He stumbled to a booth away from the farmers. As he dropped onto the spongy red seat, the night’s ordeal flared up again. Exactly the kind of low-grade agitation that responded nicely to the antianxiety medication that his colleagues now dished out in bulk. Knowing how quickly the body stopped making externally supplied substances, Weber tried not to take anything stronger than a multivitamin. Even these he had forgotten to pack, and so had taken nothing for the last three days. But so slight a change could not possibly account for this bout.
His fingers drummed on the booth’s gray Formica. From two feet above them, he watched them type. A laugh bubbled up from his clenched belly and broke over him. He took his typing hands and cradled them in each other. Diagnosis stared him in the face. He, the last life scientist to go online, was suffering from e-mail withdrawal.
The waitress appeared at boothside, dressed like something out of a movie: half ward nurse, half meter maid. His age, if she was a day: thirty years too old to wait on tables. He grinned at her, a reprieved idiot. The waitress shook her head. “Don’t you need a license to be that happy before you’ve had your coffee?” She held up two Pyrex coffee pots. He pointed to the one that wasn’t orange.
He’d forgotten about midwesterners. He could no longer read them, his people, the residents of the Great Central Flyover. Or rather, his theories about them, honed through his first twenty years of life, had died from lack of longitudinal data. They were, by various estimates, kinder, colder, duller, shrewder, more forthright, more covert, more taciturn, more guarded, and more gregarious than the mode of the country’s bean curve. Or else they were that mode: the fat, middle part of the graph that fell away to nothing on both coasts. They’d become an alien species to him, although he was one of them, by habit and birth.
He rubbed his bald spot and shook his head. With a little more edge, she asked, “What can I get you, hon?” He looked around the booth, confused. A half-sigh slipped out of her, the first of a long day. “You need a menu? We’ve got one of everything.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Spinach crêpes?”
Her mouth barely tightened. “Fresh out. Anything else, though.”
When she left with his order—two over easy, with twin pigs—he fished out his absurd cell phone. Like carrying around a little science-fiction phaser in his pocket. He’d slipped it into his trousers when he left his room, already contemplating a double descent into vice. He checked his watch, adding an hour for New York. Still too early. He eavesdropped on the table of weathered men, but what little they said was pressed into so fierce a shorthand that it might as well have been Pawnee. One of the circle, a bulbous face with luxurious ear and nose hair, whose blood-red cap read “IBP,” worked away on a toothpick, carving it into a tiny totem pole with his deft incisors. “You can’t let yourself get cocky,” the man said. “Those Arabs will walk across a desert to take revenge on a mirage.”
“Well, the Bible near says as much, already,” his tablemate agreed.
No need to alarm Sylvie, really. She could tell him nothing. Had there been anything wrong, she’d have mentioned it the night before. Besides, if she caught him using a cell phone from a public place to quell a nervous feeling, she’d never let him live it down.
The waitress brought his sausage and eggs. “You did say wheat toast, didn’t you, dear?” He nodded. They hadn’t mentioned toast, as far as Weber could remember. She poured him fresh coffee and turned toward the farmers’ table. She stopped and swung back around to him. “You’re the brain man from New York? The one who came out for a look at Mark Schluter.”
He flushed. “That’s right. How…?”
“Wish I could tell you it was psychic powers.” She spiraled the coffee pots near her ears. “My niece is a friend of the boys. She showed me a book of yours. Said you were out. We all think it’s a tragedy, what’s happened to Mark. But there’s some who say that if it hadn’t been that particular accident, it would’ve been another much like it. Bonnie says he’s pretty different these days. Not that he wasn’t kinda different before.”
“He’s bruised up, yes. But the brain is a surprising place. You’d be shocked what it can recover from.”
“This is what I am forever trying to tell my husband.”
Something clicked in him. He felt the thrill of dredging up something too small to merit remembering. “Your niece. Is she thin, light-complected? Long, straight, black hair down below her shoulders? Does she knit her own clothes?”
