The Placebo Effect

by David Rotenberg

  He noticed Yslan smile at that. “I had brothers,” she said as explanation.

  “Well he came into my bedroom and told me that I was right. Right about it all. Then of course he asked the natural question: ‘How did you know?’

  “I told him, ‘I just knew.’ It’s funny; when I think about that moment, do you know what I remember?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I remember the four framed pictures of clown jugglers hanging on the walls that my father had brought home after a meeting with a pharmaceutical detail man—they grinned down at me. Scared the shit out of me for years. At any rate, then he did something stupid. He said, ‘I wasn’t at the hospital last night, that wasn’t why I came home late.’ He stared at me and I stared back. Then he did a typical science thing by asking me, ‘So, am I lying about that?’

  “I told him I didn’t know.

  “He demanded, ‘Why not?’

  “I told him, ‘It doesn’t work on people I care about or family.’”

  Decker had thought at the time about telling his father about the lines in his head—how they aligned when he heard a truth—then decided against it, as he decided against telling the southern girl across the table from him.

  “My father’s eyes widened then he said, ‘I want you downstairs next Thursday night.’

  “I protested, ‘But you and your friends are way better pool players than—’

  “‘I know,’ he said.

  “‘But I’m not good enough to play with—’

  “‘No you aren’t, but come down and play that lying trick of yours.’

  “I really didn’t want to do it, but I did. After their game ended and the men left, my father asked me what statements made by his friends were truthful. I identified the very few truths spoken that night, then added, ‘And Mr. Walsh pocketed a twenty that belonged to you.’

  “‘You saw that too?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “My father nodded slowly. ‘This is pretty interesting, don’t you think?’ he said.

  “But I didn’t really find it interesting. I found it scary and isolating. And I didn’t like the way my father looked at me—like I had confirmed in his mind that I really was a freak. So I stopped using it.”

  He didn’t bother mentioning that he kept feeling the cold and the metal thing in his hand—and the blood.

  “Fine. When did you decide to use your—”

  “When I was sixteen with my girlfriend.”

  “Leena.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, Leena.”

  “And how…”

  “I’m not going into details, but it scared me enough that I didn’t use it again until my second Broadway show went bust and I found myself without employment—with a very sick wife and young boy who hadn’t talked nearly as much as a three-year-old should have, living in New York City—not the easiest place to survive such circumstances.

  “I put in a call to a guy I used to know when he directed plays who had left the theatre racket, gone to business school, and now worked for Lehman Brothers.

  “We met later that week at a bar whose astronomical prices for drinks made me literally weak in the knees. The guy, Barry Manson, was gloating. He knew perfectly well that I could hardly afford to breathe in bars like that, let alone drink, then eat, then drink some more. But many theatre people who leave the business enjoy seeing those who hold on fail.

  “And my last show had definitely failed. The show criticized newspapers and was promptly murdered by said newspapers when it came to reviews. How we couldn’t see that coming during the months of rehearsal and the one hundred and twenty out-of-town performances was just one of those mysteries that happen when artists lock the door to the outside world while they work.

  “Well, Barry was drinking—really enjoying himself—having an expensive, swell time.

  “Finally I asked, ‘Could you make use of someone who could tell beyond all doubt whether a person was telling the truth?’

  “Barry gave me an odd look. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  “‘That’s not true.’

  “‘Hey! I made seven figures last year.’

  “‘Maybe six, maybe five—definitely not seven,’ I said.

  “‘What about eight figures?’

  “‘Come on, Barry, if you’d made eight figures you would have told me long ago—fuck, you’d have hired a skywriter, taken out a full page in the Times.’

  “‘True enough.’

  “‘Yes, true enough.’

  “One hundred and ninety dollars’ worth of drink later, Barry postulated a plan to use my ‘gift’ to review business presentations.

