yourself.
Neither Dusty nor Martie had read it, because they preferred to read fiction. Indeed, for Dusty, fiction was as much of a principle as it was a preference. In an age when distortions, deceptions, and outright lies were the primary currencies in much of society, he had often found more truth in one work of fiction than in slop pails full of learned analyses.
But this, of course, was a book by Dr. Ahriman, and was no doubt written with the same deep commitment that he brought to his private practice.
Looking at the jacket photo, Dusty said, “Wonder why he didn’t mention mailing it.”
“Wasn’t mailed,” Martie said, pointing to the lack of postage on the envelope. “Hand delivered — and not from Dr. Ahriman.”
The label bore Dr. Roy Closterman’s name and return address.
Tucked inside the book was a succinct note from the internist:
“Curious,” Martie said.
“Yeah. He doesn’t like Dr. Ahriman.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Closterman.”
“Of course he likes him,” she protested.
“No. I sensed it. His expression, his tone of voice.”
“But what’s not to like? Dr. Ahriman’s a great psychiatrist. He’s so committed to his patients.”
“I know, yeah, and look how much better you are just after one session. He was
Bounding around the kitchen again, ears flopping, paws slapping the tile, duck in mouth, Valet raised more quacks than a feathered flock.
“Valet, settle,” Martie commanded. Then: “Maybe Dr. Closterman…maybe it’s professional jealousy.”
Opening the book, leafing through it from the front, Dusty said, “Jealousy? But Closterman’s not a psychiatrist. He and Dr. Ahriman are in different fields.”
Ever obedient, Valet stopped bounding around the kitchen, but he continued to savage the Booda until Dusty began to feel as though they had been zapped into a cartoon starring both famous ducks — Daffy and Donald.
Dusty was mildly irritated with Closterman for laying this unwanted gift on them. Considering the discreet and yet unmistakable dislike that the internist had shown for Dr. Ahriman, his intentions here were not likely to be either kind or charitable. The act seemed annoyingly petty.
Seven pages from the front of the psychiatrist’s book, Dusty came across a brief epigraph prior to the first page of Chapter 1. It was a haiku.
— Okyo, 1890
“What’s wrong?” Martie asked.
Something like theremin music, out of a long-ago movie starring Boris Karloff, wailed and warbled through his mind.
“Dusty?”
“Odd little coincidence,” he said, showing the haiku to her.
Reading the three lines, Martie cocked her head as if she, too, could hear music to which the poem had been set.
“Strange,” she agreed.
Again, the dog made the duck talk.
Martie’s pace slowed as she ascended the stairs.
Dusty knew she dreaded hearing Susan’s voice on the answering machine. He had offered to listen alone and report back to her; but to her that would be moral cowardice.
In the upstairs study, Martie’s large U-shaped desk provided all the work space that she needed to harry Hobbits out of Eriador and across the lands of Gondor and Rhovanion, into the evil kingdom of Mordor — assuming life ever gave her a chance to get back to the sanity of Tolkien’s otherworld. Two complete computer workstations and a shared printer occupied less than a third of the territory.
Attached to the phone was an answering machine she’d used since graduating from college. In electronic- appliance years, it was not merely old but antique. According to the indicator window, the tape held five messages.
Martie stood well back from the desk, near the door, as though the distance would insulate her somewhat from the emotional impact of Susan’s voice.
Here, too, was a sheepskin pillow for Valet, but he remained with his mistress, as though he knew she would need consolation.
Dusty pushed
The first message was the one Dusty had left when he called her the previous evening from the parking lot at New Life.
The second was a call from Susan, the one that must have come in just after Martie had fallen asleep the first time, from sheer exhaustion and a little Scotch, before she woke from a nightmare and raided the medicine cabinet for a sleep aid.
Martie had retreated two steps, into the doorway, as if driven backward by the sound of her dead friend’s voice. Her face was white, but the hands with which she covered it were whiter still.
Valet sat before her, gazing up, his ears perked, head cocked, hoping canine cuteness could counter grief.
The third message was also from Susan, received at 3:20 in the morning; it must have come in when Dusty was washing his hands in the bathroom and when Martie was “sleeping the perfect sleep of the innocent,” as the television commercials for the patent medicine guaranteed.
Susan paused on the tape, waiting for someone to pick up, and in the doorway Martie groaned. Remorsefully, bitterly, she said, “Yes,” and the meaning was clear in that one word: Yes, I was here; yes, I might have been able to help; yes, I failed you.
In the next pause, Martie lowered her hands from her face and stared with horror at the answering machine.
Dusty knew what she expected to hear next, for it was the same thing that he expected. Suicidal talk. A plea for support, for the counsel of a friend, for reassurance.
Dusty stopped the tape before the machine moved forward to the fourth message.
The house seemed to roll with a temblor, as though continental plates were colliding deep under the California coast, but this was strictly an earthquake of the mind.
Dusty looked at Martie.
Such eyes, her eyes. Shock waves had cracked even the hard grief that had made them a more intense blue than usual. Now, in her eyes was something that he’d never seen in anyone’s eyes before, a quality he couldn’t adequately name.
He heard himself say, “She must’ve been a little crazy there at the end. I mean, what sense does that make?
