Chapter 21

I took a sip of my seltzer and lime and turned toward the bizarre wall behind the bar. The sculptured light of the holographic images stretching the full length of the 30-foot mirror were what “The Holo-Wall” club was all about. This was another of Mathews haunts, a converted textile mill in Soho, a part of town Mathews had told me had once been chic but was now mainly for the tourists. This place, however, had been converted into an expensive private club, a hidden piece of color for the Manhattanites. It was easy to see they were keeping it alive and well, paying ten to fifteen dollars a drink.

“Wonderful stuff,” he said.

I turned to see what he was referring to. It wasn’t the holograms and it wasn’t the vodka. He was looking down at the illuminated glass brick bar top. I took a second look. Holograms there too? “Pardon me?” I said.

“Your dream...wonderful images. If I hadn’t banged on the door to wake you up, you’d have probably crashed into the shore...seen a lot more.” He looked up, his expression thoughtful...somber. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yes. Luck out with a recurring pattern. Dreams that intense have a good chance.”

“To recur?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“No. Let’s fix it so it doesn’t, Okay. You can go there if you want. That’s one sandy beach I’d like to avoid. What did I say in the session?

“You first, Charlie. IT.  What is IT?”

“The numbing,” I answered.

“The numbing,” Mathews repeated.

“Yeah.”

He turned back toward the mirrored wall.  I waited, but he was taking his time.  “Numbing of the mind?”

“No… my thinking.  IT was numbed.”  His reaction was like he was groping for something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

He turned back toward the mirrored wall.  I waited, but he was taking his time.

“You said, Charlie, that ‘my senses slowed, my thinking numbed’ And then you said, “IT wanted me to surrender’   Have I got that right?  That’s what you said, correct?”

I shook my head, “I don’t remember, exactly...that sounds close.” Something pleased him.

“Charlie,” he said. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You got my answer, now yours. The session.”

He got up and motioned to the maître d’, then nudged me along into the dining area. “At the table.”

Once we were seated, he ordered some wine - offering to introduce me to some vintage pouilly-fuissé, he said was only available in five New York restaurants - this of course being one of them - and then he got started on what I thought would be the answer to my question. “You were very talkative today, Charlie, and I think...I’m not sure, but I think you’re starting to break through.” He picked up the menu. “Their menu is heavy on the sauces, so I would suggest... “

“Doctor Mathews... order for me, anything, but stop with the evasion. If you feel it’s not in my best interest to hear it, okay. Just say so. I’ll trust you. We can keep working at it. But...I’m losing patience with the game playing. I deserve more than that. I’ve paid for more than that, and your eloquent noontime speech notwithstanding, I think you have decided to give me more than that, and that’s probably why we’re here and why you’re introducing me to your favorite wine. Am I fifty percent, right?”

He lowered the menu, a look of satisfaction on his face. “Probably closer to seventy- five.”

The waiter arrived and was quickly given the order.  “Number eleven and number seven,” said Mathews.

The waiter nodded. “Very good, sir,” and he was off. I smiled. “Joke or coincidental?”

“What?”

“The eleven and seven. Charlie numbers?”

His mood changed. The customary somberness returned. “I might appear to be loose and full of jokes at times, but when that happens, it’s a cover. Even psychiatrists have covers. But I’m not covering now. I’m much too serious, Charlie. To answer your question, purely coincidental. I do hope seven and eleven works for you, though, because before this is all over, Charlie Stevens might need a lot more luck.”

I hesitated to open my mouth because I knew what question was just behind my lips and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer. “Then you don’t believe I’m Charles Randall?”

“I believe you’re safer as Randall, but there are just too many signs you’re Charlie Stevens. You have two people in LA, Ivan and Finch who know you as Stevens and with Sobel labeling you at the Hyatt... “

“We’ve already discussed that,” I said. “Why am I safer as Randall? What did I...”

“You said a lot, but most important, you mentioned three names earlier when you were under.  Rousso, Albergetti, and Detroit. They mean anything to you now?”

I grinned. “Two hit men and the city they take me out in?”

He shook his head and he wasn’t smiling. “While you had your little nap, which we’ll get back to in a minute, I made a couple of calls. The names you muttered rang a bell, but I couldn’t place them. Two calls helped. The first was to the research desk of the Times. They were able to identify a certain Mario Rousso, Tony Albergetti, and Detroit, a nickname for Jesus Orlando...all headline makers last year in building five new hotel/casinos around the world. The second call was to Ms. Sobel.  I left her a message with the switchboard...a message to call “Detroit.” I’d made the call from a phone booth, so when her secretary called back, asking for Mr. Orlando, well... “

“I need a drink,” I said.

“There’s more, he said.

 “I would have never thought.” I raised my arm for the waiter, then found myself pulling it down rapidly. “Shit!” I said under my breath. “Now I’m supposed to look over my shoulder as if I did something wrong?”

Mathews reached across and touched my arm in a consoling manner that started me off. “We don’t know that. That’s what we’ve got to find out, Charlie. Without your memory, it’s a bit difficult, so relax, let’s enjoy our dinner and we’ll work on it some more.”

I looked up. His eyes were the fatherly eyes I wanted to see. Yeah, I’ve earned the right to be fathered a little. My eyes welled up. I wished I could blame this sudden rush of emotion on booze, but I hadn’t had a drink yet.

