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The psychiatrist wore blue, the color of Merguson's mood.

"Mr.... uh?" the psychiatrist asked.

"Merguson. Floyd Merguson."

"Sure, Mr...."

"Merguson."

"Right. Come into the office."

It was a sleek office full of sleek black chairs the texture of a lizard's underbelly. The walls were decorated with paintings of explosive color; a metal-drip sculpture resided on the large walnut desk. And there was the couch, of course, just like in the movies. It was a chocolate-brown with throw-pillows at each end. It looked as if you could drift down into it and disappear in its softness.

They sat in chairs, however. The psychiatrist on his side of the desk, Merguson on the client's side. The psychiatrist was a youngish man with a fine touch of premature white at the temples. He looked every inch the intelligent professional. "Now" the psychiatrist said, "what exactly is your problem?"

Merguson fiddled his fingers, licked his lips, and looked away.

"Come on, now. You came here for help, so let's get started."

"Well," Merguson said cautiously. "No one takes me seriously."

"Tell me about it."

"No one listens to me. I can't take it anymore. Not another moment. I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't get help. Sometimes I just want to yell out, Listen to me! "

Merguson leaned forward and said confidentially, "Actually, I think it's a disease. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I believe it is, and I believe I'm approaching the terminal stage of the illness. I got this theory that there are people others don't notice, that they're almost invisible. There's just something genetically wrong with them that causes them to go unnoticed. Like a little clock that ticks inside them, and the closer it gets to the hour hand the more unnoticed these people become.

"I've always had the problem of being shy and introverted-and that's the first sign of the disease. You either shake it early or you don't. If you don't, it just grows like cancer and consumes you. With me the problem gets worse every year, and lately by the moment.

"My wife, she used to tell me it's all in my head, but lately she doesn't bother. But let me start at the first, when I finally decided I was ill, that the illness was getting worse and that it wasn't just in my head, not some sort of complex.

"Just last week I went to the butcher, the butcher I been going to for ten years. We were never chummy, no one has ever been chummy to me but my wife, and she married me for my money. I was at least visible then; I mean you had to go to at least some effort to ignore me, but my God, it's gotten worse...

"I'm off the track. I went to the butcher, asked him for some choice cuts of meat. Another man comes in while I'm talking to him and asks for a pound of hamburger. Talks right over me, mind you. What happens? You guessed it. The butcher starts shooting the breeze with the guy, wraps up a pound of hamburger and hands it over to him!

"I ask him about my order and he says, 'Oh, I forgot.'"

Merguson lit a cigarette and held it between unsteady fingers after a long deep puff. "I tell you, he waited on three other people before he finally got to me, and then he got my order wrong, and I must have told him three times, at least.

"It's more than I can stand, Doc. Day after day people not noticing me, and it's getting worse all the time. Yesterday I went to a movie and I asked for a ticket and it happened. I mean I went out completely, went transparent, invisible. I mean completely. This was the first time. The guy just sits there behind the glass, like he's looking right through me. I asked him for a ticket again. Nothing. I was angry, I'll tell you. I just walked right on toward the door. Things had been getting me down bad enough without not being about to take off and go to a movie and relax. I thought I'd show him. Just walk right in. Then they'd sell me a ticket.

"No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to know I was there. I didn't bother with the concession stand. No one would have waited on me anyway.

"Well, that was the first time of the complete fadeouts. And I remember when I was leaving the movie, I got this funny idea. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I swear to you, Doc, on my mother's grave, there wasn't an image in the mirror. I gripped the sink to keep upright, and when I looked up again I was fading in, slowly. Well, I didn't stick around to see my face come into view. I left there and went straight home.

"That afternoon was the corker. My wife, Connie, I know she's been seeing another man. Why not? She can't see me. And when she can I don't have the presence of a one-watt bulb. I came home from the movie and she's all dressed up and talking on the phone.

"I say, 'Who you talking to?'"

Merguson crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the psychiatrist's desk. "Doesn't say doodly squat, Doc. Not a word. I'm mad as hell. I go upstairs and listen on the extension. It's a man, and they're planning a date.

"I broke in over the line and started yelling at them. Guess what? The guy says, 'Do you hear a buzzing or something or other?' 'No,' she says. And they go right on with their plans.

"I was in a homicidal rage. I went downstairs and snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it across the room. I wrecked furniture and busted up some lamps and expensive pottery. Just made a general wreck out of the place.

"She screamed then, Doc. I tell you she screamed good. But then she says the thing that makes me come here. 'Oh God,' she says. 'Ghost! Ghost in this house!'

"That floored me, and I knew I was invisible again. I went upstairs and looked in the bathroom mirror. Sure enough. Nothing there. So I waited until I faded back and I called your secretary. It took me five tries before she finally wrote my name down, gave me an appointment. It was worse than when I tried to get the meat from the butcher. So I hurried right over. I had to get this out. I swear I'm not going crazy, it's a disease, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

"So what can I do, Doc? How can I handle this? I know it's not in my head, and I've got to have some advice. Please, Doc. Say something. Tell me what to do. I've never been this desperate in my entire life. I might fade out again and not come back."

The psychiatrist took his hand from his chin where it had been resting.

"Wha... ? Sorry. I must have dozed. What was it again, Mr.... uh?"

Merguson dove across the desk, clawing for the psychiatrist's throat.

Later when the law came and found the psychiatrist strangled and slumped across his desk, his secretary said, "Funny, I don't remember anyone coming in or leaving. Couldn't have come in while I was here. He had an appointment with a Mr.... uh." She looked at the appointment book. "A Mr. Merguson. But he never showed."