False Memory

This lovefest had suddenly turned sour, for reasons the patient herself didn’t understand. She began to suspect that Keanu had a dark side. That he had become aware of her interest in him and was not pleased. That he was hiring people to watch her. Then that he was watching her himself. When the telephone rang and the caller hung up without speaking, or when the caller said, Sorry, wrong number, she was convinced that it was Keanu. Once she had adored his face; now she became terrified of it. She destroyed all the scrapbooks and burned all the photographs of him in her bedroom, because she grew convinced that he could view her remotely through any picture of himself. Indeed, at the sight of his face, she was now stricken by a panic attack. She could no longer watch television, for fear of seeing an advertisement for his latest film. She dared not read most magazines, because she might turn a page and find Keanu watching her; even the sight of his name in print alarmed her, and her list of safe periodicals now included little more than Foreign Policy Journal and such medical publications as Advancements in Kidney Dialysis.

Dr. Ahriman knew that soon, as was the pattern in these cases, his patient would become convinced that Keanu Reeves was stalking her, following her everywhere she went, whereupon her phobia would be fully established. Thereafter, she would either stabilize and learn to live as restricted a life as Susan Jagger had lived under the influence of her agoraphobia, or she would descend into complete psychosis and perhaps require at least short-term care in a good institution.

Drug therapy offered hope to such patients, but the doctor did not intend to treat this one conventionally. Eventually, he would put her through three sessions of programming, not for the purpose of controlling her but simply to instruct her to be not afraid of Keanu. Thus, for his next book, he would have a great chapter about a miraculous cure, which he would attribute to his analytic skills and his therapeutic genius, concocting an elaborate story of therapy that he had, in fact, never performed.

He hadn’t yet begun to brainwash her, because her phobia needed more time to ripen. She needed to suffer more in order that her cure would make a better story and to ensure that her gratitude, after she was made whole again, would be boundless. Properly played, she might even consent to appear on Oprah with him when his book was published.

Now, sitting in the armchair across the low table from her, he listened to her fevered speculations about the Machiavellian scheming of Mr. Reeves, not bothering to take notes because a hidden recorder was capturing her monologue and his occasional prodding question.

Impish as ever, the doctor suddenly thought how fun it would have been if the actor now waiting to assault the president’s nose could have been Keanu himself. Imagine this patient’s terror when learning of the news, which would absolutely convince her that hers would have been the savaged nose had not fate put the nation’s chief executive in Keanu’s path before her.

Ah, well. If there was a sense of humor behind the workings of the universe, it wasn’t as acute as the doctor’s.

“Doctor, you’re not listening to me.”

“But I am,” he assured her.

“No, you were woolgathering, and I’m not paying these outrageous hourly rates so you can daydream,” she said sharply.

Although just five short years ago, this woman and her boring husband had been barely able to afford fries with their Big Macs, they had become as imperious and demanding as if they had been born into vast wealth.

Indeed, her Keanu madness and her pan-faced husband’s crazy need to seek validation at the ballot box resulted from the suddenness of their financial success, from a nagging guilt about having gained so much with so little effort, and from the unspoken fear that what had come so quickly could be quickly gone.

“You don’t have a patient conflict here, do you?” she asked with sudden worry.

“Excuse me?”

“An unrevealed patient conflict? You don’t know K-K-Keanu, do you, Doctor?”

“No, no. Of course not.”

“Not to reveal a connection with him would be highly unethical. Highly. And how do I know you’re not capable of unethical conduct? What do I really know about you at all?”

Rather than draw the Taurus PT-ill Millennium from his shoulder holster and teach this nouveauriche dirt a lesson in manners, the doctor switched on his considerable charm and sweet-talked her into continuing with her delusional ramblings.

A wall clock revealed less than half an hour until he could send her out into the Keanu-haunted world. Then he would be able to deal with Skeet Caulfield and the blushing man.

In places, the glaze on the Mexican payers had been worn away.