producing a nicotine pacifier, one of
those fake cigs that gives you the oral fix and the chemical fix and the habit
fix without the noxious smoke, "it's not my area of specialty, but you seem like
a basically sane individual, modulo your rooftop adventures. Certainly, you're
not like most of the people we've got here. What are you doing here?"

Doctor Szandor is young, younger even than me, I realize. Maybe twenty-six. I
can see some fancy tattoo-work poking out of the collar of his shirt, see some
telltale remnant of a fashionable haircut in his grown-out shag. He's got to be
the youngest staff member I've met here, and he's got a fundamentally different
affect from the zombies in the lab coats who maintain the zombies in the felt
slippers.

So I tell him my story, the highlights, anyway. The more I tell him about Linda
and Fede, the dumber my own actions sound to me.

"Why the hell did you stick with this Linda anyway?" Szandor says, sucking on
his pacifier.

"The usual reasons, I guess," I say, squirming.

"Lemme tell you something," he says. He's got his feet up on the table now,
hands laced behind his neck. "It's the smartest thing my dad ever said to me,
just as my high-school girl and me were breaking up before I went away to med
school. She was nice enough, but, you know, *unstable.* I'd gotten to the point
where I ducked and ran for cover every time she disagreed with me, ready for her
to lose her shit.

"So my dad took me aside, put his arm around me, and said, 'Szandor, you know I
like that girlfriend of yours, but she is crazy. Not a little crazy, really
crazy. Maybe she won't be crazy forever, but if she gets better, it won't be
because of you. Trust me, I know this. You can't fuck a crazy girl sane, son.'"

I can't help smiling. "Truer words," I say. "But harsh."

"Harsh is relative," he says. "Contrast it with, say, getting someone committed
on trumped-up evidence."

It dawns on me that Doc Szandor believes me. "It dawns on me that you believe
me."

He gnaws fitfully at his pacifier. "Well, why not? You're not any crazier than I
am, that much is clear to me. You have neat ideas. Your story's plausible
enough."

I get excited. "Is this your *professional* opinion?"

"Sorry, no. I am not a mental health professional, so I don't have professional
opinions on your mental health. It is, however, my amateur opinion."

"Oh, well."

"So where are you at now, vis-a-vis the hospital?"

"Well, they