“Yeah, I clean up good.”
She is back in her lawyer uniform—tailored black jacket, cream-colored silk blouse, and conservative black skirt. We say nothing about last night, but I feel the deep stirring again and I know that something has changed in me. The ground has shifted under my feet and some safe center of gravity seems to be slipping away.
“I get the sizes right?”
“Perfect,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Barney’s for opening at nine-thirty on a weekday.”
“I’ll thank them when I take them back. These clothes cost more than Miley Cyrus tickets.”
“Shut up,” she smiles.
The inner office door opens and a receptionist says Nicki’s name and we follow her back to the office inside.
Dr. Benjamin Abrams rises to greet us when we walk in. He is early sixties, with sparse gray hair combed back, wearing a cable-knit cardigan sweater. His eyes appraise me right away without distance or judgment. He looks me in the eye when he shakes my hand and gestures for Nicki and me to sit.
“I appreciate your meeting us on short notice, Dr. Abrams,” Nicki says.
“Of course,” Abrams says. “You said it was urgent.”
Nicki turns to me. “Jack, I’ve brought Dr. Abrams up to speed on everything except the conversation we had last night. If you’d like, you can go ahead and talk to him with me here or I can wait out in the waiting room while you tell him the rest.”
I shrug. “I don’t mind, either way…”
“I think it would be best if Jack and I were to talk alone. Would you mind?” Abrams says to Nicki.
“Absolutely not,” Nicki says, and she gets up and turns to me. “I’ll be right outside.”
“Okay,” I say, and watch her leave.
Abrams looks at me and smiles. “So, I hear you’re having some troubles.”
I nod and, once again, I tell my strange story, starting with Sheriff Claire Boyle’s knock at my door. Abrams listens, nodding occasionally, his eyes never leaving mine for long, and then he sits very still as I sum it up with the events at St. Stephen.
“Nicki told me we would be trying to work on some things you’ve forgotten. From five years ago, I think she said?”
“Yes. I was drinking heavily for over a year, after the death of my fiancée.”
“How did she die?” he asks.
“She shot herself. I found her.”
Abrams closes his eyes for a second and lifts his head in a slight nod, absorbing this. I have never been in therapy, but now I have a better understanding of its appeal. Here is a man—an understanding, avuncular man listening to me spell out a deeply painful event, and I feel comforted and encouraged to tell him about it because I know he can never tell anyone. He knows little or nothing about me, except what I am telling him. He has no preconceptions, no axe to grind, his job is only to help me.
I talk about finding Sara, and about the fifteen months of drinking that followed, and my lack of memory from that time. He is quiet for a moment after I finish.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about memory,” he says. “We have this idea that our memories are like files in a computer, waiting to be accessed whenever we need them, but it doesn’t work like that. Far from it. Memories are constructed, in much the same way we construct fantasies—in our imaginations. You’re an imaginative fellow, a writer, and I’m sure you’re already aware of the connection between your own memories and the books you write.”
“Yes I am,” I say.
“Memories come to us as distorted versions of what we’ve experienced. Two people can observe the same event and an hour later retell it in completely different ways. They’re not lying, it’s just that their imaginations are reconstructing events differently, and their imaginations are affected by anything and everything—suggestion, fantasy, trauma, their own desires to shape them.
“In your case alcoholism played a part in your amnesia, without question. But that alone doesn’t explain your lack of recall. You show no signs of Korsakoff’s syndrome—amnesia due to alcoholism. People with Korsakoff’s are completely unaware of their memory defect, and they show no sign of concern or worry about it, and that doesn’t appear to be the case here, am I right?”
“You couldn’t be more right.”
“With the exception of some rare brain disorders, a completely amnesiac episode is very unusual. And it’s almost always the result of trauma, either physical or emotional. And it’s clear that your fiancée’s suicide was an extreme emotional trauma.”
“Yes.”
“What about physical trauma? Head injury?”
“Yes…” I say, thinking of the memory of that night in the downtown L.A. emergency room. “I did have a head injury, while I was drinking. I don’t remember anything about it, though.”
“Nicki said it was important for us to focus on this period in April ‘01, when there is some question as to your whereabouts?”
“Yes, but I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t remember anything from that time. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Well why don’t we start with the last thing you do remember from that time.”
“The last thing I remember is waking up on someone’s couch the day after Sara’s—my fiancée’s—funeral.”
“Were you intoxicated at the time?”
“I had been—before and after the funeral.”
“What’s the next thing you remember?”
“Waking up in a jail infirmary, fifteen months later.”
“Nothing in between? Nothing at all?”
“Vague things…drinking in a bar, mostly…”
“Tell me about the bar.”
“McDougal’s. A dive in Pasadena, on a side street off Colorado Boulevard.”
“What did it look like?”
