The Syndrome

by John Case

  Here, no expense had been spared. The reception area that led into the various offices was calculated to create a very particular impression, one of enormous gravitas and means. At once lavish and understated, the area was carpeted in a taupe material so dense that it dragged at the feet, as if the floor had been dusted with matter from a neutron star. A pair of travertine marble columns upheld a fourteen-foot ceiling from which shafts of indirect lighting tunneled to the floor. Luminist oils hung from the walls within sight of a reception desk that was itself a work of art, a shimmering walnut crescent whose burnished surface glowed amid the blinking diodes of the telephone console. Here and there, some richly-grained leather chairs, a spectacularly tufted Chesterfield couch, a glass-and-brass coffee table with copies of Granta and the Scientific American on its surface.

  Slough’s suite was locked, of course, so she put the envelope on the reception desk, and went back to her office for her purse. On the way out, she stuck her head in the cubicle across the hall.

  “Hey, Bets—I’m outta here.” Bette was a first-year, too, and, like Adrienne immured in work.

  With a wince and a moan, Bette got to her feet. “Jesus,” she said, “I’m seizing-up. I’ve got to remind myself to move once an hour.” She paused, and a hopeful look dawned on her. “What d’you say, Scout? Want to go out for sushi? I’m dying in here.”

  Adrienne shook her head. “Got a date with my sister. Our once a month bonding session.”

  Bette frowned. “How’s she doing, anyway?”

  Adrienne shrugged. “Still crazy. Seeing a shrink, two or three times a week—though, if you want to know the truth, I think he’s as much a part of the problem as the solution. Anyway… she wants to talk. Says it’s importante.”

  “Uhhh-oh.”

  Adrienne smiled ruefully. “Tell me about it.”

  Ordinarily, Adrienne walked or used public transportation—as well she might considering that she was almost seventy-grand in the hole to various institutions of higher learning. But tonight, she was so tired, and late, that she looked for a taxi. And, in this, her inexperience showed; it took almost five minutes before her tentative wave was acknowledged as a summons.

  The man behind the wheel was an attacking style driver, and as they rocketed along, Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut for blocks at a time. Then they were there, and the fare was seven bucks, about twice what she’d expected. For a moment, she was inclined to argue with the Nigerian behind the wheel, but there was no point in that. The zonal system that determined cab fares in the District was inscrutable, and meant to be.

  As she entered the building, the doorman recognized her—sort of. “Hey—you’re Nico’s sister, right?”

  “Adrienne.” She smiled. “Will you buzz her? Let her know I’m on my way up?”

  “Sure thing.” He waved her past him toward the elevators, which surprised her by wheezing open as soon as she touched the Up button. But when she got to the apartment, Nikki didn’t answer. Adrienne stood at the door, pushed the doorbell again, and held it down with her thumb, thinking Maybe she’s in the shower… Listening, she thought she could hear Jack barking, faintly, as if he was locked in the kitchen, a steady, distant cadence of woof, woof, woof. But from Nikki, there was nothing. Adrienne looked at her watch: it was almost 8:30.

  In a way, she was more relieved than annoyed. She was out the cab fare that she’d spent, but she was looking forward—rainbow forward—to taking a bath and going to bed. Nikki had either forgotten their date or, what was more likely, she’d gone out for cigarettes or something, and gotten hung up.

  Whatever she was doing—Adrienne gave the doorbell yet another long push—she’d given Adrienne a way out. As she walked back to the elevator, she could imagine the telephone conversation that they’d have in the morning.

  But I was there—ask your doorman!

  I was only gone ten minutes!

  I rang and rang!

  I ran out of butter!

  How was I supposed to know? You didn’t leave a note.

  Her sister. As much as Adrienne loved her, the truth was that she was never comfortable in her company. She was always waiting for the conversation to take a wrong turn—as it inevitably did in the course of an evening. Being with Nikki was like driving on a tire that had a flat. It worked okay for a little while, however nervous the driver might be, but then everything would start to wobble and… you had to pull off the road. Not that she wasn’t sympathetic. She was as tender and caring as she could be, and she would have been happy to humor Nikki if her sister’s delusions had taken any other form. But the sexual abuse she imagined was so bizarre and theatrical, so patently crazy, that it was impossible to play along. Especially for someone who was supposed to have been victimized by the same unspeakable acts.

