Mirrorman Read online

  She understood now why it was so hot down here, and the cause of the fetid, cloying smell. The reason was the swampy jungle behind the glass, with its closely packed trees and hanging vines surrounding a large pool of water flecked with green slime, everything steeped in a mist that dripped on to the floor of rotting vegetation.

  High above, powerful halogen lamps mimicked a tropical sun, filtering through leaves and branches to form a green miasma.

  And the reason for the thick glass was obvious too. The jungle was alive. Alligators snoozed on the sandy edge of the pool, snouts partly submerged in the water. Looped along the branch of a tree she saw a boa constrictor, twenty feet long and thick as a man’s waist, its unblinking eyes like pebbles of polished glass. Other creatures rustled in the dense undergrowth, and she heard the chirping of birds and the raucous cries of macaws.

  At first – seeing the cameras – she’d wondered if it was an elaborate film set. There were two movie cameras on moveable dollies and another on a rotating platform high up near the sloping roof. But of course that wasn’t possible, Josie realised. Far too risky putting live actors in there with the alligators and reptiles. She gazed through the glass wall, squinting because her eyesight was kind of bleary. Then she was staring. Half-buried in the sand at the edge of the water was a skull. A human skull. She spotted another, and then a third, wrapped in a tangle of weeds, scummy water lapping in the empty eye sockets.

  There were bones as well, pale and gleaming, picked clean as a whistle.

  One of the alligators stirred and yawned wide, the rows of teeth white against the pink fleshy interior of its jaws. Josie tried to back away, but the arm round her shoulders held her firm.

  From across the chamber came once more the chanting dirge as the Messengers prayed to their saviour and redeemer:

  Through Your dreams reach out to us

  And guide us by Your divine wisdom.

  Our ears are ever open and waiting…

  3

  The elevator doors opened and Gil Gribble went staggering, expelled into the corridor by the pressure of people eager to get out. Students streamed past him on either side: Herculean boys and Amazonian girls who made Gribble feel like a pygmy in a land of giants. What did they feed kids on these days? Ball bearings?

  Mopping his brow with his handkerchief, Gribble trailed after them into the refectory. The place was like bedlam. Confronting the din of voices and banging of trays and clatter of cutlery took physical stamina, as if battling through a shock wave of noise. He skirted the long straggling line waiting to be served at the counter and trotted towards the faculty dining room at the far end. As the double doors closed behind him he closed his eyes for a blessed moment, feeling carpet under his feet, savouring the relative peace and quiet of murmured conversation, the subdued tinkling and clinking of civilised adults eating a leisurely lunch. Not that he disliked the students here at Columbia (the kids who attended his Theoretical Physics seminars were a lively and enthusiastic bunch) but he had no desire to observe, even at a distance, the frenzied feeding of the five thousand. Reminded him too much of pigs with their snouts in the trough.

  He shuffled into the short, dignified line of fellow academics and admin colleagues and peered over their shoulders to see what was on offer. Gribble wasn’t a gourmet, but he loved his grub. The pork chops and gravy with mashed potatoes and green beans looked tempting. A side salad with Italian dressing to go with it. And, for dessert, apple-and-blueberry pie with two scoops of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. To round it off, a slice of Brie and crackers, and a tall glass of iced tea. It was as he was turning away from the cashier’s desk with his tray that he spotted her. In fact it was her blaze of red hair, boyishly cut close to the scalp and razor-trimmed around her white, pointed, pixie-like ears, that caught his eye; in the sober shades and hues of the room, Annie Lorentz stood out like a beacon.

  His inward rush of pleasure showed itself in a beaming grin as Gribble hurried over.

  She was finishing a plate of Waldorf salad, leaning forward with her elbows propped on the table, reading a thick, leather-bound volume with dusty yellowing pages supported at an angle on a pile of students’ workbooks. Close to, the contrast between her white skin and cropped red hair was even more startling. On her lips was the faintest blush of lipstick, but she wore no make-up on her silvery eyebrows or lashes. Rather than disguise it, the woollen plaid shirt and baggy, grey cord trousers seemed to emphasise how slender she was, shoulders wide and angular, long legs crossed at the ankles under the table, comfortable flat brown loafers on her feet.

