Desmond Chapter Thirteen
1958
Alan is a details man. If he had been asked about this in the past, he would have claimed it as his greatest strength, the ability upon which his entire career had been based: the observation of the minutest details in human behaviour. The slightest change in expression. A pause of only a few microseconds. Responses that can reveal through their mere presence, or even, for that matter, the lack of their presence, the mood and character and very thoughts of the person being observed. And all of this observed behaviour he would correlate against a countless array of definitions and theories, and in so doing, he could glean a discovery of the finest workings of the human mind. He would come to an understanding of others and himself and by extension, the world.
And now, this same observation to detail? How does he feel about it now?
He feels like a man buried alive, trapped and slowly sinking beneath a quicksand of emotion and response and voices and glances. As though his brain were a mouth being stuffed full, swallowing to the point of choking on an array of very distinct cues, sharpened like nettles that are tearing him apart from the inside out. He can't keep it down, but he has to keep it down. But he can't.
Doctor Alan Jeffries turns his car – a 1957 Oldsmobile Sedan, jet black with chrome hubs and leather interiors- a sharp right into the parking lot of the office park where he keeps his practice. He passes a granite embossed sign that reads MAGNUSSEN BUSINESSES in large relief letters, the eastern most letters still glistening on their western facing edge with the moisture of the recently passed rainstorm, a storm that had passed from the west to the east and so had left it's tapering imprint unevenly upon the stone, a subtle indication of the passage of time. A watermark. The fact that the letters have been embossed in granite, indicates the level of commitment that the property owner has made to the continuation of this facility, and all of the various interest contained therein. This had impressed the Doctor when he had first been searching for an adequate location to start his practice, some eight years and three months and eleven days ago.
The Doctor navigates his sedan across the lot and pulls into his own parking space – close to the building, only five spaces to the east of the overhanging canopy that extends out from the buildings front entrance. At the head of his parking space is a sign with his name on it, written in a Helvetica font – painted, actually. All of the V.I.P. Parking signs are painted by hand. Nicely centred by a tight black border about a half inch in from the signs edges. The Doctor also nicely centres his car quite evenly between the two yellow lines indicating his space, cuts the engine and opens his door. He steps out onto the asphalt, which has a sheen of freshly fallen rain that glimmers in the the sun that has just recently broken through the dissipating clouds above. The Doctor leaves his blue umbrella on the passenger side seat and closes the door of his sedan.
Details, details. He's watching all of the details; the bushes that line the front of the building (alder bushes, imported from Wisconsin), the thin patch of grass, about a foot and a half wide and cut to a height of about two and a half inches, that lines the front of the bushes, ending crisply against the off white concrete of the sidewalk, and the sidewalk rises six inches above the asphalt, and everything is drying of the rain in the new sun. The parking block before his car is not quite the same colour of the sidewalk, and his sign extends up from the middle of this parking block. The Doctor examines the sign more closely. Not... quite centred, perhaps? A little off to the right? But when the Doctor looks away and back again, his name seems a little off to the left, this time.
He shakes his head and turns towards his destination- the front entrance- and he is about to pick out some more details, because these details are not the ones that are drowning his mind. These details are innocuous, without any substance of any real kind, aren't they? And that's just how he wants it; the Doctor really prefers these sort of details with which to occupy his mind now.
But then as he enters beneath the overhanging red canopy and approaches the door (full glass front, lined with aluminum siding, the underside of the canopy a battleship grey, with a total of six identical coloured aluminum rails, that extend down, three on either side of a short stairway of five steps, centred by a curved black handrail), the Doctor sees a man approaching from within the building. He had really hoped to make his way to the office without seeing another soul, and so the Doctor steps back a bit, just behind the stone planters with juniper leaf bushes, that also serve as bases for the twin poles (thicker and of a slightly darker colour than the grey aluminum rails that side the steps) supporting the front of the canopy.
The front door opens. The Doctor reaches down into his pockets, trying to busy himself rather than look up at the face of the person that has just emerged from the building. He finds something in his inside breast pocket and pulls it out- a package of cigarettes. Winston Lights, the brand that Mrs Roberts smoked. She had left them behind after her last visit, and the for some reason the Doctor had pocketed them; he seems to have a vague memory of intending to dispose of them, somehow. Which seems strange, as he could have simply thrown them into the trash at his office.
