In The Mind's Eye

"Therapy"

     Her eyes were like ice cubes, but they made him feel warm.  And he believed her white hair was premature probably more by affect than age.  Both her body and clothes were careful and easy.  The hat she usually wore always had a medium brim, just enough to allow for theatrics.  She leaned forward at her seat and pitched her eyes as each person spoke.  He wasn’t sure he would pursue this, but at the time he had no reason to worry much about where it might lead him.

     The circle of seats allowed him to look at her all the time.  The other writers in the class always seemed to stare into space.  He supposed they were seeing their works in print.  Unlike them, he concentrated more on his persona than his works.  At his age he wanted to feel apart within this group of undergrads.

     It came to him one night while he was closing up the bar.  The divorce had separated him from lots of money and the colonial on Overlook Drive, just above the Hollow.  As he kept the booze flowing, he liked to listen to the personal stories slurred his way across the mahogany, mostly tragic comedies or comic tragedies.  Russ wasn’t much good at storytelling, but he had become a good audience and thought he understood the feelings inside the stories. O what could he do with that?

    So he figured he might be a poet, and so that made him follow the ad to the offering of a creative writing class at the community college.  He liked the idea of the circle.  It allowed him to apply the physical nature of his listening skills.  He'd pinch his face with concern and then smooth it out with assuredness.  And he wore loose shirts with baggy pants and coiffed himself about two inches longer than fashionable.  But he fussed most concern on the singular earring, a tiny mineral node pierced into the heterosexual lobe.  Two nights a week he focused on these things to forget the forty hours he spent pushing drinks at Chugger's Den.

     "I don't think anyone here has had quite my experience," this woman said during the first round up.  The instructor called them roundups, even though he'd never been farther West than Pittsburg.  Roundups were when each student said what he or she planned as a project.  The instructor usually rolled his eyes.  But when Ilene said

what she said, he rolled his eyes and then looked at the floor for a long time.

     "Why don't you just try us out," he said.

     Russ looked patiently at Ilene and oozed some assuredness.  She stared at him and smiled pleasantly.

     "Well, you see, I'm here sort of on a special assignment.  It's what my therapist suggested."

     Her light, feathery voice differed from the studied charm of her appearance.  The instructor curled into his seat and began sucking on his fist.  Some of the younger students buzzed and tried to nod knowingly.

     But Ilene wasn't stupid.  She did some eye clicks around the circle and tightened her jaw.  Her fastidiousness and grace suggested that she was up to whatever sarcasm might lurk in this klack of academiacs.  Russ assumed the therapist was real.  She had a nut's intensity, for sure, but that didn't mean she wanted to be pushed around.  At least, not by the hoi polloi.  He waited for them to sink deeper.  Someone to his right giggled.  He couldn't be sure of the gender.  It was always dubious in the circle.  The instructor coughed and kept his fist close to his mouth for security.

     "Your therapist," said the first sucker.  "Was he at all concerned about your ability?  About the possibility of competition and criticism?"  This sucker was chewing gum and running her hand through some fairly stiff purple, red and green hair.  "I mean, like, it gets kind of far out here sometimes."