My Year of Rest and Relaxation

I racked my mind.

Psychiatry has come a long way, into the spiritual realm. Into energies. There are deniers, certainly, but they all work for big oil.

“I’ve just been certified as a shaman, or sha-woman, if you please,” Dr. Tuttle said.
<…>
so I foresee myself getting busier this year. But don’t worry. I’m not abandoning my psychiatric clients. There are only a few of you, anyway. Hence my new certification. Costly, but worth it.

I leaned carefully against the bookshelf.

I felt drunk in the elevator, I felt drunk walking across York, I felt drunk in the cab. I toddled up the steps to Dr. Tuttle’s brownstone and leaned on the buzzer for a good minute until she came to the door. The snow-covered street blinded me. I shut my eyes. I was dying. <…>. I was the walking dead.

Maybe now is the moment, I thought: I could drop dead right now.

But my heart kept up its dull bang bang, thudding against my chest like Reva banging on my door.

I wondered if I might be dead, and I felt no sorrow, only worry over the afterlife, if it was going to be just like this, just as boring. If I’m dead, I thought, let this be the end. The silliness.

I wondered if those days were over now that Reva had been promoted and Ken was out of the picture. Would she suddenly grow into maturity and discard me as a relic from a failed past, the way I’d hoped to do to her when my year of sleep was over? Was Reva actually waking up? Did she now realize I was a terrible friend? Could she really dispose of me so easily? No. No. She was a drone. She was too far gone.

Why did I stop buying animal crackers? Had I forgotten that I was once a human child? Was that a good thing?