The Placebo Effect

by David Rotenberg

  “Yes, Congressman, it is.”

  “So how exactly is the smell of colour useful for national security purposes? How does it merit all the money in your budget to keep track of such important individuals?”

  Synaesthetic crosses like the smell of colours were what Yslan called silly synaesthetes—and clearly of no value to national security. They provided a blind, a cover, for what the NSA was really investigating, because there were other, far more important “crossings” out there. And some of the people with those important crossings called themselves synaesthetes, although most went by no name except their own. Yslan thought of these people as the inner circle of the synaesthetic world—and these rare individuals potentially had real value for the NSA. There were only a few they had identified at this point, and Yslan had been keeping close tabs on them. They were the truly gifted. Maybe they were a kind of synaesthete. She didn’t know—or really care. But they possessed extraordinary talents—of that she was sure. As sure as she was loathe to speak of them or their unique abilities in a public forum, especially one that might get news coverage. So she grinned and pretended that she was interested in people who could tell you the weather and the day of the week when you gave them a day of any year, or tell you the sounds of smells—silly synaesthetes.

  “So, let’s be honest here, Ms. Hicks, this file that you look after is a bit like the dolphin experiments of the seventies, wouldn’t you say?”

  The congressman was referring to the vast sums spent trying to train dolphins to attach explosive devices to enemy warships. The public got wind of the experiments and pilloried the department for its abuse of animals and its vast expense—and, oh, yes, for its failure to produce a single dolphin willing to attack enemy ships.

  “No, I don’t think it’s like the dolphin experiments of the seventies.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because synaesthetes could prove to be extremely valuable in our efforts to keep the American public safe.”

  “How? By reciting twenty thousand digits of pi?”

  Yslan wanted to smile but didn’t as she leaned closer to the microphone and said, “Actually, Congressman, we should be exact since this is on the record, I believe it was twenty-two thousand five hundred digits.”

  There was a brief laugh behind her. She knew it was Emerson. He even laughed like a Princetonian—a little too high for a man, a bit intoxicated even at this hour of the morning.

  “As you will, Ms. Hicks, but what earthly purpose does reciting numbers have in the defense of the United States of America?”

  “None, Congressman.”

  “Ah,” the congressman said with obvious satisfaction.

  “The man you are referring to is a citizen of the United Kingdom, so I doubt he has any place in the defense of the United States.”

  The congressman was hard put to keep the anger from his face. “Fine. But let’s be honest here. The skills these poor benighted souls have are akin to the ability to keep dozens of plates spinning on sticks, aren’t they? A feat to be sure, but a useless one, and in your case an expensive one. And while we’re being honest, Ms. Hicks, aren’t you just defending your file because it’s the only niche you’ve been able to find at the NSA?”

  She heard the nasty curl in his voice and recognized it for exactly what it was. Old sexism at work. But she wasn’t going to fall into the trap. She wasn’t going to say that he would never question a man about his work this way. Then she saw the odd smirk on his face and recognized that too. And it hurt her. No matter how far she had come from the dingy tobacco fields of North Carolina, people from the South still saw through her citified disguise—like Hannibal Lecter had seen through Clarice Starling, in The Silence of the Lambs. She had taken one thing from that movie to heart—the quote from Marcus Aurelius that everybody and everything has a true nature and that nature is betrayed by what he or it does. For an instant she wanted to turn to Emerson and say, “Make him stop it!” An old instinct to rely on men—one that she thought she had erased from her being long ago—but there it was. She ignored it and said, “Although I never thought I would quote one of your heroes, Congressman, I find myself having to agree with Donald Rumsfeld. Synaesthetes allow us to understand what we don’t know we don’t know. They can point us toward new places to explore—new vistas in both human experience and human potential.”

  “Now you sound like NASA in the nineteen-sixties.”

  “As I recall, Congressman, NASA in the nineteen-sixties actually put a man on the moon—a feat to be sure—and not a useless one, Congressman.”

