Free Talking in Bed by Antonya Nelson Page A

same house as their parents. That was one of the many confessions he'd heard that he could have empathized with. But he didn't—not to the client, not even privately. He might pretend to empathize in order to impress Rachel or friends, practice his miming altruism. But though his clients' troubles resembled his own, he did not consider himself among them, he was not
of
them, the messed-up humans. He was above them. That was his largest problem, he knew, the fact that he could not see himself as an ordinary man among others. That was his legacy; he considered it his father's curse, the narcissistic confidence in his own specialness, his superiority complex. It was not as imperiling as Luellen's father's curse on her, but Ev knew it had as lasting an impact.
    Today Luellen told Ev about an errant generator that had rolled down a hill during an outdoor shoot, the driver who'd tried to stand behind it and gotten run over, which broke his leg and collarbone. She had a talent for storytelling, and instead of tragic, the event was rendered comic. Ev appreciated it. She dressed neither too casually nor too formally for her sessions, so that she appeared to have a healthy relationship with him, her therapist. She did not flirt with him; she did not offer titillating stories of her sexual escapades, though presumably she could have. She was only a few years younger than Ev, so that their frames of reference in the world were identical: they remembered all of the same national assassinations and vanishings; they hummed the same songs. They shared a cynical, passive, left-wing ideology. They both disdained smiling and sentimentality. They scowled at people. They deprecated themselves as a kind of competitive sport. Ev
liked
Luellen; if she hadn't been his client, he could imagine inviting her to meet Rachel. But even then, even in his own home in the role of friend, he would have felt slightly superior to her, capable of understanding just a shred more of her neuroses than she ever would of his.
    His business encouraged this, he thought.
    Luellen's mother and oldest sister were coming to visit her. Neither of them believed that Luellen's father had passed her over. The other three sisters had such clear memories—evoked only through therapy within the last few years—that the mother was convinced Luellen, too, would begin to recall. But what Luellen recollected was her father inviting one or another of her sisters to go places with him, to restaurants or movies or even into his study. She could not remember ever having been touched by her father in any context. He had not liked her. She was unattractive. Now she picked up strangers and endangered herself as often as possible, amassing a whole fleet of men who found her worthy. It was a simple equation. Ev understood her, and he didn't mind covering precisely the same ground with her week after week, because she was telling the truth, she was diving for the source of herself, never mind the danger down there. Ev operated on the premise that she was better than she'd been a year ago (he made a mental note to check his file on her, ascertain that she had actually improved).
    He did not like to keep clients for much more than a year. He liked to feel that they left his office slightly better after their time with him, slightly more objective about their problems, clear on what they were responsible for and what they weren't. Mostly this happened, with a few exceptions; Dr. Head had remained a client, though only over the telephone, for more than fifteen years. Ev felt his usefulness for Luellen was about to expire. He would soon suggest closure; she would agree, because she was smart enough to know that if he recommended it, even if she didn't feel ready to quit, it would be best if she did.
    "I've been working on figuring out exactly how I feel every second of the day," Luellen was saying.
    Ev perked up; this was what he'd been doing.
The man felt kinship with his