False Memory

they slip me this book. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Then for some reason they seem to program me not to read it.”
    Dusty braked to a stop in a backup at a red traffic light. “A little lame, huh?”
    “A lot lame.”
    They were on a bridge that spanned the channel between Newport Harbor and its back bay. Under the sunless sky, the broad expanse of water was dark gray-green, though not black, with hatching drawn on it by the breeze above and the currents below, so that it looked scaly, like the hide of a fearsome slumbering reptile out of the Jurassic Period.
    “But there’s something that isn’t lame,” Martie said, “not in the least lame. Something that’s happening to Susan.”
    A grimness in her voice drew Dusty’s attention from the harbor. “What about Susan?”
    “She’s missing periods of time, too. Not little pieces, either. Big blocks of time. Whole nights.”
    The Valium veil in her eyes had been gradually lifting, that welcome but artificial calm giving way to anxiety once more. At Dr. Ahriman’s office, the unnatural paleness left her, replaced by peachy color, but now shadows were gathering in the tender skin under her eyes, as though her face were darkening in sympathy with the slowly waning winter afternoon.
    Beyond the farther end of the bridge, the red signal changed to green. The traffic began to move.
    Martie told him about Susan’s phantom rapist.
    Dusty had been worried. He had been frightened. Now a feeling worse than worry or fear wrapped his heart.
    Sometimes, when he woke in the abyss of night and lay listening to Martie’s sweet soft breathing, a mortal dread—more terrible than simple fear—crept into him. After one too many glasses of wine at dinner, too much cream sauce, and perhaps a bitter clove of garlic, his mind was as sour as his stomach, and he contemplated the silence of the predawn world without his usual appreciation for the beauty of stillness, hearing no peace in it, hearing instead the threat of the void. In spite of the faith that was his rock through most of his life, a worm of doubt chewed at his heart on these hushed nights, and he wondered if all that he and Martie had together was this one life, and nothing beyond it but a darkness that allowed no memory and was empty even of loneliness. He didn’t want until-death-do-you-part, didn’t want anything short of forever, and when a despairing inner voice suggested that forever was a fraud, he always reached out in the night to touch Martie in her sleep. His intention was not to wake her, only to feel in her what she invariably contained and what was detectable to even his lightest touch: her given grace, her immortality and the promise of his own.
    Now, as he listened to Martie recount Susan’s story, Dusty was an apple to the worm of doubt again. Everything that was happening to all of them seemed unreal, meaningless, a glimpse into the chaos underlying life. He was overcome by a feeling that the end, when it arrived, would be only the end, not also a beginning, and he sensed that it was coming fast, too, a cruel and brutal death toward which they were hurtling blindly.
    When Martie finished, Dusty handed his cell phone to her. “Try Susan again.”
    She placed the call. The number rang and rang. And rang.
    “Let’s go see if the retirees downstairs know where she’s gone,” Martie suggested. “It’s not far.”
    Ned will be waiting for us. As soon as I pick up what he’s got for me, we’ll go to Susan’s. But for sure, it can’t be Eric creeping around there at night.”
    “Because whoever is doing this to her, he’s one of them behind what’s happening to you, me, Skeet.”
    “Yeah. And Eric, hell, he’s an investment adviser, a numbers cruncher, not a mind-control wizard.”
    Martie keyed Susan’s number in again. She pressed the phone tightly to her ear. Her face was pinched by the strain of wishing fervently for an answer.
    53
    Ned Motherwell’s pride was an ‘82 Chevy Camaro: unpainted but with a periodically reapplied coat of flat-gray primer, chopped, fitted with frenched headlights, stripped of brightwork except for a pair of fat chrome tailpipes. Parked in the southeast corner of the shopping-center lot where they had arranged to meet, it looked like a getaway car. As Dusty parked two spaces away, Ned climbed out of the Camaro, and though it was by no definition a subcompact, there seemed to be a lot more of Ned than there was vehicle. He towered over the low, customized car as he closed the door. Although the day was cool