In a neon lit psychiatrist’s waiting room, David DeAngelis reads a story in an old magazine about a dog who fell off a yacht and swam 17 kilometres to shore, only to be killed by a drunk truck driver while trotting across the road. A middle aged woman rises from her seat, walks slowly past a framed print of Van Gogh’s ‘Vase with Twelve Sunflowers’ and yells at the young receptionist in a voice from hell, “I’ve been waiting for two fucking hours and if I don’t get to see Dr Defrays muchos fucking pronto, I’m going to slash my wrists again – and this time it will be all her fault – kapisch?”

David is 33, with cropped blond hair, high cheek bones and long eye lashes. He still has his boyish looks but he falls just short of handsome. People like him when he’s drunk. His love affair with Gloria Fenwick started passionately but over the last nine months, had turned masochistic. The worse he feels, the worse she treats him. Her dreams of freedom are chained to the guilt she feels about leaving her alcoholic husband.

Gloria is 32 but looks 25. A dead-ringer for a young Jane Fonda and she is tired of people telling her that. She owns a small bookshop in the high street which sells middle-brow literary fiction. She bought the bookshop for a song with her father’s inheritance. She dresses in bohemian chic and her girlfriends idolise her. She spends her time avoiding David and occasionally making love with him.

Gloria and David’s first date was at a judge’s 70^th birthday party. They ended up in bed where, due to an excess of alcohol, he could not perform. She was kind, which made it worse. On their second date, David drank moderately and they made love against a cold double-glazed glass window on the 35^th floor of the Hilton Hotel, as the red and yellow lights of the city twinkled below. He made her read Saint Paul’s Letters to the Romans while they had sex. Gideon’s Bible shook in her hands at the part about men and women giving their hearts to impurity.

While David slept, she slunk out from under the white 2000 thread Egyptian cotton sheets, got dressed and caught a taxi home. This was the pattern of their relationship – although Gloria denied it was a relationship. The affair went downhill from there. Gloria wouldn’t call it an affair either.

David looked at the clock in the waiting room. Dr Portia Defrays was running two hours late and she hadn’t seen the wrist slasher yet.

For three years David had been talking to Portia about how he loved and hated his mother, now ten years dead. His mother was an alcoholic depressive who died alone amongst a sea of Colleen McCullough novels and Readers Digests in a small house, in a small town, on a large island that had a solid track record for incest and teen suicides.

Portia asked a lot of questions about sex. David had been a boarder in an all-boys college. The denial of female company had stoked a sexual appetite, which grew imaginative and carnal in his teens and showed no sign of abating in his 30s. Portia turned the conversation around to his fears of Gloria’s infidelity, which amounted to her returning to her husband. He realised the irony. In the fires of lust lay the primal threat of abandonment, which his mother had threatened when he was a child.

xxxxx

Gloria sat on the edge of her chair and looked at Dr Terry Pears, who was in his mid 50s and a psychiatrist. Terry was making percolated coffee. Mondrian’s painting ‘Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow’, hung just above his head. It was Terry’s idea that Gloria might benefit from some time apart from her husband. Just to test the waters. See what freedom tasted like. Gloria was a little in love with him. Terry was in control and she wanted that badly.

“I’m still having problems with David,” Gloria said, taking the coffee and nestling it between her knees.

Terry had heard it all before. David was great in bed but he wanted too much. He wanted a lover, a girlfriend, a relationship. She loved David, she said. He was funny, intelligent and sincere but it was all too much. She was blocked and she didn’t know why.

“David keeps writing me letters,” she said.

“What sort of letters,” Terry asked, resting his cup on a Marie Claire.

“Love letters. I’ve had 30 in the past 12 months,” she said “It’s not like I lead him on. I’ve been trying to avoid him. I’ve stopped answering his emails.”

Terry put on his listening face. In the courting stages, he had pursued his wife with flowers, chocolates and love letters. He’d wait for her by the university gates and walk her home. She was charming, intelligent and studying to be a doctor. That was 25 years ago. The fires of desire had turned to cold hatred since then. Last night she had dangled the electric radiator over his bath as he cowered under the suds.

Here was this beautiful young creature, Terry thought, complaining that she felt guilty every time she had sex with a man who worshipped her. He looked at the clock. Another 50 minutes to go.

“And how many letters have you written him since this affair started?”

“Two – but calling it an ‘affair’ might be too much,” Gloria said.

“I’m wondering whether or not the love you feel for your husband,” Terry said looking like he was giving a benediction, “is really an attachment to something that dissolved a long time ago. I think what you feel for David is real but the guilt over leaving your husband is blocking you from future happiness. We have talked about how your husband was a father figure. Could it be that the guilt you feel is really the guilt of leaving your father or rather your father leaving you. That, inter alia, your husband symbolically represents your father and that this is causing a raft of issues of which guilt is only one.

