by Daniel Quinn
“Come on, there’s an elevator over here.” He strode across the room and Agnes reluctantly followed. Arriving at the far wall, he had to spend a few moments looking for the remembered red button set in the apparently seamless expanse of metal. When at last the elevator door slid open, he started to step inside and nearly walked into a second door that was blocking his way. He drew back, startled.
And saw that the door was his own front door. He turned around and saw Agnes frowning up at him solemnly, framed by the familiar setting of his apartment.
“Oh,” he said. “We’re back.”
“Richard,” Agnes said firmly, “we never left. You led me over here, poked at the doorjamb a couple times, then almost smashed your skull walking into your own front door.”
“Oh no,” he replied, shaking his head violently. “No, no. We were at the Celestial Mirror.”
“Richard, for Christ’s sake, wake up! You were hallucinating!”
But Greg went on shaking his head. “No, I see what it is. It’s a matter of will. I wanted to be at the observatory and you wanted to be here. I wasn’t prepared for that, so you won.”
“Richard, please . . .”
“Let’s try something else,” he said, and closed his eyes.
And immediately felt himself falling backwards.
“Whoops!” he said, and started waving his arms in a frantic effort to catch his balance. As he continued to plunge, he tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids seemed to be as heavy as lead.
Suddenly his fall was broken and his head snapped forward.
Someone beside him said, “Had a little nap, huh?”
XXXXI
GREG BLINKED, LOOKED AROUND groggily, and realized that he was riding in the front seat of a car.
The driver of the car glanced at him, and Greg recognized the battered face of Robbie Orsini, his depressed friend at the Glenhaven Oaks Sanatorium.
“Everything okay?” Robbie asked.
Greg looked into the back seat and saw that it was piled with boxes and clothes bags. They were just returning from the expedition they’d made into town to replace Richard Iles’s wardrobe with one of his own choosing.
“This isn’t right,” Greg said.
Robbie glanced at him, his eyebrows raised.
“This isn’t where I wanted to be.”
Frowning, Robbie drove in silence for a few moments. Then he grumbled, “Kid, nobody exactly wants to be here.”
“That’s not what I mean. This is just a dream.”
Robbie shook his head. “Take it easy, Dick. We’ll be back in a few minutes. You can talk to Dr. Jakes about it.”
Greg hunched down in his seat, closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on returning to his apartment at the Hancock Center, but he felt panicked and disoriented, and the car just went on jouncing under him.
In a few minutes they turned into a long driveway, wove their way through the sanatorium’s park-like grounds, and came to a halt at a side entrance. Robbie got out, opened the back door, and started gathering up packages.
“Leave ‘em,” Greg said.
Robbie straightened up, gave him a disgusted look, and said, “What the hell’s gotten into you, Dick?”
“Oh, fuck it,” Greg said, and started grabbing things.
When they reached Greg’s room, they dropped everything on the bed, and Robbie said, “Hey, you want me to see if Dr. Jakes is available?”
“Yeah, Robbie. That’d be fine.”
Looking back from the doorway, he saw that Greg was standing at the window, staring gloomily out at the blue hills.
“You oughtta hang this stuff up so it doesn’t get wrinkled, Dick.”
Greg turned to him with a sour laugh and said he’d take care of it.
He was just hanging up the last of his new clothes when he became aware that Agnes was standing behind him, watching him gravely.
“Well?” he snarled.
“Tell me what you’re doing, Richard.”
“I’m putting away the goddamned clothes, Agnes.”
“What about those?” She nodded toward a tangled pile of neckties at his feet.
He stared at them for a few moments, as if trying to place them. Then he turned around and saw that they were standing in the bedroom of his Hancock Center apartment.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m . . .”
“Back? Richard, believe me, you never left. After you closed your eyes, you stumbled backwards into a sofa. You sat there for a while talking to . . . someone, then you got up, walked behind the sofa, and it looked like you were picking something up. Then you came in here. Where did you think you were?”
He shook his head, preoccupied.
“I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing wrong.”
He turned and strode out of the room.
As he entered the living room, Agnes caught him by the arm. “This has to stop, Richard. I mean it. You’re playing a sort of Russian roulette with your sanity, and one of these times . . . you’re not going to make it back.”
Greg gazed down at her.
And behind them one of the huge windows exploded outward. For ten seconds they stood transfixed, listening to broken glass cascade down the sloping sides of the building to the concrete below.
“You can’t pretend that didn’t happen, Agnes. Your eyes gave you away.”
“Richard . . .”
“Watch.” He nodded toward a heavy black leather chair, and it began to glide toward them.
“Sit down, Agnes.”
When it was a few feet away, it suddenly dipped, pushed up a wrinkle of carpet, and pitched forward.
Before he could move, one of its floppy cushions sailed through the air and wrapped itself around his face. Staggering under the impact, he tried to pull it away, but it clung like a plastic film, blinding him, smothering him.
