“That’s okay. You were weird when I married you.”
Unlike Dr. Ahriman’s fourteenth-floor suite, the parking lot offered no view of the nearby Pacific. Dusty couldn’t see whether the ocean was as ominously dark now as it had appeared to be from the psychiatrist's office.
The sky was sludge, but it didn’t press down with full doomsday weight as before, and within the works of man, he could no longer see the future wreckage from pending cataclysms.
The breeze was promoting itself to a wind, busily sweeping dead leaves and a few small scraps of litter across the pavement.
In the car, Martie had a nervous edge to her, although it was only a fraction as sharp as it had been this morning. Still in a post-therapy glow, she rummaged through the glove box, found a roll of chocolate candies, and popped them into her mouth one at a time, chewing each with relish. Evidently she had no concern that she would have to give them back later, in a panic attack, if she found herself bent forward, retching uncontrollably.
Declining a chocolate when Martie offered it, Dusty withdrew the paperback from his jacket pocket and said, “Where did you get this?”
She glanced at the book and shrugged. “Picked it up somewhere.”
“Did you buy it?”
“Bookstores don’t give the things away, you know.”
“Which bookstore?”
Frowning, she said, “What’s this about?”
“I’ll explain. But first I need to know. Which store? Barnes and Noble? Borders? Book Carnival, where you buy mysteries?”
Chewing chocolate, she studied the paperback for a long moment, and a bemused look came over her. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s not as if you buy a hundred books a week from twenty different stores,” he said impatiently.
“Yeah, okay, but I never claimed to have your memory. Don’t
“I must not have been with you.”
Martie put down the roll of candies and took the paperback from him. She didn’t open the book or even fan the pages with her thumb, as he might have expected, but she held it in both hands, staring at the title, held it very tightly, as though trying to squeeze out its origins as she might squeeze juice from an orange.
“I better go back to the hospital, get a test for early-onset Alzheimer’s,” she finally said, returning the book to Dusty and picking up the chocolates.
“Maybe it was a gift,” he suggested.
“From whom?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“No. If it was a gift, I’d remember.”
“When you examined the book just now, why didn’t you open it?”
“Open it? There’s nothing in it that’ll tell me where I bought it. “She held out the half-depleted roll of candy. “Here. You’re a little irritable. Maybe you’re hypoglycemic. Pump in some sugar.”
“Pass. Martie, do you know what this novel is about?”
“Sure. It’s a thriller.”
“But a thriller about
“Entertaining plot, colorful characters. I’m enjoying it.”
“And what’s it
She stared at the paperback, chewing the candy more slowly. “Well, you know thrillers. Run, jump, chase, shoot, run some more.”
In Dusty’s hands, the book seemed to grow cold. Heavier. Its texture began to change, too: The colorful cover seemed slicker than before. As if it weren’t just a book. More than a book. A talisman, too, that might at any moment work its witchery and send him plunging through a magical doorway into a dragon-infested alternate reality of the type Skeet liked to read about. Or maybe the talisman already had performed that trick, without him realizing that he’d stepped out of one world and into another.
“Martie, I don’t think you’ve read a sentence of this book. Or even opened it.”
Holding a chocolate between thumb and forefinger, poised to pop it into her mouth, she said, “I told you, it’s a real thriller. The writing’s good. The plot is entertaining, and the characters are colorful. I’m… enjoying… it.”
Dusty saw that she recognized the singsong quality in her voice. Her mouth was open, but the chocolate morsel remained unpopped. Her eyes widened as if with surprise.
Holding the book up, back cover turned to her, he said, “It’s about brainwashing, Martie. Even the sales copy makes that clear.”
Her expression, better than any words she could have spoken, revealed that the subject of the novel was news to her.
“It takes place during and a few years after the Korean War,” he told her.
The circlet of chocolate was beginning to get tacky between her fingers, so she slipped it into her mouth.
“It’s about this guy,” Dusty said, “this soldier, Raymond Shaw, who has —”
“I’m listening,” she said.
Dusty’s attention was on the book when Martie interrupted him, and when he looked up, he saw that a placid, detached expression had claimed her face. Her mouth hung open. He saw the chocolate lozenge on her tongue.
“Martie?”
“Yeah,” she said thickly, not bothering to close her mouth, the candy quivering on her tongue.
Here was the episode with Skeet at New Life Clinic, repeating with Martie.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
She blinked, closed her mouth, tongued the candy into her left cheek, and said, “What’s wrong?”
