THE PSYCHS OF MANHATTAN

by C. C. Harris

She was finding it harder to put up with clients whose sexual fantasies made her feel physically ill. One client had whispered in her ear, ‘We are going to play a game because you are special. Suck your thumb and call me Daddy while I touch you and stroke your princess hair, but don’t tell Mommy. This is our little secret.’

  Now she wanted to find her true self and be a positive role model for her daughter. She enrolled in a business degree and was ready to celebrate her new identity. Today was going to be the last time she stood on a corner. She finally had the courage to tell her parents the truth about her life. She had enough money saved for her studies and she could afford to see a psych for career counseling at The Manhattan Well-being Clinic.

  SIX

  Crystals and Nightmares

  ‘What about it, cutie? I can give you fifteen minutes any way you like for eighty dollars.’

  I jumped, ready to reach for my gun. ‘Jesus, you scared the crap out of me,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry I scared you, I’m sweet Sassy.’

  ‘All good,’ I replied, my pulse racing.

  One look at Sassy and my breath quickened. I was starved for sex and here was an opportunity to escape my loser reality even if it was a momentary fix. Instant satisfaction had been my downfall in the past and I didn’t dare look back now. The last thing I needed was to feel like shit on top of my self-loathing. I made a beeline for my apartment block before my dick ruled my brain.

  The longest relationship I’d ever had was with fiery Maria Chianti. She had offered me a burning passion for life and great sex until one night, I’d ended up in a drunken state between the legs of someone else. Maria had hurled my clothes off our balcony and screamed, ‘You’re just an arrogant, self-entitled pig! You don’t care about anyone only yourself. One day you’ll look in the mirror and know exactly what it feels like. What you’ve done to me will come back one day and bite you. It’ll be your karma!’

  What frightened me the most was that Maria’s words were ringing true.

  In my apartment, I stood by the window. I had a bird’s eye view of the street below. A shadowy figure was standing against a bus shelter. As the figure looked up, I ducked out of sight.

  Was he watching me? Had he been hired to sculpture my skull with bullets, a 1940’s-type hitman waiting to fulfil a contract and fatten his bank account?

  I pulled down the blind. I’d been careful. I’d told no one where I was staying. Collapsing on the bed with my pistol resting on my lap, I listened to a hungry mouse scavenging for food and a couple fuckin’ in the apartment across the hall. I drifted off to sleep, my dreams haunted by sights of blood and death.

  My grandmother called my dreams a hereditary gift from her people that I needed to embrace. ‘You have the power to help others, Curtis. You’re connected to our lost people and that means you can see things that others can’t. Curtis…open your mind…you will see the world differently.’

  My family ancestors are Native American. I glanced at a tribal tattoo stretched across my arm and felt a pang of guilt for not honoring my people. I wondered why I heard punishing voices. Why people were always making me feel guilty. Persecuting me. Telling me how to fuckin’ live.

  I’d felt my eyes droop when suddenly I jolted forward. I was sitting on a train. What the fuck was I doing on a train. Passengers had gaping wounds. I looked away, repulsed, and choked on the sweet odor of rotting flesh.

  ‘Where the fuck are we going?’ I yelled.

  A fleshless skull half turned. ‘We’ve finished our journey; we are going nowhere.’

  ‘What…what the hell do you mean?’

  ‘This is your destination. There’s no more stops. You’re at the end of the line.’

  My legs were paralyzed. Passengers reached out to touch me. The windows and doors were locked. I was trapped. Buzzing sounds became louder and louder. I brushed a fly from my ear and looked up. The ceiling was in motion and looked like rolling waves. A mass of flies covered its surface. The feeling of overwhelming fear and the stench of death were suffocating. I gasped for air and tried to yell, but nothing came out. My legs still wouldn’t move.

  A passenger reached out with her bony fingers. Her blonde hair was matted with blood and on her finger, was a crystal ring.

  ‘Please help, don’t let him take me. Please, I know you can help,’ she begged.

  A sea of arms tugged at my clothes.

