Dreamer

by Daniel Quinn

At the beginning of their afternoon session, she reviewed her notes for a few minutes, then said, “Up till now the story you’ve told has been pretty well confined to your professional growth. You’ve told me how a child of a farming couple in Iowa came to be a freelance writer of Chicago. Your involvement with others seems to have taken a back seat to this process. You had no close friends. Your romantic affairs were casual, not deeply involving. But I gather that recently—in terms of your remembered life—this changed dramatically.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Well, three or four weeks ago.”

  “And strange things began happening at about the same time?”

  “That’s right.”

  She nodded. “Let’s hear about that now.”

  Greg sat thinking for a moment. “Oddly enough,” he said, “it seems to have begun with a dream.”

  * * *

  When he was finished, Greg watched the psychiatrist tug on an earlobe for a few minutes. Then he asked how all this fit into her theory that “Greg Donner” represented a fulfillment of Richard Iles’s wishes.

  “It doesn’t, of course. But it doesn’t exactly contradict it either. The menacing dreams, the dunning phone call, the episode of the gun represent Richard Iles’s anxieties on behalf of Greg Donner. He seemed to recognize that you were going to face some extreme confusion and disorientation when you woke up here—as you did, of course. Dreams and real life were sud-denly going to become intermingled, just as they did throughout this period in Chicago.” She paused, smiling thoughtfully. “Per-haps in his own way he was doing his best to get you used to it.”

  He frowned, dissatisfied. “That doesn’t explain what was happening in the dreams. Who was the follower?”

  “Well, who is it who lurks behind Gregory Donner?”

  “Oh . . . Richard Iles.”

  Agnes nodded.

  “But he was represented as a threat in the dreams.”

  “Don’t you in fact feel he’s a threat?”

  He laughed shortly. “Yes, I guess I do. Who was the old man Ginny was making love to in the last dream?”

  “That should be obvious. Who is the old man Ginny has been making love to?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Gregory Donner is the new man, isn’t he? Then who’s the old man?”

  Greg winced. “Richard Iles. Again.”

  “That’s how I read it. The dream expresses an anxiety that Ginny might prefer the old man to the new. But note that it doesn’t end there. Richard Iles seems pretty sure that she’ll ultimately come round to Greg Donner. This is, after all, what she did that last evening before you woke up here. She literally came round to Greg Donner.”

  “True.” Feeling exhausted, Greg pulled himself out of his chair. “Is there any reason for us to meet tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve got plenty to digest, and you . . . Why don’t you go to the movie tonight? It’s a favorite of mine, even if it is a bit of a relic—the Trevor Howard Pygmalion.”

  “Good lord,” Greg said heavily.

  The doctor cocked an eyebrow at him. “Is that significant?”

  He shook his head, suddenly weary of significance.

  Back in his room, he fell across the bed fully clothed and was asleep within seconds.

  It was nearly ten when he awoke hungry both for food and for company. He dialed Robbie’s room, got no answer, threw on fresh clothes, and hurried to the dining room. Robbie waved at him from his usual spot, and Greg joined him gratefully.

  Within seconds Alan was at his side, grinning cheerfully. “Get you a drink, Mr. Iles? Kitchen’s closed, I’m afraid.”

  “Closed,” Greg echoed bleakly.

  Alan folded his arms and gazed into the distance as if considering the fate of nations. “I guess I could make you a sandwich.”

  “That would be a blessing, Alan.”

  “Roast beef okay?”

  “Terrific.”

  With a sigh, Greg settled back to listen to Robbie’s latest speculations about the source of his relentlessly mysterious miseries.

  XXI

  GREG SPENT THE MORNING becoming vaguely and unsatisfactorily resentful. It wasn’t until he was waiting for Alan to bring him his second Bloody Mary that he identified the source of his resentment. It was a door: the door to Agnes’s office.

  Checking his watch, he saw it was twelve-thirty. Behind that door, Ginny would just be sitting down, would just be answering polite questions about her journey and the weather in New York. An hour or so, the doctor had said, beginning at twelve-thirty. At the latest, he’d have to be back in his room at one-thirty to be ready for her call.

  And then he would face the problem of the door.

  It would be closed when he arrived. Understandably, since Agnes’s talk with Ginny would be private. So. On arrival he was going to confront a closed door—and what was he going to do about it? Was he going to knock, like a schoolboy at the headmaster’s office? Absolutely not. He was going to barge right in and look like a lout.

  Of course, there was a way to sidestep the problem. When Agnes called, he could ask her to open the door before he arrived. He tested a dozen different ways of making the request, and all of them made him sound completely stupid.

  Therefore he would barge right in, and to hell with it.

  Who cared, anyway?

  He had more important things to think about.

  Such as the possibility that Ginny might not even recognize him. Such as the possibility that Ginny might take one look at him and shriek with horror.

  Suddenly it occurred to Greg that there was another alternative: he could knock on the door and then enter immediately, without waiting for an invitation. A neat compromise, it seemed to him—civil but not servile.