“Dark. Dingy. Never very crowded. I liked that about it. I used to sit in a dark corner and just drink all the time.”
“By yourself?”
I pause. “Yes…I thought so…but…” I trail off, unsure.
“But what?” he prompts me.
“I used to think that I just sat there alone, drinking. Talking to myself. Holding court with…imaginary people who would listen to my story about Sara.”
“You say you used to think that?”
“Well, now I think it’s possible I spoke with someone. A man. I had a dream about talking with him at the bar.”
“What comes to your mind when you think of him?”
“Only vague impressions…his voice, his glasses…”
“What about his glasses?”
I shake my head. “Plain, rectangular glasses…kind of cheap. Silver wire frames. And I could see myself in his glasses so I could never quite see his eyes.”
“What else besides his glasses?”
I think for a moment about his voice, and something else comes to me.
“His hands,” I say.
“What about his hands?”
“They were rough, calloused. I could see the calluses.”
“You saw his hands while you were sitting at the bar with him?”
“Not at the bar. In a booth, near the back.”
“You sat with him in the booth.”
“Yes.”
“What else about his hands?”
His hands…pouring me drinks. Reaching in his pockets…
“He had things…things he showed me....”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know…”
“Take your time.”
Things he took from his pocket…or wallet? Holding them out. Placing them on the table…
“I’m sorry, I can’t place it…”
“That’s okay. What else do you remember about him? You said you remembered his voice.”
“Yes. He had a deep voice.”
“Do you remember what he said? What you t
alked about with him?”
I think of the dream, trying to remember what he said to me.
“Try to think of everything you can about the bar, the booth,” Abrams prompts me. “What did it smell like?”
“Booze. Stale cigarette smoke.”
“What were you drinking?”
“Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.”
“And his voice…you said he had a deep voice. What words was he saying?”
I lean back and close my eyes, trying to sort memory from dream.
“Think about his hands,” Dr. Abrams says.
His hands… Opening the bottle…pouring my glass full…
And now I am back there, in that corner booth—
“I’ve got a story for you, Doc,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You study writing at school?”
“Cal State,” I try not to slur the words, to uphold the proud mien of my scholarship.
“That’s right, you told me. Where you met Sara, right?”
“Thasright.”
“She a writer?”
“Nope. Well, she wanned to be, kinda. But she was a teacher. We liked to read to each other…”
“That’s nice. You really loved her, didn’t you?”
“Love… Loved… Yeah. I loved her…”
“She must have been special.”
“Don’ talk about her, a’right?” I look at my face in his glasses. Mirrors reflecting my own face, but flipped, reversed…
* * *
My throat is tight and my eyes burn with hot tears.
“Can we stop?” I ask Dr. Abrams.
“Sure,” he says. “Take all the time you want.”
How many people have cried here, in this office, with this gentle, avuncular man?
“I talked to him about her—about Sara.”
“What did you talk about?”
“He was—he seemed interested in her—in hearing about her. No one else would listen for very long…”
“But he listened.”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him about her?”
“Everything. Her life…how she…”
“You talked to him about her suicide?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him about it?”
“That I didn’t know why…I didn’t… I thought I must have done something…or not done something. She didn’t leave a note or… I don’t know why to this day… It was totally out of the blue…”
“She hadn’t been depressed or ill?”
“No. She had a bout with depression before we met. She told me about it. She was on meds for a couple of years, but she stopped taking them when we started making plans to get married. She said she was truly happy for the first time in her life. That’s what I don’t understand. She said she didn’t need the meds anymore and she seemed fine…”
“So this fellow in the bar, he listened to you.”
“Yeah, he listened.”
Now I remember something else. “He told me I was a good listener. That’s why he told me things.”
“What kinds of things?”
I rub my eyes.
“Do you want to stop?” he asks me.
“No…it’s just that I haven’t thought about this before… I can’t remember any more.”
“Take your time.”
I sit quietly and think.
Nothing. I shake my head at Abrams.
“It’s gone,” I say.
“Let’s go back to St. Stephen. The person who assaulted you. Did you get any kind of look at him?”
“No. I heard a sound and turned and he hit me with something and I was knocked out before I saw him.”
“You didn’t struggle with him at all?”
“No.”
Abrams glances down at my left hand. My knuckles are scraped raw from where I punched Sallie Fun last night. I fold my hands, reflexively hiding the wounds on my knuckles. Abrams is quiet.
“That’s from something else,” I say.
Abrams doesn’t speak or move. The silence in the room piles up and then, once again, I tell my tale about Sallie.
“Most people wouldn’t have the physical courage to defend themselves like that,” Abrams says.
I shrug. “I grew up in a bad neighborhood,” I say.
“Even people from bad neighborhoods,” he says.
“I don’t like bullies. And I don’t like being afraid.”
“Who bullied you? Back in the neighborhood.” Abrams asks.