As he wrestled with it, the absurdity of what was happening struck him, and in spite of himself, he barked out a laugh—and was immediately sorry he had. Having expended the breath, he found he couldn’t get it back: his stomach shriveled in panic, and he sank to his knees.
The cushion seemed to have no substance, seemed to have disappeared. He felt his hands stirring the air in front of his face—air that he couldn’t get into his lungs. He clawed at his mouth. There was nothing there, nothing between him and the oxygen he needed; it was as if he’d simply forgotten how to breathe.
It’s just a dream, he screamed without sound.
He felt his fingers actually fumbling in his mouth, touching his teeth, his mouth—yet no air followed. He simply couldn’t make it come.
Wake up!
The blackness around him turned blood red and he fell to the floor, his arms leaden weights.
For a few moments the roar of blood filled his ears like a raging sea, then, as he lost his hold on consciousness, it began to subside into a murmur of jumbled voices.
What happened? Is he all right? Shouldn’t you . . . ? Raise his head. Please move back! Here, let me . . . Loosen his collar.
Suddenly an icy column of air rushed down Greg’s throat, and his lungs seized it greedily, surged up for more.
It’s okay, it’s okay. What happened? Take it easy. Shouldn’t someone . . . ? It’s okay. He’s a doctor. Is he all right? . . . heart attack?”
His eyes fluttered open, and the room swirled around him, faces passing like figures on an airborne carousel. Gradually the carousel slowed and stopped unsteadily, and he recognized the closest face, peering down at him from a few inches away.
It was Bruce’s face.
And behind that, over Bruce’s shoulder, another face: Ginny’s.
Rolling his head from side to side, he saw a dozen others that were dimly familiar.
“I’m awake,” he whispered.
He tried to push himself up on an elbow, but Bruce pressed him back to the floor. “Just take it easy for a minute,” he said.
“What happened?” Greg asked.
Bruce smiled apologetically
. “Well . . . it looks like you fainted.”
“Fainted?”
“We were talking, and I showed you a snapshot. And while you were looking at the snapshot, you . . . collapsed.”
Greg looked around again, wonderingly.
“This is the party?”
“The party?” Bruce laughed gently. “Yes, this is the party.”
“Let me see the snapshot.”
“That’s nothing. Just take it easy.”
“Show me the snapshot. Please?”
Shaking his head, Bruce retrieved the snapshot from the floor beside Greg, smoothed it out, and handed it to him.
He held it up, blinked a couple of times to get his eyes in focus, and peered at it without comprehension. Suddenly he remembered what Bruce had said about it: The shadows make it a bit of a puzzle. It’s like an optical illusion. You have to sort of twiddle your eves to get the right of it.
The last time he’d twiddled his eyes to get the right of it, he’d seen himself bending over Franklin Winters with a pistol in his hand. This time he saw a young man in thirties clothes offering a plate of sandwiches to a girl sitting on a blanket under a tree.
He handed the snapshot back and said, “I’m sorry I crumpled it.”
“It’s nothing, Greg. Forget about it.”
Greg looked up at Ginny.
“So you’re here.”
“I’m here, love. How are you feeling?”
“A little shaky.”
“When was the last time you had a checkup?” Bruce asked.
“I don’t know. A decade or so.”
“Time for another, I’d say.”
Greg nodded.
The crowd around him was breaking up quickly now, as it occurred to everyone that, like the excitement, the party was over, and it was time to go home. Back on his feet, Greg said good night to the last of them, closed the door, and turned to Ginny.
“Still feel like going out?” he said with a smile.
They’d planned to go to the Drake for a nightcap while the caterer cleared up.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “You’re going nowhere but to bed.”
“I suppose that would be prudent,” he agreed with a sigh. “Bring me a drink?”
“Do you think you ought to?”
“I’m all right, Ginny. Just a little wobbly in the legs.”
“All right. You get into bed and I’ll bring it.”
When she came to him a few minutes later, he asked her how long he’d been out on the floor.
“Couple of minutes. Maybe three.”
“Huh. Would you like to know how I spent those two or three minutes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sit down here beside me.”
She sat down and Greg told her what he meant.
When he was finished, Ginny went on staring broodily into space.
“So?” he asked.
“So what?”
“You’re obviously thinking something.”
“I don’t know what. Except . . .”
“Yes?”
“You told Agnes at one point that the dream had to start before . . .”
“Before I killed Franklin.”
“Yes.”
“But obviously it didn’t.”
“No.”
Ginny frowned, dissatisfied.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m worried about you, goddamn it!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly. I guess I’m worried that you’re going to make something out of this.”
“Shouldn’t I make something out of it?”
Ginny stood up abruptly and started pacing the floor.
“That’s what’s worrying me. You’re making something out of it, and I don’t know what it is.”
“I’m just thinking about it, that’s all. I don’t see how I can help doing that. It was just exactly like the dreams I had when . . . when your father was alive.”
“Goddamn it!” She sat down on the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. “You know he’s dead.”
“I know, Ginny. I’m not crazy.”
“Then what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know what to think. I really don’t.”
