The Practical Navigator Read Free Page B

bit too casual.
    â€œNo, not at all,” says Michael. “Just a checkup.”
    â€œGood. You need one,” says Rose, her curiosity and her computer with its resources and search engine ever present. “She’s una loquera .”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œA shrink.”

 
    4
    The clock on the waiting room wall reads quarter after twelve. Michael sits alone, thinking he should have known better. Doctors—even loqueras —always run late. The room is the first floor of a narrow, old two-story wooden cottage built into the hill, several blocks above Coast Avenue. It is comfortable and tastefully decorated with what to Michael’s mind look like real antiques. There is Middle Eastern art on the walls and on the sideboard. There are back issues of magazines neatly arranged on the heavy wooden chest that serves as a coffee table— Psychology Today, Spirituality & Health, Yoga Journal. It makes Michael ponder if there aren’t any other people who, like him, read Sports Illustrated and have the quiet desire to steal the couch. He looks up as the door to an inner office opens. A timid-looking middle-aged woman comes out. The woman following her is dressed in a fashionable skirt and jacket, her thick black hair pulled up and back off her face. The middle-aged woman has obviously been crying and now the dark-haired woman, at least a decade younger, folds her into a maternal embrace. They hold each other quietly and tenderly in the way, Michael thinks, that women sharing an emotional connection often do. The middle-aged woman forces a grateful, trembling smile and turns away. She doesn’t look at Michael as she passes. The outer door closes behind her. The woman in the doorway regards Michael for a moment, her carefully made-up eyes as dark as her hair.
    â€œI’m sorry to keep you waiting, Michael, please come in.” There is just the trace of an accent. Michael rises. The woman waits to let him pass and then follows closely behind him into the inner sanctum. She smells of sandalwood and jasmine.
    Entering, Michael takes in the bookcases filled with psychology and self-help tomes, the diplomas on the wall. He has never understood why doctors, even simple Ph.D.s, feel a need to showcase all their books and diplomas. People wouldn’t come to them if they didn’t think they were smart. A rectangular writing table substitutes as a desk. Two overstuffed chairs face each other across the small, bright room. A handwoven rug is on the floor between them. The dark-haired woman closes the door behind her. She moves past Michael toward the single picture window. Beyond rooftops and an apartment building there is just a sliver of the sea. Putting down the file, she draws the curtains. She turns back, taking off her jacket.
    â€œGet undressed, pleased.”
    Taken aback, Michael is silent. The dark-haired woman glances at him. She frowns slightly. “Your clothes, please. Take them off.”
    â€œHere?” says Michael. As if the small, comfortable office might have eyes.
    The dark-haired woman gives him a cool, authoritative look. “Is there a problem?”
    â€œNo. No problem.” Nonplussed, Michael starts to unbutton his shirt.
    â€œWait.” The woman reaches back behind her head, pulls a pin and shakes. Her dark hair falls in a thick tumble, framing her face, turning it from severe to sensual. She kicks out of her high heels and, suddenly inches shorter, moves toward him. “I’ll do it.” Crossing, the woman reaches out with both hands and slowly and carefully unfastens the top button of Michael’s shirt. She glances at him, softly biting her full lower lip, and then her fingers drop to the second button, then the third. Parting his shirt, she leans forward. Michael gasps as her lips brush first one nipple, then another. In a bizarre, out-of-body moment, he flashes back to a skinny kid in high school, Fred Galloway, who had such a