The Syndrome

It was in the middle of the fourth game that the shutter blew off. Torrents of water gusted against the glass, surging with the wind. “Do me a favor,” Adrie

Duran humored her. Closed his eyes, and thought.

“Well?” she asked.

“The board,” he said. “And the pieces.”

“Right, but—”

“Black and white. Red and black.”

“What else?”

He thought some more. Said, “Rum.”

She blinked with surprise. “Rum?”

“Yeah. The way it tastes. Sharp. And the… the bouquet, like cognac, the way it fills your lungs.”

She didn’t know what to say.

For a moment, he could feel the heavy glass in his hand, see the dark surface of the drink, a single small ice cube floating in it, melting to oblivion.

“What else?” It was as if her voice were being piped in from far away.

“Heat. I remember playing where it was hot, somewhere hot—my shirt sticking to my back.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It’s not really a memory. It’s more like a… like a memory—of a memory.”

“What else?”

“Music.” He even cocked his head, as if somehow this would allow him to hear it, but the motion broke his concentration and he opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Stay with it,” she told him.

He tried, but it was gone and, finally, he said so.

By now, the rain had slackened, and the sky was brightening to a jaundiced gray. “That was strange,” Duran said. “Like being at a seance.”

She leaned back in her chair and regarded him, tumbling a rook in the fingers of her left hand. “And that was all you got? Rum, heat, and music?”

He shook his head. “I was free-associating, and it was more a sensation than anything else. But, yeah: that’s what I got.”

Adrie

Duran looked confused, as if he wanted to answer her, but couldn’t. Finally, he said, “We have different points of view.”

“You listened to yourself on tape, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Well?”

He sighed. “You think I have amnesia?”

“I hope you do.”

Duran’s brows dipped. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s the lesser of two evils,” she replied.

As the afternoon headed toward evening, Adrie

“What about her credit card statements, and her checking account?” Duran asked. “If she went out of town in October…”

Just before five, Adrie

Listening to the conversation, Duran was impressed by the way Adrie

“You’re tough,” he told her, as she hung up the phone.

“Like you said: I can be a bitch.” Then she smiled, and added, “Let’s go out.”

Leaves were everywhere—and branches and limbs of trees, strewn across the streets and lawns. Raw gouges of bright blond wood on the dark trunks of trees marked the places from which they’d been ripped. Sirens howled in the distance. And the air fizzed with the rinsed feel that sometimes follows a downpour.

They took their shoes off and walked along the beach, the sand littered with debris tossed up by the thunderous surf: horseshoe crab skeletons, strands of rope and fishing line, ragged hunks of Styrofoam, driftwood, fish.

When they returned to the cottage, Adrie

The kitchen. This moment. Even the memory of playing chess with Adrie

Maybe—

“That was great!” Adrie

He watched as this very real woman drew a glass of water from the tap, and turning her eyes toward the ceiling, drank in long, slow gulps. His eyes washed over her, lingering here and there, then moving on, as if she were a banquet.

The glass drained, she set it down on the counter and cast a questioning look in Duran’s direction. “Pe

He opened his mouth to answer. Thought better of it. “No way,” he said.

She’d just come out of the shower when the telephone rang, and she picked it up.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Of course… yes. Yes it is. It went out three, four hours ago.” Because Duran was looking at her in a puzzled way, she put her hand over the receiver and whispered, “Trish.”

The real estate agent.

Then back to the phone. “Sure… no. No, it’s no problem. I keep a little penlight in my purse.” She rubbed at her hair with a towel, and laughed. “Yes I am one of those people. My nickname is Scout.” She leaned over, wrote something down. “Okay, if we have any trouble, we’ll give you a buzz.” Hung up the phone.

“What was that?” Duran asked.

“There’s a sump pump in the basement,” she told him. “And when the electricity goes out, it does ‘t work—and the basement floods. Which causes problems with the furnace. There’s some kind of generator that’s supposed to kick in, but half the time it doesn’t. So she asked if we’d go down and flick on the emergency switch.” Adrie

It wasn’t a basement, really. It was a cellar with a dirt and gravel floor. The entrance was outside, behind the house, where a pair of angled metal doors opened onto a short flight of concrete steps. Adrie

“Kinda spooky,” she muttered, as her flashlight cut through the darkness, a dim orange beam.

“The sump pump’s over there,” Duran told her, pointing to a contraption beside the south wall. Adrie

It was a little after nine when the electricity came back on. They were eating a pizza by candlelight, and drinking beer, when half the lights in the house flared. For a moment, it was as if they were caught in a photographer’s flash. They froze as the television revived with an accelerating growl of sound, followed by a spurt of ca

Duran began to chuckle, then fell silent when he saw the look of desolation on Adrie

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She shook her head, and looked away, hiding the tears.

“What is it?”

Finally, she said, “When I was looking for Nikki, in her apartment… the lights were off… because there’d been a short circuit. From the heater. And then Ramon threw the breaker and… suddenly, there she was. In the tub.” Tears rolled. She looked away.