Mirror Maze j-4

by William Bayer

  Gelsey rose and followed him into his office. She detested the waiting room, with its bland wallpaper and disheveled magazines, some of which she'd seen grow ragged over the year she'd been in treatment. But she hated the room most for the tawdry dime-store mirror on its wall, provided, she supposed, for patients who needed to compose themselves after particularly intense sessions of psychotherapy.

  Dr. Zimmerman's office, however, was something else, an extraordinary world. Gelsey loved it on account of his collection of artifacts of primitive cultures mounted on the walls. African ritual objects made of wood and copper; Oceanian fetish items; Native American headdresses; an array of African and South Sea island masks. "Totem and taboo, mirrors of the unconscious self-that's what they're all about," Dr. Z would say, sweeping his arm expansively, his gray goatee wiggling.

  Mirrors: There it was again, that damn word, the concept of reflection and reverse that consumed her, ruled her life. She had come to Dr.

  Zimmerman to seek escape from her obsession only to find that the words mirrors and mirroring were essential to his discourse.

  "How're things going?" Dr. Z's standard opening; he usually glanced away from her when he said it. He was a medium-sized man, stout, bald on top, with well-groomed gray hair on either side. He had a confidence and composure that made her doubt she could take him in a bar. Just the thought of such a battle made her shake. "Well, I keep looking into mirrors," she said. "Nothing new about that." Dr. Zimmerman smiled.

  "It's what you see in them that should concern us."

  "I see my dream-sister."

  "Sure. Your twin. Your opposite. Forever separate yet forever bound.

  That's your fantasy, Gelsey. The mirror fantasy equals the double delusion. It's a beautiful equation. So symmetrical. And so… convenient for you, too." Dr. Z smiled again-a little smugly, Gelsey thought. Oh, he was sly, the good doctor, with his perceptions and equations, devised to penetrate her defenses, disrupt her neurotic ways of coping with the world and set her on the high straight road to mental health. Of course her dream-sister was a "double delusion." Of course it had been engendered by having spent her childhood above a mirror maze.

  She craved more, much more-a deeper, more liberating analysis.

  She looked at Dr. Z. She wondered sometimes if his glib responses were devised to force her to peer more deeply into herself, or if they were nothing more than the mutterings of a lazy, aging analyst.

  "This twin of yours who writes in mirror-reverse-she's not just your mirror-sister, Gelsey-she's your inner sister, your shadow."

  That was sort of new. He had talked a lot about her shadow," but had not offered that equation before. Perhaps Dr. Z, sensing her frustration, was going to give her her money's worth today.

  "Shakespeare wrote: ' thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Do you see how it might apply?"

  "You're saying if I own up to my dream-sister, accept her as my shadow, then-l-what?"

  "You can eat her. Eat your shadow. Swallow her up. Ultimately that's the goal of therapy." Dr. Zimmerman paused. "Tell me something-when you come back from one of your expeditions and look at yourself in the mirror, what do you feel? Please note before you answer that I didn't ask you what you see." She thought about it. "I think I feel a little surprised."

  "Why?"

  "I think it's because I look the same. As if the experience hasn't changed me a bit. As if the mirror-" She stopped. There was an important idea floating in her head, but she couldn't quite catch hold of it.

  "Does the mirror reject you?"

  Gelsey stared at an Indonesian mask. She shook her head.

  "Defy you?"

  "No."

  "Try to describe it?"

  She shook her head again.

  "Perhaps it just stares at you. A blank, unforgiving face."

  "Yes, it stares. But I don't want forgiveness, Doc. No, it's something else."

  "Tell me?" can "Try, Gelsey. You must work hard on this. Shadow work is always difficult."

  "It-"

  "Yes?"

  "It almost seems to-mock me."

  "Mock you?"

  She nodded. "Like, ', you did all that, seduced that guy, dumped on him, and now you're just the same as always. You wanted it to change you and it didn't."

  " She turned to him. "Does that make any sense?"

  "I think it does." Dr. Z spoke slowly. "It's a reference to your mask.

  Like those."

