The Appointment

“Please, take a seat.”

“Where? Which one?”

“Either one is fine. Whichever one looks more comfortable.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“It’s good to finally meet you, Adam. Put a face to the name. We could have done this over the phone but I like to see the people I work with face to face. At least at first.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you too, Dr. Brom.”

“Please, just call me Brom.”

“Okay. Brom.”

“I like to think we can dispense with formalities around here. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Have us a casual rap session mano a mano.”

“Uh, I think that means `hand to hand.’ Dr. Brom.”

“….”

“Pretty sure. It means we’re in conflict. I think you meant, man to man.”

“Oh. Well, thanks Adam.” 

“In Spanish it would be hombre a hombre.”

“I see. Now then, I’ve been going through your quite extensive file. You’ve been working with Edna Plunden for four years? Is that correct?”

“Yeah, I think so. Sounds about right.”

“And you’ve made progress in that time?”

“Um. A little, I guess. Not as much as I’d like.”

“Did you like working with Edna?”

“No.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I felt that she was kind of an idiot.”

“….”

“I mean, her ideas were stupid and her opinions were even worse. She injected her dumb reactionary politics into our conversations. I don’t know what kind of ethical protocols you guys follow around here but I thought it was obnoxious and inappropriate and I hated it. You shouldn’t try to talk politics with a client unless they want to talk about politics. The shit that came out of her mouth reminded me of Nazi propaganda. I really didn’t like her. Like, at all.”

“Erm, I see.  Did you discuss any of these concerns with Edna?”

“No. I don’t like to be confrontational.” 

“I can understand that. Still, if a counselor isn’t satisfying your needs, myself included, you need to speak up. Change counselors. It’s an easy process and it doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings if you’re worried about that…”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve done it before.”

“You dropped a therapist?”

“Three. You’re number four. Five if you count Ms. Plunden.”

“Well, Edna passed away so I don’t think that counts.”

“I was in the process of dumping her before she died.”

“Oh really? Uh-huh…” 

“….”

“Well then. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I just want to make sure you are you. So when and where were you born?”

“March 24th, 198o in Grover City Iowa. I started as a baby and eventually became a small child.”

“….”

“But I live here in Massachusetts now.”

“Uh-huh. I see from your file that you have a drinking problem. How’s that going?”

“Great! I’m drinking better than ever. I may enter a contest.”

“….”

“I’m kidding, Doc. I haven’t had a drink in four years.”

“That’s very good. Congratulations. That’s difficult to do. Did you follow a recovery plan?”

“Spite. That’s my recovery plan.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Ms. Plunden—Edna—tried to coerce me into joining AA and I refused. I said I could do it on my own and I did. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of a relapse. Simple as that. Fuck that bitch.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Of course, now that she’s dead and buried, anything’s possible. The slate is wiped clean. Tabula Rasa so to speak. That means blank slate.”

“Yes, thank you, I know. But you’re thinking of drinking again?”

“I’m always thinking about drinking again. But I have no immediate plans.”

“Well that’s good. Um, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you how you got that scar over your eye?”

“Oh, I’ve had that since I was a kid. It’s not drinking related.”

“So what happened? Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Rock fight.”

“Rock fight?”

“Yeah. I was around ten and me and my friends went to war with rocks. There were six of us. We split into two teams, stockpiled our ammunition and battled it out in a field  behind an old abandoned dairy, Mankin’s Milk. It was a savage battle.”

“So you, ah, threw rocks at each other?”

“That was the plan.”

“And you got hit in the face with a rock? That sounds painful. Did you know that stoning was a type of execution? They did it in the Old Testament all the time. It’s a very dangerous, serious thing to do…”

“It was even worse than that, Doc. I lost my right eye. This one is made out of glass.”

“Oh jeez. It looks very real and natural.”

“Cost me an arm and a leg too.”

“So I take it you lost the rock fight.”

“No, I didn’t surrender.”

“You kept fighting even after the eye injury?”

“Of course! I still had one good eye. I never surrender. And I was so adrenalized I didn’t feel the pain anyway. Besides, I wasn’t even the worst casualty.”

“Someone else got injured?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“….”

“….”

“Uh, is anything wrong, Adam?”

“Nah. I was just thinking.”

“About the rock fight?”

“About how much I want to reveal about the rock fight.”

“Oh. Well, of course everything we discuss here is confidential. It doesn’t leave this office. I take that very seriously.”

“Yeah…”

“Did you tell Edna or any of the other counselors about this?”

