by Larry Low
Some devotees have been observed gloating with an unwarranted aura of smugness. George Varney's puzzles are heaven-sent or so they would have you believe as surely as Sunday follows Saturday. Others admit that Varney's puzzles are dastardly devious and difficult.
On this particular morning, Solomon Rapport, fixated on a blind-spot, experienced no end of difficulty with eighty-one down. "It only I wasn't so analytically retentive," he was heard to mutter. "I'd find these puzzles do able."
Rapport's particular hang-up clue, mean and cowardly, hadn't been all that abstruse. The good doctor was in the throes of inking-in dastardly, when, Gladys his girl Friday, poked her head in. Getting the nod, she ushered in, his nine-o'clock.
Realizing his quiet time had run out, the good doctor reluctantly screwed the cap on his cherished Cartier ballpoint, a gift from Agnes, a depressed soul, once almost lost to the world, but now no long quite so malignantly maladjusted.
"May I be so bold as to ask how my puzzle went today, Doctor?"
"A little more challenging than usual, Mr. Varney, I am pleased to say."
"I trust that you were up to the challenge as usual."
"Just barely," Doctor Rapport admitted caressing the silky black enamel finish of his beloved ballpoint before placing his treasured instrument in its satin-shrouded box to await Thursday's poser. Folding his copy of the still unread Times, he placed it just so in the bottom drawer of his mahogany desk. He made it a practice to confined himself to the puzzle page until the day's work was done. He would peek at it and fill in another item if he was lucky. Although, he was dying to learn the latest, he needed to keep his mind free of untoward influences. Feeling that he owed one hundred per cent of his focus to his patients, he made it a practice to carry home the bad news contained in the Times.
George Varney was a special case, he reflected as he walked. Although George was blessed with superior intellect, he was also cursed with the task of carrying a burdensome load of emotional baggage. George experienced considerable difficulty in achieving even minimal satisfaction from ordinary social intercourse. In the initial stages of analysis, Dr. Rapport had noted several Freudian slips that indicated suppressed desire for goals that were undoubtedly too evil to be allowed to see the light of day. Be that as it may, George had a tendency to rationalize the probablility that he could get away with whatever evil intent he set his mind to. Dr. Rapport had experienced considerable difficulty attempting to separate traumas that George had endured during his formative years and those that were mere instances of word play. Regardless of consequencce, George Varney was bent on getting his way. Varney's psyche was a malicious melange of the cynical and the malevolent.
Dr. Rapport was of a mind that George would be caught unawares. They always are, he reminded himself. Smugness foreshadows failure. However, the good doctor was dead sure that his therapeutic techniques would work wonders rendering further fretting redundant. Initially the doctor had been suspicious that his techniques seemed to have worked all too well. Turning Varney's psyche around seemed to have been almost too easy. The doctor put it down to finesse gained over many years of practice. Even then, it took quite some time before he was able to lay his fears to rest.
Friday was to be their last session. In spite of the trauma that Varney had inculcated, he was going to miss the challenge. If it was the last thing he ever did, he would never again allow a patient to get under his skin so. No wonder psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate of any profession, he reflected.