An Anonymous Girl(100)

After a few minutes of encouraging conversation, my slim gold bangle, the one April has repeatedly admired, is slid onto her wrist. “For confidence,” she is told. “Keep it.

The tenor of the evening abruptly changes.

April breaks eye contact. She stares down at her lap.

At first it seems she is overcome with positive emotion.

But her voice wobbles: “I feel like this job will give me a fresh start.”

“You deserve one,” she is told. Her wineglass is topped off.

She slides the bangle up and down on her forearm. “You’re so good to me.” But her tone doesn’t contain gratitude; instead something more nuanced infuses it.

Something not immediately identifiable.

Before it can be discerned, April drops her face into her hands and begins to sob.

“I’m sorry,” she says through her tears. “It’s that guy I told you about . . .”

She is obviously referring to the older man she brought home from a bar weeks ago, and grew obsessed with. April’s unhealthy fixation has already been managed through hours of informal counseling; her regression is disappointing.

My impatience has to be hidden: “I thought you were through with all of that.”

“I was,” April says, her tear-streaked face still lowered.

There must be some unresolved detail that is keeping her from moving on; it is time to unearth it. “Let’s go back to the beginning and get you over this man once and for all. You walked into a bar and saw him sitting there, right?” she is prompted. “What happened next?”

April’s foot begins to twirl like a propeller. “The thing is . . . I didn’t tell you everything,” she begins haltingly. She takes a long sip of wine. “I actually met him for the first time when I went to his office for a consult. He’s a therapist. I didn’t end up seeing him again for counseling, though, it was just that one session.”

This is utterly shocking.

A therapist who sleeps with a client, however briefly April was under his care, should lose his license. Clearly, this morally bereft man took advantage of an emotionally fragile young woman who came to him for help.

April looks at my hands, which are clenched into fists. “It was partly my fault,” she says quickly. “I pursued him.”

April’s arm is touched. “No, it was not your fault,” she is emphatically told.

She will need more help to recover from her belief that she is to blame. There was an imbalance of power; she was sexually exploited. But for now she is allowed to continue with the story that weighs so heavily on her.

“And I didn’t just bump into him at a bar like I said,” she admits. “I had a big crush on him after that initial session. So I . . . I followed him one night after he left his office.”

The rest of her description of her encounter with the therapist matches her original telling: She saw him sitting alone at a table for two in a hotel bar; she approached. They ended the evening in bed at her apartment. She phoned and texted him the next day, but he didn’t reply for twenty-four hours. When he finally did, it was clear he was no longer interested. She persisted with more phone calls, texts, and invitations to meet. He was polite but never wavered.

April recounts her story choppily, with pauses in between her sentences, as if she is choosing each word with great care.

“He is an abhorrent person,” April is told. “It doesn’t matter who initiated things. He took advantage of you and violated your trust. What he did bordered on criminal.”

April shakes her head. No,” she whispers. “I also messed up.”

She can barely choke out her words. “Please don’t be mad at me. I never admitted this to you. I was too ashamed. But . . . he’s actually married.”

A sharp intake of breath accompanies the terrible revelation: She’s a liar.

The very first thing April did, before we even met in person, was promise to be honest. She signed an agreement to that effect when she became Subject 5.

“You should have revealed this to me much earlier, April.”

The counseling April received was predicated on the assumption that the man who spurned her after she brought him home to her bed was single. So many hours, wasted. Had she been forthcoming about the origin of their relationship, and his marital status, the situation would have been handled very differently.

April isn’t the victim, as was believed only moments ago. She shares culpability.

“I didn’t exactly lie to you, I just left that part out,” she protests. Incredibly, April sounds defensive now. She is shunning responsibility for her actions.

There are crumbs beneath April’s stool; she must have been aware that when she bit into a cracker, she scattered them. But she just left them, another one of her messes, for someone else to clean up.

My finger is placed beneath April’s chin and gentle pressure is applied so that her head is lifted and eye contact established. “That was a serious omission,” she is told. “I am deeply disappointed.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” April blurts. She begins crying again and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long . . . I didn’t know how much I’d like you.”

A frisson ot alarm sends a jolt through my body.

Her words are not logical.