ready to go?”
“I think I got it out of my system.”
Annick kissed Philip again, and left the seawall to him and the rest of the Lycra-clad Grecian gods who jogged with the fervent certainty that neither Death nor Ugliness would ever come.
Even after the abortive attempt at running, the trip back to the condominium for a shower and the change of clothes, Annick still arrived at the clinic before anybody else—even Cedric, who was now confirmed as being a bona fide human being, with a biological need for sleep, hearth and home. Putting her store-bought cappuccino down on the office kitchen counter, Annick prepared the first urn of collective coffee, though the office was ideologically riven by conflicting views as to caffeine’s role in exacerbating anxiety disorders. The tea-drinkers could be entombed with their precious rooibos and peppermint, for all she cared.
Annick sat at her desk and went over the three months’ worth of notes she’d taken on Sanjay, trying to get an ordered sense of the young man to set against the news stories. She frowned when she realized how many times the roommate had come up, always in a negative light. There had been embarrassed stories about getting caught mid-compulsion by the roommate’s walking in unannounced; fights over noise; arguments about the use of common spaces, including the bathroom. The picture of the now-murdered Jason was uncomplimentary: thuggish, lazy, sleeping well into the day and noisily inhabiting the night when he wasn’t busy as the doorman at a downtown club. There was a dim-witted and loutish friend, Mike, who seemed to be inseparable from the roommate and who was just as bad, if not as smart. But there had not been a single instance of Sanjay’s even imagining visiting violence upon Jason. Did that make things better or worse?
“Pardon me.”
Annick turned to see Cedric leaning the top half of his body through her open door. “Dr. Boudreau, a man’s got a certain reputation to maintain. Imagine my surprise coming in with no alarm beeping, and instead hearing the mellifluous sound of percolation from the kitchen.”
“Could’ve been worse—could’ve been one of our tea-crusader friends.”
“I believe the preferred term is ‘tea bags.’”
“Gotcha.”
“You are feeling okay, Annick?”
“Sure, Cedric. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was thinking of your question yesterday, so speedily retracted—and on top of that, you have a certain… underslept quality about you this morning.”
“You certainly know how to make a lady feel special.”
“Well, as your friend and colleague, I’m not so deeply concerned with making you feel special, Doctor. I want to make sure you’re alright.”
Annick smiled without happiness, nodded, shrugged. “Just a patient, has me worried is all.”
“The only thing more painful than being good at your job is caring about it, too. Anything I can help with?”
“I can’t see how, Cedric, but if I think of anything, I’ll come to you.”
“And I’ll be there when you do,” he said, turning to leave.
“Thanks, Cedric,” she called out after him.
“Oh, and if anybody asks,” he called back, over his shoulder, “I was in my office when you got here this morning.”
Annick smiled and began to formulate a comeback when her computer dinged at her, and she turned to discover an email.
From: Dr. Supriya Desai
Subject: my son
6
For lunch, Annick had two cans of Diet Coke and six miniature Peppermint Patties—a jar of which sat ready for patients and colleagues to take from. Since they rarely did, she usually cycled through them all by herself every three or four months. Assured that her body was fortified with artificial sugar substitutes and edible wax, she once again pored over the email from Sanjay’s mother.
Dear Dr. Boudreau—
My son Sanjay has asked me to reach out on his behalf in order to dialogue with you. He says that you have been instrumental in helping him to deal with his recent depression, and for this we are both truly grateful. As you have no doubt by this time been made aware, by sundry sensational media accounts, my child has been arrested for the murder of his odious roommate, Jason MacGregor, although he is entirely innocent of these charges—but of course, you know this, having spoken with him in such depth and detail that you must surely be aware that he is incapable of any such thing. Sanjay may also have indicated in his sessions with you that a great deal of my poetic practice has addressed the liminal conjunctures between street and state violence(s), and as such I am afraid that there may be a revanchism shaping the police treatment of his case in retaliation to my anti-brutality cultural engagement. They have told Sanjay that he is being held as a continuing danger because of a so-called “murder journal” filled with the most grotesque, baroque, violent imagery, which is melodramatic nonsense, of course. As his counsel have advised against an official meeting between the two of you at this time, Sanjay has asked me instead to meet with you in person, in order to relay from him the details of his case. He was very emphatic upon the point; he indicated to me the absolute importance that I convey his innocence to you. He is currently being held at the Dunsmuir Jail on Cordova, in the Downtown Eastside, and since I am not always permitted to have my phone with me there, or have sometimes been asked to turn off the ringer, it’s perhaps best that we communicate today by email. Please let me know, urgently, your very earliest convenience for a meeting, preferably this evening, and I will endeavour to make my way to you.
Supriya
*********
Dr. Supriya Desai, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Kwikwetlem territories
she/her/hers
Annick sat back from where she had been hunched towards the screen and let out a long, strong and resigned exhalation. Sanjay was still hiding his OCD from his mother. Given that she was the very subject of the great majority of Sanjay’s dark and violent, unwanted and intrusive thoughts, maybe that was no particular surprise. He had never said as much, but Annick had begun to suspect that one of the reasons he had moved across town was to avoid the constant contact with his mother, who had no idea that she was being gutted in his mind’s eye, against his will, for the longest hours of the day.
So Sanjay hadn’t told his mother, and that would make things harder for everyone. Annick couldn’t divulge any details about their sessions without Sanjay’s direct permission. She couldn’t explain primary obsessions OCD, or why a doctor might ask a patient to keep a record of the frequency, intensity and even content of intrusive thoughts—a record that, for someone who didn’t know what they were looking at, might read like Dostoevsky by way of Charles Manson. Politically, Annick was more or less inclined to agree with Dr. Desai’s diagnosis of the brutal biases and even vindictiveness of the constabulary, but this seemed like a simple case of convenience: that piece of evidence—a chronicle of imagined killings at the site of a real one—would make all the cops’ and lawyers’ lives easier. Everybody’s lives, that is, but Sanjay’s.
Annick had written an email full of solidarity and attestations to Sanjay’s decency that were as vague as they were sincere. She’d suggested that the two of them might meet at a Palestinian restaurant on Hastings, not too far from the jail but far enough to be removed, since they’d probably both need something substantial to eat by then, and since the owners were friends of Annick’s they could count on a table with some privacy. Supriya had written a very short email back, in the affirmative. They’d take a late dinner tonight, at eight o’clock.
There were