by Edward Lee
She set down the decanter and carefully replaced its fitted glass cap. Then she walked out to the foyer.
“Alice? Where are you?”
Her only reply was the tick of the grandfather clock.
Maybe she went to sleep in the guest room, she thought. Maybe she thought about things, about what she said last night…and changed her mind about it.
God. That would be the worst, wouldn’t it? All her fears would come true then. Alice would never again look at her in the same light.
The guest-room door creaked when she opened it. She held her breath. But relief surged in her bare chest when she peeked into the moonlit room.
Thank God…
The bed was made, neat as a pin, and Alice clearly had not been in it.
But then a worse consideration surfaced.
Maybe Alice was just consoling me because she knew I was drunk. Maybe she waited till I fell asleep and then left the house—
But to go where? Where would Alice go this late?
And the possible answer hooked Holly in the eye like a flying barb:
John’s! She waited till I fell asleep so she could sneak out to goddamn John’s!
It made sense. Alice wasn’t in the house. But the only way to make sure was to see if Alice’s car was here. What had she said earlier today? She’d finally converted the old carriage house into a garage? I’ll have to check, Holly decided. If her car isn’t there, then at least I’ll know. But—
She stopped herself, tried to regain some of her common sense. Am I that impulsive? Am I that nuts? Jesus Christ, Holly, what are you thinking? Are you actually considering walking outside in the middle of the night, in your panties for God’s sake, to see if Alice’s car is here?
The question seemed to tremble in her gut. But before she could even decide her answer, she heard:
tink
Holly looked up. What was that sound? It seemed to have come from…
Down the hall
Only then did she notice it: the tiniest line of light at the bottom of one of the doors at the end of the hallway. Then she remembered just which door it was.
The basement.
She’d been down there several night before, without Alice’s knowledge, and she’d found the strange, engraved planks.
And it seemed clear right now: That’s where Alice was—in the basement.
What the hell is she doing down in the basement at this hour? Holly thought, bewildered.
tink—creeeak
Then:
click!
Holly didn’t move—she couldn’t move.
The door that led down to the basement had just clicked open, and Alice was standing there, her head slightly inclined as she faced the open door. And—
She was totally nude.
This Holly could plainly see in the wan light that leaked up from the basement stairs. Alice’s prosthesis, in this same inefficient light, was barely visible at all, such that it didn’t even seem to exist. Her arms, thighs, stomach, and breasts looked slightly perspiry. And then—
“Alice?”
—Alice began walking back down the hall, away from the basement door, and toward Holly.
“I woke up and you weren’t in bed,” Holly explained. “So I got up and looked for you…”
Alice continued toward Holly—
“Alice? Are you all right?”
—and then continued past Holly.
“Alice! Can’t you hear me? What’s wrong!”
Alice’s face looked blank, dull as paste, when she walked by. She didn’t respond, nor did she seem aware that Holly was in the hall. Instead, she walked on past, turned into the living room—
Holly followed after her. “Alice!”
Alice proceeded back to the watch room, paused a moment, then got back into bed.
At first Holly was mystified, but then she realized what the problem had to be.
Alice is…somnambulic.
Holly knew quite a bit about the phenomena. Somnambulism. Sleepwalking. A theta-wave trance. She’d even treated a few patients for it, during her internship at Hopkins. Those afflicted would experience ambulatory motor-activity during the third stage of sleep, and sometimes walk about in their precursory dream-state. It was easily treated these days, thanks to new catecholamic drugs that unblocked the release of sleep hormones. Perhaps Alice had become stricken due to her recent dieting; many hormonal imbalances/blockages were caused by nutritional deficits.
But all that—proper diagnosis, symptomology, treatment—she could worry about later. The first problem was figuring out how to bring it up to Alice tomorrow; typically, somnambulics didn’t believe it when they were told that they were sleepwalkers. But there was really no point in worrying about that now; it would all have to wait till morning.
Holly waited a minute or so for Alice to settle down (waking a sleepwalker could cause an array of sudden metabolic shifts), then she went back into the watch room and got into bed.
What a night, Holly thought in the dark.
Alice curled up in a ball on top of the sheets. From the foyer, the grandfather clock’s gentle chimes could be heard, signaling 4 a.m. Then—
“Where?” Alice said.
Holly leaned up in bed, glanced over.
“I don’t know,” Alice said.
Holly leaned over closer and whispered, “Alice? Are you awake?”
“Everywhere,” Alice said. “I know.”
Holly’s brow rose, then she realized exactly what was happening.
She’s narco-lalic…
Alice wasn’t awake at all. First sleepwalking and now this—narco-lalia or sleeptalking. The two symptoms frequently went hand in hand because they both occurred in the same precursory dream-state. People would make connected or subconnected vocalizations, sometimes just fragmentary speech sonnets, but often whole words and complete sentences. It was a unique taproot to the subconscious mind; Holly’s own narco-synthesis techniques affected a similar mind-state: the use of somiferous and hypnotic drugs to make the patients more susceptible to age-regression, memory refurbishment, and posthypnotic suggestion. And when the patient became suitably narco-lalic…
It was not uncommon that they would engage in full conversations, make comments, even answer questions— while they were fast asleep.
