As I was drying my eyes she asked, “What do you think of when you think of Hannibal Lecter?”

“I don’t know . . . Anthony Hopkins, I guess.”

“No. Not the actor, but the character. Who is he?”

“A cannibal.”

“Do you know what he does for a living?”

“Eats people?”

“No, I think that’s more of a hobby,” she said, with a chuckle at her own wit. “If you remember the movie, Jodie Foster always calls him ‘doctor.’”

“Okay . . .”

She didn’t follow up. Psychiatrists are like prosecutors and cops in that way, using silence to draw out an admission.

“I don’t think I remembered that,” I said to end the quiet.

“Do you know what kind of doctor he is?”

I thought for a moment, then realized I did know.

“He’s a psychiatrist.”

She nodded. “Maybe your dream is a way of telling you that what you’re truly terrified of is what you might end up revealing in here. In therapy. Maybe the monster that your sister let in is the psychiatrist on the third floor of the brownstone.”

Today, though, I have nothing as revelatory to share with Allison as the dream in which I stab to death the stand-in for my psychiatrist using the same weapon as I used to kill my sister’s murderer. Instead, I move in an entirely different direction.

“So I had a pretty good set the other night,” I begin brightly. “And Gabriel was there.”

“Good,” she says in that noncommittal tone that I suspect all therapists use.

“Gabriel asked about my song, though. ‘Never Goodbye.’ Whether I actually feel the things I say in the lyrics.”

We’ve discussed the song before. In fact, I sang it for her once. I wanted her to say that it was beautiful, but instead she used the word torturous.

“And what did you tell him?”

“The truth, like always.”

She smiles. “And what is the truth?”

“That sometimes I feel like that, but not all the time?”

“And by ‘like that,’ to what are you referring?”

I find this to be a bit cruel. She knows what I mean but wants me to say it aloud. I suspect it’s some type of therapist thing. If you articulate your desires, you’re less likely to act on them maybe. Something akin to keeping a food journal so you don’t overeat. Or perhaps Allison is simply a sadist.

“That sometimes I feel like I want to die.”

8. DANA GOODWIN

8.

DANA GOODWIN