The Syndrome

“What’s the matter?” Adrie

Duran shook his head. “If he tries to throw me in the bin,” he said, “I’m outta here.”

“‘The bin’?”

“It’s a clinical term,” he explained.

With more than an hour to kill, they decided to check out the offices of Mutual General Assurance. “They’ll probably give us copies of Nikki’s tapes, if you’re the one to ask for them,” she said. “I mean, you’re their client, right?”

A subway ride and a five block walk got them where they were going, though it was anything but obvious when they arrived.

The address on Avenue of the Americas turned out to be a branch of Box ‘n Mail, one of those places that sell bubblewrap and cardboard boxes, while packaging and sending items via UPS, FedEx and the postal service. As a sideline, this particular Box ‘n Mail was also a mail drop, renting boxes to people who found it problematic to receive mail at home.

Mutual General Assurance’s offices in “Suite 1119” was in fact a 4- by 6- by- 12-inch tray. A pressed metal door obscured whatever contents it might have held.

Adrie

The clerk was an energetic slob with long blond hair. “Only one way,” he said. “You write them a letter.”

“But there’s a list, right? I mean, there must be some kind of contract—between you and them.”

The clerk shook his head, turned his attention back to the package on the counter in front of him, expertly affixing a length of sealing tape to a seam.

“Couldn’t you just give me a phone number?” Adrie

“Lady,” said the clerk, “why do you think people rent these things?” He swept a hand toward the ranks of cubbyholes. It was a rhetorical question but Adrie

“As a place to receive mail.”

The clerk looked at her, then flipped the package in his hands, examining every side. Finally, he dropped it into a white plastic crate on which someone had scrawled UPS.

“They rent them because it’s a discreet way to receive mail. Discreet,” he repeated. “You want a phone number for one of these outfits, you can call 411.”

“This place is unlisted,” Adrie

The man gave her a regretful grin. “Yeah, well, that’s why I say you oughta write ‘em a letter. They want to talk to somebody, they’re probably not go

They stopped at the car to feed coins into the meter and when they returned to Dr. Shaw’s office, Adrie

She loved ru

She ran for an hour and, once or twice, got turned around, emerging from the park on the wrong side. Each time, she went back the way she came, crossing the park, thinking, You idiot. What if you’d sprained your ankle? You should have brought money—enough, at least, to make a phone call. And anyway, you should have been paying attention.

The receptionist—a punky young woman with blue fingernails and he

It was 8:45 when they finally emerged, and the sound of their voices startled her so that she jumped up, as anxious and eager as a relative in a hospital’s waiting area.

Shaw smiled at her and she could see that he was excited. For his part, Duran was exhausted, looking pale and tired, a shadow of stubble covering his jaw.

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Shaw was saying, “but nothing that hurts.” Turning to Adrie

Adrie

Shaw sighed, entwined his hands and stretched his arms above his head. He closed his eyes, and rolled his head in a circle. Then he lowered his arms and rotated his shoulders. Finally, he said, “Why don’t we sit down?”

They did.

“It’s a very odd business,” Shaw began. “What interested me at first was the duration of what I was led to believe was an amnesic fugue, but—”

“You changed your mind,” Adrie

Shaw nodded.

“And now what do you think?”

“I think—that I don’t know what I think. I can honestly say I’ve never encountered anything like Jeffrey’s mind. He knows almost nothing about his past and what he does know is less remembered than learned. It’s as if he read about himself, and memorized the details.”

Adrie

“I’m a fascinating case,” Duran told her, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Ray’s go

Shaw smiled. “If I ask Jeffrey about an incident in his past, one that he recalls, he’ll relate the story in the same way each time, bringing up the same details in the same sequence.”

“So?”

“They’re anecdotes—remembered stories, rather than memories per se. It’s not uncommon, really. All of us do it to some extent, embellishing our recollections to conform to one agenda or another, making ourselves look more attractive, our parents more loving—whatever it may be. But in Jeffrey’s case, his memories aren’t just polished, they’re set in stone.” Seeing Adrie

“Like what?” Adrie

“Ohhhh… “ He rolled his hand in the air. “The time you lost your first tooth.” He paused, and nodded encouragingly. “How was that handled in your family?”

Adrie

“Of course you do. Think about it. When you lost your baby teeth—was it handled matter-of-factly? Or was it a big deal?” The psychiatrist pressed his hands together and put them in front of his face, so that his fingertips touched his lips.

Adrie

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” he objected, impatient for an answer. “Wherever you were, whoever you were with, you lost your first baby tooth. Take it from there. What happened?”

She shut her eyes, squeezed her face tight, made a show of having to remember although why she was doing this she didn’t know—because she did remember, she remembered quite clearly. Finally, she said, “I lived with my grandmother, and she made a big deal about it—which wasn’t really like her.”