  Yes, he decided, that was the way to handle it.

  When he was summoned at last, an hour later, he found that the door to Agnes’s office was standing wide open.

  He walked in, his legs a bit wobbly, his smile a bit stiff, and saw that Agnes and Ginny were seated on opposite sides of the el-shaped sofa at the far side of the room. For a moment there was a certain blankness in their gaze as they looked up at him, as if he were an unexpected visitor. Then Agnes rose and gave him a welcoming smile. After a brief hesitation, Ginny did the same.

  As he approached them, Greg said, “Great Moments in Psychiatry, folks,” and held out a hand to Ginny. After a sidelong glance at Agnes, she took it and looked into his eyes. After a beat, she retrieved both her hand and her gaze.

  Smile in place, he felt his heart sink; it had been unmistakably a greeting of strangers.

  “Sit down over here,” Agnes commanded brightly, indicating her former place. Then she put Ginny back where she’d been and sat down beside her.

  Greg said, “Hello, Ginny.”

  She tried out a smile. “Hello, Di—” The smile faltered and her eyes flickered to Agnes and back again. “You really want me to call you . . . Greg?”

  “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter a whole hell of a lot, Ginny,” he said, amazed at the serene (and wholly false) assurance in his tone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Dr. Jakes explained. It’s just that, after calling you Dick for all these years.” She gave him a feeble smile and a helpless shrug.

  “It really doesn’t matter, Ginny. I’m going to have to get used to being Dick Iles sooner or later, so I might as well start now.” He shot Agnes an accusing look that said, Aren’t you supposed to be running this show?

  She cleared her throat. “Greg, I’ve explained to Ginny what’s happened here, and I think she understands the situation well enough.” She sent Ginny a glance and got back a confirming nod. “What she needs right now is just a little time to digest it all.”

  “Agnes, I have the feeling you’re trying to tell me something. What is it?”

  She gave him an indulgent smile. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I knew you’d want a
chance to say hello to Ginny, but that’s all it’s going to be for today. We’re going to give her a little time to adjust to all this. We’ll meet here again tomorrow afternoon at three.”

  “I see,” Greg said. Examining each face in turn, he had to struggle against blurting out: Why do I begin to get the distinct impression that news of my extraordinary recovery has not been the cause of giddy rejoicing here? Instead he politely asked Ginny where she was staying.

  “At that . . . resort,” she replied, not looking at him.

  “Griffin’s Lodge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll walk you to it.”

  “Oh. Fine,” Ginny said, standing up. She looked surprised and relieved to be getting away so easily.

  Agnes was frowning as if she’d momentarily lost track of the conversation, and Greg said to her, “I’d like to see you for a few minutes when I get back.”

  “Of course. I’ve cleared the whole afternoon for you. I was expecting to . . .”

  The words faltered and died away as she watched Greg take Ginny’s arm and steer her toward the door.

  “Ginny, what is it really?”

  They were walking a graveled path that would take them the long way round the complex to the parking lot.

  “Really,” she said, with a despairing laugh. “I like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s just the sort of question . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s your kind of question—Dick’s.”

  “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.”

  She shook her head without looking up. “If you think I’m not really confused, you’d better think again.”

  They walked in silence for a hundred yards, then he stopped and said, “Ginny, look at me.” Her glance touched his face like the wing of a moth and fluttered away.

  “Please, Ginny, look at me.” She looked at him. “Who do you see?”

  “I see . . . Dick Iles.”

  “I don’t know who Dick Iles is, Ginny. I don’t have a single memory of his. I don’t know where he grew up or went to school. I don’t know what books he likes or what television programs he watches. I don’t know how or where he met you.”

  Ginny blinked. “Then you don’t know me.”

  “Christ, didn’t Dr. Jakes explain this? Richard Iles couldn’t cope with the memories of his own life, so he created a whole new set for a man who could take his place—a man called Greg Donner. He got rid of how and where he met you, but he didn’t get rid of you. I met you my own way, but it was you I met, Ginny, you I fell in love with. Don’t you see?”

  She studied his face as if it were a puzzling photograph. “You seem to be telling me that you fell in love with a woman in your mind, an imaginary woman.”

  “No, Ginny. I fell in love with the woman Richard Iles remembered. He blocked out everything but you, and I fell in love with you. You are . . . my gift from Richard.”

  She gave her head a little shake and turned away. “You talk like Dick. You think like Dick.”

  “‘What’s that mean, Ginny?”

  Her eyes closed. “I’ve heard you say that a thousand times, in just that hurt tone. ‘What’s that mean, Ginny?’

  “God, Ginny. And what does that mean?”

  She looked down into the palms of her hands, and his heart lurched as he remembered the gesture.

  “Try to understand, Dick . . . Greg . . . I’ve had to get used to the idea that you might be here in this place for the rest of your life. I had to begin to think of our life together as . . . over.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I’m in a state of shock.” She took a step back as he reached for her arm. “Please don’t ask anything of me right now, Dick. God, and please don’t look so crushed—please. I just need some time to sort myself out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Please give me that time, Dick. I mean really give it to me. Don’t make me feel like I’m stealing it from you.”

