& - 002

“Where does cold come from? I mean not—I don’t mean the weather, the temperature. I mean the word. Where does it come from?”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Okay. Would you sit down now, please?”

He still seems distressed, absent-minded but he does it anyway.

“What would you like to talk about today?”

“I don’t care. Whatever. Pick something.”

“You have nothing you wanna tell me?”

He shrugs. Looks around the room. “Not really.”

“Then why are you here?”

He raises his left eyebrow and gives me the most incredulous look I’ve gotten from him so far. “If I had it my way, doc, I’d be out of this town yesterday. Well, last month, to be accurate.”

“Where?”

“Huh?”

“Where would you go?”

He makes a noise that can only be interpreted as, “I don’t care, go fuck yourself anyway, you know?”

“Were you always so bad at making casual conversation?”

“Casual conversation?” he laughs. “Casual conversation is two buddies talking about ball over a six pack of cold ones. This,” his finger points out the distance between us, “is called therapy. I talk shit, you try to understand what the aforementioned shit says about me and you write a prescription that keeps me from going crazy.”

“I actually don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.”

“Try to understand my shit?”

“No,” I laugh, “that I do. But I’ve never given you any medication. Not my job to, anyway.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Are you afraid you’re going crazy?”

“Aren’t we all?” he bullshits his question with a smile.

“Well, not all of us are cops who have shot the husband and child of a woman who was trying to save her son from his drunken father, but,” I shake my head. “Yeah, in some sense, we’re all a bit crazy.”

“You can go fuck yourself,” he says in a very casual, emotionless voice.

“That’s very good.”

“Masturbation?”

“You just expressed pain about your traumatic event. Means you acknowledged it.”

He doesn’t like that. He feels like I played him. He shifts his body in his seat ever so slightly but I catch his movement.

“You’ve never done that in any of our previous sessions.” I smile. “Good job.”

“Will you report me if I flip you off and storm out of this shithole right this moment?”

“Probably.”

“I see.”

“Are you seeing her tonight?”

“No.” He blinks. “No, I cancelled.”

“Why?”

“It’s his birthday this week. Her son’s, I mean.” He looks around again; his eyes stare at the blood-red bookcase he didn’t seem to like before. I see him sigh—his chest moves slowly up and then down—but it’s a silent sigh. “He’d be turning twelve.”

“Maybe she needs someone to go through this with.”

“Ha ha. Yeah, I doubt the man who murdered Colin is the right company.”

“You can’t know that. Maybe she chose you.”

He almost snorts. “Doc, it doesn’t work this way. Maybe in the movies—maybe the dude gets to fuck the damsel in distress despite destroying half the city?” he flicks his tongue against his front teeth and laughs. “But no, not here.”

“You didn’t destroy a city.”

“No, you’re right. I didn’t. I destroyed her world.”