Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

Dr. Einsam’s was the first psychiatrist’s waiting room Katherine had ever been in. She looked at it curiously for signs that this was an antechamber to the treatment of the soul. But it was like any doctor’s office. The furniture was somewhat Danish and somewhat modern, philodendron sprouted from brackets under the diffused light, and the paneled walls were bare of any image. It was all innocuous to the point of blandness—perhaps deliberately so. The waiting rooms in Purgatory probably looked like this.

Katherine sat down. She did not pick up Life, Time, or The New Yorker from the neat piles on the walnut veneer, but continued to stare round the room, as if after all it might contain some clue to the strangeness of this city, or of Dr. Einsam. Because they were related somehow. In his own terms, Iz was perfectly consistent. He had a way of looking at this world, and a system for dealing with it. He even had his own language—in a way, the language was the system.

She had tried to translate some of his more striking statements back into ordinary English, but when she did so explicitly she usually got into trouble. I don’t have any insecurities in that area meant “I’m not worried about that.” But I have no serious emotional commitments now might mean “I’m not involved with anybody else,” or it might mean “I’m not in love with you or anybody.” “Love?” Iz had said, when after a silence she tried to settle this point. “I don’t know what that word means to you. What I feel for you is completely unique. It doesn’t relate to anything else in my life. ... Can you understand that?”

“I don’t think so,” she had said, turning her head away on the sheet. Gently, Iz turned it back towards him. “Try to,” he said. “Listen, Katherine,” he continued, as she did not respond. “The kind of relationship you call ‘love’ is something that’s been very bad for you. It’s all fucked up with ideas like duty, and morality, and giving up everything for some other person in a very grudging, painful way. I don’t want to take part in this self-destructive fantasy.”

“Katherine. Come in.” Dr. Einsam held open the door to his office. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” As he stood there in his heavy glasses, neat dark silk suit and tie, well-trimmed black beard, and expression of sympathetic welcome, he looked like an advertisement for a psychiatrist. Even his faint European accent seemed more pronounced. The door itself, Katherine noticed as she entered, was heavily padded with soundproofing material in a somewhat sinister way.

The office was another small ordinary room, anonymously well furnished. A group of jungle plants, like those in Iz’s apartment, sprouted before the window, putting out red feelers and large, spotted leaves.

“Sorry I was late,” Dr. Einsam repeated. “I just had a rather hard hour.” He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his closed eyes.

“I’ve been in the waiting room about fifteen minutes,” Katherine said. “I didn’t see anyone come out.”

“By the other door.” Rapidly, Iz opened and shut a door giving onto an empty hallway.

“Oh.”

“You don’t think I bother to invent social lies for you. Uh.” He stretched his arms up and out, yawning. “This patient really has a problem. Twenty-three years old and still sleeping in the mother’s bedroom.”

“Oh, really?” Katherine had expected something more unusual.

“Naturally, that’s not all. There’s also educational failure and an intense terror of elevators. Those were the main presenting symptoms; they didn’t see anything wrong in the family setup.”

“But there aren’t any elevators in Los Angeles,” Katherine said, “at least, not very many.”

“Ya, that is why they moved out here.”

Iz smiled only slightly; Katherine felt ashamed of the laugh she gave. “Poor girl,” she apologized. “I’m sorry. You really shouldn’t tell me things like that about your patients though, should you?”

“I don’t tell you anything identifying.” The temperature of Iz’s voice dropped at this criticism. “I didn’t even say it was a woman; you only assumed that.” He looked at Katherine coolly and intently; she looked down. “Well. How are you today?”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“Good. Sit down, why don’t you?”

Katherine glanced at the couch by the wall, an innocuous rectangle covered in brown tweed. But in her mind’s eye she saw the sobs and howls of souls in pain rising out of it like thin smoke, and felt the bolster at the far end damp with demented tears. She veered away and sat on a straight chair facing the desk.

“So.” Iz leaned on the corner of the desk and loosened his tie. “And how is everything? How’s Paul?”

“All right, I guess. He hasn’t talked to me much lately. How’s Glory?”

“Oh, she’s just fine,” Iz spoke bitterly. “She’s been going out with Rory Gunn, seen around with him all over town, haven’t you noticed?” Katherine shook her head. “But I suppose you don’t follow the gossip columns. I don’t either, but someone called it to my attention. Some friend.” Katherine could not think of anything pleasant or intelligent to say; all that occurred to her was the Department of Social Studies criticism: A movie star? What on earth does he want to marry a movie star for? “So,” Iz went on. “Hey. You bought some clothes.”

“Yes; I found something. I don’t know whether it’ll do.”

“Show me.”

Katherine unwrapped the box from Jax, rustling tissue paper.

“That’s not bad. ... Put it on; let’s see it.”

“You mean now?”

“Why not?” Iz smiled. “You didn’t really expect to come up here this afternoon and not take off your clothes, did you?”

“I didn’t really know.” Katherine felt herself beginning to blush under Iz’s look; to hide it she stood up and started changing her clothes as quickly as possible, not looking at him.

“Hm. Turn round. ... Ya, I like that.”

“It feels so strange. I never wore anything like it before.” She held out her arms at an awkward angle, as if she were learning to fly. “I had an awful shock in that store; I went to look in a mirror, and I didn’t recognize myself. I mean, I thought I was somebody else.”

“Ah?”

“You see, I had on sunglasses, so I couldn’t see my face very well, and my body—Well, anyone might not recognize my body, if they were to meet it in a crowd in strange clothes.”

“No: I think I would recognize it,” Iz said, sliding off the desk. “But probably I have looked at it more closely than you ever have.” He put his hands up under the loose top of Katherine’s new costume. “For example: your breasts point outwards, but the right one does so more than the left.” He forced his fingers beneath the tight band of her bra. “Did you ever happen to observe that?” Gently, Iz pushed Katherine’s breasts up out of the bra, and stroked them in demonstration.

“No, I don’t think so.” A tremor of heat and motion rippled downwards through her. At the same time, she was embarrassed to think that this was happening in a professional office.

“You see, you’re not very narcissistic, for a woman. You’re unusually attractive, yet you don’t seem to know it. I think you actually don’t have too much consciousness of your own body image.”

“Is that bad?” She answered in a daze.

“Not necessarily. In your case, possibly it’s a good thing, since you’ve been pushed around so much by other people’s preconceptions. It might be easier for you to change. Come on; I want you.” Iz half led, half dragged Katherine towards the daybed. “Take those clothes off.”

She found herself doing so, almost automatically, laying each garment on the sofa separately, but Iz scooped them up and threw them across the room in the direction of a chair. The tweed cover was rough and itchy against her bare skin. She felt somebody should say something, and ventured, as he lay down beside her, “It seems so strange, making love right on your office couch. Have you ever done it here before?”