His lips moved like a dinosaur learning to smile. Another wave of cologne breathed its way across the chocolate mahogany mirage of his desk. A smell like advertising and strong jaw-lines and fantasies of control.
“Would you like to introduce us to your problem, Sarah?” he crooned.
I pulled a strand of hair from behind my ear and hooked it around a finger. I looked down at the thick pile of the holly green carpet. I imagined how difficult it would be to clean blood out of it. How difficult it would be to clean dried blood out of it…
He sat on the other side of the desk waiting, like a rock in need of a lighthouse. I threw my eyelids over my eyes.
“Well doctor…” I began.
“It’s Bernard. Please.” His voice allowed a narrow treble of protest. I didn’t smile. I tried to look interrupted.
“My problem is that I don’t understand the equation,” I stated. I expressed relief at getting this out into the open.
“The equation?” he echoed.
“Some of the terms seem to be missing, from all I can make out,” I proceeded.
Dr. Bernard Lavin held my seated form in his gaze. When my eyes touched his face from time to time in the silence, I felt something along the thrilling edge of hate.
“Are you interested in mathematics?” he asked.
I stared at the ceiling. At the neat delivery of its perspective. I thought: You’d never get blood up there. I said: “It seems more… as though mathematics is interested in me.”
He stood up suddenly, the only sound was the hushed run of his chair across less than a stride of that dark green carpet.
He opened a drawer in his desk, casually, unceremoniously. He withdrew bottle of Middleton whiskey. Turning to the window, he gave the lid of the bottle a well rehearsed twist. The waking smell of the whisky reached me, as he filled half a glass. I heard the soft pad of the bottle as he lowered it to the desk. His back was like a board as he stared through the window, as he stared into the trees outside and drank.
Time went away for a while. I heard his breath release something. A sadness. A pretension. A ghost of hope.
After a while he turned to the desk. He lowered a hand to the desk drawer and lifted a second glass and placed it on the shine of the desk and looked at me. I shook my head. He didn’t seem surprised.
A minute passed. He took a deep breath and drew in his chair and eased himself into it. The smell of the whiskey together with his cologne made me think of night. He looked to the window, then he looked to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “What would you like to talk about?”
I let a finger trail the edge of my eye.
“You,” I said. My voice was calm and certain, but a darkness fell across his face.
Fergus Deffely - Author 