really a doctor, yet she'd been uncommonly selfassured and competent.
Deeply impressed by Ginger Weiss during that encounter, Jorja was later
motivated by the doctor's example. She'd always thought of herself as a
born cocktail waitress, incapable of anything more challenging, but when
Alan walked out, she had remembered Dr. Weiss and decided to make more
of herself than she had previously thought possible.
During the past eleven months, Jorja had taken business management
courses at UNLV, squeezing them into an already hectic schedule. When
she finished paying the bills that Alan had left her, she would build a
nest egg so she could eventually open her own business, a dress shop.
She had worked out a very detailed plan, revising and honing it until it
was realistic, and she knew she would stick with it.
It was a shame that she would never have a chance to thank Ginger Weiss.
Of course, it was not any favor that Dr. Weiss had performed that so
deeply affected Jorja; it was not so much what the doctor had done as
what she was. Anyway, at twenty-seven Jorja's prospects were more
exciting than they had been previously.
Now, she turned off Desert Inn Road onto Pawnee Drive, a street of
comfortable homes behind the Boulevard Mall. She stopped in front of
Kara Persaghian's house and got out of the car. The front door opened
before she reached it, and Marcie rushed out, into her arms, shouting
happily. "Mommy!
Mommy!" And Jorja was at last able to forget about her job, the Texan,
the argument with the pit boss, and the dilapidated condition of the
Chevette. She squatted down and hugged her daughter. When all else
failed to cheer her, she could count on Marcie for a lift.
"Mommy," the girl said, "did you have a great day?"
"Yes, honey, I did. You smell like peanut butter."
"Cookies! Aunt Kara made peanut butter cookies! I had a great day,
too. Mommy, do you know why elephants came ... ummm, why they came all
the way from Africa to live in this country?" Marcie giggled. " 'Cause
we got orchestras here, and elephants just love to dance!" She giggled
again. "Isn't that silly."
Even allowing for maternal prejudice, Jorja knew that Marcie was an
adorable child. The girl had her mother's hair, so dark brown that it
was virtually black, and her mother's dusky complexion. Her eyes were a
striking contrast to the rest of her, not brown like Jorja's but blue
like her father's. She had an immensely appealing gamine quality.
Marcie's huge eyes opened wide. "Hey, know what day it is?"
"I sure do. Almost Christmas Eve."
"Will be soon as it's dark. Aunt Kara's giving us cookies to take home.
You know, Santa's already left the North Pole, and he's started going
down chimleys already, but in other parts of the world, of course, where
it's dark, not chimleys here. Aunt Kara says I been so bad all year
I'll only get a necklace made out of coal, but she's just teasing. Isn't
she just teasing, Mommy?"
"Just teasing," Jorja confirmed.
"Oh, no, I'm not!" Kara Persaghian said. She came through the doorway,
onto the front walk, a grandmotherly woman in a housedress and apron. "A
coal necklace . . . and maybe a set of matching coal earrings."
Marcie giggled again.
Kara was not Marcie's aunt, merely her after-school babysitter. Marcie
called her "Aunt Kara" from the second week she knew her, and the sitter
was obviously delighted by that affectionately bestowed honorary title.
Kara was carrying Marcie's jacket, a big coloring-book picture of Santa
that they had been working on for a few days, and a plate of cookies.
Jorja gave the picture and jacket to Marcie, accepted the cookies with
expressions of gratitude and with some chatter about diets, and then
Kara said, "Jorja, could I speak with you a moment-just the two of us?"
"Sure." Jorja sent Marcie to the car with the cookies and turned
inquisitively to Kara. "It's about . . . Marcie. What's she done?"
"Oh, nothing bad. She's an angel, that one. Couldn't misbehave if she
tried. But today ... well, she was talking about how the thing she
"It's the first time she's ever really nagged me about a toy," Jorja
said. "I don't know why she's obsessed with it."
"She talks about it every day. You are getting it for her?"
Jorja glanced at the Chevette, confirming that Marcie was out of
earshot, then smiled. "Yes, Santa definitely has it in his bag."
"Good. She'd be heartbroken if you didn't. But the oddest thing
happened today, and it made me wonder if she'd ever been seriously ill."
'Serious illness? No. She's an exceptionally healthy kid."
'Never been in the hospital?"
"No. Why?"
Kara frowned. "Well, today she started talking about the Little Ms.
