Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

break in the caravan of hikers clomping up the mountain, we were finally getting a small hit of nature. The air was that chill mountain variety. Our sweat soon cooled.

As had our relationship. Each of us was more edgy and guarded, neither mentioning what we were doing in the increasing number of nights when we were no longer seeing each other. I had seen Jill a few times more, at home and, with Viv's vigilance, in the on-call room, and it had been the same hard run of martinis or champagne lubricating frank, wild, mutually self-centered sex. The gap between Berry's days singing nursery rhymes and mine shouting down borderlines had widened. But this weekend was a chance to heal. So far, so good.

I had told her about Heiler, and now, sitting side by side in the nostalgic lift of the vista, I said, "But I don't think I can lie to him, face-to-face. When I'm with him, I get so damn flustered, I feel totally unsure of myself. I can't lie to him, but I can't tell the truth, either. I'm screwed."

"Who is?" Berry asked.

"lam."

"Who?"

"Me. What do you mean who? Me. Myself. I."

She smiled. "So that's what you've got to do."

"What?"

"Get him to talk about himself, and you won't have to lie. If he's into himself, he'll never even get around to you."

"HimSELF! Of course."

" 'Male station-identification.' Once he settles into using the word 'I,' you've got him. Like I was just doing with you."

"With me?"

"Asking you about yourself, about how you're going to deal with Heiler-your hopes, your fears. Taking care of this relationship. Being curious about your experience, drawing you out. How often do you do that with me?"

"But you always seem so interested in hearing about me."

"See?" She smiled and got up, brushing off her jeans. "Let's go. We've got another hour or so to the top."

"Wait. You're not interested in me? It's a lie?"

"Who's asking?"

"What do you mean 'who'? /am!"

The personal pronoun came out like a bullet, echoed off a

rockface and dropped. I shivered, sensing that maybe she was right, that there were depths of self-centeredness in me invisible to me, coming not only from my own decades of life, but from millennia of manhood. Depths of self unseen by self? Unable to be seen by self? Was this what Malik had meant?

Staring at her, I sensed that for once I was taking in who she actually was, from the purple bandanna tied around her hair, through her brown eyes set in her long face and her plump lips and swan neck and purple Pendleton work shirt and patched jeans, to the leaf-red laces on her hiking boots and the searing yellow of the birch leaf stuck to one sole. Startling, how new she seemed right there right then-new yet known, like an old friend you haven't seen in years.

"I get it," I said. "So tell me about yourself." "Maybe I will," she said coyly. "But now we hike." She smiled, took my hand, and pulled me to my feet. We started off up the crowded old trail.

Later that night, after a dazzling dinner at the Wildcat Inn in Jackson, we hiked, aching, up the narrow tilted stairs to our room under the eaves. The floor slanted in one direction and the ceiling in another and the mattress in a third, but we were happy and tipsy and full. 1 undressed her, unbuttoning, unclasping, nuzzling, overwhelmed by how newly attractive she seemed, her eyes wet with love, her body full and soft. I was careful not to Krotkey.

Lying side by side, cooling in the cooling evening, listening to the sound of sawing wood coming from the other side of the thin wall-a rickety bed being severely tested by romance- and despite her carelessness with a match and candle, which had set fire to a doily-I said, "You're wonderful. I love you." "It's so easy," she murmured, snuggling in, "when we're both just here."

I got to Emerson extra early Monday morning, and sat in the Malik rounds chair. The patients were friendly, even cheery to me. The cheerier they were, the more apprehensive I became of Heiler's seeing them so cheery.

Heiler entered and stood for a moment inside the door, staring down at us all with palpable contempt. A dismayed shake of his head seemed to set his pelvis in motion, and

one leg kicked out from his hip, and then another, as he marched toward his sanctuary to masturbate the INSURANCE executives.

Suddenly Thorny was in his face, screaming-"All you are is a life-support system for a dickhead"-and Zoe too, and then all the others. To their rage, his reaction was a cruel smile. By the time he'd shut the door behind him, the ward had once again been transformed into two dozen Borderlines from Hell, the worst patients on earth, proving the Borderline Theory.

I relaxed. When Heiler was with patients, no matter how they really were, they would act toward him like classic Heiler borderlines, lurching into rage, fear, projection, and all the other Krotkey Factors. It was like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: Heiler's observing destroyed the observed. Not only do psychiatrists specialize in their defects, I thought, they evoke them in their patients, creating patients whom they can then doctor, and make a good living off of. Had Ike White done that with depression? He'd given the impression of being calm and happy, interested in us, his residents, his patients, interested in living. But his calm, orderly attention had been amidst the piles of debris of his office, the buried shit of his life. The most sensitive of his patients, like Mary Megan Sco-rato, may have sensed it, and his lie may have depressed her more than his depression. The sonofabitch had been lying to us all. We could've taken his misery; the killer was the lie.

"THORNY'S DOING BADLY," I lied to Heiler, with Solini, that day in supervision. Hannah no longer met with us. She had supervision alone with Blair.

"Good," he said coolly. "Pretty well on schedule."

"Can't even tie his own shoes."

"Bet you had a ball, confronting him on that one." We all laughed, that hearty man-to-man laughter that Blair was really good at. "You're not being too 'nice' to him, are you?" he asked suspiciously.

I was staring down at my lap, and realized that if I looked back up into his eyes I might not be able to hide my lying, so I decided to try a Berry and ask him about himSELF: "We heard that you really kicked ass in Germany."

"You did?" he said, perking up. "From whom?"

"Everybody," Solini said, hi on it. "It's all over Misery,

what you did to Gunderson and the rest of the McLean Hospital borderline boys." These borderline researchers were Heiler's rivals, from Harvard Medical School. He was crazy with envy of them.

"Yeah, it was a dogfight, but I beat the hell out of those Harvard jerks."

"That's exactly what we heard," I said. "And Renaldo

Krotkey saw it all?"

His face fell. "No. Krotkey was a no-show. Which, as far as 7 was concerned, was a brilliant way of showing his latent hostility. He sent a paper. It was so brilliant that most people there couldn't understand much of it."

"How much did you get?" I asked expectantly. He closed his eyes. "Thirty-five percent? Maybe thirty-seven percent?"

"Incredible! You hear that, Henry?" "Thirty-seven percent?" Henry said, awed. "I never heard a percentage like that."

"I know," Blair said, nodding off, eyes half closed in admiration for himSELF. But suddenly he came to and sprang back, asking me, "What about Zoe?"

Startled, worried he might find out she was eating again, I stalled for time. "She met with me twice this week."

"Too soon. Too soon for her to fall in love with you, activate the Latent Positive Transference, and get erotic. What's

going on, Basch?"

"Hey, wait a sec, Roy," Solini said. "Blair, is it true that you and Renaldo Krotkey are going to be on the same borderline panel together? In Lima, Peru?'