  If a guy in a hood had screwed me when I was five, Adrienne thought, I think I’d remember it. The elevator doors slid open, and she stepped inside, then pressed the button for the ground floor.

  The subject was more or less verboten now, a thing between Nikki and her therapist. Adrienne couldn’t talk to her about it without losing her temper, a circumstance that was not lost on Nikki. According to her, Adrienne was “in denial.” She’d “repressed” it all. And as bad as that was for Adrienne (or so the argument went), it was at least as bad for Nikki. Where was her “validation”?

  Gimme a break…

  Then again, even this craziness wouldn’t have been so bad if Nikki had seemed—more like herself. But the Nikki who lived in the Watermill wasn’t the glam’ and funny sister that Adrienne would have done anything for. This Nikki was spacy, and getting more so, day by day.

  Because of Berlin, Adrienne thought, because of what happened there.

  There was a time, just after her sister graduated from high school, when everything was okay with Nikki, even though Adrienne hardly ever saw her. Against Deck and Marlena’s advice, Nikki had taken a bus to New York with the dream of becoming a model. Deck said she’d be back in a month, but to everyone’s surprise (except Nikki’s own), she was successful almost immediately. Within a year of turning nineteen, she had a contract with the Marrakesh Agency and a five-room apartment in Soho. She sent postcards to Adrienne from places like Jamaica, and called every week, where the sound of her voice—Hey, A! riding on a quiet giggle—made her little sister’s day.

  It seemed to Adrienne, then, that Nikki was living the good life, and so she was, but it was a fast life, too. Returning from a shoot in the Cayman Islands, her bags were searched at JFK. A couple of Thai sticks tumbled out, and that was that: two hundred hours of community service, a thousand-dollar fine and no more work with Marrakesh.

  Nikki could have stuck it out, of course, but she didn’t. She hit the road and kept on going, saying she was “on an adventure.” Adrienne got postcards and calls from just about everywhere. In fact, the first thing she asked whenever her sister called was, “Where are you?” She used to pull out the Atlas to see where she was and read up about it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, imagining Austin, Vancouver, and Telluride. Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

  Then—nothing. Adrienne was a sophomore at the University of Delaware when her sister stopped writing and calling. Deck and Marlena did their best to find her, but there wasn’t much they could do, really. They made calls, placed ads, and hired a private investigator—all to no avail. Then Marlena died. Adrienne went to law school, and not long after, Deck, too, passed away. For the first time, Adrienne was truly alone in the world.

  Two more years passed before she saw Nikki again, and that was by accident. Adrienne was in the Nine West store at Georgetown Mall, buying a pair of clogs, when she turned to leave—and there she was, as beautiful as ever, standing across the store, twisting her foot to examine the way a pair of sandals looked. For years, Adrienne had dreamed about this reunion—and when it happened, it took her breath away. It was hard to explain how right it seemed to see her sister after all those imagined sightings, after all the times when she’
d thought it might be Nikki, but it turned out not to be. Finding Nikki, seeing Nikki—it was a moment that fell perfectly into place, as naturally as the last harmonic chord in a great piece of music.

  And there was no doubt that this was her, not a moment’s hesitation despite the fact that they hadn’t seen each other in nearly ten years. She’d tiptoed hesitantly down the aisle, shoes in hand, and stopped in front of her to ask, “Nikki?” And Nikki had looked up, frowning a little—and then her face had split into the biggest, widest grin. And the two of them were screaming and hugging, Nikki shouting: “This is my baby sister!”

  As Nikki told it, she’d been tripping with her boy-toy in Berlin, a German kid named Carsten Riedle, and she overdosed. No Tristan, young Riedle left her for dead, drooling on the floor of the family’s townhouse in one of the city’s most fashionable neighborhoods.

