“I’ve lived in this town all my life,” she said. “I know a few things.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well”—she looked around to make sure no one else was listening—“I don’t know if it’s an unsolved crime or not. At the time they said it was a suicide. But you know, it was Maria Morgan, the opera singer. Seven years ago, she was found dead in her studio out on the Warwick road. She was about to make her Metropolitan Opera debut and one day as she was practicing, she just suddenly couldn’t take the pressure anymore—that’s what they said, anyway—and she hanged herself. With her two children in the house.”
“When did you say this was? Seven years ago?”
“That’s right.” She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk and pulled out a manila folder that held a sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings. “Maybe you’d like to read these. They tell the whole story.”
Dubin sat down at an isolated table and read the clippings over and over again. He liked what he read. Maria Morgan’s death had everything he looked for in a new project. A glamorous woman with everything to live for, a violent, unexplained death, an aroma of official ineptitude or corruption—and rich people running for cover in a dozen different directions. But wasn’t the story too old and cold to be of any value? Dubin had already decided to get out of the business, even if sometimes it gave him the illusion of bringing justice to a corrupt world. In his kind of detective work he wasn’t hindered by Miranda warnings, rules of evidence or statutes of limitation; he oppressed only the rich, never the weak and downtrodden. His was the underside of the law, the shadow side that remained invisible in a world where everything had its price. But the official side—the world of real detectives who carried badges and could put you away for the rest of your life—seemed to be closing in. One more case was all he had time for and all he really needed before he could retire. “What are you doing with these old newspaper clippings right in the middle of your desk?” he asked the librarian.
“Let’s just say I have my reasons.”
“Such as?”
“We librarians have our ethics, just as you journalists do. You protect your sources and we protect our borrowers.”
“Fair enough.” Dubin liked Miss Whipple, and her stubbornness made him like her more. “It said in the obituary that Maria Morgan was survived by her husband and two children. Are they still around?”
“The husband is Avery Morgan. I’m sure you’ve heard of him”—Dubin had not—“and the children, well, I guess you could say they’re still in the area.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well”—she lowered her voice—“they’ve been in the Palmer Institute ever since their mother died. They’re in their early twenties now.”
Dubin had heard of the Palmer Institute. “Is that around here?”
“Right down the road.”
“Can you tell me how to get there?”
Following her directions, Dubin wove his way through a maze of shady back roads to a secluded spot behind the Palmer Institute where he could park without being seen. He followed a path through the woods to the Institute’s rear fence, which offered a surprisingly intimate view of the terrace behind the ivy-entangled building. Even more surprisingly, there was another spectator—a small, wiry man of about fifty—who had already concealed himself behind the fence and stood peering at the terrace. The man had a delicate, almost aristocratic appearance: he wore a light blazer and a yellow shirt open at the neck, and a pair of shiny black shoes that looked completely out of place in the woods. His nose was long and beaklike, and he had a pointed chin and a high forehead enclosed by unruly tufts of gray hair, but his most remarkable features were his wide, deep-set eyes, which seemed ready to absorb the whole world into their dark uncertainties. There was something otherworldly about him that made Dubin wonder which side of the fence he belonged on.
It was almost dusk and the Institute’s grim façade was enveloped in mist, a silhouette looming ominously against the faded sky. Hanging Chinese lanterns glowed on the terrace, where a group of heavily sedated patients sat watching a strange performance. Two young people, about the age of Maria Morgan’s schizophrenic children, sat between a striking redhead and an elderly nurse, while on the lawn a young blond woman in a blue ballet dress leaped from side to side, waving her arms in a pantomime of emotions that Dubin hoped he would never experience. The man standing beside Dubin at the fence mirrored the dancer’s performance in a series of facial tics and small, precise hand gestures, as if he were directing her movements with invisible wires.
“What’s going on?” Dubin asked him.
“Performance therapy,” he muttered, as if the answer should have been obvious.
“Do you know Hunter Morgan?”
For the first time the man turned toward Dubin, drawing him into his cavernous eyes. “Why do you ask?” He spoke with the trace of an accent.
