Sitting in the waiting room, Robbie Gillette was trying to figure out how to explain that he had not been trying to commit suicide, that he had been trying to rescue his deceased childhood girl friend who was caught in the surf between the rocks at Shell Beach. He knew he had taken way too many drugs and that his mind was not right, but it was not a suicidal gesture. It was an act of love and perhaps heroism. Couldn’t anyone tell the difference? He just had to hold the thought. He could do that by clenching his asshole. He’d learned that helped him concentrate.
Finally, the door opened, and Robbie walked into the office.
“Sorry Dr. Rothstein,” Robbie said, sitting down. “I think my shoes might still be wet from yesterday.”
Looking at the man’s rounded bald head, he said to himself that Rothstein was a good egg, ha ha. He pictured the head cracking every night when the good doctor went to sleep and fuzzy yellow chick dreams hatching and staggering out, all wet and mucousy, their eyes trying to open, then collapsing back in when the alarm clock went off.
“So, Robbie,” said Dr. Rothstein, “the surfer who pulled you out said you were yelling ‘Rachel.’ Was that Rachel from when you were a teenager?”
“No, Doctor,” Robbie said. “It was Rachel from Friends. Yes, of course it was my first love Rachel, the girl I’ve never stopped thinking about. She was being pounded by the surf, and I had to get her out.”
“And what drugs had you taken? We’ve talked about LSD. It’s terrible for people like you. Especially after you reach 30.”
“That’s not what Michael Pollan says.”
“I’m serious, Robbie,” said the doctor. “You know what that stuff does to you. What did you take?”
“Just a small dose of mescaline.”
It was actually three doses, since the first one hadn’t seemed to have any effect, and as soon as he told Rothstein that lie he could feel the rats starting to chew on his toes inside his wet shoes. Maybe not rats, maybe today they were baby sand crabs that had gotten in there yesterday and were growing and multiplying in the fertile medium inside his smelly, wet socks. There’d been crabs like that on the beach where he and Rachel had gone swimming as teenagers, the beach where they ate Safeway potato salad and got drunk on Boones Farm and fooled around. He had to dive in and save her.
“Robbie, where are you now?” Dr. Rothstein said. “You need to come back.”
“I’m right here,” Robbie said, clenching and unclenching his asshole. “I was trying to save her. It wasn’t suicide. It was about helping someone survive.”
“But she passed away years ago.”
Shit, that’s right, Robbie thought. Rachel was dead. She’d been dead for years. But he didn’t want her to be dead.
“Yes,” he said wishing the session were over, wishing the whole thing would just come to an end, “yes, she’s dead. Dead as a rag doll. Dead as roadkill.”
Rothstein looked him in the eye. Rothstein’s head was beginning to crack open and one of the yellow chicks was struggling to get out. All of a sudden Robbie knew what he needed.
“Dr. Rothstein,” he said, “do you have any Hostess chocolate cupcakes around here? Or Rice Krispie treats?”
“We have water,” Dr. Rothstein said.
“Water is not what I need,” Robbie said, “I’m wet enough already.”
“I’m prescribing you diazepam. I’ll give you a sample when we finish. How did Rachel die?”
“She died in a car crash after we broke up. Didn’t I tell you this before?”
“No you didn’t,” Dr. Rothstein said.
Damn, Robbie thought, he could have sworn he’d told the story. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it had been the shrink he saw before this one, the one with the sharp cornered Columbia diploma hanging over his head.
“Why did you break up?”
“How about M&Ms? Or strawberry pop tarts out right out of the package?” Robbie asked. It was summer. She was away at camp. We had an argument. I was with my parents at some hotel. Next I heard she’d died in a car crash. I was nowhere around.”
“How many years ago?”
“15 or so.”
“This is important material,” Dr. Rothstein said, “but our time is up. And I have to write a report for your parole officer and the medical board. Otherwise they may want you back in Langley-Porter for at least 30 days observation.
“You’ll say I was a hero, right?” Robbie asked. “I was trying to rescue her from out of the ocean”
“Why don’t you come back tomorrow, we can talk more about it.”
“Who gives a shit,” Robbie said. “She’ll still be dead.”
“Yes, but you’re not.”
“She died because I yelled at her for kissing Jerry Kirkland.”
“Robbie, she died in a car crash, that’s what you said. We have to pick this up tomorrow. Three o’clock.”
Robbie left the office. It was freezing cold outside on Lexington Avenue, and he bought a Milky Way from a corner newsstand. The candy bar was as hard as a rock, but he was able to bite off a chunk and wash down the diazepam with it. The street smelled of coffee regular and Nedick’s hot dogs that had spent hours spinning on that weird machine with the stainless steel rollers. The hot dog odor drifted across the street and down the block and stayed there, suspended in midair. In all his thirty one years, he’d never seen anyone buy one of those hot dogs. Nedick’s was the purveyor of dreams, not meat. People watched them spin and smelled them but never bought them.
He didn’t understand why he was so confused, why life was so hard for him. He got on the downtown bus and closed his eyes while holding onto the strap. He felt the swaying of the bus and sort of enjoyed gently bouncing of the other passengers.
He got off at his stop at 8th street. Walking toward the east village, he passed by another Nedicks. He walked in. True to form the hotdogs were spinning on their hot metal rollers. A fat lady behind the counter stood up from a stool. Robbie ordered a hot dog with everything. She fished out one from between the tubes and put it in a bun. Then she loaded it with mustard, relish, onion, wrapped it up, and gave it to him.
He took a bite. It tasted like New York – both foul and wonderful. He chewed. Maybe it was the diazepam or maybe it was the hot dog, but he felt nourished.
He leaped like a ballet dancer out on to the sidewalk. He’d found the answer: Nedick’s hot dogs with their dog food smell and greenish tint. The reason hardly anybody ever bought them was that they were a special food only for the people such as himself who had been selected by the gods for rescue and forgiveness.
Rachel was gone. But there were many wonderful women in the world, he would find someone.
With a feeling of hope in his heart and a bounce in his step he started walking towards his apartment when who should be bump into but Dr. Rothstein.
‘Put Rachel’s photo on your wall,” Rothstein said to Robbie. “Walk by it all the time. In a while you will adjust to her being gone. Eventually you will be able to remove the photo and feel fine. You will be cured. And stick with Nedicks. They have a magic ingredient. See you at 3 tomorrow.”
Robbie was now part of the club. He had been saved.