Gloria wiped away a small tear. She did not like the implication but it was worth thinking about because she was paying Terry $300 an hour. She was 17 when her father died. She remembered holding his head in the ambulance as it raced to the hospital. He had the second heart attack in her arms.

“I’ve never thought of it like that. All I know is that I’m hurting both my husband and David and it’s killing me.”

For the briefest of moments, Gloria paused and cast her mind back to an episode of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’. Hadn’t that come straight out of a B&B script? It was something Brooke Logan would say, just before a commercial break. She wasn’t sure. Last week she told David that love was just a second-hand emotion. She was taken aback when he said that was a Tina Turner line. Even her thoughts were not her own.

Terry looked at the clock. His lawyer would call him in 15 minutes and he had to make sure the valuations of the properties and the investment portfolios were correct. There was no way he was going to spend another minute under the same roof as his psychotic wife.

“Gloria, do you mind if we cut this appointment short? I have an urgent personal matter that I must attend to.”

Gloria was a little hurt. “Of course not.”

Terry rose and walked quickly to the door. He held Gloria awkwardly by the elbow.

“You know, you’ll pass through this,” he said. “You’re a strong, beautiful, independent woman. Let’s talk again in two week’s time.”

xxxxx

Portia walked out of the consultation room with her arm around the wrist slasher. The slasher was laughing and smiling like a teenager. Portia had worked her short-term magic. She smiled at David and ushered him in.

“Good to see you, David. I’m so sorry I’m running so late. My job is full of sharp edges or something like that.”

The waste paper bin was full of tissues and the faint scent of Si perfume lingered in the air. A tower of patient files sat next to Portia’s chair with David’s name written on the top manila folder. Portia poured two glasses of ice water and offered David a packet of mint biscuits as part of the welcoming ritual.

“Christmas is high tide for neurotics,” she said. “It’s people seeing their families. Can be stressful.”

David nodded, chomped into a biscuit and washed it down with water.

“Now let me see,” Portia said, “the last time we spoke, you feared Gloria was going back to her husband, although she flagged that you two might remain ‘special friends’, which meant that you would still occasionally sleep together. Sounds very sixties”

“She’s a very liberated woman,” David said.

“Is that so? What has happened since?”

“Not much. I went to her shop last week and she said it wasn’t a good time to talk. I called her on the phone but she was just about to go out to visit a sick friend. I emailed her a couple of times but no reply. We slept together last night but she had to leave soon afterwards because her husband was picking her up early in the morning to take her to the dentist. Crown work, I believe.”

“Would it be so bad? You know, what do they call it – friends with benefits?” Portia asked.

The receptionist red light on the phone started flashing.

“Do you mind if I get that?” Portia asked. “She only calls if it’s important.”

“No problem.”

Portia hit the button.

“Yes, Janine.”

“It’s your husband. He said it’s urgent. He needs to talk to you on the study phone.”

Portia sighed, took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Sorry to mess you around. Trouble at mill. Back in a sec.”

Portia left the room, turned right and walked swiftly down the corridor and closed the study door behind her. The sound of Burt Bacharach’s “What the world needs now” wafted in from reception. The clock on the wall ticked past five o’clock. He remembered he needed to get chicken wings and soy sauce from the supermarket on the way home. The clock ticked past five fifteen when he heard the toilet flush at the end of the corridor.

Portia entered the room, her face ashen. She dropped in to the yellow leather chair and stared at a spot on the wall just above David’s head. Five seconds of silenced passed.

“Everything OK, Portia?”

“Of course. Now, where were we? Your fears that Gloria may be having affairs behind your back or was it you think she may go back to her husband? Whatever the case, they may be realistic. They may not. Women can be deceitful. Jung said something about them harbouring a deep primality that men could never fathom. Gloria sees Dr Terry Pears, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, why?”

“Of no import. Tell me your fears about Gloria having sex with other men.”

xxxxx

David’s journal – one month later

Unrelenting nightmares. Can’t focus on work. Drinking too much. Taking two elephant sized sleeping pills and I’m still awake at 3.00am writing this shit. Something invisible is practising on me. A hidden intensity. It’s unrelenting.

Me and Gloria are different. We come from two different tribes. While she was a teenager driving around with her middle-class friends from Presbyterian Girls College, I was sleeping with girls in asbestos outhouses out the back of industrial estates. If there was a place for endless reflection, my tribe would have set fire to it.

Portia again said she was worried about Gloria seeing Terry Pears. I’ll do some research on this Pears guy. Seeing Portia once a week now.

xxxxx

Gloria finished her crème caramel and ordered a café latte. David looked at her, looked at the Italian waiter behind the counter and wondered if he had slept with Gloria. Her bookshop was next door and she was in the café two or three times a day. He crossed his knife and fork and pushed the half-eaten spaghetti bolognaise away.