Mathews noticed my eyes.  Hey…we’ll figure this out and you’ll be okay. I’m not going anywhere.  Charlie?”

I heard his voice, but I was suddenly wanting something else. I wanted to be with Sara. I wanted to feel the kind of safe Sara gave me. Why had he said I was safer as Randall?

Mathews wiped his mouth and placed the napkin on the table in his usual time to go gesture.  “Dessert at Holo-Wall is a must,” he said.

I was stuffed with my number seven and really wanted to go back to the hotel and call Sara, but he was determined I try the chocolate soufflé and I sensed there was something else he wanted to say. I would have thought he’d be all talked out, as the dinner’s conversation had been diverted into the area of Mathews’ background. I didn’t want to think about me for a while and I was curious about what he’d said regarding the “review board,” figuring he wouldn’t have mentioned it if he hadn’t wanted me to know about it. I got him to talk about himself, with the help of two bottles of pouilly.

It was interesting to learn he had always been a maverick. In his graduate days at Harvard, he had, along with Leary, experimented with hallucinogens and other mind-expanding drugs. Unlike Leary however, he managed to not get kicked out. He had gone on to complete his medical school at Northwestern. From there, he worked a short period at the state hospital, where he found the restrictions on how patients could be treated far too confining. He ventured west to Los Angeles where his private practice flourished for several years. Then a series of personal tragedies struck. Within 2 years, he lost both parents to natural causes, his wife through divorce, and suspension of his license to practice psychotherapy...the “review board” incident. As he told it, he had a patient that was borderline psychopath. She was a homeless woman he’d just stumbled upon one day while walking the Santa Monica beach.

She was carrying around a dead dog. He paused to talk to the woman and realized this was the fifth mangy animal she’d found wandering around the alleys and streets in Venice.  She called it mercy killing, but I knew authorities would see it another way.  She had them all buried in a vacant lot and was on her way to lay this one to rest. He offered her some food at a nearby cafe and after talking with her, decided to give her free treatment. After a year of slow progress, working every day with her, including giving her medications for her problem.  Realizing they weren’t working on her, he was convinced a drug from France, a drug that had not acquired an FDA approval, and available only on the black market, was the only thing left to try. Her killing of the animals was getting worse. He knew he was supposed to report behavior such as hers, especially if he was treating the person, but he had chosen to keep it confidential... “some secret desire to break ground” he had said. The woman disappeared and later turned up dead from a mixture of street drugs she’d self-administered.  Traces of the French drug were found. The authorities having found his telephone number on her person and upon investigation discovered he had delved into the black market.  They didn’t prove his using the drug on the woman had caused her death, but the controversy was enough to get him censured by the State Medical Board. Because of the restrictions placed on him by the board, he had to focus on hypnotherapy as his sole practice. It turned out to be a bonanza. He joked about it at one point, saying, “… because I was in the ‘La La’ capitol of the world, every malady imaginable was thought of as treatable through hypnosis, especially the problems of the famous who wanted the New Age craze for their never ending fears and insecurities.”

As the soufflé and espresso were placed on the table, I broached the word that had been bothering me ever since he’d uttered it.  “Safe...the word safe, why did you use it before?”

He took a sip of his coffee and said, “Just a feeling. In your dream you freeze up looking toward the shore, but you can’t see anything but sand. So why would you freeze? If there was something there, something that you could relate to, even the dark office of your memory or the red brick wall outside the window, but no, there’s nothing. So maybe...maybe there is something, something you don’t want to see, something that subconsciously is immobilizing; maybe the same something that has blocked out your memory. Possible. All possibilities are still out there. The other ‘safe’ thought...In the session you mentioned the three names as people who asked you to invest in their casinos. I think you’re richer than you think, Charlie. Men like that don’t ask your everyday gambler to get financially involved with them...especially in casinos. You muttered something about telling them ‘Sobel has all my money invested in real estate.’ The last thing you said before I had to bring you out was ‘They keep calling me...they keep calling me?’”

“God,” I said. “I don’t feel like a gambler...I don’t feel like this Charlie character. I was all thumbs in Vegas, had to learn blackjack on TV before I went into the casino. Why don’t I feel like him? Why would I say those things if they weren’t true?”

He wasn’t quick to jump with an answer. He thought for a moment. “Chances are greater they’re true than not, Charlie. I have some much bigger questions with no apparent answers. What happened to make you lose your memory? Why did you invent Charles Randall? And here’s the big one...is Sobel the one with the answers?”

We ate our dessert in silence.

It was still early in Los Angeles to call Sara. She’d be teaching. I wanted to be alone and think through my options, so I sent Mathews back to the hotel in a cab. Neither Mathews nor I was sure of the next step. I hailed another cab and gave him a hundred, asking him to drive around.

He looked at the hundred-dollar bill and said, “All of it?” His incredulous look told me business had been slow that night. He had a picture of his family on the dashboard.

I gave him another hundred and said, “A nice long drive. Enough there for Central Park?”

“Enough here for most anywhere you want, mister.”

“How about a nice slow drive through Central Park...where the old street lamps are,” I said.

“Comin’ up,” he said. His smile was a happy one. The kind that isn’t all that present in New York.  It felt good. It felt really good.