Mary-Kate sighed again. She looked disdainfully around the room as if it was a cheap hotel room, leaned over, took a chocolate, then changed her mind and dropped it back in the bowl again.

Finally she spoke. “Actually, I think I do need to use your bathroom.”

It felt like relief to see her again.

I don’t know how she feels about me, but I sort of like her. I mean, I’m sickened by her existence obviously, but I find her strangely compelling.

It’s almost a perverse crush. Like when you meet a man and you find him repulsive, but you still want to go to bed with him, and when you do, it’s great, but afterward you feel ill with regret. Like that apelike guy I met at one of the client Christmas parties last year. He wore too much aftershave and more jewelry than me. The sex was fine, but afterward I was like a rape victim scrubbing myself in the shower and sobbing for Patrick. I guess it’s like that self-loathing you feel after eating bad greasy junk food.

Ellen wouldn’t eat junk food. Tofu and lentils, I imagine. I wonder if she is lovingly appalled by Patrick’s pizza habit yet.

It’s not like I want to go to bed with her. I just want to know everything about her. I want to watch her, in every imaginable situation. I want to get inside her head and inside her body. I want to be her, just for a day.

I haven’t felt like this about any of the other girls Patrick has dated.

The thing about Ellen—

It makes me feel good that I can use her name.

I used it a lot at our last session. “Thanks, Ellen.” “See you next week, Ellen.” Each time I use her name it’s like I’m slapping Patrick across his self-satisfied face.

Don’t think you’ve moved on, boy. Making a new life that has nothing to do with me. I’m still here. I’m tossing her name about. I’ve been in her house. I’ve used her bathroom. I know what brand deodorant and tampons she uses. She’s nothing special.

Except maybe she is. She might even be too good for you, buddy. She might be out of your league. Out of our league.

The thing about Ellen is that it seems like she is exactly the same person on the outside as she is on the inside. That’s the impression she gives anyway, as if she is without artifice or affectation, as if she doesn’t have to filter every word that comes out of her mouth to make sure it gives the impression she wants to give.

Of course, she must have some sort of filter. Everyone has a filter. It’s just that her filter is something quick and simple that carefully discards anything that might accidentally offend anyone.

Whereas my filter is a labyrinth of pipes and funnels and sieves that converts everything I think into something acceptable to say, depending on the situation and the person and what I’m trying to prove at that particular moment.

She has nothing to prove. She really believes all that “power of the mind” crap. She’s passionate about it. It’s like her religion.

She comes across as a bit sanctimonious at first but I think she is actually a genuinely good person—in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She wishes only good for the world. Whereas you and I, Patrick, we’re sort of flawed. We don’t wish everyone well, do we?

I feel like such a fake when I’m with her, not just for the obvious reasons. If I met her as my true self, I would still be aware of that difference between us.

I can understand why you think you might love her, Patrick. I do understand. I love her a little bit too.

It’s just that on our first Christmas Eve together you and I fell asleep flat on our backs, like sunbakers; we were holding hands with the taste of raspberries in our mouths from that wonderful liqueur Stinky gave us, and the ceiling fan whirled above us, and the room seemed to rock, just gently, and I remember thinking it was like we were two children on a raft, floating down a magical river.

That night happened. I don’t care how sweet or pure-hearted Ellen is, that night happened. To us.

When she didn’t even exist.

Remember how we both had a crush on Cameron Diaz?

Well, that’s how it should be with Ellen. We should have met her at a dinner party, and on the way home we could have talked about how lovely she was, and how interesting and weird all that hypnosis stuff was, and by the time we got home we should have forgotten all about her.

She’s extremely nice, but she’s like Cameron Diaz, Patrick. She’s not meant to be a real person in our lives. She’s nothing to do with us.

Ellen and Patrick were driving to her mother’s place. Patrick was behind the wheel. He was the sort of man who automatically assumed it was his job to drive, which was fine with Ellen, who was a nervy driver. (She remembered how Jon always carefully, correctly shared the driving. “Your turn,” he’d say, tossing her the keys, and then he’d sigh and snort and criticize her driving the whole way.)

“So your mother never met anyone else after your dad,” said Patrick. “Jesus. This traffic is out of control.” He banged his foot on the brake and the car jerked. “Sorry.”

He was clearly nervous. It was such a pity that Ellen couldn’t reassure him by saying something like, “Oh, my mother is going to adore you!”

Her mother probably wouldn’t adore him. Out of all of Ellen’s past relationships, Anne had liked Jon the best, with his witty, caustic remarks. Of course she had. Jon was the one who had done the most damage to Ellen’s self-esteem, the one she’d loved who hadn’t really loved her back.

If only she had one of those sweet, slightly plump, chatty mothers who were sort of vague about politics and business and anything outside the domestic realm. If only she had a gray-haired, bespectacled father who would warmly shake Patrick’s hand and ask him man-to-man questions about surveying, while the sweet mother fussed about, trying to get the “fellows” to take a second piece of cheesecake.