Erica Orloff - Freudian Slip

“What are you thinking?” he asked her.

She was silent for a few minutes as he studied her. And then she whispered aloud.

“God? It’s me. I…know you aren’t Santa Claus. I can’t just make a wish and have it all get better. But it’s been a really hard few years. First Daddy. And then Mom marrying that money guy. I’ve tried to like him, God. I honestly have, but he’s…not my dad. Maybe that’s what’s so hard. He’s nothing like my dad. Not heroic. Not handsome. Not funny. Not anything. He’s like striped wallpaper. You barely notice him.”

Julian saw she had clasped her hands together on top of the blanket like a small child saying bedtime prayers. Not that he knew anything about that. He hadn’t ever prayed in his life, he didn’t think, which made his recruitment for this job all the more ridiculous. He wasn’t even agnostic. The very word implied someone who had given some thought to the question of whether or not there was a God. He hadn’t. Not ever. He was nothing. Not an atheist. Not an agnostic. Just apathetic. When would the Boss understand that and let him get back into his body and wake up?

Kate whispered again, “And David. I…feel like my guts have been literally ripped out from me. When I saw them together, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even think past the pain. I don’t think I want much, God. I am truly, truly thankful for the material things I have, the roof over my head, my health, a profession I adore, all of it. But to find someone who loves me. Deeply and totally and all of me. Is it impossible? Is a soul mate impossible?”

“You know, Kate,” Julian said, “if you had told me last week that I would believe in soul mates, I would have said you were fucking nuts, but…this whole cosmic thing going on? Maybe God does exist and does know what He…She’s…doing. Maybe there’s someone out there for you.” He filled in his half of the conversation in the pauses.

“I can’t sleep, God. It’s like I hear this constant chatter in my head. It’s driving me nuts. I know it’s the stress of it all. At least I think it’s stress. I don’t want to go to work next to Leslie. It makes me want to throw up. On the good-news front, I have lost six pounds since this whole thing started—even after eating pizza. The stress diet.”

Kate pulled the covers up. “Please let me fall to sleep, God. Otherwise I’ll be so tired and will look horrible and Leslie can have the last laugh knowing David picked her and I’ve become a hag.”

Leslie, Julian decided, needed to be put in her place. And there was no way Kate was going to do that tired and stressed. “It’s okay, Kate. I was just…bored and lonely. I’m sorry I woke you. Go to sleep.”

He touched her cheek and watched as her breathing grew more shallow. Finally, she drifted off.

Now what?

He climbed from her bed and wandered into the living room. There were no phones in Neither Here Nor There, so what was he supposed to do if he had a question?

“Gus?” He said it loudly. “Gus!”

Nothing.

“Fuck me,” he said. Pissed at Gus, and at God for that matter, he sat down on the couch and waited for dawn. He wanted answers. Like when or if he was going back to his body.

He looked down at his arm. It looked like his arm—the same arm he always had—but when he touched it, he barely felt it. The tattoo of a heroin needle mocked him. He used to love heroin. Love and hate it. He’d be the first to admit he had abused his body, but now he wanted it back. If he could talk to God, wherever She was, he’d tell Her that he’d take better care of himself. A little less Patron, a little more broccoli.

He leaned his head back on Kate’s couch. What did he miss about his body? He’d discovered that the longing for heroin never goes away completely, no matter how long you’ve been clean. He craved, constantly, the euphoric sense of well-being, or floating. That place where everything was like a slow-moving bubble of warmth. Coming down from it, every muscle, every inch of him, hurt. Even his eyelashes hurt. If Gus was right and the universe was made up of strings, in a quantum sense, his particles hurt. Every neuron, proton, every cell.

He hadn’t gone to rehab. Instead, after an on-the-air rant in which he’d said some things that even for his show were pretty outrageous—and after the FCC scandal of it, the fines, the firestorm of criticism, he’d been taken off the air for thirty days. And in those thirty days, he and his producer had holed up in a hotel in Costa Rica, near the rain forest. He’d never gone through such pain in his life. Every day, an ancient native woman visited and brought him an herbal concoction to drink that their guide swore by. Julian sweated and cursed. At one point his producer, Frank, had literally tied him to the bed.

He emerged from that jungle hotel a couple of weeks later, clean but not sober. He drank more heavily, partied harder, screwed more women, chasing the demon of heroin.

Julian sighed. Then, with startling clarity, he realized that he didn’t want heroin. Or Patron. He had lost his earthly cravings. It was as if this lion he wrestled with every day for the last several years had suddenly turned into a kitten. The desire for heroin was completely gone.

“Okay, Boss.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Nicely done. If I could be this way and be back in my body, though, that would be the key. I miss sex. I miss touch.”

Suddenly, from Kate’s bedroom, her clock radio blared an old Britney Spears song.

“Crap, Kate,” he yelled. “Don’t tell me you listen to pop radio garbage. The Ramones, baby. You need to listen to the Ramones. Or Pete Townsend. Or…well, we’ll work on song selection.”

He rose and walked into her bedroom. She was hiding under the covers.

“Come on!” he yelled at her, standing at the foot of the bed. “I’m sick of these four walls. Time to get out of here. Let’s see where you work. Where you go for happy hour.”

Eventually, after one more smack down of the snooze button, she rose and headed to the bathroom. As she undressed, Julian admired her naked form.

“Nice tits. Great ass, by the way. You must do squats at the gym. You know, you need to stop covering up.”

She turned on the shower until the tiny bathroom steamed up. She stepped into the stall and soaped up her body. He watched the way the water formed rivulets through the bubbles on her skin. Even without a scrap of makeup, her skin was perfectly clear.

He watched her and decided shower time might be his favorite part of the day in Neither Here Nor There. Oddly enough, he found himself erect.

“Okay…so, let me get this straight, I can still get a hard-on in Neither Here Nor There? But what am I supposed to do with it?”

Annoyed, he had to be content with watching her rinse her body and wash her hair. She emerged from the shower, cheeks rosy from the hot water, and proceeded to brush her teeth and towel-dry her hair.

“Now the clothes,” he said, following her to the closet.

As she slid hangers across the bar, he spoke, loudly and firmly, “No, no, not a chance, big fat no, what were you thinking? No, no, and no again.”

She put a hand on her hip and sighed. “What is it with me? I hate all of my clothes all of a sudden. Hate them!”

She reached way back in the closet for a skirt and flirty top. She held them up to her body in front of the full-length mirror.

“We can work with that,” Julian told her.

“Maybe since I’ve lost weight, this will fit better.” She scrunched up her mouth and wrinkled her nose. Julian thought she looked like a bunny.

“Put it on,” he commanded her, though he did like looking at her naked.

She padded to her dresser and pulled out a pair of panties.