The week he failed to show up for an appointment was the week I crashed my car. I had passed through the waiting room at about a quarter of, half to go to the bathroom and half just to see if he was there yet. And again a few minutes before the hour I stuck my head out, and no Keith. And then five minutes after the hour. That was more like him, though. He was more lateness than earliness, and more unpredictability than he was either of those in particular.
At quarter after I left him a message.
When the hour was up I left him another message, which isn't something I do. It wasn't until halfway through that I realized I had nothing to say. "Just calling again to make sure... just checking up, give me a call and we can reschedule." I was a damn fool. And the next day, I ran my car straight into a postal service van hovering blatantly in front of me. I had never seen it.
And Keith never called me back. Instead he simply showed up a week later, at his usual time. And of course I had the hour open. He bustled himself into my office. "Sorry about last week," he said with a grin. "I was thinking maybe we could talk some more about career issues..." he had already closed the door and was sitting down. "...I feel like I need to get stuff done. You know?"
So I didn't ask him about what had happened the week before. The hook set out -- to have another conversation about something significant to him -- was too tantalizing to pass up, in any case.
"Tell me what you've been thinking," I said.
And we spoke about his career for a good ten minutes. He had decided, he said, that it was his career after all that was making him unhappy. "I know that was why I came here in the first place," he interrupted me partway through, "and that it's what you've been telling me all along. But I didn't really see it until now."
"Sounds like good news... what happened?"
Keith was wearing a yellow tie that day, I remember, one that would only have looked good on him. He loosened and re-loosened it probably three times while he was talking. "This morning was a great morning, I had eggs... Lysa made me breakfast... I had a record commute... spent the first half hour going over stuff with a new intern, she was brilliant... then Bob Ricci came in with some stuff they wanted me to sign onto and I felt my stomach drop, I felt my mood just go ten times worse." His hands dangled between his knees, having illustrated the drop in dramatic style. "It's not coming from nowhere. It is the job. It's this crap I have to do. Being fake and signing stuff I don't want to sign."
His eyes shone with eagerness to reenact the eureka moment for me. When I asked him what he was going to do, he immediately went flat.
"What would I do? I can't quit. What do you want? I'll wait until my term's up, then I'll be free to move on."
I ignored the rhetorical questions. "How are you feeling right now?"
He opened his mouth, then -- uncharacteristically -- paused, took a couple breaths, then spoke. "I feel a little better."
I nodded.
"The world makes more sense."
I remember maintaining a thoughtful silence.
"Thank you."
"Me? You're the one doing all the work."
He was impish. "Oh no, Frau Doktor, it's you with the..." he paused to tap his skull. "Vit ze shmartzhaben."
I sniggered.
"Any old jamoke can run his mouth for fifty-five minutes, it takes a true professional to make sense of it all. No, really, this is doing amazing things with my life. What, stop laughing. Did you know, the other day I actually capered? I did. Like this. Lysa thinks I'm crazy."
And on my word, the senator thrust himself from his chair and skipped a short skip to the window, making the floor tremble a little, where finding himself already out of room he turned around and looked at me, straightening his tie. "Do you ever do a little walking therapy? Get out of the office, take a client around the block? I had a teacher who used to like to do that with us. Maybe next week, if it's this nice." A grin stretched his face. "It'd be criminal not to take advantage of this mood. Or this April."
So that was the first time I met Keith outside the office, in a manner of speaking.
He lacked the particular bounce he'd had the previous week, an energy that had continued through the rest of a session devoted mostly to discussions of other teachers and mentors he'd taken particular liking to. This week he was calm in a cheerful way. When I caught up with him in the waiting room he stood and said, "Well?" so I opened the door onto the street, my heart pounding between ribs of jelly.
I had never, in fact, conducted therapy anywhere but in an office -- the office worked, so why trouble myself? But I could not have refused Keith's suggestion if I'd wanted to. The idea of being with him in the real world -- a place apart from the dim sanctum where all my transactions were usually performed -- aroused a greed so mammoth that my power of decision was not only overthrown, but forgotten. Why in the world would I want anything else but to spend more time with this man, in more places? To let him bleed into a little more of my life, if he so desired... and he apparently did!
