When Clara passed away five years ago, Susannah, who rarely visits, suddenly appeared one afternoon with a corned-beef bagel, claiming she just happened to be in the area. As she looked around my office, a glint in her eye, she jokingly named it “the Museum of Shrink Memorabilia.”
“Your patients are absolutely everywhere, Dad!” She cried freely. “On the desk, on the walls, over there on the shelves. They’re even in the goddamn kitchenette! You know what? You should start paying them!”
I had belly-laughed at the time—my kind, funny daughter. Physically her mother’s child, with quick, grassy-green eyes and jet-black hair. Her broad shoulders, back then, weighted down with grief. I recall smiling—the joke causing my muscles to do something other than sag—as I grieved the loss of my wife. Her death making its own demands, my own emptiness impossible to ignore.
2
Alexa Wú
I think I might die of excitement. Seriously. Reason: Ella Collette—best friend, bona fide babe, and, as of last night, matchmaker extraordinaire! Yep. Not only do I have a date, but I also have a date for the date. Next Saturday. Nine p.m. Hoxton.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” Ella teases, batting her heavy lashes, mascara having left a tinge of slate above both cheeks.
Already dressed, I jump and land on my bed, straddling Ella’s flat body between my thighs, head pounding from last night’s vodka tonics.
“Well, he couldn’t!” she yells, triumphant, defending her ribs from my tickling hands.
“Shhh,” I say, tapping my head.
“Well, he couldn’t,” she whispers.
I blush as I always do when Ella gets like this. Am reminded of the time my Reason took it upon herself to fix me up with one of her former school friends, inviting him in a hurried, liquor-laced phone call to her house one Friday night. Both of us had been loose and giddy from cheap Russian wheat vodka. But this time it’s different. This time I actually like the guy. He’s funny. And smart. Handsome, but not too handsome. Tall, but not giant. And he has a body to die for. Swoon!
We met last night in Hoxton after Ella insisted that another night drinking wine at home and watching repeats of Girls was simply not an option.
“Fancy meeting up?” she’d called and asked, making it sound more like a demand than an inquiry. “Some cute guy came into work handing out flyers for a new club—the Electra. We got to talking. I thought it might be fun. Sounds kinda different.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“You know, different.”
So I went. And we met. The cute guy and me. Ella introducing us while he served sleek cocktails in chilled tall-stemmed glasses. His blue eyes holding hostage every girl seated at the bar. Ella noticed my dropped jaw as soon as I clapped eyes on him, then disappeared, squeezing my hand three times—a code we both use for reassurance. Help, I’d mouthed at her, palms dripping, stomach in knots, before catching his smile, which I nervously threw back. Then he leaned over and kissed me hello. I looked past his shoulder, aware the club was brimming with attractive bodies and girls performing lavish burlesque on a narrow mirrored stage. One girl with long red hair and legs for days feigned intimacy with a nickel pole at the far end. Her shoulders shimmering but her gaze somewhere else as she fingered a delicate gold necklace with a small key attached. I gawped for longer than seemed right, lost in her drops and swerves, her perfect body forcing me to want to run home and never eat again. But then cute guy’s gaze brought me right back, pinning me to the spot. Stirred, I felt my breath fill my entire chest.
Flash.
Snapping back from the memory, I see Ella, drenched in mischief, cupping both hands beneath her chin to form a heart.
“Alexa and Shaun, sittin’ in a tree; K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” she sings, looking around me at one of my many clocks. “Fuck!”
“What?” I yell, startled. Mouth dry as a bone.
She pushes me off her—“Fuck! Fuck! Shit!”—jumps up and grabs her skinny jeans off my bedroom floor.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she scolds.
“I thought you took the week off work,” I say, knowing I’m not being dense.
“I did, but I’m babysitting the kid, remember? It’s half term. Mum’s got that temp job.”
The kid, aka Grace, is Ella’s younger sister. Not particularly bratty for a thirteen-year-old, but she does have a tendency to nick stuff. A month ago it was a pair of hair straighteners, a week later steampunk comics and a manga Pop! Vinyl from Forbidden Planet. A large, goateed security guard caught her with them tucked under her sweater. He didn’t report her, just scared her a little, made her cry, and then called Mrs. Collette, which, if I’m honest, was probably worse than calling the police.
“We can give you a lift if you’d like?” I say, upsetting a pile of ironed clothes stacked on top of my oak dresser. “Anna’s driving me to Glendown, so we can drop you on the way.”
Ella relaxes.
“Okay,” she purrs, knowing she looks pretty when she pouts, “that would be great. I can pick up Grace from her sleepover, then we’ll walk back home.”
She throws herself, belly first, back on my bed. Her perfect elbows supporting her perfect chin. It’s the kind of chin that looks good in anything: mirrors, photos, cute scarves, turtlenecks. Anything. I walk toward her, pretending I’m a photographer while Ella poses, my fingers bluffing to click, click on a push-button, flash, flash.
Chin up, chin down, Ella tilts her head. Her tired eyes narrowing for effect until a final look involving her full lips sends me off balance.
I check my watch, aware I also need to get a move on.
Ella, calmed now, picks up last month’s Vogue. “So what’s his name, this new Glendown shrink?”
“Dr. Rosenstein. But he said to call him Daniel.”
“I bet he did. And I bet he said you’d have to pay through the nose for the pleasure, thank you very much. I guess they do that, don’t they—shrinks—get you to trust them, act all friendly, lure you in before rawrrrr—pouncing in!”
Ella’s imitation of a wildcat isn’t half-bad. On hands and knees she dismisses her Vogue and claws her fingers, opens her mouth wide, and prowls along my bed like a tiger in the savannah. She roars again.
“You’re crazy!” I laugh.
Thrilled with the compliment, Ella crosses her eyes and shows me her jazz hands.
“Anyway, enough of the shrink,” she says, swapping my pajama shirt for her cotton tank top, “you’re clearly besotted with this Shaun guy, which probably means I’m about to lose my best friend until you get bored of him. When are you meeting up?”
“Saturday.” I shrug.
“Saturday,” she mimics, coy and kittenish, then points at my forehead.
“What?”
“Your bangs are all wonky,” she says, her hot breath blowing the fine strands of my hair.
Not convinced, I stride toward my Venetian mirror, but when faced with my reflection, yep, soon realize what she means.
“I was going for electro-pop,” I say, feeling defensive and licking my three longest fingers, using them to press down on my bangs.