“You want Celeste,” I said, by which I meant that I was a fool, I knew I was nothing, nothing. Of course he wouldn’t want me, no one would. Especially Freud. Freud, who I’d been convinced since I first saw his face staring out at me from the cover of the book—cigar in one hand, eyes burning—was my watcher, my protector, my savior. The only one who understood me, my confidant, my home. I ran my tongue along the ridge of the roof of my mouth and then remembered, with disgust, that it was just another dick. I had no home.

“You want fucking Celeste,” I said again, to make him admit it. But he only stood there, looking at me.

“Why do you need me to betray you?” he said finally.

“Need you to?” I said, and, unaccountably, began to laugh—not a normal laugh, full of warmth and invitation, but a careening screech of a laugh, a car flying through the guardrail. “Need you to, when you’re the one who wants Celeste instead of me, who tells me to come back and then shakes his head when I try to—when I just—when all I want—”

“What is it you want?” he said, cutting into my hysterics, which abruptly stopped. I wanted to fuck him, didn’t I? I wanted him to hold me. “What is it you really want?”

But I couldn’t say it. He was taunting me, trying to make me beg him, only to reject me once more. Was he seeing how much power he could wield? Was he trying to see how foolish I could be? He had orchestrated my shame; he had willed my humiliation.

“Why do you need me to betray you?” he repeated, and before I knew what my hands were doing I was trying to shove him backward into the wall. It was the first time I had touched him, and his chest was harder than I had imagined. I felt a twist between my legs. I registered what I was doing—I was touching Sigmund Freud, I was invading his space, I was assaulting him, I was caressing him—and, as if to make sense of my action, shoved him harder. He hardly budged; he grabbed my wrist.

“Stop pushing me, please,” he said.

“Let go of me,” I said, but Don’t let go, I thought.

He released me. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Because—” I sputtered, desperate to prove I was angry at him, not that I simply wanted, needed, to touch him. “Because you made me come back here, because you rejected me, because you humiliated me, because—”

“Humiliated,” he said. “Betrayed. I wonder what purpose this narrative serves.”

“It serves the purpose of making me feel like shit!” I screamed. But at the same time there was a glimmer of understanding: this was not what he’d meant.

“Who do you really feel rejected by?”

“You,” I said.

“Is it really me?”

Who did I feel rejected by? My vision clouded, the question was too much, it made my ears ring, She’s being a baby—who had said this?—a bright whiteness overtook my mind, a sound like static, blotting out the words—