False Memory

never to bring this guy inside the gates again. What’s his full name, anyway?”
    Opening the passenger door of the van, Dusty said, “Bruce Wayne.”
    “I thought it was Skeet something.”
    Helping Skeet into the van, Dusty said, “That’s just his nickname.” Which was truthful yet deceptive.
    “I’ll need to see his ID.”
    “I’ll bring it later,” Dusty said, slamming the door. “Right now I’ve got to get him to a doctor.”
    “He hurt?” the guard asked, following Dusty around the van to the driver’s side.
    “He’s a wreck,” Dusty said as he got in behind the wheel and pulled the door shut.
    The guard rapped on the window.
    Starting the engine with one hand, winding down the window with the other, Dusty said, “Yeah?”
    “You can’t go back to strike force, but crew isn’t the right word, either. Better call them your circus or maybe hullabaloo.”
    “You’re all right,” Dusty said. “I like you.”
    The guard smiled and tipped his sopping hat.
    Dusty rolled up the window, switched on the wipers, and drove away from the Sorensons’ house.

    7
    Descending the exterior stairs from her third-floor apartment, Susan Jagger stayed close to the house, sliding her right hand along the shingle siding, as though constantly needing to reassure herself that shelter was close by, fiercely clutching Martie’s arm with her left hand. She kept her head down, focusing intently on her feet, taking each ten-inch-high step as cautiously as a rock climber might have negotiated a towering face of sheer granite.
    Because of Susan’s raincoat hood and because she was shorter than Martie, her face was concealed, but from rainless days, Martie knew how Susan must look. Shock-white skin. Jaw set, mouth grim. Her green eyes would be haunted, as though she’d glimpsed a ghost however, the only ghost in this matter was her once vital spirit, which had been killed by agoraphobia.
    “What’s wrong with the air?” Susan asked shakily.
    “Nothing.”
    “Hard to breathe,” Susan complained. “Thick. Smells funny.”
    “Just humidity. The smell is me. New perfume.”
    “You? Perfume?”
    “I’ve got my girlish moments.”
    “We’re so exposed,” Susan said fearfully.
    “It’s not a long way to the car.”
    “Anything could happen out here.”
    “Nothing will happen.”
    “There’s nowhere to hide.”
    “There’s nothing to hide from.”
    Fifteen-hundred-year-old religious litanies were no less rigidly structured than these twice-a-week conversations on the way to and from therapy sessions.
    As they reached the bottom of the steps, the rain fell harder than before, rattling through the leaves of the potted plants on the patio, clicking against the bricks.
    Susan was reluctant to let go of the corner of the house.
    Martie put an arm around her. “Lean on me if you want.”
    Susan leaned. “Everything’s so strange out here, not like it used to be.”
    “Nothing’s changed. It’s just the storm.”
    “It’s a new world,” Susan disagreed. “And not a good one.”
    Huddling together, with Martie bending to match Susan’s stoop, they progressed through this new world, now in a rush as Susan was drawn forward by the prospect of the comparatively enclosed space of the car, but now haltingly as Susan was weighed down and nearly crushed by the infinite emptiness overhead. Whipped by wind and lashed by rain, shielded by their hoods and their billowing coats, they might have been two frightened holy sisters, in full habit, desperately seeking sanctuary in the early moments of Armageddon.
    Evidently Martie was affected either by the turbulence of the incoming storm or by her troubled friend, because as they proceeded fitfully along the promenade toward the side street where she had parked her car, she became increasingly aware of a strangeness in the day that was easy to perceive but difficult to define. On the concrete promenade, puddles like black mirrors swarmed with images so shattered by falling rain that their true appearance could not be discerned, yet they disquieted Martie. Thrashing palm trees clawed the air with fronds that had darkened from green to green-black, producing a thrum-hiss-rattle that resonated with a primitive and reckless passion deep inside her. On their right, the sand was smooth and pale, like the skin of some vast sleeping beast, and on their left, each house appeared to be filled with a storm of its own, as colorless images of roiling clouds and wind-tossed trees churned across the large ocean-view windows.
    Martie was unsettled by all these