The Therapist 17

"Happy to see you found your way," I say, standing in the doorway with a sympathetic smile.

You are fourteen minutes late to your first appointment, having gotten lost in the paved twists and turns that form the tangled heart of the city. You had parked your car in a nearby alley, and had sprinted from one storefront awning to another as the clouds overhead squeezed themselves out. You are flustered, soaked, and feeling quite ridiculous as you wonder why on earth you didn't just call and cancel.

"Sorry again," you say. "Normally I'm never late, but between getting lost and-" you stop to flourish yourself in all of your drenched glory. "This. I didn't think I'd make it."

"It's supposed to be the worst storm in fifty years," I say. "I've gotten cancellations left and right all day. I'll count myself lucky it was only fifteen minutes."

"Fourteen," you say, tapping your watch.

I laugh, and your heaving chest lets out a sigh of relief as I lead you into the office.

It is a small room, but tastefully decorated with earth tone colors. Your nose picks up the scent of chamomile emanating from a candle on the coffee table, and you feel the cares of the world begin to melt away. Beyond these doors are honking cars, foul air, and even fouler relationships, but here, where the only sound is the whir of air conditioning, you feel the pause button pressed. All that matters now is the psychologist behind you and the next forty-five minutes.

You sit down on the couch and feel your butt fall back into the cushions with a weight that reminds you of why you are here: to discuss the collapsing relationships in your life. You feel a charge of apprehension course through your spine.

"We spoke briefly on the phone last week about what you would like to get out of therapy," I say, taking my place in the office chair, which is normally turned towards my desk between appointments, but which is now turned towards you. "Would you be willing to expand upon that?"

I notice you shiver at the question. I point to the folded quilt behind you, and you take a moment to warm yourself. Part of you wants to shrug the topic off, wants to fabricate, to make up a problem out of whole cloth with which to discuss instead. However, another part cannot help but notice my brow -- serious but not stern; my jaw -- set but not strict; my posture -- relaxed but not too relaxed; and, last of all, my eyes, which are open but not wide, brown but not dark: wells that fill with the quivering flame of the candle, professing a depth of curiosity, calm, and connection that reverberate with a mystery you cannot begin to describe.

All you know at that moment is you cannot lie to me, not like you did with the other therapists who seemed to almost embrace it. I would know, and though I would speak nothing of it, my gaze would never again look upon you with the power that it did at this moment. And that thought is more intolerable to you than all the hurt that would be unleashed from the most naked honesty.

As if possessed by that spirit, timeless and eternal, who knew your whole being well before you were born, and who has stood by your mortal side ever since, you tell your story. And what a story!

The depth of your intuition, the eloquence of your expression, and the gracefulness of your femininity captivate me in a way no client has done before. Ten years of practice has cultivated in me a spirit of professional disconnect, and with that persona, a pride of self-mastery. But I am a man -- flawed -- and, if you dig deeper, an animal -- carnal -- whose appetites require no parenthesis.

Like the snake, a skin is shed when it no longer fits; and the beige slacks that gather at my groin and bunch up my hips, the long white sleeves that gather at my armpits and bunch up my arms, no longer serve a new, rising urgency stirring in my veins.

As you tell your story, you begin warming up. With each degree of temperature, by degrees you shed the quilt from your body. I cannot help but notice each new region of skin you expose. Like the open plains, you have flats; and like the hills, you have mounds that rise and fall; and like the foreign traveler, sweating with enthusiastic exertion, I want to explore it all.

Inside this room, all sense of time has vanished, but outside the storm is growing. Somewhere the wind and lightning sever a connection in the power lines. The air conditioning slows then stops. The lightbulb fades then dies. All that stands between us and utter darkness is the single candle.

In this abrupt shift, you notice my eyes no longer reflect the flame, but have a glow all its own. You return to yourself and let out a nervous laugh . . .