Big Swiss(2)

And Greta? Unflappable, as always, so long as her socks were tight, tight, tight. When she removed the socks: remote sadness, nothing serious. This upset people (her fiancé), who expected visible signs of distress (inconsolable sobbing), especially given her mother’s suicide when Greta was thirteen, after which Greta had lived with various aunts in California, Arizona, and eventually New Hampshire, where she went to high school. Her fiancé kept patting her down, checking her pockets for pills, worried she was planning to take her own life. “You’re watching too much TV,” Greta had said. “That’s not how this works. It’s not one-for-one.” Besides, Greta’s attempts were like root canals—painful, humbling, and almost always followed by a lengthy grace period. Her current grace period was good for another five years.

Although she had not been the one to find her mother’s body, she’d discovered Hopper’s. He’d shot himself in the heart, not the head, but he’d missed and had died of a heart attack. Her mother had shot herself in the head, not the heart, and had not missed. They’d both left notes, as well as what Greta considered to be unintentional postscripts. Hopper’s PS was that he’d died on his side next to Dyazide, which, if he’d used it as directed, might have prevented his death. Her mother’s PS was a long strand of hair attached to a small piece of scalp, a postscript that had tormented Greta for years.

“Aren’t you just a tiny bit triggered?” her fiancé asked, bewildered.

“My triggers are covered in wet sand,” she’d said, “because my head is a giant cement mixer.”

“So, you do have feelings,” her fiancé said. “They’re just buried. In cement. Maybe it’s time you start breaking up the cement.”

“With what, a jackhammer?”

“How about a psychologist?”

So, Greta had taken another stab at therapy. After hearing her whole story, which had taken ten weeks to tell, the shrink diagnosed her with emotional detachment disorder, which seemed like a stretch to Greta, who preferred to think of it as “poise” on a bad day, “grace” on a good one, and, when she was feeling full of herself, “serenity.” He’d made several over-the-top recommendations: hot yoga, hypnosis, primal screaming, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), acupuncture, and swing-dancing lessons. He also recommended she quit caffeine and nicotine.

Instead, Greta quit therapy. Then she quit her job, ended her relationship, moved across the country, and switched careers. Years ago, she’d worked for a “document preparation company.” The job had entailed transcribing audio for high-tech businesses, scientists doing qualitative research, journalists, professors, and psychologists. She’d held on to the equipment all these years because she’d genuinely enjoyed the eavesdropping aspect, the isolation of working from home, the not speaking for many hours at a time. She’d been a listener all her life and tended to surround herself with people in love with their own voices. It didn’t bother her that the work required very little skill and could be easily performed by robots or software. When she’d landed in Hudson, she emailed the six shrinks in town and offered her transcription services. Only Om responded.

Now secrets were fed directly into her ears, without any of the piped-in music or body pain. In fact, Greta barely moved these days. Only her fingers moved, and not very fast. Although by no means an excellent typist, she was semidiscreet, and because Hudson was so one-horse and gossipy, discretion was everything. She’d signed what looked like a pretty official confidentiality agreement, so she was forbidden to talk shit about Om’s clients. Not that she wanted to—she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker, and she barely left the house. She typically waited until midafternoon to get started and then worked until bedtime. They talked, she typed, nighty-night.

So far, Big Swiss was unlike Om’s other clients. She lacked their habit of tacking a question mark to the end of every sentence, even when asking an actual question. She never exclaimed. When she sneezed, she said “achoo” in the same way she said “hello” and “thank you.” She spoke slowly, enunciating every word, at the exact speed Greta typed, so it felt as though they were performing a piece of music together, something improvy and out-there, at a concert with no audience. Greta rarely had to rewind for another listen, or give up altogether and type [INDISCERNIBLE], which she hated doing. There had been some [SIGHING], [SNEEZING], and [THROAT-CLEARING] on the part of Big Swiss, but Om didn’t want any of that in the transcripts. Nor was Greta allowed to include a [WEIGHTY SILENCE] or any of the many [PAUSES], and no [WHIMPERING]. For some reason, Om’s style sheet permitted [WHISTLING], [SINGING], and [APPLAUSE], even though no one did those things in therapy, along with [LAUGHING] and [CRYING]. Oh, and [FIRE-BREATHING], which he sometimes did with clients who were open to kundalini, one of his passions.

Om’s first session with a client tended to run at least five to seven minutes longer than usual, but his first session with Big Swiss was a full fifteen minutes shorter. This was how Greta knew Big Swiss was beautiful—Om had forgotten to hit the record button. Either that, or he’d erased the first fifteen minutes, which wasn’t like him. Also, his voice had dropped an octave, and he kept fidgeting with his pen.


OM:?While you were talking about your aura, I thought I detected a faint accent. Where are you from originally?