Don’t you dare! Holly told herself. You have no right! It’s an invasion of privacy, a breech of ethics!
Yes, it was, but she couldn’t resist the opportunity.
“Alice?” she whispered.
“Where?” Alice replied.
“Alice, tell me about John?”
“Somewhere. I’m not sure where.”
Holly frowned. It generally took a few moments to get the sleeptalker’s subconscious attention.
“Tell me about John, the photographer, Alice.”
“John?”
“Yes, Alice, tell me about John.”
“He took pictures.”
“I know, Alice. But what else can you tell me about him?”
Alice curled up tighter in her sleep. “He…was nice.”
Nice, huh? Holly thought. I’ll bet he was nice. “Was he nicer than George and Micah?”
Alice sighed blissfully. “They were all nice.”
Just stop it, Holly, she told herself in disgust. This is criminal. You’re picking her subconscious mind; you’re probing her personal life without her permission…
But Holly’s self-objections never took root. There was one question she simply had to ask.
“Alice? Do you love them? Do you love Micah or George or John?”
“Love them,” Alice moaned. “Oh, no. I don’t love them.”
Holly gulped, scorning herself for what she was going to ask next.
“Who do you love, Alice?”
Alice fidgeted a bit, exhaled deeply. Her sleeping face looked placid in the moonlight.
“I love Holly,” she said.
Holly froze.
“I love Holly,” Alice repe
ated.
Suddenly Holly’s heart surged. What more proof did she need than the unrestrained affirmation of Alice’s own subconscious mind?
“And, and—”
“What, Alice? And what?”
“And Dessamona. I love Dessamona, too.”
Holly’s stare turned to concrete. A rage went off in her head. Who…is Dessamona?
She steeled herself then, gritted her teeth and asked, “Alice? Who is that? Who is Dessamona?”
“Dessamona?”
“Yes, Alice.” It was all Holly could do not to shake Alice awake and shout it into her face. “Who is Dessamona?”
A long pause…
“Dessamona,” Alice sighed.
Then she fell back into normal sleep and didn’t say another word.
— | — | —
32
When Holly awoke the next morning Alice was gone. The note was taped right there on the inside of the bedroom door.
Holly:
Forgot to tell you last night, but I’ll be gone most of the day. Had to go to a fitness seminar in Baltimore with my aerobics class. I’ll call you tonight when I get back. Dinner?
Love,
Alice
“Jesus,” Holly muttered aloud. Aerobics class? She never mentioned anything to me about an aerobics class.
But why should Holly be suspicious?
“Dessamona,” she whispered next. Alice had mouthed some name in her sleep, and already Holly was envisioning a torrid affair, a relationship, sex…
She’s not at any goddamn aerobics class. She’s with Dessamona, whoever the hell Dessamona is.
Holly, of course, wasn’t sure that she believed this, but the manic lover in her had no choice but to suspect. And just who was this Dessamona? What kind of a name was that? How old was she? What did she look like?
Did she even exist, or was she just a fragment of Alice’s sleeping imagination?
All the clinical signs pointed to the latter, but Holly’s love had always made her pessimistic. She trudged sleepily into the kitchen and made herself some instant coffee. The sun glared in the window; it was past nine, and she had several sessions today, starting at eleven. She showered quickly, then dressed and prepared to leave but…
Goddamn you, Holly, she cursed herself. But it had been a rough night, hadn’t it? One confusion after another, more worries. Just a shot, she promised herself, then went to Alice’s bar. She uncapped the decanter. Glass clinked as she poured herself an inch of Scotch.
She went back into the watch room to look out at the bay while she sipped her drink. But she didn’t see much, her mind was too occupied. What a strange night it had been. Alice sleepwalking, sleeptalking. Confessing in her sleep that she loved Holly, but also some other woman named Dessamona. And now this surprise “aerobics seminar.”
When she finished her Scotch something occurred to her.
The note.
There’d been something odd about it all along. Holly pulled it off the door and looked at it more closely. Yes, she thought. Wait a minute. Then she picked up the other notes on the dresser, the notes written by the men who’d recently been with Alice, and she compared them.
The note that Alice herself had written contained some distinctive traits—wide, cursive loops, circles instead of dots over the I’s.
Then she examined the men’s notes.
At first glance the handwriting was obviously different on each one. George’s note seemed quickly scrawled, tight cursive handwriting, while Micah’s appeared much more careful, more creative, wider. And John’s—the photographer’s—was printed rather than cursive, and the letters were all slanted left.
But—
They all had circles rather than dots over the I’s.
The periods, too, were all clockwise circles, and there were lots of wide loops on parallel letters.
Holly squinted down.
Could it be true?
