Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  “Andre,” he says, holding out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  They talk through Gerry’s history—the fall. Had he been experiencing any tremors or instability before the fall? No? Excellent. His pain meds. The doctor is curious to pinpoint the time of day of what he calls the “instances.”

  “You’re very thorough,” Gerry says at one point. “Patient.” A thought strikes him. “Why are we called patients? Do you know the etymology?”

  “It’s the same Latin root for the noun and the adjective. It comes from pati, the word for ‘suffering.’ I like how your mind works, Gerry. And your mind seems to work well. But we have, by my count”—he looks at the small notebook in which he has been jotting—“six instances, and they seem to be escalating. A letter, three phone calls, a tweet, a visit. If we put aside the tweet, which was seen by your assistant before it was taken down, I do detect a pattern. These things happen when you’re close to sleep. In fact, they happen when you are asleep. And they’re remarkably consistent. They all center on a person, a woman, claiming to be the model for a character in your novel, but you say there is no such person.”

  “The letter doesn’t fit, though. I saw that during the day.”

  “True. And it was before the accident. But there’s an Occam’s razor explanation for the letter—you probably did get something with a familiar address, but it was the mass mailer you initially took it for. That’s why you didn’t open it right away. I think you would have recognized the precise address used in your novel. You strike me as quite sharp, detail-oriented. But it was junk mail and it got tossed. One of those extended car warranties or something like that. That’s all there is to it.”

  He should yearn to believe this doctor, but he finds himself wondering if anyone this good-looking can really excel at his job.

  “Are you sure it’s not my meds? Or something worse? I have to be mindful that the disease that killed my mother does have a genetic component.”

  “Look, the good news is that delusional disorder is exceedingly rare. Exceedingly. And these are not the sort of delusions a person normally experiences. They’re almost too logical, too consistent. My hunch is that they really are dreams. You’re experiencing a kind of déjà vu. Do you know what déjà vu really is? It’s a sequencing error. Epileptics often have a déjà vu experience right before a seizure. It also can be related to small strokes.”

  “Strokes!”

  The doctor holds up his hands. Even his palms are beautiful. “Your blood pressure is good, you’ve taken excellent care of yourself. When you’re in better shape, I’d like to get you in for an MRI, just to be sure. But I’d also like to ask—how are you feeling, Gerry?”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “Are you unhappy?”

  “Well, of course, I’m not happy with the situation. The injury and these—unexplained phenomena.”

  “Were you happy before you fell?”

  It takes him a long time to answer. Who wants to answer such a question? It’s why he has avoided therapy all these years. Everyone’s unhappy if they have even a sliver of intelligence. Who can be happy in this world?

  “My mother had died and the last months of her life were awful. I moved to Baltimore, thinking I would be tending to her for quite some time, and she died almost immediately after I closed on this apartment. I don’t like Baltimore. Well, that’s not quite right. Baltimore’s okay. But I prefer New York. I had a life there. I don’t know anyone here, not anymore; my work hasn’t been going well—I’m not sure I want to write anymore, even if I’m not on the verge of becoming a gibbering fool. I broke up with my longtime companion, which was all for the best, believe me, but I’m lonely. Who wouldn’t be unhappy?”

  His words surprise him, in their specificity and volume. Unhappy is such a big word. Once said aloud, it can never be taken back. He has tried so hard never to say it out loud over the past twenty years. He is too aware of the good things in his life—the career, the money, the freedom. How could he possibly be unhappy?

  Because he is.

  “How do you feel about trying an antidepressant?”

  Whoa. One thing to admit to unhappiness. He’s not ready to make the full leap to depressed.

  “I don’t know—I’ve never used anything of the sort. I’m sorry, I don’t like medication, I just don’t. I’m practically a Christian Scientist that way.”

  “It’s something to think about. If I had to make a bet, my hunch is that an MRI won’t find anything. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with your head, Gerry. Your brain is fine. Again—Occam’s razor. What’s the likely explanation? You’re having bad dreams.”

