December 1984
Dr Harold Hesastein psychiatric offices, 6 East 39th St, 10th floor. Manhattan.

“Mrs Terrazas, how many children do you have?” Dr Hesastein asks, with Kathy Terraza learning slightly back into an angled large brown leather chair.
“Two, a daughter and son. My son just tuned Fourteen, my daughter is Twelve,” Kathy replies, staring at the ceiling, admiring the ornamented pattern work which sits along the edge…” She turns and looks at the Dr Hesastein. “...This building. Is it early Nineteen Hundreds?
“I believe so,” the psychiatrist replies, whilst maintaining his attention on Kathy.
“And your sleeping patterns?”
“There ok, a bit tense from time to time, my husband, who works on Wall Street, goes on a lot business trips, so he’s out of town most months.”
Dr Hesastein looks down at his notes. “How long does he leave?”
“Usually the weekend, including the Friday. About three nights,” Kathy replies, looking down at her cream colored knee length skirt, with its split, admiring her tanned right thigh.
“Do you feel anxious, when he’s away?”
Kathy, pondering the answer whilst looking at her fingernails and their deep red nail polish, also the scar that runs across her knuckle on her left hand, from a car accident Four years ago, after attending a cocaine party in Chelsea. “Sometimes”
“Well thank you for seeing me today, as noted that it was a referral from Dr Lenkin, your GP, who wanted me to discuss some issues that you raised with him a week ago, so I will concur with my colleague that we will prescribe a course of the antidepressant Sertraline.”
Leaning forward, swiveling her legs around so that she is sitting up right, she smiles at the psychiatrist. “Ok, that’s fine.”
Standing, he hands her the prescription note, as she then stands, straightening out her skirt, taking the prescription from him, she holds out her right hand, to which the psychiatrist shakes it.
“Thanks,” she says, turning around, Kathy exits the client area, closing the door behind her. Shaking her head from side to side, whilst moving her eyes upward in a dismissive manner, she scrunches up the medical prescription in her right hand. Stepping into the elevator, she taps the ground floor button with her left index finger, the doors close, as the lift descends. “Change Doctors, I think,” she says quietly to herself.
The lift doors open up onto the Ground level, quickly leaving the elevator, she sees a small bin to her right with its astray sitting above, pausing, she hastily unwraps the scrunched up prescription note, rips it in half, and places the two pieces into open side part of the bin. Walking out of the foyer, she steps onto 39th St. ***God, I need a fuck*, Kathy thinks to herself, as she eyes West 39^th Street, with a cool Westerly wind blowing in from the Atlantic, turning her back, she lifts out of her handbag a pack of cigarettes with a gas lighter, placing a single cigarette in her mouth, leaning he**r chin down, whilst cupping her mouth. She lights the cigarette, having a large draw closing he eyes, she exhales, as the smoke dissipates into nothing. Turning around, facing the wind, she walks towards 39^th Street.

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Reading: "Etelke, I of the Conjurer" from COVEAL OF THE HEDONIC (A.Glass 2025).

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