Jacobs’s apartment was on the first floor in the west wing. He had changed into a dark suit and white shirt open at the collar. He rose to greet me, smiling that one-sided smile. “Thank you, Rudy. Will you tell Norma that we’ll be ready to eat in fifteen minutes?”
Rudy nodded and left. Jacobs turned to me, still smiling and once more producing that unpleasant papery sound as he rubbed his hands together. Outside the window, a ski slope with no lights to illuminate it and no skiers to groove the spring snow descended into darkness, a highway to nowhere. “It will only be soup and salad, I’m afraid. I gave up meat two years ago. It creates fatty deposits in the brain.”
“Soup and salad is fine.”
“There’s also bread, Norma’s sourdough. It’s excellent.”
“Sounds delicious. I’d like to see Astrid, Charlie.”
“Norma will serve her and her friend Jenny Knowlton around seven. Once they’ve eaten, Miss Knowlton will give Astrid her pain medication, and help her make her evening toilet. I told Miss Knowlton that Rudy could assist with these tasks, but she won’t hear of it. Alas, Jenny Knowlton no longer seems to trust me.”
I thought back to Astrid’s letter. “Even though you cured her of her arthritis?”
“Ah, but then I was Pastor Danny. Now that I’ve eschewed all those religious trappings—I told them so, felt I had to—Miss Knowlton is suspicious. That’s what the truth does, Jamie. It makes people suspicious.”
“Is Jenny Knowlton suffering aftereffects?”
“Not at all. She’s just uncomfortable without all her miracle mumbo-jumbo to fall back on. But since you brought up the subject of aftereffects, step into my study. I want to show you something, and there’s just time before our evening repast appears.”
The study was an alcove off the suite’s parlor. His computer was on, the extra-large screen showing those endlessly galloping horses. He sat down, grimacing with discomfort, and tapped a key. The horses gave way to a plain blue desktop with only two folders on it. They were labeled A and B.
He clicked A, revealing a list of names and addresses in alphabetical order. He pressed a button, and the list began to scroll at medium speed. “Do you know what these are?”
“Cures, I’d assume.”
“Verified cures, all affected by administration of electrical current to the brain—although not the sort of current any electrician would recognize. Over thirty-one hundred in all. Take my word for it?”
“Yes.”
He turned to look at me, although the movement clearly pained him. “You mean it?”
“Yes.”
Looking gratified, he closed file A and opened B. More names and addresses, also in alphabetical order, and this time the scroll was slow enough to pick out several names I recognized. Stefan Drew, the compulsive walker; Emil Klein, the dirt eater; Patricia Farmingdale, who had poured salt in her eyes. This list was much shorter than the first one. Before it ended, I saw Robert Rivard go sliding by.
“These are the ones who have suffered significant post-cure aftereffects. Eighty-seven in all. As I believe I told you the last time we met, it amounts to less than three percent of the total. Once there were over a hundred and seventy names in File B, but many have stopped having problems—in medical parlance, they have resolved. As you have. I stopped following my cures eight months ago, but if I’d kept on, I’m sure this list would be even shorter. The ability of the human body to recover from trauma is extraordinary. With the proper application of this new electricity to the cortex and the nerve tree, that ability is effectively unlimited.”
“Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”
He blew his breath out in a disgusted pah sound. “What I’m trying to do is set your mind at rest. I’d rather have a willing assistant than a reluctant one.”
“I’m here. I’ll do what I promised… if you can cure Astrid. Let that be enough.”
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Come,” Jacobs said.
The woman who entered had the plump, matronly figure of the Good Gramma in a children’s story and the beady eyes of a dick in a department store. She set a tray down on the table in the parlor, then stood with her hands clasped primly in front of her plain black dress. Jacobs rose with another grimace, then tottered. In my first act as his assistant—in this new stage of our lives, at least—I caught his elbow and steadied him. He thanked me and led me out of the study.
“Norma, I’d like you to meet Jamie Morton. He’ll be with us at least through breakfast tomorrow, and back for a longer stay this summer.”
“Pleased,” she said, and held out her hand. I shook it.
“You don’t know what a victory that handshake represents for Norma,” Jacobs said. “Since childhood, she’s had a deep aversion to touching people. Haven’t you, dear? Not a physical problem, you’ll notice, but a psychological one. Nevertheless, she’s been cured. I think that’s interesting, don’t you?”
I told Norma it was nice to meet her, holding her hand a moment longer than necessary. I saw her mounting unease, and let loose. Cured, but perhaps not completely cured. That was interesting, too.
“Miss Knowlton says she’ll bring your patient to dinner a bit early tonight, Mr. Jacobs.”
“All right, Norma. Thank you.”
She left. We ate. It was light fare, but sat heavily in my stomach, just the same. My nerves felt all on the outside, sizzling my skin. Jacobs ate slowly—as if to taunt me—but at last he set aside his empty soup bowl. He seemed about to reach for another slice of bread, then looked at his watch and pushed back from the table instead.
“Come with me,” he said. “I think it’s time you saw your old friend.”
The door across the hall was marked RESORT PERSONNEL ONLY. Jacobs led me through a large outer office furnished with bare desks and empty shelves. The door to the inner office was locked.
He said, “Other than the security company that supplies twenty-four-seven gate guards, my staff consists of just Rudy and Norma. And while I trust them both, I see no need to put temptation in their way. And the temptation to peek at the unsuspecting is a strong one, wouldn’t you say?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could have. My mouth was as dry as old carpet. There were a dozen monitors in all, stacked in three rows of four. Jacobs pushed the power button on RESTAURANT CAMERA 3. “I believe this is the one we want.” Cheerful. Like a cross between Pastor Danny and a game show host.
It seemed to take forever before a black-and-white picture swam into view. The restaurant was large, with at least fifty tables, but only one was occupied. Two women were sitting there, but at first I could only see Jenny Knowlton, because Norma blocked the other one out as she bent to serve them their bowls of soup. Jenny was pretty, dark-haired, mid-fifties. I saw her mouth move in a silent thank you. Norma nodded, straightened up, stepped away from the table, and I saw what remained of the first girl I ever loved.
If this were a romance, I might say something like, “Although necessarily changed by the passage of years and somewhat wasted by the depredations of disease, her essential beauty remained.” I wish I could, but if I begin lying now, everything I have told so far becomes worthless.
Astrid was a crone in a wheelchair, her face a pallid pouch of flesh from which dark eyes stared listlessly down at food she obviously had no interest in. Her companion had put a large knitted cap—a kind of tam-o’-shanter—on her head, but it had slipped to one side, revealing a bald skull fuzzed with white stubble.