  My eyes flashed open. My bed was a pool of sweat. I looked at the walls half expecting them to move as I resisted the urge to vomit. It was a familiar nightmare: people begging for help. It was draining. I just wanted everyone to piss off. I did a mad dash to the bathroom and patted cool water on my face, then hung onto the edge of the basin to catch my breath. My life was fucked and so were my dreams. As far as I was concerned, dreams had no meaning and the whole thing was bullshit, although the smell of death was up my nose.

  Trapped on a fuckin’ train swarming with flies and talking with mangled bodies left me feeling lightheaded and nauseated. I glanced at the clock. It was 6.00 am and I felt as if I’d just run a marathon. Fear was fuckin’ exhausting. I hoped I wasn’t destined to some fuckin’ mental ward. My door labelled ‘Crazy Curtis.’

  As I reached for my shaver I heard a noise. As I turned around I saw a mouse running along the skirting board. Jesus Christ, I was sharing my apartment with a fuckin’ mouse. The mouse suddenly stopped and looked up as if I was the intruder. ‘I can see you’re wanting to get out of this shithole. Well bad luck. You’ll have to make the most of your accommodation. Your stuck here with me but be grateful you’re not in a mouse trap. In the meantime, no playing or sleeping on my bed. You got it?’

  His whiskers twitched disinterestedly, and he groomed himself, unperturbed by my conversation.

  ‘You look like a Charlie that doesn’t give a shit about us fuckin’ humans. If you’re good, you’ll get a few scraps tonight. I usually don’t like rodents but…for now…you can live. Just make sure you stay out of my way. It’s the first day of my job.’ I pointed my shaver in his direction hoping for a response, but there wasn’t a single squeak. ‘If only my enemies were your size Charlie, life would be easier.’

  Glancing around the apartment before leaving, I thought again what a stark contrast it was to my former apartment.

  As I hopped on a bus to Madison Avenue, my thoughts drifted to the mystery man of last night at the bus shelter. A reminder that I had to pay off the mafia fast.

  The bus arrived on Madison just in time. As I entered the building, I wished I could spend the day under the trees in Central Park watching baseball.

  My first morning at work was busy. Clients came in for appointments all day and the administration tasks were straightforward. The doctor was either good at his job or there were lots of wealthy people who thought they needed help.

  It was 4.00 pm and the doctor’s last client for the day was Courtney Williams, waiting patiently and flicking through a magazine. Something caught my eye. My glance became a stare.

  ‘Is everything ok?’ she asked. She had a sweet, soft voice.

  ‘Oh yes, sure, it’s just that…I couldn’t help noticing your ring. I like it, it’s very…unusual.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. It’s a crystal. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. A Chinese vendor said that he had lots of rings but this one was…somewhat special.’

  ‘Why did he say it was special?’ I asked.

  ‘He said the ring had chosen me. The crystal deflects negative energy. Sorry, I hope I haven’t gone on too much.’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. Anyway, I’m the one who asked.’ I gave her a reassuring smile. It was the ring from my dream. I wondered at the chance of seeing the same ring the very next day.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a light flashing on the switchboard. It was the doctor.

  I pressed the button. ‘Yes, Doctor?’

  ‘Could you send Ms Williams in please?’

  ‘Sure,’ I responded.

  ‘As this is my last cli
ent, you can finish up for the day, Curtis.’

  ‘Thanks, Doctor. See you tomorrow.’

  I caught an express bus to Lewis. Once in Brooklyn, I headed out for a pizza. Brooklyn isn’t so bad after all, I thought. Something about the place gave me a sense of freedom, the same feeling I’d had growing up. As a kid, I’d roamed around my neighborhood without a care in the world, sometimes on my own and sometimes with friends. Life had been simple. How had it got so fuckin’ complicated?

  My thoughts drifted back to the client’s ring and I wondered about the creepy coincidence. I thought it weird that people relied on inanimate objects to change their lives. I wished I wasn’t so cynical. I wished I believed in something that was empowering.

