False Memory Part 38

"You said it with conviction. With anguish. That you failed her."

Thinking back, she said, "I did, didn't I?"

Unsteepling his fingers, turning his hands palms up as though to say There you have it, There you have it, Dr. Ahriman smiled. "If further dialogue tends to confirm this diagnosis, then there's good news." Dr. Ahriman smiled. "If further dialogue tends to confirm this diagnosis, then there's good news."

"I need some good news," Martie said, though she'd not appeared distraught at any moment since entering the office.

"Finding the root of the phobia, the hidden cause, is often the most difficult phase of therapy. If your autophobia arises from this guilt about Susan, then we've leaped over a year of a.n.a.lysis. Better yet, what you have is less a genuine phobic condition than...well, call it sympathetic phobia."

"Like some husbands get sympathetic cramps and morning sickness when their wives are pregnant?" Martie suggested.

"Exactly," Ahriman affirmed. "And a sympathetic phobia, if that is what you have, is infinitely easier to cure than a deeper-rooted condition like Susan's. I all but guarantee you won't be coming to me for long before I'm done with you."

"How long?"

"One month. Perhaps three. You must understand, there's really no way to fix an exact date. So much depends on...you and me."

Dusty leaned back in his chair, further relieved. One month, even three, was not such a long time. Especially if she experienced steady improvement. They could endure this.

Dr. Ahriman was a great psychiatrist. Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.

"I'm ready to begin," Martie announced. "Already this morning, I saw our internist-"

"And his opinion?" Ahriman wondered.

"He thinks we should take the necessary steps to rule out brain tumors, that sort of thing, but more likely than not it's a matter for therapy, not medicine."

"Sounds like a good, thorough physician."

"I've had some tests done at the hospital, everything he wanted me to have. But now...well, nothing's for sure, but I think this is where I'm going to get help."

"Then let's proceed!" Dr. Ahriman said brightly, with an almost boyish enthusiasm that Dusty found heartening because it seemed to be an expression of dedication to his work and confidence in his skills.

Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.

"Mr. Rhodes," the psychiatrist said, "traditional therapy is, of course, a process requiring confidentiality for the patient if he-in this case, she-is to be forthcoming. So I'll have to ask you to adjourn to our outgoing waiting room for the rest of this session."

Dusty looked at Martie for guidance.

She smiled and nodded.

This was a safe place. She would be all right here.

"Of course, sure." Dusty rose from his chair.

Martie handed her leather jacket to him, which she had removed upon entering the office, and he put it over his arm with his coat.

"Right this way, Mr. Rhodes," Dr. Ahriman said, crossing the large office toward the door to the outgoing waiting room.

Scaled clouds, as greasy and sour-gray as rotting fish, seemed to be foul ejecta spewed out by the rolling Pacific, clotted on the heavens. The coaly veins in the water were varicose and more numerous than previously, and large sections of the sea were fearfully black to Dusty's eyes if to no other's.

His brief ripple of disquiet at once smoothed away as he turned from the enormous window and followed Dr. Ahriman.

The door between the mahogany-paneled office and the outgoing waiting room was surprisingly thick. As tightly fitted as a Mason-jar lid, it produced a soft pop and a sigh when opened, as though a vacuum seal were being broken.

Dusty supposed that a serious door was required to protect the doctor's patients from eavesdroppers. No doubt the core of it was composed of layers of soundproofing.

The honey-toned walls, black-granite floor, and furnis.h.i.+ngs in this second waiting room were like those in the larger, incoming lounge at the main entrance of the suite.

"Would you like Jennifer to bring you coffee, cola, ice water?" Ahriman asked Dusty.

"No, thank you. I'll be fine."

"Those," Ahriman said, indicating a fanned array of periodicals on a table, "are current." He smiled. "This is one doctor's office that isn't a graveyard for the magazines of prior decades."

"Very thoughtful."

Ahriman placed one hand rea.s.suringly on Dusty's shoulder. "She is going to be fine, Mr. Rhodes."

"She's a fighter."

"Have faith."

"I do."

The psychiatrist returned to Martie.

