She woke me out of a sound sleep. I had the idea that it was almost morning, and I couldn’t think who would be calling at that hour. I answered the phone, and, as I did, it rang again, and I thought, “It’s the answering machine,” and punched what I thought was “play” and had time to be surprised that there was no message before it rang again and I recognized the sound finally as the doorbell.
Annie was standing on the front steps. She had her gray coat on and was carrying a duffel bag. There was a suitcase on the step beside her. It was dark and foggy out, and I thought, “That will burn off when the sun comes up, and it will be hot tomorrow.”
“Can I stay here?” she said.
I still had the idea that the phone had rung. “Did you call?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I know I should have given you some warning, but… if this is a problem, Jeff, I can go to a hotel.”
“I thought I heard the phone,” I said, rubbing at my face as if I expected a scraggly stubble of beard like Broun’s. “What time is it?”
She had to transfer the duffel bag from one hand to the other to look at her watch. “Ten-thirty. I woke you up, didn’t I?”
No, you didn’t, I almost said. That was the problem. She had not, with all her ringing of the doorbell, managed to wake me up. I was still asleep and dreaming her, and they were not somebody else’s dreams. She looked beautiful standing there in her gray coat, her light hair curling a little from the damp fog. She looked as if she had just awakened from a long and refreshing sleep, her eyes clear and bright, and healthy pinkness in her cheeks.
“Of course you can stay,” I said, still not awake enough to ask her why she was here, or even to wonder. I opened the door and leaned past her to pick up the suitcase. “You can stay as long as you want. Broun’s not here. He’s in California. You can stay as long as you want.”
I led the way up the stairs to the study, still unable to shake the feeling that it was very late. The answering machine was blinking rapidly—I must have put it on “call return” in my sleepy fumblings. I wondered what poor soul I had been calling for the last ten minutes. I hit the “pause” button and yawned. I was still not awake. I’d better make some coffee.
“Do you want some coffee?” I said to Annie, who was standing in the door of the study looking rested and wide awake and beautiful.
“No,” she said.
I still had my hand on the answering machine buttons. “I’ve been worried about you. I tried to call you. Did you have another dream?”
“No,” she said. “The dreams have stopped.”
“They’ve stopped?” I said. “Just like that?” I still wasn’t awake.
The answering machine was still flashing. I stabbed at the buttons. The tape clicked. “Annie’s gone,” Richard said. “I think she’ll come to you. You have to make her come back. She’s sick. I only did it to help her. I didn’t have any other choice.”
“Did what?” I asked.
She pulled something out of the duffel bag. “He’s been putting these in my food,” she said, and handed me two capsules in a plastic bag. One of the capsules was cracked and there was a dusting of white powder along the bottom edge of the bag.
“What are they?” I said. “Elavil?”
“Thorazine,” she said. “I found the bottle in his medical bag.”
Thorazine. A drug strong enough to stop a horse in its tracks. “Richard gave you these?” I said, looking stupidly at the plastic bag.
“Yes,” she said. She sat down in the club chair. “He started putting them in my food when I got back from Arlington.”
When I called her I had asked her if she had been asleep, and she had said Richard had made her a cup of tea and sent her to bed. She had been so sleepy she could hardly answer my questions. Because Richard had put Thorazine in her tea. Thorazine. “They use Thorazine in mental hospitals. With uncontrollable patients.”
“I know,” she said.
“How many of these did he give you?”
“I don’t know. He… I didn’t eat anything last night and all day today.”
I had taken her out to Arlington three days ago. She couldn’t have been on the drug more than two and a half days, so there couldn’t be that much in her system, but what kind of dose had Richard given her? Any dose was too much.
“Annie, listen, let me call the hospital. They’ll know what to do. We’ve got to get this stuff out of your system.”
“Jeff, tell me what happened to the horse,” she said quietly. “The gray horse I saw in my dream. It didn’t fall forward on its knees, did it?” I looked at her hands, expecting them to be gripping the arms of the chair, but they were lying quietly in her lap. “Please tell me.”
I knelt down in front of her and took hold of her hands. “Annie, the dream’s not important. What’s important is that you’ve got a dangerous drug in your system. I don’t know what symptoms it can cause, but we’ve got to find out. There might be withdrawal symptoms of some kind. We’ve got to get you to a hospital. They’ll know what to do.”
“No,” she said, still quietly. “They’ll give me something to stop the dreams.”
“No, they won’t. They’ll try to get the Thorazine out of your system, and they’ll run tests so we’ll know exactly how much Richard’s been giving you and for how long. What if he’s been giving you drugs for weeks? What if Thorazine isn’t the only thing he’s been giving you?”
“You don’t understand. They’ll put me on medication.”
“They can’t give you anything without your consent.”
“Richard did. I can’t go to a hospital. The dreams are important. They’re the most important thing.”
“Annie…”
“No, you have to listen, Jeff. I figured out he was giving me something when you called me. When I got up to answer the phone I was so dizzy, and then when you asked me if Richard was giving me anything, I knew that must be it. But I didn’t tell you.”
“Why not?” I asked gently.
“Because it stopped the dreams.” Her hands were ice cold. I chafed them gently between my hands. “When you’d called I’d been asleep all afternoon, and I hadn’t had any dreams at all. Then you called and told me about Special Order 191 and I didn’t even want to listen. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to sleep forever.”
“That was the Thorazine,” I said.
“I wanted to sleep forever, but I couldn’t. Even under the Thorazine, even when I was asleep, I knew the dreams mattered, and that I had to have them. That’s why I came here. Because I knew you could help me. I knew you could tell me what the dreams meant.”
“Annie, listen.” I looked anxiously into her blue-gray eyes, trying to see if they were dilated. They weren’t. They looked clear and alert. Maybe she
“He’ll call Richard.”
“No, he won’t,” I said, and wished I could be sure of that. If I told him that Richard had given Thorazine to one of his patients without her knowledge, he would immediately think she was a mental patient. He would call Richard, and Richard would tell him that she was highly unstable, that she suffered from delusions of persecution. He would use his Good Shrink voice and Broun’s doctor would believe him. And then what? Would he take Annie
