Managed Expectations, Part 6: Guilt Trips In Midtown
Into Manhattan — The Sexless Therapist — A Great Week! — A Romance Questioned — Who Needs a Hug? — An Awful Shock
If Nicole planned well enough, she could ration her visits to Manhattan to about once a week, revolving around her standing weekly therapy appointment. Brooklyn had a Trader Joe's and a Steven Alan but, for some reason, it still didn't have any decent mental health professionals. So she took an N or a Q to Midtown every week to visit Ruby, her psychoanalytic psychotherapist.
The office was on the 40th floor of a building that supposedly once housed an infamous high-end brothel but was now populated almost solely by therapists. Today was no different from any of the sessions of the past five years: Nicole rode up the elevator with the same patients, of other therapists, that she had never spoken to, browsed all the requisite reading material (New York, the New Yorker, Psychology Today), and, when it was the hour, went inside and lay down on the couch.
This session was going to be hard. For one thing, she was feeling great, on par with the month she gave up gluten and refined sugar, except this time it was a week spent with Elias. They had weathered a particularly brutal post-Saragossa Manuscript Q&A together, kissed, and then spent almost every night after at some variation of one of the ubiquitous rustic locavore restaurants in Brooklyn with Farm or Barn or Garden or Commons in the name. They had been walking around the Gowanus Canal and had popped into Union Market to buy groceries when they heard about the death of Michael Jackson. Nicole considered that a solidifying moment in their relationship.
Ruby started making dismissive noises. "Relationship? What relationship? You two have basically been eating strawberries in bed together for a week."
Nicole was certain Ruby was not having sex. That must have been her that one time, spied from behind, at the Toys in Babeland on Bergen Street.
"Why aren't you happy for me?"
"I think you're high on oxytocin."
"Oh, so you're Patti Stanger now?"
"Okay." Ruby tried another approach. "What do you two talk about?"
What did Nicole and Elias talk about? Everything: mixtapes they made in high school, The Wall Street Baths versus The Russian and Turkish Baths, their shared passion for laser shows at the planetarium.
"Once we talked about how it's fun to use the word 'autumnal' in a sentence and then we decided we should we were both going to start a Scandinavian crime novel book club for just the two of us," she said.
Ruby sighed. "I think you need to remind yourself that you don't know this young man very well." She cleared her throat. "Our time's up for this week, but let's keep talking about this next week."
Nicole wrote out a check for $200, rode the elevator down, and walked toward the Manhattan Center, where she was supposed to meet Darshan. Amma was in town, hugging strangers for three days straight, and everyone at Kripalu had been telling her how, in these uncertain times, the only really authentic thing was human contact. Darsh, always on the lookout for new age cachet, felt it was completely necessary to get a hug from the Indian saint. Even if it meant waiting for five hours to do it.
Nicole made her way past the bumper stickers that read, "One World, One Spirit, One Love," the t-shirts that had "mother of bliss" printed in faux Devanagari script, and the blonde with dreadlocks telling a woman in a sari, "I swear I was Indian in a previous life."
"Your dress is too short," Darsh said to Nicole, who was wearing a new APC minidress. "It's disrespectful. India is a totally conservative country."
"Please don't start. Ruby just lectured me about how I'm too swept up in Elias."
"Aren't you?"
"Well, yeah. But honestly, what else do I have? There's only so much time I can spend transcribing interviews with Corbin Bleu and pretending like I'm too busy to go to dinner at Jared and Eva's."
"I heard Eva lives on Lean Cuisines."
"Ew!" Nicole laughed so hard that a couple sitting next to them wearing matching buffalo plaid turned to stare. Darsh's number was called and Nicole hugged Darshan goodbye-"Go get some inner peace!"-and got on the subway.
Back in Brooklyn, leaving the Atlantic/Pacific stop, Niole decided to make an unscheduled appearance. Elias lived just a few blocks away and she hadn't spoken to him in almost sixteen hours.
As she walked toward his garden apartment, she thought she saw someone at the door. She stopped and fished her glasses out of her tote bag, which had a map of Berlin on it. A tall brunette girl stood waiting at the doorstep. The girl rang the buzzer again. Elias opened the door. He kissed the girl hello. On the mouth.
Are you behind? Catch up on parts 1 through 5!
Marisa Meltzer lives in Brooklyn. Her next book, "Girl Power," will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February.
