The Syndrome (7 page)

“But you can, Henrik. You
can
see. I want you to see.”

“It’s absorbing me!” De Groot shuddered, his body flattening into the chair.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like a sponge. The light is like a sponge! I’m pulled into it.”

“And what color is the light?”

De Groot shook his head, fiercely.

“Isn’t it blue?” Duran asked. “Blueish?”

“Yes,
blue!
And I’m
bathed
in it. Inside and out. It passes through me—like a ghost.”

“What do you mean, ‘like a ghost’?”

“Like a ghost, moving through a wall.”

“That’s good, Henrik. That’s very good. Now, I want you to do something courageous. I want you to remember what happens when the light goes through you. Can you do that?”

“No!”

“It’s your safe place, Henrik. Remember that. You’re
safe
here. Now, breathe in. Slowly.
Verrry
slowly. In … and out. In and … out. Again! In … and out. In … riiiight. That’s it. Now, let your breath expand all the way to the surface of your skin. I want it to fill you up, so you can let it go.” Duran watched the Dutchman breathe for a while. Then he prompted him. “Okay … when the light passes through you …”

“It takes me up. I go up in the light.”

“What do you mean?” Duran asked.

“The light pulls me into it. It’s like … like an elevator without walls, an escalator without stairs.”

“And then what?”

“I’m in a room … in the sky.”

“What kind of room?”

“Like … an auditorium.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t move,” the Dutchman said. “I’m turning in the air—”

“What?”

“I’m slowly … turning in the air.”

“Why?”

“I’m on display … like a bug … in a case. A glass case.”

“Are you alone?” Duran asked.

The Dutchman shook his head. “There are seats all around—and they go up, row after row.”

“Are there people in the seats?” Duran asked.

De Groot shook his head. “I can’t see. The light is so bright—they’re just shapes.” Suddenly, de Groot stiffened, and thrashed.

“What’s the matter?” Duran asked.

De Groot answered through gritted teeth: “I am being interfered with.”

Duran looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve told you! I am
interfered
with.”

“How?”

“I am examined by … I don’t know who … I don’t know
what they
are.”

“Doctors?”

“No!” de Groot shot back, his voice suddenly loud and scared. “Not doctors.
Figures!
Shapes. I don’t want to look.”

“Then … why don’t you run away?” Duran asked.

“I can’t move. The light won’t
let
me move. It holds me in the air.”

“And what are the shapes doing? What’s happening?”

“They … insert instruments.”

“Where?”

“In my nose. Mouth. Every
hole
.” De Groot winced, and his eyes slammed shut.

“Yes?”

“It feels bad!”

“What does?”

“I’m not to remember,”
de Groot muttered. “For my own
welfare.
I am not to remember.”

Duran pushed.

“It’s all right to remember, Henrik.” He laid a hand on his client’s shoulder. “It is good to remember. But you have to relax. You have to breathe. Thaaaaat’s it. Now, just concentrate on breathing. It’s safe here. You’re not in the light anymore: you’re on a rock at the edge of the water. You can hear the waves lapping at the rock. There’s a breeze. And seagulls wheeling overhead …” Duran let him think about this for a while, and then: “Now, let’s go back to the other place, the place in the light. But don’t be frightened—I’m with you. I want you to tell me about the instruments … what do they look like?”

“Tubes.”

“And what are they made of?”

“Glass. Metal.” Once again, de Groot shuddered.

“What’s the matter?” Duran asked.

“They’re cold.
So
cold … they stick to my skin—and they burn.”

“And what are they doing with … the instruments?”

De Groot took a deep breath, and shuddered. “They put them in me.”

“Where?”

“No.”

“Henrik—it’s for your own good.”

“But you know!”

“Of course, I know—but you have to tell me.”

De Groot shook his head.

“Where?” Duran insisted.

“My willy! My … arse.”

“But why? Why are they doing that, Henrik? Do you know?”

The Dutchman nodded. “They’re feeding the Worm,” he said. Suddenly, de Groot whimpered, and his face clenched with a mixture of sadness and pain.

Duran glanced at his watch. To his surprise, he saw that fifty minutes had gone by. “Okay, Henrik, that’s enough. That’s enough for now.”

