Spiral

nose. I thought of Jeanette Held’s similar reaction. Then Helides brought his left hand up quickly to whip past both closed eyes before retreating back beneath his right knee.
    ”David, I’m told you and Veronica used to play on the computer together.”
    ”Yes. I am quite interested in botany, as Dr. Forbes must also have told you.”
    ”He did.”
    Because of Helides’s position on the bed, his head nodded laterally on the pillow. ”I study the true plants of Florida.”
    If he wanted to talk about them, I thought it might be a good way to get him to open up. ”The true plants, you say?”
    ”The indigenous ones. Species like the gumbo-limbo, with its grotesquely beautiful, gnarled trunks and red bark that peels like a sunburned tourist. The Caloosa Indians began using the gummy sap from the tree a millennium ago to catch birds who might land on the limbs. The sapodilla tree, with its seedy fruit the size of a baseball, like sandy candy. The torchwood tree, whose resin will burn. Those species introduced by man—like the punk tree, the pepper, the Australian pine—are forcing out the indigenous ones because these immigrants proliferate easily and grow with no need for human care.”
    Helides had been speaking in an increasingly stronger voice, then suddenly fell silent. When he opened his mouth again, the quaver was back. ”But I bore you.”
    ”Not at all.”
    ”And I am just practicing ‘avoidance,’ as Dr. Forbes would call it.”
    ”Avoidance?”
    ”Avoiding what is unpleasant to me by talking about that which I find interesting, and... safe.”
    ”Let’s stay with the pleasant a little longer. Veronica and you enjoyed working with your computer?”
    ”Yes.” A gurgle that almost amounted to a laugh. ”She was not very interested in botany, I must say. But I showed her how to access the Internet and the Web. I also would buy her computer games, and she would play them here, with me.”
    ”You bought her these games?”
    ”My father gives me an allowance for such indulgences.”
    I didn’t say anything right away.
    Helides said it for me. ”John, do not be embarrassed by your question. Or for me. I am long past any... pride of independence in my life.”
    I took a breath. ”When you and Veronica were together, did she ever talk with you about her life?”
    His lips grew thinner. ”She tried to... cheer me up, I think in exchange for my showing her more computer tricks.”
    ”In exchange.”
    ”Veronica was not a generous girl, John. She... bartered for what she wanted.”
    Same assessment as I’d gotten from others. ”But did Veronica talk with you about what she was doing in her life, maybe who or what she was afraid of?”
    ”No.” Now a vertical shake from the head on the pillow. ”No, Veronica intuited that I would not be of much use to her if she told me... disturbing things.” A pause, and the lips parted in a slight, but genuine, smile. ”Which is not to say that she did not help me, John. Truly. With all my father has spent on formal ‘treatments,’ the allowance money that went toward those computer games probably brought me more joy than anything else. And that was because of Veronica.”
    Since Helides brought up the ”treatments” issue, I decided to push it a little. ”Dr. Forbes said you’d had electroshock therapy?”
    A visible cringe, the whole body drawing more tightly into the fetal position. ”Yes.... But even if I... wanted to talk with you about them, I could not. My... short-term memory before the... ‘sessions’ was wiped out by the current applied.”
    Move to safer ground. ”Dr. Forbes also said you take some drugs now.”
    The slight smile again as Helides relaxed a bit. ”I have no remaining pride on that subject, either. The Zoloft renders me impotent, and I must not mix it with alcohol or other substances.”
    ”So you don’t.”
    ”No.”
    ”Not even at your father’s birthday party.”
    Another cringe and tightening of the body language. ”Let us not... avoid anymore. Get it over with, please?” Okay. ”What can you tell me about that day?”
    ”It was very... disrupting. Many people in the house, my brother’s friends, others. Dr. Forbes tried to keep me... at ease, but it was not possible.”
    ”I’ve seen Kalil Biggs’s videotape.”
    ”Another... disruption.”
    ”His doing the taping, David?”
    ”The noise, the unusual... movements. His lens... following me wherever I went.”
    I didn’t recall Helides being