Mind Games

Chapter Nine: Light a Match

Kanas's office had an elegance to it that he had missed, and now held a newfound appreciation for since his time working at the university. Where the office at the university housed cheap industrial furniture, his office here held expensive antique furniture, it showed character. And there was silence here, he wasn't having to strain his attention over the noise of rowdy students beyond thin office doors.

He had missed silence like this.

In the last two weeks that he had been signed up at the school, his own clients had become a little redundant, fading almost effortlessly into the background of his life while he dealt with his new endeavour. With someone else's crisis, and had rediscovered his own reasons for becoming a psychologist in the likes of a nineteen-year-old.

Constance had been right. His life had become startlingly mundane since leaving New York. To the point where he would have thought about leaving his profession for something like becoming a chef, heading up a restaurant of delicate foods and flavours if Ezra hadn't called him, if he hadn't met Lucca.

And now Lucca was due to arrive in ten minutes.

Since his venture at the university had begun, Monday through Wednesday his office didn't see any light, or experience the fresh air. Now that Lucca had requested a Tuesday appointment, he could break that cycle. Come here straight from the school, open up the windows to let in the fresh air and a little light.

It wasn't a cosy office, but it had an intimate feel. Separated from the existence of outside life by the reverse blinds on the floor-to-ceiling windows, which meant that if he wanted to see sunlight or moonlight, he had to look all the way up to see into the street. It was an office that challenged everyone who walked through the doors, decorated outside the bland utilitarianism of most psychiatrist's offices. Everything from the thirteen-foot of the red-and-mushroom coloured linens that draped over the windows, to the dark varnished wood of the floor and the tone-one-tone grey wallpaper made a statement. Especially the heritage red wall that faded into the background after sunset, shadowed by the overhang of the library circling the room.

It was almost gothic in it's design. A twisty noir. Kanas was finding himself a little giddy with anticipation as to how Lucca was going to react.

There was a polite knock at the door a minute before seven-thirty and Kanas pulled it open to find Lucca waiting patiently, expectantly on the other side.

Kanas smiled. "Right on time," he says.

Lucca nodded, a smile of her own playing at the corner of her lips. "I told you, doctor, tardiness isn't something that I adhere to," she says.

He stepped to the side, welcomed her in.

She walked past him with her hands clasped politely behind her back, the way he often saw her do. She walked further into his office, stepped from the foyer into the grand room, taking in every knowing and unknowing detail with a passive, neutral expression. Her nose tilted up briefly, as though she was scenting the air, but her expression didn't change to one of distaste, so he considered that as a point in his favour.

"This is much more like what I expected of you," she says conversationally, sounding pleased. She stopped in front of the teal-coloured tufted lounge to admire the Japanese drawings framed on the red wall behind. "Sophisticated. Challenging. Classical order and strange beauty. You have an eye for the unique, doctor."

She sounded almost in awe, and Kanas smiled, stayed standing next to the seat he reserved for himself during his therapy sessions, watching politely, in an almost transfixed state himself as she walked in front of his desk. She stopped, looked down at a sketch he'd been working on.