False Memory

Pressing the remote control to close the garage door, Dusty wondered why he hadn’t said all this to the telephone salesperson who had been pushing the newspaper. Those incessant calls from the Times subscription hawkers were one of the few serious drawbacks to living in southern California, on a par with earthquakes, wildfires, and mudslides. If he’d delivered this same rant to the woman — or had it been a man? — pitching the Times, maybe his name would finally have been removed from their solicitation list.

As he backed out of the driveway into the street, Dusty had the peculiar realization that he couldn’t recall whether the Times representative on the phone had been a man or a woman. No reason why he should remember, really, since he had listened only to enough of the spiel to realize what it was, whereupon he had hung up.

Usually, he ended a Times call by making a proposition, to have fun with the salesperson. Okay, I’ll subscribe if you’ll take barter. I’ll paint one of your offices, you give me three years of the Times. Or, yeah, I’ll take a lifetime subscription if your paper promises never again to refer to a mere sports star as a hero.

He hadn’t made them a proposition this time. On the other hand, he couldn’t remember what he had said, even if it was as simple as no thanks or stop bothering me.

Odd. His mind was blank.

Evidently, he was even more preoccupied with — and disturbed by — the business with Skeet this morning than he had realized.

15

The Chinese takeout was no doubt as delicious as Susan said it was, but although Martie, too, exclaimed over it, she actually found the food flavorless. The Tsingtao tasted bitter today.

Neither the food nor the beer was at fault. Martie’s free-floating anxiety, although ebbing at the moment, robbed her of the ability to take pleasure in anything.

She ate with chopsticks, and at first she thought that merely watching Susan use a fork would induce another panic attack. But the sight of the wicked tines didn’t alarm her, after all, as it had earlier. She had no fear of the fork, per Se; she was afraid, instead, of what damage could be done with the fork if it were in her own hand. In Susan’s possession, the utensil seemed harmless.

The apprehension that she, Martie herself, harbored the dark potential for some unspeakable act of violence was so disturbing that she refused to dwell on it. This was the most irrational of fears, for she was certain in mind and heart and soul that she had no capacity for savagery. And yet she had not trusted herself with the bottle opener…

Considering how edgy she was — and how hard she was trying not to reveal that edginess to Susan — she should have been an even bigger loser at pinochle than usual. Instead, the cards favored her, and she played with masterful skill, taking full advantage of each piece of good luck, perhaps because the game helped to distract her from morbid considerations.

“You’re a champ today,” Susan said.

“I’m wearing my lucky socks.”

“Already your debt is down from six hundred thousand to five hundred and ninety-eight thousand.”

“Great. Now maybe Dusty will be able to sleep at night.”

“How is Dusty?”

“Even sweeter than Valet.”

“You get a man who’s more lovable than a golden retriever.” Susan sighed. “And I marry a selfish pig.”

“Earlier, you were defending Eric.”

“He’s a swine.”

“That’s my line.”

“And I thank you for it.”

Outside, a wolfish wind growled, scratched on the windows, and raised mournful howls to the eaves.

Martie said, “Why the change of heart?”

“The root of my agoraphobia might lie in problems between Eric and me, going back a couple years, things I’ve been in denial about.”

“Is that what Dr. Ahriman says?”

“He doesn’t really direct me toward ideas like that. He just makes it possible for me to… figure it out.”

Martie played a queen of clubs. “You never mentioned problems between you and Eric. Not until he wasn’t able to handle…this.”

“But I guess we had them.”

Martie frowned. “You guess?”

“Well, there’s no guessing. We had a problem.”

“Pinochle,” Martie said, taking the last trick. “What problem?”

“A woman.”

Martie was stunned. Real sisters could be no closer than she and Susan. Although they both had too much self-respect to share intimate details of their sex lives, they never kept big secrets from each other, yet she’d never before heard of this woman.

“The creep was cheating on you?” Martie asked.

“A discovery like that, all of a sudden, it makes you feel so vulnerable,” Susan said, but without the emotion the words implied, as though quoting a psychology textbook. “And that’s what agoraphobia is about — an overwhelming, crippling feeling of vulnerability.”

“You never even hinted at this.”

Susan shrugged. “Maybe I was too ashamed.”