Fear itself

“I’m more worried about you. If your suspicions are accurate-and I’m not at all sure they are, despite my now shattered nerves and pounding heart-you’re in more danger than I am, a woman alone and all that.”

“I think we’re all at risk here,” replied Dorie. “In fact, I’m thinking about posting this on the chat room.”

“No!” The response was unhesitating. “There are a lot of unstable personalities who visit that chat room. Something like this might drive some of them over the edge. Panic attacks, agoraphobia, maybe even suicide.”

“Then what-”

“First of all, calm down. I’m not without resources myself. I’ll make a few calls, contact a few people. I’ll let you know what I find out, you let me know what you find out. And in the meantime, let’s keep this between us-we don’t want to throw the whole community into a panic.”

“You think so?” said Dorie doubtfully.

“I know so. Look, I have to go now-sounds like Missy just woke up.”

“Say hi to her for me-and for God’s sake, be careful.”

“You too. Good night, Dorito.”

“Good night, Simon.”

7

Monday had been a lonely day for Missy. Simon had given Tasha, her attendant, the week off, then spent all morning in the locked basement. And after lunch, instead of taking her to the park as he’d promised, he’d installed her in her bedroom with her favorite Audrey Hepburn videos (Charade, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Wait Until Dark), a snack tray, and strict instructions not to leave the room unless she had to use the toilet.

Then he was kind of distant all through dinner and hardly paid any attention to her. It was a good dinner, though: hamburgs, Tater Tots, applesauce, and Little Debbie snack cakes for dessert-she gobbled down three before he even noticed, and he didn’t make her eat any green veggies. Plus Simon cooked it for her himself, which made it extra good.

After dinner Simon sent Missy back upstairs, then went down into the basement, and didn’t come back up until halfway through The Original Ten O’Clock News. Missy never missed The Original Ten O’Clock News-she had a major crush on Dennis Richmond, the handsome black anchorman. Once Simon took her to the telethon and she met him in person and gave him a dollar for those poor children in their wheelchairs.

But even after Simon came up from the basement, he didn’t pay any attention to Missy-just went into his room and closed the door. Missy kept expecting him to come kiss her good night, but he didn’t. She fell asleep with the light and the TV on but woke up in the dark with the TV off-she’d been awakened by the ringing of the telephone. From across the hall she heard Simon talking. She got out of bed and knocked on the door of the master suite. No answer-she opened it anyway, crossed the bedroom, and stuck her head into Simon’s little office. He was at the computer.

“Who called?” A stranger would have heard Hoo-haw, but as always, Simon had no trouble understanding Missy.

“Dorie. She said to say hi to you.”

Missy decided to tease him a little. “Talking to your girlfriend. Simon’s got a girlfriend.”

“Missy, I’m in no mood for your nonsense. Now, go back to bed before I get serious.”

Uh-oh. When Simon said “serious,” he meant “mad.” When Simon was mad, sometimes he did things he was sorry for later. But the sorry didn’t help much if you were the one he did the things to. “I love you?” she whispered cautiously.

“I love you, too,” said Simon, turning his back to the door. It wasn’t as though he’d had that great a day, either. That’s what comes from trying to do too much too fast, he told himself. The total darkness, then that stunt with the liver-greedy, Simon, greedy. And now, what with Dorie Bell stirring things up, it would have to end sooner than he had planned. For Wayne and Dorie both.

Still, spilt milk and all that. And perhaps when Wayne knew the end was coming…

Simon could feel his pulse quickening at the thought. Yes, that’s it, he told himself, that’s what we’re in this for. Then he realized Missy was still standing forlornly in the doorway. He spun his chair around again. “Hey, sis, what do you say, how ’bout pancakes for breakfast?”

“Peachy keen,” replied Missy, picturing the Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle, which always made her giggle. “I love pancakes.”

“I know you do. Now, go to bed-I have to go back down to the basement.”

“I don’t like the basement. It’s scary.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why you mustn’t go down there, not ever.”

“You do,” she said intelligibly. She could manage her oo sounds pretty well. And as Simon knew, her speech difficulties stemmed from the way the congenital Down’s flattening of the palate forced Missy’s tongue to protrude, and were not indicative of her level of comprehension.

“I have to,” he said.

“Ha hunh,” she replied, waving a chubby hand.

Have fun. Simon found himself wondering, as he slipped on his new D-303, single- tube, dual-eye, night-vision goggles with built-in two-stage infrared illuminator, whether somehow Missy didn’t understand a lot more than even he gave her credit for.

8

Something was wrong.

Since regaining consciousness, pain, thirst, and hunger permitting, Wayne had spent the last few hours working his way through the Bach suites numerically, and doing rather well, too, until he got stuck on number five, the one Casals called the tempestuous suite. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the music with him-he knew the score by heart. But he just couldn’t seem to get number five going.

Then, in his mind’s ear, he heard old Brotsky: the tuning, Mr. Summers, the tuning. He’d forgotten to drop the A string down to G-a little trick Bach had employed to enhance the cello’s sonority. After that, the piece went relatively smoothly, although it was interesting to note that even on an imaginary instrument he still sometimes stumbled over the same difficult intervals that had always given him trouble.

He played with his remaining eye firmly closed. Funny how total darkness made you want to shut your eyes, he thought. Otherwise it was too vast, like the blackness of space-you felt as though if you let go, you’d tumble through it forever.

But even with his eye closed, he was so sensitive to light that he knew when the door at the top of the stairs had been opened, however brief and faint the glow. He did his best to ignore it, concentrating all the harder on the Bach.

As for the birds, a curious thing had happened. It might have been the result of such an extreme application of Dr. Taylor’s desensitization therapy. Flooding, the technical term for overwhelming a phobic with the object of his fear, was considered by some psychiatrists to be the most effective form of phobia therapy, but few patients or psychiatrists had the stomach for it, and the malpractice carriers weren’t crazy about it either-when it failed, it failed big time. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he and the birds were all fellow captives, but whatever the reason, Wayne’s ornithophobia had vanished: he found that birds no longer frightened him. Except for the owl, but as that was no longer an unreasonable fear, it no longer qualified as a phobia.

Somebody probably should have locked me in a room with a bunch of birds years ago, thought Wayne during one of his more lucid moments. He even started to chuckle.