  “What about the phone calls?”

  The doctor’s beautiful face clouds. “Maybe someone is punking you by phone. But the woman at the window—there’s no other explanation. For now, take notes. Don’t worry. Establish a good sleep system—less TV time, and don’t fall asleep while watching it. No screens for at least an hour before bed. But I am confident that you don’t have dementia.”

  Gerry knows he should be cheered by this assessment. He is not crazy. He is not declining. He’s depressed, and who wouldn’t be? The delusions are bad dreams. The phone calls are—

  Phylloh, he thinks. Phylloh knows he’s here, knows when he’s alone. Phylloh has the power to let people upstairs. Phylloh is the one who checked the security video. Or so she said. He will make a discreet inquiry about Phylloh. He has no idea why she would do such a thing, but clearly his tormentor is crazy and crazy requires no logic, no rhyme or reason.

  1978

  “LET’S GO TO ATLANTIC CITY.”

  “Why?”

  “To enter the Miss America pageant. To gamble, Gerry. Let’s gamble.”

  Gerry had no interest in gambling and he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go on a road trip with Luke. “We don’t have a car.”

  “We can borrow Tara’s.”

  “Won’t we have to ask her to come with us, then?”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “We don’t have to do everything as a threesome,” he said.

  “You dumb fucker. You did it with her, didn’t you?”

  “She’s my best friend. It was—inevitable.”

  “I’m your best friend. Hey, does that mean you’re going to sleep with me now?”

  Luke had come out to Gerry at the end of their freshman year. Matched up by the housing lottery, they had been happy to discover that they genuinely liked each other, and they pledged to continue living together. But it was important to Luke, once they made their compulsory arrangement a voluntary one, that Gerry know he was gay. At the time, the relatively few gay students on campus tended to be flamboyant. Luke was promiscuous but discreet. He and Gerry had never worked out a code for what to do when one of them wanted the room alone because Gerry’s girlfriend during sophomore year had a single and Luke preferred to go to New York. He would take the train up on Friday night and return late Sunday. Gerry had no idea where Luke went or what he did, if he had a steady man or if he preferred having sex with lots and lots of strangers. And he had no vocabulary with which to inquire.

  Luke’s schtick about being attracted to Gerry was a running gag, which made him uncomfortable. The fact that it made him uncomfortable made him even more uncomfortable. And then Luke would go for a while without making the joke and Gerry would wonder why he stopped.

  “Based on what happened with Tara—no. It was a stupid thing to do and it loused up our friendship.”

  “Women can’t do just-sex.”

  “I can’t do just-sex. That’s why I screwed up the friendship. We have so much in common; we make each other laugh. I just had to know what the sex would be like.”

  “And?”

  “Not that great. For either of us.” Gerry was still puzzling over that fact. He was even more puzzled by Tara’s assessment: “Our damage doesn’t mesh.” What damage? He didn’t consider himself damaged and, frankly, Tara’s alcoholic f
ather seemed small potatoes to him.

  “Maybe your luck will change in Atlantic City.”

  Luke managed to get Tara’s car without Tara attached and they headed to the beach. It was amazing to Gerry that one state could contain both Princeton and Atlantic City. It was delightful, at first, to smell the ocean air and see the street names he remembered from his Monopoly set. He called out the names and Luke responded with the colors, then the costs and even the rents.

  “Kentucky Avenue. Three houses, seven hundred dollars. Four houses, eight-seventy-five.”

  Gerry wanted to play blackjack, because it was the closest thing to a game of skill, but he was not prepared for the speed at which it was played and he quickly lost the forty dollars he had staked himself. Luke left the table up fifty dollars. He wanted to shoot craps, a game Gerry could not follow at all. Luke started a run and people gathered, enjoying the vicarious thrill, or perhaps rooting for his lucky streak to end. A woman in a bareback leotard and filmy skirt tried to flirt with him, but Luke ignored her, ignored the drinks that started coming his way. Gerry realized that Luke was in his own private world, just him and the dice and the chips. He won another hundred dollars, tipped the croupier, and moved on to roulette. Gerry decided to go in search of a beer. When he left the roulette table, Luke was up two hundred dollars.

