False Memory Part 34

43.

At Skeet's apartment, the bedroom was as barren of decoration and as starkly furnished as any monk's cell.

Having backed into a corner to limit her options if a murderous impulse seized her, Martie stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her hands clamped tightly under her biceps. "Why didn't you tell me last night? Poor Skeet's back in rehab and you don't tell me till now?"

"You had enough on your mind," Dusty said as he searched under the neatly folded clothes in the bottom drawer of a dresser so plain it might have been crafted by a strict religious order that thought Shaker furniture was sinfully ornate.

"What're you looking for-his stash?"

"No. If there's any of that left, it'll take hours to find it. I'm looking for...well, I don't know what I'm looking for."

"We've got to be at Dr. Closterman's office in forty minutes."

"Plenty of time," Dusty said, elevating his search to a higher drawer.

"Did he show up at work stoned?"

"Yeah. He jumped off the Sorensons' roof."

"My G.o.d! How bad was he hurt?"

"Not at all."

"Not at all all?"

"It's a long story," Dusty said, opening the top drawer on the dresser. He wasn't going to tell her that he had gone off the roof with Skeet, not while she was in her current condition.

"What are you hiding from me?" she demanded.

"I'm not hiding hiding anything." anything."

"What are you keeping keeping from me?" from me?"

"Martie, let's not play games with semantics, okay?"

"At times like this, it couldn't be clearer that you are the son of Trevor Penn Rhodes."

Closing the last dresser drawer, he said, "That was low. I'm not keeping keeping anything from you." anything from you."

"What are you protecting me from?"

"I guess what I'm hunting for," he said, instead of answering her question, "is evidence that Skeet's mixed up in some cult."

Because he'd already searched the single nightstand and under the bed, Dusty stepped into the adjoining bathroom, which was small, clean, and completely white. He opened the medicine cabinet and quickly sorted through the contents.

From the bedroom, in an anxious and accusatory tone, Martie said, "You don't know what I might be doing out here."

"Looking for an ax?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"We've been down that road."

"Yeah, but it's a long one."

When he came out of the bathroom, he saw that she was shaking and as pale as-though prettier than-something that lived under a rock. "You okay?"

"What do you mean-cult?"

Though she cringed when he approached her, he took her by the arm, drew her out of the corner, and led her into the living room. "Skeet said he jumped off the roof because an angel of death told him he should."

"That's just the drugs talking."

"Maybe. But you know how those cults operate-the brainwashing and all."

"What're you talking about?"

"Brainwashing."

In the living room, she backed into another corner and clamped her hands in her armpits again. "Brainwashing?"

"Rub-a-dub, cerebrum in a tub."

The living room contained only a sofa, an armchair, a coffee table, an end table, two lamps, and a set of shelves on which were stored both books and magazines. Dusty c.o.c.ked his head to scan the t.i.tles on the spines of the books.

From her corner, Martie said, "What're you hiding from me?"

"There you go again."

"You wouldn't think he was mixed up in a cult-brainwashed, for G.o.d's sake-just because of what he said about some angel of death."

"There was an incident at the clinic."

"New Life?"

"Yeah."

"What incident?"

All the paperbacks on the shelves were fantasy novels. Tales of dragons, wizards, warlocks, and swashbuckling heroes in the land of long-ago or never-was. Not for the first time, Dusty was baffled by the kid's genre of choice; after all, Skeet pretty much lived in a fantasy, anyway, and wouldn't seem to need it for entertainment.

"What incident?" Martie repeated.

"Went into a trance."

"What do you mean, a trance?"

"You know, like a magician, one of those stage hypnotists, casts on you and then makes you cluck like a chicken."

"Skeet was clucking like a chicken?"

"No, it was more complicated than that."

As Dusty continued along the shelves, the t.i.tles began to make him terribly sad. He realized that perhaps his brother sought refuge in these make-believe kingdoms because they were all cleaner, better, more-ordered fantasies than the one in which the kid lived. In these books, spells worked, friends were always true and brave, good and evil were sharply defined, good always won-and no one became drug-dependent and screwed up his life.

"Quacking like a duck, gobbling like a turkey?" Martie asked from her corner exile.

"What?"

"How was it more complicated, what Skeet did at the clinic?"

Quickly sorting through a stack of magazines, finding nothing published by any cult more nefarious than the Time-Warner media group, Dusty said, "I'll tell you later. We don't have time for it now."

"You are exasperating."

"It's a gift," he said, leaving the magazines and books for a quick look through the small kitchen.

"Don't leave me alone here," she pleaded.

"Then come along."

"No way," she said, obviously thinking about knives and meat forks and potato mashers. "No way. That's a kitchen."

"I'm not going to ask you to cook."

The combination kitchen and dining area was open to the living room, all one big California floor plan, so Martie was in fact able to see him pulling open drawers and cabinet doors.

She was silent for half a minute, but when she spoke, her voice was shaky. "Dusty, I'm getting worse."

"To me, babe, you just keep getting better and better."

"I mean it. I'm serious. I'm on the edge here, and sliding fast."

Dusty wasn't finding any cult paraphernalia among the pots and pans. No secret decoder rings. No pamphlets about Armageddon looming. No tracts about how to recognize the Antichrist if you run into him at the mall.

"What're you doing in there?" Martie demanded.

"Stabbing myself through the heart, so you won't have to."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Been there, done that," he said, returning to the living room.

"You're a cold man," she complained.

Her pale face squinched with anger.

"I'm ice," he agreed.

"You are. I mean it."

"Arctic."

"You make me so angry."

"You make me so happy," he countered.

Squinch became startled realization, and her eyes widened as she said, "You're my Martie."

"That doesn't sound like another insult."

"And I'm your Susan."

"Oh, this is no good. We'll have to change all our monogrammed towels."

"For a year, I've treated her like you're treating me. Jollying her along, always needling her out of her self-pity, trying to keep her spirits up."

"You've been a real b.i.t.c.h, huh?"

Martie laughed. Shaky, one tremble away from a sob, like those laughs in operas, when the tragic heroine pitches a soprano trill and lets it fall into a contralto quaver of despair. "I've been a b.i.t.c.h and a sarcastic wisea.s.s, yeah, because I love her so much."

Smiling, Dusty held out his right hand toward her. "We've got to be going."

One step out of her corner, she stopped, unable to come farther. "Dusty, I don't want to be Susan."

"I know."

"I don't want to...fall that far down."

"You won't," he promised.

"I'm scared."

Rather than follow her customary preference for bright colors, Martie had gone to the dark side of her wardrobe. Black boots, black jeans, a black pullover, and a black leather jacket. She looked like a mourner at a biker's funeral. In this stark outfit, she should have appeared to be tough, as hard and as formidable as night itself. Instead, she seemed as ephemeral as a shadow fading and shrinking under a relentless sun.

"I'm scared," she repeated.

This was a time for truth, not for jollying, and Dusty said, "Yeah. Me, too."

Overcoming the fear of her imagined homicidal potential, she took his hand. Hers was cold, but touching was progress.

"I've got got to phone Susan," she said. "She was expecting me to call last night." to phone Susan," she said. "She was expecting me to call last night."

"We'll phone her from the car."

Out of the apartment, along the common hall, down the stairs, across the small foyer where Skeet had penciled the name FARNER FARNER under under CAULFIELD CAULFIELD on his mailbox label, and out of the building, Dusty felt Martie's hand warming in his and dared to think he could save her. on his mailbox label, and out of the building, Dusty felt Martie's hand warming in his and dared to think he could save her.