The door fell shut with a m.u.f.fled but impressive thud, and the latch automatically engaged. There was no handle on this side. The door could only be opened from the inner office.

48.

Black hair, black attire. Blue eyes s.h.i.+ne like Tiffany. Her light, too, a lamp.

The doctor polished that haiku in his mind, rather pleased with it, as he returned to his armchair and sat across the low table from Martie Rhodes.

Without a word, he studied her face, feature by feature and then as a whole, taking his time, curious to see if his protracted silence would make her uneasy.

Unperturbed, she waited, evidently confident that the doctor's mute inspection had a clinical purpose that would be explained to her when the time was right.

As with Susan Jagger, Dr. Ahriman had previously implanted in Martie and Dustin Rhodes the suggestion that they would feel deeply at ease in his office. Likewise, they were always to be rea.s.sured at the sight of him.

In their unconscious minds, he had embedded six thoughts, like little prayers, to which they were able to resort one sentence at a time or in a single long calming mantra, if any doubt or nervousness overcame them in his presence. This is a safe place. Dr. Ahriman is a great psychiatrist. Everything will be all right now that I am- This is a safe place. Dr. Ahriman is a great psychiatrist. Everything will be all right now that I am-or in Dustin's case, Martie is-in Dr. Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman is deeply committed to his patients. Dr. Ahriman will make this trouble go away. Martie is-in Dr. Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman is deeply committed to his patients. Dr. Ahriman will make this trouble go away. Even when they were fully conscious, these mini-meditations would reinforce their perception that Dr. Mark Ahriman was their sole salvation. Even when they were fully conscious, these mini-meditations would reinforce their perception that Dr. Mark Ahriman was their sole salvation.

The doctor had found it richly amusing to watch them smiling and nodding, even as they must have wondered at their sudden shedding of anxiety. And what fun it was to have a man so gratefully entrust his wife to you when your intention was to debase, demean, humiliate, and ultimately destroy her.

After the unantic.i.p.ated halftime occasioned by Susan's suicide, the game would now resume.

"Martie?" he said.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Raymond Shaw."

Her demeanor changed at once. She stiffened and sat straighter in her chair. Her lovely half smile froze, faded, and she said, "I'm listening."

Having switched her on with that name, the doctor now loaded the elaborate program that was so succinctly coded in her personal haiku. "Blown from the west-"

"You are the west and the western wind," she said dutifully.

"-fallen leaves gather-"

"The leaves are your instructions."

"-in the east."

"I am the east," Martie said, and now all instructions that the doctor gave her would be gathered in like autumn leaves, to compost in the dark warm depths of her subconscious mind.

[image]

As Dusty hung Martie's black leather jacket on the coatrack, he felt the paperback in the right-hand pocket. It was the novel she had carried here when escorting Susan, not for the entire past year, but at least for four or five months.

Although she had claimed that it was an entertaining read, the book appeared to be as pristine as when it had first been stocked on a bookstore shelf. The spine was smooth, uncreased. When he riffled the pages, they were so crisp and fresh that this might have been the first time they had been parted from one another since being married at the bindery.

He remembered how Martie had spoken of this story in the vague language of a high-schooler faking a report on a book she'd never taken the time to crack. He was suddenly sure that Martie had read none of the novel, but he couldn't imagine why she would lie about anything this trivial.

Indeed, Dusty found it hard to get his mind around the thought that Martie would ever lie about any matter whatsoever, whether great or small. Uncommon respect for the truth was one of the touchstones by which she constantly tested her right to call herself Smilin' Bob Woodhouse's daughter.

After hanging up his own jacket, still holding the paperback, he looked at the magazines fanned on the table. They were of one ilk, dedicated either to shameless fawning over celebrities or to the supposedly witty skewering and hip a.n.a.lysis of the doings and sayings of celebrities, which in the end had essentially the same effect as shameless fawning.

Leaving the magazines untouched, he sat down with the book.

He was vaguely familiar with the t.i.tle. In its time, this novel had been a best-seller. A famous film had been adapted from it. Dusty had neither read the book nor seen the movie.

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon. by Richard Condon.

