False Memory

psychiatrist said, “traditional therapy is, of course, a process requiring confidentiality for the patient if he—in this case, she—is to be forthcoming. So I’ll have to ask you to adjourn to our outgoing waiting room for the rest of this session.”
    Dusty looked at Martie for guidance.
    She smiled and nodded.
    This was a safe place. She would be all right here.
    “Of course, sure.” Dusty rose from his chair.
    Martie handed her leather jacket to him, which she had removed upon entering the office, and he put it over his arm with his coat.
    “Right this way, Mr. Rhodes,” Dr. Ahriman said, crossing the large office toward the door to the outgoing waiting room.
    Scaled clouds, as greasy and sour-gray as rotting fish, seemed to be foul ejecta spewed out by the rolling Pacific, clotted on the heavens. The coaly veins in the water were varicose and more numerous than previously, and large sections of the sea were fearfully black to Dusty’s eyes if to no other’s.
    His brief ripple of disquiet at once smoothed away as he turned from the enormous window and followed Dr. Ahriman.
    The door between the mahogany-paneled office and the outgoing waiting room was surprisingly thick. As tightly fitted as a Mason jar lid, it produced a soft pop and a sigh when opened, as though a vacuum seal were being broken.
    Dusty supposed that a serious door was required to protect the doctor’s patients from eavesdroppers. No doubt the core of it was composed of layers of soundproofing.
    The honey-toned walls, black-granite floor, and furnishings in this second waiting room were like those in the larger, incoming lounge at the main entrance of the suite.
    “Would you like Jennifer to bring you coffee, cola, ice water?” Ahriman asked Dusty.
    “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
    “Those,” Ahriman said, indicating a fanned array of periodicals on a table, “are current.” He smiled. “This is one doctor’s office that isn’t a graveyard for the magazines of prior decades.”
    “Very thoughtful.”
    Ahriman placed one hand reassuringly on Dusty’s shoulder. “She is going to be fine, Mr. Rhodes.”
    “She’s a fighter.”
    “Have faith.”
    “I do.”
    The psychiatrist returned to Martie.
    The door fell shut with a muffled but impressive thud, and the latch automatically engaged. There was no handle on this side. The door could only be opened from the inner office.

48
    Black hair, black attire. Blue eyes shine like Tiffany. Her light, too, a lamp.
    The doctor polished that haiku in his mind, rather pleased with it, as he returned to his armchair and sat across the low table from Martie Rhodes.
    Without a word, he studied her face, feature by feature and then as a whole, taking his time, curious to see if his protracted silence would make her uneasy.
    Unperturbed, she waited, evidently confident that the doctor’s mute inspection had a clinical purpose that would be explained to her when the time was right.
    As with Susan Jagger, Dr. Ahriman had previously implanted in Martie and Dustin Rhodes the suggestion that they would feel deeply at ease in his office. Likewise, they were always to be reassured at the sight of him.
    In their unconscious minds, he had embedded six thoughts, like little prayers, to which they were able to resort one sentence at a time or in a single long calming mantra, if any doubt or nervousness overcame them in his presence. This is a safe place. Dr. Ahriman is a great psychiatrist. Everything will be all right now that I am—or in Dustin’s case, Martie is—in Dr Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman is deeply committed to his patients. Dr. Ahriman will make this trouble go away. Even when they were fully conscious, these mini-meditations would reinforce their perception that Dr. Mark Ahriman was their sole salvation.
    The doctor had found it richly amusing to watch them smiling and nodding, even as they must have wondered at their sudden shedding of anxiety. And what fun it was to have a man so gratefully entrust his wife to you when your intention was to debase, demean, humiliate, and ultimately destroy her.
    After the unanticipated halftime occasioned by Susan’s suicide, the game would now resume.
    “Martie?” he said.
    “Yes, Doctor?”
    “Raymond Shaw.”
    Her demeanor changed at once. She stiffened and sat straighter in her chair. Her lovely half smile froze, faded, and she said, “I’m listening.”
    Having switched her on with that name, the doctor now loaded the elaborate program that was so succinctly coded in her personal