Chapter 1 Milly
"Just tell me if I'm crazy."
"You're not crazy," Dez pauses for just a beat too long. "Just mixed up."
"Do you ever zone out, or take a nap during these sessions?" I ask her and resist the urge to contort myself to look at her. She sits in a chair and has me lay on a couch. I can't see her, I talk to the ceiling or the window mostly and she's a floating voice. She's like my conscience, not a person. She must have picked it up from Freud, but before I can totally derail our session and ask, she answers.
"Sometimes."
Without the face I can't tell if she's joking. She might be bored or might be suppressing a grin- her voice gives nothing away. But I picture her fighting back a smile.
Dez is my psychiatrist and swears I'm not crazy, but she did prescribe me crazy pills- a white one for anxiety, a red one for insomnia, and these green ones that I don't what they're for, but they make me not care about anything, like when my alarm clock wakes me on a Sunday and I just unplug it and wrap the blankets tighter and fall back asleep.
She's sending me mixed messages on the crazy.
I'm seeing her once a week and paying $150 per session- not per hour because the hour is only 50 minutes- because I can't tell if I have the greatest job in the world or the worst: I get paid to do nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And it’s driving me crazy.
I do Sudoku, and the crossword, sometimes the jumble, but I hate when I can't solve one word and have to wait a whole day to get the answer, so I avoid the jumble unless I get to the end of the internet or YouTube bores me or I don't ride the elevator with Mr. Lavender Shaving Cream and fantasize about him all day.
It feels strange to see him here in this office. He’s never been a problem. He’s the green pill. Or his dimples are the green pill. He was probably an unhealthy fantasy that I should bring up here, but I don’t want to.
He disturbed me in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad- but it was something.
When I stood silently in the elevator next to Ty Dalton, he was always polite and maybe not friendly, but not unapproachable either. He had an air of authority, a calm self-assurance. He was a big man, broad- shouldered, tall, his body fit and powerful. His eyes made me shiver a little when they weren't smiling. Charming or not, he was drop-dead gorgeous with just that spice of menace to his look that made him intriguing. Like you wanted to write a book about him and uncover the curiosity, maybe bottle it, sell it and get rich.
I hadn’t seen him for days, but his coal black hair and bold green eyes and sullen sensuality of a mouth floated up before me. His body was like a sleek Arabian race horse, the sort people like him pay millions for and never race, just put him out to stud. Big and powerfully muscled, and thank God for his tailor and the snug fit of his suits. Especially the great care it must take in the pants which outlined one of the dozens of reasons for his confidence, and maybe it was indecent of me to stare so much, but someone had to appreciate that wonderful tailor’s hard work.
It usually took every ounce of my willpower to not appreciate his tailor too much. It felt like at any moment I might lose whatever sanity I had left and do something that would rightfully get me arrested. That was his disturbance and most days it was the best thing that happened to me.
I passed our moments in the elevator with my body in a slow simmer, a current racing along every nerve, settling into an odd, tingling heat in the pit of my belly. I wanted to slide my fingers under his stiff colorful shirts, trace the muscles of his shoulders and feel his heart beat under my fingers. Kiss that hard mouth and soft dimples senseless.
But of course I never did.
Aside from exciting elevator days, my biggest problem is usually whether to take the green pill or one of the others, or instead bring one of my toys to work- the bullet or lavender Lou, or the magic wand.
Pills and toys don't mix.
Ordinarily I 'just say no,' and spend my time following the endless black hole of cat videos on YouTube or the newspapers' crossword and Sudoku, or sometimes some soft-core porn and lavender Lou.
Other times the anxiety is through the roof and I swear I'll be found out. I imagine the police will show up and accuse me of stealing, embezzling, misappropriation, fraud, crimes of moral turpitude that will follow me around for the rest of my life and disqualify me from being a bank teller, a cashier at the grocery store, maybe even a waitress- any job that handles money.
And it never goes away.
The internet taught me all of this. Apparently if you have the time and a tendency towards being neurotic, any problem you have is exactly like having a headache and going to WebMD. Your head doesn't hurt because you're tired or you didn't drink enough water or you're suddenly addicted to caffeine.
It's always a brain tumor.
When I start reading Wikipedia and legal cases and statutes and think about the sort of job you have to take if you can’t get hired as waitress or a cashier- that's when I take the green pill.
"I should just find another job, but I'm trapped."
"No, you just feel trapped," Dez corrects me.
