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Union Square subway station. He was about my age, wearing a black suit and a white shirt. A briefcase between his legs. All around him people were bustling from one platform to another. The man stood rooted to the spot.Amid the deafening roar of the arriving trains I could just make out isolated phrases. “Hearken unto the Lord … we are sinners all … put your faith in the Lord … you have gone astray …” No one besides me paid him any mind. Even if someone had taken pity on him and stayed to listen, they would not have been able to pick up even one complete sentence. I wondered what drove him to it. Did he, too, hear a voice? Did it command him to preach to arriving trains in one of New York’s biggest subway stations? What power would my voice acquire over me with time?
    IN SPITE OF my fears I took the prescribed medication only twice. It was not the objections of the voice that held me back. Nor was it the possible side effects. It was the intended effect. The thought that I would be consuming a chemical substance that would overpower me. Direct me, control me. A strange heaviness had overcome me already that first time. The feeling of being a stranger in my own body.
    Every fiber of my being resisted it. Under no circumstances was I willing to enslave myself to these little white pills. It had not yet come to that. There must be some other way to rid myself of the voice. I needed to try something completely different, only I didn’t know what. Should I follow Amy’s advice and withdraw with her to the forests of upstate New York? Meditate? I feared that the quiet there would only exacerbate my condition.
    The one thing that helped was classical music. WhenI lay on the sofa listening to Mozart, Bach, or Haydn, the voice fell silent. The tones of the violin, the cello, and the piano worked on her like an exorcist. As if their melodies could lay her to rest. I had to be careful, though, not to do anything else at the same time. No reading, no cleaning up, no cooking. She would chime right in.
Knock it off. Make up your mind: Listen to music or read. Listen to music or get dinner ready. It won’t do to try both at once.
I was always trying to do much too much at once rather than concentrating on a single thing. That was not going to turn out well. She would not stand for it.
    Thanksgiving only made things worse. For the first time in my life I would be spending the holiday alone. Amy was visiting a relative in Boston. The few other friends whose company I might have enjoyed were celebrating with their families. Half the country was going to be traveling. I had turned down my brother’s halfhearted invitation to San Francisco weeks ago.
    I had never seen the city so empty. Nary a car on the street, shops and cafés closed. Even the homeless man who always sat at the corner of Second and Fifty-ninth had disappeared. I called half a dozen restaurants looking to order in; not one was open.
    By dinnertime the whole building smelled like roasting turkey. From the other apartments on the floor came the laughter of the revelers. The clink of glasses. The aroma of cranberries, glazed carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie.
    The miserable stench of loneliness.
    I ate leftovers from the fridge and, against the vociferous objections of the voice, drank almost a whole bottle of red wine. She turned out to be right. The alcohol did me no good. I started to pity myself. I ended up huddled in tears on the couch.
    On Sunday evening Amy returned from Massachusetts. We had talked on the phone several times over the past few days. She was relieved when I went off the meds, and she kept inviting me to spend a few days in the countryside with her. She was really worried about me now. Wouldn’t I come with her to the Buddhist center after all? It would do me good to disengage. She promised. And if it didn’t, we could be back in Manhattan within three hours. I had nothing to lose.
    By that point I didn’t care