  To Yslan’s surprise, Congressman Villianne smiled. The feral look had returned to the man’s face, and his ‘Thank you, Ms. Hicks’ made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  The rest of the questioning was not so pointed, but everyone made it clear that she would have to seriously justify her budget before the committee met again in three months.

  Two hours, and an unpleasant phone call to her boss, Leonard Harrison, later, Yslan found herself eyeing the bottle of Tennessee mash on the mirrored shelf on the other side of a Georgetown bar. Then Emerson Remi’s shadow crossed the liquor bottle and she lost all interest in having a drink.

  “Hicksy, a bit early for you if I remember correctly.”

  “You do—and you know you do, Emerson.”

  “Mind if I take a seat?” he asked as he sat on the bar stool beside her. “So what are the doofs over at NSA doing sticking you with this loser of an assignment?”

  She smiled and turned to him. “That’s classified information, Emerson, and, as a reporter, you should know that.” But her smile had faded before she finished speaking. Why did it always feel like she was wearing the wrong clothes when she was with him? Because he was the best-looking thing in almost any room—like Alec Baldwin before he got fat and thought he was funny.

  “Bourbon—got Woodbridge?” he said in the bartender’s direction. As the bartender poured him the silky brown liquid, a waitress came by and put a plate of chicken fingers in front of Yslan. For a moment Yslan was going to claim that she hadn’t ordered this but thought, fuck that, and said to the waitress, “Ketchup please.” Then she smiled at Emerson—or did her best to smile.

  “I could watch you eat chicken fingers forever.”

  “What do you want, Emerson?”

  “Synaesthetes. Tell me all about you and the NSA and synaesthetes.”

  The waitress brought over a small cup of ketchup and put it down beside Yslan. “Bring the bottle, will ya?” The waitress gave a sigh and retreated to wherever waitresses retreat.

  “How’s your drink, Emerson?”

  “Good. Woodbridge is very good. And your chicken fingers now that you have catsup?”

  “I love that you say catsup and not ketchup.”

  “Ketchup is the brand name; the product name is catsup. Like Kleenex and tissue.”

  “Like fuck yourself and leave me alone?”

  “Not exactly like that.”

  Yslan thought, I can’t wait until he gets old, puffy and bald.

  “A penny for your thoughts?”

  “Oh, Emerson, you should know that a good southern girl’s thoughts are worth well more than a penny.”

  The bottle of ketchup arrived—the waitress departed. Yslan tilted the bottle over her chicken fingers but nothing came out. She shook it—no ketchup. She then held it in her left hand, aimed carefully, and thumped the bottom with her right palm. A large glop spat from the bottle and landed on Emerson’s white linen shirt—right over his nipple.

  She laughed.

  He didn’t.

  He finished his drink and said, “I’ll be watching you, Hicksy, you and your freaky, geek friends. Because I can smell a story—and you and those weirdos stink of one.” He turned and waved—he may have said ta-ta, but Yslan didn’t hear it.

  6

  DECKER TAKES A JOB, OR TWO OR THREE

  DECKER TRIED TO RESIST BUT COULDN’T. HE HOPPED UP onto the sidewalk just s
outh of the Junction, took out his touch-screen iPod and opened the Safari browser. The morning sun momentarily made the screen difficult to read. Then his fingers raced across the tiny keyboard as if they had a will of their own. The website came up quickly. Decker thought of it as his “sin” site—sin as in that which is punished, not syn as in synaesthetes.

  The outsiders’ part of the synaesthetes’ website had the usual dry, offhanded definitions of synaesthesia and a link to Daniel Tammet’s BBC videos. All very cold—analytical—for outsiders. Without a prompt Decker punched in his access code—Sethcomehome. The screen went black and stayed that way for well over a minute. Then within the blackness a square of denser blackness appeared over a square of lesser blackness. Decker thought of it as a clear reference to Mark Rothko’s paintings. Then slowly, as in the paintings, the squares began to pulse—and images began to appear. Then came the feared words:

  WELCOME FELLOW TRAVELER

  Again without prompting, Decker supplied his second password, and the welcome disappeared to be replaced by a menu—but one unlike any other computer menu. This one was purposefully without order, misspelled, misaligned and confusing. It reminded Decker of a small notice he had seen years ago on a New York City lamppost: INTERNATIONAL ESP CONFERENCE—IF YOU HAVE IT, YOU’LL KNOW WHEN AND WHERE.

