Kiss (12 page)

“Tell me about what happened before each of the occurrences,” Dr. Harding said.

“Um . . . the day of the first one was terrible. The worst twenty-four hours of my life,” she explained.

“The dream was that night?”

“Yes.”

“And before the second dream?”

“It was more of a vision really. I don’t think I slept—it was more like I fainted. Wayne kissed me. That’s hardly reason. It wasn’t traumatic or stressful anyway.”

Dr. Harding crossed her legs. “Well, there are several things going on here, any of which might trigger episodes of dreaming. Stressful episodes, for one, induce the brain to work on problem solving, and sometimes this comes out in the form of dreams, even if they seem unrelated to the inciting event.”

Shauna took her eyes off the file cabinet and tried to focus on the therapist. She had such distracting hair, the way it stuck out in a mass of coppery frizz.

“Another factor at work here is that your brain knows it’s missing some memories. Then along comes Wayne, who has connections to this blank chapter in your story. On a subconscious level, you figure he can help you fill in the blanks. Your brain might be processing this possibility by generating vicarious scenarios that involve him. Dreaming is really a very personal attempt to construct and reconstruct important memories, but not always rationally.”

“Too bad dreams don’t distinguish between what’s real and unreal.”

“Dreaming can be valuable, nonetheless.”

“What about the drug trials? Could the pills cause these . . . visions?”

“We’ll certainly be looking into that as a side effect. But these drugs aim for the centers of your brain that involve memory storage.” She tapped a candy- apple fingernail on her temple. “And because dreaming is about the process of accessing and disassembling memories, it’s entirely possible that your dreams are at least partially drug induced.”

“Should I stop taking the medicine?”

Dr. Harding’s laugh sounded closer to a cough. “I don’t think so. We can sit here all day and theorize and not avoid the possibility that the dreams are nothing more than delusional confabulations.”

Delusional what?

“You might even consider enjoying them as private entertainment. For now.”

The suggestion left Shauna both relieved and dissatisfied. Entertainment?

“Keep a journal if you want. And let me know if the dreams grow more frequent or”—she searched for the right phrase—“change in tone.”

“Change tone?”

“Do the dreams frighten you?”

Shauna weighed this. The real sense of pain had frightened her, as had the confusion, the sense that she was someone else.

“On some level.”

“I’ll want to know if that level goes up. Come see me again Tuesday. Let’s see how the weekend goes.”

The independent film, a gloomy Scandinavian project that had done well at the Sundance Festival, showed at the Dobie Theater at ten. Wayne and Shauna arrived with enough time to park some distance away and walk down the Guadalupe Street Drag, a street known for its underground bookstores and tat-too parlors and eclectic stores. On this Friday night the Drag was crowded with university students looking for a distraction from their studies and midterms.

The theater was located on the second floor of the Dobie Mall. The movie house was a strange little place that boasted a gourmet concessions stand—Wayne bought a mocha for himself and an herbal tea for Shauna—and four small screens in themed theaters. Their flick was showing in the Gothic Gargoyle room. Shauna couldn’t fathom the possibility that she had ever actually enjoyed such a place.

For the sake of her memory, however, she tried. But so far, as at the Barton Springs pool, the location did nothing to tap her past experiences here.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he said as they took seats on the end of the strange diagonal aisle that cut through the room. There was no stadium seating in this place. Apparently the tall people were expected to be polite and sit in back.

“Just thinking.” The grotesque gargoyle murals on the walls distracted her. She sipped her tea, which scalded the cut on her tongue, still tender from her fall at the hospital earlier in the week. “I’ve been having more weird dreams.”

“Daydreams?”

“I wouldn’t call them that.”

“Tell me: you have some unfulfilled fantasy to play football?”

Dr. Harding’s reassurances freed her to get this off her chest. “Yeah, and to fight in Iraq, too, it seems.”

He cocked his head. “I haven’t heard this one. You take a nap at home?”

“No, when I passed out at the park. And it’s a winner too. I was dreaming of being someone else again. I don’t think it was you this time—wrong name—but the voice
sounded
like you. You’ve got to quit getting into my head like this, okay?”

“So you were me. Or maybe not me. In Iraq.”

“Yeah. Planning to go AWOL.”

He laughed at that, a short, tight-lipped laugh. “A deserter, huh?” Then he took a swig of mocha.

“Some friend of . . . this person’s had died, I think. Jones? Johnson? I—oh forget this—they called him Marshall. Marshall was upset about it. I got the impression it was some kind of last straw.”

Wayne leaned forward, elbows on knees, cup between both hands, eyes still on her.

“What’s waterboarding?” she asked.

Wayne’s cheek twitched, and he looked away. “Torture,” he murmured. She almost couldn’t hear him. “Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

“You’ve experienced it?”

“Only once, in training. With trainers I trusted. They cover your face, pour water up your nose. It’s like drowning on dry land.”

“It doesn’t sound that awful—I mean, compared to other forms I’ve heard of.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again, looked at her with the speechlessness of someone who had no adequate words for his experience or her ignorance. Once again, she wished she had thought before she had spoken.

“It’s slow-motion suffocation,” he finally said. “A controlled execution.”

