False Memory

of the day by this enormous weight of falling rain, which came down like cataracts of iron pellets.
    She waited until she heard Susan engage the dead bolt, a solid Schiage lock that would hold against serious assault. Then she quickly descended the long, steep flight of stairs.
    At the bottom, she stopped, turned, and peered up toward the landing and the apartment door.
    Susan Jagger seemed like a beautiful princess in a fairy tale, imprisoned in a tower, besieged by trolls and malevolent spirits, with no brave prince to save her.
    As the gray day reverberated with the ceaseless booming of big storm waves on the nearby shore, Martie hurried along the beach promenade to the nearest street, where gutters overflowed and dirty water churned around the tires of her red Saturn.
    She hoped Dusty had taken advantage of the bad weather to be domestic and to make his incomparable meatballs and spicy tomato sauce. Nothing would be more reassuring than stepping into the house and seeing him in a cooking apron, a glass of red wine near at hand. The air would be full of delicious aromas. Good retro pop music—maybe Dean Martin—on the stereo. Dusty’s smile, his embrace, his kiss. After this bizarre day, she needed all the cozy reassurances of home and hearth and husband.
    As Martie started the car, a sickening vision blazed through her mind, burning away all hope that the day might yet bring her a small measure of peace and reassurance. This was more real than an ordinary mental picture, so detailed and intense that it seemed as if it were happening right here, right now. She was convinced that she was flashing forward to a terrible incident that would happen, receiving a glimpse of an inevitable moment in the future, toward which she was plunging as surely as if she’d thrown herself off a cliff. When she thrust the key into the ignition, her mind filled with an image of an eye pierced by the wicked point of the key, gouged by the serrated edge, which sank into the brain behind the eye. Even as she jammed the key into the car ignition, she twisted it, and simultaneously the key in her vivid premonition also twisted in the eye.
    Without any conscious awareness of having opened the door, Martie found herself out of the car, leaning against the side of it, bringing up her lunch onto the rainwashed street.
    She stood there for a long while, head bent.
    Her raincoat hood had slipped back. Soon her hair was soaked.
    When she was sure that she was fully purged, she reached into the car, plucked tissues from a box of Kleenex, and wiped her lips.
    She always kept a small bottle of water in the car. Now she used it to rinse out her mouth.
    Though still a little queasy, she got into the Saturn and pulled the door shut.
    The engine was idling. She wouldn’t have to touch the key again until she was parked in her garage in Corona Del Mar.
    Wet, cold, miserable, frightened, confused, she wanted more than anything to be safe at home, to be dry and warm and among familiar things.
    She was shaking too much to drive. She waited almost fifteen minutes before she finally released the hand brake and put the car in gear.
    Although she desperately wanted to go home, she was afraid of what might happen when she got there. No. She was being dishonest with herself. She wasn’t afraid of what would happen. She was afraid of what she might do.
    The eye that she had seen in her premonition—if, indeed, that’s what it had been—was not merely any eye. It had been a distinctive shade of gray-blue, lustrous and beautiful. Just like Dusty’s eyes.

    18
    At New Life Clinic, the positive psychological influences provided by animals were thought to be useful in certain cases, and Valet was welcome. Dusty parked near the portico, and by the time they got into the building, they were only slightly damp, which was a disappointment to the dog. Valet was a retriever, after all, with webbed feet, a love of water, and enough aquatic talent to qualify him for the Olympic synchronized-swimming team.
    In his second-floor quarters, Skeet was fast asleep atop the covers, fully clothed, shoes off.
    The bleak winter afternoon pressed its fading face to the window, and shadows gathered in the room. The only other light issued from a small battery-powered reading lamp clipped to the book that Tom Wong, the male nurse, was reading.
    After scratching Valet behind the ears, Tom took advantage of their visit to go on a break.
    Dusty quietly unpacked both suitcases, stowed the