Senorita Lorenzo’s red chamber

Senorita Lorenzo, Lethe’s psychiatrist, was encamped in her office all day long. She rarely left for lunch, preferring instead the red-chambered privacy of the British-American clinic. She savored the time that she had alone and usually allowed herself to relax and forget about her patients.

It was a narrow window of pleasure, and she had to be careful not to impinge on the delicacy of these moments with her mundane, daily preoccupations. She was not a particularly indulgent woman, but she knew how to indulge herself and was precise about it.

She could give herself a small piece of chocolate, a single glass of wine, or a few crackers with goat cheese, and she was happy. Without this ritual of self-gratification, she was likely to pay less attention to her patients. Her patients demanded her full sympathy and this was an exhausting practice, listening to someone tell you about their problems. She only required a small portion of the day for herself; the rest she could charge for.

She knocked off her shoes underneath the desk, and dropped a fresh cherry into her mouth. The juice spilled down the sides of her chin, and she laughed at herself for being so messy.

She thought of an older man who she’d been spending some time with lately. She went back and forth on whether this was a good idea. The man was recently divorced. Moreover, he worked in the same clinic.

The soft, fresh goat cheese coated the outsides of her teeth. Before she brought the wine glass to her lips, she savored the bitty chives with self-abandon. The minutes were ticking away and soon she’d be working with a client (she glanced at her schedule). At least she had her fifteen minutes of pleasure. In the right frame of mind, fifteen minutes could seem longer, like in a dream.

She rubbed her feet anxiously against the carpet. Perhaps the dream was ending soon.

Lethe frantically ran though the underground metro, sweat soaking his underarms; a continuous huffing threw him into an athletic trance. Finally, he arrived, bursting into Senorita Lorenzo’s red chamber with lackluster appearance.

The psychiatrist stashed a couple things into her bottom drawer. Her shoes went back on. She straightened her collar.

“It smells like alcohol in here–” Lethe remarked.

“Sometimes I have a glass of wine with my lunch.”

Lethe situated himself in his chair, looking around suspiciously. “What do you do in here all day?”

“I talk to patients like you.”

“Don’t you get bored listening to strangers all the time?”

“No, I actually find it quite interesting. I want to learn more about my patients.”

“That sounds so scripted. What do you really think about me?” Lethe flashed a look of provocation.

“I think you have a lot of potential, Lethe. I’ve read your writings. You’re a talented young man.”

“Then what’s my problem? Why can’t I connect with anyone?”

“You can connect. Look at your relationship to the Senora, it’s strong.”

The darkness and red silk upholstery inside the psychiatrist’s office attracted Lethe’s attention; the office lulled him into a fantasy. He pictured his doctor giving him presents on top of her bed. The lavish Italian bed had soaring columns and a gauzy veil hanging over a canopy.

“I spoke to your father.” Senorita Lorenzo announced.

“Did he send you my allowance?”

“He says he won’t send you a dime until you find a job.”

“But that wasn’t part of the deal. And anyways I’m in Spain. How am I supposed to find a job in a place where there’s thirty-five per cent unemployment?”

“You won’t find one if you never leave the apartment.”

“But wait, that’s not true anymore. I leave the apartment. I leave the apartment every night.”

Lethe thought of the Moroccans.

“Have you been taking those pills I gave you?” She moved her scarf around her neck.

“Yes, I think they’re working. I’m much calmer than I was before. Can’t you tell?”

“You seem a little calmer . . . maybe.”

“I’m reading a mammoth book. Of course you’ve heard of it, you’re Spanish.”

“No, actually, I was born in Italy.”

“Huh, that’s funny. You look like a Spaniard.”

“Roma.” The Senorita squinted her eyes and smiled. Then she looked at the clock on her desk. “You know you have a lot of talents, Lethe. I’ve read your writing, it’s excellent.”

He changed his tone, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am talented. I’m not just going to sit around the apartment anymore. I’m going to do something!”

A broad smile appeared on Senorita Lorenzo’s face. She wanted to hug Lethe, but then she dismissed this impulse and stayed close to her desk as he was leaving.

Hashish

A long, long time ago in an artificial suburban hamlet called Barclay Park,

beside a high stucco wall covered with ivy,

behind a flowering bush (Calochortus nudus),

Lethe smoked his first cigarette.

Tasting the harsh fumes of death, Lethe grew hardened and ambitious to continue smoking each week. He slipped out of the house when his parents weren’t looking and he ran to the end of his street to smoke. He knew the family who lived in the house at the end of the cul de sac, he played soccer with their son. Nevertheless he pretended they couldn’t see him going into their backyard and hiding behind their flowering bushes.