"And I just feel like my bank account won't last for two months without this job. If I start feeling like there’s another 0 at the end of my balance will the bank feel like I’m right and not close my account?" Never mind send a quarter of the check home every month. No wonder I’m nuts- I’m 23 and support a family.
"That's not what we're talking about. You could stop all this tomorrow by changing bank accounts and getting a new job."
"If I do that I won't be able to afford you anymore."
"Good. You'll be cured." She's not swayed by my best argument.
"Cured, but poor. This paycheck pays you and my rent and my student loans. And how do I explain this job? How do I get a reference? What do I tell the new boss? They paid for my MBA and if I leave within three years I have to pay it all back."
"All of these ‘what if's’ are the cause of your anxiety- nothing else. I can't answer them. I don't know what will happen. But I do know you're smart, accomplished, and young. The only compliment I can't give you is brave. When you face these problems you won't need to see me once a week anymore and you'll end up surprising yourself."
Instead of calling me a coward, which is the truth, she says 'not brave'. I love how she does that.
"It's almost catch-22, if I quit, then I won't be crazy anymore. But if I quit and leave this job wouldn't that make me crazy?”
All I can hear is the scratch of her pen against the crisp white paper of her notebook.
“Think of what I can do with all this time and a steady paycheck. I could write a great novel, I could read the 100 greatest novels. I could watch the 100 greatest movies. I could better myself. I could study astrophysics or genetics. This is the opportunity of a lifetime and a blessing that anyone would be happy to have."
"But not you, Milly." She cuts me off. "You're twisted with anxiety and you don't better yourself, you sit around doing crossword puzzles, watch cat videos and masturbate to the soapy elevator boy. And you feel tremendously guilty about it. So much guilt that you have to come here and get it all of your chest to get through it."
I don't think I told her about the masturbating part. Did I?
But I definitely told her about lavender soap guy- man. He was decades from being a boy.
She's very smart.
And I’ve been silent for way too long to deny it now.
She's good.
"You called me ‘Milly’." After weeks arguing and me cringing every time she called me by my full name, ‘Mildred’, or ‘Miss Wells’, this was a big win for me, and just the thing to change the embarrassing subject.
"You expressed your preference, many, many times and I decided our time is better spent without all your derailments. I also want you to feel comfortable here. But I stand by my position that it’s more professional and sets the tone for the Doctor-patient relationship.”
"Add charming and persuasive to that list of my good points."
Milly. My argument was that I hated the name Mildred, that it sounded like a grandmother, and a rocking chair and knitting needles. I have nothing against those things. I hope I get there one day.
One day in the year 2070.
My company, White and Williams, promoted me, told me I'd have this new office and a new boss and new staff, and I'd even get to manage a few people. They moved me to the new building they rented and even gave me money to furnish the office. It was freshly painted and decorated, so all I really needed to do was get some plants and magazines, to make it look more welcoming.
Human Resources said everyone would show up in a week.
That was 3 months ago.
Since then, HR quit answering my calls. My old boss was transferred. My new boss hasn't shown up. And the company is is in Chicago, 800 miles away from New York City, so I can’t just clear it up in person.
Well, I could have two and a half months ago, but not now.
They just forgot about me.
They abandoned me.
But they still deposit my paycheck every other Thursday. I get paid to do nothing, but I’m starting to agree with Dez- it’s not worth it.
Dez is the biggest reason I don’t jump three feet in the air when the phone rings. I don’t even like looking at it, so I tucked it away inside the big potted plants.
I still half expect people to walk through the doors any day. Hopefully I'm doing crossword puzzles and not masturbating, but either way, I hope we'll have a good laugh and things will go back to normal.
But I doubt it.
"Tell me about elevator man. Is he why you're so reluctant to leave?"
"I've hardly ever talked to him."
But I've fantasized about him for months.
"It's time you take control of your life. You know what you have to do, but you're unwilling. You're scared. But there won't be any improvement until you take a leap. Until you be brave in this."
"I know." And I did, she was right, but I needed a push. She gave me homework to build up will power and self-assurance, but I procrastinate on them too.
"How are things at home?" Dez asked pointedly.
The question hung in the air for a second, it smelled bad.. We were getting along so nicely. I scrunched my face up contemplating how to go over home and Todd.
My phone buzzed, "Sorry," I say.`
Leaving the phone on is against the rules, but this was my work phone, it hadn't buzzed in weeks.
“Company wide announcement at 2 pm. All employees please log in to the video conference channel.”
We have a video conference channel?