The bakery under Dr. Aline’s office was sliding its lunch trays into the case when Carys stood up in the waiting room and said, “Owen, this is Tobias.”
I knew the name before I knew the face. Four years, she had told me on our second date, back when it was a story about somebody else. Tobias Renn managed maintenance for rental buildings. He had a way of standing with his weight on his heels. He had a manila folder under his arm that afternoon, and he held it the way you hold a door shut.
“Tobias,” I said, and put my hand out, because that is what my body does when it does not know what else to do.
His grip was dry and quick. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“From her?”
“From her.” He glanced at Carys, and something passed between them that I was not part of. That was the first thing that happened in that room, and I have thought about it more than anything else.
Carys had dressed up. That was what got me, more than the man. She had on the green blouse she wears when she wants to be taken seriously, and her hair was pinned, and her hands were folded in front of her like a woman waiting to be sentenced. Eleven months I had been engaged to her. I knew every one of her silences, and this one I did not know.
“Why is he here?” I asked.
“Because he’s the one person who knows my pattern,” she said.
“Your pattern.”
“I need somebody in the room who has seen me do this before.”
The receptionist had stopped typing. Downstairs somebody dropped a tray and laughed about it. I stood there with my jacket over my arm and felt the floor tilt the way it does in a dream where you have arrived at school with no pants.
Then Dr. Aline came to the door of the inner office, and she did not look surprised to see four people instead of two. She is a small woman with gray hair cut short and reading glasses on a chain, and in three sessions since April she has never once raised her voice. She looked at Tobias, then at me, then at the envelopes in her hand. Two of them. Legal size, cream, sealed.
“Come in,” she said. “Today I’m going to open both intake forms. In the room, with everyone present.”
My mouth went dry. I knew what was in mine.
The office smells like yeast and old carpet. There is a coffee table instead of a desk, and a print of a bridge on the wall that I have stared at for hours. Carys went to the couch. Tobias took the chair nearest the window, folder on his knees. Dr. Aline set the two envelopes side by side and sat down, and I stayed on my feet.
“Owen,” she said. “Sit.”
“No.”
“Please sit down.”
“I’m not sitting down for this.” I heard my own voice go loud and did not care. “I’m not going to sit on a couch next to her ex-boyfriend and open a piece of paper like it’s a fortune cookie. This is not what I signed up for. This is not counseling. This is an ambush, and I’m going to walk out that door and you can bill me for the hour.”
Nobody moved. The bakery noise came up through the floor.
“That’s fair,” Tobias said, and I hated him for how calm he was. “I’m not going to say one word until both forms have been read out loud. Then I’ll talk, and you can decide what you want to do about it.”
“You don’t get a vote in my marriage.”
“No,” he said. “I get a folder.”
“Open mine first,” Carys said.
