The Law of Similars Read Online Free PDF Page B

elegant. Prettier. Especially the skin creams and lotions.
    But then there is always that small cabinet beside the pharmacy counter where the homeopathic remedies are stored. The belladonna and the chamomile, the Rhus tox and the Ignatia. A few dozen little drawers, each one no more than two or three inches high, filled with the cures.
    In France, you can even get them in the form of suppositories.
    But Carissa didn't believe that she could have settled in Paris when she first started her practice. Her family lived in Vermont, the man she assumed she would marry lived in Vermont. All of her life she herself had lived in Vermont.
    And she liked the state. She liked hiking the small hills in the summer and skiing the larger ones in the winter. And once her mural had been completed, she found that she liked the celebrity that went along with being a bit of an oddball in a small town: Mysterious. Esoteric. Exotic. But still, in the eyes of her neighbors who knew her, very talented.
    That was, after all, what had drawn most of her friends and lovers and patients to her. She was good at what she did. And she was unique.
    She was a native plant with some strangely foreign flowers.
    I had no foreshadowings of upheaval when I met Carissa Lake the next to last day in November, no inklings that our relationship would become controversial. Problematic. Insane. If I felt anything when I first walked into Carissa's office and looked down from the stars on her ceiling to find her sitting comfortably before her computer, it was relief that I wasn't going to have to exchange my clothes for one of those open-backed little gowns that barely stretched to mid-thigh.
    Briefly, when we'd first spoken on the phone to schedule an appointment, I'd feared that I would. "No gown?" I had asked, not at all pleased that this New Ager was going to expect me to sit around some examining room in the buff, but not exactly surprised. In my experience, people trekking down alternate paths had always been way too comfortable with their bodies, even when they had bodies like mine.
    "Of course not. Why would I give you a gown?"
    "Modesty, maybe?"
    "You won't be taking your clothes off, Leland."
    "Oh."
    "I mean, I guess you could if it's important to you. But based on what you've told me so far, there doesn't seem to be any reason."
    "Will you examine me?"
    "Yes, absolutely."
    Carissa had a professional woman's short hair--manageable and fast in the morning--just a shade closer to blond than brown. A round, girlish face. Eyeglasses that she'd slid to the top of her head like a hair band. She was wearing a V-neck sweater the night that we met, and when she swiveled in her chair to face me, I was immediately drawn to the creamy triangle of skin above the black cotton--no shirt between fabric and flesh. A thin gold chain hung like a smile against her collarbone.
    With the mural of buildings behind her, it looked for a brief moment as if she was working on the balcony or the roof of a brownstone.
    "Well," she said when she saw me. "Right on time."
    I smiled, regretting that my recent enthusiasm for the health club had lasted at best a dozen visits. I wasn't fat as that winter approached, but I'd noticed when I shaved that my extra ten pounds were particularly gelatinous, and had a tendency to shimmy across my midsection whenever I swung my arm toward the sink to rinse my razor.
    Carissa stood to greet me, and I realized she was almost as tall as I was, and I am close to six feet. Unlike my sister, Diana, however, there was nothing spindly or awkward about Carissa. She moved like water on slickrock.
    "Welcome," she said. "It's nice to meet you."
    "Likewise."
    She offered me herbal tea, and I declined, and then she suggested that I sit down on the couch beside one of the two large windows that faced west. The sun had long set--I'd come here after work, after a long day that included almost six hours in court--but I had a sense that she enjoyed wonderful sunsets.
    "You