  It was easy to find a pizza bar and the pizza was the best I’d tasted. Before leaving, I grabbed a piece for Charlie.

  Back at my apartment, I watched Charlie nibble at his dinner and hoped the Russians weren’t coming.

  SEVEN

  Mindfulness

  Before Courtney started seeing a psych, she didn’t think her life could change. Her income came from working on the streets and pleasing her pimp.

  Courtney suffered guilt over rejecting her family, who were devout Catholics. At the age of twenty, she’d got caught up in the drug scene and before long, prostitution and drug dealing were part of her daily survival. In the end, she hated herself and hated the sex industry.

  She received a morsel of money compared to her pimp. Despite the thousands of dollars that changed hands, she still lived in public housing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the rats were the size of cats. She’d slept with corporate leaders to seal business deals and it wasn’t unusual for her pimp to place a hidden camera during sex romps for blackmailing clients. The clients were easy prey.

  Courtney missed her hometown and especially her younger sisters. She had no contact with anyone from her past as she couldn’t bear them knowing about her life. When clients were scarce, she lived off food stamps and visited the local soup kitchen or YMCA. To Courtney, the Lower East Side was a place of loneliness and her heightened intuition sensed the presence of lost and displaced souls from another time.

  Courtney’s only friend had ended up hanging from the end of a rope after her ex-boyfriend had posted her nude selfie on-line. That night, Courtney had felt as if she was stranded on a desolate island. She felt invisible to the world. A ghost that people looked through as if she didn’t exist. Nothing seemed to matter.

  Her feelings of loneliness were overwhelming, and her reality became scrambled with suicidal thoughts. Courtney’s negative emotions escalated after she diagnosed herself online as having a major depressive disorder. She feared she would never be fixed. She couldn’t see the point of living if she was always going to be sad and lonely. She had decided it was the only way out. No one would care if she was gone. She came to the realization that life didn’t make sense.

  She remembered the sound of a distant train. She was standing still and quiet on the platform, staring at the railway track as the train approached. I wouldn’t feel like a failure anymore. It would be easy, she thought. She wouldn’t feel a thing. All she had to do was step to the edge and jump. She had made up her mind she didn’t belong. She was nothing and nobody cared. The forgotten one. This was her ticket to freedom from intolerable pain.

  Then, as she stood on the platform edge, she heard a voice. A voice that was calm and soothing and that didn’t judge her. ‘Please step back and stand with me. I want you to be safe. I will help you.’ She didn’t see anyone, and the next thing she remembered was waking up in the Manhattan Psychiatric Centre and spending two weeks undergoing a personalized therapy program.

  Her suicide plan had failed but she noticed she didn’t feel so hopeless and the voices in her head were no longer persecuting. The warmth of that stranger’s voice on the night of her suicide plan stayed with her. A voice that cared whether she lived or died. A voice that was by her side on the platform.

  She walked away from the hospital afraid she’d relapse, so she decided to follow through with a mental health plan and see a therapist. She was fortunate enough to see a psych who advertised free consults at her local YMCA. She had weekly sessions and enjoyed the bus trip from the Lower East Side to the world of the privileged in the Upper East Side.

  Courtney liked the contrast between New York’s haves and have-nots. It motivated her to better herself. She wondered how her psych could counsel others when he lived a privileged life free from financial stress, until he disclosed to her a childhood of suffering and pain. She saw him as her role model. Someone who could make positive changes despite the odds. His self-disclosed traumatic childhood made her feel a deep connection with him. He understood her. He knew what it was like to struggle with adversity. She had at last found what she longed for. Her soulmate.

  During this time, an inheritance investigator tracked her down to a soup kitchen close to her apartment and left his number. At first, she thought it was a joke or her old pimp looking for her. To her shock, when she called the number, she realized the investigator was genuine. She had hardly known her grandmother but for some reason, she had cared enough about Courtney to leave her a Ford Focus and some cash. Had her grandmother been the voice at the train station?

