Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

he ought to feel. She had become, by degrees, over the years, involved in a situation from which she could not now extricate herself. And he saw no way out for her now; it had gone on too long. The formula had become fixed. The seeds of evil had been allowed to grow.
    “There’s no turning back for you,” he said, knowing it, knowing that she knew it. “Listen,” he said to her in a gentle voice. He put his hand on her shoulder, but as before she at once shrank away. “Tell them you want him out right now, and you’re not turning in any more people.”
    “Would they release him, then, if I said that?”
    “Try it.” Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm. But—he could
    imagine Mr. McNulty and how he looked to the girl. She could never confront him; the McNultys of the world did not get confronted by anyone. Except when something went strangely wrong.
    “Do you know what you are?” Kathy said. “You’re a very good person. Do you understand that?”
    He shrugged. Like most truths it was a matter of opinion. Perhaps he was. In this situation, anyhow. Not so in others. But Kathy didn’t know about that.
    “Sit down,” he said, “pet your cat, drink your screwdriver. Don’t think about anything; just be. Can you do that? Empty your mind for a little while? Try it.” He brought her a chair; she dutifully seated herself on it.
    “I do it all the time,” she said emptily, dully.
    Jason said, “But not negatively. Do it positively.”
    “How? What do you mean?”
    “Do it for a real purpose, not just to avoid facing unfortunate verities. Do it because you love your husband and you want him back. You want everything to be as it was before.”
    “Yes,” she agreed. “But now I’ve met you.”
    “Meaning what?” He proceeded cautiously; her response puzzled him.
    Kathy said, “You’re more magnetic than Jack. He’s magnetic, but you’re so much, much more. Maybe after meeting you I couldn’t really love him again. Or do you think a person can love two people equally, but in different ways? My therapy group says no, that I have to choose. They say that’s one of the basic aspects of life. See, this has come up before; I’ve met several men more magnetic than Jack…but none of them as magnetic as you. Now I really don’t know what to do. It’s very difficult to decide such things because there’s no one you can talk to: no one understands. You have to go through it alone, and sometimes you choose wrong. Like, what if I choose you over Jack and then he comes back and I don’t give a shit about him; what then? How is he going to feel? That’s important, but it’s also important how I feel. If I like you or someone like you better than him, then I have to act it out, as our therapy group puts it. Did you know I was in a psychiatric hospital for eight weeks? Morningside Mental Hygiene Relations in Atherton. My folks paid for it. It cost a fortune because for some reason we weren’t eligible for community or federal aid. Anyhow, I learned a lot about myself and I made a whole lot of friends, there. Most of the people I truly know I met at Morningside. Of course, when I originally met them back then I had the delusion that they were famous people like Mickey Quinn and Arlene Howe. You know—celebrities. Like you.”
    He said, “I know both Quinn and Howe, and you haven’t missed anything.”
    Scrutinizing him, she said, “Maybe you’re not a celebrity; maybe I’ve reverted back to my delusional period. They said I probably would, sometime. Sooner or later. Maybe it’s later now.”
    “That,” he pointed out, “would make me a hallucination of yours. Try harder; I don’t feel completely real.”
    She laughed. But her mood remained somber. “Wouldn’t that be strange if I made you up, like you just said? That if I fully recovered you’d disappear?”
    “I wouldn’t disappear. But I’d cease to be a celebrity.”
    “You already have.” She raised her head, confronted him steadily.