  Her eyes, as she looked up at Gribble’s greeting, were of the very palest blue. He had worshipped from afar, and closer to, ever since she had joined the faculty one year and three months ago. He had not the faintest idea how he stood with Annie Lorentz, and lacked the courage to find out.

  ‘Hi, Gil,’ she said with an easy smile. ‘Grab a seat.’

  ‘If I’m not in the way.’ Gribble tried to indicate her book with his loaded tray. ‘You ain’t preparing or nothin’?’

  His voice died away as he saw Annie Lorentz gazing at the food on his tray. He looked too – or rather gawped. In place of the pork chops and mashed potato there was a double cheeseburger with bacon slices and a heap of greasy fries. Instead of a healthy salad he had chosen a side order of griddle cakes with ham sausage. For dessert there was coconut-cream pie topped with frozen yoghurt. Plus (and here Gribble goggled in disbelief) a couple of Twinkies.

  ‘Better put that mountain of animal fat and cholesterol down before you collapse under it,’ Annie Lorentz advised him. She watched with a little twinkle of amusement as Gribble manoeuvred himself and his lunch between two chairs and finally settled opposite her. He was red in the face and drops of sweat were trickling down from under the frizzy mop of hair that flopped over his forehead like a bedraggled squirrel.

  ‘Glad I ran into you,’ Gribble said, unfolding his knife, fork and spoon from his napkin. He stared at the plates of food as if seeing them for the first time. Cheeseburger and fries?

  With a quick, shy smile he said, ‘Ain’t seen you in a month of Sundays. You bin away?’

  ‘Yeah, got back Tuesday from a field trip. Three weeks in Washington State studying the Haida tribes. Went across to Vancouver Island mid-trip for four days. You ever visited that part of the northwest, Gil?’

  Gribble admitted he hadn’t.

  ‘It’s amazing. Wonderful country!’ Annie Lorentz pushed her plate away and closed her book. ‘The Haidas still carve traditional totem poles up there. Eighty, ninety, some over a hundred feet high. I brought one back for you.’

  Gribble nearly choked on a mouthful of cheeseburger. ‘You brought me back a hundred-foot-high totem pole?’ he spluttered, wiping his mouth.

  Annie Lorentz delved into a canvas drawstring bag and produced a totem pole of carved wood, painted in bright colours, about nine inches tall. She stood it on the table in front of him. ‘For you. Look good on your mantel. Have you got a mantel?’

  Gribble said he had, which was true, though with the amount of electronic paraphernalia and other junk in his living room he couldn’t remember where it was. What did that matter? Annie had thought of him – had thought enough of him to bring him back a present from her travels.

  ‘Hey, thanks, that’s really nice of you,’ he mumbled, a delicious warm flush spreading through him. ‘Appreciate it a lot, Annie. It’ll have pride of place.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Annie Lorentz tugged open the neck of the canvas bag to reveal a dozen or more totem poles. ‘They were having a sale, so I bought a job lot. Know anybody who’d like one?’

  ‘Not right off the bat, no.’ Gribble’s attempt at a valiant smile was as bleak and watery as a sunset seen through a storm cloud. ‘But I’ll ask around if you like.’ His appetite seemed to have deserted him. He jabbed a fork into the heap of fries and stuck them into his mouth.

  ‘Do you want me?’ Annie Lorentz asked.

  The fries
went down in a single gulp. ‘Huh?’

  ‘I thought maybe you wanted me for something when you said you were glad to have run into me.’ She cocked her head. ‘No?’

  ‘Yeah… um, that’s right, I did.’

  ‘What was it?’

  Gribble had to think. His mind was in its usual clutter, and the proximity of Annie Lorentz added to his confusion. ‘Uh, a friend of mine, Jeff Cawdor, he’s …’ Gribble frowned, wondering how to begin. How did you explain to someone the weird, unsettling problems Cawdor was experiencing? ‘You know about mental stuff, don’t you, Annie? You studied psychology, am I right?’

  ‘Social anthropology, Gil.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘With particular reference to tribal arts and customs.’

  ‘Ain’t the same, I guess.’

  Annie Lorentz leant back, folded one arm across her chest, pulling at the short red hair curling behind her left ear. ‘About the same as asking a cosmologist what the stars foretell for tomorrow.’

  Gribble saw her point. He dabbled with the griddle cakes. ‘Aw, well, my mistake.’