“I’ve heard he’s a patient here.”
The man hesitated. “That’s Hunter Morgan on the terrace. His twin sister Antonia is sitting beside him.”
“Who’s the dancer?” Dubin asked. He expected to hear that she was one of the more seriously disturbed inmates.
“That’s... Dr. Palmer’s niece.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. She works here.”
As he drove home that night, Dubin asked himself whether he really wanted to stick his nose under this tent. He smelled money, but there were a number of less pleasant smells mixed in. Death, of course, and insanity, and a rich family’s nasty secrets. He had nothing invested; he could walk away and never think about this town again. But he was haunted by the image of the schizophrenic twins on the terrace, staring into the darkness as the mist wrapped itself around them under the chill shadow of the Institute’s gabled roof. They had their secrets and he had his. Was their captivity something he should even attempt to unravel?
Now he stood in the morning shadows outside Avery Morgan’s house trading barbs with his wife. She had just accused Dubin of being a blackmailer and he was taking his time denying it. In the shade beside the stone barn he watched the morning breeze jostle a lock of tawny hair across her forehead.
“I’m in the information business,” he said. “I just gather what’s out there and let my client decide how it should be used. Or not used.”
“And if you don’t have a client?”
“Then I keep looking until I find one.”
“What information do you have?”
“Not very much so far.”
“And my husband?”
“He said to keep my eyes open but he didn’t really sign up as a client. That means I have to keep looking.”
Susan Morgan was attractive in an unattractive way, with her cold eyes and her hard cheeks and her low, masculine voice. “Come with me,” she said.
He followed her into the stone barn, past a row of horse stalls and through a narrow doorway into a small apartment that was evidently used as an office.
“How much will you need?” She took a checkbook out of a drawer and sat down on the couch to write him a check. The desk was cluttered with books and papers.
“Five thousand ought to do it for now. Plus expenses.”
“Oh,” she said. “Do blackmailers have expenses?”
“I have a client now. That makes me a detective.”
She smiled as she stood up. “All right, start detecting. But I want to know everything you do, before anybody else does—especially my husband. And when I say enough is enough, you go away. Is that a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
She followed him out of the apartment and opened another door that led up a dusty flight of stairs. “Don’t charge me extra for this.”
They climbed the stairs to an open room with a skylight that covered the barn’s entire upper level. The air smelled like mice and the sparse furnishings were draped with sheets. “Maria Morgan’s studio. Just the way she left it.”
“Mind if I look around?”
“Not now. Maybe on your next visit.”
In another moment they were back in the driveway. The golden retriever, in a friendly gesture, jumped up on Dubin and spattered him with mud from head to foot. Susan pulled the dog off, laughing at Dubin’s distress. She laughed more as he squinted into his car’s side mirror and tried to shake the mud out of his wavy dark hair.
He retreated into his car. “Thanks for the check,” he said. “I’ll give you a call in a couple days.”
Susan had stopped laughing but there was still a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “You know, Dubin,” she said, “you really ought to give up blackmail and become a detective.”
“Why?”
“You look exactly like Edgar Allan Poe.”
* * *
By the time I finished my psychiatric residency, I imagined that I knew everything I needed to know about human beings and their mental pathologies. For that reason I must have been particularly vulnerable to the most insidious of those pathologies, the madness of love. In the space of a few months I became obsessed with three women—an artist, an ingénue, and a nymphomaniac—each of whom brought me a step closer to ruin. The name of the first one (not her real name, of course) was Olympia.
