False Memory

and was no doubt written with the same deep commitment that he brought to his private practice.
    Looking at the jacket photo, Dusty said, “Wonder why he didn’t mention mailing it.”
    “Wasn’t mailed,” Martie said, pointing to the lack of postage on the envelope. “Hand delivered—and not from Dr. Ahriman.”
    The label bore Dr. Roy Closterman’s name and return address. Tucked inside the book was a succinct note from the internist:
    My receptionist passes your place on her way home, so I’ve asked her to drop this off I thought you might find Dr. Ahriman’s latest book of interest. Perhaps you’ve never read him.
    “Curious,” Martie said. “Yeah. He doesn’t like Dr. Ahriman.” “Who doesn’t?”
    “Closterman.”
    “Of course, he likes him,” she protested.
    “No. I sensed it. His expression, his tone of voice.”
    “But what’s not to like? Dr. Ahriman’s a great psychiatrist. He’s so committed to his patients.”
    Quack, quack, quack went the plush toy duck.
    “I know, yeah, and look how much better you are just after one session. He was good for you.”
    Bounding around the kitchen again, ears flopping, paws slapping the tile, duck in mouth, Valet raised more quacks than a feathered flock.
    “Valet, settle,” Martie commanded. Then: “Maybe Dr. Closterman... maybe it’s professional jealousy.”
    Opening the book, leafing through it from the front, Dusty said, “Jealousy? But Closterman’s not a psychiatrist. He and Dr. Ahriman are in different fields.”
    Ever obedient, Valet stopped bounding around the kitchen, but he continued to savage the Booda until Dusty began to feel as though they had been zapped into a cartoon starring both famous ducks— Daffy and Donald.
    Dusty was mildly irritated with Closterman for laying this unwanted gift on them. Considering the discreet and yet unmistakable dislike that the internist had shown for Dr. Ahriman, his intentions here were not likely to be either kind or charitable. The act seemed annoyingly petty.
    Seven pages from the front of the psychiatrist’s book, Dusty came across a brief epigraph prior to the first page of Chapter 1. It was a haiku.

    This phantasm
    of falling petals vanishes into
    moon and flowers...
    —Okyo, 1890

    “What’s wrong?” Martie asked.
    Something like theremin music, out of a long-ago movie starring Boris Karloff, wailed and warbled through his mind.
    “Dusty?”
    “Odd little coincidence,” he said, showing the haiku to her.
    Reading the three lines, Martie cocked her head as if she, too, could hear music to which the poem had been set.
    “Strange,” she agreed.
    Again, the dog made the duck talk.

     
     
    Martie’s pace slowed as she ascended the stairs.
    Dusty knew she dreaded hearing Susan’s voice on the answering machine. He had offered to listen alone and report back to her; but to her that would be moral cowardice.
    In the upstairs study, Martie’s large U-shaped desk provided all the work space that she needed to harry Hobbits out of Eriador and across the lands of Gondor and Rhovanion, into the evil kingdom of Mordor—assuming life ever gave her a chance to get back to the sanity of Tolkien’s otherworld. Two complete computer workstations and a shared printer occupied less than a third of the territory.
    Attached to the phone was an answering machine she’d used since graduating from college. In electronic-appliance years, it was not merely old but antique. According to the indicator window, the tape held five messages.
    Martie stood well back from the desk, near the door, as though the distance would insulate her somewhat from the emotional impact of Susan’s voice.
    Here, too, was a sheepskin pillow for Valet, but he remained with his mistress, as though he knew she would need consolation.
    Dusty pushed messages. The tape rewound, then played.
    The first message was the one Dusty had left when he called her the previous evening from the parking lot at New Life.
    “Scarlett, it’s me. Rhett. Just calling to say I do give a damn, after all...
    The second was a call from Susan, the one that must have come in just after Martie had fallen asleep the first time, from sheer exhaustion and a little Scotch, before she woke from a nightmare and raided the medicine cabinet for a sleep aid.
    “It’s me. What’s wrong? You okay? You think I’m nuts? It’s all right if ‘you do. Call me.”
    Martie had retreated two steps, into the doorway, as if driven backward by the sound of her dead friend’s voice. Her face was white, but the hands with which