'Is it Dr. Leavitt yet?' I said.
'ThisJune,' she said. 'Wrapping up my dissertation.'
'Congratulations. Neuroanatomy?'
'Neurochemistry-much more practical, right?'
'Still planning on going to med school?'
'Next fall. Stanford.'
'Psychiatry?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe something a bit more concrete. No offense. I'm going to take my time and see what appeals tome.'
'Well, there's certainly no hurry-what are you, twelve years old?'
'Twenty! I'll be twenty-one next month.'
A veritable crone.'
'Weren't you young, too, when you finished?'
'Not that young. I was shaving.
She laughed again. 'It's great to see you. Hear from Jamey at all?'
'I got a postcard at Christmas. From New Hampshire. He's renting a farm there. Writing poetry.'
'Is he.. all right?'
'He's better. There was no return address on the card and he wasn't listed. So I called the psychiatrist who treated him up in Carmel and she said he'd been maintaining pretty well on medication. Apparently he's got someone to take care of him. One of the nurses who worked with him up there.'
'Well, that's good,' she said. 'Poor guy. He had so much going for and against him.'
'Good way to put it. Have you had any contact with the other people in the group?'
The group. Project t6o. As in IQ. Accelerated academics for kids with genius intellects. A grand experiment; one of its members ended up accused of serial murder. I'd gotten involved, taken a joyride into hatred and corruption. is at Harvard law and working for a judge, Felicia's studying math at Columbia, and David dropped out of U. of Chicago med school after one semester and became a commodities trader.
In the pits. He always was kind of an eighties guy. Anyway, the projects defunct-Dr. Flowers didn't renew the grant.'
'Health problems?'
'That was part of it. And of course the publicity about Jamey didn't help. She moved to Hawaii. I think she wanted to minimize her stress-because of the M.S.'
Catching up with the past for the second time today, I realized how many loose ends I'd let dangle.
'So,' she said, 'what brings you here?'
'Looking up some case material.'
Anything interesting?'
'Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Familiar with it?'
'I've heard of Munchausen people abusing their bodies to fake disease, right? But what's the proxy part?'
'People faking disease in their children.'
