Death Match

Another five-minute break; another cup of decaffeinated coffee; and a third white envelope. Rubbing his eyes blearily, Lash opened it and pulled out the stapled pamphlet within. This time, the test consisted of a long set of incomplete sentences:

I wish my father _________________________________

My second favorite food is _______________________

My greatest mistake was __________________________

I feel that children are __________________________

I’d like it if other people _____________________

I believe that mutual orgasm _______________________

I feel that red wine _______________________________

I would be completely happy if only _______________

Some areas of my body are very ___________________

Mountain hiking in spring is _______________________

The book with the greatest influence on me was ____

Here they were at last: the personal, intimate questions that had been noticeably lacking from the first test. Once again, Lash guessed there were close to a thousand. As he sca

I wish my father had taken the time to praise me more often.

It was almost twelve-thirty by the time he filled in the last sentence, and Lash felt the begi

By the time Lash returned, Vogel had brought in a folding chair and placed it perpendicular to his own. Where the cube of pencils had been was now an oblong box of black cardboard.

“How are you feeling, Dr. Lash?” Vogel asked as he sat in the folding chair.

Lash passed a hand across his eyes. “Sandbagged.”

A smile flitted briefly across Vogel’s face. “It seems grueling, I know. But our studies have shown that a single, intensive day of evaluation yields the best results. Please sit.” He opened the box, revealing a stack of large cards face down.

The moment he saw a small number printed on the top card, Lash knew what lay ahead. He’d been so engrossed in the first three tests he’d almost forgotten about what he himself had examined in the blind just a few days before.

“We’re now going to do an inkblot test, known as the Hirschfeldt. Are you familiar with it?”

“More or less.”

“I see.” Vogel drew out a blank control sheet from the box, made a notation. “Let’s begin. I’ll show you the inkblots, one by one, and you tell me what they look like.” He lifted the first card from the box, turned it over, and placed it on the table, facing Lash. “What might this be?”

Lash looked at the picture, trying to empty his mind of prior associations — especially the terrible images that had jumped unbidden into his mind back at the Audubon Center. “I see a bird,” he said. “Up at the top. It’s like a raven, the white part is its beak. And the whole card looks like a warrior, Japanese, a ninja or samurai. With two swords in scabbards — you can see them sticking out there, left and right, pointed downwards.”

Vogel scribbled on the control sheet, taking down — Lash knew — his remarks verbatim. “Very good,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go on to the next one. What might this be?”

Lash worked his way through the cards, fighting a growing weariness, trying always to make the responses his own rather than what he knew to be common replies. By one o’clock, Vogel had finished both the response and inquiry phases of the test, and Lash’s headache had grown worse. As he watched Vogel put the cards away, he found himself wondering about all the other applicants who had streamed into the building this morning: were they all squirreled away somewhere on this floor, in their own little testing suites? Had Lewis Thorpe felt as exhausted as he himself did now, as tired of staring at the blank white walls?

“You must be hungry, Dr. Lash,” Vogel said as he closed the box. “Come on. Your lunch is waiting.”

Though he felt no hungrier now than before the inkblots, Lash followed him across the small central space to one of the doors in the far wall. Vogel swiped his card through the reader, and the door sprang open to reveal yet another white room. This, however, had prints on three of its walls. They were simple, well-framed photographs of forests and seacoasts, bereft of people or wildlife, yet Lash’s gaze rested hungrily on them after the sterile emptiness of the morning.

His lunch was laid out on a crisp linen tablecloth: cold poached salmon with dill sauce, wild rice, a sourdough roll, and coffee — decaffeinated, of course. As he ate, Lash felt his appetite return and the headache recede. Vogel, who had left him to dine in peace, returned twenty minutes later.

“What next?” Lash asked, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. He held out little hope his question would be answered, but Vogel surprised him.

“Just two more items,” Vogel said. “The physical examination and the psychological interview. If you’ve finished, we can proceed immediately.”

Lash laid the napkin aside and rose, thinking back again to what the man in the class reunion had said about his own day of testing. So far it had been tiring, even enervating, but nothing worse. A physical exam he could handle. And he’d given enough psychological interviews to know what to expect.

“Lead on,” he said.

Vogel ushered Lash back out into the central space and pointed at one of the two blank doors not yet opened. Vogel swiped his card through the reader, then began scratching something into his palm device with the plastic stylus. “You may proceed, Dr. Lash. Please remove your clothes and put on the hospital gown you’ll find inside. You can hang your things on the door hook.”

Lash entered the new room, closed the door, and looked around as he began undressing. It was an examination room, small but remarkably well equipped for its size. Unlike the previous rooms, there were plenty of items here, but most were of a kind Lash would have preferred not to see: probes, curette and syringe packets, sterile pads. A faint smell of antiseptic hung in the air.

Lash had no sooner do

“Let’s see,” he said, examining a folder in his hand. “Dr. Lash. Medical doctor, by chance?”

“No. Doctorate in psychology.”

“Very good, very good,” the doctor said, putting the folder aside and pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Now just relax, Dr. Lash. This shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“An hour?” Lash said, but fell silent when he saw the doctor poking his finger into a jar of petroleum jelly. Maybe $100,000 isn’t such an outrageous fee, after all, he thought to himself.