“I’m here as a patient,” I said. I wanted roles to be clear.

Cynthia Jalter’s daytime offices were in a private medical building in a sunny, modern complex near downtown Beauchamp. She shared a receptionist, waiting area, and piped-in Muzak selections with a Dr. Gavin Flapcloth. The office was even more generic than the informal counseling area in her apartment. The curtains, lamp shades, tissues, and the color in the sky of the small landscape in oils above the desk were all the same color, a meek, inoffensive yellow. It probably bore the name buff or cockle. The office had no windows. It was like being submerged in a glass of lukewarm eggnog.

Cynthia Jalter, on the other hand, was poised and elegant. Her black hair was swept back to expose her eyebrows, which met over her nose. She was the least blond woman I had ever met.

“I couldn’t possibly take you on,” she said. “We have a relationship outside this office.”

“I’ll relinquish that,” I said. “I want you to dissect me. Understand my life.”

She smiled. “We can’t go backward. It doesn’t work that way.”

“My problems are couple related,” I said. “I’m asking the advice of an expert.”

“We met in a bar, you and I. You bought me a drink.”

“That was fieldwork,” I said. “You wanted to see me exhibit my tropism, my need to couple. Let’s call it Life-Scenario Therapy.”

“Two lonely people meeting in a bar.”

My eyes wandered to a picture on the far wall. A faded print of a familiar painting: Brueghel’s Icarus, falling into the ocean unseen.

“I need your help,” I said. “Things you said have been haunting me. Delusory or subjective worlds. Dual cognitive systems. Inequal growth. Do they apply to me? I need to understand.”

She sighed. “With what goal? Reentry? My understanding was that you’re currently uncoupled.”

“Am I? See, you’ve helped me already. That’s exactly what I’m missing, a terminology to apply to my situation. Uncoupled. Of course. Cynthia, can’t you see I’m operating at a disadvantage? Everyone around has a theory or an obsession. I’m making it up as I go along.”

Cynthia Jalter lowered her head and smiled to herself. She set her clipboard on the desk and crossed her legs.

“You’ve got yourself mixed up with Alice’s experiment,” she said. “Lack’s the one without any method. You’re just using that as a cover.”

“What are you saying?”

“You say you want my help, but I think you’re kidding yourself. You want to avoid seeing the effect you’re having on someone else. To avoid responsibility.”

I stared blankly. The Muzak swelled.

“Do you know what I thought when you called?”

I was mute, wheels turning silently inside.

“I have to be honest with you, Philip. I’m not interested in your coming to me with problems about Alice. I don’t think you have any. She’s gone. What I would be interested in is seeing you exhibit your tropism.”

I felt my face flush, my palms moisten. A common panic associated with frank avowals by dauntingly attractive women.

“I don’t want to be your therapist,” she said. “I might like to make love to you.”

She leaned back in her chair. Her cheeks were a little flushed too. I felt courted, dizzy. Was it this simple? No more Alice? Could Cynthia Jalter simply uncouple me like a jigsaw-puzzle section and move me into her frame?

When I examined myself for response, I found a void, a lack.

“Is this an abuse of therapeutic confidence?” I said, dodging. “Can I lodge a complaint? Have I got a lawsuit?”

“I haven’t accepted payment or even verbally contracted to see you professionally,” she said. “We’re just squatters in this office right now, not therapist and patient.”

“Okay. No hard feelings. I just wanted to know.”

“I understand. Besides, this might all be just some advanced therapeutic format. What did you call it? Life-Scenario Therapy.”

I smiled weakly, at a loss. Cynthia Jalter got out of her seat, moved around her desk and out of view, then reappeared behind my chair, her arms draped over the back, her fingertips lightly touching my shoulders.

“Relax,” she said.

“I am relaxed. It’s just buried under layers of incredulity and panic. But underneath those I’m very relaxed.”

“Philip.”

“Also I am attracted to you. But I don’t know how to approach a woman whose area of expertise is what goes wrong when people overlap.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Also your office is like the living quarters of a space capsule they would use to send television talk-show hosts to other worlds.”

“Should we go for a walk?”

“Yes.”

She had a word with the receptionist, then we stepped outside, into the cold, sunny afternoon. She took my hand and led me around the corner, to a grassy courtyard behind the medical offices, sheltered from the street by a low brick wall. From there I could see the parking lot of the Look ’n’ Like, the milling shoppers examining wreaths of pinecone and fir under a yellow tarpaulin. I looked up and caught a blurry figure moving behind the pebbled glass of the medical building windows.

I pointed. “Dr. Flapcloth?”

Cynthia Jalter nodded.

“Another couple therapist?”

“Vagina ecologist.”

“What?”

She repeated it.

“You mean a gynecologist.”

“Yes and no. Gavin prefers to break it into the root words to capture a meaning he feels is lost. The ecology of the vagina, the vagina as environment, rather than just negative space.”

“And himself as what? E.P.A. official?”

Cynthia Jalter laughed. The wind blew a strand of black hair into her mouth, and she ran it back out with a finger.

I thought of Lack as cosmic vagina, laid out across that cold steel table for examination. Unable to close his legs. Peered into by dozens of white-coated experts. Maybe Alice just wanted to shelter this vaginal entity.

Cynthia Jalter squeezed my hand. She blinked as the wind whipped her hair across her face. “You don’t have to stay with Alice anymore,” she said, apparently reading my thoughts. “You’ve been patient enough. It’s not your fault. You’re free now to do anything you want.”

Though it was cold, a layer of moisture was forming between our clenched hands.

“What if I want to stay with Alice?” I said.

She smiled. “Just don’t forget that there are other options. That your life can change. People do forget.” She tugged my hand and drew me close enough to kiss. Her lips were dry and cool. I thought I could feel her smiling around my mouth.

It only lasted an instant. Just long enough for me to wonder if I was numb to Cynthia Jalter the way Alice was numb to me, the way Lack was numb to Alice. Were we links in a chain?

More important, if I woke to Cynthia Jalter, entered her embrace, would that start a chain reaction—would Lack embrace Alice?

The kiss was over before I could puzzle it out. Our lips stuck together slightly as we separated. Whatever else, I’d have a small secret now. This kiss would be with me, invisible badge or scar, when I went back to the apartment.

I opened my eyes. A tiny plane droned overhead, low against the fluffy clouds, trailing a banner that read CELESTE WILL YOU MARRY ME MAYNARD. A simple message conveyed across vast distance. Admirable. The answer could only be yes. The plane circled the patch of sky above the courtyard, then vanished.

I looked at Cynthia Jalter.

“I need time to think,” I said. “I’m living with two men who can’t see and a woman who won’t talk. She’s painting self-portraits now. She only eats toast. It’s tempting to think I can just walk away, but I can’t. Lack is part of my life at this point. I have to see it through to the end. I’m as bound to it as Alice.”

Cynthia Jalter took me by the shoulder and kissed me again, quickly, almost furtively, on the corner of my mouth. I was left puckering in the cold air, late.

“I understand,” she said. She seemed confident.

What did she know that I didn’t?

“Relax,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with a slow, awkward beginning. The text for the whole relationship, the sustaining mythos, is built in the first few encounters. The whirl of emotions, the push and pull. So the more of this kind of material we generate, the better.”

I couldn’t speak.

“We’re sitting pretty,” she said.

My knees were locked. I had no voice. A tendril of her hair floated loose and swept against my cheek. I tucked it back behind her ear, and came awfully close to grabbing her and kissing her again. But the impulse tangled into knots. Instead I raised my hand and pointed to the parking lot, indicating my small brown Datsun.

“You have to go,” she said.

I made a steering wheel shape with my hands.