  “The first two ‘vettings,’ as Barry liked to call them, were basically successful. I actually sat in as they did the interviews. I caught one job applicant in a nontruth and confirmed the statements of the second. Barry managed to get tidbits of payment for me, but neither he nor I was thrilled with the arrangement. Something about the third vetting, of an attractive Puerto Rican woman, was fishy from start to finish. At the end of the interview I was outside smoking—yeah, I used to smoke too—and the woman approached me. ‘Confusing, huh?’

  “‘Excuse me?’ I was surprised that Barry was nowhere to be seen.

  “‘You were confused as to whether I was lying or not.’

  “I nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I’d have to agree with that.’

  “‘Do you know why I confused you?’

  “‘No. No, I don’t.’

  “‘Because I was telling the truth—but not my truth. Every answer I gave applied directly to my older sister.’

  “‘Every one?’

  “‘Even my name. I’m not Ellen Rios, I’m Susan Rios.’

  “Yes you are, I thought.

  “‘I’m thirty years old.’

  “‘No you’re not, and neither is your sister.’

  “Ms. Rios nodded. ‘Impressive. I’m a journalist.’

  “‘A nontruth.’ I said flatly.

  “‘Okay, I was a journalist. I used to work in your hometown.’

  “‘That’s true. Probably with the Globe and Mail. And you probably quote P.G. Wodehouse to the other fake Brits over there.’

  “‘Well, P.G. was important… ’

  “‘If you went to girls’ private school, wore tartan skirts that didn’t cover your knees and you had a thing for Jewish boys then, black boys now.’

  “‘Even more impressive. I’m interested.’

  “‘That’s true, but interested in what?’

  “‘Making you some real money.’

  “‘And why would you be interested in doing that?’

  “‘Because I’d split the proceeds.’

  “‘How?’

  “‘Seventy-five, twenty-five.’

  “‘Need I ask which end is mine?’

  “‘No need. I have the contacts you need—you don’t.’

  “‘I have the talent.’

  “‘But without contacts you have no way of converting that talent into cash. You can stay with your Mr. Manson and do parlour tricks—or move up to the big time.’

  “I jettisoned Barry as easily as clipping a fingernail and for six months pocketed five thousand dollars almost every other month, at which point it occurred to me that I had enough contacts of my own. My name was out there in the business ether. But, while I was making some money, Ms. Rios was getting rich—so over drinks one night I told her of our imminent divorce.

  “‘Well, I knew it would come sooner or later,’ she’d said.”

  Decker didn’t bother telling Yslan the rest. But he had said, “An untruth.” A real look of disappointment had crossed Ms. Rios’ handsome face. “What?”

  “I was hoping… forget it.”

  But Decker knew that she was hoping that he had come to care about her, which would have stopped his ability to see whether she was telling the truth or not. He shook hands, gave the waitress a fifty and set out on his own.

  He said, “And my gamble paid o
ff. Word of my ability spread through the New York business community, which inevitably got it to Chicago, then to Cincinnati, Wichita and throughout the American heartland—where money was thrown about for expertise with as much abandon as a baboon throwing its shit at a passing car on Chapman’s Peak. Know where that is?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cape Town.”

  “Never been.”

  “It’s pretty special. At any rate, I left her. The world pursued me, and thus my fee of up to fifteen thousand dollars in small bills was born.”

  “Okay. Good,” Yslan said. “What about this whole acting thing. How’d that start?”

  “I had a pretty female neighbor…”

  “…on Strathallan Boulevard in Toronto—Karen, wasn’t it?”

  “If you know, what the hell are you asking me for?”

  “Because I only know the facts. You followed her to an arts summer camp. She was a drama kid so you became one. Then you acted in high school and won a few awards from Sampsons.”

  “Simpsons. Simpsons Drama Festival.”

  “Best actor one year, best director the next. Then you were off to Rochester to work in a summer stock theatre. Did you have legal working papers?”

  “I was a kid.”