According to the copyright page, the first edition was published in 1959. An age ago. Another millennium.

Yet still in print. A good sign.

Chapter 1. Although a thriller, the book opened not on a dark stormy night, but in San Francisco, in suns.h.i.+ne. Dusty began to read.

[image]

The doctor asked Martie to sit on the couch, where he could sit beside her. Obediently, she moved from the armchair.

Wrapped up all in black. Odd color to wrap a toy-one not yet broken.

That haiku also resonated with him, and he ran it through his mind a few times with increasing pleasure. It wasn't as good as the Tiffany one, but far better than his recent efforts to capture Susan Jagger in verse.

Sitting on the couch close to Martie but not thigh to thigh, the doctor said, "Today, together, we enter a new phase."

In the solemn and hushed confines of her mind chapel, where the only votive candles were lit to the G.o.d Ahriman, Martie attended his every word with the quiet acceptance and the s.h.i.+ning visionary stare of Joan of Arc listening to her Voice.

"From this day forward, you will discover that destruction and self-destruction are ever more appealing. Terrifying, yes. But even terror has a sweet appeal. Tell me if you have ever ridden a roller coaster, one of those that takes you on barrel rolls, loops at high speed."

"Yes."

"Tell me how you felt on that roller coaster."

"Afraid."

"But you felt something else."

"Exhilaration. Delight."

"There. Terror and pleasure are linked in us. We are a badly miswired species, Martie. Terror delights us, both the experience of terror and the dealing out of it to others. We are healthier if we admit to this miswiring and do not struggle to be better than our natures allow. You do understand what I'm saying."

Her eyes jiggled. REM. She said, "Yes."

"Regardless of what our Creator intended us to be, what we have become is what we are. are. Compa.s.sion, love, humility, honesty, loyalty, truthfulness-these are like those enormous plate-gla.s.s windows into which small birds crash repeatedly, stupidly. We bash ourselves to pieces against the gla.s.s of love, the gla.s.s of truth, foolishly struggling to go where we can never go, to be what we are not wired to be." Compa.s.sion, love, humility, honesty, loyalty, truthfulness-these are like those enormous plate-gla.s.s windows into which small birds crash repeatedly, stupidly. We bash ourselves to pieces against the gla.s.s of love, the gla.s.s of truth, foolishly struggling to go where we can never go, to be what we are not wired to be."

"Yes."

"Power and its primary consequences-death and s.e.x. That's what drives us. Power over others is the thrill of thrills for us. We idolize politicians because they have so much power, and we wors.h.i.+p celebrities because their lives appear to be more charged with power than our own. The strong among us seize power, and the weak have the thrill of sacrificing themselves to the power of the strong. Power. The power to kill, to maim, to hurt, to tell other people what to do, how to think, what to believe and what not to believe. The power to terrorize. Destruction is our talent, our destiny. And I am going to prepare you to wallow in destruction, Martie, and ultimately to destroy yourself-to know both the thrill of crus.h.i.+ng and of being crushed."

Blue jiggle. Blue stillness.

Her hands in her lap, both palms up as though to receive. Lips parted to intake. Head c.o.c.ked slightly to one side in the posture of an attentive student.

The doctor put one hand to her face, caressed her cheek. "Kiss my hand, Martie."

She pressed her lips to his fingers.

Lowering his hand, the doctor said, "I'm going to show you more photographs, Martie. Images that we will study together. They are similar to those we studied yesterday, when you were here with Susan. Like those photographs, these images are all repulsive, disgusting, horrifying. However, you will examine them calmly and with careful attention to detail. You will store them away in your memory, where they will apparently be forgotten-but each time your anxiety swells into a full-scale panic attack, these images will flood back into your mind. And then you will not will not see them as photographs in a book, neatly boxed, with white borders and captions underneath. Instead, they will be wall-to-wall images in your mind, more vivid and real to you than things you have actually experienced. Please tell me whether or not you understand, Martie." see them as photographs in a book, neatly boxed, with white borders and captions underneath. Instead, they will be wall-to-wall images in your mind, more vivid and real to you than things you have actually experienced. Please tell me whether or not you understand, Martie."