The Devil's Interval Read Free

that what they all claim?”
    â€œI’m not kidding, Maggie. I don’t mean legally innocent; I mean really innocent.”
    â€œWow.”
    â€œYeah,” she said seriously. “It’s one of a kind. We could use some ink.”
Interval No. 1 with Dr. Mephisto
    T he night before we went to our first session with Jessie McQuist, MFT, PhD, and couples counselor to every other yuppie/buppie/guppie committed twosome in the East Bay, some miserable brew of guilt and dread gave me a killer case of insomnia. Beside me, Michael snored gently, deep in the untroubled sleep of not just the guiltless but also the noble and forgiving wronged spouse. At first he’d been furious, then cold and businesslike, and slowly he’d started to return to his normal, careless, affectionate self. But therapy! Yuck. That seemed likely to reignite the whole cycle of fire and ice. To distract myself, I focused on Dante’s second circle of hell, the one that was home to those who lusted. At least it was a cool club that would welcome me—Cleopatra was there, and Helen of Troy, and Guinevere. Beauties, queens, and me, a weak, slightly bored, and hassled dilettante writer-editor-mom. The irony, I realized, was that it hadn’t even been lust that had tempted me into the affair with my late boss. It was curiosity about someone who seemed so elegant and elusive. It was hero worship. It was a chance to see myself as something other than the mom on the Wednesday pickup for soccer practice. It was exciting to feel seductive, to make love in the middle of the afternoon, to have a secret. But of course it was also the secret that made me miserable. And the worst moment of my life rolled around, as I should have known it would, when Michael told me he knew. It was the morning after Quentin’s death, and we were jockeying for mirror and sink space in our bathroom, as we did every morning. I sniffled something about what a wonderful, irreplaceable editor and friend Quentin had been. And then Michael shut me up. “Was he a wonderful lover, too?” he asked. We were both facing the mirror, Michael shaving, his eyes cold and flat. “What do you mean?” I stammered. And then he told me. He knew. He’d known for a long time. He knew it was over, and he didn’t want to talk about it. Ever.
    And here we were, more than a year later, about to go sit onthe couch of shame in some touchy-feely Berkeley shrink’s office, and I thought, “That really will be the second circle of hell.” And then my alarm went off.
    Near the end of our first therapy session, I had two realizations: Michael, who could be one tough, judgmental guy about people who did what he perceived as vague things for a living, had decided he liked, or at least trusted, Dr. McQuist. Go figure. The other insight was that I didn’t like her much at all. And that it was going to be oh so easy to morph her name from Dr. McQuist into Dr. Mephisto. Easy. And fun.
    Just looking at Jessie McQuist made my head hurt. Black, black, black hair tipped with gold highlights, an embroidered hot pink vest, purple Lycra pants. Blue fingernails. I don’t care how many initials she had after her name, I had a hard time taking a therapist seriously who had such a promiscuous relationship with color. The Craftsman bungalow that housed her office, lime-green cupola and all, should have tipped me off. Of course, I was having a hard time taking therapy seriously. Which became obvious in the first few minutes of our conversation.
    â€œMichael, Margaret,” she said, sitting cross-legged in her big chair, in that annoying way show-offy limber people do. Okay, okay, I get it! You do yoga.
    â€œHow are you?”
    â€œI’m fine,” said Michael.
    â€œMe too,” I said.
    Silence.
    â€œWeird to say, ‘fine,’ if we’re here for therapy,” I offered.
    â€œNothing’s weird,” she said.
    I wanted to say that a