He was born into a gated community. Smoking, being the great rebellious act of any adolescent, instilled him with a sense of expansive liberty. He was saving a corner of himself for misdeeds, a part of himself which his father couldn’t influence.

The dark deed of smoking was repeated over and over like a ritual. When he entered high school, he could say that he smoked, not once, but often.

The shadow of his youth became like his double. When he wasn’t studying to get good grades to earn his father’s approval, the shadow took full possession of him. At times, the shadow felt more real than anything else.

The neighbors never did see him scurrying into their backyard. They never ran out of the house to evict him from the flowering bush, the site of his early transgressions. And if he wanted to jump the stucco wall, he did so fearlessly. He threw his bicycle over it and rode across the highway where there was a hotel and a golf course.

Sometimes he spent whole afternoons wandering through the hotel. Like a gentrified dandy, he sat on the couches and drew in his sketchbook. He was mimicking his mother, who used to do the same. She would sit for hours in expensive hotels with her sketchbook, capturing the faces of the crowd. He made doodles and comic strips only he could decipher. He pretended to be a guest in the hotel. If anyone asked him what he was doing there, he would say he was the son of a wealthy politician.

His father was a doctor. A prescriptive man by nature who communicated to his son mainly through lectures. His father never understood his mother’s inclination toward art, and he appreciated Rose the artist only in the sense that this calling was alien to him. Because Lethe took after his mother, he tended to develop in opposition to his father.

Cigarettes tasted like the harsh fumes of death. Lethe grew used to the taste, but never completely. There was always the residue of something bitter and coarse.

During his senior year he smoked every morning while driving to school. He drove his father’s Oldsmobile; he was never given a car of his own. In the neighborhood where he grew up this was unusual.

If he wanted to escape Barclay Park, which he often did, he had to climb the stucco wall. When he was able to drive, he roamed the leafy suburb at night, smoking cigarettes one after the other.

On the balcony of the Senora’s apartment, Lethe removed the tobacco from one of his cigarettes. He kept the paper. It was three o’clock in the morning. The night air had a wavy, moist feel. The stars in the sky fell under the horizon like lost buttons and pins. You had to search for them. Directly above him there was nothing. Only a gulf of darkness.

He filled the cigarette with the hashish he had just purchased. A Moroccan sold it to him. You could find Moroccans in almost any park after 11:00 pm. They clustered around benches and stone steps, drinking whiskey and shouting gleefully. You simply had to approach them and they understood what you wanted. Lethe learned these things from living in Spain.

The leader stepped up to Lethe. He pressed his body against Lethe’s and took his cash. Then he removed a little piece of clay wrapped in plastic and tore it in half between his teeth. Muttering something in Spanish, he put the hashish into Lethe’s hand.

Lethe caught sight of the Moroccan’s mouth. It was the dirtiest mouth he had ever seen in his life. The Moroccan was missing all but four of his teeth, and those teeth were yellow and stumpy.

The rest of the Moroccans had pockmarked faces and greasy hands. They grinned whenever you were communicating with them. They couldn’t stop grinning.

The joint tasted like his first cigarette: overpowering, dirty, coarse. But he sucked on the end of it until his head was full, and his senses lazily unstrung. It was like slipping out of the house and running to the end of the street. It was like hiding beside the flowering bush and taking those first drags off a half-smoked cigarette. It was like jumping the stucco wall.

The neighbors wouldn’t notice a thing.

The early morning pleased him in a disorienting way. It was somewhere between morning and night and for Lethe this was a comfortable place to be. He liked how the trees below the Senora’s apartment grew out of their little concrete squares. He liked how the storefronts gleamed in the oily moonlight. He noticed the fruit seller’s wooden cart which had fallen on its side from the wind.

Hashish was weird. It didn’t fill him with ecstatic energy. It just sort of dulled his senses and dropped him onto plateaus of vacant emotion. There was nothing immediately pleasurable in the effects. But having spent so much time in the Senora’s apartment, doing practically nothing, the slightest difference in his well-being greatly satisfied him.

“What are you doing out here?” The Senora asked suddenly.

Lethe looked at his watch; it was almost 4:30 in the morning.

“Oh, I came outside to have a cigarette . . . I must have fallen asleep.”

“When Don Quixote fell asleep, he was attacked by highway men.”

Lethe smiled. “Are you a highway man?”

“Not tonight.”

They laughed together. “Go to bed, nino.”