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The Consultant

She walks intodrink of water in the desert of reen She’s an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare They all do Every time They have to It’s that kind of story

The lady in question stands in the corner of arette dictated by tradition with shaking hands

“You gotta help me, mister,” she says

I’m a miss, but that doesn’t matter In situations like this, you have to stick to the forht away I’ arback in Antique Pearl

“Tell me all your troubles,” I say in ht She drinks it, leaves a frosty red lip-print on the glass

And she takes a deep breath that makes her black dress shift just so She tells me a man is after her because he wants her heart He chases her through the dark, through the neon forest of rainy streets Or she has this brother, see, with a withered ar She was supposed to protect hih Or her stepht for a dozen sins she’s never thought of Or she’s waited and waited for a child but nothing doing Or she pricked her finger on a needle when she was sixteen and oh, glory, the things she’s done to keep on pricking Or she woke up and all her savings accounts were gone, the ht Maybe it’s a simple one: the mirror said she wasn’t pretty anyot in over her head, and now she has three nights to cough up a na to take her son

I’ve heard theator as what you ht up; showure that out and you’re halfway out of the dark

Call them fairy tales, if that makes you feel better If you call them fairy tales, then you don’t have to believe you’re in one

It’s all about seeing the pattern—and the pattern is always there It’s a vicious circle: the story gets told because the pattern repeats, and the pattern repeats because the story gets told A girl co down her face and says that she slept with her professor because she thought he’d love her forever She wanted to walk in his rarified world of books and gin parties and wickedly sardonic quips instead of treading water in her dreary home town She tried to speak the way his friends did and dress the way he liked, tottering on those topless high-heeled Iliac towers She made herself write the way he did himself, one and she’s got this knife, see, but not a lot of courage She’s in soon knives

And I say: “Sweetheart, you gave up your voice for hio badly No do you want to proceed?”

Because there’s a choice There’s always a choice Who do you want to be? You can break this tale, once you’ve got a sightline on it That’s why they come to me Because I can open up ot a little Derringer in ranate seeds Because I have the hat, crooked at just the right angle, that says I can save them

So who do you want to be?

Sure, no great loss to be the ingenue, sacrificing yourself for your love Put away that knife, fix your make-up, drop his class, watch hi at the faculty party—never forgetting that she’s in a story too, and you can’t tell which one by looking at her, andin her six hundred dollar shoes to convince hi foaic Maybe that’ll buy you what you’re looking for But it’s not the only solution Soo back home, where you’ll be exotic and urbane, for all your experience in that strange, foreign world

I don’t judge I just give the is to put on a black dress and become a wicked stepmother There’s power in that, if you’re after power

Then there’s the back alley deals, the workarounds, the needles and the camels You can turn around in the dark, with theover you, and you can give it to hi what you want has that effect, erous e of hearts in the shadows, and so anyway

Listen, everything is possible in here You can burn every spinning wheel in the kingdoets the chance to climb up It is possible to decline the beanstalk You can let the old witch dance at your wedding, hand out the kind of forgiveness that would wake the dead and sleeping You can just walk away, get on a horse, and go wake some other maiden fro What do you want? Do you want to escape? Or were you looking for that candy house?

Sometimes they don’t believe me They can’t see what I see They can’t even see hoe play out a story right there inn beyond ht It’s a pretty broad schtick, but it helpshere but us archetypes, sweetheart Still, when I tell theold, all that money those sleek et angry They think I’old is: faketo come when you opened your 401k and it had all turned back to acorns and leaves They throater in my face or th

ey beg me to hunt down the leprechaun that sold them that rotten house, and sure, I’ll do that Whatever you pay me for You choose your role in this I provide an honest service, and that’s all I don’t try to sway them either way; it wouldn’t be fair After all, I can see their cards, but they can’t see mine

It’s a lonely life Me and my patterns and scotch and ice The nature of the process is that they leave when it’s over, exeunt, pursued by a bear with an eo, I didn’t doplot Never stop to rest, not here, not in the woods

And me? Well, it doesn’t work that way If you could narrate yourself I’d be out of a job I need them to tell me who I am If I’uide, or teuessed my name And that’s the way I like it: clean, no et stories, and I’onist Eliot had a bead on it A bit player, a voice in the smoke A Greek chorus, that’s me Or maybe a ht I’s So they walk into my office—not always dames, sometimes a paladin in an ice creairl with the hair down to god-knohere he’ll just die, or his wife is bored and unhappy and maybe she only ever liked him in the first place when he was a beast, or a wolf, or he’s just lost, and he can hear so for him from the deeps, and I fall for the them is part of the denouement, and I know that better than anyone It’ll lass

I tell them: don’t depend on a woodsman in the third act I tell them: look for sets of three, or seven I tell them: there’s always a way to survive I tell theains that involve ery I tell them: you don’t have to lie still and wait for soht to push her into the oven She was going to hurt you I tell them: she couldn’t help it She just loved her own childrenand brave It’s what you do with that that matters I tell them: you can share that bear with your sister I tell them: no one can stay silent forever I tell them: it’s not your fault I tell them: mirrors lie I tell them: you can wear those boots, if you want them You can lift that sword It was always your sword I tell them: the apple has two sides I tell them: just because he woke you up doesn’tI tell them: his name is Rumplestiltskin

And my cases end like all stories end: with a sunset, and a kiss, and redeht fro as the rain just keeps coht of the back end of the world

So coain in no time Let me take your coat Have a drink—it’s cheap and sour but it does the job Much like myself

Now Tell me all your troubles