  He pointed at a grouping of African masks made of ebony and embellished with savanna grass. One in particular had always fascinated Gelsey.

  Although a single mask, it offered two nearly identical carved faces.

  The cheeks of each were puffed, the eyes were slits, the mouths were open as if for whistling.

  "You want to be like Dorian Gray-looking at his portrait, seeing the evil in himself. But your mirror refuses to show your bad side to you.

  Which means, of course, that you refuse to see it."

  Well, she had to admit, she rather liked that view of things. It explained the mockery she felt when she gazed into her own eyes after taking down a mark. The problem was that Dr. Zimmerman had no idea of what she actually did. She had told him she went to bars, picked up strange men, went home with them, had sex with them, then slipped out without a word while they slept. She had never told him what she really did to them, that she never had sex with them although she always made them think she would-how, instead, she fed them KO drops, then stripped them, searched them, robbed them, uncovered their secrets, left behind a display of power, even wrote them messages in mirror-reverse on their chests.

  "You haven't talked about the maze in a while," Dr. Z said, changing tone, indicating he wanted to start along a different tack. "You told me your father built it. But I've never been quite sure why or for whom."

  "He built it for himself." She paused. "For us."

  "Your family?"

  "Maybe for just the two of us," she said.

  "Do you think of it as his legacy?"

  "It was all he left me."

  "I didn't mean that way."

  "Well, sure, it kind of sums him up. I mean, it's got all his traits."

  "Please explain."

  "It's slick and complicated. You can get lost in it. It draws you in. He was a charmer that way." Dr. Zimmerman nodded. "It's cruel, too," she added.

  "How is it cruel?"

  "The way it confuses you, drives you nuts. A maze is a fiendish thing."

  "I'm sure it is. Sounds like he used it to express his aggression."

  "I think so," Gelsey agreed. "It also makes you look funny. Actually, it makes you look like shit. The Corridor of Distortion-that really takes you apart. Someone with a body-image problem wouldn't be able to take it. And the Fragmentation Serpent-that breaks you into little pieces."

  Dr. Zimmerman was silent. She glanced at him. He was staring intently at a Melanesian mask, one with huge eyes and a grotesque looped nose. She had touched it once when he had gone out of the room. A film of oily soot had stained her hand.

  "Why have you stopped, Gelsey?" he asked softly.

  "You want more?"

  "Have you more to give?"

  She shook her head. She knew what he was waiting for, and she knew that if she started talking about it she would end up sobbing like a little girl. Dammit' I Why doesn't he have a mirror in here? If she could only look at herself, she could-what? Escape?

  "Escape," she said.

  "Escape-yes. Go on.

  "My mother would lock me down there when I was bad. As a punishment.

  "You can just be with yourself awhile,' she'd say. You know what happens?"

  "Tell me?"

  "Locked up with weird images of yourself-after a while you forget what you look like."

  "Yes, I can imagine." Dr. Z changed position in his chair. "And then, perhaps, you would need to keep looking into mirrors to reassure yourself that you still were you." He shook his head. "But I think there was more to your paren
ts' cruelty. Locking you up down there wasn't the worst they could inflict. Your father, for instance-"

  She felt sweat on her forehead. Suddenly she wanted to run away-jump out of her chair, bolt out of Dr. Z's consulting room, rush out of the building into the open air.

  "I know what you want. You want me to talk about playtime." Dr. Z was silent. "I don't feel like it today."

  "That's all right," he said kindly.

  "I wonder-"

  "Yes?" I "-if I want to come back anymore." The words leaped out of her mouth as if of their own accord. When she heard them she was shocked.

  She turned to Dr. Zimmerman to see if he was surprised.

  "Quit therapy?" he asked. He didn't look upset. "Yeah-I guess that's what I meant."

  "That's one way to handle it, isn't it?"

  "You think I want to run away from the truth?" He shook his head. "What do you think?"

  "I'm not sure I want to say."

  "Hey! Come on, Doc! I'm paying you fancy money. Don't hold out on me.

  You got something-hand it over." She liked the way she sounded-a tough young woman who didn't take any shit. "Leaving therapy means leaving me."

