False Memory

phone, he wondered if his hello would be answered by Dr. Closterman or by someone else saying Viola Narvilly. Enslavement was always a touch tone away.

Closterman.

Dusty apologized for lying in order to ensure a timely callback. “There’s no allergic reaction, but there is an emergency, Doctor. This book you sent over…”

“Learn to Love Yourself,” Closterman said.

“Yeah. Doctor, why did you send this to us?”

“I thought you ought to read it,” Closterman replied without any inflection that could be interpreted as either a positive or negative judgment of the book or its author.

“Doctor…” Dusty hesitated, then plunged: “Oh, hell, there’s no way to sneak up on it. I think maybe we have a problem with Dr. Ahriman. A big problem.”

Even as he made the accusation, an inner voice argued with him. The psychiatrist, great and committed, had done nothing to earn this calumny, this disrespect. Dusty felt guilty, ungrateful, treacherous, irrational. And all those feelings scared him, because considering the circumstances, he had every reason to suspect the psychiatrist. The voice within, powerfully convincing, was not his voice, but that of an invisible presence, the same that pumped the inflation bulb of the sphygmomanometer in his dream, the same around which the fury of leaves formed in Martie’s nightmare, and now this presence walked the halls of his mind, invisible but not silent, urging him to trust Dr. Ahriman, to let go of this absurd suspicion, to trust and have faith.

Into Dusty’s silence, Closterman cast a question: “Martie’s seen him already, hasn’t she?”

“This afternoon. But we think now…it goes back farther than that. Back months and months, when she was taking her friend to see him. Doctor, you’re going to think I’m crazy—”

“Not necessarily. But we shouldn’t talk about this any further on the phone. Can you come here?”

“Where’s here?”

“I live on Balboa Island.” Closterman gave him directions.

“We’ll be there soon. Can we bring a dog?”

“He can play with mine.”

When Dusty hung up the phone and turned to Martie, she said, “Maybe this isn’t the best thing to do.”

She was listening to an inner voice of her own.

“Maybe,” she said, “if we just call Dr. Ahriman and lay all this out for him…maybe he’ll be able to explain everything.”

The invisible walker of hallways in Dusty’s mind argued for the same course of action, almost word for word, as Martie suggested it.

She rose suddenly to her feet. “Oh, God, what the hell am I saying?”

Dusty’s face flushed, and he knew that if he looked in a mirror, he would see his cheeks ruddy. Shame burned in him, shame at his suspicion, at his failure to accord to Dr. Ahriman the well-earned trust and respect that the psychiatrist was due.

“Where we are here,” Dusty said shakily, “is in the middle of a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Valet had come out from under the table. He stood with his tail held low, his shoulders slumped, his head half bowed, in tune with their mood.

“Why are we taking the dog with us?” Martie asked.

“Because I don’t think we’ll be coming back here for a while. I don’t think we can risk it. Come on,” he said, crossing the kitchen toward the hallway. “Let’s throw some stuff in suitcases, clothes for a few days. And let’s do it fast.”

Minutes later, before closing his suitcase, Dusty took the compact, customized.45 Colt out of the nightstand drawer. He hesitated, decided not to put the weapon beyond easy reach, closed the suitcase without adding to its contents, and pulled from the closet a leather jacket with deep pockets.

He wondered if the gun could really provide protection.

If Mark Ahriman walked into the bedroom this very minute, the treacherous voice inside Dusty might delay him long enough for the psychiatrist to smile and say Viola Narvilly before the trigger could be squeezed.

Then would I suck on the pistol as if it were a Popsicle, and blow my brains out as obediently as Susan slashed her wrists?

Out of the bedroom, down the narrow stairs, with the retriever in the lead, with Martie lugging one suitcase, with Dusty carrying another, pausing to snare the books in the kitchen, and then to the Saturn in the driveway, they moved with a quickening sense that they must outrace the spreading shadow of a descending doom.

58

A low, arched bridge connected Balboa Island, in Newport Harbor, to the mainland. Marine Avenue, lined with restaurants and shops, was nearly deserted. Eucalyptus leaves and blades torn from palm fronds spiraled in man- size whirlwinds along the street, as though Martie’s dream of the mahogany woods were being re-created here.

Dr. Closterman didn’t live on one of the interior streets, but along the waterfront. They parked near the end of Marine Avenue and, with Valet, walked out to the paved promenade that surrounded the island and that was separated from the harbor by a low seawall.

Before they found Closterman’s house, one hour to the minute after her previous seizure, Martie was hit by a wave of autophobia. This was another endurable assault, as lowkey as the previous three, but she couldn’t walk under the influence of it, couldn’t even stand.

They sat on the seawall, waiting for the attack to pass.

Valet was patient, neither cringing nor venturing forth to sniff out a potential friend when a man walked past with a dalmatian.

The tide was coming in. Wind chopped the usually calm harbor, slapping wavelets against the concrete seawall, and the reflected lights of the harborside houses wriggled across the rippled water.

Sailing yachts and motor vessels, moored at the private docks, wallowed in their berths, groaning and creaking. Halyards and metal fittings clinked against steel masts.

When Martie’s seizure passed quickly, she said, “I saw a dead priest with a railroad spike in his forehead. Briefly, thank God, not like earlier today when I couldn’t clear my head of crap like that. But where does this stuff come from?”

“Someone put it there.” Against the counsel of the insistent inner voice, Dusty said, “Ahriman put it there.”

“But how?”

With her unanswered question blown out across the harbor, they set out again in search of Dr. Closterman.

None of the houses on the island was higher than three stories, and charming bungalows huddled next to huge showplaces. Closterman lived in a cozy-looking two-story with gables, decorative shutters, and window boxes filled with English primrose.

When he answered the door, the barefoot physician was wearing tan cotton pants, with his belly slung over the waistband, and a T-shirt advertising Hobie surfboards.

At his side was a black Labrador with big, inquisitive eyes.

“Charlotte,” Dr. Closterman said by way of introduction.

Valet was usually shy around other dogs, but let off his leash, he immediately went nose-to-nose with Charlotte, tail wagging. They circled each other, sniffing, whereafter the Labrador raced across the foyer and up the stairs, and Valet bounded wildly after her.

“It’s all right,” Roy Closterman said. “They can’t knock over anything that hasn’t been knocked over before.”

The physician offered to take their coats, but they held on to them because Dusty was carrying the Colt in