In theory Maxwell more or less subscribed to the three-date rule that was popular among his peers. In practice he had plenty of first dates, fewer seconds, and almost no thirds–and what third dates there were ended with him not tangled in the lady’s arms and sheets but standing on her porch steps, enduring a sisterly hug or a chaste kiss on the cheek, nodding dutifully as she described that special lady who was waiting out there somewhere for Maxwell to make her deliriously happy. And those were the good third dates–the ones that did not end with the young lady excusing herself from the table to visit the restroom and never returning, or suddenly remembering a sick grandmother, roommate, or ferret that required immediate attention. Coincidentally, these young ladies always seemed to remember these invalids right after Maxwell made them aware of his condition.
According to Dr. Gibbs, Maxwell’s insistence on telling a potential lover about his condition did not have its origins in chivalry, moral rectitude, or any notion of the potential lover’s informed consent. As Dr. Gibbs explained it, Maxwell had an inflated sense of the significance of sexual intercourse, in that it subconsciously represented to him the installment of another woman to the post his late mother had held. Since Maxwell’s mother was the only woman in the world who had been aware of his condition, therefore Maxwell–according to Dr. Gibbs–insisted that any prospective replacement must also be made aware before she could stand as a candidate for his mother’s place. Maxwell had great affection for Dr. Gibbs–it was this affection that inspired him to remain Dr. Gibbs’s patient, rather than any progress on his condition, as there had been none over many, many years–and he took this theory as well-meant, harmless, and rather silly.
But whether Maxwell’s code of precoital honesty was written in the moral block letters that Maxwell maintained, or Dr. Gibbs’s palimpsest over an Oedipal subtext, its chilling effect on his love life was not a matter of debate, and as the sympathetic hugs and kisses on the cheek piled up, Maxwell had found it increasingly difficult to regard his romantic situation with that lighthearted “right one is out there” attitude that he still professed even to his diary and psychiatrist.
He would have denied being angry with the women who had rejected him, but he could not deny that the rejections affected him. Maxwell’s long-term plans for life beyond the door of Demonologie–his dreams of teaching high-school history or of opening up a kayak rental place somewhere out west–felt farther away than ever, and somehow less important, as if his condition were not just something physical, but a message from the universe–a reminder that there was no real difference between the fire of ambition and the chill acceptance of disappointment–certainly not enough of a difference that Maxwell should bother himself about it. And in his love life, such as it was, the moment of confession had begun to weigh so heavily on his mind from the first moment Maxwell met a woman that recently he was not even able to engage wholeheartedly in his normal, flirtatious conversation.
This evening for example, when the cute but slightly heavyset redhead in the coat of bright green wool and the orange skirt jogged up to the club, swinging her shoulders and puffing in the cold, his first thought was not, as it should have been, how to gently deny her entry on account of her naively cheerful fashion, thick legs, and the extra twenty pounds she was carrying–some of it in her good-natured but round face. Instead he found himself imagining how she might react if, over third-date candlelight at Icarus or L’Espalier, he confessed his condition to her. Would she be a bolter? A sobber? Would she take his hand warmly as she friendzoned him? Or would she reject him in some novel way he had never seen before? Certainly she would not profess unchanged feelings for him. Certainly she would not accept him as he was. Certainly she would not smile, warmly and openly, as she was smiling just now, as if she were the one greeting him. As a result of this moment of fantasy, Maxwell was unprepared with his normal apologetic smile and gentle speech as she approached the rope, and in his confusion he reached for a doorman’s line he hadn’t used in years–a rookie blunder of a line, unworthy of Maxwell’s standing in his profession.
“I’m sorry, we’re really full tonight.”
The redhead’s smile vanished and she eyed him suspiciously, but she turned to go, and for just a moment Maxwell thought he might escape unscathed–until a taxi pulled up and two underwear models stepped out. The redhead turned back around, arms crossed, and watched Maxwell with raised brows and tapping foot as he lifted the rope and let the two underwear models walk through, leaning together and giggling over a picture on one of their cell phones.
