Shaking his head slowly, Christopher said, “Thanks, but I don’t think you can help.”
“Don’t close me out, Chris.”
Plea or caution? He couldn’t quite decide. While he debated, she retreated two steps and disappeared behind the closing door. A moment later there was a splash.
Caution, he decided.
“Would you like to see any further mail?” asked the AIP.
Christopher laughed brittlely. “No.”
“Would you like to select alternate music?”
“No.” He was silent for a long moment, trying to read the feeling in his body without putting words to it, trying to grasp his experience of his own life. Is this where you want to be? Is there anything right about who you are this instant? he asked, and the answers were reflected back to him as echoes of sorrow. No. Not the tenth part.
Then what are you going to do about it?
Male laughter in the distance. He drew a slow deep breath, his eyes closing briefly. “Judy?”
The AIP responded to its name. “Yes, Chris?”
He sighed. “See if you can reach Eric Meyfarth.”
Meyfarth did not call back, Jessie did not come back, and Mark did not leave until after midnight.
By that time, Christopher had retreated to the darkness of his bedroom, trying to pretend he was tired. When Loi slipped into his room, he tried to pretend he was asleep. She stood by the bed for a long time, watching him, saying nothing. Just when he thought that she was about to leave, she spoke.
“Would you like some company?” she asked gently.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her, his eyes suddenly damp. “Yes,” he said hoarsely, pulling back the sheet.
Loi slipped into bed easily and snuggled against him in a position born of compromise and experience, lying on her side with one arm hugging his chest, one leg hooking over his. Her skin was silky and warm, and her hair smelled faintly of spa oils, but not at all of Mark.
Despite their nakedness, the embrace was chaste, the intimate space they shared the creation of two friends, not two lovers. She wrapped him in a safe, comfortable cocoon built from her love and her body and her energy, and her presence was balm for his pain. He was so grateful for the gift that he almost began to cry.
“I called Dr. Meyfarth,” he whispered, the words an offering.
“Sssh,” she said, turning her head to kiss his shoulder. “Sleep.”
Christopher closed his eyes and listened to the echoes of his unhappy thoughts, now fading beneath the sound of their breathing, each breath deeper and more tranquil than the last. Sooner than he would have guessed possible, he was asleep.
Loi was gone when he woke in the morning—she did not like to share a bed for sleeping, so he was not surprised. But the touch of peace that she had given him remained, nestled against the resolve he had found on his own. Between the two, it was a little easier that morning to face both the day and himself.
Eric Meyfarth did not make it easy.
“I got your message,” he said when he called back. “What’s up, Chris?” His tone, like his expression, was pointedly neutral.
“Can I see you?”
“That depends,” said Meyfarth. “Why?”
Asking had been hard enough. Christopher had not expected to have to explain himself. “Because if I saw someone else, I’d have to waste all that time getting to where we left off.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” Meyfarth said dryly.
“I didn’t mean—”
“But I’m not quite persuaded,” he went on. “The last time I saw you, you were a bit skeptical about my usefulness.”
Christopher looked away. “I wasn’t ready to be helped.”
“True enough. What’s changed?”
“Nothing. Except for the worse. And that’s what has to change. I don’t want to feel like this.”
“You said much the same thing a few weeks ago, in my office. But you broke your contract with me and walked out when it got tough.”
“I—” The quick defense died on his lips. “I guess I did. Old habits die hard.”
“Sometimes they don’t die at all,” Meyfarth said. “What assurance do I have that you’re serious this time?”
Knitting his brow and frowning, Christopher considered. “I don’t know. None. I have to hope you’ll trust me. Which comes harder the second time around, I suppose.”
Nodding, Meyfarth said, “You know that I’m going to go right back to the sore spots, right back to your father and your family.”
“I know. I just don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you.”
“Why is that, Chris?”
“Because I don’t know how much I know.”
“Ah,” said Meyfarth. “I’m confident that, at some level, you remember everything that’s important to remember.”
“How can you say that? You can’t know.”
“No, I can’t—not with complete certainty,” said Meyfarth. “But it’s something I’ve come to believe about people. Inside every one of us is the frightened four-year-old, the nine-year-old explorer, the restless adolescent, and the twenty-year-old dreamer we once were. Remembering is easy. It’s the forgetting that we have to practice.”
“It comes naturally enough to me.”
Meyfarth shook his head. “You’re self-taught, I assure you. The heart of your problem is the pretense that all you are is what you are now. You’ve been living unconnected to your past.”
“I just don’t archive things like other people do,” Christopher said defensively. “Look, I have trouble remembering what happened two years ago, let alone twenty. I wish I had more stories about my childhood. I wish I had more stories about my father. But I don’t. I’m lost when the conversation turns to people telling funny anecdotes on themselves. I just don’t remember that sort of thing. I don’t know what I was like when I was ten. And I don’t have anyone to help me remember.”
“You don’t need anyone,” Meyfarth said simply.
“I need something. You, anyway.”
Meyfarth shook his head. “You know where the gold is buried. I can only guess. If you need a map, you have to look in your own life. Have you ever kept a diary? Letter archives? Any family video albums lying around?”
“No and no. Not many pictures.” He paused. “And when I look at them, I can only see this little boy that I can’t really remember being.”
“Because you won’t let yourself. If you were connected to your past, those pictures would make you feel, not remember,” said Meyfarth. “You’re a curious one, Chris. You don’t even get emotional about your emotions.”
“That’s not true—”
“It is. Which is why they all come out as anger.”
Christopher looked away.
“You need to be reconnected, Chris.”
“How do we do that?”
“We don’t. You do.” Meyfarth pursed his lips. “I was hoping to get what I needed talking to you. But the trust is coming a little hard, Chris. I think you’re going to have to show me something before we can pick up our sessions.”
“What?”
“How long has it been since you talked to your father?”
“Uh—a few weeks.”
“Your sister?”
Wincing, Christopher admitted, “A couple of years.”
“Okay,” Meyfarth said, nodding. “Here’s my offer. I can slot you at two, Monday—if sometime between now and then, you give your sister a call and ask her what kind of kid you were. Or something equally risky. What do you say?”