The waitress threw out one hip and tipped her head. “Now, I know for a fact she hasn’t met you yet.”
He spiraled his hands by his ears. “Psychic powers.”
“Ho-kay,” she said. “You got my dollar. I’ll go buy your damn book.”
She went to the circle of men and topped off their coffees. They flirted with her outrageously, joking about her pair of hot, bottomless pots. The same jokes that filled Long Island diners, jokes Weber had long ago stopped hearing in his native country. She leaned into the group, and they spoke together in soft voices. Surely about him. The alien species.
She came back his way, waving coffee pots in triumph. “You were looking at pictures of her at Pioneer Pizza. That fellow there—” She pointed with the decaf. “I won’t say ‘gentleman’—has a daughter who waited on you.”
Weber pressed his hand to his forehead. “I think I’m outnumbered here.”
“Small town for you, i’nit? Everybody’s somebody’s kin. Take that plate for you, hon? Or are you still working on it?”
“No, no. My labors now have ended.”
As soon as his waitress left, dread washed back over him. Coffee was a mistake, after such a night. He never drank caffeinated anymore. Sylvie had kept him clean for close to two years. Sausage, too: a gross miscalculation. Four days in Nebraska; four days away from the lab, the office, the writing desk. He checked his watch; still too early to call out east. But he called Bob Cavanaugh’s cell so infrequently that he’d earned the right to abuse it now.
His editor’s preemptive “Gerald!” knocked Weber back. Caller ID: one of the world’s truly evil technologies. The receiver was not supposed to know the sender before the sender knew the receiver. Weber’s own cell phone had Caller ID built into the dial screen. But he always averted his eyes. Cavanaugh sounded pleased. “I know why you’re calling!”
The words crawled up Weber’s spine. “Do you?”
“You haven’t seen them yet? I sent them as attachments, yesterday.”
“Seen what? I’m on the road. Nebraska. I haven’t—”
“God help you. What is it, still smoke signals out there?”
“No, I’m sure they…I just haven’t…”
“Gerald. Why are you whispering?”
“Well, I’m in a public place.” He looked around. No one in the restaurant was looking at him. They didn’t have to.
“Gerald Weber!” Affectionate but merciless. “You aren’t calling at this hour to ask how things are going?”
“Well, not entirely, no. I just—”
“Slippery slope, Gerald. Three more books and you’ll be asking for sales figures. I, for one, am delighted to witness your descent into humanity. Well, set your mind at rest. We’re off on a pretty good foot.”
“A pretty good foot? Is the creature in question a biped?”
“Ah, biology humor. The Kirkus review is a little mixed, but the Booklist is to die for. Hang on. I’m on the train. I copied myself on the laptop. I’ll read you the highlights.”
Weber listened. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t be worried about the book. The Country of Surprise was the richest thing he’d ever written. It consisted of a dozen re-created case histories of patients who’d suffered what Weber studiously refused to call brain damage. Each of his twelve subjects had been changed so profoundly by illness or accident that each called into question the solidity of the self. We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one suffici
ent to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognizable new countries. Who could take issue with that?
Listening to the review, Weber was all islands. Cavanaugh stopped reading. Weber was supposed to respond. “Does that please you?” he asked his editor.
“Me? I think it’s great. We’re using it for the ad.”
Weber nodded, to someone half a continent away. “What didn’t Kirkus like?”
Another silence at the other end. Cavanaugh, finessing. “Something about the case histories being too anecdotal. Too much philosophy and not enough car chases. They may have used the word portentous.”
“Portentous in what sense?”
“You know, Gerald, I wouldn’t worry about it. Nobody can discover you anymore. You’ve become a big target; more points for taking you down than for praising you. It won’t hold us up in the slightest.”
“Do you have the piece handy?”
Cavanaugh sighed and retrieved the file. He read it to Weber. “There. Masochist. Now forget it. Fuck the peasants. So what are you doing in Nebraska? Something to do with the new project, I hope?”
Weber flinched. “Oh, you know me, Bob. Everything’s the new project.”