  ‘Something wrong with your friend up here, Gil,’ Annie Lorentz advised him, tapping her head, ‘he ought to see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘He’s not crazy, Annie. It ain’t that kind of mental problem. He keeps getting flashes of stuff – like, you know, visions – just come out of nowhere. He didn’t actually say as much, but he’s worried sick, I can tell.’

  ‘Visions of what?’

  ‘He told me a whole bunch of things.’ Gazing into the middle distance, Gribble smothered a burp. ‘Lemme see … a sailing ship from way back long ago. Then a guy about to be fried in the electric chair. And this really weird daydream, I guess, about seducing his secretary at the office. Tell you, Annie, he’s in a bad way –’

  ‘Whoa. Whoa. Seducing his secretary?’ Annie Lorentz was shaking her head. ‘Hey, come on, Gil, that’s not a vision; that’s a male lust fantasy. He has the hots for her, so he lies in bed imagining what it would be like to fuck her and playing with himself.’

  Gribble felt himself blushing. She had a forthright and uncompromising way of expressing herself that, although he would never confess it, Gribble found shocking. He chewed on some burger, which refused to go down, and kept on chewing.

  ‘Nothing strange about that, Gil,’ Annie Lorentz said mildly.

  Gribble finally and thankfully got the damn thing swallowed. ‘It ain’t that of itself that’s strange. Cawdor was honest enough to admit such thoughts had popped into his head.’

  Leaning back with folded arms, legs stretched out, Annie Lorentz listened as he told her of the imagined sexual encounter which then – so Cawdor’s secretary claimed – had actually occurred. Her shrewd pale-blue eyes fringed by silvery lashes were slightly narrowed as if she were weighing the credence of the story each step of the way, testing its validity.

  When he had finished, she was silent for a moment, head on one side. ‘Your friend Cawdor, he asked you for help?’

  Gribble shook his head. He could tell she was intrigued. ‘Not straight off. What I think is, Jeff needed somebody to talk to, so he talked to me. But I can’t figure it out, can you?’

  ‘And when he says he never made any play for this woman – Phyllis – you believe him?’

  ‘Oh yeah, absolutely, one hundred per cent.’ Gribble felt vaguely offended that she should question his friend’s honesty. ‘I mean, why would Jeff even tell me about it if he had – you know, if he’d messed around with his secretary? Why mention it in the first place? He’d have kept his mouth shut.’ He shrugged. ‘We’d be none the wiser, would we?’

  ‘That’s true,’ Annie Lorentz conceded. ‘Yeah, that is odd, I have to admit.’ She picked up her canvas bag, yanked the drawstring tight, and pushed back her chair. ‘Gotta go.’

  Gribble watched as she stood up, hooked her finger under the collar of a denim jacket and tossed it over her shoulder. Now was the moment, if he was serious, to ask her out to dinner, or at least to have a drink with him after work. In the normal run of things he wouldn’t see her again for days, even weeks. He took a breath.

  ‘As a matter of fact I do know somebody, Gil. Not sure he’d be able to help your friend, but he’d be willing to listen and take him seriously. Doctor Khuman is interested in that kind of thing. Want me to ask him?’

  Gribble let go of the breath he’d been holding. ‘Thanks, Annie. Yeah, sure. Is he on the faculty?’

  ‘No, he has his own private research institute, the Troth Foundation, in upstate New York. Like me to call him?’

  Gribble nodded, bereft of words. Annie Lorentz was already moving off. He watched her tall, rangy figure threading through the tables to the door, a small glowing smile on his face. Gribble felt suddenly happy. He had an excuse now – a legitimate one at that – to keep in touch with his dream woman. And he’d be doing his friend a favour into the bargain. He hoped and prayed Cawdor would see it that way.

  Bill Benedict leant towards the mike, crinkled eyes on the sweeping hand of the clock, and flicked the talk-back button.

  ‘Stand by, Sarah. Red coming up in ten seconds. Nine … eight… seven…’

  Behind the thick glass window of the control booth, inside the tiny studio with its walls of oatmeal-coloured soundproof tiles, Sarah made a circle of her finger and thumb and held it towards him – OK. Fed through the large floor speakers, the opening chords of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ tinkled in the air as the mixing engineer eased the slide control on the panel. Bill Benedict gave Sarah a nod and encouraging wink, the close crop of his white hair like a skull cap atop his ruggedly handsome weatherbeaten features.

