Hugh stepped through the office door and sighed happily.

"Hi Twinkie," he said. "How’s everybody’s favorite therapist? How about a hug?"

"Hugs are okay," said Twinkie, "but not squeezes. And I need to stay sitting down. My back is acting up. You feel good," she said as Hugh bent down and gave her shoulders a gentle hug. "Tell me about that."

"Well, for one thing, I get to leave work an hour early so I can come to these sessions, that’s a big plus. Also, the car has gone six weeks now without needing repairs. So every morning I can go up to Oak Lawn and have breakfast and newspaper at Lucas B & B, without being stranded by something else going wrong with the electrical system. For another thing, I had a very good dream last night, and it’s stayed with me all day."

"Good. Do you want to work with that?"

"Sure. Okay. My daughter and I were wizards. We were helping others in a game of some sort, blocking out patterns of thought against an invisible opponent. There was a bright gold square—rectangle—of words, a logical construct, as I remember. We were always one step ahead, outsmarting our enemy. That’s about all I can remember, except what this warm, wise voice said as I woke up. I wrote it down in my notebook. Here, I’ll read it."

"Just a second. I want you to go back and gestalt that enemy. Instead of ‘We had an invisible opponent,’ say, ‘I am an invisible opponent,’ and go with that."

"Okay. ‘I am an invisible opponent. I am against Hugh and Heather.’"

"You getting anything?"

"My wife—my ex wife—changed her phone to an unlisted number, so I can’t even talk to my daughter now."

"And the feeling associated with that?"

"Anger. As usual."

"’As usual.’ Sarcastic. Resigned. Are you angry at yourself for being angry?"

"Maybe. Anger is such a dominant emotion for me. And it does no good, it just gets in the way."

"Okay. Let’s go back to the dream. There’s this game. Hugh and his daughter are the good guys. What would Jung say about the daughter, do you think?"

"My anima, my intuitive, feminine self. And my real daughter, too."

"Right. Hugh and his better half, let’s say. And ‘I am their enemy…’"

"Okay. ‘I am their enemy, their opponent in the game.’"

"But… But what keeps happening?"

"But they keep winning. They’re always one step ahead, outsmarting me… Oh boy."

"You got something."

"All of a sudden I remembered Theresa telling me, ‘Hugh, you really set yourself up. You’re always playing these one-upsmanship games, but you play to lose. That arrogant, defensive s.o.b.—you don’t believe in him any more than we do. Why don’t you start out one-down for a change?’ ‘Try a little humility,’ in other words."

"That arrogant, defensive s.o.b.—is he angry?"

"Oh hell yes. He’s got a Masters degree in English and he’s working for four-fifty an hour in a frame-maker’s shop because a disease has destroyed his life. He is royally pissed. At God and everybody."

"Not without reason."

"Not without reason. Unfortunately—or fortunately, rather—he’s living with a bunch of other people who are pretty much in the same boat, and there’s no sense taking it out on them."

"They can take care of themselves, though."

"Oh yes, can and do. I’ve been told several times—well, twice, but it feels like more—that my ‘negativity’ is a turn-off. If Scobey’s sarcastic, it’s cute; if I’m sarcastic, it’s ‘arrogant, defensive s.o.b.’ or ‘negativity.’"

"Maybe Scobey’s sarcasm is directed inwards, and yours is directed outwards?"

"Mmm. Something like that, maybe. Scobey’s comes across as more of a wry outlook on life. Mine comes across as—What I’m getting is—anal aggressive, a real ass-hole."

"Sarcasm is a weapon. ‘What if he turned that weapon on me?’"

"Yes, but for every drop of acid that falls outside—It’s like that old saw, ‘When you point your finger at someone else, remember, the other four fingers point back at you.’ One cut outside makes four cuts inside. Sometimes I feel like a man with a brain full of razor blades."

"Ouch. You have a gift for vivid and dramatic imagery. What is that song Kermit the Frog sings on ‘Sesame Street’? ‘It’s not easy being green.’ It’s not easy being me sometimes, is it?"

