Sighing again, he studied the folder before him, which did not take very long. The patient was still quite young even though he had already made a mark of sorts on the world. A theoretical mathematician, apparently. Probably thought himself a square circle on an adding machine. The psychiatrist browsed through the folder's contents again, then jabbed the buzzer.
"You can send Mr. Moore in now," he said and snapped the intercom off before Miss Austin could answer. The present moment was no time to be distracted.
Dr. Rawlings held his head in his hands and stared morosely at the desk. Then he picked up a pencil and began tapping it against an inkwell. An incongruous thought surely, pencil and inkwell—what would Freud say about that?
He decided in the same thought that he didn't give a particular damn what Freud thought about inkwells. There were times in fact when he didn't care what Freud thought about anything. There were times when all we wanted to think about was a small chicken farm, with maybe a gorgeous honey-blonde like Miss Austin to help sow a few seeds.
He looked out the window at the sky and the tops of buildings, and recalled with bitterness the patient who had claimed that he could fly, and who had tried to jump to the street forty floors below solely to prove it. It would have made a nasty splash, he thought. All the king's horses and all the king's men—Unless, of course, the patient really could fly....
He looked up, annoyed, and discovered that the door had not opened. Furiously, he jabbed the buzzer again. "Isn't Mr. Moore here yet?" he demanded, consulting his watch. "He was supposed to be here five minutes ago."
"He's here, Doctor," the receptionist's silk-and-satin tones came. "He's trying to get up enough courage to open the door."
"Oh," the psychiatrist said. He felt like adding something unprofessional, but he controlled himself. With an effort he shut off the intercom and just waited.
He looked up at the door and saw the knob turning slowly, ever so slowly. He watched its glistening facets turn in the dim natural lighting of the room, rotating as though in the slowest of slow motions.
He sighed and turned his attention to his desk top, where he discovered he had abstractedly pencilled on the blotter a four letter word not normally used in polite society. Hastily, annoyed with himself, he grabbed the pencil and used its erasing head to rub off the offending word.