  Decker entered the main chat room, but he chose to lurk rather than participate. He’d never participated. It scared the bejeezus out of him when he heard his distant cousins “participate”—because “speak” would be the wrong name for what appeared before him on the screen. He actually thought of it as below him—as in he was looking down on it from some considerable height.

  The first “speaker” put up a corner of an early Jackson Pollock painting—upside down—with the screeched comment: Why is this art!!!

  Decker leaned against the wall of a building and watched his tiny screen. He’d never seen synaesthetes get this close to something this important before.

  A barrage of comments followed, attempting to explain that which they did not understand. The Pollock painting was a foreign language to them, but one that was of interest—like something just beyond the horizon. Decker knew that the greatest of the abstract expressionists like Rothko had gone beyond the horizon and come back with their unearthly visions of another world.

  Another screamed comment: Is this really art?

  Decker knew that the only logical response to the Jackson Pollock painting was a Paul Klee canvas. To which a Larry Rivers mural should then follow. But the participants in the chat room didn’t have a way of knowing that. These folks knew—no, that’s wrong—they sensed that there was something important, something quintessential out there but couldn’t figure out exactly what that something was.

  Decker didn’t leave his perch as the chatters fumbled and bumbled and missed the point—blind men in a darkened room.

  He suddenly felt as if he was being watched.

  He looked up from the tiny screen and across Bloor Street he saw a scruffy, fat man/boy. He was standing on top of the manhole that was the most southerly exit of the underground steam tunnel system that used to connect many buildings in the Junction—Decker’s house being one—to the old coal plant up by the abandoned train depot. Decker thought he knew all the panhandlers on Bloor West, but maybe this guy was new. Decker hoped the guy was willing to fight for his place on the sidewalks out here.

  He clicked off his iPod and entered the fruit store near Runnymede. The prices were always good at this Asian market, but the quality varied. So he chose carefully then got into the somewhat long line.

  The Korean woman at the cash register was screaming. The black woman ahead of him, shocked, clutched her $3.99 Nicaraguan pineapple to her chest. Painful, Decker thought, but so very Toronto—black woman, from her together appearance and middle-class demeanor probably Grenadian or Trinidadian, holding a piece of Central American fruit, shocked to her very marrow that the Korean woman had raised her voice to a white man—just shocked! Verklempt, Decker thought—the Yiddish word for “choked up” coming from the ancient recesses of his brain’s storage bins. His atheist/Jewish mother used few Yiddish words, but verklempt—that she’d used. Good word, he thought—appropriate word.

  The white man, who was the object of the Korean cashier’s wrath, began to argue his case. “Bruised. They were all bruised.”

  “All?” the Korean woman huffed. “All apples… whole bushel bruised? Not possible.”

  “Did my son return the whole bushel?” the white man demanded.

  “Yes, yesterday…”

  “Then they were all bruised—the whole bushel.”

  “No! No. No. Not bruised when I sold him the bushel. Not bruised.”

  “If my son brought them back, then they were bruised.”

  “Then he bruised them.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “He bruised them when he peeled them.”

  “No. The machine that peels the apples takes only one at a time…”

  The Grenadian or Trinidadian woman dropped her pineapple. It hit the floor but did not bounce. The Korean cashier stared at her, commanding her to pick up the Nicaraguan delight and daring her to claim that now it was bruised too.

  In the meantime the white man was in the middle of a complicated explanation as to the mechanics of the apple peeling machine he used to make his pastries.

  Decker allowed himself to slip forward into his facial mask and slowed his breathing. He looked up at the white man—about forty-five, married, unhappy, two boys, Austrian.