"No, it’s not."

"I think all of us have to acknowledge that from time to time. If I shift attention from you to my lower back—Ow, I’ve got to stand up and stretch. Would you come over and give me a hand? … Thank you. Your hand feels good on my elbow. Here, let’s stand by the window… It’s winter out there, the grass is withered by the cold… It’s not easy being a forty-year-old woman with a bad back who’s just divorced and is just starting a new career. But if I focus on that…"

"I could blow my brains out and die of self pity."

"People with a sense of irony are not likely to do that though, are they? You ever read ‘Winnie the Pooh’ to your daughter?"

"Oh yes."

"Remember Eeyore?"

"The sarcastic ass."

"Yes, he is. Even while Winnie the Pooh and the gang are trying to save him, he’s making sarcastic comments on their rescue attempt…"

"Okay, okay, I recognize the type. And he’s a self-important ass, too. Christopher Robin throws a party in Winnie the Pooh’s honor, and Eeyore thinks it’s for him and makes…an ass of himself."

"All right, yes. He’s sarcastic and self-important. But that’s just Eeyore being Eeyore, and Christopher Robin isn’t going to throw him away for that. Tigger is too aggressive sometimes, too ‘bouncy,’ but Christopher Robin isn’t going to throw him away, either. Why? Because aggressiveness is a necessary part of one’s personality. Eeyore’s sense of irony is a mark of intelligence. Kanga’s ability to nurture Roo. Owl’s wish to be literate and wise. Each character represents an important part of Christopher Robin’s childhood self."

"Winnie the Pooh’s simplicity and creativity."

"Yes, definitely. I need for us to sit back down now, and I need to walk and sit without help… Okay, we were talking about a dream. And you have your notebook with you. Let’s go back to that voice whose words you heard as you woke up, and wrote down. I want you to gestalt that, too. ‘I am a warm, wise voice.’"

"All right, let me see. I am a warm, wise voice, saying: ‘We know what beauty is, but not how to define it. Who designed the proportions of the female face, or breast or hand, that would attract a man’s eye? These things lie buried deep within us. We know what goodness is—anyone who’s been offered a drink of cold water on a hot, thirsty day knows goodness—but, goodness, how to define it; how to make it amenable to the mathematic reaches of the mind.’"

"Mmm. I like that."

"Yeah. Maybe that’s the golden rectangle of words in the earlier part of the dream."

"So, I am a warm, wise voice."

"Right. I can be that way."

"And I am waking up."

"Right. I’m changing. Growing."

"How do you feel?"

"Better than Ritalin. About as good as two hits of grass."

"And that is…?"

"That is pretty da—darn good."

"Okay, let’s enjoy that a few moments… So: you’re off work early, your car’s running right, you had a good dream, and all that’s got you coming in here walking—well, not quite walking on air, but your step is light, your face is bright, your shoulders are thrown back. I’ve never seen you so happy."

"All right, you’ve got me. The arrogant, defensive s.o.b. finally got laid, okay? No, that’s crude, that’s not really the way I feel about it. This woman, one of my fellow residents here—This is in confidence, right?"

"Yes, but just call her ‘my friend.’"

"Okay, that’s good, that’s accurate. My friend and I had lunch duty Sunday. So, it’s eleven o’clock. We look at the menu and check out what’s available: Canned yams, canned spinach, and ‘chicken-fried steak’—translate that ‘pasteurized, processed meat foods, lightly covered with grit.’ She says, ‘Do we really want to eat this?’ ‘No, who would?’ ‘This is Sunday dinner,’ she says. ‘Sunday dinner is supposed to be special. Do you have any money?’ ‘Enough we could get a decent meal after we’re through fixing the institutional glop.’ ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ she says. ‘Let’s go to the store.’ We had seventeen dollars between us, and thanks to her superior shopping skills, we came out of the store with an eight-pound roast, fresh carrots, fresh green beans, onions, potatoes—they have to be new potatoes—beef broth, and a five-dollar bill, intact. That’s for coffee and dessert after lunch, right?

