Last Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

naked for all intents and purposes, my patient is topless, and in the interest of full disclosure, should it turn out to be relevant, I should probably add pantyless, and we're both completely, totally, absolutely involved in the performance of this wonderfully elaborate interpretative piece about the collision of primitive life forms in the earliest moments of the survival of carbon-based life on earth."
    "I'm with you," I said. Though I'm not sure why I said that. The circumstances she was describing were as foreign to me as string theory.
    "Two minutes after I spotted her for the first time, the dance we were doing brought us side to side. She completed a spin, and her eyes showed just a flicker of surprise as she recognized that it was me dancing beside her. I watched her glance flit from my face to my boots to my veil, and down my train, not really ever pausing too long anywhere in between. Finally, she took my hand. Softly. She said, 'Hello, Doctor Zoet.' Just like she might be greeting me in the waiting room."
    Hella narrowed her eyes at me. "You told me once during supervision back when I was still in graduate school that when a therapist runs into a patient in public, out of the office, the safest thing to do is to follow the patient's social lead. Allow the patient to say hello, or not, to make introductions, or not, that sort of thing. So that's what I did right then. I said, 'Hello,' back to her. I didn't even use her name, you know, just in case she wasn't using it while she was at Burning Man."
    "Good call," I said. "Considering the circumstances." And the event. And the wardrobe.
    Hella said, "There's an underlying expectation of anonymity out there. At Burning Man. Certainly at our theme camp. Absolutely during a performance like that one. No cameras, no recording. It's made clear to everyone who attends."
    "I can imagine," I said. Actually, I was taking Hella's word for it.
    Hella continued. "She and I were tugged in opposite directions. Literally. By the dance. We parted, danced away. The performance brought us back together a few minutes later. Maybe five, ten.
    "Her presence was a distraction for me, I have to admit. I would have preferred she not be there. I think it's important that I say that. Burning Man is a place I go to get away from . . . my work. My life."
    "Understood," I said.
    "When she saw me again, almost immediately she said to me, 'In case you're wondering, they were Dan's idea.' "
    My expression made it clear that the name Dan wasn't ringing a bell.
    Hella reminded me, "Daniel was her dead husband, the golf pro. The man without the three-wood?"
    "Got it," I said, grateful for the information. In my professional life, the names of patients, my own and those of my supervisees, not to mention all of their numerous significant others and friends and family members and adversaries, and colleagues, and neighbors, tended to run together for me. Contextual nicknames helped me keep important people distinct. Hella's patient had always been "Three-Wood Widow." Her dead husband, Daniel, had been "the golf pro" or "the dead golf pro."
    Hella had a new name for him, apparently. "The Man Without the Three-Wood."
    "Go on," I said. Few stories in therapy, or supervision, interest me from a narrative point of view. I have, literally, heard them before. However, I definitely wanted to know how the Burning Man vignette turned out.
    Hella said, "I didn't know what she meant with her reference to her husband; I didn't know what exactly had been Dan's idea. Was she talking about being at Burning Man? Was she a return visitor? Or had she made the trip to the festival as some kind of tribute to her dead husband? And why did she say 'they' and not 'this'?
    "Frankly, Alan, I wasn't even sure whether to respond to her at all. I didn't want to be her therapist right then. You know what I mean? I didn't. I had other things in my head. Her presence was . . . distracting. By introducing Dan she seemed to be inserting the