  By the time he got back, it was all gone.

  “I bet on the black,” Luke said. “Fifty-fifty shot and I lost. Do you have any cash?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if I could get a line of credit—”

  “Luke, don’t be crazy.”

  “But that was the point of coming here, to be crazy. Do you know the single best moment in gambling, Gerry?”

  “Winning, of course.”

  “No, it’s the moment before. Before the ball lands, before the card is shown, before the dice settle, one of those rare moments when you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Think about all the books we read, the movies we love—how often are you truly surprised by a story? Or your life? We always sort of know where we’re going, what’s going to happen. But not in a casino.”

  Gerry opened his mouth to object, but he could not think of a story that truly contradicted Luke’s point. Only last week, they had gone to see this new movie, Halloween, which was full of surprises, but—was it? It was clear which girl would live, that the children would not be harmed.

  “Sounds unsettling to me,” he said. “Like staring into the abyss.”

  “Oh, no, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. I would live in that moment every waking second if I could. It’s like Rocky Horror Picture Show. ‘I see you quiver with antici—’” He held the pause even longer than Tim Curry. “‘—pation.’”

  “Okay, do you know what I’m going to say next?”

  “Something sensible, no doubt.”

  Somehow, Gerry got Luke to take a walk on the boardwalk, where the fresh air was a shock to their lungs after the casino. Despite the autumnal chill, they took off their shoes and walked on the beach.

  “If I can’t gamble, I need to find someone to fuck,” Luke said. “Don’t worry, it won’t be you. Not tonight, at least.”

  “Let’s just drive back, Luke.”

  “I’ll meet you at the car in an hour.”

  “Luke, that’s crazy—”

  “What?” Mock outrage. “You don’t think I can get laid in an hour? Gerry, I could probably be done in fifteen minutes.”

  In the end, it took him ninety. He showed up at the car, brandishing a twenty. “He thought I was trade and who am I to disabuse someone of that notion? I would have paid him, not that I had any money. I like older men. They’re experienced.”

  Gerry drove, although Luke had promised Tara that no one else would touch the wheel of her precious Tercel. It was evening now, but still not late. They would be back on campus before midnight. They could order pizza, drink beer.

  Gerry had no words, no context for his friend’s behavior. Luke, exhausted by whatever he had been doing, fell asleep in the car and Gerry kept stealing glances at his profile, so smooth and perfect and pretty. What was it like to be that pretty? What was it like to be a homosexual? Would anyone choose to be one? Gerry had been with only three women, but the first time he entered one, he couldn’t believe how amazing it was, how literature, which he held in such high esteem, had failed to inform him fully of the wonders of sex. According to Luke, it was the moment before winning—so therefore the moment before ejaculation, or maybe contact—that thrilled him. That made no sense to Gerry. When he came inside a woman, it was about as happy as he had ever been. And he knew, because of his father, that he had to guard himself against becoming obsessive about this particular joy, that he must never hurt another person in his pursuit of that pleasure.

  Was Luke happy? He could not ask the question without immediately jumping to the Auden line: The question was absurd. Of course Luke wasn’t happy. The things he had done in Atlantic City—that was not what a happy person did. That kind of compulsive behavior was the opposite of happy.

  “I don’t know, Gerry,” Luke said, his eyes still closed. “Are you happy? Is anyone happy?”

  Gerry had not spoken aloud. He was pretty sure he had not spoken aloud. Was Luke sitting there wondering at Gerry’s behavior, judging his choices?

  “I certainly think happiness is possible,” he said.

  “Even for people like us? I don’t know. If we were happy, we wouldn’t want to be writers, right?”

  “There have been happy writers. Good ones. It’s possible. I have to believe it’s possible.”