“Do you think he’s pulling stunts from beyond the grave?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, Ginny. I just know that it happened, and I’m trying to figure it out.”
“Look, will you do me a favor? Don’t try to figure it out. Just leave it alone. It was just a dream, for Christ’s sake!”
Greg nodded, his face expressionless.
Ginny sighed. “All right. Do you want to know what I think?”
He nodded again.
“When you looked at that snapshot of Bruce’s, you saw yourself bending over Franklin with a gun, when in fact it was a picture of someone else entirely, doing something else entirely. Right?”
“Right.”
“Greg, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out something like that. After all these years, your subconscious—your guilty conscience, whatever you want to call it—snuck up behind you and gave you a whack on the head.”
“Yes, that’s about what I thought myself.”
“Time for a little self-punishment here, Greg.”
“Yes. You mean the dream? You think the dream was a little self-punishment?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Don’t you see? You punished yourself exactly the way Franklin would have punished you if he’d been alive.”
Greg laughed mirthlessly. “Yes, that’s it. That’s very good. Let me up, I’m going to have another drink.”
She stood up and followed him into the kitchen. As he got out the ice and the bottle, he said, “It’s amazing how everyone keeps coming up with explanations for everything—all completely plausible, all completely contradictory. Agnes Tillford gave me wonderful explanations of all those dreams I had just before I met you. Then Agnes Jakes gave me a whole different set of explanations for the very same dreams. Then, in the dream I just had, she gave me an explanation of why I wasn’t dreaming. And now you’ve given me an explanation of why I was dreaming. I love it.”
“And what’s that mean?”
“That’s my line,” he said with a laugh, and carried his drink into the living room.
“I just want to know, Greg. You say all that as though it’s supposed to mean something.”
“It’s not important, Ginny. What’s important is, what do I do now? What do I do about my guilty conscience? Do I just ignore it? Wait and see if it’s going to make a habit of sneaking up and slugging me from time to time?”
“No . . .”
“What then?”
“You really want an opinion?”
“Absolutely.”
‘Then I think you should talk to someone about it.”
“Someone like a psychotherapist.”
“Maybe.”
He chuckled. “I love it. I could be the only man alive with two psychotherapists—one in waking life and one in his dreams.”
“It doesn’t have to be a psychotherapist.”
“A priest? It would have to be someone who could keep a small murder just between the two of us, after all.”
Ginny frowned. “Why are you being this way, Greg?”
“I’m sorry. Am I being some way?”
“You’re being . . . sort of manic.”
“Sorry, I’ll be serious. Who do you think I should talk to?”
“Well, you could talk to Bruce. I think he’d . . .”
“You think he’d what? Keep my dark secret? Yes, I suppose he would, since he has dark secrets of his own to keep. Do you think I should call him?”
“I don’t think it could hurt.”
Greg nodded and headed for the phone.
“I didn’t mean this second, for God’s sake!”
But Greg was already punching out a set of numbers.
&nbs
p; “Greg, it’s one o’clock in the morning!”
He gazed at her placidly, the receiver at his ear. After a few moments he said, “Hi! Bruce? This is Greg Donner. Listen, Ginny and I have been talking, and we think it would be a good idea for us to get together—I mean, you and me. What? Well, yes, it’s connected to what happened tonight. In a way. There’s some deep stuff going on here.”
Greg paused, raised his eyebrows at Ginny, and turned the receiver toward her as if to demonstrate that Bruce was silently thinking it over.
“Yes?” he went on, putting the receiver back to his ear. “Are you sure? It could wait until Monday if you’d rather not break into your weekend. Great. Why don’t you let me buy you brunch at the Drake? Say . . . eleven o’clock? Fine. See you then.”
After cradling the receiver, he took his drink to a window overlooking the lake, threw back the drapes, and stood staring at his reflection in the black glass.
“Now that really is amazing,” he said.
“What is? The fact that he’d see you on a Sunday?”
Without turning, he smiled.
“No, not that. The fact that I’ve never known Bruce’s telephone number, never called him in my life. But all I had to do was pick up the phone, punch in some numbers, and there he was.”
Ginny said nothing.
“Isn’t that remarkable?”
“I don’t know. What does it mean?”
“It means, my love, that I have an appointment elsewhere. For tonight, your charms have faded. The woman I want to be with is Agnes, and I imagine she’s right where I left her.”
He spun around and was once again surrounded by the stark blacks and whites of Richard Iles’s living room.
Noticing that he was still in his pajamas, he laughed.
Agnes, standing just where Ginny had stood, glared at him reproachfully.
XXXXII
IT’S NO ONE THING, IS IT, AGNES. It’s not just willpower, not just concentration, not just having a very specific thing in mind. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle—one minute you’re wobbling all over the street and the next you’ve got the hang of it, and it’s impossible to say why.”
“Enough, Richard,” she said, her eyes ablaze with fury. “This has got to stop now. I mean it.”
“It does indeed, Agnes. It’s showdown time.”
