The Art of the Hustle 2 (Complete)

Chapter Forty-One

Sitting with Dr. Chang, Deon was becoming more comfortable with opening up about his feelings as well as his past. His means of expressing himself had improved drastically since their first session. It was an obvious sign that Trevor's influence on him was having a marked effect on his linguistic and interpersonal skills.

Dr. Chang created a safe environment to get whatever issue he was dealing with off his mind. Speaking freely, Deon meandered from one subject to the next seemingly with no clear purpose. Dr. Chang allowed him that forum, only steering him and guiding him when she felt it was necessary.

"I've been thinking about my brother a lot lately. I miss him so much."

"How did he pass?"

"Drug overdose," Deon said with remorse as if he were to blame. This intrigued Dr. Chang. "Some chump sold him tainted fentanyl."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"But Darrell, I mean, the drug dealer got what's coming to him," Deon said under his breath. Dr. Chang heard the comment and asked about it.

"What do you mean by that exactly?"

"Nothing... I just mean that justice was served."

"Was he arrested?"

"No."

"Did you do something to him?"

No answer.

"You mentioned your brother died two years ago?"

"Yes."

"Okay, looks like we're almost out of time," Dr. Chang said. "I'll see you Thursday."

Trevor's appointment followed Deon's so when Trevor walked in, he noticed Dr. Chang looking unusually bothered by something. He made the logical connection that it might have something to do with her session with Deon. Although she could not talk about another patient, it still didn't prevent Trevor from asking about it anyway.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know," she said, pacing the room. "I may need a few minutes to collect my thoughts."

"Is there something you want to talk about?"

"No, I'm fine. Let's begin shall we. Tell me about your relationship with Deon. How well have you gotten to know him?"

"I don't know him all that well. I spend a lot of time with him, but we don't really talk too much about his personal life. Actually, just recently I set him up in this fancy Yaletown condo and bought him an entire wardrobe. Oh, and a new laptop as well."

"That's very generous of you. What inspired you to do that?"

"You know why the ancient Greeks were so prolific?"

"No."

"It's because they had a warm climate, lots of food, and were not constantly at war. This allowed them to have an abundance of leisure time. Time to think of philosophy and mathematics, science and medicine, and so on. I think if someone is too focused on finding food and shelter every day, then they will never advance to the next stage of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is establishing meaningful relationships, workplace satisfaction, ambition, community, and answering some of the higher order questions in life.

"One of my goals with Deon is to turn his life around — make him into a productive member of society. So if I can alleviate some of the stress and assure him food, clothing, shelter, and security, then perhaps he could spend more time focusing on the next stages and get himself out of this mess that he's in, which is largely no fault of his own."

"That's very noble of you."

"I'm doing this to help him of course, but also to help myself, as you know. I'm also using Deon as a case study for my future foundation. I want to see what it will take, if anything, to put someone on the right track. A social experiment if you will.

"The apartment was my way of getting him out of a rut. He was in a rundown apartment with two roommates, they didn't respect the place, didn't have nice stuff. So I wanted to remove him from that environment and away from his knucklehead friends.

"I also think success has a lot to do with one's mental state. Often our circumstances can makes us feel like losers or that we are not good enough. My hope with the condo and all the other stuff is that those things would give him a boost in confidence. I'm obviously no psychologist so perhaps what I did was wrong, but it's an experiment that will only cost me time and a little bit of money, and I have lots of money. So I thought, why not try this and see what happens."

After a while, Dr. Chang didn't really seem as though she was listening as her mind was somewhere else. Trevor recognized her absent mindedness and said something absurd just to test whether or not she was listening to him. "And I also bought him an elephant that he can keep in the underground parking garage. I had to pull a few strings with the strata, but in the end they had to say yes since there were no stated size restrictions for pets.

"Dr. Chang..." Trevor said, getting her attention.

"I'm sorry, you were saying."

"You know what, I think I'm all set for today. I'll see you next week."