Fletch smiled. “Not at all. Where is she?”
“In her room. She’s been concentrating on her weight problem, but …” The young man shrugged. “Will you follow me, please?”
“Sure.”
Fletch followed the young man through the corridors of Blythe Spirit’s second floor. Fletch now knew the place had been built as the estate of a Wisconsin timber baron.
Cindy and Roger had met Fletch at O’Hare International Airport at about one-fifteen. Together they had driven in the Global Cable News van the 112 miles from Chicago to Forward, Wisconsin.
Roger drove at first, while Cindy, who would do the on-camera work on the television feature describing Blythe Spirit’s therapy for those suffering food addictions, studied the material faxed to Fletch on both the problems specific to food addiction, and Blythe Spirit itself. Fletch had studied the material on the airplane from Nashville to Chicago. Together, in the backseat of the van, they worked on the script Fletch had drafted on the airplane.
After Cindy had absorbed the material, she drove the van. She said driving relaxed her.
They were warmly greeted by the staff of Blythe Spirit.
Staying off camera, Fletch helped Roger set up the exterior shots. Once inside, he helped both Roger and Cindy set up the interview locations, helped those to be interviewed, administrators, staff, and two or three willing patients, understand what was wanted from them, helped Cindy and Roger understand what points in particular the interviewees wished to make.
When Fletch was summoned to Crystal Faoni’s room, Cindy was just about to begin an interview with a patient in the sunroom on Blythe Spirit’s second floor.
There was little or no need for Fletch from that point forward.
To get to Nashville Airport in time, Fletch had skipped breakfast. He had eaten an apple in the car. There was no time for him to eat anything at the airport. Nothing but drinks had been offered on the airplane. He had not wanted to delay Cindy and Roger at O’Hare Airport by stopping to eat.
It was late afternoon.
Fletch was very hungry.
He did not know how to ask the staff of Blythe Spirit for food.
As they approached the door to Room 27, the young man in white slowed and spoke quietly to Fletch.
“If you can understand, sir, to ensure her privacy, Ms. Faoni has expressed the wish that she remain behind a curtain while she meets with you. You do understand, don’t you?”
“A curtain?”
“Some of our patients are more sensitive about their condition than others are.”
“Okay.”
Fletch’s stomach growled.
THE ROOM INTO which Fletch was shown was a perfectly pleasant bedroom. The king-sized bed and its side table were lower than usual. Two upholstered chairs had uncommonly wide seats. There were paintings of farm scenes on the beige walls. The outer wall was a sliding glass door onto a small balcony.
The privacy curtain hanging from a rail around the bed had been run back. It pretty well concealed the space on the other side of the bed. The curtain was a white plastic, very like a shower curtain.
Through the opaque curtain, backlit through the glass door, Fletch could see only the outline of a large bulk covered with white material. There was a globe on top of the bulk. The globe had neatly parted dark hair.
It took Fletch a moment to realize he was seeing a seated figure, a person.
From behind the curtain, a voice said: “By my calculation, Fletch, it has taken you less than forty-eight hours, since your first meeting Jack, to find me, and to penetrate my ultimate line of defense.”
The voice was that of Crystal Faoni.
“Hello, Crystal. I wish I could say it’s nice to see you.”
“It really wouldn’t be, you know.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I heard your voice. I watched you in the courtyard through the window.”
“You still didn’t have to invite me in for a visit.”
“I had figured you would do something to get to me. I wasn’t sure whether I would see you….”
“You expected me?”
“I know you.”
“Yes. You do.”
“You arrived with a camera crew from Global Cable News.”
“Yes.”
“Clever. I’m sure the owners and administrators of Blythe Spirit are delighted by the publicity.”
“They’ve been most cooperative. So why did you decide to invite me to your room?”
“Once I saw you … You were counting on that, weren’t you? … You’ve changed little. Are you sitting?”
Fletch realized he had the advantage. She was backlit by the fading light in the window behind her. The attendant had closed the door behind Fletch. He could see her amazing outline. She couldn’t see him at all. “No.”
“Sit down. Please.”
The arms of the chair in which Fletch sat were too far away from his body to be useful. Could he have lost that much weight since that morning? “Thank you. I seem to remember a time when you and I fell through a curtain very much like that one.”
“I remember, too. We were wet, and we were naked, and it was wonderful. That reporter came into the bathroom—what was her name?—and found us on the floor struggling to get out from under that damned shower curtain.”
“Freddie Arbuthnot, who I thought was an impostor.”
“We were laughing. I was afraid you’d use her interrupting us as an excuse to stop. You didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. She went away.”
“You never were easily embarrassed.”
“Is Jack my son?”
“What do you think?”
Various images went through Fletch’s mind: the back of the lanky young man dressed in wet, muddy prison denims in his study, looking away from him, the quick flash of his eyes; an hour later finding him cleaned up in the study, as shiny as a new penny; his sitting in the morning sunlight on the top rail of the corral; his fiddling with the knobs of an electronic console in the dusk at Camp Orania; his crouching over the body of the man he had killed the night before; his repeating what Fletch said through the station wagon window just before Fletch left the encampment. “Yes.”
“He is.”
“People mark a certain physical resemblance.”
“Mental, too. He’s as curious as a cat. In spirit, he’s you all over again. Do you find him witty?”
“Witty? Half.”
“Do you like him?”
“Depends.”
“You love him.”
“Crystal, why didn’t you ever tell me we have a son?”
“How angry are you about that?”
“Very.”
“Why?”
“It might have been nice. You know: son and Dad; Dad and son. Birthdays. Football.”
“Having a kid is a lot more than birthdays and football, Fletch.”
“Did you think me entirely irresponsible?”
“How many times have you been married? Three?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever have kids with any of your wives?”
“You never really knew my wives. I mean, you did know me. We weren’t grown up. I have no idea why I married Linda, Barbara.”
“You believed in the old institutions, you used to say.”
“Yeah.”
“In a time and a place when you yourself were changing the old institutions more than you knew. We all were.”
“Technology changed them more than anything we did. The bicycle. The car. Radio, television, telephone, the computer. The pill. Time and spatial relations, human relations were changing more and faster than ever before. We struggled to keep up. Most of us failed, I guess.”
“You never had kids with your wives, did you? So I should snatch a kid from you, and surprise you with it? How would you have felt about that?”