  Sarah saw the red light wink on and brought the swivel mike in its sponge glove close to her mouth. ‘Good evening and welcome to Take Five, WCTC New Brunswick’s intimate late-hour confessional of soul searching and breast baring, with me, your friend and confidante, Sarah Cawdor.’

  She had a wonderful mellifluous voice for radio, lowpitched with just a hint of huskiness. The theme tune faded away. Sarah smiled at Bill Benedict in the control booth. She raised one finger, listening over the headphones as he cued her in to the first caller of the evening. Then she launched in:

  ‘Hello, Alice, welcome to Take Five. Say what you have to say and we’ll do our best to give you good advice.’

  ‘It’s my kid, my son Paul. He’s kinda changed. I dunno how to explain it.’ A thin nasal whine, the voice of the struggling, ill-educated underclass. ‘He was such a sweet boy, kind and thoughtful, and in the last few months it’s like – I dunno – like Jekyll and Hyde, you know?’

  ‘How old is Paul?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Is he doing well in school?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I guess so. I mean, I don’t really know – he never tells me nothin’, you know? Never talks to me or nothin’, like I don’t even exist, and when he does say somethin’ it’s like, you know, just abuse and stuff, no respect –’

  ‘Remember you only have five minutes, Alice. Then we have to move on. So what’s the problem with Paul? Is he drinking? Taking drugs? Antisocial behaviour? Is he violent?’

  ‘No, no, he ain’t aggressive, least not to me. About drink and drugs and stuff, I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What does his father have to say about this?’

  ‘We split up, six years ago, me and Ron, and he don’t come around too –’

  ‘You and Ron were divorced.’

  ‘We couldn’t get divorced ‘cause we wasn’t married. No, the sonofabitch – excuse me, slip of the tongue – bastard run off with a bleached blonde with big feet and bad breath. Tell the truth, Sarah, I ain’t seen him from that day to this. An’ I don’t want to, believe me, that guy treated me like dogshit – excuse me, pardon my French –’

  ‘Five minutes, Alice, remember?’

  Oh yeah, sorry.’ There was a sniffling pause, and faintly in the background the gulp of something liquid. Then: ‘I’m at the end of my wits wi
th that boy, Sarah. Paul, I mean. Wha’d’ya reckon I ought to do? He’s too big to be chastised. I tell you, honestly, I just don’t know how to handle him.’ Another loud sniffle.

  ‘A lot of kids – most kids – go through a rebellious stage, Alice, at Paul’s age. It’s perfectly normal and natural. But you do, I feel – and I think you’ll agree – have an additional problem here with the absence of a father.’ Sarah’s voice was calm and reasonable, uncritical, not apportioning blame. ‘I think discipline is the key here, Alice. Paul needs guidance; he needs direction, positive goals to aim for and attain. And that’s where the Message can make a real difference. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Well, yeah, I think… What’s that again?’

  ‘Does Paul ever watch The Lovebeams Show?’

  ‘Uhh… dunno …’

  ‘Get him to watch it, Alice,’ Sarah insisted. ‘Young people are crying out for a guiding light in this world of confusion and corruption. Values have been tossed on the scrap heap or made a mockery of, and it’s high time we got back to our basic, core beliefs that made this country great. The Lovebeams Show can get Paul started on the right path. Will you give it a go?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess, if it’ll do him some good.’ The tired, defeated voice hesitated. ‘What is it exactly?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a fun thing, Alice, he’ll enjoy it. They have music, games, prizes, pretty girls. Paul likes girls, doesn’t he? And they don’t preach at you: they beam the Message into the hearts of everyone prepared to receive it.’

  Sarah nodded to Bill Benedict, acknowledging the countdown coming over the headphones. She said, ‘Your five minutes is nearly up, Alice. Take my advice and try it with Paul. The change in him will amaze you, I promise. OK?’

  ‘Thanks, Sarah. Just one more thing –’

  ‘My pleasure, Alice, and thanks for calling Take Five’ She sat back in the padded chair as the theme music swelled up, reaching for her cigarettes. She just had time to light one and take a deep pull before the next caller was on the line.