  "Of course."

  "That means killing me."

  "I don't see that."

  "If you don't come here to see me anymore, Gelsey then I'll be as good as dead for you, won't I?"

  "I suppose… in a way."

  "Kill me and you kill your father." She looked him square in the eyes.

  "What are you talking about?" He smiled at her, his sly, therapeutic smile. Then, very quickly, he stuck out the forefinger of his right hand and drew it swiftly across his throat.

  "Kill therapist! Kill father!" He leered at her suddenly, in a way she'd never seen before. "Aha!" He nodded vigorously. "The equation's simple.

  The king is dead!"

  Out on the street, she felt that, indeed, Dr. Z had given her something special. She felt unburdened, although she wasn't certain of exactly what. Perhaps, she thought, she was free for a time of the weight of carrying around her dream-sister on her back.

  Looking about her, she took in the tranquillity of the street. Two children were playing jump rope. A repairman, tool box in hand, was stepping out of his panel truck, double-parked a few houses up. A mother was wheeling a baby carriage toward the corner of Columbus Avenue. The sun glinted off the well-washed windows of the row houses.

  From one of the apartments she could hear someone playing a piano, awkwardly practicing scales.

  West Seventy-first was quiet, residential, a street of urban professionals like Dr. Z, who had bought up the old town houses, renovated them and by so doing created an island of serenity.

  How I wish I could live on a street like this, Gelsey thought, where everything is so subdued and sweet. Instead of in a loft on top of a mirror maze beside a deserted old amusement park that doesn't amuse anyone anymore, least of all myself.

  Tania i:.!

  Janek, awakened by loud knocking, opened his eyes. For a moment he was surprised to find himself in his hotel room. His body still ached from the beating, but the bed was soft and he didn't feel much like leaving it.

  "Yeah? Who's there?" he called.

  "Police." The response was delivered in a surprisingly gentle voice.

  Janek shook his head. Maybe they think they made a mistake. They've come to take me back- He wrapped a sheet around his body, went to the door and opened it. The corridor was dark. A short, slender midthirties Cuban, dressed in a neat white shirt and a wellpressed pair of slacks, peered at him through wire-rimmed spectacles.

  "Lieutenant Janek?"

  Janek nodded. The young man smartly saluted.

  Well… this is a change. Janek examined the visitor's ID. His name was Luis Ortiz. He was a lieutenant in the Homicide Bureau of the Havana Urban Police.

  "I have been assigned to assist you."

  "With what?"

  "Your investigation of the Mendoza case. You are an esteemed visitor, sir. All the facilities of my bureau are at your disposal."

  Janek gazed at the man, then gestured him into the room. Ortiz entered, looked around, warmly shook Janek's hand.

  "Aren't you laying it on a little thick?" Janek asked.

  "Excuse me?" The young officer stared at him, confused. "You're the first person around here to call me ', ' "

  Ortiz shook his head. "A mistake was made, sir. I am here to set it right. I have located Senora Figueras and have discussed the matter with her. She is waiting for us now." Ortiz peered around the room, then continued, more relaxed. His English, Janek noted, was excellent, although his accent was unmistakably Cuban. "At first she did not wish to speak with you. But when I explained that you had come a long way and that your presence here had become a matter of"-he smiled shyly-"state security-well, she will be very pleased to answer your questions, Whether she will be truthful, I cannot guarantee." Ortiz paused, squinted at Janek, smiled again, cupped his hand to his ear and pointed at the ceiling. Then he gestured toward the windows.

  The message was clear: They could not speak freely in the room; it would be better to talk outside.

  "All right. Give me fifteen minutes," Janek said. "I'll meet you in the lobby."

  After Ortiz left, he went into his bathroom, dropped the sheet and inspected his body in the mirror. There were some bluish marks on his flanks and thighs from the kicks, but the tenderness was dissipating fast. He looked at his face, saw the eyes of a man who had been humiliated and abused. Recalling his feelings of the night before-of gratitude and purgation-he was angry at his captors but even more furious with himself. Am I so weak it only took them a couple of days to betid my mind?

