Free Burning Time by Leslie Glass Page B

a rolling desk chair, also leather. He had covered the windows to the outside world with bamboo blinds, but left open a few tiny windows into himself for those patients who truly needed to find him. Antique clocks came and went as he added to his collection and moved them about. But none in here distracted by ticking loudly or chiming the hour. A number of prints, needlepoint pillows, knickknacks, and mementos in a wide variety of tastes and quality, given himover the years by his patients, companionably coexisted with his books on every available surface in the room. Years ago he used to hide everything away, as if personal things from his patients might reveal their names and crowd the space with their voices. But now he knew therapy did not require empty spaces and blank walls to be successful.
    For people like Harold, the walls were as good as blank anyway. He didn’t care what was on them. Today he nodded at Jason, but didn’t actually greet him, look at him, or ask how he was. As far as Harold was concerned, his psychiatrist had absolutely no life beyond taking care of him. Jason knew this, and knew that Harold didn’t see the dark shadows under his eyes or the turmoil behind them.
    He stood as Harold crossed the room with a loping walk and sat in the Eames chair next to the desk. Harold had always been meticulously dressed and was now. Very distinguished. He was wearing a dark suit with a gray silk tie, a white shirt, and black shoes. His hair was cut very short. He was an inch or two taller than Jason, and ten years older. His hair was almost all gray now. Two years ago when Harold first came to Jason, his hair had been black. He had been a big beefy man. Now he was caved in. His cheeks looked as if they had been deflated. His mouth had thinned out into a line. Often—several times in a session at least—he sucked his lips inside his mouth and closed his teeth over them as if to stop himself from saying or doing something. Jason had a French clock on the shelf that was a brass bull standing on a clock face. That was Harold two years ago, bullish on himself.
    “I had a dream about Marilyn last night,” Harold said.
    Jason sat in his chair and rolled it away from his desk into the center of the room, trying to quell his anguish. Emma had appeared in a quirky and sexual movie, andnow somebody was writing upsetting letters to her. He shifted in his seat but couldn’t relax.
    One letter came every day on the dot, very strange and rambling letters that no psychiatrist could read without being concerned. They were signed,
The Friend That Saved You
. Jason kept asking her to think,
think
about what this might mean, but Emma drew a blank on ever being saved by anybody.
    “Tell me about the dream,” Jason said to Harold, and thought about the letters.
    There was a lot of Right and Wrong in them. Maybe they were some religious thing. They mentioned right path, wrong path,
the fire that burned but didn’t consume
. In the Bible that might be the burning bush. But hellfire also burned without consuming.
Once saved, now damned to burning
. That sounded pretty vengeful to him.
    Emma thought they were equal to the kind of chain letters they got as kids that threatened bad luck if you didn’t copy them and send them to fourteen friends. Curses like, your mother wears army boots. Drop dead. Burn in Hell. She argued there was nothing to it. Jason knew she was wrong; there was something to this. He just didn’t know what.
    “How long will this go on?” Harold asked.
    “A long time.”
    “I thought when she died I would get some relief. But, I don’t know. I feel worse.” Harold let his chin sink down on his chest.
    “You’ll feel worse for a while, and then you’ll feel better,” Jason murmured.
    “I don’t know. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I walk around at night. I can’t even concentrate on a movie or anything. I just keep thinking about those nights, you know, when she was so sick. She didn’t want