“In what sense?”
“Stop it!”
He was really having trouble here. He was strongly attracted to her, that was certain, but there just was no memory.
“Those images over the door, I’ll give odds you don’t know what they are,” she said.
“I do not.”
“Well, I do, because my grandfather was the man who discovered them.
“Is this why you went to Guatemala? Are you a believer?”
“What do you think?” Her tone was knife-edged with sarcasm.
“That’s for you to say, Caroline.”
Her eyes became sad. “You need to remember something, David.”
This was a subtle mind, quick and supple, and it was testing him, but in what sense? Was the real Caroline Light trying to find out if he remembered her, or was an imposter trying to determine if he’d been in the class?
“What about myself do I need to remember?”
She lit another cigarette. “Shall we do sex talk?”
“Shall we?”
“Isn’t that what you do here?”
“This is a hospital you’re in, Caroline. It’s a place where people who are suffering come for relief. Which is why you checked yourself in, I would think. What do you think?”
“That I need an ashtray.”
“There isn’t one.”
She flicked ash on the carpet. “This is a Tabriz, probably a Hajiijalili, and look at the abrash. Gorgeous.” She smiled a little, then, and her face became soft with promise. Really, she was meltingly beautiful. “I always wondered what it was like up here. Remember the time we tried to sneak up and old Mrs. Acton got mad and threatened to spank us? She lived to a hundred and three, did you know that?”
“Under the terms of the transfer, we can’t alter the decor in these rooms. That’s why the rug is still here.”
“How strangely colorless you’ve become, David. You’re not in total amnesia, though. I can see it in your eyes.”
She stood up and came around the desk. He stood, also, and suddenly they were quite close, and the attraction was powerful. He cleared a dry throat.
“Maybe I’ve always been a colorless bureaucratic type. By your definition, anyway.”
Fingers brushed his forearm, a seemingly innocuous gesture that was surprisingly intimate.
“We know each other, David, and we have made promises, and even if your mind is in denial, your body knows it.” She gestured toward the images over the door. “They mark this as a sacred space. Worthy abode of the Plumed Serpent, for example. Quetzalcoatl. Does that ring a bell with you?”
Vaguely, he recalled talk of the Mexican gods in the class.
He cleared his throat. “The situation—the disturbed sun, the coincidence of the dates, all of that—has caused a significant minority of patients to integrate Mayan cosmology into their fantasy production. We psychiatrists used to get Hitlers and JFKs and Napoleons. Now, it’s Tlalocs and Quetzalcoatls. So yes, I am indeed familiar with the Plumed Serpent. If I may be so bold, which god are you?”
“I get what you’re doing. You’re not sure about me. You remember something, but not enough to let down your guard. I could be the enemy.”
“What does that mean to you?”
Her cheeks went rosy, her lips parted just enough to reveal the pearl edges of her teeth, the moist pink of her tongue.
Maybe it was the most seductive look he had ever seen.
“David, I want us to be us again, like we were when we were kids.”
There was no longer the slightest question in his mind that his decision to house her on confinement was correct. If she was a member of the class, she’d welcome the safety of it. If she was some kind of agent, she’d be contained. This woman had no psychiatric symptoms, and she wasn’t even bothering to pretend.
Katie appeared, meaning that he was out of time.
He said, “Caroline is ready to go.”
With a dancer’s grace, Caroline turned around. Then she whirled back, her cheeks red, her eyes so savage that they sent a shock through him. Caroline angry was a terror.
“That works exactly once,” she snapped.
She was very controlling. She did not like to be “handled.” And he was just not sure where he stood with her.
He tried a smile. “It’s just that it’s lunchtime, Caroline.”
“Anything raw and bloody. A heart, preferably.”
“Be careful, you might get just that.”
“Ah. Can I order it? Does this place work like a cruise ship?”
He ignored the question and instead turned away from her in his chair. After a pause, she huffed out, Katie hurrying along behind her.
Katie handed her over to Sam Taylor in the outer office and began to push David’s door closed.
“No, Katie, I want you,” he called.
She returned. For the safety of Caroline Light, he intended to make a convincing case to every staff member at the clinic that she was genuinely insane, perhaps even dangerous.
“I want this patient placed on priority observation at all times. Her luggage is to be searched by Glen personally for anything that shouldn’t be there, and it’s to be brought to me. She is to have locator buttons placed in her shoes and clothing, and I want security to put her on the alarm list for any deviation from routine.”
Katie’s face suggested carefully concealed surprise.
“This woman is in a good deal of trouble,” he explained. “She’s been poorly diagnosed and inappropriately treated, but that’s not the problem. What we have here is a time bomb that’s about to explode. In the safety of this environment, surrounded by professionals who can control her, she’s going to give herself permission to just plain cut loose.”
“I’ll get this set up right away.” She turned to leave.
“Don’t worry, she’s not going to blow just yet. But she will, Katie. At some point that anger is coming out, and it isn’t going to be pretty.”
“Doctor, you have the steering committee meeting.”
When Katie had gone, he took a deep breath and let it out. He was drawn to his assistant sexually—not as explosively as to Caroline Light, of course, but he’d welcome company in bed.
He went to the bookcase and pulled down one of the beautiful codices. He really wanted to spend some time with them, if nothing else admiring the artistry. He was drawn to them. He wanted to feel them in his hands.
He drew down another volume, then another and another. They were all different, all huge, and he thought that any one of them might contain more writing than all the known Aztec and Mayan codices in the world.
Then he saw a volume that was not a codex.
He had just opened it when Marian Hunt came in, followed by the executive chef, Ray Weller, Glen, Bill Osterman, the chief engineer, and the other members of the on-site steering committee.
Appropriately enough just before lunch, the subject was to be food resources. Supplying the clinic with the luxuries the patients expected was getting more and more complicated. There had to be cutbacks, followed by the inevitable protests.
As the room filled, he began to experience an acute sense of claustrophobia. He was not used to feeling suspicious of coworkers, and having his office filled with them was surprisingly unpleasant. As large as it was, it felt just now like a coffin.
