and puffing, her arms mottled and meaty-looking as two legs of lamb, spread wide to block Lilah’s retreat. “Come on now, oh come on,” she’s saying, in a voice less of anger than of schoolmarmish annoyance.
Joining Patty on the stairs is another massive, white-clad figure who fills his polo shirt like the Mighty Hulk. If this is a dream, I’d really like to wake up now, thinks Lilah. It sure feels like a dream, the way she’s rooted to the landing, frozen in place as the two close in on her, looking nightmarishly similar in their white uniforms, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum in a madhouse production of
They flank her, each taking an arm, and walk her back up the stairs and down the corridor; this time the nurses all turn away busily as they pass the desk. Patty accompanies Lilah into the peach-colored room while her male counterpart-his name tag reads simply,
3
Hotel dining room. White tablecloths, tinkle of glass and clatter of tableware, muted breakfast conversations. Striking vistas of Portland through tinted plate-glass windows. From the entrance alcove, Pender scanned the premises and spotted Irene Cogan, wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, sitting alone reading the
He crossed the room, his head pounding with every footfall, despite the double padding of his rubber-soled Hush Puppies on a thick gray carpet patterned with the hotel chain’s interlocking initials in burgundy. “Mind if I join you?”
“I like your outfit,” she said, gesturing graciously toward the empty chair across from her. He was wearing a white-on-white guayabera shirttails-out over not-yet-rumpled brown slacks. “Have we been invited to a Mexican wedding?”
“Har de har har,” said Pender, whose interview at the TPP offices down by the warehouse district was to begin in less than an hour and was expected to take all day. He turned to the hovering, white-jacketed waiter. “Screwdriver. Light on the oj, heavy on the Stoli. If it takes, I may consider solid food.”
“Hungover?” asked Irene, after the waiter left.
“Serves you right.”
“For what?”
“For all the booze you drank last night, what else?”
“Oh, that,” replied Pender, then: “Look, about last night…“
She held up both hands; two silver bracelets jingled as they slid down her long slender wrist. “Please, let’s not talk about it, okay?”
From that high point, the conversation flagged. Irene dissected her grapefruit and skimmed the newspaper; Pender sipped at his orange-tinted Stoli and gazed out the window at the cityscape below. “I’m sure glad this didn’t turn out awkward,” he said after a few minutes.
“Me too,” said Irene over the top of the newspaper. Then she folded it and slipped it into her gigantic Coach bag. “I keep thinking I ought to give Lily a call just to see how she’s doing. I know it’s inappropriate, but-”
“Why inappropriate? I mean, think of that poor kid, waking up in a strange place, not knowing anybody. And it’s probably just starting to sink in about her grandparents-of course you should call her, why shouldn’t you?”
Because she’s no longer my patient, thought Irene. Then she reminded herself that as far as her relationship with Lily was concerned, she’d crossed that line a long time ago. “You know, I think I will,” she told Pender.
“Tell her Uncle Pen says hi.”
4
“Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”
No answer. Dressed in an open-backed green gown with strings in back that tie in front and paper slippers that keep threatening to slide off, Lilah shuffles down the long green corridor, flanked by a white-clad psych tech on either side. When they reach the elevator, Mullet Woman punches in the security code and steps inside first, while Hulk follows Lilah. Exiting one floor below, they reverse the process, then flank Lilah again and march her down another long green corridor, this one two-toned with a waist-high, olive-colored wainscoting, to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The door opens, revealing a large tiled room dominated by an enormous padded table in the shape of a cross; it looks more like a medieval torture device than a piece of furniture. Beside it, seated behind a gray metal desk, is a plumpish, bespectacled man in a white lab coat, his reddish-brown hair combed back in waves from a high round forehead. He gestures toward the empty wooden chair across the desk, politely asks her to take a seat. She shakes off the hands of her escorts, puts a little extra hip swivel into her walk as she crosses the room.
“Do you know who I am?” is his first question.
She draws the hospital gown tightly around her, shrugs noncommittally.
“Ever seen me before?”
“Not that I know of.” A seductive smile. “You are kinda cute, though.”
He’s not biting. “What’s your name?”
“Lilah.”
“Last name?”
She frowns prettily. “Sorry-sometimes I have trouble remembering things.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Some kind of mental hospital?”
“Do you know what day it is?”
She shrugs, causing the hospital gown to fall open. His eyes flicker downward-only for a moment, but a quickening of his breath gives her a sense of power. She leans forward provocatively. “Look, whoever you are, could we talk in private for a couple minutes?”
“No, we can’t.” He breaks eye contact, types something onto a laptop computer on the desk, then looks up again. “Just a few more questions. You were right about this being a mental hospital-do you have any idea
Both the room and the man are too chilly for her to go around with her boobs hanging out. Lilah pulls the lapels of her hospital gown closed again. “Because your goons over there wouldn’t let me leave.”
“I mean why you were brought here in the first place.”
“I don’t know. Amnesia, maybe?” She waits for him to finish typing another note into the laptop. “Well, am I right?”
“You’re experiencing some loss of memory, then?”
“Yeah, I got CRS-can’t remember shit.”
“Tell me the last memories you do have-before coming here, that is.”
“Well there was this biker, he picked me up in Seaside, I was pretending to be a hooker-I do that sometimes, just for the fun of it…. “
She tells him the rest readily enough-Lilah feels no sense of shame where sexual matters are concerned. When she finishes, he closes the notebook, then does something that takes her completely by surprise: he leans earnestly across the table and stares hard into her eyes, saying, “Lily? Lily, if you’re there…if you can hear me…if you’re in any way conscious…if you have any conscious control over any of this…if any of this alter switching is in any way voluntary to any extent, now’s the time to speak up. Believe me, nobody here is going to think less of you.”
Lilah draws back, tearing her eyes from his searching gaze. “He’s the crazy one, not me,” she tells Mullet Woman over her shoulder.
But Mullet Woman’s not looking at Lilah, she’s looking over Lilah’s head at the crazy doctor, who sighs, blows