  He stayed beneath the jet stream for a moment, listening to its whoosh above him, then, although he knew he shouldn’t, entered it. He closed his eyes—three parallel lines. The man was telling the truth about the peeling machine’s workings. Decker turned toward the Korean woman—although now hefty and virtually without an identifiable waist he sensed the presence of a thin girl, a domineering father, a rapacious uncle, tears, envy of dancers in midnight studios—and she too was telling the truth about the bushel of apples being without blemish when she sold them to the white man’s son.

  The shabbily dressed man Decker had seen on the other side of Bloor Street entered the store, eating from one of the two pints of Californian strawberries he held in his dirty hands.

  Decker felt the man’s presence before he saw him.

  Then the man was pointing at Decker—gesticulating wildly in his direction. Decker suddenly felt as if the earth had moved beneath his feet, and he reached out to support himself against one of the tables holding papayas. Fortunately it accepted his weight with only a slight groan.

  Two strong store workers rushed at the man with the strawberries and hustled him out of the shop.

  When Decker looked up the man was gone; his two green cardboard pint baskets emptied of their strawberry goodness lay on the ground near the door.

  Before Decker could think about the man, the Korean cashier demanded, “Bring in the boy!”

  For a second Decker thought she was talking about the man with the strawberries, then he remembered the bruised apple argument.

  “Why should I bring in my son?” the Austrian replied.

  Because there is a liar here, Decker thought, but it’s neither of you two. The black woman slipped her pineapple back onto the shelf and took another. The Austrian swore he would never shop in this fruit market again. The Korean cashier said, “Your pastries no good anyways, and too expensive, much.”

  Decker smiled. Better this mixed-race city than the all-white one he had grown up in—even if you couldn’t leave your bicycle unlocked on the street.

  “Next, next here.” The Korean woman tabulated the cost of the fruit in Decker’s basket, then asked for $10.27. He went to reach for his credit card then realized two things. One, that his Visa card didn’t seem to work anymore, and two, that this store didn’t take credit cards—no fruit market took credit cards.

  “Ten twenty-seven,” she repeated. He handed over twenty dollars and, as she g
ave him his change, she announced, “Have a good day.”

  It sounded just a wee bit more like a command than a recommendation, but then again the meaning could easily have been lost in translation—just another multicultural moment.

  Decker stepped out onto Bloor West and his cell phone rang.

  “Yeah.” Decker wasn’t much for cell phone courtesy. He pressed the device hard to his ear, almost gave up, then shouted into the thing, “Yeah!”

  “It’s me.”

  “Eddie, you sound like you’re calling from Poland or something.”

  “Nope. They’ve got better cell phone service in Poland than here.”

  “Here as in Toronto?”

  “Malaysia has better service, so does China—and India, off the charts. Buddy, I think even western Borneo…”

  “Nice to know that, Eddie…”

  “When it comes to cell phone service, Hogtown is in the pig shit. But hey—tempus fugit.”

  “I think you mean ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’ ‘Tempus fugit’ means ‘time flies.’ Sic transit, et cetera, means ‘so goes the world’—or in your terms, ‘pig shit happens.’”

  “Always nice to know that someone cares about the dead stuff.”

  “Okay, Eddie, I’m tired. I taught late last night.”

  “Yeah, well, sic fugit gloria—and her sister if she has one.”

  “Eddie!”

  “Okay. Three requests came in last night while you were doing whatever it is that you were doing.”

  “I was—”

  “Yeah—and I thought you could get the twenty thousand dollars that Seth needs in one, two, three.”

  The only news he ever received about his son, Seth, Decker got through Eddie. He knew that Seth was out in western Canada somewhere. Where exactly he didn’t know—Seth never told him. But the boy was nineteen, made his own decisions, lived his own life, and this was the very first time he’d ever asked for money. Decker thought of asking Eddie where Seth was, what his phone number was—and why suddenly he needed twenty thousand dollars. But Decker knew that Seth didn’t want him to know any of these things and he knew that Eddie would never betray Seth’s trust—certainly not the way that Decker had. He hoped against hope that Seth wanted the money to go to college, but he doubted it. Seth was intensely bright but way too independent a thinker to have a successful university career.