“Are you examining someone?”
“A young accident victim who thinks his sister is an impostor.”
“Strange. That’s what my sister thinks of me.”
Weber laughed, dutifully. “We all play ourselves.”
“This is for the new one? I thought I was buying a book about memory.”
“That’s what’s so interesting. His sister matches everything he remembers about her, but he’s ready to discard memory in favor of gut reaction. All the remembered evidence in the world can’t hold a candle to low-level hunch.”
“Wild. What’s the prognosis?”
“You’ll have to buy the book, Robert. Twenty-five bucks, at your local chain.”
“At that price, I’ll wait to read the reviews first.”
They hung up. Weber snapped back to the restaurant, the smell of bacon grease. The reception of his work was almost irrelevant. Only the act of honest observation mattered. And on that score he was covered. The morning’s anxiety had been an aberration. He couldn’t imagine what had triggered it. Perhaps that woman Gillespie’s unspoken accusation. He drained his coffee, searching the cup bottom. At the far table, the farmers exchanged jokes about agricultural extension agents. Weber listened without following.
“So the first fella says, ‘This bug don’t chew and spit up its cud like the other one.’ ‘Naw,’ the second fella tells him. ‘This one is a non-compost mantis.’”
His waitress reappeared. “Get you anything else, dear?”
“Just the check, thanks. Oh. And could I ask you something?” He felt mildly queasy again. Nothing. “You say that everyone is somebody’s kin out here. How about the Schluters?”
She gazed out the window, on a street slowly filling with moving bodies. “The father was kind of a loner. Joan Swanson had some family down in Hastings. But, you know, she was the kind of person who believed that the Kingdom was coming tomorrow afternoon, at 4:15 p.m. And nobody she knew was ready to make the cut. Tends to drive even family away.” She shook her head sadly and stacked the dirty dishes. “No, not much safety net for those two kids.”
He returned to Good Samaritan for a follow-up with Dr. Hayes. They reviewed Weber’s three days of materials. Hayes studied the GSR results, facial recognition scores, and psychological profiles. He asked a dozen questions, of which Weber could answer only a third. Hayes was impressed. “Strangest thing you could hope to see, and still come out intact!” He smacked the sheaf of notes. “Well, Doctor, you’ve raised my appreciation for the case. I suppose that’s good science for you. But what’s indicated now? How do we treat the condition and not just the symptom?”
Weber grimaced. “I’m not sure I know the difference, here. The literature has no systematic treatment studies. No real sample size to work with. Psychiatric origins are rare enough. Trauma-induced cases are almost fiction. If you want my opinion…”
The neurologist bared his palms: no sharp implements. “No turf in medicine. You know that.”
If Weber knew anything from a lifetime of research, it was exactly the opposite. “I’d recommend intensive, persistent cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s a conservative course, but worth pursuing. Let me give you a recent article.”
Hayes raised an eyebrow. “I suppose,” he said. “I suppose we could even get spontaneous melioration.”
Weber countered the attack. “It has happened. CBT has a track record in delusions. If nothing else, it can help address the anger and paranoia.”
Everything about Hayes radiated healthy skepticism. But the first rule of medicine was to do something. Useful or worthless, however irrelevant or unlikely—act. Hayes stood and offered Weber his hand. “I’ll be happy to refer him to Psych. And I look forward to seeing your piece, wherever it appears. Remember to spell my name with an ‘e.’”
There remained only to say goodbye. Weber arrived at Dedham Glen after Mark’s afternoon physical therapy. Karin was there, a chance to combine both farewells. He saw them from a distance, out on the front grounds, Karin sprawled on the grass fifty yards off, like some quarantined babysitter, while Mark sat on a metal bench underneath a cottonwood next to a woman Weber instantly recognized without having met. Bonnie Travis wore a sleeveless baby-blue blouse and denim skirt. Having removed his knit cap, she was placing a garland of woven dandelions around Mark Schluter’s head. She planted a twig in his hands, a garden Zeus’s scepter. Mark wallowed in the treatment. They looked up as Weber approached across the lawn, and Bonnie’s face broke out in a smile that could only have arisen in a state with fewer than twenty-two people per square mile. “Hey! I know you. You look just like your photograph.”