“Guy named Vasquez. When I was a kid I used to go to a park near my house to read…to get out of the house when my mom was drinking or drugging. Vasquez and his friends would chase me off if they found me there. One day I got tired of running.”
“What did you do?”
“Vasquez came up to me with his crew and said, ‘This ain’t a liberry.’”
“What did you say?”
“I looked up at him and said, ‘library’.”
A smile flickers across Abrams’ face. “And how did he respond to that?” he asks.
“He beat the hell out of me. Broke my nose. The next day I went to a gym in the neighborhood where a trainer taught boxing and mixed martial arts. I fought Golden Gloves for a couple of years.”
“Did you ever see this Vasquez fellow again?”
“Yes. He confronted me a year or so later and I broke his jaw.”
“How’d you feel about that?” Abrams asks.
I think for a second. “Like I had completed something,” I say. “It felt good not to be afraid.”
“You say you boxed for two years. Why did you stop?”
“I was competing for a regional championship. I was ahead on points but the guy wouldn’t go down. I kept beating on him and…all of a sudden I felt sorry for him. I hesitated and he clocked me. Knocked me out for the first time. I never fought again.”
“You want to talk more about that?” Abrams asks.
“Not really,” I say.
Abrams is quiet again. He shifts in his chair. “This association with your books and the murders…what can you tell me about that?”
“Not much, really. As far as I know there is no association. That’s what’s so frustrating. I can’t understand how I knew those things… It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Memory and imagination are like two sides of the same coin,” Abrams says. “Have you ever heard of a phenomena called cryptomnesia?”
“No.”
“Jung wrote a fair bit about it. It’s a kind of unconscious plagiarism. There are many cases of authors and composers who wrote things they believed were completely original, only to find that they had read or heard them from another source, from an earlier time in their lives. Helen Keller was accused of plagiarism when she wrote The Frost King, which turned out to be a fairy tale that had been read to her as a child. Cryptomnesia was even referenced as a mitigating factor in the lawsuit against George Harrison over the song My Sweet Lord. The melody was virtually identical to a song Harrison had heard years earlier, but forgotten. And more recently there was a famous case involving a young woman living here in New York—an artist. She was hit on the head and sexually assaulted. She disappeared and was found two years later, in Dallas. She had completely forgotten what had happened to her, but in those two years she painted dozens of vivid pictures of her assault, without any idea that what she was painting was actually a memory of a real event. Her paintings were even used to identify and convict her attacker. And although she slowly remembered more about the events surrounding the assault, to this day she still has no memory of the event she painted so vividly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When I leave Abrams’s office I find Nicki sitting on the edge of the corduroy sofa in the waiting room, arguing with someone on her cell.
“You are threatening to ruin a man’s reputation based on evidence I have yet to hear,” she says, then gives me a look and rolls her eyes. “Well if it’s all com
ing from your boss maybe you should have him call me and we’ll work something out. Mr. Rhodes is here with me right now, I’m looking at him as we speak. He hasn’t run off, as you were so worried about, and you have yet to give me a good reason why he should come back out to L.A. after he’s already come there and cooperated and told you everything he knows,” she says. Then she stands up straight, holding the phone at her ear and listening, her eyes flashing bright with anger.
“Fine,” she says. “Please have him call me. Give him my number and we’ll work it out. Mr. Rhodes is anxious to help in any way he can.” She hangs up and throws the phone in her little black handbag like it was something that washed up out of a storm drain.
“Asshole,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.” She opens the office door and we go to the elevator and we don’t say anything until it arrives.
In the elevator she says, “Did you get anywhere?” I shake my head.
“Not really. Some things came to me, but nothing about April ’01.”
We get out in the lobby and we’re on the street when she turns to me.
“The DA is gonna call me today and give me the final word on whether your name will be released as a person of interest. Detective Marsh has a forensic team at Temescal right now. I have to be honest with you, Jack, it doesn’t look good. You have things you told Dr. Abrams that I know are confidential but what you tell me is confidential, too. I need to know what you told him. Even if you think it isn’t important. Even if it’s painful or embarrassing. You can’t shock me or make me think less of you. But I can help you more if you tell me what you told him.”
“Okay,” I say.
“You want to go back to the office?”
“Not really,” I say.
She looks up and down the street quickly. “Do you mind if we go to a bar?” she asks.
“No, it’s alright.”
I follow Nicki as she jaywalks across the street with the brazen expertise unique to New Yorkers. We enter a small, dark place and sit at the copper-topped bar. We both order Cokes and I tell her everything I told Abrams.
She looks at me after I’ve finished, her eyes darting back and forth as her mind runs over all of it. She thinks quietly for a long time.
“I need a cigarette,” she says finally.
We get up. “Be right back,” Nicki calls to the bartender, who nods.
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