“I'd like to hear it from you. I need to know what you think.”
“Because once upon a time there was a bad man who got inside my body and pretended to be me and did bad things to people.”
“I see. And where is that bad man now?”
“The police man shot him and he went away.”
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“All I 'member, I was in this dark jail place and I was scared and he made me stay there and there was this dead bird on the floor. Is my voice on that?”
Irene pressed stop. “Yes. Would you like to hear it?” She hit the reverse button, then play.
“… this dead bird on the floor. Is my voice on that?”
“That's not me,” said Maxwell. “Is that me?”
“That's you. Everybody's own voice sounds different to them when they hear it over a tape recorder.”
“How come?”
“Because you're hearing it from the outside rather than the inside.” He had presented Irene with a convenient segue. “By the way, Lyssy, do you ever hear other voices inside your head?”
“You mean like the bad man?”
“Sure, like the bad man.”
He looked down at his lap. “N O means no. And if I do, I have to tell Doctor Al or one of the nurses or somebody right away, cross my heart and hope to die.” Then he looked up slyly-transparently slyly. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” replied Irene. “Would you like to play a little game with me?”
“Absolutely,” he repeated in his piping voice. He appeared to enjoy the sound of the word. “Ab-so- lutely.”
“Okay, here's how it goes. I'm going to ask you three questions, and you have to answer them truthfully. You understand what truthfully means?”
“I'm not a baby.”
“I know-I just have to make extra sure. But here's the game part-the whole time I'm asking the questions, and the whole time you're answering, you have to look straight at me. No looking away, no hiding your face or anything like that. Think you can do that?”
“Too easy,” he said scornfully.
“Then it shouldn't be any trouble. Okay, first question.” Irene pointed to her eyes. “Look right here.” Their eyes locked across the room. “How old are you?”
“Five. One two three four five.”
“Very good. Second question: what's your favorite ice cream flavor?”
“Choc'lit.”
“Excellent. Third question: what's your name?” This last was the only question that mattered, of course.
“Lyssy. L Y S S Y,” he declared proudly, his eyes locked on hers. “Do I win?”
“You sure do.” No upward flicker of the eyeballs, no flutter of the eyelids, no grounding behavior, no change in the voice, no sign of stress or struggle.
“What? What do I win?”
Irene turned off the Dictaphone, slipped it into her purse along with her notebook, then rummaged around and came up with a pack of sugarless Trident. “Chewing gum,” she said, feeling a touch manic. “First prize is a pack of Original Flavor, Sugarless Trident. More dentists recommend sugarless Trident for their patients.”
“Coo-ool,” said Lyssy. “Are we done now? Are we finished?”
“You know, I think we are,” said Irene, standing up. “I think we are at long last finished.” She slung her purse strap over her shoulder, crossed to the bed, handed Lyssy his prize.
He hurriedly tore the pack open, stripped the foil off two pieces, shoved them both into his mouth. “Will you come back to see me some time?” he asked her indistinctly.
“Perhaps some day, Lyssy,” she said, crossing to the door, which opened as if by magic. “I do live sort of far away.”
“Too bad,” he said. “You're nice.”
Irene turned in the doorway. “Why, thank you, Lyssy. You're nice too.” She took a backward step; the door closed.
“Well?” asked Dr. Corder, beaming.
“I'm impressed,” said Irene, stepping up to peer through the one-way glass. Maxwell was still sitting on the bed, motionless save for the steady movement of his jaw as he worked at his gum.
“But not entirely convinced?”
“ ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ He's already fooled me once, Dr. Corder.”
“Please, Dr. Cogan, call me Al.”
“In that case, call me Irene.”
“It'd be my pleasure,” said Corder, offering her his arm. “Now how about that lunch?”
“Sounds great.” Irene took his arm, and together they strolled back down the salmon-colored corridor. Were they flirting? she wondered. She certainly hoped so.
Ulysses Maxwell sat motionless on the bed for another ten minutes. When he was sure they were gone, he spat his gum out onto the floor. Then his carriage changed dramatically. He lowered his shoulders and arched his neck, cocking his head slightly to the side.
“ ‘Why, thank you, Lyssy,’ ” he said aloud, forming the words carefully, almost primly, at the front of his mouth, and speaking with just a trace of a lisp-Irene's lisp. “ ‘You're nice, too.’ ”
He rose, crossed the room with only a ghost of the limp he'd put on for Irene, sat down at his desk, and with the black crayon swiftly sketched the outline of a nude woman on the top sheet of the pad. No stick figure this time: she was reclining in a modified odalisque, her hands behind her head, her small breasts tipped pertly. Then he put the black crayon back in the box and took out several other shades, peach, melon, red-orange, orange-red, apricot, and carnation, with which he sketched in first a few sparse pubic hairs, just above the triangular space between her slender thighs, then a luscious head of shoulder length, strawberry blond hair.
“Much better,” he said, admiring her for a moment, then tearing the picture into narrow strips, and the strips into tiny pieces before depositing it in his wastebasket. “That Princess Di shade was all wrong for your complexion. Miss Miller would never have approved.”
