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Lena Lena decided to leave him on April Fool’s Day. It was raining gray as the pigeons pecking at the cigarette stubs on the sidewalk outside his building, which made her want to light up. It seemed so Dorian Gray, doing such a thing. He’d freak at the smoke rings poisoning his precious air space. Maybe he’d show some emotion by asking her to put it out or lose his temper altogether. How delicious. At least she’d know he was breathing. She wouldn’t tell him her decision right away, let him think she was still his needy patient and he, her demi-god therapist. She got up from the bench, brushed crumbs from her carrot cake off of her dress, re-applied her lipstick, then crossed Lexington. She recalled she’d never fucked him because he repulsed her. It wasn’t just because he reminded her of her father. That she could handle; had since was she was ten. And obviously she wasn’t so much into looks or she wouldn’t have married Jorge, not that Jorge looked anything like her stupid therapist or crazy-ass dad. No, in the past five years and over a half-dozen therapists later, she’d never found any worth the effort of sneaking around with, yet she had friends who’d become involved in all kinds of activities with their brain docs. This just grossed her out and made her wonder why they were so desperate. Anyway, he’d know she was gone forever when she walked, then talked—to those same friends, along with the woman who did her nails at Enchantress, and the doorman at his high-rise who was a collector of tenant “news.” After all, she had influence. People listened to Lena. She pushed the brass elevator button for UP, thinking he deserved her wrath. He deserved to lose her because all he ever did was bob his head and make faces while she unloaded. She needed understanding and advice, introspection and analysis, yet mute Ivy-league head-bobbing was all she ever got. Once, she’d even mentioned the self-help books she’d read over the summer. How much she adored them. How kind these doctors with the glossy bestsellers seemed. “What do you think?” He peered over his glasses with reptilian chill. “Lena,”—he paused dramatically—“I don’t read those books.” She got off the elevator and stepped into his shrine. It smelled of old carpeting and antiseptic. Moments later, his latest receptionist said, “Doctor Henessy will see you now,” and into his cave Lena went. Shit. She’d forgotten to bring cigs. Forty minutes into the session, she raised the issue of the books again. He tugged on his wiry goatee and there it was—that distinct, smug sniff. Or was it a tisk? Didn’t matter. Lena grabbed her purse and steamed out of his office down to the misty streets. She headed for the bookshop and bought the latest “How to be Happy Even When You’re Not” bestseller. Of course, her former therapist would think of the books as beneath him. What a snob. They all were. Every last one. So she found a new therapist. He’d graduated Villanova, spent time in Italy and was very jovial. He talked in stories, told her how he had counseled couples in Rome and about his University teachings in the Alps. Even about advising Clooney on a boat in Lake Como. He talked so much that she couldn’t say anything without him waving his pen above his head like a victory flag and saying, “Bravissimo this!” and “Bravissimo that!” “Lena, you have had a breakthrough. Bravissimo!” Almost choking to death on her mother’s panini when she was eight was a breakthrough? Was that really all that was behind her troubles? She searched for another therapist. If only she could find someone like her favorite self-help author. At night she lay awake, talking things over with Jorge. “I pay them good money and they don’t offer any opinions, only yammer on about themselves.” “Mmm, I hear you, babe,” he mumbled, yanking the blankets over his shoulders. “Are you listening to me?” “Every word.” Lena was such a handful at times she made Jorge’s balls ache. Lately, the pain had risen to his heart, high-wattage zaps. Yet even while she complained, he reminded himself of the good times. Their love. Stuff they both liked to do. The little noises she made when he got it right. Some would say he was pussy-whipped. Yeah, and who wasn’t? They lived outside the city in a clapboard farmhouse set 1000 feet off the highway so when Lena was on one of her tirades at least no one heard her. No one but Jorge. He didn’t mind and went along, trying to make her happy, being the one who cleaned up the mess and picked up the pieces after the storm was over. It was easier than telling her he didn’t want to hear it any more. That she was driving him bananas—driving him away—yet he didn’t really want to believe that either. Always, after another Lena-rant, he would drift off, his arm around her doughy waist like a life preserver, and she would grow quiet and beautiful and kind again. The next day, Jorge decided to find a therapist of his own. He could use an ear, after all. He chose a random name from Lena’s list. A week later, a doctor with a fake Italian accent was saying, “Bravissimo, Jorge! You have had a breakthrough!” “Yeah? How?” All he’d done was talk about loving his wife. “But I can’t live with her. It’s like I’m losing myself.” The therapist smiled and poked the air with his pen. “Aah, see? You have discovered the universal language of self-love. You are free, Jorge.” On the subway home, Jorge’s mind raced. You are free. But he wasn’t free. He was pushed and yanked