First instalment

Copper had waited long enough for her turn. She had thumbed through every magazine in the waiting room a few times. She had daydreamed of a fire breaking out in the corner by the buzzing air conditioner. The weird looking guy on the brown couch along the opposite wall had jumped up to fight the fire. He had battled the growing flames heroically but his pant leg had caught fire. Things with the daydream had gone awry, events repeating themselves and the storyline circling around and around until Copper knew that there was no point in continuing. So she had returned to waiting for her turn. But enough was enough.

Copper rose from the wicker chair and gathered her purse and jacket. Just as she was half way to the door of the waiting room, the punch-face nurse opened the other door to the inner sanctuary of the Doctor and called her name. Copper turned slowly, hanging in the balance of indecision. To leave, to be home within the hour, to sink into her own den of clutter and comfort... to be billed for this session regardless. Or to go in. To answer the call of Punch Face and be led through secret doors where a glorified college grad would spend an obligatory hour asking inane questions before adjusting the prescription meant to treat clinical depression - the pills Copper never took.

"So how have you been Copper?" asked Dr. Field. Faintly, Copper could hear a song from the past. "We're the Kids in America..." the phrase tuned the doctor out completely. Vaguely, she was aware she should come up with some sort of an answer for Dr. Field. He would expect something bland and ice breaking. Something non-specific. But Copper was suddenly stricken with the need to remember who had sung that song.

She made a grand show of folding her jacket and placing it on the back of the easy chair. Then her purse needed to be set down just so against the side of the coffee table. As if suddenly remembering something, Copper sat, started, and leaned forward to rummage through her purse. She could only make that work for so long. She knew she would have to either pretend to find something or she would have to stop and talk to the Dr. The anxiety of the impending awkwardness pushed hard against her effort to remember the artist that had recorded that stupid song - even though Copper could no longer hear the song even faintly.

"Outside a new day is dawning. Outside suburbia's sprawling everywhere..."

"Sorry?" the Doctor was a very patient man. Most people had begun to ignore her by this point. But, then again, he was getting paid to pay attention to her. He'd better be patient.

"Nothing," she said. "Just singing to myself."

"Ah. Well, last week you were worried about your job hunting. Have you applied for anything? Any news on that front?"

Copper's focus returned, her 80's music name search abandoned. "Yes. I have applied for a position as an administrative assistant in a school and I have an interview in two days. I am glad you asked or I would have forgotten to thank you for pressuring me to apply for jobs. I needed that push."

"You were very resistant to the idea as I recall." Dr. Field steepled his fingers under his chin in a very cliche doctoresque fashion. Hatred seethed unexpectedly in Copper's stomach. Why couldn't people just accept gratitude when it came. Why the Hell should the I-told-you-so crowd have the right to live past puberty? Deviance like that should be genetically screened at birth. Part of that triple screen thing they do now for expectant mothers. "Spina Bifida? Nope. Down's Syndrome? Nope. Grow up to be a patronizing ass? oooh. OK. Point me to the nearest abortion clinic please.

Oops. He was still talking.

"...whenever you feel that coming on. I don't think we should adjust your dosage for now. In fact, I think if things work out, we might discuss in a month's time discontinuing your medication. How would you feel about that?"

Really? He sees improvement? I haven't taken a pill in eight months. Sorry Doc. Already discontinued.

"OK," Copper said quietly. "I'm open to that."

Outside on the street, Copper spent ten minutes standing on the street corner deciding whether to take the bus, the subway or walk the fifteen blocks. Fifteen. Not too far. A man in a white suit and hat stood reading a newspaper at the bus stop across the street. He kept looking at her. Creep.

Turning toward the subway station, she began to walk. She hadn't really decided on the subway. She actually didn't like going underground. It felt colder down there. Darker. Wetter. Damp. Awful reports in the news always referred to the subway. Part of Copper recoiled at going down there into the artificial web of tubes and trains. Nothing natural about it.

Copper paid for her tokens and went through the turnstile. Down another flight of concrete glossy stairs and she was waiting at the platform for the Eastbound train. Should only be a couple of minutes. There was a bench. Perhaps there was time for a dream or two.

Choosing what to daydream about could be a sordid affair. It was always tempting to populate her stories with people around her at the moment. But she rarely did so. Wholly imaginative beings were far more powerful than the fictions one created around an existing body. If satisfaction is your goal, don't fantasize about the people you watch. Rather you should tune it all out and make people up from scratch.

Her first mental meandering tuned into a sort of adventure. Copper saw herself as some sort of Robin Hood brigand out for revenge against a tyrannical landlord who had stolen some geese. Swords were involved. Children ran and hid from the landlord’s thugs who roamed from farm to farm stealing all the edible fowl and calling it “taxes.” Copper ambushed them and freed the birds who took to the air immediately... so that no one could eat them.

The dream stalled as Copper had come to a moral dilemma. Was she to defend the farm folk and return the geese? Or were the farm folk just as bad as the landlord and his henchmen, enslaving animals for the sole purpose of eventual butchery and ingestion? Suddenly, Copper was aware that someone had sat beside her.

The man in the white suit and hat from the bus stop was sitting right beside her. He had managed to enter the subway station, approach Copper and sit down on the same bench so their thighs were in contact. Copper was not accustomed to people feeling so entitled as to invade her personal space in a subway station. On the train was different. Everyone rubbed up against everyone else on a subway train. But in the station where there was so much room... the socially acceptable protocols were different.

“Excuse me.” She said to the white dressed man. “Do I know you?”

The man in white smiled and turned his head toward Copper. His eyes were a pale green with golden flecks scattered randomly around his irises. His teeth were too white. They looked like someone was shining a black light somewhere. When he spoke, his voice was smooth but piercing and poisonous. Copper was instantly attracted to the voice. But not the right kind of attraction, her mind screamed at her. All her instincts told her this guy was bad news. She should be running. She should be groping for her pepper spray. But his voice froze her in place. Even though it was barely more than a whisper, Copper was caught. And his voice was more real than any reality she had ever experienced.

“There’s a new wave coming I warn you,” he said. He sat smiling his too-white smile at the immobile Copper for a full minute. Then he rose. A train pulled in, the one Copper had been waiting for. The man in white got on the train, turned and looked again at Copper through the window. His smile seemed even bigger as the train pulled away. Copper couldn't breathe.