“I don’t know that to be true.”
“I do.”
“I’m no pharmacologist.”
“Then consult one,” she said without enmity.
“Shit.” He was as irrationally angry with her as he had briefly been angry with Barbara Christman.
The more rattled he became, the deeper her equanimity. “What you experienced was synesthesia.”
“What?”
All scientist now, Rose Tucker said, “Synesthesia. A sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied in a different modality.”
“Mumbo-jumbo.”
“Not at all. For instance, a few bars of a familiar song are played—but instead of hearing them, you might see a certain colour or smell an associated aroma. It’s a rare condition in the general population, but it’s what most people first feel with these photos—and it’s common among mystics.”
“Mystics!” He almost spat on the floor. “I’m no mystic, Dr. Tucker. I’m a crime reporter—or was. Only the facts matter to me.”
“Synesthesia isn’t simply the result of religious mania, if that’s what you’re thinking, Joe. It’s a scientifically documented experience even among nonbelievers, and some well-grounded people think it’s a glimpse of a higher state of consciousness.”
Her eyes, such cool lakes before, seemed hot now, and when he peered into them, he looked at once away, afraid that her fire would spread to him. He was not sure if he saw evil in her or only wanted to see it, and he was thoroughly confused.
“If it was some skin-permeating drug on the photograph,” she said, as maddeningly soft-spoken as any devil ever had been, “then the effect would have lingered after you dropped it.”
He said nothing, spinning in his internal turmoil.
“But when you released the photo, the effect ceased. Because what you’re confronted with here is nothing as comforting as mere illusion, Joe.”
“Where’s Nina?” he demanded.
Rose indicated the Polaroid, which now lay on the table where he had dropped it. “Look. See.”
“No.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
Anger surged in him, boiled. This was the savage anger that had frightened him before. It frightened him now, too, but he could not control it.
“Where’s Nina, damn it?”
“Open your heart,” she said quietly.
“This is bullshit.”
“Open your mind.”
“Open it how far? Until I’ve emptied out my head? Is that what you want me to be?”
She gave him time to get a grip on himself. Then: “I don’t want you to be anything, Joe. You asked me where Nina is. You want to know about your family. I gave you the photograph so you could see. So you could see.”
Her will was stronger than his, and after a while he found himself picking up the photograph.
“Remember the feeling,” she encouraged him. “Let it come to you again.”
It did not come to him again, however, although he turned the photograph over and over in his hands. He slid his fingertips in circles across the glossy image but could not feel the granite, the bronze, the grass. He summoned the blueness and the brightness, but they did not appear.
Tossing the photograph aside in disgust, he said, “I don’t know what I’m doing with this.”
Infuriatingly patient, she smiled compassionately and held out a hand to him.
He refused to take it.
Although he was frustrated by what he now perceived as her New Age proclivities, he also felt that somehow, by not being able to lose himself a second time in the phantasmal blue brightness, he had failed Michelle and Chrissie and Nina.
But if his experience had been only an hallucination, induced with chemicals or hypnosis, then it had no significance, and giving himself to the waking dream once again could not bring back those who were irretrievably lost.
A fusillade of confusions ricocheted through his mind.
Rose said, “It’s okay. The imbued photograph is usually enough. But not always.”
“Imbued?”
“It’s okay, Joe. It’s okay. Once in a while there’s someone… someone like you… and then the only thing that convinces is galvanic contact.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The touch.”
“What touch?”
Instead of answering him, Rose picked up the Polaroid snapshot and stared at it as though she could clearly see something that Joe could see not at all. If turmoil touched her heart and mind, she hid it well, for she seemed as tranquil as a country pond in a windless twilight.