Classic male rape fantasy?
Lucy’s incubus . . .
The abduction imagery in the dream.
Had she come across this dreadful little book, perhaps as part of her brother’s “roots” research?
Reading it and identifying with the victim?
Or what if the dream represented something more personal—being molested herself?
At the voir dire, she’d denied ever having been a crime victim. But if it had happened long ago and she’d repressed it, she wouldn’t have remembered.
The dream had started right after she’d listened to Milo testify about Carrie.
Identifying with a child victim.
Abused in childhood, not by her father—he hadn’t been around to do it—but by a father surrogate? A teacher or some other trusted adult?
Other men in the dream—melding with her father because he had hurt her in another way?
I thought of her waking up on the kitchen floor.
The helplessness of the position.
Victimization.
Or maybe none of the above.
I wrestled with it a while longer, got no further, and went back inside. Remembering the radio broadcast I’d heard in the car, I flipped TV channels till I found a news show. Something about Eastern Europe; then Shwandt’s face appeared, leering, over the anchor’s left shoulder.
“Police in Santa Ana are investigating the mutilation slaying of a young woman, still unidentified, whose body was found, stuffed in a trash bag, by the side of the Santa Ana Freeway early this morning near the Main Street exit. Sources close to the investigation say the slaying bears striking similarities to the serial murders for which the Bogeyman, Jobe Shwandt, was recently sentenced to death, and the possibility of a copycat killer operating out of Orange County is being considered. More on this breaking story as details emerge.”
Too much bad stuff, time to sweat it out of my system. Pretending my knees were eighteen years old, I took a hard jog on the beach. When I got back, the phone was ringing. My service with Lucy, again.
“Dr. Delaware? I’m . . . calling from work. I had a . . . bit of a problem.” Her voice dropped so low I could barely hear it. Noise in the background didn’t help.
“What happened, Lucy?”
“The dream. I . . . had it again.”
“Since this morning’s session?”
“Yes.” Her voice shook. “Here. At work, at my desk. . . . God, this is so—I have to talk softly; I’m at a pay phone in the lobby and people are staring. Can you hear me?”
“I hear you fine.”
She caught her breath. “I feel so stupid! Falling asleep at my desk!”
“When did this happen?”
“Lunch hour. I was brown-bagging, trying to catch up. I guess I nodded off, I don’t know, I really don’t remember.”
“Had you taken any sort of medication?”
“Just Tylenol for a headache.”
“No antihistamines or anything else that would make you drowsy?”
“Nothing. I just . . . fell asleep.” She whispered: “It must have woken me up—I found myself on the floor, my legs . . . the dream was still in my head, reverberating. Right in the middle of the office! God!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not physically. But the humiliation—everyone thinks I’m crazy!”
“Were there a lot of people around when you fell?”
“Not when I fell, but right after. It was lunchtime; a whole crowd was coming back and saw me on the floor! I ran to the ladies’ room to straighten up. When I got back, my boss was there. He never comes into the staff area. The look on his face—like what kind of nutcase do I have working for me!”
“If he’s worried about anything, Lucy, it’s probably that you’ll file a worker’s comp suit.”
“No, no, I’m sure he thinks I’m some kind of bizarro. Falling asleep in the middle of the day—I excused myself to the bathroom again, went down to the lobby, and called you.”
“Come over, let’s talk.”
“I—I guess I’d better. I’m sure not in any shape to go back up there.”
I called a neurologist in Santa Monica named Phil Austerlitz and told him I had a possible referral. When I recounted what had happened, he said, “You’re thinking narcolepsy?”