Olympia was Miles Palmer’s niece, the daughter of Peter Bartolli, and she was a beautiful, exotic creature—at least that was how she appeared to me through the lens of my infatuation: tall and statuesque, long limbed and graceful, with almond eyes and a platinum complexion that made her look like a visitor from another world. Her mother was a Russian ballet dancer, the onetime wife of Peter Bartolli who had raised her singlehandedly after the mother waltzed off with another man. At that time Bartolli was Associate Director of the Institute, and Olympia spent her childhood in this strange environment surrounded by wealthy psychotics and the doctors who humored them. As a result she took on the coloration of both groups: she was kind and generous but incredibly self-centered, driven by emotion but at the same time devious and manipulative, intellectually accomplished but given to crackpot notions. Some who knew her thought she should have stayed on as a patient.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Olympia. She had come to the Institute to conduct one of her “Performance Therapy” sessions. Dr. Palmer was away at a professional meeting—it was the night before Hunter Morgan’s first piano performance—and my nemesis Dr. Jeffrey Gottlieb was in charge. Personally, I never approved of these events; it seemed to me that they nudged the patients in the wrong direction, away from reality instead of towards it. But Dr. Palmer had maintained a close relationship with Olympia even after her father’s ouster—she’d grown up there, he said, and she’d always be welcome—and his generous attitude meant that periodically she would show up for one of these extravaganzas. Sometimes she danced, sometimes she put on a little play, and sometimes (without Dr. Palmer’s knowledge or approval, I’m sure) she lectured the uncomprehending patients about New Age spirituality, homeopathic medicine, and various other fads that were close to her heart. She even had a room where she could sleep overnight when she visited the Institute.
On this particular occasion she had choreographed a kind of ballet that required an audience of patients and staff to sit on the terrace while she cavorted around on the lawn behind the Institute. I had spent the afternoon attending to some personal business, and when I returned I caught a glimpse of Olympia through one of the upstairs windows. She drifted through the evening mist in a blue ballet dress, waving her willowy arms gracefully, sometimes violently, as she acted out some ghostly drama. As dancing it probably left something to be desired, but in terms of raw passion and beauty I had never experienced anything like it. And when at the climactic moment she raised her eyes to meet mine, and held them there for a long moment, I wanted to rush outside and embrace this beautiful phantom before she disappeared into the night. But then she did a strange thing: the music stopped and she whirled onto the terrace toward Hunter and Antonia, who sat between Mrs. Paterson and Nicole, and she bent over to kiss each of the twins on the forehead. And then without looking at anyone else she put her hands together and slowly slipped back into the shadows like a feather floating away on the wind.
Olympia’s room, as it happened, was in the residential wing just around the corner from mine. Most of the residential wing had been blocked off for years; my room and Olympia’s were the only ones still in use. That night, after I made sure all the patients were safely in bed, I waited in the dimly-lighted hall to see if I could catch a glimpse of Olympia. When she appeared I pretended to be fumbling with my keys, but on her way past me she smiled archly, as if she took it as a token of the power she exercised over men, women, children, animals—indeed all living things and probably more than a few inanimate objects—that they would forever be fascinated with her and her movements.
“Good night,” she murmured as she unlocked her door.
“Good night,” I said. “I enjoyed your performance.”
She stared back at me uncomprehendingly. “It wasn’t intended to be enjoyed, exactly. It’s a type of therapy.”
“Oh, I know that,” I stammered. “And quite honestly I’m fascinated by its therapeutic possibilities. For the patients it’s therapy, but for those of us on the other side—therapists rather than patients, I mean—it can be very beautiful.”
“Is there really an ‘other side’?” she asked. “Isn’t therapy really just another way of learning to experience the world?”
And with another enigmatic smile she slipped into her room. I spent a restless night dreaming about Olympia and her almond eyes. I imagined myself falling in love with her—basking in her smile, entranced by her words, thrilling to her gentle laughter as she strolled beside me or danced with me on a moonlight cruise. We sipped wine in sidewalk cafes and coffee in bohemian bistros; we splashed in the Caribbean and cycled through the South of France. Hesitant, even tongue-tied at first, we gradually opened our hearts to each other, confiding all our hopes and dreams. I bought her a bouquet of long-stemmed roses, comforted her when she was sick, paced the floor despairingly when she stayed away. It was a montage of every hackneyed image of the intoxicating whirl of love that Hollywood ever put on the big screen, and when I woke up I was sure that it was all true, every frame and flicker of it.
That was an illusion, of course, which quickly wore off as I rolled out of bed and staggered into the shower. I don’t know if I ever really fell in love with Olympia, and I doubt if she ever loved me, but I’ll never forget that dream and the sensation it left me with. I should have recognized it for what it was—a token of my deteriorating mental health—but some illusions are too precious to do without, even when you know they are illusions. The sensation, even the false sensation, of being in love with Olympia was an experience I did not want to forget.