around by his cock each time Lena swayed her wild round hips and screamed her gypsy temper. Obviously, Doctor “Bravissimo” had never met anyone like his Lena. Maybe if he somehow showed her his plight she’d finally understand. He went to the card sellers and scanned the displays until he found just what he was looking for. The card would have to be on recycled paper because Lena liked that. “No more plastic grocery bags, Jorge.” Yes, there it was. It had a cartoon of a starving guy on an island in ripped pants, waving a white rag, his eyes, black gaping holes. On the card he wrote, Help me love you, Lena. Jorge. Feeling pretty hopeful about things, Jorge whistled as he walked to the subway station. His train screeched down the tracks and his cell phone rang. “WHERE ARE YOU?” Lena. His knees quaked. Why hadn’t he looked at the number on the read-out? He couldn’t tell her he’d gone into the city without her. She’d have his head. Now she’d hear the trains, so he raced down the walkway, weaving through the mobs of people while she grilled him. Finally, he found a closet of some psort and ducked inside. “WHY ARE YOU OUT OF BREATH? Oh, my god. Jorge, are you... are you fucking somebody?!” “God no, baby! No way!” She began to cry. “I don’t believe you, you pig!” A cleaning woman opened the door, shaking a mop at him. “Hey! Whatchya doing in here? Get out!” He held up his hands. “Whoa. No need for violence. I’m going, I’m going.” “Jorge, what’s going on? Is that the woman?” “Nothing’s going on, Lena, and you’re the only one for me. Don’t you know that by now?” “You’re a cheating, disgusting, useless hick.” She’d said hick before. Cheating before, and disgusting before. But never useless. Jorge’s heart froze. Stopped like a clock with a dead battery. “I want you home now,” she ordered. “I need a foot massage. We also need milk and seven, not six, seven cans of cat food.” “Hey, Lena, know what? I got my head shrunk today and my balls enlarged. They’re even bigger than your crazy-ass ego,” Jorge said. Now that felt great. “My god, you’re crude.” Jorge laughed and pitched the cell phone at the train tracks, where it was crushed beneath the steel monster. He climbed aboard, whistling, feeling free as a bird, just like the doctor said.
Two days later, Jorge was basking under a Tuscan sun along the shores of a mountain lake when a woman walked up to him. Tall and boney, thirties, she reminded him of Angelina Jolie minus the over-juiced pout. She wore a bikini top and pareo around her hips, causing a stirring inside him. “You dropped this. Back on the docks.” She held something out to him. Left-hand. No ring. It was the card he almost gave Lena. Aah, hell. He shoulda ripped it up and tossed it in the ocean. The woman sat on the edge of his chaise lounge. “Is for me, yes?” “For you? Um, yeah, sure.” Jorge stared ahead. A rainbow of fishing boats bobbed in the harbor, and the sun was sliding behind the village on the hill, leaving streaks of tangerine and gold across the sky. “So what’s your name?” She made a face. Was he supposed to know this part? “Why, Lena, of course,” she said, laughing. “Doctor Lena Fraggionetti. I am—how you say in American slang? Shrunk?” He tore off his sunglasses. “A shrink? No shit?” “Si, certo, no sheet.” “Lena, the shrink? This is too goddamn weird.” “You do not care for therapists?” “Most give crap advice. Sorry.” “I hear this before,” said Doctor Lena Fraggionetti with the easy olive-green eyes and athletic body, yet all Jorge could see was a doughy waist and gypsy hips naked in a high-back leather chair, a slender hand reaching out to him and a harsh voice whispering into his ear about how pathetic he was. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Lena.” He kissed her right cheek. “And, thank you.” He gathered his things and turned to go. “She must be very special,” she said. “Your lady.” Jorge looked over his shoulder and nodded. “She’s somethin’ all right.” He hurried to his hotel and packed his bags. He didn’t bother to shower. No time. The desk clerk said the last flight for the States was taking off in an hour. He paid the cab driver an extra wad of Euros to drive faster than normal. By dusk Jorge was sipping a Blue Moon and sailing across the skies, the card to his Lena, gritty from sand and blooming with the scent of lakes and oleander tucked into the left pocket of his shirt above his heart. He kept touching it to make sure it was there. He would get her a gift, too. Something shiny. He would listen to her rants and what ridiculous things the cats did that day. He would be her man. Because she deserved that much from him. She deserved a marriage without all the turbulence. Yet it seemed he couldn’t escape it, especially now that he was suspended in a smoky metal tube over the Atlantic and the plane was suddenly going wild. Bucking and shaking, refusing to take him anywhere but down. He didn’t hear the screams of the other passengers as he stared out the port-hole window at the dark ocean. He only crushed his fist around the card and sank into the deep blue. Crashing like a man waking from a dream. Under the water, he saw her swimming toward him. Lena. His beautiful Lena. She was dressed in a white dress and chunky silver sandals, her auburn hair flowing behind her like tentacles. “I didn’t know you could swim like that,” he said, holding her. She smiled, kissing him hard on the mouth, her lips salty and wet, bursting with life.
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