I heard that, thought Penz as Dr. Sauvage sighed in exasperation. Now she is going to uncross her legs just to cross them again. He listened for the slippery wooshing of her skirt and her hose.

He didn’t have to look. He could tell she was growing more impatient with him. He could smell it in the air. He could feel it ripple on his skin. Dr. Sauvage would never understand how fragile his senses and sensibilities had become.

Ever since he saw her his skin, ears, tongue, eyes were all accessory to a mutiny of his mind. The words fell out, “I saw her again.”

No, don’t let the doctor know that you had tried to escape, to Falls Church.

“Where did this happen?”

Fool! You should have never come in today. Don’t you know you are just giving your family probable cause to put you away?

He opened his eyes to the gibberish that filled the room like iridescent streaks of music scrawled on the blank wall by a neurotic composer with a bewitched baton.

What is real?

“This time, she was real.”