Chapter 1 - Alice
I had exactly fourteen days to finish an academic paper and submit it to the psychology journal. After a year without publishing anything, I could already hear the comments being made behind my back in academic circles about my lack of substance. Un imposteur.
I went to the kitchen, where I made coffee with buttered tartines, then settled onto the living room couch. I set the phone down on the side table, but the sound of a notification pulled me back. Louis Fontaine. My index finger flew to the screen.
Thursday, April 23 [7:05 AM] Louis Fontaine: Good morning, Dr. Heart. How are you? I know I already had my session this week, but I wanted to know if I could see you today still. Whenever you have time.
I didn’t like answering client texts from home, but it wasn’t like Louis to ask for an emergency session. My schedule was full, and I’d need the whole morning to work on my paper. I picked up the phone and reread the exchange.
Thursday, April 23 [7:10 AM] Dr. Alice Heart: Good morning, Louis. I’m well, and I hope you are too. Come by the office at 8:00 PM.
I went to the apartment’s office and sat by the window. I let my thoughts drift without direction, looking for something to catch my attention and give me the inspiration to face the computer for three hours. A face formed in my mind, with a restrained, slightly crooked smile. Even in memory it lit a spark in my body, sending signals for my core to prepare to receive something that definitely wasn’t coming. I shut my eyes tight.
I could explain it away as a simple emotional reaction to my patient’s feelings and behavior. He sought approval in my office, and I doled it out in homeopathic doses, all while being seduced by the asymmetry of that relationship. I knew so much about him, and he knew almost nothing about me, and that was powerful. But knowing the whys didn’t make the wanting any less.
I paced the room, in the gap between the desk and the bookshelf, between the books and paintings, and stopped in front of the framed diplomas on the wall. Scraps of paper marking exactly how far my desire was allowed to reach. Dr. Alice Heart, the prodigy who threw more than ten years of her career in the gutter because she didn’t know when to close her legs. The thought was enough to make me sit back down at the desk and pick up my phone again.
I tapped an icon of a heart wrapped in flames, and was taken to a screen with my face and the words “Alice H., 32” underneath. I’d downloaded the dating app a week ago, when my fertile window and the loneliness of a Saturday night had joined forces and cried out for human contact. I still hadn’t gone out with anyone, in the end.
I’d subscribed to the platform to get all the “benefits,” and the feature I enjoyed the most was seeing who’d liked my profile before matching, instead of only finding out after liking back. It was always a nice little ego boost to open that tab, and that’s exactly what I clicked on next. I only liked back the ones I was genuinely interested in.
After swiping past a few profiles, I stopped on the photo of a guy on a beach. His dark blond hair had golden glints from the late-afternoon sun, and he was grinning wide, but his turquoise eyes stayed lowered, as if he wanted to seduce whoever was on the other side of the screen. He wore a button-down with the top buttons open, revealing a defined chest dotted with small moles. “Louis F., 26,” read the caption below the selfie. I dropped the phone for the second time that day and pressed my hands to my face. My heart was racing. What if it had been an accident? The thought hurt.
Either way, our therapeutic relationship was now compromised. It wouldn’t be ethical to keep seeing him as a client. I tapped the three dots in the corner of his photo and hit “block.”
After finishing my writing session, I showered and got ready for lunch and the office. I put on a pair of gray flared jeans that showed off my curves nicely. Too casual. I decided on a wine-colored V-neck sweater with a lace-trimmed white camisole underneath, to balance it out. I also added a leather belt with a square buckle, matched with black boots. Finally, I did light makeup — eyeliner, mascara, blush, and gloss. I knew I was making an extra effort with my appearance today, and I found myself a little pathetic for it.
At the office the day went as usual, packed, with only an hour’s break in the late afternoon after a client rescheduled. I took the chance to step out for coffee, and when I got back I spent the rest of the time organizing my session notes. When I finished, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and touch up my makeup for the last two appointments of the day.
The office had two armchairs facing each other, and a couch pushed against the wall next to one of them. Luckily, my next client decided to lie down on the couch, so he didn’t notice I kept glancing at the clock every five minutes. At the end, once we said our goodbyes, I leaned against the door and closed my eyes. They felt sensitive, so I turned off the overhead light and left only the lamp on. The room was small, and the lamp was enough to light it. Five minutes later, the intercom buzzed.
“Dr. Heart?” said a deep, halting voice. “I’m here.”
“Hi, Louis. Come on up.”
I released the building’s digital lock and waited for him to climb to the third floor. I took one last deep breath and opened the door the moment I heard footsteps in the hallway.
“Good evening,” I smiled and held out my hand.
“Good evening,” Louis took my hand and smiled back. His hand was cold, faintly damp, and his eyes were shyer than in the photo I’d seen earlier.
I closed the door and sat in the armchair next to the couch. Louis smelled like someone who’d just finished smoking a cigarette as he passed by me, but a woody, sea-salt cologne filled the room once he took off his overcoat. He took the second armchair across from me and settled in comfortably, one leg crossed over the other, arms resting on the armrests. Despite the relaxed posture, he wasn’t looking at me directly. That yellowish light on him made him look like the central figure in some Caravaggio painting, the chiaroscuro tracing his jaw and the straight line of his nose.
