False Memory

expected when bowed by shame, and not at the bed where so much of her humiliation had occurred, but always at the ming tree.
    Now, following her into the bedroom, he said, “I want to see what’s in that pot, under the ivy.”
    Dutifully, she led him toward the Biedermeier pedestal, but the doctor stopped short when he saw what was playing on the TV.
    “I’ll be damned,” he said.
    He would have been damned, in fact, if he had not recognized the cause of his suspicion, if he had finally driven home and gone to bed without returning here.
    “Come to me,” he said.
    As Susan approached, the doctor made fists of his hands. He wanted to punch her pretty face.
    Girls. They were all alike.
    As a boy, he’d seen no use for them, had wanted nothing to do with them. Girls had made him sick with all their coy manipulations. The best thing about them was that he could make them cry without much effort—all those beautiful, salty tears—but then they always ran to their mothers or fathers to tattle. He was good at defending himself against their hysterical accusations; adults tended to find him charming and convincing. He had soon realized, however, that he must learn discretion and not let his thirst for tears control him the way that a taste for cocaine controlled more than a few people in the Hollywood crowd with which his father worked.
    Eventually, victimized by his hormones, he discovered that he needed girls for more than their tears. He learned, too, how easily a handsome lad like him could play games that put girls’ hearts in his hands, allowing him to wring more tears from them through calculated romance and betrayal than, as a younger boy, he had ever gotten from them by pinching, poking, boxing ears, and pushing them into mud puddles.
    Decades of torturing them emotionally had not, however, made them any more appealing to him than they had been when he was just a preschooler dropping caterpillars down their blouses. Girls still annoyed more than charmed him, left him feeling vaguely ill after he had indulged with them, and the fact that he was also fascinated by them only made him resent them more. Worse, sex was never enough for them; they wanted you to father their children. The marrow crawled in his bones at the thought of being anyone’s father. He had once nearly fallen into that trap, but fate had favored his escape. You couldn’t trust children. They were inside your defenses, and when you least expected it, they could kill you and steal your wealth. The doctor knew all about such treachery. And if you fathered a daughter, the mother and child would surely conspire against you at every turn. In the doctor’s view, all other men belonged to a breed different from—and far inferior to—his own, but girls were another species entirely, not merely another breed; girls were alien and ultimately unknowable.
    When Susan stopped before him, the doctor raised one fist.
    She appeared free of fear. Her personality was now so deeply repressed that she was unable to exhibit emotion until instructed to do so.
    “I should beat your face in.”
    Although he heard the boyish petulance in his voice, he wasn’t embarrassed by it. The doctor was sufficiently self-aware to realize that during these games of control, he was undergoing personality regression, descending the ladder of years. This descent was not mortifying or troubling in the least; indeed, it was essential if he were to enjoy the moment in its fullness. As an adult of broad experience, he was jaded; but as a boy, he still had a delightfully raw sense of wonder, was still thrilled by every nuance of the imaginative abuse of power.
    “I should just beat your stupid face so hard you’ll be ugly forever.”
    Deep under his spell, Susan remained serene. A spasm of REM seized her for a few seconds, but it was unrelated to his threat.
    Discretion and restraint were now essential. Ahriman dared not strike her. Her death, if properly staged, was unlikely to generate a homicide investigation. Bruised and battered, however, she would not be a credible suicide.
    “I don’t like you anymore, Susie. I don’t like you at all.”
    She was silent, because she hadn’t been instructed to reply.
    “I assume that you haven’t yet called the police. Tell me if that’s correct.”
    “That’s correct.”
    “Have you spoken to anyone about that videotape on the TV?”
    “Have I?”
    Cautioning himself that her response was not defiant, that this was only how she was programmed to reply to