She looked away, mortified, and tried to bring the conversation back to her vision. But there wasn’t much else to tell. “Someone tried to talk Marshall out of leaving. But he was committed.”

“And that’s it?” The theater lights dimmed.

“Pretty much.”

Wayne took another drink and leaned back in his chair. “Your mind does take ideas and run with them,” she thought she heard him say as the lights went out and the screen lit up.

He downed the rest of his hot mocha like it was a shot of whiskey.

Shauna looked at her watch for the first time thirty minutes into the movie. Her tea had become cool enough to drink, and the story line failed to engage her. Wayne was jiggling his thumb on his thigh, a tapping kind of fidget. But his eyes were glued to the screen.

She tried to tune in to the film, but her ears kept returning to Wayne’s vibrating thumb.

A few moments later he leaned toward her ear and whispered, “Be right back,” then slipped out. She heard his empty paper cup drop into the waste-basket next to the door as he went by.

When “right back” turned into five minutes, Shauna started to wonder if Wayne was okay. Bad milk in the mocha, maybe? Or maybe he was bored, too, trying to be polite about it without actually having to suffer through any more celluloid. If that was the case, she should say she felt the same way.

No need to waste both money and hours.

She grabbed her purse, her half-empty cup of tea, and went out.

There was no sign of Wayne in the small lobby or near the bathrooms. She checked the tables where several people hung out waiting for the midnight showing of whatever the classic movie of the week was. Not there. She contemplated whether it would be uncouth to wait for him by the bathrooms, but then thought she heard his voice out on the mall.

She poked her head out, saw him standing a few feet off, back to the theater, talking on his cell. She felt slightly guilty for having commanded so much of his time today. Other people needed him. Obviously. His phone was pinched between his right shoulder and his ear while he fished in his pockets for something.

Shauna decided to wait.

The mall stores were closed now, and the night crawlers had moved on to their favorite clubs or whatever it was they did on weekend nights these days. A security guard cruised by. Though Wayne wasn’t talking loudly, she had no trouble hearing his voice.

“I can’t explain it . . . Of course I haven’t. Never. I’m not—no.”

He straightened his head and gripped the phone in his right hand, his back still to Shauna.

“So we’ve got some kind of
Twilight Zone
thing going on here, whatever . . . I can’t remember exactly, maybe . . . Who was in charge of cleaning out her loft?”

Her loft?

“Well let’s hope they didn’t botch it. Either she’s been lying through her teeth this entire time or your guys failed to—don’t feed me that line!”

He seemed aware that his volume was climbing and dialed it down low. Shauna strained to hear.

“I know what I know. I’m giving it to you straight. I’ve been with her almost a week. She’s not going to be spoon-fed.”

A sweat broke out on Shauna’s palms.

“It’s not too late to make sure she never remembers.”

Shauna turned away from Wayne as if she might find some explanation behind her for the fear that hit then.

“Of course you don’t like it. But it’s less risk.”

There was some misunderstanding, some gross misinterpretation of the words that would explain this conversation away.

“No. He hasn’t contacted her, but someone’s onto her. I’ll keep a closer eye on her, see what I can figure out. I’ve got to get back in. I’ll call you . . .”

She did not hear the rest. She bolted back into the theater, under the watchful eyes of gargoyles. She set her cup of tea on the floor by her seat, shaking so badly that she knocked it over. She fumbled through her purse for a tissue to blot up the mess, then bent over and dabbed at the tea. The tissue came apart in her hands.

A shadow blocked the tiny safety lights in the floor.

“Spill?” Wayne whispered.

She stuffed the soggy shreds into the empty cup and nodded, tried to compose herself. “Everything okay?” If she had misunderstood—surely she had misunderstood—he would explain this new fear away.

“Upset stomach,” was all he said, and he settled back into the chair to watch the film.

11

Shauna lay awake in her bedroom at the guesthouse, watching the digital clock tick off numbers through two o’clock, then three.

Who had Wayne been talking to? She contemplated trying to get hold of his phone but got only as far as opening her bedroom door onto the silent living room before deciding that was an idiot’s idea. She eased her door shut, released the knob, and climbed back into bed.

She pulled the blanket up to her chin.

When Shauna was a kindergartener, her mother taught her a ditty to say in the nights when bad dreams frightened her. How did it go? It had not come to mind for many, many years, so when Shauna found herself saying it aloud, the rhyme surprised her.

God is with me. Jesus is here. The Spirit is greater than my fear.

Tonight, though, the words did not comfort her. Instead, she was pricked with sadness for having forgotten what is was like to have such childlike, simple faith in a good God. Was that something she could ever reclaim for herself?

Her thoughts turned to the blond reporter in the smoky rain jacket.

An eyewitness puts a second passenger in the car with you.

Who was his eyewitness? And who could the passenger be?

She needed to find this Smith. How could a person track down a freelancer named Smith with no more information than that?

Shauna wondered where her laptop was. She needed to do some online investigation.

Newspaper archives search.

Accident report request.

Neither of which might turn up anything that Wayne hadn’t already told her.

Was Wayne her protector or a trickster?

She didn’t know. She had honestly believed he cared about her.

He did care about her. She was overreacting again. In fact, she was certain there was an explanation for his conversation that would embarrass her gross interpretation.