The room was as dark, soft and silent as a womb. Evidently most of Dr. Romadka's patients dreamed expensively. The inevitable desk had a double curve like a love seat. There were no advertisements anywhere: a sure sign of wealth. On one wall was a large, round design, apparently copied from some classical Greek original, which disturbed Phil with its suggestions of nymphs and satyrs. He quickly shifted his gaze to an arch, through which he could see the beginning of a stairway. He decided Dr. Romadka must also have a penthouse.
Suddenly he heard angry voices, a man's and a girl's. The latter's rose to a catsquall of hate. A door somewhere shut with a snap, and a bit later a man came down the stairs without moving his feet. Phil deduced an escalator.
Dr. Romadka was tubby, bald and beaming with subtlety. He had on his left cheek four new, deep scratches, which he ignored completely and apparently expected Phil to. He summoned Phil to the desk with an indicating nod. They sat down and looked at each other across the curved and gleaming plane.
The analyst smiled. "Well, Mr. Gish? Yes, Jack Jones told me your name, and since Sacheverell and Mary are paying for things in any case, the new arrangement is quite all right. Oh, Sacheverell and Mary are Mr. and Mrs. Akeley, Jack Jones' friends. I thought you might have known. Incidentally, you're an hour late for your appointment."
A drop of blood fell from the deepest scratch to his white shirt and spread.
Phil shivered, then made himself say it. "I was spending the time going crazy."
The analyst nodded. "You do seem a bit wrought up."
"A bit?"
"Well," conceded the analyst with a shrug to excuse his own inadequate powers of description. Then he said, "Do not be surprised at going crazy, as you put it, Mr. Gish—may I call you Phil? It is the rule rather than the exception these days, though your admitting it is a bit out of the ordinary. For a full century now Americans have been living in one of those ages of collective madness and herd delusion, comparable only to the Dutch tulip mania, the witchcraft dread, the dancing madness, Trotskyism, and the Crusades. Until 1950 ours might have been called the Automobile Mania, but now the imagination can only grope for a name—I'm writing an unpopular book on the subject, you see. Not that this current social madness is a deep secret or anything to be startled at. What other results could have been expected when American society began to overvalue on the one hand security, censorship, an imagined world-saving idealism and self-sacrifice in war, and on the other hand insatiable hunger for possessions, fiercely competitive aggressiveness, sadistic male belligerence, contempt for parents and the state, and a fantastically overstimulated sexuality?"
The analyst's voice rose stridently and his eyes popped, as if there were a personal element in his indignation. But the next moment he was his merry professional self.