"We had fun. You know: We were focused on a task, something besides each other. She was the cook, and I was the step’n-fetchit. Dice one of the onions, and quarter the others. Yes’m. Scrape the carrots. Yes’m. Tip and slice the green beans. Yes’m. And I’m looking over at her, and her face is—I want to say Angelic, something like that. Peaceful. Absorbed. Usually her face is strained, you know, full of trouble. And it’s like, suddenly I’m looking at the Before picture—Before the divorce, Before the hospital, Before here—Once upon a time…"

"Once upon a time there was a little girl who liked to help Mommy in the kitchen. And Mommy liked to cook. That’s my guess."

"Maybe that’s where the angel came from. At any rate, for me it was, Once upon a time there was a woman at peace with herself, at peace with what she was, at peace with the way the world was treating her…"

"And you were enjoying this, you both were having fun."

"Oh, yes. And we were getting all this positive feedback. What’s that that smells so good? Hey, this looks great, when will it be ready? We got nominated for permanent cooks, an honor we politely declined, of course."

"And then there was dessert together."

"Right. Two coffees and one piece of cheesecake."

"You know, this is sounding like a really nice first date."

"Yeah. Right. We already spend a lot of time together, but the girlfriends are always in the way. Her roommates are ‘my girlfriends,’ and ‘my girlfriends and I’ have lots of ‘girl things’ to talk about, just ‘girl talk,’ you know. And I’m thinking, ‘What is this? I’m dealing with a thirty-five-year-old pre-adolescent here?’"

"Speaking of adolescents, we need to wrap this up in about two minutes, Hugh. I’ve got two teenagers to pick up."

Okay. One of her girlfriends from school had asked Li—my friend—to keep an eye on her apartment; feed the cats, water the plants; she’s spending the weekend with her mother. Would I like to come along? Sure. There’s the holding hands in the restaurant, the kiss in the apartment. Her girlfriend had said it was okay if she spent the night. Would I like to stay? We wouldn’t have to do anything. No, but it sure would be nice, wouldn’t it? Yes, but I don’t want to start anything. Right, we’re just two friends taking care of each other’s needs. Nobody’s sending out wedding announcements tomorrow.—There’s just one more thing I need to talk about: In the bedroom there’s a crib, infant seat, little kids’ bird mobile hanging from the light fixture. Oh, your friend has a baby. Had a baby, a little boy named Andrew, he died at four months; cradle death; nobody knows what caused it. Her husband left her, that’s why she’s spending the week-end with her mom."

"Oh my. Smack in the middle of someone else’s tragedy."

"It made a sort of bizarre backdrop to our lovemaking. I’ve tried to write a poem about it."

"Can we save that for next time? I’ve really got to go now."

"Sure. To be continued."

"Let me leave you with this thought: What does Owl say about this relationship?"

"He who would be literate and wise?"

"Yes," Twinkie said as she shrugged on her coat and winced.

"We wouldn’t last two weeks living together. We’d be like two drowning cats clawing each other to stay afloat. I found that out Monday morning. Nothing I did was right. And my negativity was the problem, you see."

"So, what do you do with that?—No, don’t tell me now. Wait til next week."

"Walk you to your car?"

"Thank you, yes."

He walked her to her car in silence, taking her arm when they crossed the street. She thanked him and thanked him again when he opened her car door. She got in and drove away.

Hugh watched her leave. And with her left an island of sanity and normalcy. Twinkie was home, family, all the things that anchor life in a secure harbor, that make it full and real. What an extraordinary gift, he thought, is ordinary life.

Hugh turned and looked at the 3-story brick of his current address, temporarily and tenuously held. A place of exile halfway between a prison called a hospital and the supposedly sane world that created it. Yet even here one found love, decency. 'We come as pilgrims,' he told the edifice, 'as veterans of very foreign wars. Please shelter our fellowship, and nurture our every attempt to be kind.' Then it came to him, the daughter in his dream was Liz.

