Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe Read Free

she asked, her radiant eyes peeking over the magazine cover, where another pair of eyes radiated a glossy gaze. “You were pretty quiet at dinner.”
    â€œIt went about the same,” said Dr. Munck without lowering the small-town newspaper to look at his wife.
    â€œDoes that mean you don’t want to talk about it?”
    He folded the newspaper backwards and his upper body appeared. “That’s how it sounded, didn’t it?”
    â€œYes, it certainly did. Are you okay?” Leslie asked, laying aside the magazine on the coffee table and offering her complete attention.
    â€œSeverely doubting, that’s how I am.” He said this with a kind of far-off reflectiveness. Leslie now saw a chance to delve a little deeper.
    â€œAnything particularly doubtful?”
    â€œOnly everything,” he answered.
    â€œShall I make us drinks?”
    â€œThat would be much appreciated.”
    Leslie walked to another part of the living room and from a large cabinet pulled out some bottles and some glasses. From the kitchen she brought out a supply of ice cubes in a brown plastic bucket. The sounds of drink-making were the only intrusion upon the living room’s plush quiet. The drapes were drawn on all windows except the one in the corner where an Aphrodite sculpture posed. Beyond that window was a deserted streetlighted street and a piece of moon above the opulent leafage of spring trees.
    â€œHere you go. A little drinky for my hard-working darling,” she said, handing him a glass that was very thick at its base and tapered almost undetectably toward its rim.
    â€œThanks, I really needed one of these.”
    â€œWhy? Problems at the hospital?”
    â€œI wish you’d stop calling it a hospital. It’s a prison, as you well know.”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œYou could say the word
prison
once in a while.”
    â€œAll right, then. How’s things at the prison, dear? Boss on your case? Inmates acting up?” Leslie checked herself before things spiraled into an argument. She took a deep gulp from her drink and calmed herself. “I’m sorry about the snideness, David.”
    â€œNo, I deserved it. I’m projecting my anger onto you. I think you’ve known for some time what I can’t bring myself to admit.”
    â€œWhich is?” Leslie prompted.
    â€œWhich is that maybe it was not the wisest decision to move here and take this saintly mission upon my psychologist’s shoulders.”
    Her husband’s remark indicated an even more acute mood of demoralization than Leslie had hoped for. But somehow his words did not cheer her the way she thought they would. She could distantly hear the moving van pulling up to the house, but the sound was no longer as pleasing as it once was.
    â€œYou said you wanted to do something more than treat urban neuroses. Something more meaningful, more challenging.”
    â€œWhat I wanted, masochistically, was a thankless job, an impossible one. And I got it.”
    â€œIs it really that bad?” Leslie inquired, not quite believing she asked the question with such encouraging skepticism about the actual severity of the situation. She congratulated herself for placing David’s self-esteem above her own desire for a change of venue, important as she felt this was.
    â€œI’m afraid it is that bad. When I first visited the prison’s psychiatric unit and met the other doctors, I swore I wouldn’t become as hopelessly cynical as they were. Things would be different with me. I overestimated myself by a wide margin, though. Today one of the orderlies was beaten up again by two of the prisoners, excuse me, ‘patients.’ Last week it was Dr. Valdman. That’s why I was so edgy on Norleen’s birthday. So far I’ve been lucky. All they do is spit at me. Well, they can all rot in that hellhole as far as I’m concerned.”
    David felt his own words lingering