“All I asked is whether or not you thought you were making progress with your psychiatrist?” David said.

“No. What you asked was ‘did I think Terry was making any progress with me, aka, as an object of seduction?” Gloria hissed. “You’ve really got some bloody nerve. We were having a nice lunch together and then you had to fuck it up. Have I asked any questions about you and what’s her name? You’re the one who needs the psychic surgery. You’re cracking up, you know that? Last week you called my best friend and asked her if she was in a lesbian relationship with me. She’s the commissioning editor of the largest publishing company in town, you fucking idiot! And even if I was having an affair with her or Dr Pears or Bob Geldoff, what the hell has it got to do with you?”

Gloria threw $20.00 on the table, picked up her fake fur op-shop coat, and stormed out. David stared at the froth on her cup and imagined Bob Geldoff trying to unhook her bra. The Italian waiter turned his back on him.

xxxxx

David stared at Portia’s back as she hunted in a cupboard for the mint biscuits. He wondered what she would be like in bed. Whether she’d let her hair down and take her glasses off. Would she call him daddy? Portia finds the biscuits, rips open the pack with her teeth and throws them on the table.

“God helps those who help themselves,” she said.

The rings around Portia’s eyes look like thunderheads. There’s a nasty bruise on her ankle. She sits down, pulls his file to her lap and reads her last entry.

“How long have I been seeing you now?

“About three years.”

“In that time, have our sessions helped you at all?”

“They helped getting over the fact that my mother was a total arsehole.”

“Your mother was human just like you, with weaknesses and foibles. Have they helped you get a handle on Portia, her apparent rejection of you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I thought so,” Portia said. She put the file on the chair and took a deep breath. “The reason is existential. I’m not entirely comfortable with her seeing Dr Pears. It is my duty to give you some confidential information. It is common knowledge amongst the medical fraternity that Dr Pears forms – how can I say this? – highly personal relationships with his younger female patients. Relationships which are not entirely therapeutic. It is a delicate matter and the Psychiatric Association of Psychiatrists is investigating.”

“You think Portia is sleeping with him?”

“The probability is high. Naturally, she would not disclose the fact because Dr Pears can be charismatic and may have some hold over her. It’s possible that he has used his therapy skills to get her to fall in love with him. She may also feel humiliation. His sexual appetites, so I’m told, are unusual. The reason we have not made any head way, to use a naval term, is due not to any psychological flaw of yours but rather to Dr Pear’s sexual entrapment of Gloria.”

David stared at Portia’s legs. She had a small varicose vein running over her calf muscle. He finished his glass of ice water, sat back and crossed his legs. He imagined Gloria and Dr Pears, naked in his office. He would make her read the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, starting at page one, while he had sex with her. A cold rage settled on his heart.

“I didn’t know whether it was right to tell you,” Portia said. “Don’t confront Gloria with this. It would compound her guilt and may send her in to a tailspin from which she would never recover. I suggest for the time being, that we do nothing and let the Psychiatric Association deal with the matter. They can be slow but they will get to the bottom of it. Go home now and put your faith in the medical fraternity. Believe me, we eat our own.”

David decided not to walk to Gloria’s bookshop and confront her. He walked across the road, past the nightclub district and into City Army Disposals. A pimply teenager wearing a green combat jacket ambled over to him.

“Can I help you, mate?”

“I’d like to see some hunting knives, please,” David said calmly.

xxxxx

David’s journal – two weeks later

A stitch in time saves nine a stitch in time saves nine a stitch in time saves nine a stitch in time saves… Have taken a week off without pay. Can’t think, can’t write. All I can think of is that slime shrink putting his hands-on Gloria. I’ve stopped taking the Luvox on Portia’s advice. The problem with thinking is that you’re always thinking about thinking.

Gloria says we should have some time apart. I said the last fucking nine months have been time apart and asked her for my house key back. That went down like a shit sandwich. What did Wittgenstein say? ‘those who live in the present, live in eternity.’ That’s not good. Not good at all. Gloria in Excelsis.

xxxxxx

Terry said good night to the receptionist and was about to lock the glass security door and leave for the night. He wore a heavy cashmere coat over a cheap black suit, which he bought that morning. The office keys were in his hand when he heard a noise coming from the toilets. The toilet door opened slowly and a man in his mid 30s with blonde hair and high cheekbones walked in to the reception. His hands were buried deep in to the pockets of a black duffle jacket. In the neon light, Terry could see the man had been crying.

“Dr Terry Pears, I presume,” he said.

“How can I help you?”

“God helps those who help themselves. Isn’t that right? My name is David DeAngelis – David of the Angels. Maybe the Angel of Death. I understand you have been ploughing my girlfriend – although she wouldn’t like me calling her a girlfriend or even ex-girlfriend – as it connotes a relationship of some kind. But I understand that you have formed a special relationship with her. Supplanted me in her affections. Yes, ‘supplanted’ is the right word. I’m a journalist you know. I know about words.”

