Calvin Baker - Grace

“Interesting, I do think they owe you an additional payment,” he said, scanning a clause he had negotiated. “With your permission, I’ll contact the production company to see whether that doesn’t get things moving along. If it does not, well, it will. Let’s assume for the time being it was only an oversight they need to be reminded of.” He tapped his hand reassuringly on his desk. “However, that’s only business,” he looked at me. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course.”

“How is everything else?”

“We would be here all morning if I answered that fully.”

“Well, I do not have to be in court today.”

I explained to him the e-mail I received that morning, as he nodded empathetically, although it was impossible to know what he was thinking, or searching for, as he listened intently.

“Well,” he sighed when I finished. “All of it is simply part of human nature. You shouldn’t castigate yourself. Let it wash down the stream, and try not to step in that part of the river again, which you will not if you take it seriously, as you should and do most things.”

“That is good of you to say.”

“I say it because it is true,” he replied, “and I see no earthly reason you should be less than fully happy.”

“What do you advise that I do?”

“Nothing,” he counseled. Real problems do not fire warning shots.

“And people who are unwell always tell us so, if we do not ignore what they are saying.” He looked at me, and wrote down a number on a piece of heavy, embossed stationery. “You may have missed what was being told to you. If you are open to it, you might consider a visit to Dr. Glass, who did wonders for me a few years back when I was going through a rough patch.”

“Is it obvious?”

“To others? No. To me? I know you.”

“All the same, I do not want my head shrunk.”

“Read the saints, then. They will put your mind at rest.”

I took the phone number in any case, and thanked him, agreeing to call the following week about the contract.

When I reached the street again, I reconsidered his advice and saw no reason to resist being helped. I called Dr. Glass’s office. There was an appointment that afternoon, which I took since I was already in Midtown, and I made my way across the park.

When I arrived Dr. Glass had stepped out for an emergency, but her colleague, Dr. Nando, agreed to see me instead. He listened, as I explained why I had come, and immediately suggested some pills for depression. “If Dr. Glass were here she would say it is more complex than that, and you are suffering not so much a mental reversal as enantiodromia, a mind-spirit split, and the only way to heal that is to embrace your deepest consciousness, all of which you know on some level, but which is different from comprehending. That is a question of being. However, unless — what for? — you want to go beating through the metaphysical weeds in search of the roots of your most ancient sadness — ghosts unheard a thousand years — you should just take the pills.”

I declined the pills, thinking to get another opinion before submitting to them, but accepted a prescription instead for something to help me sleep. As I folded it into my jacket pocket, I asked if there was anything else I could do besides the drugs. He told me sport, and “Dr. Glass might suggest you follow your heart, and less your head.”

I left the office, thinking as I walked of all the things they tell you as a kid, which, by the time you are an adult, are supposed to have worked their way inside of you. If they have not, or if you have discovered the things they first told you are insuperable lies, then through this rupture — between what you believed and what you have discovered to be true — everything else threatens to come tumbling out, until your entire being is up for grabs as you try to figure out what to stuff back inside and what to leave down in the dirt of the crossroads. Let the devil take it all.

Westhaven was right; I needed to take better care. He was wrong about Anna, though. The situation did not clear up when I ignored it.

On the way home from the psychiatrist I decided it would be better to get away for a while than to take the medication. I contacted Schoeller to find out if it was too late to join his bachelor party. It was not, but I would have to scramble to make plans.

I was able to use miles instead of buying a last-minute ticket, and the next day I went to see my doctor for a checkup and vaccination. I also wanted to ask about the pills Dr. Nando had suggested.

“Good drugs,” he said. “Clean, few side effects. But I can prescribe pills for you. If you ever need a prescription let me know.”

“Thank you.”

“How is life otherwise?”

“I’m worried about dying.”

“Why? You’re in perfect health.”

I’m not worried about death , I’m worried about dying . That I have not done enough. That there would be no more meaning even if I had. That the most savage among us, or else the most savage parts of all of us, prevail. I’m afraid there is no sense in life, and if there is I fucked up and missed it. That there are no second chances. “That’s good to hear” was all I said.

“Relax. You have a lot of road ahead of you,” he reassured me. “You’re just a little exhausted. Take a vacation, it will help you regain perspective.”

“I’m going to Brazil next week.”

“You will need a yellow fever vaccine. While you are at it, you should get diphtheria, and there’s a new vaccine you should have too. When was your last hemoglobin, by the way?”

“Eleven years.”

“They only last ten.”

“What’s the new vaccine for?”

“Diseases guys like us don’t get.”

“Who gets them?”

“Guys who don’t take the vaccine.”

He was a good doctor, but he was locked in a death dance with the insurance company for every nickel he could charge them. I played my part and took the shot.

The next day I went to get new contact lenses from swaybacked Dr. Nelson. When he hunched over the microscope, though, he was the image of Hephaestus, as he worked a miracle to make me see better.

I was glued together pretty well after that, but I still felt something was wrong. I could not point to anything specific. There was simply something wrong, and I did not know what. When Nell called that afternoon, telling me she had to see me right away, it seemed to confirm my diffuse worries.

“How did you find that one?” she asked incredulously, when I arrived at the restaurant where she had asked to meet. “A real Adela Quested.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. That girl from the club, Anna.”

“I don’t want to get into it. She’s—”

“Crazier than the Mad Hatter on angel dust, is what she is,” Nell said, cutting me off.

“She’s just dull.”

“Did you do anything with her?”

“No. Why?”

“Listen,” she hunted around in an enormous green leather shoulder bag, until she retrieved a tiny, white, metallic square. “You know, she’s been calling everyone. I don’t even know how she got this number,” Nell said, waving her hand over the device, which woke up with the sound of Anna’s voice defaming me in the vilest terms.

“Oh. Why do you say that?” I heard Nell coaxing her along, in her best Linda Tripp voice.

“Because I can,” Anna said. “Who does he think he is?”

“He’s one of the most decent people I know,” Nell said at length, after Anna had gone on long enough to discredit herself completely. Good old Nell. “If things between you were not what you wanted, maybe it is because you were not honest with him or yourself, and now you’re angry. I don’t know, Anna. I wasn’t there. Then again, maybe it’s because of the way you were raised, or the things in your head.”