  The Riedles’ housekeeper found her in a coma the following morning, and sent for an ambulance. Hospitalized, she remained unconscious for the better part of a week and, when she awoke, remembered almost nothing. Weeks went by, and then a month. Finally, she was removed to a clinic in Switzerland where they had a doctor on staff who’d had success with cases similar to her own. The clinic also treated substance abuse and since Nikki’s troubles had started with an overdose, it was considered the ideal place for her rehabilitation.

  While her doctors expected the amnesia to pass of its own accord, she remained Patient X to herself and everyone else. Meanwhile, queries to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn—Nikki’s English was clearly American—proved fruitless. According to embassy officials, no missing persons reports had been filed that would fit her description. Neither had anyone found a passport with her picture on it. Which meant that her nationality could not be established. Next!

  And then it happened. On a warm spring day, as she walked from the clinic toward the marina and its restaurants, Nikki saw a poster on the wall emblazoned with an ad for Far and Away. Cruise and Kidman were locked in an embrace, and… Nicole. It all came flooding back. She remembered her name. She remembered Carsten Riedle. She even remembered the music that was playing on the CD when the scumbag shot her up. Alanis Morissette. Jagged Little Pill.

  Two days later, she had a lawyer, and two weeks after that, a settlement: in exchange for the fräulein’s agreement to disappear from their son’s life and to forgo legal action against the family, the Riedles would establish a trust fund in her behalf. And so it was done: half-a-million dollars. Exit the Riedles.

  The elevator opened on the lobby, and Adrienne stepped out, still thinking about Nikki. She’d always wanted to ask her, When did you remember me? Was it there, in Switzerland, or later? And: why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you come home? Not to mention the questions she had for the clinic, such as: Who was the idiot they talked to at the Embassy? Because Deck and Marlena had called the State Department repeatedly. Knowing that Nikki’s last known address was in Germany, they had made several inquiries, asking if an American woman of her description had run afoul of the police, or been in an accident. Somehow, Nikki’s plight had slipped through the cracks. It was infuriating, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it.

  And, anyway, it wasn’t the same Nikki who’d come back—not really. It was like, Nikki-Lite or something.

  Almost furtively, Adrienne glanced around the lobby, half expecting to see her sister—and feeling a guilty rush of pleasure when she did not. Crossing the lobby, she reflected on the fact that her affection for her sister was more nostalgic than real, her contacts driven as much by duty as they were by affection. That was wrong, but she wasn’t going to beat herself up about it. Nikki wasn’t just disturbed; she was disturbing.

  What was always revealed between the kiss hello and the appetizer was something that Adrienne preferred to forget. Nikki was not getting better, she was getting worse. And this shrink she was seeing was not helping. Quite the opposite, in fact. During the time that Nikki had been seeing him, she’d gotten loopier and loopier, ranting about things that not only had never happened—but never could have happened.

  And seeing her sister like this, Adrienne wanted to do something about it, but—

  “You leaving?” The doorman was holding the door open for her.

  Adrienne shrugged. “I guess she went out.”

  The doorman looked puzzled. Shook his head and frowned. “I don’t think so—I would have seen her. You check the laundry room?”

  Adrienne paused in front of the door, then turned around. “No—what a good idea.” Forcing a smile, she took the stairs down to the basement, where she could smell the room before she saw it. The heated sweetness of the fabric softener, the sharp tang of the bleach. She peered inside, but there was no one, the small room desolate under the fluorescent lights, its banks of machines still, the round eyes of the dryers blank.

  So it was back up the stairs, where the doorman was waiting with a chagrined look on his face.

  “Hey,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “I forgot to look. She left a note for you.” He handed it to her.

  As Adrienne took the envelope, a feeling of foreboding came over her. Opening it, she felt a surge of adrenaline sparkle through her veins, and the hair stood up on her arms. For a moment, it was almost as if she were standing on a cliff, looking down. And then the note, so short she didn’t have to read it.

  A—

  Couldn’t stick it any

  longer. Rainbow sorry.