“You’re really full of something tonight,” the redhead said.
“I’m sorry,” said Maxwell, “you deserved better than that.”
“You mean I deserved a better rejection?”
“Wow, that was bad too–look, I’m really off my game tonight.”
“Your game?”
“What I really meant to say was …”
As Maxwell had no idea what he really meant to say, he was grateful to one of the valets for choosing that moment to pop out of the club.
“Hey, Maxwell,” said the valet, zipping up his leather jacket, “I’m making a coffee run–you want one?”
“Yeah–actually, would you bring two? One for me and one for …”
“I’ll tell you what you can do with your coffee, Maxwell,” said the redhead, tugging her polyester skirt to cover her knees against the cold.
“Come on, let me buy you a coffee, it’s the least I can do. A coffee for me and a coffee for … come on, a coffee for …”
She sighed, looked over her shoulder at the cab–which was already pulling away–and turned back towards him.
“Shannon.”
“For Shannon, who likes her coffee …”
“Light and sweet. Just like you like your women, apparently.”
* * *
Dr. Russell Gibbs was not in the habit of making late night phone calls, or even of being awake late enough to consider them. But he had not been able to fall asleep tonight, and he could not say why. He’d watched the late news as usual, switching off the television as that heroic theme swelled over the closing credits and shots of the Boston skyline, and then laid himself out straight on his back as always, careful not to encroach on the right half of the bed, where he kept three pillows under the blanket to imitate the form of a sleeping figure. He had not consumed more caffeine than usual, or later–just the traditional can of Diet Coke with dinner. There was nothing particular on his mind–which was to say, no more than the usual. But sleep had refused to come.
Traditionally Dr. Gibbs had been a champion sleeper, drifting off just as happily in strange surroundings as at home, or to the sounds of sirens as of silence. Even as his life had slowly fallen apart over these last years, the obsession and self-doubt that had filled the days had rarely overflown into his nights, and Dr. Gibbs had at least been able to lay head on pillow and count on seven to eight hours of blissful unconsciousness. But tonight something had bothered him and kept sleep at bay–some shadow of an idea, some whisper echoing in the back of his brain–and finally, after an hour or two of tossing and turning, he’d put on his robe and slippers and come down to the cold kitchen for a mug of hot chocolate to take into the living room. There he planned to sip and rock, sip and rock, courting sleep and watching the garden fill up with snow.
Now he stood in his kitchen, the floor so cold he could feel it through his slippers, and eyed the jar of hot chocolate with suspicion. Turning it over in his hands he read and re-read the label, hoping each time that he would find something different printed there. It was not clear to Dr. Gibbs how “stone-ground chocolate” related to regular chocolate, or why it would occur to any sane individual to “blend” any kind of chocolate with “essential oils of fragrant lavender and sun-ripened chiles,” and he was not sure he wanted to find out. But as this was the only option that his ransacking of the cupboard had turned up, Dr. Gibbs got some milk from the refrigerator, poured it in a saucepan, and
put it to heat up on the range.
As the milk heated, Dr. Gibbs cracked the seal of the jar of hot chocolate, unscrewed the top, and sniffed at the fine powder that floated up. The nerve endings in his nostrils informed him that he had just snorted pure fire, while the taste buds nearest the back of his throat politely disagreed, opining that he had just swallowed a few well-chewed petals of lily, at least one of which had refused to descend his throat completely. It was official: his relaxing plan–with the rocking and the sipping and the snow-covered garden–had been spoiled. Yes, technically he could still go rock and watch the snow, but instead of steaming cocoa the mug would have to hold tea or decaffeinated coffee, and for Dr. Gibbs–to whom coffee tasted bitter, even with sugar and tea “dusty”–the prospect had lost a good deal of its appeal. But perhaps there was another option?