Doctor kit, and she told me she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up
because then she could treat herself when she got sick. She said she
never wanted a doctor to touch her again because she was once hurt real
bad by doctors. I asked her what she meant, and she got quiet for a
while, and I thought she wasn't going to answer me. Then finally, in
this very somber voice, she said some doctors had once strapped her down
in a hospital bed so she couldn't get out, and then they stuck her full
of needles and flashed lights in her face and did all sorts of horrible
things to her. She said they hurt her real bad, so she was going to
become her own doctor and treat herself from now on."
" Really? Well, it's not true," Jorja said. "I don't know why she'd
make up such a story. That is odd."
"Oh, that's not the odd part. When she told me all this, I was
concerned. I was surprised you'd never told me. I mean, if she'd been
seriously ill, I ought to've been told in case there was a possibility
of a recurrence. So I questioned her about it-just casually, the way
you coax things out of a childand suddenly the poor little thing just
burst into tears. We were in the kitchen, making cookies, and she
started to cry . . . and shake. Just shaking like a leaf. I tried
to calm her, but that only made her cry harder. Then she pulled away
from me and ran. I found her in the living room, in the corner behind
the big green Lay-Z-Boy, huddled down as if she were hiding from
someone."
"Good heavens," Jorja said.
Kara said, "Took me at least five minutes to get her to stop crying and
another ten to coax her out of her hidey-hole behind that chair. She
made me promise, if those doctors ever came for her again, that I'd let
her hide behind the chair and not tell them where she was. I mean,
Jorja, she was in a real state."
On the way home, Jorja said, "That was some story you told Kara."
"What story?" Marcie asked, looking straight ahead, barely able to see
over the dashboard.
"That story about the doctors."
"Oh."
"Being strapped in bed. Why'd you make up a thing like that?"
"It's true," Marcie said.
"But it isn't."
"Yes, it is." The girl's voi
ce was little more than a whisper.
"The only hospital you were ever in was the one where you were born, and
I'm sure you don't remember that." Jorja sighed. "A few months ago we
had a little talk about fibbing. Remember what happened to Danny Duck
when he fibbed?"
"The Truth Fairy wouldn't let him go to the woodchuck's party."
"That's right."
"Fibbing's bad," Marcie said softly. "Nobody likes fibbers-'specially
not woodchucks and squirrels."
Disarmed, Jorja had to bite back a laugh and struggle to keep a stern
tone in her voice. "Nobody likes fibbers."
They stopped at a red traffic light, but Marcie still looked straight
ahead, refusing to meet Jorja's eyes. The girl said, "It's 'specially
bad to fib to your mommy or your daddy."
"Or to anyone who cares about you. And making up stories to scare
Kara-that's the same as fibbing."
"Wasn't tryin' to scare her," Marcie said.
"Trying to get sympathy, then. You were never in a hospital."
"Was."
"Oh, yeah?" Marcie nodded vigorously, and Jorja said, "When?"
"Don't 'member when."
"You don't remember, huh?"
"Almost."
"Almost isn't good enough. Where was this hospital?"
"I'm not sure. Sometimes ... I 'member it better than other times.
Sometimes I can hardly 'member it at all, and sometimes I 'member it
real good, and then I ... I get scared."
"Right now you don't remember too well, huh?"
"Nope. But today I 'membered real good ... and scared myself."
The traffic light changed, and Jorja drove in silence, wondering how
best to handle the situation. She had no notion what to make of it. It
was foolish ever to believe that you understood your child. Marcie had
always been able to surprise Jorja with actions, statements, big ideas,
musings, and questions that seemed not to have come from within herself
but which it seemed she had carefully selected from some secret book of
startling behavior that was known to all kids but not to adults, some
cosmic volume perhaps titled Keeping Mom and Dad Off-Balance.
As if she had just dipped into that book again, Marcie said, "Why were
all Santa Claus's kids deformed?"
"What?"
"Well, see, Santa and Mrs. Claus had a whole bunch of kids, but all of
them was elves."
"The elves aren't their children. They work for Santa."
"Really? How much does he pay 'em?"
"He doesn't pay them anything, honey."
"How do they buy food, then?"
"They don't have to buy anything. Santa gives them all they need." This
was certainly the last Christmas that Marcie would believe in Santa;
nearly all of her classmates were already doubters. Recently, she had
been asking these probing questions. Jorja would be sorry to see the
fantasy disproved, the magic lost. "The elves are part of his family,
honey, and they work with him simply for the love of it."
"You mean the elves are adopted? So Santa doesn't have real kids of his
own? That's sad."
