“What happened?” Sam asks.
“People grow apart,” I say, waving my hand to dismiss the topic. “Simple fact of life.”
“That’s the truth,” Sam says, taking another bite of eggs. “So, who’s your favorite?”
“My favorite?”
“Yeah, of my patients. Who do you like the best?”
“Who do I—”
“Actually, no. Reverse that. What I really want to know is who you liked the least.”
I’m dumbfounded. “You’re not mad at me?”
He shrugs. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and while I’m not sure my patients would love the idea of you up here, listening to their sessions, the truth is, if I was in your situation, I’d do the same thing.”
“You would?”
“Name a person who wouldn’t. Isn’t the desire to see inside people’s lives the entire premise of social media?” He takes a bite, chews. “Least favorite.”
“Well,” I say carefully, “if you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would have one hundred percent said Skinny Jeans.”
Sam looks confused. “Who?”
“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed. “I mean Christopher Zucker. I didn’t know who David Foster Wallace was, so I looked him up. Literary hero to men? Are you kidding me? He stalked and abused his wife, and what, nobody cares?”
“I know,” Sam says. “It’s weird.”
“I can’t tell you how hard it was sometimes, keeping my mouth shut up here.”
“I can only imagine,” he says. “But then something changed your mind . . .”
“I happened to see him recently, having lunch with his girlfriend.” It wasn’t entirely coincidental, of course. Rather, I found him under the About Me page on his company’s website, which led me to his Instagram account, which then led me to the model girlfriend’s, populated almost entirely with photographs she took of herself （I’m aware they’re called selfies, a word I refuse to use）。 It was here that she announced she was meeting Christopher for a date—#datewiththeboy #chestnutcafe—posing in six different outfits, asking everyone to help her decide what to wear. She chose the clingy black jumpsuit, not my first choice.
“He seemed vulnerable,” I tell Sam. “Something in his expression when he looked at her. Like he was forcing himself to endure her.” I know I should stop, but I can’t help myself. “He’s been doing this his whole life. Feeling the pressure to date the most beautiful girl in the room. He needs to be told that this is a hopeless endeavor. Did you know that research shows that when two good-looking people get together, they have a high chance of a rocky marriage? Researchers at Harvard did a study on it.”
“Is that right?”
“You want to see the study?”
“You have it?”
“Yeah, hang on.”
In the library, I locate the purple binder where I’ve been filing the notes I keep on our patients. I finger through the tabs until I get to Christopher’s. “Look,” I say, returning to the room and handing Sam the six-page study. “They looked at the top twenty actresses on IMDb and found that a high percentage had unhappy marriages. And those considered to be the best-looking guys in high school had higher rates of divorce than the average guys.”
“This is fascinating,” he murmurs.
“I knew you’d get it,” I say. “I think this all has to do with Christopher’s father.”
Sam lifts an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Move over,” I say, perching at the foot of his bed. He slides his casts to the side, making room for me. “Christopher’s father was insecure and vain, which he played out by scrutinizing his son’s physicality,” I say. “Christopher then grows up and exclusively dates women who are very attractive, but who he finds shallow and uninteresting. Why does he continue to do this? Because they validate the idea that he’s physically attractive, and therefore valuable in the eyes of his father.”
“Nice work, Albert. That’s exactly right.”
I open my eyes wide. “It is?”
“Yes. You’re astute. It’s where I was leading Christopher, to that understanding about his father.”
“Wow.” I’m proud of myself, and confused. “Why didn’t you save time and tell him that’s what was happening with him?”
“He had to get there himself, and that’s delicate,” Sam says, handing me the study and returning to his meal. “It takes time. Like a good story.”