There was still, Dr. Gibbs pretended to just remember, one bottle in the house: a Balvenie 10 year that Maxwell, who couldn’t have known any better, had given him three Christmases ago. Naturally Dr. Gibbs could not have thrown it away right in front of Maxwell, so he had locked it in the bottom drawer of his desk, on top of a few letters and pictures he kept from the era before Clarissa-his-ex-wife. He had fully intended to pour the contents of the bottle down the drain as soon as Maxwell’s session was over, but they had run a little late that day, and Dr. Gibbs had taken no break between patients. Then, by the end of the day, Clarissa-his-ex-wife had returned home–and Dr. Gibbs was not going to open a bottle of scotch, not even to dispose of it, when she might walk into the room at any moment. After that the bottle had been forgotten until Maxwell’s presence reminded him of it again–at which point Dr. Gibbs, bound by politeness, could once again take no action. And so it had gone, visit after visit, and there the bottle had stayed, until it really had been forgotten–or almost so, experienced only as a vague unease every time Clarissa-his-ex-wife had gone anywhere near the bottom drawer of his desk.
And really, where would be the harm in opening the bottle now? Dr. Gibbs was not, after all, an alcoholic. He had been an unpleasant drunk–he was man enough to admit that–as he could admit that he had come to overindulge too often. He had driven in some conditions that now shamed him to recall, and he recognized his luck in having avoided any consequences on that score. But at the very worst he had become pre-alcoholic–as someone who was eating too high on the glycemic index and neglecting exercise might become pre-diabetic. Pre-diabetes was reversible. And surely just as a recovered pre-diabetic could indulge in an ice-cream now and again, Dr. Gibbs, who was not an alcoholic, could take an occasional drink, and the world would not end.
Exhibit A: for all Clarissa-his-ex-wife’s talk about groups and therapy and sponsors, when Dr. Gibbs had decided to quit drinking it had taken him not twelve steps to quit, but one: quit drinking. He had gone “cold Wild Turkey,” as he had bragged to her. And he had only quit drinking at all because Clarissa-his-ex-wife had made it so clear to him that she refused to live with an alcoholic. Well, he wasn’t an alcoholic–he had proven it by giving up alcohol–and she no longer lived with him anyway. So if he now decided to have a single drink, one small celebratory drink, and then did so without fuss or second-guessing or self-doubt, where would the harm be in that? Wouldn’t that in fact support the fact that he was not an alcoholic?
The milk he had been heating for the hot chocolate interrupted this line of reasoning, foaming over the top of the pan and hissing as it reached the blue flame beneath, and Dr. Gibbs grabbed the handle without thinking. Pain shot through his hand–he dropped the pan back to the stove, where it spilled foaming milk across the entire range.
“Pot holders are next to the refrigerator, second drawer down,” said a voice in his head.
“Stupid damn it stupid,” Dr. Gibbs yelled to no one, certainly not to the voice in his head, whom he made it a point never to dignify with an address. He sprinted to the sink and ran cold water over his hand.
He stood holding his hand in the flow of water until it ached with cold and then felt like nothing at all, looking out through the window above the sink over the narrow strip of grass that separated his house from the neighbor’s. It had stopped snowing.
As he stood there, looking out and thinking of nothing at all, Dr. Gibbs felt a sudden, almost painful event in his brain–a thought that had not been there just a moment before dropped from nowhere, fully formed, as if crystallizing from a super-saturated liquid where it had hung invisible. Dr. Gibbs understood right away that this was the idea that had kept him from sleep, but for a moment the crystalline thought sat there in the pre-language regions of his brain–he could not have expressed what he had just come to understand if he tried–and Dr. Gibbs merely continued to stand, his mouth slightly open, his hand still under the tap.
