“Oh yeah, you’ll like this,” said Carla. “‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.’”
“Did she really say that?”
“No, some guy called Thoreau said that. She just put it on her website. What the doctor says is ‘Do you have two selves? Is the self you present to the world in better or worse shape than the self you keep private? Would you like to heal the separateness you experience even as you extend yourself to others?’ Then there’s some stuff about holistic empowerment. You planning to get empowered?”
“It couldn’t do any harm, could it?” said Billy.
“Well, it’d make the social worker happy.”
“That’s what I live for.”
He seemed suddenly distracted and sad. Carla decided he needed cheering up.
“I’ve been thinking about tattooing,” she said.
“For the love of God, why?” said Billy, and instantly realized that he was overreacting. The last thing he wanted to do was alarm his daughter. “I mean, aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about tattoos?”
“I’m not thinking of getting one,” Carla said.
Billy was thoroughly relieved that they weren’t having that conversation.
“The thing is,” Carla said, “I don’t understand how anybody ever starts doing it in the first place. I mean, who’s going to get a tattoo from somebody who’s never done any tattooing before?”
Billy gave a small, uninterested grunt that he hoped was enough to stifle the conversation.
“Maybe most people start on themselves,” said Carla, immune to his tactics. “And I hear that some people practice on a pig, but it’s going to have to be one very docile pig, isn’t it?”
“Maybe a dead pig,” Billy suggested.
“But that’s where I could come in, isn’t it?” said Carla. “Somebody could practice on me. They wouldn’t use a real needle, just a blunt stick, like a knitting needle, something that wouldn’t break the skin. And they could draw a pattern on me, all over my body if they wanted, and then when they’d finished, they’d see if it was any good. And if they didn’t like it, then they’d just wait awhile till it disappeared and then start all over again, keep on doing it until he (or she) got really good. Then move on to real ink. It could be a great after-school job.”
“Tell me you don’t mean any of this,” said Billy gloomily.
Her attempts to cheer him had been a conspicuous failure.
“You really think you need some life coaching?” she asked.
“Nah,” said Billy. “I just need a life.”
* * *
Akim had set up the appointment for late in the afternoon. That allowed Billy to pick up Carla from school and take her home before doing the job, though Akim had surely not taken that into account when making the arrangement. The doctor’s office was on the ground floor of a grand, red-brick, three-story house in one of the leafiest, safest, most expensive parts of town. Access to the office was via a side entrance, and Billy guessed that the doctor lived in the house upstairs, presumably not alone, given the size of the house. For now, however, there was just one car in the drive, and that promised to make things easier. He parked the Cadillac in front of it, boxing it in.
Billy tapped on the office door and tried the handle. It was unlocked, and he stepped into a tiny reception area where Carol Fermor, looking rather less confident and sleek than on her website, was hammering at a keyboard and scowling at a computer screen.
“I’m looking for Dr. Fermor,” Billy Moore said, though he knew he’d found her. “Dr. Carol Fermor.”
“That’s me.”
“Oh, okay. I thought you might be the receptionist.”
“I don’t have a receptionist,” she said, and it sounded like a complaint. “And this computer is killing me.”
“I’m your five-thirty,” he said.
“Right, of course. Hello, Mr. Smith. William Smith, is it?”
So Akim had made the appointment using half of Billy’s real name. He tried to calculate the degree of insult and the degree of risk.
“Sounds like a fake name, doesn’t it?” he said.
The doctor simply replied, “Go on through and take a seat in my office. I’ll be right with you.”
Billy moved through the reception area and, via a frosted-glass door, into a large, bright room that looked out onto a trim but lush square of garden. To the limited extent that Billy had any preconceptions of what a life coach’s office would be like, he had imagined something between a hospital room and a hotel gym. This place was homely: worn rugs, unmatching furniture, a huge flabby couch. There were table lamps in the shape of ballerinas that looked like they revolved and a shelf displaying a row of Minnie Mouse figurines. And although there were framed certificates on the wall, there were also pieces of children’s art and a photograph of a younger Carol Fermor standing thigh-deep in a trench, with Egyptian ruins in the cloudy yellow distance behind her. Billy was still looking at that picture when she came into the room, but he pretended he was looking at the certificates, examining her professional credentials.
“Are you a real doctor?” he asked.
“I’m not a medical doctor, no. My doctorate was actually in archaeology and anthropology. Then I had a long career in human resources. I’ve been a life coach for a decade or so. And you?”
“No, I’m not a real doctor either.”
She offered a wintry smile.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.
Billy selected a plain, straight chair that had its back to the window. Carol Fermor sat down on a chair just like the one he’d chosen, angled at a careful 45 degrees to his. She balanced a yellow legal pad on her knee, took out a slender gold mechanical pencil. Very old-school, Billy thought, though he had no idea what new-school would have looked like.
“Well, Mr. Smith, how are you? You sounded a little anxious on the phone.”
“Yes,” he said. What point was there in saying it hadn’t been him who’d made the call?
“So, Mr. Smith, William, what do you think I can do for you?”
“Tough questions first, eh?”
There was no smile from her this time, and nothing at all from Billy.
“All right,” she said, “let me tell you how this usually works. At a first session like this neither of us should expect too much. We’ll talk. I’ll ask you a few questions. You’ll ask me a few questions. I’ll explain what I do. You’ll explain what you hope I can do. And if we decide to move forward, there are various personality tests and questionnaires we might find useful as a starting point.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Billy.
“We should both come without fixed ideas, but there is one very simple thing I’d say: you must be ready for change. Are you?”
“Fuck yes,” said Billy. “Oh sorry. Yes, yes, I’m ready for change.”
“Good.”
She allowed him to sit in an awkward silence for a while, until he felt obliged to say, “I feel like a bit of a fraud coming here really.”
“It’s not unusual to feel that way. That’s often part of the problem. There’s no need for those feelings.”
They sat in silence for an even longer spell, and this time she cracked first.
“Well,” she said, “Freud — though you won’t find many Freudians around these days — tells us that love and work are the only therapies.”
“Smart guy,” said Billy.
“He had his moments, yes. So, William, how’s work?”
“Hard,” he said. “Too hard.”
“How so?”
He was only briefly tempted to describe the stresses of the parking business. Instead, he said, “My boss is the real problem.”
“Bosses so often are. What line of business are you in, exactly?”