Page 62 of Alone With You in the Ether

“No,” Regan said, and the psychiatrist looked up, startled.

“Charlotte.”

“I’m joking,” she said, soothing her with a smile, and the doctor frowned.

“Charlotte, if there’s something you’d like to discuss—”

“I’m fine,” she said.

The doctor’s eyes narrowed, doubtful.

Then, diplomatically, “You never told me how your weekend with your family went.”

“Not well,” Regan said. “My parents didn’t like the friend I brought with me.”

“The friend?”

“Yes, a friend.” You and me, you and me, you and me, Aldo, Aldo, Rinaldo, I am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than I am to any other form of vice. The thought of having you is more dangerous than any cocktail of drugs, the idea of belonging to you endlessly destructive. “He’s a theoretical mathematician, one of those lost-in-his-head types. My mother thought he was rude.”

“And your father?”

“Usually agrees with my mother.”

“What about your sister?”

I like him, Madeline had said, murmuring it in Regan’s ear and giving her arm a squeeze as she passed, saying nothing else.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it bother you? That they don’t like him, I mean.”

Regan cast a glance aside, impassive.

You cannot fathom the degree to which this bores me, she thought.

So she said, “I started painting again.”

Regan watched the doctor go rigid with unasked questions, but reluctantly, she managed the effort to venture, “Oh?”

“Yes,” Regan said, and didn’t elaborate.

“Is it… going well, then?”

It’s a fire. I used to burn out, now I just burn.

“Yes,” she said.

The doctor’s attention slid to the clock beside her.

“Well,” the doctor said, clearing her throat. “How are things with Marcus?”

“He wants to know why I don’t come to bed.”

The doctor blinked, taken aback a second time. How mundane, Regan thought disdainfully. How small your concerns. How very little the scope of your understanding.

“And why don’t you?”

“Because I’m painting.” It’s obvious, don’t you see it, can’t you hear it? His name is written on my skin, he scarred me, I’ve changed my entire shape for having fit within the enormity of his thoughts, and now the only words I know are lines and color.

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