“No, but you’re the only one that asked about my scar.”

“I see. Well it’s our first session so there’s no rush. You can take the time to think it through and either talk about it or not. It sounds serious. It might be wise to meditate on it.”

“I refuse to meditate.”

“It was a figure of speech. I meant to think about it.”

“Billy Hodge.”

“Pardon?”

“Billy Hodge was this weird kid we hung around with in my old neighborhood. We picked on him mercilessly. Bullying wasn’t out of fashion the way it is now. There was just something about him, his personality, the way he looked and acted that brought out the anger and hate in people. Everyone was mean to him. But he still tagged along with our gang like a needy little masochist. And we let him, even though we treated him like a human punching bag. Billy became like a mascot, our token loser. We kept him around to feel better about ourselves, I guess. Anyway, one day we came up with the brilliant idea of organizing a rock fight. We’d already had crabapple fights and stick fights, so rocks were the next logical step. We were escalating. It was like an arms race.”

“I see. Go on.”

“Anyway, we formed two teams of three. Billy Hodge ended up on the opposing team. So, he was like, my enemy. Y’know? Even more than usual. We were in an overgrown field surrounded by woods and we gathered piles of ammo, mostly granite and chunks of brick from the old dairy. When the war commenced we went at it tooth and nail. We started throwing rocks at the other team and trying to dodge the rocks flying our way. I had a pretty powerful slider and I sailed a chunk of granite at Nate Hollings, hitting him right in the funny bone. You should have heard him scream. I’d knocked his throwing arm out of commission. Another rock whizzed inches from his head and Nate ran into the woods, crying and holding his wounded elbow. We learned later that he’d chipped a bone. I was watching Nate’s humiliating retreat when Jason Jaxx hurled a fastball with a pointy piece of rock and it smashed into my face like a damn meteor. I fell back into the grass, blood gushing down my face. I’d been hit smack dab in the right eyeball. My friend Hunter Henderson ran over to me, looked down and said, `Holy fuck! They killed Adam!’ I sat up, spit blood out of my mouth and said, ‘No, I’m not dead…’ and Hunter and Roger Shear helped me stand up. They both tried to convince me to admit defeat and go home but I wasn’t having it. I just said, `Gimme a fucking rock.’ And the war continued.”

“Wow, that’s some story. So who won the war?”

“Nobody. We all lost.”

“How so?”    

“Um. Well. I… I’m not sure how it started. It was three against two. I was dizzy, I thought night had fallen because everything was so dark. I kept stumbling and falling. And then I caught a glimpse of Billy and I let him have it. The rock hit him in the neck. He yowled with pain and then Hunter and Roger started trying to pelt him. They started throwing rocks with deadly accuracy. Billy realized he was in real danger and he ran into the woods. We took off after him. And then the unthinkable happened. Billy’s teammate, Jason Jaxx started after him with an armload of rocks too. It had become four against one. It wasn’t a war anymore. It was a massacre.

“Billy knew he couldn’t outrun us and didn’t have any rocks to defend himself so he climbed a tree. He ran up a pine tree like a goddamn squirrel. We circled the tree, rocks at the ready. He made it to the top where the branches formed like a natural crow’s nest. But there was nowhere for him to go except down and we started hurling rocks up at him. We all had strong throwing arms. We reached Billy with ease, even overshooting him at times… 

“But I had the magic bullet—a jagged, fist-sized chunk of granite. I whipped that fucker with everything I had and it hit Billy square in the forehead. We’re talking smack dab. And he toppled out of the crow’s nest and fell straight down, hitting every branch along the way. We couldn’t tell the difference between the cracking branches and his cracking bones. When he finally landed on the ground we all knew he was dead.”

“Oh my god.”

“You okay, Doc? You look a little pale.”

“No, I’m fine. So, um what were the repercussions of the accident?”

“Ha! It wasn’t an accident, Doc. I meant to knock Billy out of that tree. Watching him fall to his death was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.”

“….”

“And there were no repercussions. We just left him in the woods to rot. He was a missing kid for a while and then some hikers found his remains. By then he was so decomposed they had to ID him by his screwed-up teeth. Me and Jason and Nate and Hunter kept our mouths shut and just feigned blissful ignorance. We got away with it scot-free. Plus we ridded the world of that fucking Billy Hodge. We should have gotten medals.”

“What about remorse? Guilt? Your conscience?”

“What are those?”  

“….”

“You were on the level about that confidentiality, right Doc?”