ALL I REMEMBER is that she came into the apartment, closing the door behind her. She began speaking to me at once, in a somewhat worried and anxious tone. Her work was getting to her. Some of the patients at the mental hospital were career criminals and psychopaths, although they did not term them as such. They could be quite seductive and build up a rapport with even the most seasoned psychologists. “They get under your skin,” she had told me. “It’s hard to wash them off.” She had scrubbed and shampooed her luscious blonde hair in vain.
There she was in the cold glow of a kitchen light. It was evening now in Estonia, the darkness was settling in earlier and earlier, and we all knew which way things were heading as the last days of summer faded away and the equinox breathed its first fall-time breathe. She was still talking there in the kitchen, but her cadence was so fast I had a hard time following her. She had on that button sweater of hers, the soft one, and the light made it look only more cloud-like and gauzy, up from the skies. “I’m sorry things are so tough at the mad house,” I said.
I kissed her after that. The psychologist undid all her buttons and soon I was touching her other buttons. My hands were guided by some instinct, I knew just where to push, just where to pull, just how to conjure ecstasy. And then, mid-kiss, her eyes opened and she recoiled in a kind of befuddled plot-twist horror. “We never agreed we could do that!” she stammered at me. “We never had agreement to make love!” “But, but …” My voice trailed off, but it sounded distant, as if it was echoing back from the end of a tunnel. Calamity, despair. All I had wanted to do was take the edge off, to make her feel blissful. I still did. Even as she pushed me away.
north! 