"No, 'cause he's got all the elves to love."
God, I love this kid, Jorja thought. Thank you, God. Thank you for
this kid, even if I did have to get tied up with Alan Rykoff to get her.
Dark clouds and silver linings.
She turned into the two-lane driveway that encircled Las Huevos
Apartments and parked the Chevette in the fourth carport. Las Huevos.
The Eggs. After five years in the place, she still couldn't understand
why anyone would name an apartment complex The Eggs.
The instant the car stopped, Marcie was out of it with the poster from
the coloring book and the plate of cookies, dashing up the walkway to
their entrance. The girl had deftly changed the subject just long
enough to finish the ride and escape from the confines of the car.
Jorja wondered if she should press the issue farther. It was Christmas
Eve, and she had no desire to spoil the holiday. Marcie was a good kid,
better than most, and this business about being hurt by doctors was an
extremely rare instance of fabrication. Jorja had made the point that
fibbing was not acceptable, and Marcie had understood (even if she had
persisted a bit with her medical fantasy), and her sudden change of
subject had probably been an admission of wrongdoing. So it was an
aberration. Nothing would be gained by harping on it, especially not at
the risk of ruining Christmas.
Jorja was confident she would hear no more about it.
5.
Laguna Beach , California
During the afternoon, Dominick Corvaisis must have read the unsigned
typewritten note a hundred times:
The sleepwalker would be well-advised to search the past for the source
of his problem. That is where the secret is buried.
In addition to the letter's lack of signature and return address, the
postmark on the plain white envelope was doublestruck and badly smeared,
so he could not determine whether it had been mailed in Laguna Beach or
from another city.
After he paid for his breakfast and left The Cottage, he sat in his car,
the copy of Twilight in Babylon forgotten on the seat beside him, and
read the note half a dozen times. It made him so nervous that he
withdrew a pair of Valiums from his jacket pocket and almost took one
without water. But as he put the tablet to his lips, he hesitated. To
explore all the ramifications of the note, he would need a clear mind.
For the first time in weeks, he denied himself chemical escape from his
anxieties; he returned the Valium to his pocket.
He drove to South Coast Plaza, a huge shopping mall in Costa Mesa, to
buy some last-minute Christmas gifts. In each store he visited, while
he waited for the clerks to gift-wrap his purchases, he took the curious
message from his pocket and read it again and again.
For a while Dom had wondered if the note had come from Parker, if
perhaps the artist had sent it to jolt him and intrigue him and propel
him out of his drug-induced haze. Parker might be capable of such
highly theatrical, amateur psychotherapy. But finally Dom dismissed
that idea. Machiavellian maneuvers were simply not aspects of the
painter's personality. He was, in fact, almost excessively forthright.
Parker was not the author of the note, but he was certain to have some
original speculations about who might be behind it. Together, they
might be able to decide just how the arrival of this letter changed
things and how they ought to proceed.
Later, back in Laguna, when Dom was within a block of Parker's house, he
was suddenly shaken by a previously unconsidered, profoundly troubling
possibility. This new idea was so disconcerting that he pulled the
Firebird to the curb and stopped. He got the note from his pocket, read
it again, fingered the paper. He felt cold inside. He looked into the
reflection of his own eyes in the rearview mirror, and he did not like
what he saw.
Could he have written the note himself?
He could have composed it on the Displaywriter while asleep. But it was
outlandish to suppose he'd dressed, gone to the mailbo
x, deposited the
note, returned home, and changed into pajamas again without waking up.
Impossible. Wasn't it? If he had done such a thing, his mental
imbalance was worse than he had thought.
His hands were clammy. He blotted them on his trousers.
Only three people in the world were aware of his sleepwalking: himself,
Parker Faine, and Dr. Cobletz. He had already eliminated Parker. Dr.
Cobletz had certainly not sent the note. So if Dom himself had not sent
it-who had?
When he pulled away from the curb at last, he did not continue to
Parker's house but headed home instead.
Ten minutes later, in his study, he took the by-now rumpled note from
his pocket. He typed those two sentences, which appeared on the
Displaywriter's dark screen in glowing green letters. Then he switched
on the printer and instructed the computer to produce a hard copy of the
document. He watched as it hammered out those twenty-three words.
The Displaywriter came with two printwheels in two typefaces. He had
bought two more to provide options for different tasks. Now, Dom used
the three additional printwheels to produce a total of four copies of
the note, and with a pencil he labeled each according to the style of