But during that moment Dr. Gibbs’s mind was not idle. He could feel his Rational Agent bestir itself: put on its work boots, grab a clipboard and some coffee, a little grumpy at being roused so late, and ride down the shaft elevator to one of the deepest levels of Dr. Gibbs’s subconscious–there to trudge, stooped and sweaty, through deep associations and intuitions until he reached the spot where this Big Idea had been unearthed, this potentially huge find, veined with some mythical substance that had not been seen in Dr. Gibbs’s subconscious for quite some time–something called “hope.”
Taking his time, so deliberate it seemed as if he were exacting revenge for the late hour, Dr. Gibbs’s Rational Agent poked around, testing this “hope” at various points, pinging it with the clip of his pen and considering the resonance, shining his flashlight deep inside and peering after the beam for flaws, jotting an inscrutable note or two. Finally he looked up–as if towards a buyer waiting for a painting to be authenticated–held his pose for a theatrical interval, and nodded once. This was it. After years of failure–after so many blind alleys he did not wish to number them–Dr. Gibbs had resolved the mystery of Maxwell’s condition, and of Derek’s. He would call them and tell them–now, immediately–he had to.
He scrambled for the phone, not even bothering to turn off the water, and was about to dial Derek when the voice in his head started up again.
“That late news edition you watch is called the ‘late news edition’ because it starts at 11, right? And it lasts an hour, which makes it midnight by the time you went to bed–plus however many hours you were tossing and turning–plus however long you were looking for hot chocolate–plus however many minutes your Rational Agent just spent rummaging around the basement of your brain. Is this really the hour a respectable psychiatrist goes calling his patients? Even his last two remaining patients, with whom he’s developed an unhealthy obsession that has driven everyone and everything else out of his life? Even with a ‘breakthrough’ like this ‘Big Idea’ of yours? That’s assuming, by the way, that this ‘Hsiao Experiment’ really is a breakthrough. The details on the news report you watched seemed a little light. I know your Rational Agent put his stamp on it, but he hasn’t exactly been batting 1000 recently, has he? If I were going to call Derek or Maxwell, especially at this hour, I’d want to make sure I knew what I was talking about first. But hey, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’m sure they’ll be up. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear from you.”
A moment’s reflection convinced Dr. Gibbs that the voice–whom he had dubbed Clarissa-in-his-head, owing to the resemblance she shared with Clarissa-his-ex-wife in both vocabulary and views on his character–had a point. He replaced the phone on the wall.
But returning to sleep was out of the question now. If it was too late to call, he would just have to wait until morning–and in the meantime, he would grab his laptop and do some research on this “Hsiao Experiment.” By the time the sun rose, he would have all his ducks in such a neat row that even Clarissa-in-his-head would have to admit that he’d cracked these cases wide open. And in the meantime, how could a celebratory sip or two go amiss? It might even take some of the sting out of his hand, which was starting to wake up again.
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To Dr. Gibbs’s amazement, Clarissa-in-his-head did not rebut any point of this final argument. More astonishing still, she pretended to find something interesting about her nails as he turned off the tap, wrapped a towel packed with ice around his hand, and walked to his office to retrieve his laptop and the bottle.
* * *
“Good evening sir,” said the guard in the booth, “and welcome to Mohegan Sun. Could I have your name?”
“Derek Field.”
The guard tapped at an iPad and swiped his finger left and right and left again across the screen, frowning.
“That’s Field as in F-I-E-L-D? As in ‘Field of Dreams?’”
“There a better way to spell it I’ve been missing?”
“Sorry?”
“That’s right. ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, I will come. You built it. Here I am.”
“Sorry, sir, but I’m having a little trouble finding your reservation.”
“I don’t have a reservation.”
“Ah–this lane is for our guests with hotel reservations.”
“The sign said this was the lane for valet parking.”
“Valet parking is an added service for our guests with hotel reservations only,” said the guard, looking to the right, where another car had arrived and was idling behind Derek’s. “But if you turn out to the left here, it’ll take you to the parking garage, and you shouldn’t have a problem finding the lobby and the front desk from there.”
Other Copenhagens Page 12
