Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect Read Free Page A

me? No, but it made me sad. And it made it much easier to do what I could for him. I never took him inside me. But I saw him for months. Talking, soft touching, listening to him. I’d go to his hotel room every time he came to the city on business. He’d order whatever I wanted from room service and then we’d get into bed with the food. He liked me to feed him. And then he liked to feed me. And he liked me to massage him. Just lightly, you know, with oil. He was strong, worked out a lot, and I liked looking at him. All stretched out on the bed. He never closed his eyes, though. And we never shut off the light. I’d use the oil to loosen him up, and then I’d—”
    She cut herself off. “I guess there’s no reason for me to go into all that, is there?”
    “If you want to tell me about it, I want to hear about it,” I offered.
    She’d pulled me in and lulled me with the cadences of her speech. If Cleo Thane wanted to become a sex therapist, she’d be very good at it. The only problem was that as much as I earned—$225 an hour—she made more than three times that.
    “It hurts. This confusion. These conflicts…” Her lips trembled and she looked away.
    “What scares you the most? What is the most confusing?”
    “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the book….” She hesitated. And then in a quieter voice said, “No. Not exactly the book. But it’s related to the book. It’s really the man I’m seeing.”
    “Seeing? As in seeing a client?” I was surprised. In all the time she had been in therapy with me she had never mentioned that she was seriously dating anyone, and I’d been waiting for a revelation like this.
    Six months may sound like a long time for a patient to hold back important aspects of her personal life, but opening up was not always a simple act. Cleo had been obfuscating since she started with me. It was my job to be patient and do the best I could and trust that she would tell me her secrets when she was ready.
    She shook her head. “No. He’s not a client. He’s my fiancé. A lawyer. At a very prestigious white-glove law firm. I hired him a year ago to help me set up an offshore account for my company.” She let out a delightful peal of laughter. “How ironic is that? I hired him. After a while he asked me out. This love shit is worse than the guy who pulled the knife on me in bed when I first got into the business. Him I knew what to do with—I reached out and grabbed him by the balls. I squeezed so hard, his little baby fingers opened and the knife just dropped out. But this love stuff? I don’t know where to grab.”
    When you are a therapist, you often become preoccupied with a patient’s body language and voice. Obsessed with those things, in fact. From an inappropriate smile you understand a conflict, from crossed arms you pick up on an unwillingness to open up, from closed eyes you detect a reluctance to face the truth. In listening to a client, you hear not just the words, but the subtleties of inflections, pauses and rhythms of the voice. You sometimes hear words that almost come out but are aborted, the sighs, the hints of tears. For me, voicesare a rich source of information, especially when a patient is lying down on the couch and I can’t see his or her face.
    But Cleo was sitting up and facing me. She had been clear from the first: she didn’t want to lie down on my couch. That, she said, would make her feel too much as though she was working.
    “What is so confusing about the love stuff, as you call it?” I asked.
    “I never believed in romantic love. I once read that it’s something that was invented in the twelfth century. And up till now every experience I’ve had was just more proof. This has never happened to me before. And I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.” A faraway look in her eyes suggested just the opposite.
    Doctors are not supposed to admit this, but we like some patients more than others. And I liked Cleo a lot. She was refreshing and honest.