He happens upon a dedication page in the front of one book and reads
what is printed there, This opus is for my mother and father, Jim and
Alice Stillwater, who taught me to be an honest man–and who can’t be
blamed if I am able to think like a criminal.
His mother and father. He stares in astonishment at their names.
He has no memory of them, cannot picture their faces or recall where
they might live.
He returns to the desk to consult the Rolodex. He discovers Jim and
Alice Stillwater in Mammoth Lakes, California. The street address means
nothing to him, and he wonders if it is the house in which he grew up.
He must love his parents. He dedicated a book to them. Yet they are
ciphers to him. So much has been lost.
He returns to the bookshelves. Opening the U.S. or British edition of
every title in the collection to study the dedication, he eventually
characters are based–excluding, of course, the homicidal psychopaths.
And two volumes later, To my daughters, Charlotte and Emily, with the
hope they will read this book one day when they are grown up and will
know that the daddy in this story speaks my own heart when he talks with
such conviction and emotion about his feelings for his own little girls.
Putting the books aside, he picks up the photograph once more and holds
it in both hands with something like reverence.
The attractive blonde is surely Paige. A perfect wife.
The two girls are Charlotte and Emily,-although he has no way of knowing
which is which. They look sweet and obedient.
Paige, Charlotte, Emily.
At last he has found his life. This is where he belongs. This is home.
The future begins now.
Paige, Charlotte, Emily.
This is the family toward which destiny has led him.
“I need to be Marty Stillwater,” he says, and he is thrilled to have
found, at last, his own warm place in this cold and lonely world.
Dr. Paul Guthridge’s office suite had three examination rooms. Over the
years, Marty had been in all of them. They were identical to one
another, indistinguishable from rooms in doctors’ offices from Maine to
Texas, pale-blue walls, stainless-steel fixtures, otherwise white-on
white, scrub sink, stool, an eye chart. The place had no more charm
than a morgue though a better smell.
Marty sat on the edge of a padded examination table that was protected
by a continuous roll of paper sheeting. He was shirtless, and the room
was cool. Though he was still wearing his pants, he felt naked,
vulnerable. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself having a catatonic
seizure, being unable to talk or move or even blink, whereupon the
physician would mistake him for dead, strip him naked, wire an ID tag to
his big toe, tape his eyelids shut, and ship him off to the coroner for
processing.
Although it earned him a living, a suspense writer’s imagination made
him more aware of the constant proximity of death than were most people.
Every dog was a potential rabies carrier. Every strange van passing
through the neighborhood was driven by a sexual psychopath who would
kidnap and murder any child left unattended for more than three seconds.
Every can of soup in the pantry was botulism waiting to happen.
He was not particularly afraid of doctors–though he was not comforted
by them, either.
What troubled him was the whole idea of medical science, not because he
distrusted it but because, irrationally, its very existence was a
reminder that life was tenuous, death inescapable. He didn’t need
reminders. He already possessed an acute awareness of mortality, and
spent his life trying to cope with it.
Determined not to sound like an hysteric while describing his symptoms
to Guthridge, Marty recounted the odd experiences of the past three days
in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. He tried to use clinical rather than
emotional terms, beginning with the seven-minute fugue in his office and
ending with the abrupt panic attack he had suffered as he had been
leaving the house to drive to the doctor’s office.
Guthridge was an excellent internist–in part because he was a good