"Laura Resnick - Ever Since Eden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

"Like I was right to leave Texas."
Dr. Seltzer returns to her favorite question. What do snakes mean to
me?
"Ultimate evil," I say, thinking this sounds good.
"Go on," she says.
Those two words, I estimate, cost me sixty cents apiece.
I think back to the days before my mother got divorced and became a
Unitarian. I remember the incense-scented church and the chubby, white-haired
priest who seemed to live with his arms spread at a forty-five degree angle.
He didn't speak, he _intoned_. And the snake, he told us, was the most cunning
of all God's creatures.
"Subtle, sneaky, insidious," I say. "It was the snake who seduced Eve."
"Interesting. You said you weren't religious."
"I'm speaking metaphorically. Anyhow, the writers of Genesis obviously
shared my feelings in this particular area, and that was thousands of years
ago." This makes me feel validated.
I am about to develop my theme. Then Dr. Seltzer says our time is up.
****
The dream always begins the same way. I am in the reptile house at the zoo.
How did I get here? I am incredulous...
At the moment that I realize there are no other visitors, the Egyptian
Cobra crawls forward and speaks to me. It sounds like Anthony Hopkins in
_Silence of the Lambs_.
"Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden?"
"Where are the oil filters?" I ask.
"Eat from the tree and you will find them."
"Can't you just tell me where they are?"
"Here, let me show you." The cobra slides forward.
I realize there is no glass between us. "Wait! No!"
The cobra strikes.
****
"And I wake up screaming."
"Are you sure you've never been bitten by a snake?" Dr. Seltzer asks.
"Never. Even if I blocked it out, I'm sure my mother would know." My
mother has always been baffled by a phobia which, she says, I've had since I
was a toddler.
"Perhaps you should start coming twice a week," Dr. Seltzer suggests.
****
One year and nearly ten thousand dollars later I stop seeing Dr. Seltzer.
Analysis is getting me nowhere, though my sessions have contributed amply to
the tuition fees of Dr. Seltzer's oldest son, so at least someone has
benefitted.
I continue to live a life governed by this single, obsessive fear. In
other ways I am quite normal. Really. I hold down a job, occasionally date,
pay my bills, eat Healthy Choice frozen dinners followed by a pint of Ben and
Jerry's Chubby Hubby, play racquetball, buy all my underwear in the January
sales, read Sara Paretsky, and vacation at the beach.
But the dream always begins the same way.
****
I am in the reptile house at the zoo. I am awake this time. I know I am