"Peacock Therapy," part 2.1

II.

“So Corbin, tell me, do you ever fool around with the girls?” Dr. Phillpots asked as he tapped Corbin on the shoulder and pointed him to the leather wingback chair positioned against the canted bay window that looked out on the docks.

The leather groaned as Corbin eased into the chair. An identical chair sat opposite, with a textured glass table, featuring a bowl of mints, interceding. Corbin glanced anxiously at the ancient cuddy cabin boats tethered below, rocking in the twilight breeze.

“Or maybe you like boys?” Dr. Phillpots muttered as he searched his desk and gathered his notes, which consisted of a legal pad and a wodge of loose scraps. “I understand teenagers are more open these days.” When he returned and sat in the chair opposite, Corbin shook his head. Dr. Phillpots raised his peaked brows quizzically. His owlish pupils hung under a precipitous forehead and above a sharp nose balancing a pair of reading glasses. Salt and pepper wisps thickened at his temples to cover the helices of his ears.

“No? And no business with the girls, huh?” he asked. Corbin shook his head again. “Well, you’re young—let’s see.” He paused to look through his notes. “Fourteen. That’s young.” He studied the young man’s face for a moment. Corbin’s bangs hung down to his oily cheeks. His pursed lips concealed a web of gleaming braces. He had his left hand stuck in his jeans’ pocket, fiddling with something.

“Okay. I’m going to ask you a series of routine questions now,” Dr. Phillpots warned. “Just answer honestly.”

Corbin nodded.

“Ever do drugs, or drink alcohol?”

“No,” Corbin answered softly.

“No? What about smoking?”

Corbin shook his head.

“Okay, that’s good. Ever hear voices, or see things that aren’t there?”

“N-no.”

“Ever feel like hurting yourself or have suicidal thoughts, anything like that?”

Corbin paused before replying, “No.”

“What about hurting others? Any homicidal thoughts?”

Corbin shook his head.

“Excellent,” Dr. Phillpots declared. He lifted his wrist to show Corbin the face of his pin-lever watch. “Now here’s a puzzle for you: at noon, the minute hand and the hour hand are lined up, right? Twelve hours later, they’ll be lined up again. How many times do they cross—so that they’re lined up like that—during those twelve hours?”

“Um.” Corbin envisioned the clock hands whirling in the space between his eyes and the canted window panes. He tapped at the space to count each crossing. “Um, I think it would be—like, twelve? Because they cross every hour?”

“Close! Actually, it’s eleven. Each crossing adds a little bit more time to when the hands cross, past the hour mark. Every twelve hours, all those bits add up to an extra hour.”

Corbin frowned.

Dr. Phillpots scrawled a few notes on his legal pad and sighed. “So let’s talk about what brought you here. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Corbin shifted in his seat, and the leather groaned and chirped. His eyes began boring into the vaguely botanical spirals of the Tabriz rug spread out over the office’s mesquite-wood floor. “I, um, wanted to see the peacocks in this place, a place where you’re not supposed to go? But I went anyway?”

“Mm. I talked to your parents for a long time, on the phone. What I understand from them is there was a lot more to it?” Dr. Phillpots peered down through his reading glasses at one of his scraps. “Let’s see: you were warned the first time by a security officer, but you went back anyway, and got caught. The officer called your parents to pick you up. Then you went back a third time, and got caught a third time. That time they were going to call the police and have you arrested, but your parents managed to convince them not to, by promising to put you in treatment. Did I get that right?”

Corbin nodded.

Dr. Phillpots tilted his head. “So what is it about these peacocks that’s so interesting?”

9.30.2017 (c)