. Any girl will tell you, there are always eyes on you, unsolicited comments, unwanted noises, unwelcome approaches. But then maybe I saw him once more over the weekend, when I was coming home from the farmers’ market. Still, it’s hard to be certain.
“Well,” I backpedal. “Maybe it wasn’t the same man.”
I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want her to think I’m backsliding. Stumbling toward another breakdown. When something like that happens to you, there’s this energy to the people who care about you, like they’re always waiting for signs that it’s going to happen again. I get it; they don’t want to miss the tells a second time and run the risk of losing you again, maybe for good. Even I’m wary. I feel a little sick about that black spot in my memory where I took a vacation from reality, how fuzzy are the days surrounding Jack’s murder.
So. I try not to think about it. It’s one of the things from which I am trying to move on. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know, when the worst thing happens and you’re still standing. Everyone’s very clear about it: you’re supposed to move on.
“It’s probably nothing,” I say, stealing a surreptitious glance at my watch. My smartphone, my tether as Jack liked to call it, is off and tucked into my bag, as per Dr. Nash’s office rules. Here we free ourselves of distractions and try to be present in a world that conspires against it, she has said more than once.
Dr. Nash watches me, prettily brushing away an errant strand of her lovely gray-blond bob. Behind her there’s a picture of her family—her chiseled-jaw, graying husband, her grown children both with her same delicate features, intelligent eyes. They all stand together on a terrace overlooking a beach sunset, smiling, faces pressed together. We’re perfect, it seems to say. Wealthy and gorgeous, without a single stain of darkness on our lives. I look away.
“I noticed you’re not wearing your rings,” she says.
I look down at my left hand. The finger is slightly indented from my wedding and engagement rings, but bare.
“When did you make that decision?”
My hands swelled the other night, and I took the rings off and put them in the dish beside my bed. I haven’t put them back on. I tell her as much. Jack has been dead almost a year. I’m not married anymore. Time to stop wearing the jewelry, right? Even though
