False Memory

In the kitchen, Susan sang, “‘Feelin’ good from my head to my shoes.’”

Maybe the shoes part. Not the head.

16

Dusty never failed to be surprised by Skeet’s apartment. The three small rooms and bath were almost obsessively well ordered and scrupulously clean. Skeet was such a shambling wreck, physically and psychologically, that Dusty always expected to find this place in chaos.

While his master packed two bags with clothes and toiletries, Valet toured the rooms, sniffing the floors and furniture, enjoying the pungent aromas of waxes and polishes and cleaning fluids that were different from the brands used in the Rhodeses’ home.

Finished with the packing, Dusty checked the contents of the refrigerator, which appeared to have been stocked by a terminal anorexic. The only quart of milk was already three days past the freshness date stamped on the carton, and he poured it down the drain. He fed a half loaf of white bread to the garbage disposal, and followed it with the hideously mottled contents of an open package of bologna that looked as if it would soon grow hair and growl. Beer, soft drinks, and condiments accounted for everything else in the fridge; and all of it would still be fresh when Skeet came home.

On the counter next to the kitchen phone, Dusty found the only disorder in the apartment: a messy scattering of loose pages from a notepad. As he gathered them, he saw that the same name had been written on each piece of paper, sometimes only once, but more often three or four times. On fourteen sheets of paper, one — and only one — name appeared thirty-nine times: Dr. Yen Lo. None of the fourteen pages featured a phone number or any additional message.

The handwriting was recognizably Skeet’s. On a few pages, the script was fluid and neat. On others, it appeared as if Skeet’s hand had been a little unsteady; furthermore, he had borne down hard with the pen, impressing the seven letters deep into the paper. Curiously, on fully half the pages, Dr. Yen Lo was inscribed with such apparent emotion — and perhaps struggle — that some letters were virtually slashed onto the paper, gouging it.

A cheap ballpoint pen also lay on the counter. The transparent plastic casing had snapped in two. The flexible ink cartridge, which had popped out of the broken pen, was bent in the middle.

Frowning, Dusty swept the counter with his hand, gathering the pieces of the pen into a small pile.

He spent only a minute sorting the fourteen sheets from the notepad, putting the neatest sample of writing on top, the messiest on the bottom, ordering the other twelve in the most obvious fashion. There was an unmistakable progression in the deterioration of the handwriting. On the bottom page, the name appeared only once and was incomplete—Dr. Ye—probably because the pen had broken at the start of the n.

The obvious deduction was that Skeet had become increasingly angry or distressed until finally he exerted such ferocious pressure on the pen that it snapped.

Distress, not anger.

Skeet didn’t have a problem with anger. Quite the opposite.

He was gentle by nature, and his temperament had been further cooked to the consistency of sweet pudding by the pharmacopoeia of behavior-modification drugs to which a fearsome series of clinical psychologists with aggressive-treatment philosophies had subjected him, with the enthusiastic encouragement of Skeet’s dear old dad, Dr. Holden Caulfield, alias Sam Farner. The kid’s sense of self was so faded by years of relentless chemical bleaching that it could not hold red anger in its fibers; the meanest offense, which would enrage the average man, drew from Skeet nothing more than a shrug and a fragile smile of resignation. The bitterness he felt toward his father, which was the closest to anger that he would ever come, had sustained him through his search for the truth of the professor’s origins, but it hadn’t been potent enough or enduring enough to give him the strength to confront the phony bastard with his discoveries.

Dusty carefully folded the fourteen pages from the notepad, slipped them into a pocket of his jeans, and scooped the fragments of the pen off the counter. The ballpoint was inexpensive but not poorly made. The one- piece transparent plastic casing was rigid and strong. The pressure required to snap it like a dry twig would have been tremendous.

Skeet was incapable of the necessary rage, and it was difficult to imagine what could have caused him such extreme distress that he would have pressed down on the ballpoint with the requisite ferocity.

After a hesitation, Dusty threw the broken pen in the trash.

Valet stuck his snout in the waste can, sniffing to determine if the discarded item might be edible.

Dusty opened a drawer and withdrew a telephone directory, the Yellow Pages. He looked under PHYSICIANS for Dr. Yen Lo, but no such entry existed.

He tried PSYCHIATRISTS. Then PSYCHOLOGISTS. Then finally THERAPISTS. No luck.

17

While Susan put the pinochle deck and score pad away, Martie rinsed the lunch plates and the takeout cartons, trying not to look at the mezzaluna on the nearby cutting board.

Susan brought her fork into the kitchen. “You forgot this.”

Because Martie was already drying her hands, Susan washed the fork and put it away.

While Susan drank a second beer, Martie sat with her in the living room. Susan’s idea of background music was Glenn Gould on piano, playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

As a young girl, Susan had dreamed of being a musician with a major symphony orchestra. She was a fine violinist; not world-class, not so great that she could be the featured performer on a concert tour, but fine enough to ensure that her more modest dream could have become a reality. Somehow, she had settled for real-estate sales instead.

Even until late in her final year of high school, Martie had wanted to be a veterinarian. Now she designed video games.

Life offers infinite possible roads. Sometimes your head chooses the route, sometimes your heart. And sometimes, for better or worse, neither head nor heart can resist the stubborn pull of fate.

From time to time, Gould’s exquisite sprays of silvery notes reminded Martie that although the wind had diminished, cold rain was still falling outside, beyond the heavily draped windows. The apartment was so cloistered and cozy that she was tempted to succumb to the dangerously comforting notion that no world existed beyond these protective walls.

She and Susan talked about the old days, old friends. They devoted not a word to the future.

Susan wasn’t a serious drinker. Two beers were, to her, a binge. Usually, she got neither giddy nor mean with drink, but pleasantly sentimental. This time, she became steadily quieter and solemn.

Soon, Martie was doing most of the talking. To her own ear, she sounded increasingly inane, so at last she stopped babbling.

Their friendship was deep enough to make them comfortable with silence. This silence, however, had a weird and edgy quality, perhaps because Martie was surreptitiously watching her friend for signs of the trancelike condition that had previously overtaken her.

She couldn’t bear to listen to the Goldberg Variations yet again, because suddenly the music’s piercing beauty was depressing. Strangely, for her, it had come to signify loss, loneliness, and quiet desperation. The apartment quickly became stifling rather than cozy, claustrophobic rather than comforting.

When Susan used the remote control to replay the same CD, Martie consulted her watch and recited a series of nonexistent errands to which she must attend before five o’clock.

In the kitchen, after Martie slipped into her raincoat, she and Susan embraced, as they always did on parting. This time the hug was more fierce than usual, as though both of them were trying to convey a great many