Berman heaved himself up out of his chair and fiddled with a beaded cord, letting in a wider flash of white light, and then, finally, shutting it out altogether. The room was suddenly dark, as if a lamp had been turned off, quieter somehow, the atmosphere more unexpectedly intimate. He returned to his seat and looked at her with his bland, forgiving expression, refusing to be insulted by her tone.

“Now I should apologize for my sarcasm,” she said.

“Do you want to apologize?”

“Oh, please, Dr. Berman, please. I’ve been coming to you for a total of three years, off and on; I’ve poured thousands of dollars into your bank account, I’ve talked my throat dry, and you’re still tossing rhetorical softballs at me as if I hadn’t progressed out of the batting practice stage. As if I’m just another one of your patients.”

She looked up at him. Nothing. He appeared to have absorbed this comment as unflinchingly as he absorbed everything else she said. Their eyes met for a few seconds and then he reached over and turned on the light beside his chair. “Oh shit,” she said. “Now I have to apologize for that slip and explain that I really do know I am just another one of your patients and that I’m not some special case, but that—shoot me—I’d like to think I’m a little bit more sane and sensible and self-aware than that sunburnt skeleton I see in your waiting room every Tuesday or some of the other wrecks—whose lives, I know, believe me, I know, are undoubtedly more organized and orderly and focused than mine—and would like to hear something from you other than the usual, predictable, textbook therapeutic, Psych 101 jargon.”

Jane clutched the arms of her chair, trying to prop herself up, trying to look in control, even though she felt a peculiar weakness in her thighs. She was melting. Maybe she was having a nervous breakdown. That at least would be something concrete, something you could slap a label on. Berman was his placid self, but in the soft shadows, his face looked handsome and disconcertingly sensual. She’d probably have to lift her shirt and unhook her bra to get a reaction out of him. Fortunately she hadn’t said that out loud. He raised one eyebrow and crossed his feet at the ankles, like a polite schoolgirl. Expensive brown socks with flecks of gray, she noted, undoubtedly presents from his wife.

“All I mean,” Jane said, “is that I’d like you to say something unpredictable. Does that make me a horrible person? And please don’t bounce that question back in my face; it’s obvious I think it does make me a horrible person or I wouldn’t bother to ask.”