…

Liz Kaplan washed down two Ativan tablets with a swallow of tea from her thermos and flipped on her television. "Now in its fourth week," said a voice, as the picture appeared of some men in white tunics and turbans hanging a burning American flag over the edge of a building, "the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran has deteriorated sharply." Rolling black smoke against a clear blue sky. "The Ayatollah Khomeini…" She quickly changed the channel to a woman dressed in a towel spelling relief as ROLAIDS on a steamy shower stall door. Liz switched off the set, kicked off her shoes, and flopped down on her bed. The blank ceiling returned her stare. So did the walls. "We’ve got to get some posters for these walls," she muttered, as she threw her legs over the edge of her bed and sat up. The silence of the blank television screen made a gray hush. The room’s hollowness felt cold. She remembered the Quiet Room at the hospital: plastic mattress on a bare concrete floor, walls the same institutional green as here, steel door with a tiny window, its glass webbed with steel wire. She opened the drawer of her bedside table and took out the card Hugh had left on her pillow Monday. A bright blue bowl filled with bright red cherries and inside the hand-written note, ‘I’m glad You’re a Part of my Life. Hugh.’ His handwriting was a bold scrawl. Knowing Hugh, he probably thought it was calligraphy. But it’s the thought that counts, she told herself, and it’s a nice thought. She put the card back in the drawer.

She got up and padded to the window. The glass had gentle ripples in it. Outside stood a tree bereft of leaves, parched grass, and a gray winter’s sky. She heard a door open and close downstairs, voices drifting beyond reach. "I need people," she told the tree. "People are like a drug with me. I get high on them. And right now, I’ve got to have a fix. Only problem is, if I go down there, Hugh is going to be there, and Hugh wants to be Mister Wonderful, and I’m supposed to be Miz Wonderful, and everything’s supposed to be Just Wonderful—and I just don’t want any of that. I need to tell him, ‘Ease up. Keep it light. I need room to breathe.’ Better yet, tell Rose, ‘You’re better at this sort of thing than I am. Will you get it across to Hugh, I want a friendship, not a courtship?’" She slid her shoes on, took a deep breath, and started down stairs.

…

Brian Haywood let his fingers wander over the keys of the ancient upright piano, then warmed up his left hand with the signature melody of "Mister Tambourine Man" while his right hand worked out peripherally related problems in rhythm and harmonics. He had the rapt attention of the half dozen residents in the house dining room by the time his exercises had become the backdrop to his almost conversational tenor telling Elton John’s story of his first experience of Marilyn Monroe when he was just a kid, seeing her in Technicolor on the big screen. Brian seemed to gather and focus all the sadness in the room until his good-bye to Norma Jean became all their good-byes to lost loves and broken dreams. They were all candles in the wind, each realized, lost and flickering against the dark. When the last chord died away, all applauded. But one, a short red-haired man in a plaid jacket, clapped louder and longer than the rest, and walked over to the piano. "Bravo!" he cried, "Bravo! A concert-quality performance!"

"Why of course, dear," said Brian. "I was playing just for you. My name is Brian," he said extending his hand. "Now you must tell me yours. I’ve seen you around for about a week now."

"Eddie. Eddie Dean. Listen, my father knows people in the music business. We’ve got to make you a demo tape. That talent can’t be allowed to stay undiscovered."

"Oh, it’s not undiscovered. I’ve been told my interpretation of ‘MacArthur Park’ reveals the song’s deepest layers of meaning. Would you like to hear it?"

"Absolutely. Please."

Brian turned back to the keyboard and pounded the introduction to Bach’s "Brandenburg Concerto" into a thunderstorm with torrents of rain that trailed off into a child plinking out the melody on a toy piano and singing in a petulant falsetto:

"Someone left my hash out in the rain,

And I know that I can’t smoke it;

I won’t even try to toke it;

And I’ll never have a hundred bucks again.