“The office is closed for the day,” Terry said, “but I can see you’re upset. Would you like to come in to my study…”

“Said the fly to the spider. Come in and see my etchings. I suppose if I had your sickness, I too would have spent six years in medical school and then another seven years of study being a shrink, with the sole aim of exercising my sexual fantasies on my patients.”

“What are you…?”

“Don’t interrupt Dr Pears, that’s not good technique. You see, I know about those things.”

“You’re Gloria’s boyfriend.”

“How did you guess? But I must correct you” David said, pushing Terry in to the study. “Gloria wouldn’t like the term ‘boyfriend’. It defines a man in a loving and unique relationship with a woman. I’m afraid the only person in this room who has a unique relationship with Gloria is you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“So, this is where it all happens,” David said looking around the room. “The study of Dr Nice Pair. I see you have a Mondrian as well. We both share a taste in art and the same woman. And there’s the black couch. I’ve never understood until now why psychiatrists have couches. Picture this. Gloria is upset. You sit beside her, comfort her. The gentle squeeze. The light brush of her hair and before she knows it, you’re on her like a praying mantis.”

David pulls out the hunting knife, runs it across his cheek and makes stabbing thrusts as he moves towards Terry.

“First of all, I never laid a hand on Gloria,” Terry cries out as he falls over the couch. “We have no relationship except patient and doctor. She came to me because she was troubled. Not only about the relationship with you but with men in general. She’s hardly going to want a sexual relationship with me. I have a psychotic psychiatrist for a wife, who wants to castrate me.”

“Your wife’s a shrink? What’s her name?”

“Portia Defrays”

“She’s my psychiatrist. I’ve been seeing her for three years.”

“You poor bastard – and I mean that in a non-condescending or judgemental way. She has been poisoning your mind against me.”

“Why?”

“So, the Psychiatric Association of Psychiatrists bars me.”

Terry starts crying. David hands him a tissue and directs him to the couch.

“I know you’ve got problems with Gloria,” Terry said. “I’m not trying to deny your reality but you’ve got no idea what it’s like living with Portia. A year ago, she met another man – a patient and a neurosurgeon. He’s young, handsome and as Portia has told me numerous times, hung like a horse. We go for weeks without talking to each other. She wants a divorce, the house and 75 per cent of our investment portfolio. I said no. It would bankrupt me. I’ve been living in hell.”

David sat down on Terry’s chair and looked at the psychiatrist sobbing in to a tissue. There but for the grace of Freud goes me, he thought. He put his hand on Terry’s shoulder.

“You’ve got it bad. I never realised. Makes me and Gloria’s problems seem like small potatoes.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t dismiss your problems so easily,” Terry sniffled. “You asked Gloria for your house key back. While I’m not the fount of all knowledge about women, she will never, ever forgive you for that.”

“Why?”

“You got in first. Even though she treats you like trash and then sleeps with you, the fact you denied her access to your house, to your inner domain, is a cardinal sin. She won’t see the hypocrisy. She just won’t see you.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Get a dog”

David put the knife back in to his pocket as the night security guard poked his head around the corner

“Working late Dr Pears?”

Terry pulled a clump of tissues from the box and blew his nose.

“Hullo Patrick, yes, well no. We’re just finishing up here, thank you.”

David straightened the patient files on Terry’s desk. Gloria’s file was on top. David crossed his legs and stared at the Mondrian print.

“Have you ever considered using the media? I presume Portia is well known in medical circles.”

“She’s well known in political and charity circles. Where ever there’s a circle, you’ll find Portia hovering like a bird of prey.”

“A news story about her and kinky sex with a neuroscientist, who was also a patient, that would probably swing a judge around to making a settlement in your favour, would it not?”

“You would do that for me? But you hardly know me.”

“Gloria said I should try to reach out to people and make new friends. It’s a bold experiment because I don’t really like people. A nice page three story with a picture wouldn’t do my career any harm and it would serve Portia right for yanking my chain.”

Terry smiled. He did not have many friends as they felt he was judging them. Which he was.

“I was wondering whether you would like a drink?” Terry said. “There’s a small bar around the corner. A problem shared is a problem halved – or something like that.”

“Do you mind if I bring Gloria’s file with us? It would make interesting reading”.

“Of course.”

Terry locked the glass office door and they walked down the corridor to the lifts.

Terry’s personal office phone started ringing.

“Do you want to get that?” David asked.

“No. They’ll leave a message. They always leave a message.”

They entered the lift and made their way to the ground floor. In Terry’s study, the answering machine clicked on.

“Terry. Terry … if you’re there, pick up. It’s Gloria. Damn. Look, I can’t make drinks this Friday night as it’s my husband’s birthday. Are you free Saturday night for dinner at my house?”