Even stranger is that the Doctor finds himself shaking one of the cigarettes out of the pack and placing the filter end between his lips. Not to mention the book of matches- Rudy's Lounge, Kinston, Ontario- that he draws like magic from his front right pocket, peeling off a match with his fingertips and sparking a flame that he sets against the end of the cigarette. He drops the match into the planter and pulls on the cigarette, feeling the warm smoke filling his lungs, and although the Doctor has never smoked anything before in his life, it seems like the most natural thing in the world for him to be doing, right now.
In front of the doorway, the man who exited the building has now paused, gazing out from beneath the red canopy into the increasingly brighter day, before deciding to tuck his umbrella under his arm with his coat and suitcase and, with a deep finalizing breath, make his way forward and down the steps, towards the smoking doctor. The man is not exactly portly; rather he is a man relatively thin of frame, but with a round and multi chinned face that seems to bobble lightly on his neck as he clambers down the steps. Alan watches him through a haze of smoke. He's never seen the man before. And in spite of his aversions to the contrary, the doctor can't help but to try and guess as to the man's occupation... Just what was his business in the business park?
The man looks up and seems to notice Alan for the first time. His small piggish eyes pop for just a second, before he recovers and offers Alan a congenial smile. A lawyer? Accountant? Too friendly. And now that he can see Alan's face, the man drops the smile and looks quickly away, slightly disconcerted. Alan spots the man's left eyebrow spring up ever so slightly, as well as an almost invisible crease that appears next to his left eye, along with the subtle raising of his left arm as he moves past Alan. All unconscious defensive gestures; for some reason, Alan's presence has unsettled this man. He continues past Alan and into the parking lot, turning to the right to search for his car. Alan steps out from the planter and watches the man, not wanting to, not wanting to at all, but unable to stop himself, now. He smokes and watches and thinks: Real Estate. This guy's a land developer of some kind.
The man pauses, his head bobbing up and then holding still. He's forgotten something, left something back in the building. Alan can tell that the man is still aware of his presence, for as he stands in hesitation, he is also trying to keep watch on Alan, out of the corner of his eye. It is clear that the man does not want to return back to the building as long as Alan remains standing in front of the entrance, and so after a few seconds of this surreptitious attempt to watch without watching, the man steps forward in a sort of stop and go waddle, further into the parking lot, between the rows of parked cars, now, a hesitant kind of false movement of someone who is walking away even though they don't really want to.
The Real Estate Developer is afraid of Alan. Something he had seen in Alan's eyes. But he needs to return to the building, because he's forgotten something and it can't wait until tomorrow. The man's fat head seems to jerk and twitch on his thin neck. He is both lost and found, this man. He is frozen in time. He needs to get her present. A present for her. Something... something for his wife. A present for his wife. Stop in front of a car and think about it some more. That guy, is he still back there? Still there. A present. He needs to bring his wife a present.
Because the Real Estate man is guilty of something and he needs to make up for it with a present.
A light shock rushes up Alan's spine and he uses this to tear his eyes away from the Real Estate developer in the parking lot. He flicks the cigarette away and rushes to the door, counting the pattern squares on the red rug beneath the canopy, not quite the same red as the canopy but close enough to match, to blend together. No, that's wrong. They don't blend with underside of the canopy, they contrast with the underside and it's battleship grey tone. They blend with the memory of the top of the canopy, within the mind of whomever happens to be approaching the building. Remembering to return, to turn back. Seventeen red pattern squares on the rug leading up to the door. The door. Four panes of clear glass.
And so it goes like this for Alan, all the way up to his empty office, his office that will be empty all day, because he has no appointments today at all, it's a Saturday. He counts and counts, floor tiles and mirrors and light switches and floor runners and steps and rug patterns, he counts and counts to avoid reading the minds of anyone he should happen to meet on his way up to his office. And when he finally gets to his office he can shut all of the blinds and sit down behind his desk. He can close his eyes and give himself a chance to clear his mind and think, now that his office is empty, now that there is no one else here.
Now that Maria is gone.
