“Oh, well—” Shaw rolled his hand through the air.
“It’s a basic medical history” Duran explained. “Operations, dizzy spells, allergies—”
“And a bit of testing,” Shaw added. “Routine stuff: the TAT, the MMSE—”
“Which are what?” Adrienne asked.
Shaw shrugged. “Well, the names don’t tell you a lot more than the acronyms. But they’re tools we use to ascertain the patient’s psychopathological status, identify cognitive impairment and thematic perception curves—that sort of thing.”
Adrienne nodded, even as Duran frowned. What was he actually agreeing to by coming here? Was he going to be this man’s guinea pig?
Shaw winked at him. “I’m sure Mr. Duran knows as much about the tests as I do—not so?”
Duran shrugged. “I know what they are,” he said, “but I’ve never really had much use for them in my own practice.”
“Well, I’m a great believer in testing,” Shaw told them, “and if we have time, I think we’ll take a shot at the Beck Depression Inventory.” He saw the wariness in Duran’s eye, and rushed to reassure him. “Just to get a take on things.”
“I understand,” Duran said, “but… what we’re talking about is memory—not my sanity. My memory.”
Shaw rolled his head from side to side, as if the distinction was unimportant. “Well,” he said, “if everything you’ve been telling me is true, there’s clearly a dysfunction of some kind. The tests are just investigative tools. And the first thing we need to find out is whether your amnesia is organic or adaptive, the result of trauma or… something else.” He clapped his hands together. “We need to get some idea of the kind of thing we’re dealing with.”
“Which is what?” Adrienne asked.
Shaw turned his palms toward the ceiling. “There’s no way to say, at this point. Amnesia can have any number of causes, from a knock on the head to epilepsy, extreme stress or—I don’t want to frighten you, but—a brain tumor. It could be a form of hysteria.”
“‘Hysteria’?”
Shaw winced. “It’s an outdated term. Basically, we’re talking about adaptive amnesia, the kind of amnesia that results from psychological—as opposed to physiological—causes.” Shaw steepled his hands and peered over his fingertips: “Of course, the lines can be blurred. But, generally speaking, hysterical amnesia is amenable to talk therapies. These days, we tend to classify it as a dissociative disorder.” He glanced at his watch, then bounced to his feet. “In any case, the tests will give us a leg up on things.”
He shook hands, then shepherded them toward the door. “See you at three.”
They checked the car (no ticket), fed the meter, and found a deli a few blocks from Shaw’s office, where they ate pastrami sandwiches with a side of half-sour pickles and cans of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. Duran was in a funk, uncomfortable with being someone else’s patient, Shaw’s litany ringing in his head: cognitive impairment, dysfunction, hysteria.
“What’s the matter?” Adrienne asked, as she speared a slice of pickle on her fork.
Duran shook his head. “If he tries to throw me in the bin,” he said, “I’m outta here.”
“‘The bin’?”
“It’s a clinical term,” he explained.
With more than an hour to kill, they decided to check out the offices of Mutual General Assurance. “They’ll probably give us copies of Nikki’s tapes, if you’re the one to ask for them,” she said. “I mean, you’re their client, right?”
A subway ride and a five block walk got them where they were going, though it was anything but obvious when they arrived.
The address on Avenue of the Americas turned out to be a branch of Box ‘n Mail, one of those places that sell bubblewrap and cardboard boxes, while packaging and sending items via UPS, FedEx and the postal service. As a sideline, this particular Box ‘n Mail was also a mail drop, renting boxes to people who found it problematic to receive mail at home.
Mutual General Assurance’s offices in “Suite 1119” was in fact a 4- by 6- by- 12-inch tray. A pressed metal door obscured whatever contents it might have held.
Adrienne and Duran waited in line behind a woman sending a care package to her son at Cornell. When it became their turn, Adrienne asked how she could get in touch with Mutual General Assurance.
The clerk was an energetic slob with long blond hair. “Only one way,” he said. “You write them a letter.”
“But there’s a list, right? I mean, there must be some kind of contract—between you and them.”
The clerk shook his head, turned his attention back to the package on the counter in front of him, expertly affixing a length of sealing tape to a seam.
“Couldn’t you just give me a phone number?” Adrienne cajoled. “It’s important—I mean, I really need to talk to these people.”
“Lady,” said the clerk, “why do you think people rent these things?” He swept a hand toward the ranks of cubbyholes. It was a rhetorical question but Adrienne answered anyway.
“As a place to receive mail.”
The clerk looked at her, then flipped the package in his hands, examining every side. Finally, he dropped it into a white plastic crate on which someone had scrawled UPS.
“They rent them because it’s a discreet way to receive mail. Discreet,” he repeated. “You want a phone number for one of these outfits, you can call 411.”
“This place is unlisted,” Adrienne told him. “I already tried that.”
The man gave her a regretful grin. “Yeah, well, that’s why I say you oughta write ‘em a letter. They want to talk to somebody, they’re probably not gonna rent a box from us.”
They stopped at the car to feed coins into the meter and when they returned to Dr. Shaw’s office, Adrienne was given the option of cooling her heels in the reception or—“I think I’ll go for a run,” she said. “The park’s only a few blocks away.” Retrieving her running clothes from the car, she changed in the ladies’ room outside Shaw’s office, then took the elevator down to the first floor, leaving the psychiatrist and Duran to themselves.
She loved running in Central Park. The distance around was almost perfect, about six miles, and there was something wonderful about jogging beneath a canopy of skyscrapers and trees.
She ran for an hour and, once or twice, got turned around, emerging from the park on the wrong side. Each time, she went back the way she came, crossing the park, thinking, You idiot. What if you’d sprained your ankle? You should have brought money—enough, at least, to make a phone call. And anyway, you should have been paying attention.
The receptionist—a punky young woman with blue fingernails and henna colored hair—left at six. When she’d gone, Adrienne went to her desk and used the telephone to make a reservation at one of the hotels whose numbers she’d taken off the computer the night before. Then she changed back into her regular clothes, and began to read Newsweek. By 7:30, she’d read New York, People, and was halfway through the New Yorker, and beginning to worry that something was wrong. Twice, she got up from the couch and stood, listening, outside the door to Shaw’s office. But the door was solid, and all she could hear was a low mumble.
It was 8:45 when they finally emerged, and the sound of their voices startled her so that she jumped up, as anxious and eager as a relative in a hospital’s waiting area.
Shaw smiled at her and she could see that he was excited. For his part, Duran was exhausted, looking pale and tired, a shadow of stubble covering his jaw.
“It’s a pain in the ass,” Shaw was saying, “but nothing that hurts.” Turning to Adrienne, he lifted his palms toward the ceiling, and apologized for keeping her waiting so long. “I’m completely baffled,” he told her, “but more intrigued than ever. I’ve never seen anything like it! And as I was saying to Jeff, I’d like to run some tests in the morning. Nothing too strenuous—”