Free Kill Me by Stephen White

“Okay.”
    I could tell he was far from convinced, but the guy apparently wasn’t much of a debater. I decided to be generous, show some cards. I explained, “I don’t have time for mistakes.”
    I said it offhandedly, like I was a busy, important guy, someone who couldn’t waste time on a pedestrian faux pas. He had no way to know that the worst mistake would have been telling him too much, too soon, before I was certain I could trust him. But my nonchalance ended up sounding like arrogance and didn’t exactly suck him in.
    “I don’t understand what that means,” he said. “That you don’t have time for mistakes.”
    “How could you understand?” I laughed a laugh that Thea affectionately called my “impish chuckle,” before I added, “I mean, how could you? I know all the facts — well, I know most of them — and I don’t understand what it all means. Maybe that’s why I’m here.”
    “Maybe?”
    “I have a tough decision to make. I need help, okay?”
    “With?”
    “You do have a certain propensity for demanding clarification, don’t you?” I asked, only half-joking that time.
    “Therapeutically? I admit that clarity can be overrated,” he said. “But for someone like you, someone who is in some obvious physical distress” — he allowed that dust to settle for a moment before he continued — “and someone who has juggled some things to be here with me, for the time being I’m going to err on the side of caution.
    “I’m also aware that you haven’t quite reached a judgment about how much you’re going to tell me. Or how much you’re going to trust me. I think it’s important to acknowledge all that.”
    “Well,” I said, in a Jack Benny kind of way.
    “Don’t get me wrong; that’s all fair. Your doubts about me, and about this process? Totally understandable, regardless of the other circumstances. About which, I admit ignorance.”
    “Thank you for that.” Sarcasm seeped into my words without any conscious intent. That happened a lot with me.
    Character defect. One I’ll die with, I’m afraid.
    “You’re from out of town,” he said.
    Why did he say that? I wasn’t quite sure, so, assuming he was fishing, I went fishing, too. “Is that a question?” I asked.
    “Sure. Let’s make it a question. You’re from out of town?” He changed the inflection the second time he said it.
    “Yes.”
    “Far out of town?”
    “Far enough.”
    He tried to hide his wry smile, but failed. “You chose to come to see me rather than to see a therapist in your hometown. Why?”
    “Because you’re not in my hometown. The shrinks in my hometown are. By definition.”
    “Okay,” he said. He said it in capitulation, not in agreement, certainly not to express any satisfaction at having arrived at a point of mutual understanding with me.
    “It’s a tautology,” I said.
    He digested my astonishing vocabulary for about five seconds before he said, “You’re a wiseass, aren’t you?”
    I admit I was shocked. Not by his perspicacity — it wasn’t that difficult to discern that I was a wiseass — but rather by the bluntness of his appraisal. “I beg your pardon,” I said.
    He added, “I bet you drive people crazy sometimes.”
    Coming from his mouth neither of his two assertions sounded to me like accusations, merely statements of fact. He was right with both allegations — no doubt about that — but I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge that to him, yet. So I asked, “What do you mean?”
    “When someone wants to slow dance with you — get a little closer, that kind of slow dance — I imagine you do with them some version of what you’re doing here with me: You pull out a saber and start to fence with them instead. Your fencing is part serious, part comedy — part King Arthur and part Monty Python. Has to drive people a little crazy, especially the ones who care about you, who cherish those occasional moments close to you. Maybe even need those occasional moments close to