Unlovable Read online

  My mouth felt like it had been hanging open long enough to house a colony of damselflies through their entire life cycle.

  Martin spoke first. “Oh. You have another client. I’m sorry. I’ll just go.”

  The despair in his voice broke the spell, and I came out of my silence and chair at the same time. “No, Martin. You can stay. But you,” I said, turning to Crixus, “need to leave. Now.”

  Crixus crossed the room in two long-legged strides and pried open Martin’s hand, replacing his soggy hanky with a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Martin blinked at the glass neck in his palm. “What’s this for?”

  I snatched the bottle away from Martin and shoved it back at Crixus. “You will not come into my office, interrupt a session, and give my client alcohol. Alcohol only numbs feelings, and it’s vitally important that Martin take the time to process—”

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” Crixus interrupted, handing the Jack Daniels back to Martin. “You’re going to take a few slugs of this, then you’re going to drive over to the loft where that piece of shit yoga instructor is shacking up with your wife. You’re going to break this bottle over his head, throw your wife over your shoulder, drag her out to the car, and fuck her.”

  “Wife or no, what you are recommending is a sexual assault,” I said, snagging the bottle from Martin a second time. “Also, there are some serious underlying issues here that need to be addressed. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to barge in here and start giving unstudied advice to an unstable—”

  “You love your wife?” Crixus asked Martin, ignoring me.

  Martin’s eyes took on a new sheen of tears. “More than anything.”

  “Then go get her.”

  “Martin, don’t listen to him. He is not a professional—”

  Some new infusion seemed to pump through Martin’s veins, straightening his limbs. He shot up from the couch and grabbed the booze from my hand.

  “You got this,” Crixus said.

  “I got this,” Martin repeated, unscrewing the black cap and tipping back a few swallows of liquor. “Thank you, Doctor. This was exactly what I needed.” He pushed through the door to the reception area like a man storming the gates of hell.

  Speaking of hell, how the hell had Crixus gotten in here? Even if he’d managed to bluff his way through the semi-permeable security membrane that was Rolly, why had Julie let him in?

  A glance around my office yielded little by way of weapons. The only vaguely pointy object in the room was my scented oil warmer, but committing acts of violence with a device I used to infuse the room with the calming scent of lavender seemed counterintuitive somehow. I could throw a book at him. I could break a vase and threaten him with a shard.

  Grudgingly, I heeded a phrase I’d parroted countless times: I used my words instead. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is my private office. Not some revolving door clinic for the delusively insistent!”

  “I told you, I’m a demigod.” The muscles beneath his T-shirt flexed as if to substantiate his claim by means of anatomical perfection. An argument I was not beyond entertaining, however briefly.

  “Regardless of how much you obviously need my services, I am not in the habit of treating clients who break into my office. We will not be working together, Crixus. Get out before I call the authorities.”

  “Doctor, I am the authorities.” With this, he swung from his shoulder the canvas sack I failed to realize he had been holding. “And I’m not the one who needs your services.” The bag jerked and swayed in his grip as something inside clawed at the fabric.

  I jumped back a full foot, staring at the shape moving beneath the cloth. “What—what’s in there?”

  Crixus shot a wicked grin in my direction, holding the bag aloft in preparation for dumping the contents onto the carpeted expanse between the couch and my chair. “Your next client.”

  *****

  A flurry of feathers swirled around the little body like a personalized snowstorm as it tumbled across the carpet. The blur of creamy flesh collided with the cherry wood cabinet below the bookshelf housing my collection of Freud and Lacan, psychology’s father and stepfather, so to speak.

  It was a toddler. Or at least, it looked like toddler from behind. The creamy globes of his tiny, naked buttocks weren’t nearly as disturbing as the wings sprouting from the smooth but small shoulder blades.

  A leather quiver full of golden arrows rested among the snowy white feathers.

  The toddler turned, and the miniature anatomy on full display dragged to mind summers of working daycare to put myself through college. A little boy. Perhaps the loveliest child I had ever seen—with wide crystal blue eyes, a freckled nose, and head of golden curls. Only the wide silver band of duct tape across his mouth marred the image of doll-like perfection.