The next morning I made the mistake of asking Gottlieb what he knew about Olympia. “Oh, what a wacko!” he laughed. “Just like her father. Did you see her cavorting around on the lawn last night? The patients must be wondering what they’re doing in here if she’s allowed on the streets.”
“I don’t know. I thought her dance was very beautiful.”
“Has she told you about her past life regressions? She will, if you give her a chance. She used to be a temple prostitute in the court of Cleopatra.” He laughed uproariously.
“She seems nice enough to me.”
“She is very nice. Her basic problem is that she grew up surrounded by crazy people, with her father and Miles Palmer vying for her affections. For those two everything has to be a competition, if not a fight to the death, and they spoiled her rotten.”
Gottlieb was taking a little too much glee in bursting my bubble. When I started to walk away he called after me. “Hoffmann,” he said, lowering his voice. “You wouldn’t want to make the mistake of getting involved with that girl. I considered that when I first met her too.” He shook his head. “Bad idea.”
I smiled and nodded as if
I appreciated his advice, but kept walking. Getting into a conversation with Gottlieb was always a mistake, especially on the subject of women. He was balding, bug-eyed and overweight, and he had a wife and two kids. Yet for some reason he seemed to think of himself as God’s gift to women. Everybody knew he was sleeping with Julietta, the voluptuous receptionist who didn’t need a past life regression to look like a prostitute. I tried to picture the two of them together, and it made me feel a little sick. Julietta flirted with me sometimes as I passed her desk, stopping me to ask some pointless question as she tilted forward in her low-cut dress. If I kept going she’d call my name in her low, sensuous voice; if I turned around she’d slide her tongue over her lips in a pantomime of desperate love. One day Gottlieb walked into the reception area just as I began to respond: she giggled, and he warned me off with a proprietorial smirk. Then I remembered what he’d said about Olympia—how he’d considered getting “involved” with her when he first arrived at the Institute. That must have been seven or eight years ago, when she was still a teenager. I felt like going back and telling Gottlieb that Olympia would never have considered going out with a creature like him, even for a minute, even when she was seventeen years old, and that if I ever even heard of him putting one of his smelly hands on a young girl I would....
But I had to stop fantasizing and start my afternoon rounds with the patients. In those days I still didn’t understand how things fit together at the Institute. That afternoon Hunter Morgan would sit down to play the piano for the first time. Only much later would I begin to grasp the connection between that strange performance and Olympia’s of the night before.
* * *
Nicole had mixed feelings about going home after two weeks at the Institute. She occupied a dingy garret in a dark rambling house that had been converted to apartments, overseen by a nosy landlady named Mrs. Gruber who owned several cats but never seemed to feed them. Nicole’s entrance was through a side door that led up a musty staircase to her apartment. The familiar clutter was there, just as she’d left it, even the dirty dishes in the sink. There was comfort in that, she told herself. Getting back to normal, all the little routines of life—that would put her mind in the right groove. Washing the dishes, taking out the trash—what a smell!—cleaning the toilet, vacuuming the rug. All that would distract her from the bigger issues. And there were even more urgent concerns: she was famished and everything in the refrigerator was sprouting black spots and patches of hair. Anything in the cupboards? Half a box of stale cookies, a can of chicken noodle soup. Barely enough to take her through what promised to be a long night. Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea, renting an apartment so far out of the city. After the breakup with Richard, she’d thought the rural setting would help settle her mind, help her focus on her work. And what did she end up with, besides commuting on the bus two or three days a week? A smelly apartment, a nosy landlady, and two weeks in the loony bin. In fact the apartment was beyond smelly; it was frighteningly isolated—at the top of a dark winding staircase used only by feral cats—and positively gothic in its gloom, with shadows so deep she had never actually looked into some of the corners. The kind of place where a woman could be murdered in her bed and none of the neighbors would notice or care.
The Rules of Dreaming Page 3