He brought the Dutchman back to wakeful consciousness, disappointed that he was still unable to surface the trauma underlying de Groot’s delusion. He needed to help de Groot
push through
, reversing the process of sublimation which had generated this absurd story of alien abduction (if, indeed, that is what it was). As things now stood, de Groot was being tortured by an event that his mind had encrypted, repressing the memory by transforming it into something else.

The Dutchman sat up, blinked and looked around. “What happened?” he asked, his voice thick with suspicion.

“You did great,” Duran told him. Then he switched off the tape recorder, and got to his feet. “We made real progress.”

To Duran’s surprise, de Groot remained where he was, tapping his fingertips together, listening or thinking or both. Finally, he pushed himself to his feet, and smiled. “That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t feel any better.”

Nico lived in a two-bedroom apartment in The Watermill, a Georgetown condominium just below M Street, where the C&O Canal begins its journey out to the Maryland suburbs and beyond. The building was a modern and elegant one with decent security, a nice view of the Potomac, and capacious balconies brimming with plants.

That morning, she’d slept late, and by the time she’d climbed out of bed, Jack was practically crossing his legs. He reproached her with a series of stiff little barks as she quickly dressed, then ran a brush through her hair, using a scrunchie to corral it in an untidy ponytail. Finally, she grabbed a plastic grocery bag, stuffed it into her pocket and headed toward the elevator with Jack lurching ahead on his leash, scrabbling along the carpeted hallway.

“Mawnin’ Miz Sullivan.”

The doorman, Ramon, was an aspiring actor who tried out a different accent each week. His latest affectation was to mimic the speech and mannerisms of a southern butler, a not entirely successful undertaking that suggested an unlikely hybrid of Vivian Leigh and Antonio Banderas.

“Hey, Ramon!”

“And to you, too, Master Kerouac.” The doorman leaned down to pet the dog, a Jack Russell terrier who rewarded Ramon’s attention by launching himself in a series of impressive vertical leaps.

“Whoa,” Nico said. “Take it easy, Jacko.”

“Vigorous animal,” Ramon remarked, still in his plantation accent.

Nico smiled. “He is, indeed. What’s up?”

Ramon segued into himself. “Did I
tell
you, I got a part in the Scorsese movie, the one they’re shooting in the District!”

“That’s terrific. Congratulations!”

“Well, it’s not
so
terrific. I mean, it’s just a walk-on. But guess what the part is—I’m a
doorman
.”

Nico wasn’t sure what to say, so she said, “Heyyy!” Jack was straining at the leash, pulling her toward the door. “Congratulations are definitely in order.”

“The thing is, I don’t know whether to
take
it. I’m gonna miss three, maybe four days work. Probably, I get fired. So whatta you think, Neek? Should I do it?” He gave her a beseeching look.

“Jack!” she said. “Do you mind?” In point of fact, Jack had already settled down, sitting quietly between them. She wasn’t sure what to say, and used the dog as a distraction to avoid the doorman’s eyes. Should he risk his job for a bit part that might not even make the final cut? Ramon took his career as an actor very seriously, but the truth was, he didn’t seem to be very good at it. So playing a doorman might not be a bad idea. Then again, was it worth giving up his real job so he could
pretend
to do the same thing on camera? Finally, she said: “Go for it.”

“Really?”

“Definitely. I saw this whole thing on TV once, and this guy is saying, you know, you can’t go wrong if you follow your bliss.”

“My bliss? You mean, like, what makes me happy? Like acting?”

“Exactly.”

Ramon winced. “I don’t know. I like my job, too. The tips aren’t bad, you know? And Christmas is coming—not too long now. Coupla months.”

Nico shrugged. “Maybe you can get somebody to fill in—
make it worth their while. And, anyway, where are they going to find someone as reliable as you? What I think? You get someone to cover—they won’t touch you.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Okayyy! So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna follow my bliss.”

“Now you’ve got it!”

He held the door open for them. “You think—I ask Victor, you think he’ll cover for me?”

“Sure. He’s a friend of yours, right?”

