She parts her lips sometimes when he gets up to leave every other Monday at three to make his four o’clock appointment. He hasn’t told her. He won’t tell her. He thinks she already knows anyway.
He parks his car on the street, a few blocks from the building. He watches his feet on the sidewalk, making sure the one is placed safely in front of the other. The sky is gray and the air smells crisp like burning wood.
Downtown is decorated for Christmas with lights and banners and shop windows filled with festive displays. Christmas carols feel like their being pumped through some citywide speaker system. Little Drummer Boy is playing as he walks to the building, but on the next block it’s Rudolph and then it’s Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas which his mom used to sing to him when he couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve and it makes him drowsy to hear it.
He’s a block away from the building when the snow starts to fall.
It doesn’t fill him with that childlike feeling of joy like it usually does. Instead he can’t help but feel as if maybe he’s trapped inside of a snow globe.
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“I’ve been tired lately, really tired. But I think it’s just winter and the fact that when I get up in the morning it’s still pitch black outside. I hate waking up in the dark. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Yeah, other than that I’m doing pretty good.”
“Well, as you know, my family is all still pretty local except for my sister who lives in New York. She’s coming down with her husband and, yeah, the whole family will be together. It’ll be nice.”
“At work, we’re doing this Secret Santa thing . I got her.”
“This green teapot that she said she saw in this store a couple months back. She really likes tea and this way she can make it at her desk at work.”
“I’m also, uh, thinking about putting a lot of random inside joke sort of things inside of it. Like little bonus gifts.”
“Well, this one time the power went out at work and so we played Boggle by candlelight for hours and had this really intense tournament while we were waiting for the power to come back. She won and I blamed it all on the timer which I still have so I thought I’d put that in there.”
“Yeah, she’ll like it.”
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Now, he writes something down on that notepad.
He leans forward to try and see what’s being written, but the writing is tiny and the letters blend together.
He thinks maybe it says something about “infatuation,” but maybe not.
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“Anyway, we’re having this party later in the week which will be horrible, but she usually makes those sort of things more fun.”
“My boss will probably find some way of getting around corporate’s rule about not having liquor at office parties. And- I mean, she’s really adorable when she’s drunk.”
“I didn’t? Oh. Pam. Her name is Pam.”
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The couch that he’s sitting on isn’t comfortable. It’s supposed to be, but it’s too soft. He sinks into it too deeply and he feels like he won’t be able to stand back up.
His mustached therapist (though he hesitates to call him “his therapist”, because he doesn’t even really want to be here) is wearing argyle socks and a seasonal tie with classic looking Christmas trees on it. Which is strange, because he could’ve sworn this guy was Jewish.
He feels himself sink even further into the couch.
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“My roommate Mark’s out of town right now. He went to visit his mom who lives in New Jersey. So, yeah, I guess I’ve felt a little lonely lately.”
“I don’t know why I’m- I mean, what do you want me to talk about?”
“I’m not feeling anything, that’s really the thing. I just really don’t feel anything much these days. I don’t know what it is.”
“I guess it happened gradually. I don’t know.”
“About a month ago, I stopped dreaming. That sounded really overdramatic, didn’t it?”
“No, it’s not like I don’t remember my dreams. I just honestly stopped dreaming about anything. I can remember blankness, maybe just white. Like static or something. Is there some psychological condition where people stop dreaming?”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
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He is acutely aware of his shaking knee. It’s a nervous habit he’s always had. He puts his hand on it, but it just keeps bouncing up and down. He feels like it’s giving him away. He feels like it’s giving this guy exactly what he’s looking for. A weakness. Some telling sign that there’s actually something wrong with him.
There’s nothing wrong with him.
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“I’m seeing this girl, Katy.”
“Yeah. She’s pretty, funny, not really smart, but she’s not stupid either.”
“About five months, maybe. In the beginning, it was on and off. But these past two months, it’s gotten more serious.”
“No.”
“I try, but I can’t.”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
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He watches more notes get scribbled onto the notepad. He doesn’t bother trying to read them, because he already knows what they say about him.
There are thirty minutes left in the hour and he notices that everything in this office is some deep shade of red.
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“I was thinking about telling her. Do you think I should tell her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because I know what she’ll say.”
“That she can’t leave him after ten years of being with him.”
“Yeah, exactly. It’s the only thing about her that I wish-”
“I wrote it in a card.”
“Yeah. No, yeah. You’re right. I guess it’s not really something that you should just say in a Christmas card, but-”
“I’m just scared, I guess.”
“Losing her completely.”
“It says, uh, hold on. I’ve actually got it with me. Here.”
“Yeah, she is. She really…is.”
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Like any other day, the clock hits five as his eager eyes are watching.
He stands up quickly, running his hands along the front of his pants even though his palms are completely dry.
The therapist, with his notepad and his socks and his assumptions, opens his mouth like he wants to say one last thing, maybe he has some golden nugget of advice, but he closes it and smiles, nodding.
Outside, the snow is deep and he panics just for a brief moment at the thought of how long it will take him to get home.