  “You crossed the border without papers just a few days ago. Is this a thing with you?”

  “Where’s this going?”

  “And you directed professionally at that summer stock for the first time. Of Mice and Men, as I remember.”

  “Be accurate, Special Agent Hicks. You don’t remember—you remember your notes.”

  “Right. Then off to the Yale School of Drama.”

  “After an undergraduate degree.”

  “Yeah, after that. And then from there to New York and the regional theatres.”

  “Well, you’ve got my résumé down pat. But I don’t hear a question.”

  “Sure, Mr. Roberts. Here’s the question: did you use your gift in any of that—before you were with this Barry guy?”

  “No,” he said. “My professional directing eye had gotten keen enough that I didn’t need it in my work.” He knew that his “keen eye” was a subset of the gift, but he wasn’t about to share that.

  “So when did you begin to use it again—exactly when?”

  He was going to tell her about his Broadway contract but decided against it. That was his sin. His private sin—which he felt led to his wife’s illness.

  He said, “When I sat at my wife’s side as her doctor told her that ‘your feelings of weakness and lack of balance are probably just temporary. Your body will right things soon.’”

  Decker had closed his eyes and would never forget the lines swirling in random patterns across his retinal screen. When the meeting was over he had asked his wife to wait for him outside. She’d looked at him funny but he’d said, “Do you really want to see how much this little consultation cost?” She’d smiled that wan smile of hers and slowly left the office. Once the door was closed, Decker turned on the doctor. “You’re not telling the truth.”

  “I am, Mr. Roberts; the body can right itself.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but what’s wrong with my wife?”

  The doctor signaled Decker to sit and pulled out a stack of test results. Although none were conclusive, all pointed toward a diagnosis of ALS.

  “Then why not tell her that?”

  “Because people who are told they may have a deadly illness too often succumb to the illness well before they have to. The brain is a more powerful determinant of health than the body.”

  Decker had nodded; with that he agreed. “But you believe she has ALS?”

  “I believe she will shortly begin to exhibit the opening symptoms of ALS, yes.”

  Decker had closed his eyes—four parallel lines, and tears.

  “Do you need a moment, Mr. Roberts?” the doctor asked, pushing a tissue box across the desk.

  No, Decker thought, I need a way out of dark room that has no door, that’s what I need—what my wife needs.

  Decker looked up—Special Agent Yslan Hicks was staring at him.

  “Now it’s your turn to answer a few questions,” Decker said.

  Yslan pulled her eyes away from his and said, “Okay, what do you want to know about me?”

  The door opened and Mr. T stuck his large head in. Yslan turned to him; “Not now.” The door shut. Decker sensed something odd in this too—but what?

  “What do you want to know?” Yslan prompted.

  “I’m going to write down three statements, and I want you to read them to me in such a way that I will believe you’re telling me the truth.”

  “Okay,” she said and slid a piece of paper and a pen across the table.

  He pulled the goosenecked lamp to him. The plug almost came out of the old wall socket. He wrote quickly on the paper and slid it back across the table to her. “Would you say that each of those three statements are truths?”

  She read the three statements.

  “Are they all truths?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Fine. Then read me those three statements and make me believe they’re truths.” Decker gently closed his eyes and leaned back.

  Yslan suddenly felt self-conscious and quickly realized that if she tried to make him—force him—to believe her, that she would sound false even if she were telling the truth. Suddenly a line that she had read over and over again in the transcripts that she had of Decker’s acting class lectures came into her head; “Think the thought, swallow the thought—say the stupid words.”

  And she did. “My name is Yslan Hicks and I work for the National Security Agency of the United States.”

  Three perfectly straight, parallel lines moved across Decker’s retinal screen.

  Decker nodded, “Next.”

  Yslan took a breath and said, “My job at the NSA is to keep synaesthetes safe.”

  A square within a square. Decker nodded.