“Yeah, I guess …”

“Well, there you go …”

Once outside, Nico and Jack mounted the steps to the broad dirt path that ran beside the canal. Jack indulged in his complicated, almost frantic, ritual of sniffing and peeing, while Nico let her mind drift, eyes on the turbid water.

On the way back, she tied Jack up outside Dean & DeLuca’s and went in to buy cheese and a baguette—and a single, perfect tomato. Returning a minute later with her little bag of groceries, she found a woman in a maroon suit talking to Jack, whose leash she’d tied to a parking meter.

“Heeza guh-boy,” the woman mewed, “waiting for Mommy. Yes he izzzz. Whatta guh-boy.” Suddenly, she straightened up, and looked sharply at Nico. “I hope you clean up after him.”

“Oh,” Nico said, taken aback. “I do. Absolutely.” Stooping, she freed Jack from the parking meter, and headed back toward her apartment.

Inside, she set to work on a tomato and brie sandwich, lightly toasting slices of the baguette. Using an Appalachian bread knife that resembled a fiddler’s bow, she began to cut paper-thin slices from her perfect tomato. And as she did, and much to her surprise, she found herself crying. She could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks, hot, wet, and senseless. It was almost as if she was slicing an onion instead of a tomato,
because there were lots of tears—and they came from nowhere, as irrelevant as snot because they had no emotional content. They were just … tears.

She wasn’t sad. She wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t … anything. It was the woman outside Dean & DeLuca’s who’d brought it on, the one who was so friendly to Jack, and yet … people like that made your heart sink.
I hope you clean up after him!
she’d said, as if there was something wrong with
her
, something about Nico that was unclean or contemptible. You could see it in the woman’s eyes, hear it in her suspicious tone.

When the sandwich was made, she went into the living room and sat down in front of the TV Jack composed himself at her feet, waiting for her to eat, waiting for her to share—which she did, tearing off a part of the sandwich that was runny with cheese. She wasn’t hungry anymore. Just … gray.

Pushing the sandwich away, she lay back on the rose-velvet sofa and flicked on the remote. Jack finished his little wedge of brie and, with a regretful glance at its source, jumped up beside her, curled into a ring and went to sleep. Idly, Nico scratched behind his ear as the morning bled into afternoon, talk shows giving way to soap operas and peculiar sports.
Oprah! One Life to Live. The BMX Challenge …

It was odd the way these things came and went. One minute, she was on fire, the next—she didn’t feel like doing anything. Wherever her energy had come from over the last few days, it was gone now. All she wanted to do, all she felt able to do, was lie there in front of the TV And it really didn’t matter what was on.
NASCAR. The Weather Channel. Seinfeld
reruns. It was depressing.

And tiring. And not just physically. The exhaustion she felt came as much from her heart as it did from her body.
I hope you clean up after him!
Why were people like that? It was enough to make you weep.

*    *    *

The sandwich was gone.

Jack must have eaten it—which was fine, because she’d been lying there on the couch for fifteen or twenty hours, gazing at the television, half-asleep, watching anything and everything, seeing nothing. And now, after all that rest, she was even more tired than when she’d first lain down. It was all she could do to sit up, and once she had, she regretted doing it because the back of her head was pounding.

Walking into the kitchen, she stood for a minute in front of the little espresso machine, rehearsing in her mind everything she’d have to do to make herself a cup of coffee. In the end, she gave up on the idea, and wandered out onto the balcony. It was a chilly day, and overcast, as if her mood had been projected on the world around her. Every once in a while, a gust of wind rattled the wrought iron rods on the balcony and the ferns thrashed. They looked a little peaked, and it occurred to her that she should give them some water and, maybe some plant food. Or bring them inside—it was almost time. But she didn’t feel like doing that. She didn’t feel like doing
chores.
She felt like—

Suddenly, the alarm went off on her wrist, reminding her to take her meds, and “call home.” Crossing the room to the table that held her portable computer, she picked up the carrying case in which she kept her medication. Unzipping one of the side compartments, she found the little orange bottles she was looking for, but the one in which the lithium had been was empty. She’d forgotten to refill the prescription in … wherever the fuck she’d been when she was taking Placebo 1.

Somewhere hot. Sunny. Palm trees. California!