More Than Human

He looked at me for a long time. It was the first time he’d used his eyes on me for anything but a flash glance. Then he picked up the bill.

‘What do I do first?’ I demanded.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How do we start?’

‘We started when you walked in here.’

So then I had to laugh. ‘All right, you got me. All I had was an opening. I didn’t know where you would go from there, so I couldn’t be there ahead of you.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ Stern said. ‘Do you usually figure everything out in advance?’

‘Always.’

‘How often are you right?’

‘All the time. Except – but I don’t have to tell you about no exceptions.’

He really grinned this time. ‘I see. One of my patients has been talking.’

‘One of your ex-patients. Your patients don’t talk.’

‘I ask them not to. That applies to you, too. What did you hear?’

‘That you know from what people say and do what they’re about to say and do, and that sometimes you let’m do it and sometimes you don’t. How did you learn to do that?’

He thought a minute. ‘I guess I was born with an eye for details, and then let myself make enough mistakes with enough people until I learned not to make too many more. How did you learn to do it?’

I said, ‘You answer that and I won’t have to come back here.’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘I wish I did. Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?’

He shrugged. ‘Depends on where you want to go.’ He paused, and I got the eyes full strength again. ‘Which thumbnail description of psychiatry do you believe at the moment?’

‘I don’t get you.’

Stern slid open a desk drawer and took out a blackened pipe. He smelled it, turned it over while looking at me. ‘Psychiatry attacks the onion of the self, removing layer after layer until it gets down to the little sliver of unsullied-ego. Or: psychiatry drills like an oil well, down and side-wise and down again, through all the muck and rock until it strikes a layer that yields. Or: psychiatry grabs a handful of sexual motivations and throws them on the pinball machine of your life, so they bounce on down against episodes. Want more?’

I had to laugh. ‘That last one was pretty good.’

‘That last one was pretty bad. They are all bad. They all try to simplify something which is complex by its very nature. The only thumbnail you’ll get from me is this: no one knows what’s really wrong with you but you; no one can find a cure for it but you; no one but you can identify it as a cure; and once you find it, no one but you can do anything about it.’

‘What are you here for?’

‘To listen.’

‘I don’t have to pay somebody no day’s wage every hour just to listen.’

‘True. But you’re convinced that I listen selectively.’

‘Am I?’ I wondered about it. ‘I guess I am. Well, don’t

you?’,

‘No, but you’ll never believe that.’

I laughed. He asked me what that was for. I said, ‘You’re not calling me Sonny.’

‘Not you.’ He shook his head slowly. He was watching me while he did it, so his eyes slid in their sockets as his head moved. ‘What is it you want to know about yourself, that made you worried I might tell people?’

‘I want to find out why I killed somebody,’ I said right away.

It didn’t faze him a bit?. ‘Lie down over there.’

I got up. ‘On that couch?’

He nodded.

As I stretched out self-consciously, I said, ‘I feel like I’m in some damn cartoon.’

‘What cartoon?’

‘Guy’s built like a bunch of grapes,’ I said, looking at the ceiling. It was pale grey.

‘What’s the caption?’

‘ “I got trunks full of ‘em.” ’

‘Very good,’ he said quietly. I looked at him carefully. I knew then he was the kind of guy who laughs way down deep when he laughs at all.

He said,’ I’ll use that in a book of case histories some time. But it won’t include yours. What made you throw that in?” When I didn’t answer, he got up and moved to a chair behind me where I couldn’t see him. ‘You can quit testing, Sonny. I’m good enough for your purposes.’

I clenched my jaw so hard, my back teeth hurt. Then I relaxed; I relaxed all over. It was wonderful. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t say anything, but I had that feeling again that he was laughing. Not at me, though.

‘How old are you?’ he asked me suddenly.

‘Uh-fifteen.’

‘Uh – fifteen,’ he repeated. ‘What does the „uh” mean?’

‘Nothing. I’m fifteen.’

‘When I asked your age, you hesitated because some other number popped up. You discarded that and substituted „fifteen.”‘

‘The hell I did! I am fifteen!’

‘I didn’t say you weren’t.’ His voice came patiently.’ Now what was the other number?’

I got mad again. ‘There wasn’t any other number! What do you want to go pryin’ my grunts apart for, trying to plant this and that and make it mean what you think it ought to mean?’

He was silent.

‘I’m fifteen,’ I said defiantly, and then,’ I don’t like being only fifteen. You know that. I’m not trying to insist I’m fifteen.’

He just waited, still not saying anything.

I felt defeated. ‘The number was eight.’

‘So you’re eight. And your name?’