Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

rolled my own eyes as if in frustrated resignation at trying to actually talk to one of these "psychiatric theme parks." She smiled, and walked away, My key slid smoothly into the worn lock. I led Lily out.

We drove silently through the crystalline starry night along a loud spring river and up into a declivity of the mountains and then down again to a valley and to the horse farm poor Cherokee had bought with his severance pay from Walt Disney. I felt Lily's fragility, and was reluctant to speak. She too was silent. The farmhouse was dark. Her parents, who had been taking care of the children, must have been asleep, as were the children. I went with her into each child's room, and heard her crying softly at the sight of these two damaged angels, sweetly asleep.

"I can never thank you enough," she said, saying good-bye at the door.

"There's one thing more. At some point I need to ask you what the truth is about Schlomo Dove."

Fear slithered across her eyes. She looked down at her feet. "We've been having sex since last summer. Come back tomorrow. We'll talk."

IN THAT HORRIFIC basement of the Farben the next morning, May 15 and my last day on the West, I found myself walking past the stench and pitiful whining of the dogs, which reminded me how worried I was about Thorny, wherever he was out there. I walked into Win Winthrop's office. Win sat at his desk playing with his keyboard. Van Dusky the husky, recovering from his brain surgery, was lying at his feet whimpering and licking his hock without cessation, without, one might say, "missing a lick." A note written in red Magic Marker was posted over the computer:

Arch. Gen. Psych. Wants Our Dog Study For Their Lead Article!

"Archives of Genetic Psychiatry?" I asked.

"Not Genetic, General. Published by the AMA: 'Physicians dedicated to the health of America.' They want our dog study for their lead article."

"Van Dusky?" I called out. The husky wagged his tail and

got up, sort of, for only two of his four legs now worked. He tried to hop toward me on the good two, the bad two sticking out spastically. With a whimper Van Dusky fell on his face. He began licking his hock with his tongue.

"I just want to tell you, Win, that you'd've made a great Nazi."

"Yeah and you got no balls. Hey-stop that!"

I was ripping the tape spools off the two cartoon clown's eyes on the mainframe computer and stomping them into Van Dusky's wet dog chow. As Win bent to save them I kicked as many manuscript pages as I could all over the place and stomped those into the dog food too and then bent down and picked up Van Dusky and carried him out

"You're psychotic!"

"Tell it to the ASPCA."

He chose to save his manuscripts rather than his dog. The dog was heavy, but I struggled upstairs to Telecommunications and shut the bulletproof behind me. Laying Van Dusky gently down, I told Viv what was up and she dialed the ASPCA hot line. I told them that it was an emergency with an abused dog in need of shelter and that the Misery dog lab was a torture chamber, right out of the Dark Ages.

While we waited, I talked with Viv about the atrocities I'd seen among the drug fascists on the West, and about how depressed I'd been. Soon the ASPCA men hi their white coats were screaming at Errol and Win in their white coats. Mr. Beef Telly, head of Security, was shouting into his walkie-talkie for help.

As we watched this tragicomic pantomime on the far side of the bulletproof, I said to Viv:

"Those guys almost killed me."

"Yeah. If you was drowning, those jokers would throw you a rock."

When I went to pick up my things on the West, I passed the Quiet Room and saw the Man Who Thought He Was a Kernel of Com, plastered up against the wall, terrified. He was staring at a real live chicken that was walking around clucking and scratching and pecking.

"What happened?" I asked nun through the slit for speaking. "I thought you knew that you're not a kernel of corn."

"/ know I'm not a kernel of corn," the man said, eyes

riveted on the chicken, "but how do I know that that chicken knows?"

A nurse arrived, to scatter a few drugs.

How had this happened? How had the received wisdom gotten so far from the human heart?

HEIDELBERG EAST

"Identify, don't compare."

— ANONYMOUS

Eighteen

"YES, HE SEEMED repulsive to me too, at first," Lily Putnam was saying later that night, lighting another cigarette.

We were in Cherokee's study, up over the horses in the barn. Dusk had turned to dark, and the roof, all skylights, showed the first stars faceting the night. The horses below were snorting and stamping, as if impatient for the man to reappear. We were sipping tea. She had offered drinks. I wanted a nice sharp bourbon, but I felt that in this middle ground between life and therapy I should abstain. I was trying to detox my way out of the beauty parlor of drugs I'd wandered into on Heidelberg West.

"I was ripe," she went on, "for someone to take a real interest in me. The years in California, away from both our families, in such a bizarre, hedonistic, rather fake place, had taken its toll. It was Fantasyland, really. Not only on Cherokee, on me too. Back here, poor Cher started to feel like such a failure. He withdrew from me. And from the girls. Even though he put in a lot of time with them, he wasn't really there for them either. I tried to get him to get some help, but he wouldn't. It went against his grain. I don't know how you did it, I mean get him to come to see you, it was marvelous, really. And so I was getting more and more isolated, more desperate, doubting myself, my attractiveness as a woman, doubting everything. I felt I needed help, though it went against my grain as well. Well, one day a friend told me about Schlomo, who could sort of match you up with the right therapist. That first appointment, he said, 'You're like the sun, emanating warmth, giving it away to others, leaving yourself cold and empty.' And then he said that although he didn't often do it, he would keep me for his own patient. I was thrilled." She

sighed, and went on, "I believed him. Over time, I began to have strong feelings for him. I could see the person living in that repulsive, rather forlorn body. A powerful person. Those strange eyes, you know?" I nodded. "It started innocently enough. He'd touch me as I was leaving the office, first on the shoulder, a friendly pat, then my lower back… and so forth. Then he'd touch me when I was in the office, and then, well, when I was on the couch. And he isolated me from Cher and my family. Told me that analysis only works if you keep it secret. He was especially strict about my not telling my husband. One thing led to another. New underwear. Perfume. He had this thing about hair. I prided myself on my long light brown hair, but he said he liked it short, boyish. One day I cut it all off. For him? God damn!" She blew a plume of smoke, and looked around Cherokee's office as if for the first time, taking it in.

"I feel so guilty," she went on, "but it seems so strange now, to think that I would go in there at six in the morning, he would nod, we would undress, have sex, and then we'd smoke a cigarette together and talk, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, a kind of 'Hi, how are you? Okay, you? Okay.' I started smoking again, after having a bitch of a time quitting. And then, as time went on, we'd talk less and less about me, and more and more about him. Telling you about it now, it all seems like a bad dream. How could it have happened? At first I felt so ashamed. He analyzed it out. 'It's your WASP upbringing,' he said. 'People aren't naturally monogamous. This analysis will free you up. Affairs are good, a good good thing, as long as you don't tell the one you're cheating on. Get in touch with your grief, your tsouris.' I started to feel sorry for him. He told me about his little boy drowning in his pool. He complained about his miserable marriage-no sex with Dixie-about his heart condition-he was on diuretics, and kept bananas around, for potassium. Sometimes… we'd