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and doctor.
    At one minute before five, he glanced out his window. The summer day was still dominating the world outside the office: bright sun, temperatures creeping up into the nineties. The city heat had an insistence to it, demanding to be acknowledged. He listened to the hum of the air conditioner, and suddenly recalled what it was like when he was first starting out, and an open window and a rattling old oscillating fan was all the relief he could afford from the hazy, stultifying atmosphere of the city in July. Sometimes, he thought, it seems as if there is no air anywhere.
    He tore his eyes away from the window when he heard the three peals of the buzzer. He pushed himself to his feet, and walked over to the door, pulling it open quickly to allow Mr. Zimmerman with all his impatience to enter immediately. Zimmerman did not like to wait in the anteroom. He showed up seconds before the session was to begin, and expected to be admitted instantaneously. Ricky had once spied the man marching up and down the sidewalk outside the apartment building on a bitter winter evening, furiously glancing at his watch every few seconds, trying to will the time to pass so that he did not have to wait inside. On more than one occasion, Ricky had been tempted to let the man cool his heels for a few minutes, to see if he could stimulate some understanding on Zimmerman’s part as to why being so precise was so important. But he had not done this. Instead, Ricky swung open the door at exactly five o ’clock every weekday, so that the angry man could barrel into the treatment room, toss himself down on the couch, and launch immediately into sarcasm and fury over all the wrongs that had been perpetrated on him that day. Ricky took a deep breath as he opened his door, and adopted his best poker face. Regardless of whether Ricky felt inside he was holding a full house or a jack-high bust, Zimmerman got the same noncommittal look each day.
    “Good afternoon,” he started, his standard greeting.
    But it was not Roger Zimmerman in the waiting room.
    Instead, Ricky was suddenly eye-to-eye with a striking and statuesque young woman.
    She wore a long black belted raincoat that dropped to her shoes, far out of place on the hot summer day, dark sunglasses, which she removed quickly, revealing penetrating vibrant green eyes. He would have guessed her age at somewhere just on the better side of thirty. A woman whose considerable looks were at their peak and whose understanding of the world had sharpened past youth.
    “I’m sorry…” Ricky said hesitantly. “But…”
    “Oh,” the young woman replied airily, shaking shoulder-length blond hair and gesturing smoothly with her hand. “Zimmerman won’t be here today. I came instead.”
    “But he…”
    “He won’t be needing you any longer,” she continued. “He decided to conclude his treatment at precisely two-thirty-seven this afternoon. Curiously enough, he was at the 92nd Street subway station when he reached this decision after the briefest of conversations with Mr. R. It was Mr. R. who persuaded him that he no longer needed or desired your services. And to our surprise, it wasn’t all that difficult for Zimmerman to reach that conclusion, either.”
    And then she pushed past the startled doctor into his office.

Chapter Four
    So,” the young woman said breezily, “this is where the mystery unfolds.”
    Ricky had wordlessly trailed her into his office, where he watched as she surveyed the small room. Her eyes lingered on the couch, his chair, his desk. She walked over and inspected the books he had on the shelves, nodding her head as she absorbed the thick and stodgy titles. She ran a finger along the spine of one text, then noted the dust that came away on her fingertip, causing her to shake her head. “Not used much…,” she muttered. She lifted her eyes to his once, saying reproachfully, “What? Not a single volume of verse, or work of fiction?” Then she approached the