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“I don’t see things in black and white.” Lisa was getting upset now. Her face frowned -though no muscles were initiated. Her sad face was effortless. Her eyebrows folded over her giant wet globes, melting –oozing over her ocular bones and down the sides of her temporalis. Her lips twitched bombastically. She sniffled and swayed her body.

“Lisa,” the man bent over the side of his cush chair to draw up a black canvass portfolio containing Bristol Board inks, two magazines and a copy of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes and bedtime stories. “Now what do you see here?”

Giovani was a portly man. He didn’t care much for suspenders but today was a suspender day. When Giovani explains to himself why it is a “suspender day” he could hardly find a rational premise to base an argument for or against suspenders. Nor could he fathom that he had declared days in which these suspenders would occur. The issue was moot.

For all intensive purposes it should be known that a suspender day was in fact a day in which Giovanni would wear suspenders.

Suspender Day thus would begin when Giovanni would extinguish his wardrobe of the rather shamefully unrecognized “Belt Day” pants and leaving two identical pairs of blue boot cut polyester – cotton blend dress pants with gold inseam stitching and curly “N”s sewn into the rear pockets. He didn’t mind the “N”s so much.

He rarely stood up or moved around the room. Giovanni sat in his cush chair and shuffled through the Bristol Board inks, asking questions.

“What do you see in this one Charles? What do you see in this one Johnny? Sue? Emily?“
“Lisa? What do you see in this one?”

Her bored eyed drifted up from the hair fallen on her shoulders, split ends snaking back at her. “Same.”

“Lisa, you can’t keep seeing the same thing…”

“What? That is all it IS.”

“But you’ve got to see something else?”

“Maybe I don’t want to let you in.”

“That’s it”

“If I tell you something fruity, you’re going to start with diagnosis. If I tell you what IT IS than what does that make you look like, flashing me with your silly Bristols and inks.” She could see well into the bag now and was sneaking glances at the magazine covers to judge if they were anything worth really reading.

“Okay, Lisa. Here, what do you make of this?” He held up the last card.

“A Car”

Giovanni chortled and half smiled, “Yes, it is a picture of a car.” He lay the Bristol face down on the others. It was a cartoon clip art picture of a purple car and like a child’s flash card, beneath in light blue bubble font was printed “C - Car”

“Even my little brother could do that one.”

He set the boards down and trying to seem interested pointed an index up his snout and stationary glasses even firmer onto his rotund head. “Oh? How old is your bother?”

“Three.”

“Do you love him?”

“Do you want to show me something else, please, at least they were entertaining.”

“Alright, I wanted you to take a look at some more pictures.” He reached into the canvass bag and withdrew the Mother Goose and such. “What do you see here?”

“A goose.”

“And here?”

“A talking frog.”

“And here?”

“A castle, look where is this getting us?”

“You see, Lisa, black and white.”

“What?”

“You are conditioned to see things. You do not see things with your own eyes.”

“But how? I?" She remembered seeing the magazines. "Show me the magazines then. I’ll bet I can tell you all kinds of mad shit about what is there.”

“I am sure you could, ‘mad shit and all’, but really those are just reading material for the bus and break, now I can see that you are afraid and our session time is over. Would you like to reschedule, I have tomorrow afternoon open… “

“Afraid?!? I’m fucking pissed! Why won’t you just tell me why I see things in Black and White? What is that supposed to mean?”

“How about just recommend you for 12 hours of anger management, our director does well with the staff who are always here to help you. Who is your probation officer?”

“Fuck you and your fucking fucked up fairy tales!” Her voice rose above the small pacifier of music that thinned the gurgles from the Purina bottled water fountain.
Her voice wailed through the paper thin walls – audibly. Lisa stormed -threw open the door and left the office.

The secretary came into the room with her file.

Giovannis forehead was cradled in his right hand and he sat stroking his temples. “Recommend 12 hours of anger management.”

The secretary made a note and then began to leave. “Charles Peterson is in the lobby,” she whispered back through the ajar door.