The Disappearist

Chapter Five: "A Therapist"

Wil spent nearly the next six months alone. Bree was sent to the United States Marshal Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia; Wil had a newly-thriving counseling office in downtown Dallas, specializing in the treatment of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The separation was difficult for both of them. Each of them counted down the 21 & ½ week training program by the day, as though it was a prison sentence and they were both counting down to their simultaneous release.

"Time goes so slow when you're not with the one you love," Wil told Bree every day on the phone. And she always agreed. Granted, she was given breaks to go home and he was occasionally allowed to come see her, but those experiences equated to little more than prison conjugal visits with the option of grabbing a nice dinner at a classy restaurant.

But the time alone in Dallas was sometimes torturous. The sound of their quiet upper-middle class house in a newly-built development in McKinney was uncomfortable. It didn't feel like home without Bree there; it simply felt like staying in a big empty house.

For a while, Wil tried to compensate for this loneliness by buying every new tech gadget on the market. Thousands of dollars were spent on electronic accessories which Wil felt like he didn't necessarily need, but certainly wanted. Something about shopping was fulfilling. And Wil refused to shop online. He wanted to physically go to the store and purchase these items, having descriptive technical conversations with salesmen about the benefits and limitations of a product he fully intended upon buying, regardless of how the salesman talked it up.

Wil loved the process of shopping for these items. He loved the act of going out to the store, browsing the potential items, listening to the salespeople, and purchasing the tangible item that day and taking it home. He was fully aware that most (if not all) of the items he bought could have been purchased cheaper online from wholesale websites. However, the mere acts of clicking, scrolling, buying online, then waiting for delivery was entirely unfulfilling because Wil didn't particularly need to make any effort to do this — he may as well have been clicking through stock quotes or browsing the local news.

It was the experience of going out and buying the items which fulfilled him.

The other thing Wil found extremely fulfilling was his work. Working with his clients was intrinsically satisfying for him because he felt as though he benefitted personally from "doing good" in the world. He felt like, if someone came into his office and spoke to him about their lives, and he responded by providing feedback and instituting several therapeutic strategies, he could improve someone's life; maybe even save their life.

Wil's office was one of many in a successful counseling practice which occupied the entire floor of a corporate-like building in downtown Dallas (which rented suites to businesses). The practice (which employed him and included seventeen other therapists and psychiatrists who specialized in varying areas of treatment) was prominently named Leonard, Laurie, & Associates (after the two founding psychiatrists). LLA was one of the most successful counseling practices in Dallas because it addressed an array of needs and provided mental health assistance to an exclusive upper-class "business" clientele as well as donating pro-bono therapy to people such as homeless veterans, sex offenders, schizophrenics, and generally underprivileged clients in need of services.

Wil's personal office at LLA was humble. It was one of the smaller offices (since he was one of the younger Associates, but he made it work. The walls were a soft shade of taupe, not because he liked the color, but because he remembered a line from Ocean's Eleven when Brad Pitt's character said, "They say taupe is very soothing." In all honesty, Wil wasn't sure this was a true statement, but, like many of the aspects of his life, he enjoyed employing movie references whenever possible. So when the firm's partners asked what color he wanted his office walls to be painted, he promptly said, "Taupe; they say it's very soothing."

His walls were populated with numerous varieties of visual stimuli. His office was located in one of the central offices, so it had no windows. Wil was okay with this because it kept his clients (and himself) from mentally wandering off-task and staring at the downtown Dallas landscape. It also enabled the room to be pitch-black when the lights were off (a feature which Wil sometimes took advantage of if he ever felt like he needed a nap between clients to rest his brain).

On the west wall, behind his cocobolo desk, hung his academic credentials — his bachelor's degrees from Merriam University in St. Louis as well as his master's degree and Ph.D. diplomas from the University of North Texas.

The south wall, though painted taupe like the rest of the walls, was also painted with a large artistically-written script quote, meant to inspire his clients: "Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." This quote, from The Shawshank Redemption, was one of Wil's favorite inspiring quotes. He and Bree painted it there (although Bree did most of the painting, being much more artistic than Wil) the week after Wil was hired by LLA.

On the east wall hung a large textured print of the painting "San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk" by Claude Monet. He chose this particular painting to dominate his wall space, not because of its vibrant color or abstract impressionism, but rather, because it was the painting at the center of the 1999 movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, which starred Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, and Wil's favorite comedian, Dennis Leary.

Finally, the north wall was where the door was, but above the door, a rustic wooden placard was placed for anyone to see as they exited. Wil remembered seeing something similar in the classroom of his high school English teacher, who hung a placard above the outside of his classroom door which read: "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here," which was, according to Dante Alighieri, on the gates of Hell in Inferno. And while Wil knew his teacher meant it as a joke, he liked the idea. So the last thing clients saw as they exited his office was this rustic wooden placard above Wil's door which read, "Be Just and Fear Not," a line from Shakespeare's Henry VIII, but was also chiseled into the side of the Missouri State Capitol Building back in Wil's home state.