Oh, woe!"

Again, everyone in the room applauded. "Donna Summer, eat your heart out," said Brian.

Eddie remained unaffected. "So you do comedy, too. Great. Listen, if my father could hear you, just once, I know he’d say, ‘Now, there’s real talent.’ And my father has contacts."

"Why you dear man," said Brian. "I don’t believe in that father of yours very much at all. But since you believe in me, I’ll believe in you. All right? And a friend of mine did make a tape. And I do have a Walkman for you to listen to it on. If you’d like?"

"Absolutely," said Eddie.

"Who is that guy in the perpetual plaid jacket?" asked Liz after the pair had left.

"That’s Eddie Dean," said Hugh. "His father is a congressman."

"Or senator," said Dennis.

"An important political figure in any case," said Hugh. "Eddie has a son in Tulsa."

"Or Oklahoma City," said Dennis.

"A large town in Oklahoma," said Hugh. "But he can’t acknowledge the boy because his father’s enemies would use it to destroy his career. You can imagine the page-one headlines: ‘Dubious politician’s obscure son fathers illegitimate child.’"

"All I know," said Liz, "is that every time I see him, he’s wearing the same plaid jacket, black slacks, and white shirt. At least it looks like the same outfit, every day."

"Probably is," said Dennis. "But his father is a great guy. He took Eddie on a bow-hunting trip to Alaska for his twenty-first birthday."

"Or maybe it was Canada?" said Hugh.

"No, it was Alaska," said Dennis. "And Eddie shot a Kodiak bear at point-blank range."

"With a bow and arrow," said Hugh.

"Absolutely," said Dennis. "It was a life-or-death situation—It was going to be the bear, or it was going to be him—so the shot had to be perfect. And it was. Dead center, right through the heart, at twenty yards."

"Do not attempt this stunt in your own home," said Hugh.

"Maybe he’s telling the truth," said Rose. "After all, it’s not impossible."

"No, but it’s highly unlikely," said Hugh. "When he tells these stories, he goes into blind automatic. He freezes and stares at something about two feet in front of him while you both listen to the recording. Then, when he’s through, he looks at you like, ‘How about that?’ But it doesn’t really require your response because he doesn’t see you. It’s like you’re this generic person out there…"

"The porch light is on, but there’s nobody home," said Rose.

"Yes," said Hugh. "That’s it. The porch light is putting on a light show in this case, but…"

"Remember ‘The Wizard of Oz’?" said Scobey. "Toto’s pulling back the curtain, and there’s the Wizard, pulling levers and yelling into the microphone, ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’"

"So tell him to drop the bullshit, take a bath, change clothes, and give the plaid jacket to somebody he doesn’t like," said Liz.

"He’s not operating at that level of …comprehension," said Hugh.

"A few bricks shy of a load?" said Rose.

"More like running on empty," said Dennis.

…

Hugh gave up on the fourth revision of the Andrew poem. He lay back on his bed and turned his notebook to catch the overhead light. The only thing that satisfied him was the first line: "Your name was Andrew and you did not know it." That and the description:

"Your infant seat with its three stuffed toys

Adorns a corner, and from the light that I turn out

Hang four bright birds to please you.

Framed on the wall is a poem your father wrote.

It says we need a new Messiah.

Jesus buttons dot the drapes…"

Even that was starting to look like corned beef.

He put the notebook over his face and closed his eyes, hoping he would doze off. The sound of voices down the hall reminded him of when he was a child and the adults would drone on and on in another room…

"Knock, knock," said a familiar but unexpected voice.

"Piano Man," said Hugh sleepily as he opened his eyes. Framed in the doorway was a willowy figure topped by a mass of blonde curls. "Brian Haywood, what brings you to my door?"

"We’ve got a little problem," said Brian, "and we were hoping you would help us out."

"Who’s ‘we’?’ said Hugh.

"Me and Eddie Dean," said Brian. "It seems Eddie has a gun."
…