Louis, I saw your match on Firesy. That crosses the line of our clinical relationship, so I’ll have to refer you to another psychologist, I thought. What I actually said was:
“What would you like to bring up today?”
Louis lifted his head and looked at me for a few seconds.
“I’ve been pretty anxious the last few days,” he tipped his head back and shifted his crossed legs from one side to the other. “I downloaded Firesy this week. Was feeling lonely, I don’t know.”
“And what about that anxiety made you book this session today, instead of waiting until next Tuesday?” I asked, adjusting myself in my seat.
He kept shifting his legs and didn’t answer right away.
“I wanted something easy,” he lifted his head. “But it’s all so bureaucratic, it’s been a while since I’ve done this. Except I managed to line up a date, for tomorrow, and for some reason that’s got me wired. I barely slept last night.”
Something in me pinched, and not pleasantly. Louis had ended a long relationship about three months ago, and according to what he’d brought to sessions, he hadn’t been with anyone since. It might have been around that time that I started noticing his longer, more lingering looks at me.
“You said you wanted something easy. What made it hard?” I threw back at him.
Louis sighed.
“I’m going to sound like garbage for what I’m about to say, but I just wanted a quick fuck,” he uncrossed his legs and rested his forearms on his knees. “I don’t want to have to be with an escort, I don’t want transactional sex... but at the same time I also don’t want to do it with someone I don’t have any emotional connection with.”
I let the silence stretch. He needed more time to work through what he was feeling. I stilled the tapping of my foot.
“But I don’t know if I want to build that emotional connection. I don’t want anyone getting expectations about me. I don’t want to have to make small talk after we’re done, I don’t want to have to call the next day.”
He stared at the floor, nodding his head over and over like commas.
“You don’t want to sleep with someone without an emotional connection, but you also don’t want to build that connection. So where does that leave you?”
“I know it’s contradictory,” he let out a dry laugh. “Actually, let me rephrase what I said before,” he stood up, and started pacing back and forth in the narrow space between the furniture. “I don’t just want a quick fuck. I want to feel something I’ve never felt in any relationship before. Something I can only imagine. I want to do it with someone I want so badly I forget who I even am. But I know I’m not going to find the right person.”
He was tall, and his shadow swallowed me whole while he stood there against the light.
“Why not?” I said quietly.
Louis was already near the door again, his back to me, one hand dragging down his face while the other rested on his hip.
“Because I won’t,” he turned around. “Because I know what I want isn’t going to come from an app.”
By that point I was already tapping the tip of my pen against the clipboard.
He came over to the couch and sat next to me. There it was, the triangulation he’d been doing more and more often lately, his eyes tracing mine, then my mouth, then back to my eyes.
“I’m afraid the person I really want doesn’t want me back.”
I looked away from him and jotted something meaningless on the clipboard. My heart was pounding.
“So, there is a right person, after all.”
“And she’d never look at me twice,” Louis dropped his head and folded his hands in his lap, thumbs circling one over the other.
My hands had gone cold.
“Why would you think that?” I sounded more indignant than I meant to.
He shook his head.
“It’s complicated, Alice,” he said my name so gently. “There are things between us that can’t just be brushed aside.”
I dropped my pen on the floor by accident. I needed to take back control of the conversation.
I bent down to grab it, but Louis got there first, and held the pen out to me in midair. When I tugged it toward me, it didn’t come. His eyes were fixed on me, and I couldn’t look away.
“Sorry.”
He let go of the pen, and I stayed frozen in the same position.
“Louis, I need to ask you something.”
"Sure," he raised his eyebrows.
“Is there something else you want to tell me?” I went on.
Louis opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times. Then, he stood up abruptly.
“I need to go. Thank you, and sorry, for whatever it’s worth,” Louis said.
He grabbed his overcoat and left the room before I had the chance to say anything else. I threw myself back into the armchair and took the tenth deep breath of the day.
I couldn’t keep doing this, pretending I wasn’t affected far beyond — far, far beyond — the limits of professionalism with him. Lucky for me he’d walked out of that room before admitting anything, because I’d already decided to commit the biggest mistake of my life and kiss him right there. I’d let him go at the next session. Maybe he’d come after me on his own, sometime. Maybe. It wouldn’t make it any less wrong, but at least I wouldn’t be the one making the first move.
I straightened up the room, turned off the lamp, and grabbed my bag and coat. Earlier the main street had been packed with cars, so I’d parked two blocks away. The walk there and the damp cold pulled me a little out of my head.
Turning the corner, the heavily wooded street where I’d left my car was dark, as if the treetops were sucking all the light out of the streetlamps for themselves. It was beautiful, gloomy, and it made me feel tiny, standing there alone. I hurried to get to the car, my footsteps echoing too loud in my own ears. As soon as I got home I’d open a bottle of wine and take a long bath to process the night.
Besides my car, there were only two others on that street. One across the road, and another parked behind mine. I walked faster, pulling my keys out of my bag before getting closer. I unlocked the doors and glanced once more at the cars around me before getting in.
I tossed my bag onto the passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt. Phew. I was safe. There was no reason for that prickling at the back of my neck. And then, all at once, everything went dark.
