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life. I listened bleakly, uttering vacuities like “I understand” or “You’re to be admired, darling.” Then she said she thought it in our best interests “not to actually
meet”
for several more days. It’s like kicking smoking, she said.
    Why had I never – in my cruellest nightmares – imagined that the former first mate of the
Ego
would suddenly mutineer and cast this solitary sailor afloat? I thought I’d known Sally’s every caprice. How had I missed the signs? I, of all people.
    I have been butted from Sally’s life like a cigarette, dismissed as a bad habit. That’s what has finally driven me to the couch: the casualness of it all, the flip finality. I’m comforted only by the thought that worse could happen. I could be slashed to death by Bob Grundison. Wouldn’t Sally Pascoe be sorry then?

C HAPTER T HREE
    Date of Interview, Thursday, July 31, 2003
.
    Timothy arrived ten minutes early, but on the wrong day, thinking it was Friday. He was even more excited and disturbed than on our first session, so I was obliged to ask another patient to wait, promising Tim twenty minutes.
    Yesterday, he received an anonymous note in the mail,
You are next
. The writer had sketched a heart shape below the words, pierced with what could be a sword or an arrow. Tim has taken it as a death threat, though I urged him not to jump to conclusions. I reminded him it isn’t uncommon for therapists to receive bizarre notes from former patients.
    I fear a paranoid disorder is at play. Not for the first time, he ascribed his burdens to “mysterious powers,” mystic or divine conspiracies “to fuck up my head.” 1 The note, he says, has been “working like a worm into my brain.” He claims that “Grundy is watching me again.” He is vague about why he is so certain of this. “I can sense him, smell him almost.” Yet he never sees the man he presumes to be Bob Grundison.
    He became more settled after we talked it through. I assured him we would do more work on it tomorrow, on his regular day.
    Slow down and relax, okay? Let’s allow things to settle for a bit.
    I’m sorry, I’m a little shattered, I haven’t received a good death threat in years. Red-ink lettering. A dagger through the heart.
    It looks more like a sword. Or an arrow. What do the words mean to you,
You are next!
    This is from Barbara Loews Wiseman’s killer. I am next.
    Have you called the police?
    Of course not, I’m not going to have them rooting through my patient files.
    Then what have you done about it?
    Gave it to Dotty Chung, a friend, a private eye. She knows Grundy. She used to be with the city, lead officer on Dr. Wiseman’s murder.
    It seems like a feminine hand to me somehow. Cupid’s arrow …
    Bob Grundison is not Cupid.
    Date of Interview: Friday, August 1, 2003
.
    Because of difficult personal circumstances, I cancelled all patients today except for Timothy Dare, who arrived breathless, excusing himself for being late. He’d been stopped en route by a policewoman for bicycling without a helmet. He explained to her he’d lost it somewhere. Subsequently, we found the helmet in my waiting-room closet, where he’d left it yesterday.
    This is another graphic instance of his absent-mindedness, which is apparently not simply a consequence of his stressed state. He feels it is part of his “characteristic behaviour pattern.” He also forgets appointments with his patients. Twice last winter he had to buy replacement raincoats. He is able to laugh at this.In fact, during his recounting we both laughed, a welcome tension release for me.
    He rode up in the elevator today, which I took as an encouraging sign that he’s trying to come to grips with at least one of his phobic responses. He was much more relaxed than yesterday, and revealed a side that is both compassionate and entertaining.
    However, Tim appears no closer to reconciling himself to the loss of his partner – his self-esteem has been damaged by this – and I fear