Alan opens his eyes, slowly. The office fades into view before him, mindlessly still. Nothing to read here, no thoughts. Such a relief. And no Maria.
We are not souls! She had said - or rather thought - at him, at the Facility up in the Muskokas. We are MAGNETS for souls! Her eyes wide, stained legs sprawled beneath her on the floor of her cell, reeking of urine and sweat and madness, Maria Jantzen had looked into her former employer's eyes and had passed on her knowledge to him, the hidden and heretical awareness that she herself had received from Doctor Alan's star patient, from Desmond.
The North is the greatest magnet of all Time.
And they had known. The Facility, the Company. The Director. They had known what she was telling him, what she was giving to him, and they had let him go. Let him come back here, to his office, because after all, what would he do about it, anyways? Maybe they had thought he wouldn't even make it back here, that he would crash his car from the onrush of information deluging his mind.
But of course the truth is much simpler. The truth is that they simply don't care.
He is no longer even a pawn in this game, anymore. He is free to do whatever he wants. And that is the most terrifying thought of all. That his freedom is, in fact, an irrelevant thing.
But then Alan realizes something. For the first time since he left the Facility, his mind is no longer registering all of the minute details around him. In spite of his terror, the continuous stream of data seems to have abated. He is alone in his own head.
Alan looks around the office. His desk, the blotter in front of him. The green lamp that Sarah had bought him, the framed photo of Sarah and Emily. How long had he been away from them? He had mentioned that he needed to go out of town, hadn't he? And yet he feels little anxiety, now. Is it because of the familiarity of his surroundings, the fact that he has seen everything in this room so many times before? He tilts his head expectantly, listening to his own thoughts. It's difficult to say -
The phone on his desk rings. Oh no. Alan sits back in his chair and eyes the phone ruefully. I was beginning to understand something... The phone rings again. It vibrates on the desk like a carefully prepared bomb. With a sharp breath the doctor reaches forward and grasps the receiver, lifts it to his ear.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end is clear but quiet, as though the sound on the line had been turned down. “Doctor Alan?”
He knows this voice but for some reason can't quite place it. A woman, a patient?
“Yes?”
“It's Wendy Roberts, doctor. I'm sorry to be bothering you on a Saturday like this.”
Wendy Roberts. Of course, who else? But her voice is different. It seems... not necessarily lower in pitch, but nonetheless... deeper.
“I had a feeling that you would be at your office,” Wendy Roberts continues, her voice smoothly rolling off the line into his ear, “And thought it might be a good idea if we had a talk about a few things.”
“A talk?”
“Yes, doctor. My husband and I have arrived at a... key point in our relationship.”
“Desmond...”
“Yes, Desmond. He needs your help, doctor. We need your help.”
“But it's a Saturday...” These last words drop from Alan's lip like a petulant whine.
There is a pause on the other line. Alan waits and forgets to breathe.
“You were at the facility earlier today, weren't you, Doctor?”
Alan grips the phone tighter in his hand and closes his eyes. He lets his breath out slowly between his teeth and shakes his head. Why is he still pretending? This has always been about Desmond. “Mrs Roberts,” He whispers, “Wendy. You know that... You know they're-”
“Listening? Yes Doctor. I know. But we're just going to have to deal with that later. For now it is very important that we meet. The three of us. Together.”
Together. He had heard that word being used earlier this very day, in a way that had caused his insides to turn into sludge. The voice that had spoken it had been like a warped mockery of a human being's speech, a sound that crawled more than resonated, like a bug, crawling into his ear and eating his brain. Together. But now, hearing it spoken by Wendy Roberts, he seems to sense a small kindling of hope growing within him.
This is a strange feeling for Alan, because over the past several months his relationship with Mrs Roberts had been strained, at best, and as for her husband, well... There had been nobody there, as far as Alan was concerned. What is strange for him is to find awakening within him the possibility of a bond between himself and these two people, and it with this comes the realization of just how much he had been in denial about their situation, all this time.
From the moment that they had first entered his office the Roberts' had been the centre point of Alan's existence. Everything he did, had been directed by this strange couple's presence in his life. Why should now be any different?
“Of course Mrs Roberts. When can you make it down here?”
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