These notes, she thought. A weird sensation slithered up her back, like clawed hands, then seemed to lace through her hair. They weren’t written by three different men. They were all written by Alice…
««—»»
There was only one way to be sure. Holly didn’t know all that much about modern graphology, save for the basis, which dealt with the drawing symbology and thematic apperception. But she had to be sure—absolutely sure—before she could commence. To herself, she felt certain, but she needed clinical proof, too. And after she got it…
What then? she wondered, driving the Maserati a bit too fast down Rowe Boulevard. She’d just pulled out of the Old Post Office Pavilion, where she’d photocopied the notes that Alice had claimed were left by men, and also the note Alice had left for Holly, explaining the business about the aerobics seminar. Then a series of circuitous turns took her onto the campus of St. John’s. St. John’s was one of the oldest colleges in the country, old Gothic buildings forming a private curtilage within the city’s historic district. It was, for the most part, an art college, but they did have a creative psychology department, the head of which was a former schoolmate.
Holly had done half of her residency with Bill Stone, and they’d been good friends. He’d dropped out, though; psychiatry, he’d claimed, depressed him, and so back to the grad school he’d gone. Holly hadn’t talked to him in several years, but she did remember one thing. During grad school he’d worked part-time for the state police, as a graphologist—a handwriting expert.
But—
Damn! she thought once she got into the looming building that housed St. John’s psych department. A dizzy-looking secretary with white-streaked hair and earrings like loops on a shower curtain told her that Bill Stone was at the summer orientation proceedings, and he wouldn’t be back for several hours. “Would you like to leave a message, miss?” the secretary asked.
Holly quickly scribbled some instructions on a piece of notepaper, stuffed it all in an envelope, and asked the secretary to give it to Bill when he was in. Then she made a mad dash back to Alice’s house, replaced the original notes, and made it to her office just in time for her first session.
Secreting handwriting samples without Alice’s permission? Photocopying them for graphological analysis? Was she going to extremes?
She didn’t think so.
Because all the evidence pointed to one thing:
A schizoid-shift, a neurotic break, she realized. First, a suicide attempt, followed by compulsive sitaphobia, maybe even anorexia, then somnambulism and narcolalia, an imaginary entity—Dessamona—and invented hypersexuality—phony male lovers writing phony notes.
Yes, all the clinical signs were there, all right.
Good God, Holly finished the thought. Alice might well be on the verge of a split-personality…
— | — | —
33
Alice had not gone to any aerobics seminar—it was the only thing she could think of at the last moment, the only lie.
She didn’t like to lie, but sometimes a person had to, to spare the feelings of others.
Last night, she thought. Jesus…
Holly had gotten drunk again, and, worse, had confessed what Alice had suspected all along: that she was in love with her.
Alice tried to be open minded about it; she’d even promised that they’d make love sometime, hadn’t she? But that was last night.
She had no idea how she felt about it now.
In fact, she didn’t really know how she felt about anything at the moment.
She walked on, trying to clear her head. The night was warm and clear. The moon shone boldly in the sky, just beyond the edge of the bay, which she could see looking down Main Street past the City Dock. Its gentle white light glimmered on the surface of the water. It looked beautiful…
She’d been driving all day; she simply had to get out. She didn’t know what to make of the Holly situation— and lying to her certainly wouldn’t help—and she just felt so cloistered… It’s dark now, she thought. She’s probably sitting by her phone wai
ting for me to call. Alice had left Holly a note, hadn’t she? Promising that she’d call, promising that they’d go to dinner? Another lie. Another broken promise.
She just wasn’t ready to deal with the fact that another woman was in love with her. It felt almost as if something apart from her, something entirely separate, had pushed her out of the house, to think.
But now that she was out, and had been all day long, what was she to think about? What realities were there to be confronted, what decisions were there to be made?
What a mess…
Alice decided to walk down Main. She passed Pete’s Place, Fran O’Brien’s, and several other famous city bars. A moment later she was even passing Middleton’s, which had existed since the mid-1700s; George Washington himself had supposedly dined there during his victory march down General’s Highway once the Revolutionary War was won. All these nice, atmospheric taverns everywhere she turned, yet Alice didn’t feel impelled at all to enter any of them. She didn’t want to drink; she didn’t want to hang out.
She just wanted to think…
And as she did so, she remained oblivious to her prosthesis. She walked normally, just as the elderly woman at the hospital had said she would. And no more ghost-limb syndrome; no more phantom itching on a lower leg she no longer possessed. This was just another example of her “rebirth.” Alice no longer considered herself an amputee. She was just a woman, just a normal, everyday woman.
She sauntered along the docks, looked at the boats, looked at the people. The nightlife down here was fairly active; many people, particularly couples, were out and about. But I’m out and about by myself, she realized. Any other time this would’ve bothered her, but not tonight. Her “oneness,” her new relationship with herself, seemed all-important to her. She was out to clear her head, not to party. She was out for a stroll, to contemplate, not to—