She looked him over, feeling the tingle of shock and fear. Yes, her world had always been full of bearded men laying down rules and laws, telling her what she could and couldn’t do. But nothing in her life and experience had prepared her for a man calling himself a rabbi to behave in such a way. There was something strange in his face, too, she realized, something that hadn’t been there before, or that at least she hadn’t noticed, that she had never experienced with a man of his age. An old man. No, not old, not exactly. An older man, she corrected herself mentally, a man the age of her father.

She looked away. Was this normal, for a psychologist to touch, to threaten like this? To get such a look in his face like this, a look she had sometimes seen in Duvie’s in the moonlight, when he reached out to touch her? Or was she just imagining it? Perhaps he was only trying to do his job? Perhaps this was what all psychologists did when patients “didn’t cooperate”?

She tried to calm herself down, to reason it out. Of course, counseling would be a waste of time if she didn’t tell him the truth. But why did he need every detail? And how could she tell him what she had done with Duvie, lying there on his couch, with him watching her every move? With him touching her?

“So I see you haven’t decided. So decide, Shaindele. And if you are not prepared to tell the truth, to answer everything I ask you, then don’t bother coming back. Is that clear?”

He had already pulled his chair behind his desk again. He wasn’t looking at her, but fiddling again impatiently with the pencils on his desk. “That’s it. Time’s up.”

Slowly, she stood, backing away and turning the lock in the door that led to the waiting room.

“Not that door! Go out the way you came in.” He seemed upset.

She stared at him, backing away, trying not to get near him. Only when she had closed the door behind her did she allow herself to breathe.

She was in no hurry to get home. The familiar streets seemed like a foreign country, the storefronts hazy and indistinct as if covered in smoke. The faster her heart beat, the more the streets seemed to whizz past her cartoonishly, her feet hardly touching the ground as she tried to put as much distance between herself and Yoel Grub as possible.