minutes of searching through the tangled lines of the internet, I found a story about Descartes. The story had been written by a professor and posted on his university web page. According to this professor, Descartes admitted that there were moments in his life when he spent so much time wrestling with these questions about existence and reality that he could actually make himself believe that his hands weren’t really his own. According to this professor’s web page, when Descartes had these crises of faith, he generally left his lonely office. Being around people seemed to hold these deeper questions at bay.
At this point in my day, I was leery of the stories professors tell and sick of these questions. I decided to find some people to be around. And preferably not psych patients. I stood and forced opened my window. It creaked. Dust and flecks of old paint fell.
Outside, a woman with gray hair and a dark business suit approached the Williams Building from the direction of the dual diagnosis dorm. I watched her approach. She waved to me. I waved back. She kept waving. I realized that she was signaling to me. I closed the window. It dropped smoothly. I counted my steps, winding my way down through the labyrinth.
The woman sat in a plush, dark leather chair in the front lobby of the building. “I’ve been meaning to meet you for a week,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, indeed,” she said. “I’m Dr. Bishop.”
I gave her a broad smile and offered my hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
She grasped my hand. Her fingers were slim and cool as fresh asparagus.
“Did it seem sincere?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
My smile hadn’t waned. “My greeting. Do I seem sincerely pleased to meet you?”
“I suppose.”
“Good. I figure sincerity is everything. If I can fake that, I’ve got it made.”
She gave me a flustered look as if to say, “You are the grant writer, right? Not a patient?” But, no, I realized. Dr. Bishop was a professional. A psychologist. All of her facial expressions must be carefully calculated.
I explained myself. “The signature on your email. It’s that quote from George Burns. ‘Sincerity is everything…’”
Dr. Bishop smiled again. “Oh! I get it. A joke. I’m sorry. My secretary—ex-secretary—put that on my email. It was funny to her. A geeky psychologist joke. I can’t figure out how to get rid of it.” She pointed out the two plush chairs with her cool, slim fingers. “Please have a seat.”
I did. We discussed hospital business for the next half-hour: forms, departments, hierarchies, donors, social events that were encouraged, social events that could be ignored, insurance plans, retirement benefits, staff projects, research projects, administrators’ jurisdictions, the secretaries who really ran the joint, the charge nurses whose good sides I’d do myself a favor to get on, places to get office supplies, where to pick up the paycheck that had been waiting for me in payroll for 48 hours, Hawaiian shirt Fridays (the first of each month), vacation days and the best time to take them, and everything else that Dr. Bishop could think about. At the end of it all, she said to me, “You know, I’m not an administrator. I just volunteered to lead the search committee for a grant writer.”
I did know that and told her so.
She continued, “Which is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been engaged in some recent fascinating research myself.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about it, what with my earlier encounter with The Professor and all. Besides that, I knew a bit about her and her research. I’d suspected as much when I was going through the hiring process, but now, sitting face-to-face with Dr. Bishop, I realized that I did know her. I’d experienced her research firsthand. It had been years ago but it wasn’t an event I was likely to forget. If she remembered me, she didn’t let on. Without dredging up the past, I prodded her into the present. “Oh, yeah?”
She paused. “Let’s not get into that now.” She patted my knee. “Do you like dogs?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Would you like a puppy?”
I laughed, surprised. “As a matter of fact, I would.”
Dr. Bishop clapped twice. Each clap was as sharp and definitive as a period at the end of a sentence. White space separated them. She said, “You look like a dog lover. And we just admitted a patient. A suicide attempt. When the paramedics picked him up, they found the saddest little dog in his apartment. Just a puppy. And, well, long story short, the patient is no longer with us. No longer among the living. But the puppy is living with me. My cats do not like him. He needs a new home. You’re the guy to give it to him.” Dr. Bishop popped out of her seat. She said, “Follow me.”
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
4
The next day, I sat in my wooden office chair, gazing at the fog outside my office window. I had a three-ring binder on my lap. It was full of papers I had printed off the internet, punched three holes in, and stuck in the binder. I had ordered the pages logically, highlighted them appropriately, made notes in the margins. On the computer behind me, I had computer files that held the drafts of various proposals. The phone on my desk could show a list of my last ten outgoing calls; all to people whose names were in my three-ring binder. Surrounded thus by all the signifiers of the consummate professional, I watched a bluebird.
The bluebird perched on the high branch of a fir sapling on the hill across from me. The young branch sagged under the bluebird’s weight, swaying in the gentle breeze. I wondered if bluebirds were indigenous to this part of California and if it was odd to see a bluebird in January. Or, perhaps, was this the south where the bluebirds flew in the winter? Are bluebirds migratory? If so, where was the rest of its flock?
Letting go even further, I indulged in more thoughts, wondering if a group of bluebirds was called a flock, or, perhaps like crows, a group of them could be called a murder. A murder of bluebirds? It didn’t have the right ring to it. And while I was on the subject—or nowhere near it, if you don’t follow my random loose associations—where were all the palm trees on the grounds of this Southern California psych hospital? Wasn’t it state law that palm trees had to be visible in every glance here in Southern California?
Dr. Benengeli snapped me out of my ruminations. I heard her voice in the hallway outside my office. “Are you supposed to be here?” she asked.
A male voice responded. He did not answer her question. He just said her name in that warm and jovial way that sets off alarm bells. He said, “Dr. Benengeli.”
“Walters,” Dr. Benengeli said. She paused. I set my feet on the floor and perked up my ears. “Are you supposed to be here?”
“I just wanted to say hello.”
“To whom? To me?”
“Well, who else?”
“You know where my office is. You know it’s not in this building.” Dr. Benengeli had a lilt to her voice that I’d never heard. I thought of her exceptionally short stature and the lack of psych techs in this building and of the castor oil coating the barbs of this strange man’s voice. I rushed into the hallway. The fluorescent light above my office door flickered. Dr. Benengeli and the strange man both stopped talking and turned to face me.
“Do you need a hand, Doctor?” I asked.
Castor Oil Walters gave me a smile. “You must be the new grant writer,” he said.
I looked to Dr. Benengeli. Her eyes were like polished stone. I couldn’t read anything in them. She didn’t wait for subtleties to play out. “Okay,” she said. “I see how it is. Come on, Walters. It’s easy to get lost in this building. Let me show you to your car.”
Walters