OliViA

Disturbance

August 2014

     Alan Donnelly peered at her over the rims of his glasses as he sat in his chair across the room. Although she was young enough to be his daughter, she fascinated him. Her physical beauty was undeniable, but what made it so fascinating was that it was effortless, unconscious. Dark hair, cascading carelessly down her back, framed the exquisite delicacy of her features. Without even a trace of makeup, her skin was immaculate, translucent; the curves of her body enticing. Could it be such beauty that left him speechless? Or was it the faraway azure of her eyes? He felt that those eyes concealed volumes of complexity and mystery behind their distant blue. Would his colleagues consider his gaze clinical or lecherous? In more than twenty years of practice, he'd never faced this dilemma. To his amazement, he felt uncertain for the first time in all those years whether the way he was looking at his client could compromise his professional ethics and his private morals. Maybe a belated mid-life crisis of some sort was responsible for this improper infatuation, an aging man's desperation to feel young? No, he was not that kind of man, Alan reassured himself. It had to be something else.

On the other side of the room, Olivia continued to stare out a window. She turned her head from time to time to check the clock. Besides that, she hadn't budged throughout the session.

And they were forty minutes in.

Alan pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. He hated intake sessions, the limiting, and obviously contrived questions. How could an impersonal, if annoying, routine event end up being so disconcerting? So damn humiliating?

Alan tried to reassert control. "We don't have to talk about the incident. We can talk about something else if you like."

Olivia gave the wall clock another glance. She grabbed her purse then strode for the door.

"We're not done yet, Olivia. We still have ten minutes," Alan told her. "If you go out that door, I'll have no choice but to tell the judge you are not abiding by your court order." He hoped a threat would be more persuasive than a plea.

Olivia rested her hand on the doorknob briefly, then she let it go. She slowly walked back, plopped down in the chair, sullenly crossing her arms. She returned her gaze to the window. Now, she was a pouting child to Alan and not the brooding young beauty who had intrigued him just minutes before. He made a note of this change on his pad because he knew he had his first glimpse of Olivia's behavior when she didn't get what she wanted.

"So what provoked the assault?" Alan asked, his pencil hesitating.

A pause. "He was following me."

These were the first words Olivia had spoken to him in the session. She still wasn't bothering to look at him though.

Alan scribbled. "What makes you think he was following you?"

"He was behind me."

Olivia turned her gaze on him. The azure sliced right through him.

She was mesmerizing, even intimidating. He didn't dare turn away. He knew that's what she wanted, for him to lower his eyes. That was her way of assuming control, forcing the spectators to turn their gaze from her.

All of a sudden, myth came back to Alan. Olivia was every bit as powerful as Medusa. Except she was the exact opposite of Medusa. One had to look at Medusa's ugliness to be petrified. With Olivia, you unwilling turned from her beauty that turned you to stone. 

Alan looked directly into Olivia's eyes.

He wasn't going to ask follow-up questions. He wanted her to know he was not overwhelmed or captivated by her intrigue. They could hold this stare-down forever. He wasn't going to give her what she wanted. He didn't have another patient for an hour. Go on; I've got time, his eyes challenged her. Finally, she cast her eyes downward. She'd been beaten at her own game.