Free Epilogue by Anne Roiphe

dressed in black, with white hair. There were no empty seats. Psychoanalysts of all kinds had come to hear her, to applaud and to feel themselves close to the source, to pay their respects. This was before all the attacks on Freud. This was before it became clear to everyone that psychoanalysis was too expensive, would aid, if it would aid, only a very selected few. Psychoanalysts were pushed off their pedestals. Nevertheless I was a member of that community. I knew what they were talking about, jargon and all.
    A friend sends me an e-mail. It has a single name on it. I call her to ask why she sent me that name. “I heard from my sister-in-law, the divorced one—that this B. is a man to stay away from. If someone introduces you to him, stay away from him.” My friend tells me that he’s been widowed for about three years. He’s a psychoanalyst. Why had my friend sent me his name? To warn me, she said, she was afraid I would be introduced to him since we had so many connections in common. I am intrigued. I Google him. I find the address of his office. I write him a note. I introduce myself. I suggest that we might enjoy meeting each other. What am I doing? This is not the way women of my generation behave. It is unseemly. It is also absurd. I have just been warned the man is no good and so I go rush toward him as if I wanted nothing more in the world than a no-good man. I drop my letter off at the post office.
    The very next morning the phone rings. This is Dr. B., the voice says on the phone. He has a low, calm, reassuring voice. He liked my note. He is intrigued. He wants me to meet him at the Harvard Club the following evening for

    dinner. He will meet me in the lobby. I agree. All day I walk around holding his name in my mind. I think, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I remind myself not to anticipate more than a dinner. But all day the possibility of Dr. B. runs like a shiver down my spine.
    It is raining the next night. I dress carefully. I put on shoes with heels and a gold buckle. I don’t care if my toes soak in puddles. I arrive at the Harvard Club and there he is sitting in a chair in the lobby reading a newspaper. He has a strong face, a head of silver hair, a warm handshake. We go into the club, the mahogany dark club, with its male-ness everywhere and a certain sad look to the chandeliers as if time had passed it by. Its solemnity now hollow, like an inn in the mountains that has lost its clientele. We talk, Dr. B. and I. Perhaps I talk too much. He asks me how I heard about him. I tell him. Was this a mistake? I want to interest him. I ask him questions. I find out what there is to find out about a psychoanalyst, a doctor who is used to not answering. He went to Harvard. I know his kind. We talk about our children. Perhaps I talk too much. Perhaps not. Then he walks me to the door of the Harvard Club. He lives on the East Side. I live on the West. The rain is coming down in torrents. He says he is going away for a week on a trip with one of his granddaughters but will call me when he returns. I walk off in the rain, my umbrella over my head.
    The next morning he calls before eight o’clock. “Who is the person your friend knew? Who is the source of the warning about me?” That name I had not told him. I didn’t want to tell him. I was embarrassed at my lack of tact. I had not been sworn to secrecy but still the entire conversa-

    tion was indiscreet. But I gave him the name: a woman I didn’t know. He said to me again, “I will call you as soon as I return.”
    But he didn’t call, not the next week or the week after. He didn’t break my heart. One dinner, a few hours’ conversation cannot do that. But I tasted disappointment. Yes, if I leave my house for encounters with strange men, rejec-tion is a possibility, a likelihood, a certainty some of the time. This one I deserved. It does not startle me that I am not universally loved by all who have dinner with me. I am a writer and know that bad reviews