  “Which is it, Gerry? Is it possible or do you have to believe it’s possible?”

  When Gerry failed to answer, Luke sighed and rolled to his side. “I can remove the cause,” he said, “but not the symptoms.”

  It took Gerry a beat to realize that Luke was simply finishing the Rocky Horror song “Sweet Transvestite.”

  March 12

  “WHAT DID YOU DO TO PHYLLOH?” Victoria asks him.

  “Nothing!” Gerry says, offended by the very suggestion that he’s in the position to do anything to anyone.

  “She’s gotten terribly frosty.”

  Phylloh is phrosty, he thinks. Then he remembers. He had called Phylloh’s supervisor, to make sure she wasn’t lying to him about the tapes. He had decided the girl meant no overt harm, but it had occurred to him that maybe she’d simply fibbed about watching the security tapes from the elevator. Phylloh had always struck him as a little lazy. He had forgotten that she’d told him she wasn’t supposed to review the tapes for residents under any circumstances.

  “Maybe it’s a general mood? Or she has a specific grievance with you?” Phylloh should be happy she wasn’t phired, Gerry thinks.

  He is trying to work the New York Times crossword puzzle with his astronaut pen, which turns out not to be an invention of Seinfeld but a real thing, an essential tool given how often Gerry is flat on his back. He has splurged on three, at a cost of $150 total, and he is careful to keep them in the drawer of the table next to his bed, along with his usual cache of Moleskine notebooks. He is horrified that he is having trouble finishing the Monday puzzle. During the months of caring for his mother, he had lost the habit of completing the puzzle daily, but he has been working it again since his accident and this is troubling. He sometimes used to stall on Saturday, the hardest day, but never Monday! Mondays were for morons.

  Victoria says: “I can’t imagine anything I’ve done, but I don’t care if she doesn’t want to talk to me. She’s so chatty and it’s all so banal. I just want to pick up the packages and move on. If I didn’t have to check for packages, I would take the elevator from the garage straight to the apartment, bypass the front desk entirely.”

  Sometimes he feels as if Victoria is trying on his personality, his attitudes. They do not suit her. In this world where people are quick to speak of entitlement and privilege, some nuances have been lost, it seems to Gerry. Yes, t
here are privileges in being white, male, and moneyed, and he supposes one should be alert to those birthright perks. He certainly tries to be. But there are privileges that one earns through accomplishment and sheer longevity. Victoria has no right to be haughty about another person being “chatty” and “banal.” Has she ever listened to herself? Besides, Gerry’s six decades of life trump Victoria’s two and change.

  But if he said those exact words out loud, she would take great offense. She might even complain that the use of the forty-fifth president’s name as a verb triggered her. Triggered. A sloppy term, to Gerry’s way of thinking. A trigger is something someone deliberately pulls and it leads to a very specific sequence of events. If one is triggered, then one is the weapon or the snare, no? The recurrence of painful memories is simply day-to-day life. It’s nothing at all like firing a gun.

  He does his upper-body exercises. At least his body seems to respond to stimulation, even if his mind does not. He is getting stronger above the waist, but sitting is still terribly painful and there is nothing to be done for that. Maybe he should cut back on his medication, although Aileen is phlegmatically determined that he take the full dosage.

  The phone rings with the staccato double-buzz that indicates the front desk is calling. He’s so bored he picks it up.

  “She’s back,” says Phylloh. She is frosty.

  “Who?”

  “Your wife.”

  “Wife?” Lucy? Gretchen? Sarah? He’s so desperate for stimulation he’d be happy to see any of them. Even Gretchen.

  “The one who was here in February.”

  Keeping careful track of my visitors, are you, Phylloh?

  “Oh. She was never my wife.”

  “Well, she’s here.”

  “I guess you can send her up.”

  “I already did. She said you were expecting her.”

  He isn’t. Then again, Margot’s talent is for the unexpected. Exciting in the early, heady days of dating, especially when applied to sex. Extremely tedious as life goes on.