Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee Page B

keeping a bug even after he was dead, the s.o.b. I had called Luzan’s office to apologize for suddenly quitting our sessions and disappearing as I did. I knew I shouldn’t have. I was simply going to tell him that I was sorry for the breakoff, that he’d been helpful in what he had to say about my life, but his wife answered and told me he had drowned in a boating accident off St. Thomas. She was cleaning out his office when I called. At the last moment she had decided not to go with him. And I thought,
Lucky for you
. She wept a little, wheezing like she was sick in the chest, and thanked me for my concern. I could almost hear Luzan’s bird-high voice, a bizarre pitch that like much else about him was a little silly, a dress of maudlin order on a man of such girth and weight. He could have been a bit player on a Saturday morning children’s show. He kept his black hair damp and oily and combed straight down to his eyes. As a kid I would have said his was a fresh-off-the-boat look. Luzan smelled of milk and ground pepper and lemons. Over the seven weeks of sessions I grew fond of him. Once, he offered me macaroons his daughter had baked.
    â€œTake one, my friend,” he squeaked to me. “We shouldn’t submit to the traditional doctor-patient relationship. It’s not our psychology, anyway. Let them have their problems. We can share our own.”
    Hoagland said, “The doctor was veal, Harry, one huge medallion of sweet-ass veal. You were the wolf. You fed him cream, you fed him honey. You were holding the knife.”
    â€œNo more knives,” I said. “I swear, I’ll bolt.”
    â€œNot a one,” he assured me, his gaze and body now forward and bearing down on me. “This thing with Kwang should be quick and clean. This is a hands-off deal. I see you with his office for three, four weeks tops. All I want is that you do this right again, like I know you can.”
    He rose from his chair and stepped to the coffeemaker, pouring out a silty cup for me, and then one for himself.
    He went on, different again, his voice calmer. “Remember how I taught you. Just stay in the background. Be unapparent and flat. Speak enough so they can hear your voice and come to trust it, but no more, and no one will think twice about who you are. The key is to make them think just once. No more, no less. I can see that this thing with your wife keeps you self-occupied. That’s fucking great! Really! It happens. It’s life. I just want you to write out a good legend for this and stick with it. When Jack had that awful thing with Sophie he decided to leave for a while. That’s not the best course for you, in my opinion. I think you need to stay close.”
    â€œJack’s saying different,” I told him.
    Hoagland guffawed. “Don’t listen to him. Jack’s a romantic. What he means is protect what you’ve got. My view—your wife will leave you and come back and leave you for the rest of your natural life. It will go on and on. It’s the bald-assed truth. It’s nothing against her or you. Honest. I ought to know. Ask the last three generations of Hoaglands. We know the secret. Marriage is a traveling circus. We’re the performers. Some of us, unfortunately, are more like freak acts. Maybe she likes certain towns, maybe you prefer others. She’ll drop off somewhere every once in a while and stay for a bit. So what. She’ll bore, she’ll catch up, she’ll be back.”
    I didn’t answer him. I just kept thinking of his wife, Martha, nearly-poignant-if-not-for-her-feeble-will Martha, forever pale and small-shouldered and smiling, pulling uncomfortably at the strap of her sequined body suit, her tightrope fifty feet up in the air; Hoagland was down on the ground, in a cage, wielding a chair in one hand, a bullwhip in the other. Where’s the beast? Crack. So it followed—I must be the Wolf-Boy. Lelia, the Tattooed