A Dark Matter (35 page)

“You can’t be telling the truth.”

“If I’d been there with the rest of your gang, I wouldn’t able to think about everything from this angle. I like being at my own little angle. It’s like standing on the sidewalk, looking in through someone’s picture window, and trying to make sense of what you see.”

She thought about what I had said, and I could picture her with the phone in her hand, staring blindly ahead in the darkened hotel room, her features half in shadow. When finally she spoke, it was with a degree of warmth that surprised me. “One day, I’ll try to help, too, but I’ll have to work up to it.”

After I disconnected, I realized that I had told her nothing about our miraculous rescue from death in a plane crash. It was better that way, I thought. She need never hear of that incident.

When we drove into the Lamont’s parking lot, a slim dark shape moved from the shadow of the great walnut tree. The tremor of unease that visited me disappeared when the gliding figure moved into the sunlight and became Pargeeta Parmendera.

“Hi,” I said, although I could see that Pargeeta was not in the mood for social niceties. As she marched up to the car it was clear that speaking to Howard Bly’s friends had been uppermost in her mind for some time.

“Yeah, hi,” she said, and came to a halt directly in front of me. “Sorry. I just have to say this. I waited out here because I was pretty sure you’d be getting here around this time.”

“How long were you standing there?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Twenty minutes?”

“You were standing under that tree for twenty minutes?”

“It might have been more like half an hour. Please. I was sure you’d come here sooner or later, and I wanted to explain something before we get inside. I don’t want you to think I’m a horrible person.”

“Nobody could think that, Pargeeta.”

“Okay, but you saw my face, the expression on my face, which I don’t even know what it was. Only
you saw
it.”

“I don’t know what you’re raving about, sweetie.”

“I saw you notice. When Howard was sitting on the floor, and Dr. Greengrass was talking to him.”

I did know what troubled her, I realized. In Pargeeta’s face I had seen something troubled and conflicted, and she was right to think it had disturbed me. “Ah,” I said. “Yes.”

“You
do
know what I’m raving about.”

“Well, maybe
he
does,” Don began, but fell silent when I flicked an irritated glance at him.

“It’s not serious,” I said.

“To me it is! I went crazy, worrying about what you thought. I’m not a bad person. Howard’s wonderful, and I adore him, but I don’t want to make him stay here forever.”

“You understood right away that he was going to leave.”

“He talked without quoting! And he said ‘Farewell’ twice!”

“You’re right.” She thought Hootie’s farewell had been for her.

She threw out her arms, and her face twisted. “Why am I the only person who ever
hears
him? Howard will tell you everything, you just have to understand the way he talks.”

“You don’t want to lose your friend, do you? Now that it’s easy to understand what Howard is saying, he’ll be able to move into a halfway house.”

“Well, duh,” she said. “You see my dilemma.”

“And to make it worse, you’re really proud of him, too.”

“Wouldn’t you be? It’s fantastic, how he could let himself talk again. And it was because of the two of you. You showed up, and he just blossomed!”

“You do all the work, and we turn up and get all the credit.”

“Yeah, there’s that. Only it didn’t feel like work.” She raised both hands and flicked away tears I hadn’t seen.

“Howard owes a lot to your friendship. He knows that.”

“Howard wants to see the Eel. That’s your wife, isn’t it? Her nickname was the Eel, and his was Hootie.”

“You’ve been having long conversations with him.”

“While I still can,” she said. “But I do want him to see your wife again, I really do.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure you’re there, too, one day.”

“Is it time to go inside yet?” Don asked.

Dr. Greengrass beckoned us into his office and invited us to sit down. The progress of everybody’s favorite patient continued at its astounding pace, though he had showed some signs of backsliding today, in his friends’ absence. Some moodiness, loss of appetite, and a couple of instances of his “quote mark” arm gestures to indicate that he was selecting his phrases from a wider context.

“In a sense, though, I gather that everything Howard says now comes from the much wider context of multiple sources. A near infinity of sources. That’s his contention, anyhow. I can’t imagine how a human memory can hold so much, and in fact, I wonder if it’s humanly possible. Howard never seems to need to search through these mental documents of his for an expression, he just comes out with it, whatever it is.”

“You think he’s cheating?” I asked, smiling.

“I think he may still need the comfort of an underlying text, even if it’s an infinite patchwork that is … more theoretical than actual.”

“Or it may be that we just don’t understand how his memory works.”

“Point taken,” Greengrass said. “In my view, you understand, it would be preferable if Howard is merely pretending to be quoting from an infinitely available multiplicity of texts. As a practical matter, of course, it makes little or no difference. I just want you to be aware that Howard appears to be significantly more secure in his progress when he knows that you’re in the vicinity.”

“He was unhappy that we left town?”

