I’ve abandoned my Corona and I’m just working on the computer. But the book isn’t mine. I can write without thinking. Read, watch TV, close my eyes, it doesn’t matter. My fingers just type away on their own.”
“If your work isn’t yours, whose would it be?”
“That’s a hell of a good question. The answer is, I have no idea.”
“But you’re not involved in the writing?”
“Well, I am, of course, sort of. In the sense that I can see their world, hear their voices. Shit! You moron. Moron!”
“I’m a moron?”
“I’m a moron! You don’t tell a shrink you hear voices.”
“The voices don’t want you to tell me about them?”
“Aw, shit. Sheee-ut! Goddamn it, the voices don’t care.”
“So what do they say?”
“They cry. They’re suffering. Some of them came up through the yard, and when I touched them I could see them—see the hands, the faces that I touched. Does that sound plain crazy, or spectacularly crazy?”
“Sounds like I might as well get that new Lexus I’ve had my eye on.”
“Do you know what a parallel universe is?”
“Something that exists deep inside the CERN supercollider for a few billionths of a second?”
“I’m not paying you to bait me, Henry. We’re deducting three minutes of money for that little flippancy.”
“You’re afraid I’m laughing at you, but that isn’t what’s going on.”
“What is?”
“I’m trying to make sense of what you’re saying.”
“Would it disturb you to know that in a parallel universe a doctor very much like you called Frank Willerson is currently walking off toward the northwest with most of the other people in this community, and he has no soul?”
“We’re probably all better off without that soul mythology, anyway. Let’s you and me deal with who and what we know we are, which is us in this room together. Or are you here? Are you a projection from a parallel universe, Wiley? Is schizophrenia the problem, here?”
“Look, I had a close encounter with creatures from a third parallel universe a few years ago, and because that happened—well, I’m doing what I’m doing.”
“Which is?”
“I’d say I have no fucking idea, but I’m beginning to have an idea. I’m the balancing force between the positive and negative earths.”
“Ah, of course, that makes complete sense. Would you be God, then, or just Jesus?”
“I’m Napoleon, you fuck.”
“Not interested, Wylie. Every psychiatrist reaches a point in his career where he has to draw a line. No more Napoleons. I reached that point a while back.”
“Am I insane?”
“Of course you’re insane.”
“What can I do about it?”
“Come here a lot. Keep paying your bill.”
“You are a cynical man.”
“Yes I am.”
“Look, I’ll apologize to my wife for going out in the back yard naked. If that’s a compromise, here.”
“Is it a compromise?”
“When you’re bored, you turn the patient’s statements into questions. You’re doing that now.”
Henry lifted his arm, drew back his sleeve, and looked at his watch. “I’m relieved to say that we’ve come to the end of our time, Wiley. You can reschedule with Marla.”
“Can I fuck her, too?”
“If you want to continue treatment with me, no.”
“You don’t like me very much, do you?”
“Do you want me to like you?”
He left the office without making another appointment. What was the point? The good doctor didn’t believe a word he said. Hell, he didn’t believe a word he said.
Driving back in the Jeepazine, he made a decision. He would change it. He’d simply go back and alter the text. Because if he changed it, maybe he would also change events. No more ruined Winters family, no more ruined world.
He drove faster, and faster still, thinking only of his computer, of the urgent need return to his writing— which was returning to him and fast, roaring into his head like some kind of a dam-break flood blasting down the stream behind his house, a flood of words—
—and then there were lights, bright, back windshield.
Damn, he did not need another ticket, he was gonna need to take a damn compulsory driving course, which would take hours and piss him off in a mighty way.
“Hey, there, Matt, I’m sorry, I guess I was a little fast, there.”
“Wiley, you were doing a hundred and eleven.”
“Oh, that is bad.”
“Well, you know, I don’t usually stop town people. But—”
“How’s Beka?”
“Aw, shut up.”
“Uh, I could buy you a box of Partagas? Or just hand over the fifteen hundred bucks they cost? Cash, now?”
“I’ll take money and smokes. But I’m still gonna have to write this up.”
“Aw, fuck, Matt. Damnit, fuck.”
“Why were you going so fast? I mean, damn.”
“What can I tell you? I’m crazy.”
Matt wrote the ticket and handed it in for Wiley to sign. “This is gonna four-point you, but this is town, you’re in town, and we just—a hundred and eleven is not good, Wiley, I’m sorry.”
Four points added to the eight he already had would mean not only compulsory driver’s ed, but also a court appearance.
“I’m gonna call George Piccolo and tell him you harassed me.”
“You do that and I’ll beat your ass, boy.”
When they were kids, Matt had always won. He was heavier, he was faster, but Wiley was capable of getting more pissed off, as he did now. “Gimme the goddamn ticket, and for the love of God don’t tell Brooke or I’ll get my ass whupped, serious.”
“Well, you might like that.”
“Tell you what, I’m gonna drive home at thirty miles an hour and then I’m goin’ back to the cave for a smoke. I’ll call you on your cell to share my enjoyment with you.”
“Smoke my cigars, you’re gonna eat the butts. Remember that, because I get off duty in an hour and I will check.”
Hiding the ticket carefully, he drove on. He’d find a way to hide the fat check to the county in Quicken. Somehow or other.
Once back in his office, he pulled out the bottle of Woodford Reserve he kept in his bottom-drawer liquor stash and sipped at it.
What seemed like the next moment, voices caused him to come awake. Had he been sleeping? What had just happened? For a disoriented moment, he had the horrifying sense that he’d crossed into the parallel universe. But then the voices resolved into familiar ones. Brooke was coming in from the garage with the kids. She’d brought them home from school.
He looked at his watch in stunned amazement. It was four-thirty and the sun was on its way down. He’d been sitting here all day. Writing? He had no idea.
He listened to Brooke, to Kelsey’s high voice full of excitement about a snake in show and tell, to Nick’s