  And then he ran at me.

  Fighting my tight pencil skirt, I scrambled up onto my chair, hearing the words “keep it away from me!” shriek from my mouth.

  Crixus jumped between us and caught the creature by its wings, eliciting a series of furious muffled shrieks. “Easy, kid. Hold still. I’ll take the tape off.” Crixus peeled up a corner of the tape, and with one cringe-inducing rip, the strip came free.

  The boy’s brief high-pitched scream shattered a glass vase on my bookshelf, and a flood of marbles scattered across the floor.

  Julie’s failure to poke a concerned head inside my office provided all the more evidence that these events unfolded not in my office, but in my mind. And where was Rolly? Two years of enduring daily come-ons from the yeasty security guard, and he was absent the one time I actually wanted him nearby.

  The boy’s fingertips explored the angry red rectangle of flesh across his mouth, and he swung a small, bare foot out to kick Crixus in the shin. “Give me my fucking loincloth, you kidnapping son of a bitch!”

  Crixus booted the canvas bag at him, and the boy pulled out a wad of white fabric and stepped into it.

  “Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Psy.D, Ph.D,” Crixus announced, adopting a ceremony in direct conflict with his faded fatigue pants, “this is Cupid. Cupid, this is Dr. Matilda Schmidt, and she’s going to fix you. Right after she comes down from her chair.”

  I looked down, just now realizing that, not only was I still standing on my chair, but also holding a throw pillow in front of me like a shield. My stiletto heels had punctured the leather. As it often did in times of extreme stress, the wall between my thoughts and my mouth evaporated, leaving my words free access to the open air before I could call them back. “This isn’t happening. I am having a psychotic episode. A temporary break with reality. Yes. My mother was schizophrenic. These things are often hereditary. I’m not fit to practice. I’ll have to check myself into a clinic. All those years in college. I’ll never be able to pay back my student loans. My life is over.”

  “Your life is not over. But the world might be, if you can’t get him sorted out.” Crixus said, jerking his chin toward Cupid.

  “Me?” I asked. “What the hell am I going to do? I’ve hallucinated a demigod and some creepy winged kid into my office.”

  “Creepy winged kid?” Cupid repeated.

  Crixus rested a steadying hand on the curly blond head. “Cupid, don’t—”

  But he was too late. Wings beating in a feathery frenzy, Cupid launched himself at me.

  “Oh my God it flies,” I screamed, hurling the pillow at him and missing.

  Cupid pulled up short, grimacing in pain as he swerved abruptly to the left. He grazed the wall, sending my framed diplomas crashing to the floor in a symphony of breaking glass before he collided with a bookshelf.

  “Not my diplomas!” The framed papers on the wall crashing to the ground seemed a visual manifestation of what I feared was already happening—all my work, lost to madness.

  “You bent my fucking wing, you asshat,” Cupid shouted at Crixus, shoving away the books that had fallen on his tiny body. He looked over his left shoulder and tried a couple o
f flaps. The wing refused to extend fully, scooping air forward rather than downward.

  “This could have been avoided if you would have gotten in the bag the first time I asked,” Crixus answered.

  “How would you like it if someone barged into your home in the middle of dinner and insisted you get into a little bag?” Cupid challenged.

  “That wasn’t your home, it was a motel. And you weren’t eating dinner, you were sharing a bowl of Sour Diesel with some crack whores.”

  Cupid looked down at his bare toes. “What I do is none of your fucking business.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Crixus said. “My business is to make sure you’re taking care of yours. Valentines Day is just around the corner, and your numbers have tanked. This is the first year in world history that divorce rates spiked by fifty percent in February. Proposals are down, polls are reporting significant sexual dissatisfaction within exhausting relationships—”

  “He’s right,” I broke in, grasping at a fact anchoring me to reality. “My couples therapy load has doubled since Christmas.”