“It affected him, let’s put it that way. We’re open to the idea of moving Howard into a residential treatment center, but right now our first concern is that we refrain from doing anything prematurely, or anything that has even the faintest chance of undermining Howard.”

“We share your concern,” I said. Don nodded. “And I’m glad you’re open to the idea of a treatment center.”

“Well, they’re very different from halfway houses, aren’t they? I can’t pretend that Howard is likely to get anything new out of staying on at the Lamont. Actually, I have been thinking for years that he would very likely experience considerable benefits simply from being in a new environment, but Howard never found that idea even faintly acceptable. He just shut down on me. Until now.”

“That’s very interesting,” I said.

Greengrass cocked his head and stuck a ballpoint pen in his mouth, apparently considering some matter. “You remember promising to share any new information you might acquire about the sources of Howard’s pathology?”

“If I had anything you’d find explanatory, you’d already know about it.”

“Surely you have discussed the incident involving Mr. Mallon.”

“We had kind of worked out that we’d start on the meadow today.”

“In that case, let me detain you no longer.” Greengrass smiled at them and began to stand up.

“First let me make a suggestion,” I said. “You can tell me if it’s any kind of possibility.”

Greengrass settled down again. “Please.”

“Our presence in Howard’s general vicinity seems to have a positive influence on him?”

“On his progress, yes.”

“Are there any special limitations or conditions pertaining to the treatment centers you would be exploring for Howard?”

“What a question! Yes, first, availability, of course. Suitability. The general condition of the unit.”

“Is location an issue?”

Dr. Greengrass tilted back in his chair and gave me a careful look. “What is this suggestion of yours, Mr. Harwell?”

“I wondered if it might be helpful to Howard to be placed in Chicago. I’m completely ignorant about this kind of thing, but through my wife’s work, she would know any number of people who could be helpful in finding Howard a good placement there.”

“In Chicago.”

“The first thing Howard told Pargeeta was that he wanted to see my wife.”

“He referred to your wife as the Eel?”

“It was her high-school nickname. Her name is Lee, which backwards is….”

“You and your wife have the same given name?”

“So it seems. Do you draw any psychological conclusions from that?”

“None. Why do you ask?”

“Someone we met this morning implied it meant something unpleasant.”

“People’s names have very little to do with their romantic attachments,” Greengrass said.

“Also, back in those days, we looked like twins.”

“No wonder you fell in love!” The psychiatrist tilted his head and grinned. I thought he looked a bit like a
Wind in the Willows
character, too. As Greengrass’s mind returned to our earlier topic, his smile faded. “I don’t believe there is any serious obstacle to placing Howard in Illinois. If we were a state hospital, of course, it would be impossible. However, those codes and restrictions do not apply to us. As I explained to you, I’d be entirely willing to see Howard pass into a good center. For me personally, and I want to be completely frank about this matter, the central issue here concerns your involvement in Howard’s ongoing treatment. How committed are you to Howard’s case? I am asking both of you. How do you see your wife’s involvement, Mr. Harwell?”

“We’d both do everything we could.”

“So would I,” said Don. “It’s long past time I settled down, and Chicago would be a great place to do it. I don’t want to die broke and alone.”

I turned my head and regarded him in amazement.

Don shrugged. “I mean, man, I’m getting too old to keep living like this. What I could do, you know, is find a little apartment and advertise for students. All the time I been staying with you, Lee, I been thinking about this. Mallon got off the road, so can I.”

“Could you make a living that way?”

“Hell, yes, I can make a living. It’d be a small one, bro, I’ll never buy any fancy townhouses on the Gold Coast, but it would be enough for me. D’you know why?”

“Why?”

“If you sell wisdom, you’ll always have customers. I’ll print up a couple of pamphlets, leave ’em in bars and drugstores and libraries, inside a month I’ll have fifty, sixty queries.” He swiveled in his chair to face Greengrass. “I’d consider it an honor to maintain contact with Hootie—Howard, I mean. Damn, man, I’d go over and see him once a day, until he got sick of me, anyhow.”

“And I would need good, reliable paperwork for this patient. Monthly reports, say, for at least the first twenty-four months.”

“You want monthly reports?” Don asked. “Whoa, Nellie. I think I’ll leave that to the writer over here.”

“I don’t believe the doctor meant us,” I said.

“Correct, Mr. Harwell. I would expect monthly reports from any treatment center that admits Howard. In a sense, Howard will always be my patient. It’s essential that I be kept informed of his ongoing condition.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

“No,” Greengrass said. “It should not be a problem.” He looked up and placed his hands on his desk. “Our biggest problem is that we’ll all be so brokenhearted when and if Howard actually does move on. Pargeeta especially.”

“I promised her she could visit us,” I said.

“That was kind of you, Mr. Harwell. What do you say we drop in on our patient?”