Y is for Fidelity by Logan Ryan Smith

Author:Logan Ryan Smith [Smith, Logan Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transmission Press
Published: 2016-10-29T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17.

Four days later, Ben comes back from his first session with Madelyn (my treat) and says he’s never going back to her.

“What happened? Is Madelyn OK?” I ask, picturing her hogtied and hanging from a chandelier while Ben treats her like a piñata. I’m smoking a Camel and re-reading The Bridge (the book Ben was reading when I brought Katharine home) and I’m wearing two-hundred-dollar jeans and a kind of shiny v-neck t-shirt that cost eighty-bucks. I’ve got Calvin Kline ankle-high leather boots on. I feel silly, but even though it’s a Wednesday Ben said we’d be hitting the clubs in Gold Coast tonight where all the money-grubbing types and desperate cougars prowl. He said I need to up my game, fashion-wise, if I ever expect to “plunge my lick-a-stick into the fun dip.” He also told me to get on Rogaine STAT before it becomes a real problem.

I was hoping no one else would have noticed that yet. I’m already considered a sissy in comparison to my one-legged brother, now I have male-pattern baldness to look forward to. I may as well drink Drano and die!

“She’s fine. Jesus, what’s that supposed to mean, anyway?” Ben storms past me into the kitchen. He yanks the refrigerator open, reaches in and grabs a beer, cracks it open. “And, for fuck’s sake… this is about me. I’m the goddamned nutcase going to a goddamned therapist—and one without a doctorate for some reason.”

“I know. What’s up with her not having that doctorate? Seriously, it’s like, what, two extra years of school? One, maybe? Anyway, what happened?”

I put my cigarette out into a tinfoil ashtray as he collapses into the couch beside me, that can of Old Style glued to his lips.

“Result,” he finally says.

“Result?”

“Breakthrough. Well, as far as your goddamned precious Madelyn is concerned.”

“Really? A breakthrough? That’s wonderful!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”

“Your dainty non-doctor said I’m blocked.”

“Blocked?”

“Yeah, like I have constipation of the mind. Basically, she told me what every other piece of shit with some phony certificate has told me. Right? All my fault.”

Ben picks up the PS4 controller off the coffee table and starts up a game of FIFA without inviting me to join.

I sit back for a few moments and pout but he doesn’t notice so I ask, “Is that all? Is that all there was to the breakthrough? I mean, Madelyn is pretty smart. She knows her stuff.”

“She’s a fraud.”

“That seems to be a pretty regular theme to things.”

“Goddamn, Ian,” Ben says, eyes on his game, “you’re turning into a real cynic in your bald-headed old-age.”

“I’m not bald!” I complain. “Yet.”

“Whatever you say, chief. Anyway, that Madelyn’s about as big as my pinky, but she’s still a good-looking woman, no? I mean, you could really toss that piece around the bedroom…”

“So, your breakthrough wasn’t any kind of breakthrough at all.”

“Well, like I said. She told me what every other goddamned headshrinker has said—that I am choosing to remember nothing because I murdered my own wife and kids.

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