  He sighed. “I’m still living in a world in which, five days ago you spent the night in my arms. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me it’s all right for me to take the time I need.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, managing a feeble smile. “If I weren’t such a klutz, I’d have known you’d need it.”

  They continued along the path, and, groping for some neutral subject, he asked her what sort of place Griffin’s Lodge was.

  “Oh, plush. Pretentious.”

  “Maybe we could get together there if you wanted to talk,” Greg suggested.

  “Yes, that’s a thought.”

  “In fact, we could have a drink here in the lounge before you leave. Just talk.”

  “I don’t have any ‘just talk’ in me right now, Dick. Sorry—Greg.”

  “I don’t care what you call me, Ginny.” He grinned. “Just so long as you call me.” She reminded him that they were scheduled to meet in Dr. Jakes’s office at three the following afternoon. “I know, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude all other contact.”

  “True,” she said, giving him a smile that didn’t commit her to anything. Having arrived at her car, she let him open the door for her. A moment later she was gone.

  “All right, Doctor Jakes,” he began with deadly emphasis, “just what the hell happened here?”

  “Happened?”

  “Come on, Agnes, don’t play games with me. I want the blow-by-blow account.” They were sitting in their usual places in her office, facing each other in a pair of Eames chairs.

  “Frankly,” she said, “I don’t think a blow-by-blow account is what you want at all.”

  “No? What do I really want?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you see if you can figure that out for yourself?”

  With a sigh, Greg pulled himself out of his chair and went over to the shelves arrayed with her collection of antique toys. He picked up a 1930s “G-Man Pursuit Car” in luscious red, purple, and blue and ran it along the shelf, producing an angry crackle of machine-gun fire.

  His hand still poised on the car, he said, “Ginny didn’t seem thrilled to have me back among the living.”

  “I agree. She wasn’t exactly overcome with delight.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “This isn’t a branch of the Gestapo, Greg. She wasn’t here for interrogation.”

  “I know, but . . . Didn’t she say anything, give any kind of hint as to what she was thinking?”

  “My feeling is that she was careful not to say anything, not to give any kind of hint.”

  “Why?”

  “Again, I don’t know. Conjecturally, because her thoughts were in a complete turmoil. As yours were the morning you woke up and found yourself here instead of in an apartment in Chicago.”

  “The two things aren’t comparable.”

  “Not precisely, of course. But consider this. Ginny arrives here not knowing what to expect, is told that the personality she’s known for many years as her husband has vanished—possibly for all time—to be replaced by that of an utter stranger. Would you necessarily and without hesitation identify that as a cause for rejoicing?”

  “No, but . . . She knows her husband’s personality hasn’t been replaced by that of an utter stranger.”

  “How does she know that?”

  “She said so. When we were walking to her car. She said, ‘You are Dick. You think like Dick, talk like Dick.’”

  “I see.”

  “Come on, Agnes. Haven’t you talked to her about her life with Richard Iles? Don’t you know where they stood with each other?”

  She sighed. “Greg, the families of psychiatric patients come in two varieties. One variety understands that what we do here requires their active collaboration. The other variety drops off their children or spouses like appliances to be repaired, and
when we try to question them they politely or impolitely tell us to mind our own business.”

  “You’re saying that Ginny belongs to that variety?”

  “Yes, but with considerable justification. After all, we knew what had traumatized Richard Iles—something intolerable happened to him in Russia. It had nothing to do with Ginny. That being the case, we had no more reason to probe into his relationship with her than if he’d been concussed in an auto accident.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But . . .”

  “But didn’t we talk about the things you want to know? We might have, but we didn’t. She just didn’t take me into her confidence about such things.”

  Greg picked up the “G-Man Pursuit Car” and peered in at the smiling, untroubled face behind the machine gun.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  XXII

  THE DINING ROOM WAS EMPTY when Greg went in to lunch the next day. Checking his watch, he saw why: it was only eleven-thirty. Alan appeared after a moment, and Greg ordered a Bloody Mary.

  When the waiter reappeared a few minutes later carrying a telephone, Greg thought he’d somehow misunderstood his order. Alan plugged the phone in and set it down before him, just as if it were a drink, and Greg gave him a baffled look.

  “You have a phone call, Mr. Iles,” Alan explained.

  “Ah!” Greg cried, feeling like a complete fool.

  When Alan was out of sight, Greg picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Greg?”

  “Ginny?”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about your suggestion.”

  “My suggestion.”

  “Yes, Uh. I think I’d better be honest with you about something. I’m not exactly looking forward to that meeting this afternoon.”

  “I see,” Greg said. “May I ask why not?”

  “I don’t think Dr. Jakes has a very high opinion of me.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I think she thinks that . . .

  “Go on.”

  “She thinks I neglected you.”

  “Neglected me. How?”

  “She thinks I should have been a little more on hand.”

  “Ginny, you’re being very oblique here. Where should you have been a little more on hand?”