Short Fiction Stories

Take One Giant Step

by Sylvia Krakauer

She looked at her watch and realized that she'd never get through the next 23 minutes without peeing on Dr. Baker's carpet and so she started mentally rehearsing the question in her mind. On the seventh attempt, she said it out loud, "do you think I could use your ladies room real quick?"

Leslie almost always asked if it would be okay if something occurred "real quick". Could she ask a question "real quick", could her date explain the part of the movie she'd missed "real quick", could she interrupt the meal for a phone call, check her messages, move the clothes from the washer to the dryer as long as she was sincere in her determination to not take too much time or attention away from the other person while she got it crossed off the list?

There was always a list and it always seemed to be intruding on someone else's rightful place center stage in Leslie's life. So Leslie always felt that she had to make it clear that she would dispense with everything real quick.

"Sure," Dr. Baker said simply, not pointing in the direction of the rest room, as Leslie hoped he would. He probably figured that after 15 months in therapy, she'd know. But she didn't. Which was really odd since Leslie always had to pee.

"You know," Leslie began in earnest, truly to sound like she had just lit upon the crux of her angst, trying to engage Dr. Baker in a discussion that would distract them both from the fact that she had just wasted time asking for a break and then not taken it. Maybe he'd think that she was stalling and now was recommitting to uncover and heal the source of her neurotic behavior, to deal with the true core of her pain. Maybe that would impress him or maybe it would make him worry that she'd someday decide that she didn't need him to listen to her for 48 minutes every week and then he'd have replace the neatly written check for $175 she deposited in his never-too-eager hands.

Leslie had all but forgotten the bouts of indecision and sadness that had led her to begin therapy in the first place. Fifteen months later it was all about Dr. Baker, and what he thought of her. She fervently hoped that he didn't feel he had to work too hard for the money she paid him and that he had crazier but not more interesting clients. She hoped that he called them some of them patients and that only she was a client, almost as if he considered her a peer. She hoped that she didn't embarrass him by making too much of the transfer of funds, so she always had the check already written out and in the palm of her hand so she could slip it to Dr. Baker somewhere during the last five minutes of her session. It wasn't always easy not to look at her watch just the right amount, so that he never had to end the session without having received the check. Of course his having to end the session at all meant that Leslie was taking up too much time and infringing on Dr. Baker's schedule and his other patients/clients. But she didn't want it to appear that she was overly concerned with time, unwilling to share the stories that would help heal her wounded psyche or spending fully 25% of her very expensive 48 minutes planning how to deposit the already written out check into Baker's hand.

She wondered if she would seem plucky or just rude if she asked Dr. Baker's first name and then never used it. If this were a movie he'd have told her and she'd have been playfully corrected every time she did not use it, opting for the more formal and correct salutation. Leslie didn't really care about the first name, and she knew what it was anyway, from the article in "Psychology Today" that had promoted her to choose him from the list of four therapists recommended by a FaceBook friend.

But then Leslie almost always had information before she asked for it. The information itself never seemed the object of the question but it was, in a way that was just as much a mystery as everything else of importance in her life, part of the journey.

People were always telling Leslie that it was all about the journey. This brought to mind Leslie's mother's comment that equipment described as "state-of-the-art" was always on the brink of obsolescence. This led Leslie's mother to conclude that "state-of-the-art" was one step above useless. This made Leslie laugh. It also made her think that if the journey was more important, the destination must be way out of reach or really crappy.

Leslie pretended to scratch her wrist so she could glean the information that there were only 12 minutes left to this particular journey. Surely her bladder could wait that long. She calculated that she could obsess about whether or not Dr. Baker noticed that she never went to the ladies' room, wonder what he concluded about that and whether or not he accorded additional weight to the comments she made right after asking for the break. That would leave just time enough to palm the check, pass it off to Dr. Baker, wrap up what she considered the salient points of this session, let him repeat two of her comments and add a pithy one of his own and she'd be good to go. And so, for not the first time that day, she thought that something she'd previously considered quite ridiculous, the whole life being about the journey thing, was probably spot on.

A random thought, if there is such a thing during therapy, occurred to Leslie. She wondered why people wondered why people always ordered the same ice cream flavor when there were so many from which to choose. Although she knew that she was more aware of her neurosis than other people, it didn’t truly seem that she was any crazier. Other people didn't sit in the car for five minutes rehearsing how to order a new ice cream flavor and consider whether or not getting something new was worth giving up the certainty of the one you already knew you liked. That would leave them only two options: try to compress the entire thought process into the time spent waiting on line or ordering your "go to" flavor. Of course some people didn't have to compress anything, they could chat with friends or hum along to a song no one else could otherwise hear if she weren't humming it until they got to the front of the line and then stare at the menu or off into space and consider all the options then. This was not really a viable option. Which is not to say that people didn't do it every day. But in order to avail yourself of this option, the one that meant keeping everyone waiting, you had to believe, not just act like you believed but honestly believe that you had a right to keep everyone waiting. Very young, very pretty, very, very skinny girls can pull this off. Everyone else looks like a jerk. Young, pretty, skinny girls look like jerks too but they are supposed to. The only thing a young, pretty, skinny girl can do that makes it worse for everyone in the world who isn't young, pretty or skinny is to act like she doesn't know that she can do anything she wants to anyone she wants whenever she wants. This robs them of the ability to think that being nice, considerate or smart somehow evens the score between them and their more attractive co-inhabitants of earth. Everyone knows that it doesn't but it's best if everyone pretends that they don't.

And with that random thought, Leslie's time was up and she smiled, knowing that in six and a half minutes she'd be able to pee in her own bathroom.

The one traffic signal on the way from the office to Leslie's apartment was yellow and she was relieved to note that since the car in front of her had already stopped, she didn't have to decide whether to slow down or accelerate in anticipation of the red light. That was one of the truly "no win" dilemmas; whether to risk alienating the speed freak behind you or maiming the nonchalant slight seer ahead of you always left Leslie feeling that she'd made the wrong choice. Since the choice she almost always made was to slow to a near crawl and then lurch ahead and slide through the light, she probably wasn't beating herself up too much in this particular case.

Having been relieved of this decision left Leslie free to make an uncharacteristically spontaneous one to make an unscheduled stop on the way home. Some children on the corner were running under a sprinkler and this combined with Leslie's thoughts about ice cream flavors made her want to stop and get frozen custard.

After using the ladies' room, she got on line and began rehearsing "large chocolate and vanilla swirl soft serve" in double time since the line was very short. As the person in front of Leslie started to walk away with her banana split, Leslie felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Dr. Baker smiling broadly at her.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said pleasantly. Leslie hesitated for a full three seconds before saying, "Get me a strawberry shake and whatever my friend, Julian would like."

Three seconds, Leslie learned, was just long enough for the two young, pretty, very skinny girls behind her and Julian Baker to get annoyed but not enough time for them to allow that annoyance to show on their faces.

Once seated at a rickety table on white wicker chairs, Leslie took a long sip of her shake before attempting to unravel the knot of mind chatter unleashed by her having used her shrink's first name without her being in appropriate possession of that information.

She thought she should say, "Julian" hesitate for a beat, follow that with "Dr. Baker" and then charmingly revert back to "Julian". But it came out as "JulianBaker".

"Actually, my first name is Patrick, and I think you should probably start calling me that because I don't think I should see you professionally any more. For a couple of reasons. Not the least of which is that you are probably the sanest person I know."

And Leslie decided that if that were true this might actually be the start of a beautiful friendship.

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