The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

for the road, and headed out the door. ten Val Riordan leaned against her office door, trying to catch her breath and maintain her temper.
    Nothing in her clinical experience compared to the sessions she held on the day after the Texaco exploded. She had seen twenty patients in ten hours, and every one of them had wanted to talk about sex. And not abstract sex either, not issues or attitudes about sex, just squishy, thumping sex itself. It was unnerving.
    She'd anticipated a spike in libido among her patients (it was a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants), but the books said not more than five to fifteen percent would have a reaction – about the same number that experienced a loss of libido upon taking the drugs. But today she'd hit one hundred percent. It was as if she were running a kennel for hopeless horndogs rather than a psychiatric practice.
    After the last patient she'd come out of her office to find her new receptionist, Chloe, furiously masturbating, her feet hooked into the edge of the desk, her steno chair squeaking like a tortured squirrel.
    Val had excused herself, turned on her heel, walked back into her office, and shut the door.
    Chloe, twenty-one, had maroon hair, an entire wardrobe rendered in black, and a sapphire nose ring.
    Val had begun treating the girl in her teens for bulimia,then hired her when the volume of appointments skyrocketed after the placebo went into effect. Chloe worked in exchange for therapy; Val had thought it would be a good financial move. Frankly, she'd liked her better when she just threw up a lot.
    Val was still trying to figure out exactly what to do when there was a soft knock on the door.
    "Yes?"
    "Sorry," Chloe said through the door.
    "Uh, Chloe, that is not appropriate office behavior."
    "Well, your last appointment had left. I thought that you would be working on your notes or something for a while. I'm really sorry."
    "That's it? My last appointment leaves, so let the wild rumpus begin?"
    "Am I fired?"
    Val thought for a second. There were twenty more patients to see tomorrow and twenty the day after that. If the weirdness didn't kill her, the workload would. She couldn't afford to lose Chloe now. "No, you're not fired. But please, no more of that in the office."
    "Do you have time to talk? I know my next session isn't until next week, but I really need to talk to you."
    "Wouldn't you prefer to go home and, uh, think about things?"
    "You mean finish? No, I'm finished for now. That's what I want to talk to you about. That wasn't the first time today."
    Val gulped. It was highly unprofessional to talk to a patient through a door. She steeled herself and opened it. "Come in." She returned to her desk without looking at the girl. Chloe took a seat across from her.
    "So this wasn't the first time today?" Val was the psychotherapist now, not the boss. If she'd been the boss, she would have come over the desk and strangled the little slut.
    "No, I can't seem to get enough. I, well, it started about two in the morning, and I went straight though until time to get ready for work. Then once or twice while each patient was in session."
    Val's jaw dropped. Sixteen hours of intermittent masturbation? The other patients she had seen had cited two in the morning as when their sexual adventures had started too. She said, "And how do you feel about that?"
    "I feel okay. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carnal tunnel?"
    "Chloe, if you think that you're going to file a workmen's compensation claim for this-"
    "No no no, I just want to stop."
    "Did something happen to set this off?Something at two in the morning?A dream perhaps?" Her other patients had described various sexual dreams. Winston Krauss, the pharmacist with the sexual obsession for marine mammals, confessed to dreaming of having sex with a blue whale, riding it through the depths like Ahab with a hard-on. Upon awakening, he'd abused his inflatable Flipper until it would no longer hold air.
    Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her long maroon hair hid her face. "I dreamed I was having sex with a tank truck, and it blew up."
    "A tank truck?"
    "I came."
    "Sexual dreams are completely normal, Chloe."Right, a tank truck? That's normal. "Tellme, was there fire in your dream?" Pyromaniacs derived sexual pleasure from setting and watching fires. That's how they caught them, look in the crowd for a grinning guy with a woody and gas stains on his shoes.
    "No, no fire. I woke up at the