False Memory

with physicians as skeptically as she did with high-pressure car salesmen, double-checking them through her own research and by seeking second opinions.
    Popping the pizza into the microwave, Susan was happy to be relieved of the necessity to cook a complicated dinner, and she understood, almost with the power of an epiphany, that she’d held fast to her sanity through ritual at the expense of action. Ritual anesthetized, made the misery of her condition bearable, but it did not bring her closer to a resolution of her troubles; it didn’t heal.
    She filled her wineglass. Wine didn’t heal, either, and she needed to be careful not to get bagged and then screw up the work ahead of her, but she was so excited, so adrenaline-stoked, that she could probably finish the whole bottle and, with her metabolism in high gear, burn it off by bedtime.
    As Susan paced the kitchen, waiting for the pizza to be ready, her bafflement at her long passivity grew into amazement. Looking over the past year with new detachment, she could almost believe she’d been living under a warlock’s evil spell that had clouded her thinking, sapped her willpower, and shackled her soul with dark magic.
    Well, the spell was broken. The old Susan Jagger was back— clearheaded, energized, and ready to use her anger to change her life.
    He was out there. Maybe he was even watching from the dunes this very minute. Maybe he would skate past her house on Rollerblades now and then, or jog past, or ride past on a bike, to all appearances only one more California fun freak or exercise fanatic. But he was out there, for sure.
    The creep hadn’t visited her for three successive nights, but he followed a pattern of need that all but assured he would come to her before dawn. Even if she could not fend off sleep, even if she was somehow drugged and unaware of what he was doing to her, she would know all about him in the morning, because with a little luck, the hidden camcorder would capture him in the act.
    If the tape revealed Eric, she would kick his sorry ass until her shoe would need to be surgically removed from his cheeks. And then get him out of her life forever.
    If she caught a stranger, which seemed highly unlikely, she would have proof for the police. As deeply mortifying as it would be to surrender a tape of her own rape into evidence, she would do what she must.
    Returning to the table for her glass of wine, she wondered what if... what if...
    What if upon waking she felt used and sore, felt the insidious warmth of semen, and yet the tape showed her alone in bed, tossing either in ecstasy or in terror, like a madwoman in a fit? As though her visitor were an entity—call him Incubus—who cast no reflection in mirrors and left no image on videotape.
    Nonsense.
    The truth was out there, but it wasn’t supernatural.
    She raised the glass of Merlot for a sip—and took half of it in one thick swallow.

    28
    Like a shrine to Martha Stewart, goddess of the modern American home. Two floor lamps with fringed silk shades. Two big armchairs with footstools, facing each other across a tea table. Needlepoint pillows on the chairs. The living-room fireplace to one side.
    This was Martie’s favorite spot in the house. Many nights during the past three years, she and Dusty had sat here with books, quietly reading, each lost in a separate fiction, yet as intimate as if they had been holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.
    Now her legs were drawn up on the chair, and she was turned slightly to her left, sans book. She sat quite still, in a languid attitude, which must have looked like the posture of serenity, when in fact she was not so much serene as emotionally exhausted.
    In the other chair, Dusty tried to settle back in an assumption of calm consideration and analysis, but he slid repeatedly to the edge of his seat.
    Occasionally halted by embarrassment, more often silenced because she couldn’t help pausing to marvel at the weird details of her own demented behavior, Martie recounted her ordeal in short installments, resuming her story when Dusty gently encouraged her with questions.
    The very sight of Dusty calmed her and gave her hope, but Martie sometimes could not meet his eyes. She gazed into the cold fireplace as if hypnotic flames licked the ceramic logs.
    Surprisingly, the decorative set of brass fireplace tools didn’t alarm her. A small shovel. Pointed tongs. A poker. Only a short while ago, the sight of the poker alone would have plucked