  Crixus slid me a smug look. “Beginning to believe, Doctor?”

  “No,” I answered, looking down from my chair. “I was just confirming that your statistics appear to be correct.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Crixus said, turning back to Cupid. “Zeus has already found your replacement. I asked him for one last chance to work with you. This is it. You get help, or you get gone.”

  “And who’s going to help me?” Cupid spat. “Her? Nuns know more about love than this uptight, head-shrinking prude. ”

  “Excuse me,” I said, my hands coming to rest on my hips. “I have successfully counseled hundreds of couples through their—”

  “And she’s a virgin,” Cupid tossed out, fluttering onto the leather couch arm and folding his wings behind him. “Attraction is my business, and she knows nothing about it.”

  “I will have you know I took several seminars on human intimacy. This is to say nothing of the extensive reading I’ve done on the subject. I graduated with high honors from both my programs—”

  “You?” Crixus asked, his strong features made harder by disbelief. “You’re a virgin?”

  “I do not discuss my sex life with my clients,” I advised them.

  “Because it doesn’t exist,” Cupid snickered.

  “And she thinks we’re only in her mind,” Crixus laughed. “No wonder she’s got all those smutty books in her nightstand.”

  A hot blush burned in my cheeks. “I find them to be a fascinating exploration of the tropes of female sexual fantasy. And furthermore—”

  “You need to get laid,” Crixus interrupted. “If I weren’t already committed to getting Cupid here sorted out, I would be more than happy to oblige.” A wolfish gleam wet his eyes.

  An old, familiar irritation gathered between my shoulders. I focused my narrowed gaze on Crixus. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve turned down similar offers? What exactly do you think inserting part of your anatomy into my body is going to solve for me?”

  “For starters, you wouldn’t use words like ‘inserting’ and ‘anatomy.’ Not after I was finished with you.” His gaze traveled from my lips to the center of my pencil skirt.

  I hoped demigods didn’t have x-ray vision. A bead of cold sweat traveled down my ribs. “My vocabulary is none of your concern. And frankly, I don’t see any reason to continue a conversation with a…person who may or may not be real.”

  Crixus sighed, his broad chest only deflating a fraction. “Here’s the rub, Doctor, and there’s really no getting around it. Either you’re crazy, or this is happening. I’m guessing you’d prefer the latter. So why don’t you follow that option and see where it leads you? Give it a shot. Unless…” he trailed off.

  “Unless what?” I asked.

  “Unless—” he ambled to the front of my chair and offered me a hand the aforementioned romance novels would have described as calloused and surprisingly muscular “—you feel this case is beyond your capacity to handle.”

  His obvious attempt at manipulation shouldn’t have worked on me. Yet, I found myself ignoring Crixus’s hand and stepping down from the chair on my own.

  “All right,” I announced. “You want me to treat him, I’ll treat him. You,” I said, grabbing Crixus by the bulging triceps and aiming him toward the door, “out. You,” I glanced at Cupid, “bum on the cushions.” I reached up and released my hair from its prison. The rush of blood to my scalp was immediate and intense as I sat down on my punctured cushion and shook the heavy waves over my shoulder.

  A smile lifted the corners of Crixus’s full lips. “Did you do that on purpose? Turning me on just so you can send me out into the cold world?”

  “Your physical condition is not my problem, Crixus. And I’m not sure what you did to Rolly and Julie,” I added, “but they had better not have been harmed in any way, or I will bring justice to your doorstep.”

  “Not likely,” Crixus grinned. “Justice and I are old friends.”

  “Congratulations. Get out.” You cocky bastard, my mind appended to the civil directive.

  “Yes, Doctor.” The word ceased to be clinical as he caressed it with his tongue.

  After the door had closed behind him, I gathered my notepad from the side table where I’d set it when Crixus had interrupted Melvin’s session. In the face of this unreality, the heavy ink pen in my hand felt like an anchor to the life I had known.

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me what’s been going on in your life. What’s keeping you from your work?”