  Nikki

  Chapter 7

  The doorman’s hands were shaking as he inserted a master key in the lock to Nikki’s door. Over and over, under his breath, he kept repeating, “Y’never know, y’never know.” Then the lock turned, the door swung open, and Adrienne blew past, eyes wild.

  “Nikki?” The apartment was dark, the dog barking, somewhere off to the right. “Nikki?”

  Ramon’s hands felt for the light switch, but nothing happened when he flicked it on. He gave Adrienne a bewildered look. “I think—maybe the fuse blew,” he said.

  “Fix it,” Adrienne ordered as she stepped deeper into the darkness of the apartment.

  “Breaker’s in the kitchen,” Ramon replied, “but I’ll need a flashlight. You think she had one?”

  Adrienne didn’t say anything. She could hardly breathe.

  “There’s—there’s a utility room down the hall.” The doorman turned, then broke into a run.

  “Nikki?” She could feel the hot tears rolling down her cheeks as she moved, step by step, through the living room, hands extended, just above her waist. She didn’t want to trip over… “Nikki?”

  The only light in the apartment was the ambient, neon glow from outside the windows. That, and the light from the hall. She could make out shapes—the couch and the table, the big leather club chair. But… “Nikki!?”

  Jack was barking louder now, his feet scrabbling against the kitchen door. As her eyes began to adjust, she maneuvered her way toward the sound and, finding the door, pulled it open. The dog burst into the room and, yipping, chased his tail in a frantic little circle, then jumped up against her. “Down,” she ordered, at once startled and annoyed.

  With a yip, Jack bolted through the living room to the hallway where, once again, she could hear him scrabbling at a door—this time trying to get in rather than out. She followed the dog, thinking how silent the apartment was with the electricity out. The only noise was the faint hum of traffic, and the scratching sound that Jack was making. Then he began to bark, and a shaft of light crashed into her eyes.

  “I found a flashlight,” Ramon told her.

  Adrienne raised a hand in front of her eyes, squinted and blinked, helpless as a deer. Ramon swung the light in a figure eight through the rooms, and Adrienne’s eyes followed it, afraid of what she’d see. But there was nothing.

  “I’ll get the dog,” she said. “You get the lights.”

  Ramon nodded, and strode toward the kitchen, taking the flashlight with him. Adrienne felt her way toward the bathroom doo
r, feeling as if she were about to be seasick. “Jack,” she said, “c’mon.” But his scrabbling became even more frantic, now that she was beside him. Relenting, she opened the door to the bath, and stepped into the pitch-dark.

  From habit, she flipped the light switch on and off, then on and off again, but nothing happened. Jack was mewling a few feet away, and the only sound was the drip, drip, drip of water. “Nikki?” Silence. Nothing.

  And then, the doorman calling from the kitchen—“Got it!” Suddenly, the lights flashed on, and a lonely trumpet accelerated from 0 to 80 decibels in half a second, pealing through the now bright air above where Nikki lay, drowned and burned in a tub of gray water. Eyes wide in a look of mild surprise.

  The moths rose up in her stomach—even as the world fell away from her feet, and Adrienne, sinking, felt a flash of pain at the side of her head. And then it was dark again.

  When she awoke, a policeman was sitting in a chair at her side, talking quietly into a cell-phone. The lights were on. Her head was pounding. And she was lying on a couch, with a pillow under her feet.

  “Hey,” she said, complaining and entreating, all at once. Leaning on an elbow, she sat up. Slowly.

  “You hit your head when you fainted,” the cop explained.

  Fainted? What ‘fainted’? She’d been standing in—the bathroom. Suddenly, she remembered the long, peeling jazz horn, and the image of her sister’s eyes flashed before her own. A sob rose in her throat.

  “There was nothing anyone could do,” the cop told her. “It must have been instantaneous.”

  She made a noise somewhere between a groan and a whimper. Her head dropped into her hands, and the tears rolled.

  “The doorman called 911. My partner and I were just up the street.”

  For the first time, she noticed a second policeman standing near the doorway, talking quietly with Ramon.