Just Last Night(70)

“Mementos of people who don’t know they’re being photographed,” Fin says. “Do you also take locks of hair from your sleeping victims?”

I look at him in shame and his face is lit up in amusement.

“Oh, now you stop sulking, in your malicious glee!” I blurt, faux-indignant, but glad he’s not outright calling me sinister. “I’ll delete it if you’re that bothered.”

“No, don’t. I’m touched you’d want to remember a single second of this,” he says, in a diplomatic tone.

I put my rain-speckled phone away.

“Can you get rid of any of the ones where I have a double chin though?” Finlay says, with the insouciant flirtiness of someone who’s never been troubled by a double chin, and has slyly correctly guessed there’s photos, plural.

“It’s a deal. Though I’d remind you, vanity is a sin.”

“And I’d remind you that creepshotting is not ethical.”

The storm billows around us as we smile at each other under our hoods and I feel inexplicably . . . what’s the word? Soothed. I feel soothed.

Back at the hotel, I scroll through a series of unexpectedly luminous, sulky pictures of a man with dark hair in a blue coat and feel something that I wouldn’t call soothed, exactly.





28


Although I appear at ten to one, in hopes of being first, Finlay is already sitting at the bar. He’s toying with the spoon in the saucer of a cup of tea, amid lots of young shiny people in 1920s costumes, buzzing from high spirits and midday alcohol.

They join in a lusty round of “Happy birthday Dear BOBBY!” while a pleased-with-himself-looking cherubic lad with a side parting in a white tuxedo and lopsided bow tie raises a coupe glass to them. I notice the women, in feather headbands, dropped waists, and kiss curls, are in badges saying “East Egg,” the dapper men branded “West Egg.”

“It’s one of those passage of time ironies, isn’t it,” I say, quietly, after greeting Fin and ordering a Diet Coke. “The Great Gatsby was about how wealth and glamour and social climbing will hollow you out and destroy you, steal the love of your life away. So naturally we appropriate it for hey, let’s get wrecked costumes for parties that unironically celebrate those things.”

“Haha. Never mind Jay Gatsby, I could tell them wealth and social climbing as a mysterious nobody in New York doesn’t lead anywhere good. My culture is not your prom dress, Bobby,” Finlay says, with a knowing smile, looking up from under his brow. I’m momentarily floored by his exceptionally quick and self-aware riposte, combined with looking like a sodding film star. I can practically see the fireworks going off behind him.

“A ‘passage of time irony’ . . . is a good phrase. I’m a walking ‘passage of time irony,’” he says.

I laugh in admiration, and Fin and I share a confidential look. I get the distinct impression he’s trying to make a connection with me, but I don’t know why he’d do that. I’ve lost my bearings and need to recover them, swiftly.

“I wasn’t aware psychology was lucrative and social climby,” I say, carefully, steadying myself. “But then I don’t know any psychologists so I’m not sure what I’m basing that on. Also, psychiatrists in films look old as wizards. Wait, which are you, and what’s the difference?”

“I’m a counselor-psychologist. In essence, the difference is that psychiatrists prescribe drugs. I don’t prescribe drugs. Lucrative, it depends,” Fin says. “If you go into private practice and you’re successful. I got a lucky break early on.”

“What sort of lucky break?” I ask, sipping my drink.

“Hmmm . . . ,” Fin says, appraising me. “I have these thoughts about what I want going back to Susie, then realize it can’t.”

“Me too,” I say.

“What, you’d have ever worried I’d talk to her?” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“No, in general. The impulse to refer back to her and realizing you can’t anymore.”

“OK. Please don’t repeat this anyway, but . . . when I first began treating people at my own practice, after my residency, a friend sent someone with a profile to me.”

“With a profile?” I repeat, blankly.

I think of Finlay as sharing a lexicon with me, and every so often he sounds like an NYT Long Read. As if he’s going to start using words like “storied” and” preposition” and “luscious plums.”

“They were working on a big-budget film and not able to carry on and needed therapy, someone to talk to.”

“Oh God, you mean they were famous?”

“I did sessions with them, they felt able to return to work, the studio saved a lot of money and the film won Oscars.”

“Shit!”

“Then the person I helped told their friends about me. That formed the basis of a very strong client list.”

Fin drinks the last of his coffee.

“You’re the head doctor to a bunch of neurotic A-list actors, so can set your prices at ‘totally mad bilk’ level? And you know all their secrets?!”

“I’m good at what I do, my clients are human like you or I, and my prices are competitive, thank you,” Fin says, rolling his eyes, but with no real ire. “Patient confidentiality is inviolable.”