  Cupid looked thoughtful for a moment. “You are. Or people like you, anyway.”

  “What do you mean, ‘people like me?’” My pen hovered over the notepad, not entirely willing to admit my name into this story.

  “People like you have rendered my services unnecessary. What with groups like ‘It’s Just Lunch,’ ‘Dates for Doctors,’ ‘Singles with Smarts’—”

  “I lead a very busy life,” I interrupted. “It’s hard to find the time to meet people.”

  “Especially when you never leave your house.” As he grinned, I noticed the skin around his mouth had faded to the color of his rosy cheeks.

  “That statement is an overgeneralization. I come to work five days a week. I also go grocery shopping.”

  “You should prove all of my points,” Cupid said. “You’re better at it than I am.”

  Time to redirect. “So, people being empowered to take their search for a partner into their own hands threatens you?”

  Cupid absently ran his fingers over the tip of his wing. “No, it doesn’t threaten me. But it does render me obsolete.”

  “There are plenty of people who still meet under traditional circumstances. Can’t you focus your efforts on them?”

  A shadow passed behind his bright blue eyes. “Not anymore.”

  I felt a familiar tingle at the base of my spine. I was approaching a nerve. “And why not?”

  “Because I am sick and fucking tired of making other people happy and having nothing left for myself.” His small round elbows came to rest on his small round knees.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  The curly head jerked up to look at me. “What’s whose name?”

  Having entered familiar territory, I began to draw shapes instead of taking notes. “The woman you’re in love with.”

  Cupid straightened his diaper and crossed his legs in the masculine fashion, foot over knee. “Who says I’m in love with anyone?”

  “Your body language, for one,” I observed. “Your facial expressions, for another.”

  Cupid’s little chest sank as he exhaled. “Her name is Psyche—”

  For the second time in one morning, my door banged open on its hinges as if kicked from the other side. I looked up, half expecting to see Crixus there.

  In keeping with this day’s patterns, what I expected and what happened instead were oceans apart.

  T
he man in my doorway looked ready to attend a funeral—or to cause one. His shoulders were wide beneath a black suit coat, his hips narrow within black trousers. Thick, wavy hair the color of dark chocolate brushed the collar of his coat. The lines of his face might have been broken from rock. Whether his eyes reflected his suit, or were themselves the color of coal, it was difficult to say. Those twin chips of obsidian pulled color from my skirt, my shirt, my eyes, and my hair as they traced over me.

  Fear rippled down my back. This man has come neither to seek help nor to give it.

  I glanced toward the couch, where Cupid no longer sat. No sooner had I begun to wonder where he’d gone than I noticed the winged marble statue perched next to the fish tank.

  Coward.

  “Do you have an appointment?” I asked the man, already knowing he didn’t. Though I felt days had passed since I awoke this morning, the time wasn’t yet 9:30 a.m., and Julie would never have scheduled two clients in the same hour. A foreboding ache settled into my chest.

  Julie.

  Had Crixus done something to her? Or maybe it wasn’t Crixus, but the man standing in front of me. In which case, where the hell was Crixus? Why would he let this man interrupt my session with Cupid?

  And Cupid. Couldn’t he do something? I cast another glance at the statue, willing it to hurl itself at the back of the intruder’s head.

  It didn’t.

  The man’s voice might have spent sixteen hours in a Memphis smokehouse, so rich and dark was its timbre. “What the hell happened in here?” he asked, taking in the shattered picture frames, vase shards, and marbles.

  “Just doing a little redecorating,” I said.

  “With a baseball bat?” He chuckled, stepping over a carpet of sparkling glass.

  I folded my arms across my chest, uncomfortable with the directness of his gaze and his increasing proximity. “I’m sorry, can I help you?”

  “Dr. Matilda Schmidt?” he asked.

  A small measure of relief cooled the pit of my stomach. A client. “Yes, I’m Dr. Schmidt.”

  “Good. You’re coming with me.” He stood, unmoving, in the center of the room and looked toward the door as if he expected me to follow him.