Cigarette, Chapter 5

“Tell me about your mother.”
“Not much to tell, blonde hair, blue eyes, had a mole on her nose.”
“Mr Benson, I believe that your deflection of my questions is demonstrative of a desire to hide from your past, making light of it rather than facing it seriously.” The shrink replied gravely. He wasn’t at all like I had imagined. In fact ‘he’ was a ‘she’. I expected an old man with glasses and a big beard. Instead I had gotten an attractive red headed young lady, probably in her late twenties/early thirties.

“You could be right, but enough about that, are you busy later?” Lying down on this silly couch I didn’t feel especially confident, but I was still a bit drunk, so that went a long way towards boosting me.
“Mr Benson, are you flirting with me?” She said, flirtatiously.
“Maybe, is it working?” I say, feeling far more suave than I have any bloody right too. I’m a cliché kind of guy. She throws her clipboard and pen on the floor, and straddles me. I grab her blouse and rip it open, revealing a frilly Victoria’s Secret bra, she leans forward and…

“Mr Benson, please focus, we have limited time, and my services are quite costly.” Snap back to reality, my imagination is made up of wishful thinking and bad porno plots.
“It’s my boss’ money we’re spending, so we can take as long as we want.” I look at the ceiling, there’s a crack in it, and what appears to be a coffee stain. How did that get there?
“Yes, well… to repeat my last question, do you think you have an issue with controlling your anger?” She leans forward, regarding me over her designer glasses. Her office is really swanky, lots of diplomas on the walls, a big desk, a massive window looking out on a gloomy afternoon. I think she probably earns a lot more than me, probably well good at her job, while I don’t even know what mine is.

I feel a little intimidated. At least it’s not anger, I think. It’s frustrating that I don’t know, makes me want to scream. Was that anger? I think wanting to scream is anger, or fear. I don’t feel scared probably, she’s not a clown or a cigar cutter. I think it was anger… I’m pretty sure it was.

“I do believe I may have an anger problem.” I say, staring fixedly at that improbable coffee stain.
“The first step is admittance; do you have any idea where this problem may have stemmed from?” She says seriously. She unfolds then refolds her legs. She’s wearing tights and a pencil skirt, with black heels. I worry that I may need to roll onto my back to hide an impending erection. I think of Jimmy crying on my sofa and it goes away sharpish.
“I think it happened around the time that the thing I don’t like to talk about happened.” I say, a phantom itch starts where my finger used to be. I imagine a crab crawling over it at the bottom of the sea, making it tickle.

She writes something on her little clipboard thing, and says to me, “Tell me about it.” Which is just about the dumbest thing she could say at this time. Maybe she got all the diplomas off the internet.
“About what?” I ask, hoping she takes the bait.
“About the thing… that you don’t like to talk about.” She says, completely seriously. I burst into fits of laugher and the itch goes away and for a while, there’s isn’t a big score to worry about, things are rosy between me and Sarah, Jimmy doesn’t sleep on my sofa and I don’t have nightmares about losing the other fingers.

To my surprise, she laughs too. When we’re both about done, she says, “Okay, that was a stupid question I admit, but you have to talk about it David.” First name basis, get in!
“Call me Dave.”
“Oh okay, Dave. Call me Doctor Hanna” She says coldly. Maybe not.
“And I don’t want to.” I fold my arms and shake my head. I’m such a child sometimes.
“Can you at least show me?” She says, and stands up, walking around the back of her desk. I watch her go and check out her rear as she does, very nice. I feel a pang of guilt at that, and realise that Sarah still has me pretty darn whipped. She comes back with a chalkboard and stick of chalk and hands them to me.

“I can try.” I love doodling. I spend a long time crafting a very elaborate drawing of a clown and a bear holding a man down, while a shark with a man’s body, wearing a suit, chomps off his finger. Above the man’s head there is a speech bubble saying “I swear, I don’t smoke cigars!” and a sad face beside it for good measure.

I hand it to her; and she looks at it for a long time. Then at me, then at the picture again. She has sexy green eyes, I feel guilty some more.
“What does this mean, do you think?” She says after a while.
“I assure you, it’s actually quite literal.” I say, gesturing with my missing finger, if it’s possible to do that.
“So this is the thing you refuse to talk about?” She says slowly.
“Bingo.” I prop myself up on one elbow and look at her. The rain outside has stopped and a bit of afternoon sunlight breaks through the clouds. I would take it as a sign that things will brighten up, but I don’t believe in that kind of rubbish, not with Jimmy preparing to fuck my life up all over again.
“Well, I think that…” Before she can finish, the timer on her desk goes off (it’s shaped like a hen and the alarm is a ‘clucking’ sound).
“Oops, looks like our time is up Dave.” She says apologetically, can’t really tell if she means it or not.

“Aww no, but we were making progress!” I think, I don’t really know what progress would be in this situation.
“I know, but there’s always next time. Same time, same place, next week?”
“Sounds good to me.” On the way out of the building I check my phone. I have 10 missed calls and 10 texts from Sarah. I don’t really need to listen to the voice mails or read the texts to know their content, but I’m a bit of a sadist so I read the first one out of curiosity. It reads,
“Where are you? You fucking asshole, if you’ve run away with another woman, I swear to god I will hunt you down, rip off your balls, and shove them-“

I throw my phone on the ground, and stamp on it until there’s nothing left but little bits of plastic shrapnel. Then I stamp on those too. I think the therapy might be working already.