  Yslan looked at the third statement, thought the thought, swallowed the thought, and said the stupid words: “I believe Decker Roberts is a synaesthete like the man who can recite pi out to 22,500 digits is a synaesthete.”

  For a long moment there were no figures at all on his retinal screen, then he felt a moment of bitter cold and something metal in his right hand, then squiggles from all four directions entered his screen. Special Agent Yslan Hicks was lying to him.

  35

  HAS ANYONE SEEN MIKE?

  “I’M NOT SAYING ANOTHER WORD UNTIL I CAN MAKE A phone call.”

  Yslan looked at him. She realized that something had changed. She handed him his phone and left the room.

  Decker quickly dialed Eddie’s number. Eddie’s voice mail picked up on the first ring, and Decker hit the agreed-upon code. Eddie plugged his phone into his computer and watched the sine wave on the screen. It stabilized and he picked up. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in New Jersey.”

  “The Garden State?”

  “So they claim.”

  “Good movie, great sound track.”

  “Yeah. Eddie, I need you to check something for me.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Yslan Hicks. Y-S-L-A-N. And Hicks as in Beverly Hillbillies kind of hicks. Claims she works for the National Security Agency.”

  “Okay. So what do you want to know?” he asked, glancing at the sine wave on the computer screen.

  “Does she? And what is that agency about, and what’s her story?” Decker heard a curse from Eddie’s end of the line. “What?”

  “Hang up. Hang up now.” Eddie slammed down his phone and shouted, “Fuck me with a crowbar!” as he stared at the sine wave on the screen: it was going nuts.

  Emerson Remi smiled as he clicked his handheld shut. New Jersey? Not usually classy enough for Ms. Yslan Hicks, but hell, close enough to drive. He finished his glass of sherry—he’d come to like sherry lately—and flipped his doorman a ten-dollar bill to get his car from the garage. He’d drive out—
surprise her—in New Jersey.

  Decker knocked on the door to his room. Yslan said, “It’s not locked.” Decker pushed open the door and saw Yslan and Mr. T at a small breakfast table. There was a bag of Chinese takeout on the counter and a plate of muffins beside a jar of organic peanut butter on the table. Mr. T had evidently just smothered a chocolate chip muffin in peanut butter. Even Guy Fieri wouldn’t eat that.

  “You’ve finished your phone call? That was quick.”

  “Yeah,” Decker said. “I need my computer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do.”

  Mr. T wiped his mouth. Yslan nodded and the large man stood from the table with a surprising grace and went into the next room. Decker noticed Yslan watching Mr. T closely—as one would a pet tiger. Moments later he came back with the computer.

  Decker took it and returned to the bedroom. He looked at the door; the light beneath the door was unbroken by the shadows of feet.

  His fingers raced across the keyboard as he called up the synaesthetes website. The outsiders’ part of the site came up with the usual dry and offhanded stuff. Decker punched in his access code—Sethcomehome. The painted black squares came up and began to pulse. Then:

  WELCOME FELLOW TRAVELER

  Decker supplied his second password and waited. The wormhole entrance to the chat room appeared. He didn’t enter—he went to the blocked room where Eddie’s message waited for him.

  He scanned it quickly. There was a small story about Yslan in front of a congressional committee defending her budget for tracking synaesthetes, her educational credentials, a confirmation of her place at the NSA, a quick bio of her more than modest southern roots, then a down and dirty bulleted list of the aboveground work and covert activities of the NSA.

  Decker read it a second time, then committed it to the abyss. So she was who she claimed she was. Southerners interested Decker. They had secrets; he had secrets.

  He closed the blocked room and couldn’t resist entering the chat room—where he lurked.

  Images in rapid succession filled the screen, the visual equivalents of screaming. Bloody medieval crucifixions followed and seemed to scorch across the monitor. Then written responses—some in grammatically ludicrous English, others in preposterous versions of other languages—then more wild images and screeds of colours and weird mathematical shapes.