Free Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzer

heads like propellers as they spoke.” Levin was sitting quietly, listening. Occasionally he said something, but for the most part he was silent. When visiting hours came to an end and the room shifted to a deeper blue, the woman threw her bangled arms around Levin’s neck and whispered into his ear. The small boy hooked onto one of Levin’s legs and stayed there, like an appendage.
    In Occupational Therapy the children were stringing elbow macaroni into necklaces, and Lucy began to enjoy the rhythm of it, the clicking of piece upon piece. Someone was moaning across the table—a nine-year-old girl who had tried to hang herself with a jump rope in her bedroom at home. She sat helpless now, raw pasta and bits of glitter scattered in front of her, untouched. Lucy looked up and realized that Levin was standing in the doorway, watching her. Beverly, the occupational therapist, noticed him also.
    “Hi, Mr. Levin,” she said. “Can I do something for you? Do you want some more lanyard?”
    “No,” he said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “I still have yards to go. I came to talk to Lucy Ascher, if that’s okay.”
    Beverly looked doubtful, but finally she agreed that he could come in for a little while. Levin sat down on one of the high,spindly stools. He was wearing a dark maroon bathrobe, and Lucy could see how slender and long his legs were. “I never really introduced myself to you,” he said. “At least not formally. I only told you my name, nothing more. If we were in prison, I’d tell you what I was in for, like they did in that big prison movie. But this is almost the same thing, isn’t it? I mean, we’re all in here for
something
. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’m not paying for it. It turns out there’s all this money lying around the university where I teach—a fund that helps tenured faculty pay for hospitalization. The last person who got to use the money was somebody three years ago. Cancer of the colon. He only used five weeks’ worth, though, and you can pretty much guess the rest. So I’m doing time because I’m a wreck, because the counting man has gotten to me.” He paused. “I suppose that sounds a little odd. You’re young enough to know what I’m talking about—those cardboard figures that hold up their hands, and you learn how to subtract by breaking off their fingers at the knuckle, and you learn how to add by putting them back on. I’m sure you’ve seen them. As a kind of academic joke there’s a counting man in the math department faculty lounge. People put funny hats on it or dress it up like a woman and put a lampshade on its head and dance with it at the big Christmas party and everyone laughs.”
    He continued speaking like this for almost half an hour, telling her how the presence of the counting man had given him the idea of counting things. He began counting squares of linoleum on the floor when he walked across a room, he counted the spines of books on every shelf he passed, he counted the moles, the beauty marks, that lightly dotted hiswife’s body. “Even you,” he said, “you’re wearing twenty buttons—twelve on your shirt including the pockets, and eight on your sweater. Useless information. See what I’m going through?”
    His voice sounded good to her; it rose and fell in erratic slides like a calliope, and nobody had ever talked to Lucy at such length before. Levin stood up, looming over her. “You,” he said in a whisper, “are the only one I’ve met who just
sits
there. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is.”
    Beverly came up behind them, her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “Lucy,” she said, “please start cleaning up your things. O.T. is just about over for today.”
    Around the room, children were putting away their creations in designated cubbyholes or wiping the tabletops, or just sitting on their stools, feet hooked over the top rungs, rocking to a private music. One boy was eating paste from a gallon-sized jar. It was time to