Mind Games Read Online Free PDF

Pondicherry Restaurant, to Tim and Sally – there they are, twenty-nine years from the day they met on a playground, carving up the carcass of their life together, divvying up stereos and coffee grinders. (Who cared!) I believe I slipped into a Category 300.6 disorder: derealization, existence is unreal, the surrounding world a sham.
    (This isn’t the first episode in which I’ve suffered estrangement from the self – add that to your ever-growing list.)
    As if to confirm this diagnosis, there occurred a surreal event as we were debating custody of the hand-blown wine goblets. Outside, a tall, stilettoed, miniskirted woman emerged from a Cadillac convertible, high-stepped onto the sidewalk, and stared directly at me through the glass. Let me introduce to you the dark-haired, pouty-mouthed, bold-breasted Vivian Lalonde, graduate student, twenty-three, who has been in therapy with me for the last month.
    In a thrice she was standing at our table, hovering over me. “Dr. Dare, I’m sorry, I have to talk to you.”
    “Vivian, this is not the best time.” This Amazon, six feet tall in heels, is a histrionic attention-demander with a history of unhappy male relationships – intelligent but obsessively flirtatious. I’d probably erred in telling her the Pondicherry was my favourite restaurant.
    “I’ve left him.”
    “Let’s make a very early appointment. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow, how’s that?”
    “I have nowhere to go. I walked out with what I have on me.” A dress of pricey design, the top unbuttoned to reveal the barest glimpse of braless breasts. She was staring at me intensely,ignoring Sally, who shifted uncomfortably. Introductions didn’t seem warranted.
    “I just feel so lost and alone, Doctor.”
    I thought of telling her, to use the cloying argot of the pseudo-therapist, that I shared her pain – her plight eerily echoed mine, though this was her second failure at marriage, one that hadn’t lasted half a year.
    I rose and ushered her toward the kitchen doorway, out of the hearing of all but Nataraja, who was sorting through his spice jars.
    “You have your parents’ home to go to.”
    “I can’t face them.”
    “That’s the first thing you should do.”
    “He’ll think it’s my fault.”
    Note the reference not to mother but to father, an overbearing surgeon who was footing my bills and who’d been no less opposed to this marriage than the first. He wanted his daughter to be happy – that, he insisted, was all that counted. Vivian’s mother, an ineffectual self-doubter, offered little support.
    I explained she’d interrupted a deeply personal discussion. Her eyes finally went to Sally.
    “That’s your wife.” She had no trouble deducing that, as she’d seen Sally’s self-portrait on the wall of my office.
    “Please, Vivian, do as I suggest.”
    She finally agreed, reluctantly, to go to her parents’ home. As she left, Nataraja drew me aside solicitously. He’d observed Sally’s tears, my gloom, but mistook their source. “Stick with Sally. That other one may be built like a B-52 bomber, but she doesn’t have all her buttons done up.” Nataraja will often show me another face. He’d lived well and decadently as a spiritual leader until convicted of tax evasion. He is a handsome man of forty, dark, with soulful eyes.
    I slumped back into my chair. Sally was unreadable, a look she often takes on in defence against my alleged ability to readher thoughts (if I try to do so, it’s without mischievous motive).
    “She’s a patient,” I explained.
    “Obviously”
    “Smart. She’s studying for her masters.”
    “In what – reproductive biology?”
    “Design arts.”
    Sally repeated, with exaggerated mimicry, “ ‘I walked out with what I have
on
me. I have nowhere to
go.’ “
    “What would you have me do? Offer to put her up on the
Altered Ego?”
    “What is she, some spoiled brat? She couldn’t take her eyes off you.”
    Under the circumstances, I thought it