  "The segurosos are shits," Ortiz said as soon as they were out on the street. Now, suddenly informal, the Cuban policeman turned to him, large, brown, bespectacled eyes flashing outrage. "They had no business arresting you.

  Some heads will roll, I believe. But perhaps not. They protect one another, cover each other's-how do you say itass?" "Yeah, that's how we say it," Janek said. He thought: This guy's pretty funny.

  "Is it not precisely the same in New York?" OTtiz asked.

  Yes, that, too, was true, Janek agreed.

  Ortiz guided him to a small black Russian car parked around the corner.

  It was identical to the car in which Fonseca had picked him up under the arcades three mornings before. Ortiz unlocked the passenger door, held it open for him, closed it, then came around to the driver's side and got in.

  "Are you all right, sir?"

  Janek stared at him. Ortiz's concern seemed genuine. His manner conveyed a younger cop's respect. He thought: Isn't it amazing how quickly my situation's changed?

  "I'm okay," Janek said. "They didn't hurt me. They just wanted to get into my head." "But you saw through them." Ortiz smiled, then lightly bit his lower lip. "Torture does not exist in Cuba. It is the law. It is forbidden." His irony, which verged on bitterness, was unmistakable, but Ortiz did not continue to project it. Rather, he shook his head to dismiss the subject, started the car and pulled into the street.

  "We have many problems here, Lieutenant. The segurosos are only one of them. Colonel Fonseca told me they thought you were someone else. They often make such mistakes."

  Janek studied Ortiz as he drove. He liked the efficient way he handled the little car, wheeling elegantly around a traffic circle, then merging smartly behind a convoy of military trucks. But can I trust him? he asked himself. Couldn't all this affability be part of some complicated scam?

  They passed a food store with a long line in front. Ortiz gestured toward it. "They have bread today. Not much else.

  "So, we're going to be partners," Janek said.

  "It will be an honor to be your partner, sir."

  "Partners should get to know one another."

  "I agree."

  "Call me Frank, Luis-I'd appreciate that. You have a family?-"

  "A wife and two daughters." Ortiz grinned. janek turned back
to the street. A billboard loomed ahead. The words were in Spanish, but he had no difficulty understanding them: SOCIALISMO O MUERTE-"Socialism or Death."

  "Are you a Communist, Luis?"

  "I am not a counterrevolutionary." He glanced at Janek. "And you, are you a capitalist, Frank?"

  Janek smiled. "Where I come from cops don't accumulate much capital."

  "Nor here… if they are honest."

  "And you're honest, is that what you're telling me, Luis?"

  The answer, when it came, was a good deal more serious than Janek expected. "In these difficult times that is the only thing I can hold on to," the young man said gravely.

  They drove a while in silence. A bus ahead of them spewed thick black smoke. A truck barreled past them, radio blaring. Havana seemed more lively than three mornings before, perhaps because it was early and people were on their way to work.

  "Let's get some coffee."

  Luis shook his head. "Coffee is rationed. There are no more cafes."

  "There must be a place-" Yes, Luis told him, there were several hard-currency restaurants that catered exclusively to foreign visitors.

  "I've got hard currency," Janek said.

  "But Senora Figueras-"

  "She can wait."

  For a moment Luis hesitated, then he nodded. "Yes, of course," he said.

  He turned the car around and drove west toward the suburbs. In an area called Miramar, Janek noticed mansions with spacious gardens and sentry posts. Luis told him these were foreign embassies or the homes of high officials. He turned down a side street, passed through a wooded area, pulled into a parking lot and stopped before a vast open structure with a thatched roof.

  As they walked toward it, Janek could see that it enclosed numerous tables set with plates and utensils. But except for a lone waitress, the huge place was empty.

  "The tourists will come later, perhaps a group tour in the evening,"

  Luis explained. He selected a table, ordered coffee. After the waitress drifted off, Janek leaned forward.

  "What do you know about the Mendoza case?"

  "Only what Senora Figueras told me."

  Luis outlined Mendoza as if it were nothing more than a case of a man who had arranged the brutal murder of his wife.