In my first steps I was afraid I would not be able to concentrate on the conversation, would not even be able to draw a normal breath. I was suddenly afraid he would know. Surely there was some glazed look to my eye, or some hateful audibility to my swallow that would tell him not all was right in the world that walked beside him. But nothing happened. And as he began to talk about the usual things, a strange feeling came over me. I was happy. I was walking down a street lined with cherry trees on a beautiful April day, gifted with the company of a rather handsome, zanily charming man -- in a bright green tie with tiny turtles on it -- whose attention in its full force was like an industrial heat lamp. I found myself smiling for no reason at every other point in the conversation. I was enjoying myself!
"Dad really wanted me to get into a profession where I could make some money," Keith was saying. "But it wasn't like he was a distant or particularly hard-driving man. He cared a lot about me." His tone became wistful and he stopped for a moment, then jerked a flower up from the sidewalk border and stuck it behind his own ear. "I didn't think he'd be happy with me as a writer. Though I obviously should have been."
"You've been thinking about this some more."
"I've been more than thinking. I've been talking to some people. Every time I started rambling about maybe leaving office to write full-time for magazines, they'd get excited."
"People like who?"
"Oh... people like my brother-in-law. The other secretary who works in our office. My hairdresser."
Keith didn't look particularly like he'd had a haircut recently. "People who know you, you mean?"
"They'd have a reaction like this--" He grabbed both my hands in his and let his eyes light up. "Really? That's great! Keith, that's wonderful!" His high-pitched rendition made me laugh. When he stopped squeezing my hands I slipped them into my pockets without thinking, warm.
"So... I see."
"So it's like everybody's been just waiting for me to come to this decision. Like it was obvious for everyone but me. Don't be a politician, stupid!"
"What are you going to--"
"Everyone's been really supportive. It left me with a huge smile on my face."
"Have you talked to your wife about it?"
"No... well... I didn't want to worry her until I got a better feel for what I wanted to do. She's been busy with a big case they're bringing to court. I've barely even seen her lately. I feel like I see you more than I see her. So... what am I going to do... My brother-in-law said he knew a guy who wanted to start up a new nature journal, something more balanced than the usual left-wing radical proselytizing. Rich Wegman, do you know him? He's a meteorologist."
My ears were buzzing. "No, I don't think so."
"So I talked to Rich--" All this in the past week? "--who's a brilliant guy, and he says he was just going to make it a local thing, but if I wanted to join he says he'd push to try to make it statewide coverage, statewide readership. He said with my experience and reputation that... not only would my name sell copies, but that he'd be crazy not to offer me the lead editorial position. If I was available."
"Are you available?"
"Can you imagine? The California Nature Review, edited by Keith Wright. He says it's just going to be a monthly, about fourteen, sixteen pages per issue. Still."
Keith strolled nearly as fast as he talked, and we'd come most of the way around the block by now, turning the last corner. I let my overfilled mind struggle through the last few sentences to sit at a point of vague irritation. Did he not hear my question? I realized he'd slowed down as we headed back toward my office building. The light breeze was tugging some of his hair over his eyes.
"Rich said I was welcome to bring anybody else on board... we really hit it off. This is going to be a true collaboration. He said he trusted me to bring in anybody else who knows anything about business, or science, or writing. So I was wondering... how'd you like to do a little consulting?"
"What?"
"You know, help us get things set up, figure out a business plan, see what we need for staff. You said you used to do consulting for small businesses. I only worked for a giant corporation. Not the same. Plus, you're smarter than me and Rich put together. Don't tell Rich I said that, though," he laughed.
My chest and face felt hot, my stomach icy. The California regulations on fraternization never had a chance; it was too late; the words were already vaulting from my mouth. "Of course. If you think I'd have something to add--"
"You're way too modest. Please, five months ago I was a miserable political lackey. With a bad case of melodrama. Now, look at me! I'm almost the editor of a monthly journal! with a bad case of melodrama." He pulled the flower out from behind his ear and tossed it over his shoulder.
My cheeks were still burning. I wanted to ask him again, What about your job? What did you decide? It's the therapist's role to get a client thinking clearly about his life. It was all too late though. As we ascended the steps to the office, one of his restless hands seized me at the elbow and he turned me bodily to point out how the full moon hung above a blooming cherry tree. "I love April," he said, and I felt myself nod in agreement; then we were inside.