  She moved to a better part of New York and underwent drug and alcohol rehab, continuing her weekly counseling sessions with her psych. She was determined to stay away from drugs, and she wanted to continue with the counseling until she felt safe enough to cope on her own. She knew if she didn’t resist the drugs, her life would be finished.

  Courtney stopped working on the streets and found a part-time job at her local convenience store. She considered it her first real job. She liked her boss and enjoyed the contact with customers. For the first time in her life she’d felt worthwhile. She was no longer consumed by feelings of hopelessness. One day she hoped to study social work and help others. She couldn’t believe how her life had turned around.

  Courtney looked out of the doctor’s window and noticed it was getting dark. She had been talking with her psych for over an hour and now she was wondering why her counseling session had gone well over time. She didn’t want to be traveling home in the dark. At times, she found it difficult to be assertive. The last thing she wanted was to offend him. She looked at her watch and gathered the courage to speak. She stood up and hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘Thank you for the session but…I must get going.’

  ‘Next week then Courtney, same time?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Yes, that would be great,’ she responded as she walked towards the elevator.

  The doctor caught up and pressed the elevator button. ‘I’ll escort you down to the basement garage, it provides a quicker access to Madison. Oh, and here’s the book I promised. It’s about healing the mind and the body.’

  ‘Thank you. It looks like a useful resource.’

  He must think I’m special, she thought, amazed by his kindness. One day she would repay him. She couldn’t imagine him being absent from her life.

  She flicked through the book’s pages as the elevator descended and wondered why he cared so much while others had rejected her.

  ‘Thanks again for the book.’

  ‘You’re welcome Courtney. I’m glad to offer any resources that will be helpful.’

  As the elevator doors opened, she stepped into the dimly lit basement and could see the access to Madison Avenue.

  ‘I appreciate you escorting me, but I’ll be fine now. I can see the exit.’

  ‘Bye Courtney, have a safe journey home.’

  ‘I will.’

  As she walked away from the elevator doors, she turned to give her psych a wave but to her surprise, he was already gone. She didn’t want to miss her bus, so she quickened her pace. She thought she heard a noise. She stopped to listen and quickly scanned the basement. Nothing. That’s strange, she thought.

  She challenged her catastrophizing thoughts just
as her psych had taught her and repeated positive self-statements. ‘I’m ok, I’m safe, there’s no one here.’ As she walked towards the exit, she heard the noise again. This time it was louder. This time she realized it wasn’t her catastrophizing thoughts. Her heart was pounding, and she was trembling. Panicked, she felt her throat tighten and her breathing became restricted.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice echoed through the basement and off the unforgiving walls. There was no response.

  Her inner voice told her to run but she was paralyzed. The book slipped from her hands. It was too late. She was grabbed from behind. Her body was violently jerked backwards, and her heels scraped along the ground. She caught a glimpse of her attacker as he pulled her hair. She had trusted him! He’d been caring and supportive. How could he do this? How could this be happening to me? she thought.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. Her voice was barely audible. ‘You said…you said I was a good person and I was special.’

  His words were mocking. ‘You know, Courtney, bad things happen to good people. I’m sorry my dear, I’m not your knight in shining armor but I will tell you a little secret. Your fun is about to begin.’

  She was at his mercy. She heard voices and a vehicle screeching through the basement. She hoped the voices would save her. She gasped. Is this my punishment from God? Is this my fault?

  ‘Please…please…I beg you…let me go…I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Don’t you remember, Courtney? Happiness is valuing the present,’ the doctor said with a sinister laugh.

  Her life flashed before her eyes, and she knew it was the end.

  He pitilessly dragged her fragile body to a waiting van. She tugged on her finger and her crystal ring fell onto the basement floor. She hoped someone would find it. She prayed he hadn’t noticed.

  She heard his last chilling words.

  ‘Thank you, Courtney. We’ve had a positive and collaborative relationship, but now you are my financial solution. Because of you, I’m $700,000 richer. Financial mindfulness is such a wonderful thing. Enjoy your journey Courtney and remember, live in the moment.’