Man in a Hurry and Other Fantasy Stories. Alan Nelson
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Maybe I am witnessing an entirely new psychosis, he told himself. Funny things are happening in the world today. He saw himself before the American Psychiatric Congress, delivering a monograph: “The Emergence of a New Psychosis.” This new disorder apparently had symptoms opposite from paranoia—he could call it Narapoia. Hopefully, Dr. Departure foresaw the possibility that some of his colleagues would insist on naming it after its discoverer: “Departureomania.” He would be famous; his name linked with Freud. A sickening thought struck him. Supposing this man McFarlane were a malingerer! A fake! By God, he’d find out! Quickly, he buzzed his secretary, Miss Armstrong, and instructed her to cancel all appointments for the rest of the day. Then he reached for his hat and fled from the building.
* * * *
Three days later, the telephone in Dr. Departure’s office rang. Miss Armstrong answered it. It was Mrs. Departure.
“No, he isn’t here,” Miss Armstrong said. “As a matter of fact, he hasn’t been here for three days except to bounce in and out for his mail.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with that man.” Mrs. Departure’s exasperated voice rattled the receiver. “He’s gone half the night, too. Comes home utterly exhausted. What do you suppose he’s writing in that little notebook?”
“Frankly, I’m worried about him,” Miss Armstrong replied. “He’s so irritable. And in such a frightful rush all the time.”
* * * *
“You’re looking peaked, Doc,” McFarlane said at his next meeting, a week later. It was the first time the doctor had sat behind the desk for many days. His legs ached. Stealthily, beneath the desk, he slipped off both scuffed shoes to relieve the pressure from his blistered feet.
“Never mind about me,” the doctor snapped. “How are you?” The doctor’s fingers twitched. He was much thinner and his face was pale and drawn.
“I think I must be getting better,” McFarlane announced. “I have the feeling lately that someone is following me.”
“Nonsense!” Dr. Departure snapped at him irritably. “It’s just your imagination.”
He squinted his eyes and gazed at McFarlane. If only he could be sure this McFarlane was not faking. So far, there was nothing to indicate he was. After all, his sudden urge on the streets to overtake someone seemed perfectly genuine. McFarlane would raise his head, his pace would quicken and away he would go.
Well, I’ll just have to watch him a little while longer, the doctor told himself.
He closed his eyes a moment, reviewing his activities for the previous week: the long cross-city jaunts in which he had almost lost McFarlane a dozen times; the long, long waits outside restaurants and bars, waiting for McFarlane to emerge.
I’ll just have to keep going until I get all the facts, he thought. But he was a little concerned with the weight he’d lost, and with the strange ringing noises in his head which had recently developed…
At the end of the hour, McFarlane tiptoed out of the office. Dr. Departure was snoring fuzzily.
* * * *
On the day of McFarlane’s next appointment with the doctor, he was met at the door by Miss Armstrong. “Doctor isn’t here,” she informed him. “He’s taken a leave of absence for three months…possibly a year.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it,” McFarlane said. “He was looking done in, though. Where is he? On vacation?”
“As a matter of fact, he’s at Marwood Sanitarium.”
A strange, puzzled look suddenly settled over McFarlane’s face and he gazed into space a moment. Presently, he smiled at the secretary.
“I just had the funniest feeling,” he said. “Suddenly I feel like I’m completely cured. All of a sudden. Just when you told me about Dr. Departure.”
* * * *
The doctors had quite a time with Dr. Departure at the sanitarium.
“Just tell us anything that comes into your mind,” they urged.
Departure’s eyes were glazed and he was very excited. “I’ve got to follow him, I tell you! I can’t let him get out of sight. Not for an instant. He’s got a bird with baggy eyes and floppy ears.”
“Very interesting. All very interesting!” The doctors gloomed among themselves, shaking their heads scientifically. “Something entirely new!”
“It’s rather like a persecution complex…isn’t it? Only the opposite!”
“He seems to have the delusion he is following someone. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Probably the emergence of a brand new psychosis. I suggest that we observe him very closely.”
And here, one of the doctors went so far as to suggest further that they let Dr. Departure move about the city at will—closely watched, of course, by alternately selecting members of their staff—so that his actions could be carefully noted…
* * * *
THE SHOPDROPPER
“I’m a klepto-kleptomaniac, Doctor.”
Dr. Manly J. Departure, bursting with vitamins and energy after his year’s leave of absence, gazed with professional cordiality at the angular young man across the desk, who was kneading preposterously long fingers and scowling.
“Well, that’s not too serious, Mr. Flint,” Dr. Departure replied, permitting himself an affable chuckle. “There seems to be a lot of kleptomania going around this season. As for the stuttering…”
Mr. Flint did not smile.
“Not kleptomania, Doctor. Klepto-kleptomania.” The young man continued to massage his fingers as though smoothing out invisible wrinkles. “I steal only from other kleptomaniacs,” he said earnestly.
Dr. Departure’s chuckle dribbled away.
“If I understand you,” Dr. Departure began very slowly, “you have a pathological impulse to steal. But, instead of stealing from department stores, as does the normal klepto…rather, the usual kleptomaniac, you feel impelled to steal the things other kleptomaniacs have already stolen?”
“That’s right,” the man answered. “I sneak into their rooms when they’re out. They’re getting harder and harder to find, too. Of course, it’s all stuff I have no particular use for. Look!”
He reached down, hauled up a bulky paper sack and handed it across the desk.
Dr. Departure opened it and extracted, among other things, an egg beater, a plastic thimble, a pencil sharpener, a bottle of permanent wave lotion and an ocarina.
“I just…just can’t help myself, Doctor.” Flint flexed his long, lean fingers, frowned at them, then looked up once more at the doctor. “This urge I get…it’s irresistible. And getting worse all the time. You’ve got to help me.”
Dr. Departure laid the bag down and began running his finger over the small brass clock his wife had given him for Christmas; it always steadied him to focus his attention a moment or so on the little instrument ticking off the dollars like a taxi meter. Presently, he lifted his eyes and studied the man: thin, pallid face, a shaving cut over the Adam’s apple, conservative dresser. Nothing remarkable except his preoccupation with those very long fingers.
“Just a few routine questions first,” Dr. Departure said, picking up a pencil.
Flint, it turned out, was thirty-seven, graduated from high school, employed as an insurance clerk, unmarried. All very usual.
At the end of the hour, the doctor arose and smiled reassuringly.
“Shall we say Tuesday at ten?” he said, seeing Flint to the door.
* * * *
Shortly