He is real - страница 7

Alex and I had lived together for almost a year. But it often seemed to me that there should have been another guy in his place. The one that seemed to be close by was so close, I could just extend my arm, but at the same time he was so far away. So far that it does not make sense to measure the distance in kilometers. I did not see him, but this circumstance did not mean that he actually did not exist.

Alex happened to notice my conversations “with myself” (in the bathroom or in the kitchen, for example, when I forgot about his presence in the apartment), I think it is clear that in fact the conversations were held not with myself, but with my “invisible friend”. Or the way I look thoughtfully for a long time through the objects around me, and in most cases I prefer time spent alone. In fact, of course, not alone.

Alex responded to my words about the splitting up, in my understanding, not in the way that a sane person would do. He took me to a psychotherapist. The doctor explained that the “invisible friend” is a product of my own brain, none other than a character created by my sick imagination. Like, I had been lonely, so I made it up.

I was sitting opposite to the doctor who was in his fifties and it did not came up in mind in any way why I had to tell him everything. My “invisible friend” insisted on doing that, but did not explain the reason for it.

“Just do as I say. It is necessary "– It was his only argument.

I was telling the doctor about the events related to my friend. My friend was telling me about the doctor. The doctor was listening to me and making comments asking about my friend. My friend laughed at the doctor, the doctor mentally laughed at me, having already decided on the diagnosis at the back of his mind. I laughed at the doctor and at how quickly came to a medical conclusion, which, of course, was wrong.

Of course, I felt a keen desire to pin on the doctor, knowing his hidden thoughts and desires, but did not do it on the request of my “invisible friend”. I was aware that every day, going to work, the doctor passed by his neighbor’s door with the memory of the hours spent in Nina’s bed and waiting for the next suitable occasion to repeat everything. Or about a bank account secretly opened abroad. He transfers money to the account for a trip to Ukraine under the excuse of a seminar. And the search for young and beautiful, flesh peddlers who, for his money, would agree to fulfill all his whims, was the real motive of the fictional business trip.

Well, actually, he is a good doctor, in terms of attitude to his professional activities. He has helped lots of mentally ill people for many years of his practice. Although I actually was not a mental patient.

The doctor prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers (the latter, according to him, were supposed to block hearing voices), at first I was not even going to take them. But Alex thoughtfully insisted on treatment. And my “invisible friend” strangely supported him.

I could not realize the moment when the world lost its colors, and the days got filled with the routine of life slowly dragging on one by one. My “invisible friend” was not present in them and sometimes it seemed that he had never existed at all.

Dani and I went up to the twenty-seventh and last floor of a recently built hotel in Herzliya. The door to the room was opened by a man of about forty, of medium height and build. Immediately my attention was attracted by his dilated pupils, his eyes quickly flapping with eyelashes, and the way he was gurning gnashing his teeth when they got onto each other. All of these suggested a large amount of cocaine taken by him. Under the influence of the drug, clients often lose track of time and money, and this was good for me tonight, as at many previous nights.