“You, too,” Weber answered.
Mark doubled over giggling. Only grabbing Bonnie kept him from falling off the bench.
“What?” Bonnie begged, laughing along. “What’d I say?”
“You’re both nuts.” Mark strafed them with his scepter.
“Splain, Markie.”
“Well, first off, a photo’s flat? And it’s, like, this big.”
Bonnie Travis cackled like a fiend. It struck Weber that they’d been recreating before his arrival, although he smelled nothing. Karin stood and walked over to Weber, her face filled with suspicion. “This is it, isn’t it?”
Mark reeled. “What’s happening? You exposed her? You’re arresting her?”
Weber addressed Karin. “I’ve spoken with Dr. Hayes. He’ll refer you to intensive cognitive behavioral therapy, as we discussed.”
“She’s going to the slammer?” Mark grabbed Bonnie’s forearm. “See? What’d I tell you? You didn’t believe me. This woman’s got a problem.”
“You’ll be involved,” Weber told her. As promises went, this was the feeblest.
Karin’s eyes interrogated Weber. “You’re not coming back?”
He gave her the look of friendly respect that had won him the trust of hundreds of altered, anxious people—all the reassurance he had just last night misplaced.
“You’re leaving?” Bonnie pouted. In truth, she looked nothing like her picture. “But you just got here.”
Mark jerked up. “Hang on. No, Shrinky. Don’t go. I forbid you!” He pointed his imperial trident at Weber. “You said you’d get me out of this joint. Who’s gonna spring me if you don’t?”
Weber arched his eyebrows but said nothing.
“Man! I gotta get home. Get back to work. That job is the only good thing I’ve got going. They’ll shit-can me if I hang out here any longer.”
Karin palmed her own temples. “Mark, we’ve been over this. You’re on disability. If the doctors feel you need more therapy, IBP’s insurance will…”
“I don’t need therapy; I need work. If those health people would just get off my back. I don’t mean you, Shrinky. Your head’s in the righ
t place, at least.”
Mark had accepted Weber as spontaneously as he rejected his own sister. Nothing Weber had done deserved such trust. “Keep working on yourself, Mark.” Weber cringed at the sound of his own words. “You’ll be home in no time.”
Mark looked away, crushed. Bonnie leaned over and put her arm around him. He made a sound like a slapped dog. “Handing me back over to her! And after I proved…”
“Excuse me,” Weber said. “I need to check some things with the staff before I go.” He headed back to the facility and slipped inside. The reception area looked like the starting line of a wheelchair race. Weber approached the desk and asked for Barbara Gillespie. His pulse raced, vaguely criminal. The receptionist paged Barbara. She appeared, unsettled by the sight of him. Her eyes, that green alert: leave now. She tried for lightness. “Uh-oh. A medical authority.”
He found himself wanting to jest back. So he didn’t. “I’ve been speaking with Neurology at Good Samaritan.”
“Yes?” Instant professional register. Something in her knew what he was after.
“They’ve agreed to some CBT. I’d like to enlist your help. You have…such good rapport with him. Clearly, he dotes on you.”
She turned cautious. “CBT?”
“I’m sorry. Cognitive behavioral therapy.” Strange that she didn’t know. “Would you be interested?”
She smiled, despite herself. “On some days, yes. Definitely.”
He barked a single-syllable laugh. “I’m with you on that. I often…”
She nodded, reading him without explanation, the lightest touch. It struck him again, her absurd rank. Yet she excelled at what she did. Who was he to promote her beyond that calling? They shared a nervous moment, both of them searching for the final, forgotten detail. But no such detail existed, and he wouldn’t invent one.
“Thank you, then,” she told him. “Take care.” The words sounded hopelessly midwestern. Yet her voice—so coastal.