Chapter Text
“So, Armie, how are you today?” she asked me this as I wavered between the couch and the chair. I settled on the chair, the temptation to lay down on the couch and fall asleep right away was too great.
“Yep, I’m good right now, a little tired but okay.” I shrugged, I honestly felt okay right now.
“Yes, I saw you’ve had a busy few weeks. The play’s finished now?”
The joys of the internet, I never had to tell people what I’d been up to work-wise. “Yeh, I loved it, I really did, I’m so glad I said yes to a role on stage, I’d probably be up for something else if the right play came along, I just need a rest first.”
“So, what’s on your mind today?”
“Well, I think I’m ready for this to be our last session, Dr Finckle. I wanted these sessions to get through the last year and I honestly feel so much better.” She opened her mouth to speak but I stopped her straight away. “I know, I know, there is no better or worse, only daily dealing and strategies but yeh, I’m all equipped now, I’m good.” I smiled at her, I did feel good, ready, prepared. What was the point in more sessions when someone else who needed them more than me could get booked in with her?
She took off her glasses and placed them beside her on the coffee table, looked at me and sighed heavily, tapped her ring finger against her leg. “Armie, please, cut the bullshit.”
“What?”
“Armie, when I agreed to take you on as a client, we had a strict agreement that we’d meet and go beyond the usual therapy, that you would invest in this process with me with straight talking and honesty.”
“Yes and that’s what I’ve done.”
“As I said, bullshit.” She leaned forward and held out her hands for me to hold. “What am I holding?”
This bit I was used to, the swearing and rolling of eyes not so much. “My hands, Dr Finckle, my life, my heart, feelings, all of it. I know all this.” I shook my head at her, I really couldn’t see where this was going. Life was good, I had my kids, my ex and I were on good terms, my work, friends, I’d even managed to keep a civil relationship with my mother going for at least eight months now. She let go of my hands, stood up, did she just growl at me? What the hell? “I’m sorry, Dr, I don’t know what it is that you want me to say?” She rummaged in the desk drawer and then threw something at me, I caught it, her phone. “Your phone, what?”
She sat on the floor in front of me. “Armie, sit on the floor with me.”
“Erm, I really think I should be going, Dr Finckle-“
“Armie, sit on the goddamn floor!” She pointed at the floor and I came down to her level with crossed legs, banging my coccyx bone on the rug as I sat down quickly. "Okay,” well at least she’d stopped growling, this was beyond weird though. “The code’s 6472, go to the folder marked A.”
“Dr Finckle, no nudie pics right?” My smile faltered as she scowled at me. I entered the code on her phone and opened the folder. There were pics alright, just definitely not nudes. There were photos of me, me and Timmy. I shook my head at her and went to pass her phone back. “I don’t understand, they’re photos of me and Timothée Chalamet, he was a co-star of mine.”
She pushed the phone back at me. “Yes Armie, I know who he is. Keep looking, look closer.”
I scrolled down, scrolled down some more and then some more. Jesus, how many photos did she have of me? “That’s a lot of photos of me, Dr Finckle.”
“Armie, when I take on famous people as clients, I inevitably come up against a wall of resistance, an empty space shall we say, a space that I know is not empty but the client never discusses in session. I investigate, google and instagram are wonderful inventions by the way. Then, I keep a record of what I find.” She pointed at her screen in my hands, “that’s your empty space, Armie. The one thing you never discussed in our sessions in a year, just went straight past it like it wasn’t there.”
I still didn’t get what the hell she was talking about. I don’t have an empty space, I don’t. We talked about everything in my sessions, everything. I scrolled back up and up and up, pictures of me and Timmy, us at the New York Film Festival last year, us behind the scenes filming in Crema, us on a stage in Paris, I think, murky photos those ones. I kept scrolling, us with Neil Patrick Harris, us with Ellen, what looked like some videos, one of Tim at Austin. At the top of the screen was another video, blurry this time, I played it and then paused it quickly again, it was at the stage door a few weeks ago when I called him out and he got away from me. I smiled up at the doc, “he’s squirrelly.” Another pointed stare at me so I looked back down at the phone again and the top row of photos, a picture of me on a couch at TIFF, just two weeks ago. Then two blurry shots of me and Timmy, when he launched himself off the banquette he’d been dancing on, to hug me, and the second photo was even blurrier, must have been taken the night after, us talking and Timmy obviously laughing at whatever nonsense I was coming out with. I shook my head and handed her phone back.
“How is this my empty space? It’s just photos of me and Timmy, okay, a hell of a lot of photos but that’s it.” I didn’t understand what she was trying to get at.
“Armie, this is the first time you’ve said his name.” She put her phone down on the rug next to her and reached out for my hands again.
I shook my head, “no, that’s nonsense, I talk about him all the time, he’s my friend, I must do, surely...”
“Nope, you don’t even trail off or start saying his name and then stop yourself, he’s your empty space, you’re telling me a story about something that happened to you recently and you’d just skip right over him, on to the next story, not a pause or a breath. Just an empty space, nothing to see here.”
“I, I, no, that can’t be right, it can’t be.” I looked down at my hands in hers and realised mine were shaking, my bracelet rattling against my wrist.
“It’s called Tolerant Space syndrome. People can go years and years without realising what they’re doing. Some therapists never pick up on it. It’s only because I’ve worked extensively in Hollywood that I’ve seen it happen the most with people in the public eye who are forced to be in denial about their real selves or some part of their lives that they’ve had to keep hidden for a long time. Effectively, you live your life but your brain tricks you, pulls that person or thing or feeling into a space that gets ignored. So, you spend time with Timothée but you never talk about him.”
“No, that’s wrong, that’s bullshit, I talk about him all the time, I do.”
She shook her head at me again but her scowl had turned into a beyond sympathetic face. “No, you talk about him in interviews all the time but it’s as a friend, a co-star, a great guy.”
“He is, he’s all of those things but I don’t understand how I’ve never talked about him here, with you.”
“Like I said, you don’t realise you’re doing it. Is Timothée more than a friend to you, Armie?”
I gripped her hands then, felt the shaking go up my arms, I didn’t understand, I didn’t. Timmy’s a friend, that’s all, he can’t be more than that, he can’t be.
“Armie, Armie, can you hear me? Armie, you need to hold on, okay, hold on to my hands, it’s okay.”
As I heard a swishing noise and saw dots in front of my eyes, blackness swept me up and I fell into it with a sigh.