Fear itself

8

Something was wrong.

Since regaining consciousness, pain, thirst, and hunger permitting, Wayne had spent the last few hours working his way through the Bach suites numerically, and doing rather well, too, until he got stuck on number five, the one Casals called the tempestuous suite. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the music with him-he knew the score by heart. But he just couldn’t seem to get number five going.

Then, in his mind’s ear, he heard old Brotsky: the tuning, Mr. Summers, the tuning. He’d forgotten to drop the A string down to G-a little trick Bach had employed to enhance the cello’s sonority. After that, the piece went relatively smoothly, although it was interesting to note that even on an imaginary instrument he still sometimes stumbled over the same difficult intervals that had always given him trouble.

He played with his remaining eye firmly closed. Funny how total darkness made you want to shut your eyes, he thought. Otherwise it was too vast, like the blackness of space-you felt as though if you let go, you’d tumble through it forever.

But even with his eye closed, he was so sensitive to light that he knew when the door at the top of the stairs had been opened, however brief and faint the glow. He did his best to ignore it, concentrating all the harder on the Bach.

As for the birds, a curious thing had happened. It might have been the result of such an extreme application of Dr. Taylor’s desensitization therapy. Flooding, the technical term for overwhelming a phobic with the object of his fear, was considered by some psychiatrists to be the most effective form of phobia therapy, but few patients or psychiatrists had the stomach for it, and the malpractice carriers weren’t crazy about it either-when it failed, it failed big time. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he and the birds were all fellow captives, but whatever the reason, Wayne’s ornithophobia had vanished: he found that birds no longer frightened him. Except for the owl, but as that was no longer an unreasonable fear, it no longer qualified as a phobia.

Somebody probably should have locked me in a room with a bunch of birds years ago, thought Wayne during one of his more lucid moments. He even started to chuckle.

Think of the money I’d have saved on therapy.

Laughing out loud, now. LOL, as they said in the PWSPD chat room.

Miracle cure for ornithophobia. Not cheap, though-cost you an eye and an ear.

LOL a little too hard.

Also guaranteed to improve your cello playing. Play even the most difficult pieces with your hands tied behind your back.

Shrieking with laughter. Lucid no longer. Couldn’t stop if his life depended on it. Birds skittering around in their cages.

My new friends.

Shrieking and sobbing.

My fine new feathered friends.

Just sobbing, until he’d sobbed himself out. Then it was back to Bach. Number six-the bucolic.

And this time, Mr. Summers, remember to retune your instrument before you begin.

Much better, thought Simon, when Wayne began to lose his composure. Fear comes in flavors, but the purer it was, the better-nothing chased away the blind rat, or made Simon feel more alive than the terror of a severe phobic. And these new Generation 2 technology goggles were really something-$1,899 over the Internet, but worth every penny. The detail was astounding, especially when you switched on the optional infrared spot/flood lens intended for use in total darkness. You could see every twitch, every quiver, every tear and every drop of fear sweat, and even the darkest blood. All in shades of green, of course, but you got used to that quickly enough, and the padded headgear distributed the one-and-a-half pound weight of the goggles evenly, and thus made it easy to bear-Simon thought of himself as having a long, aristocratic neck and a delicate build.

But when Wayne left off sobbing and went back to that intolerable, infernal finger twitching, Simon intervened for the first time since the owl attack.

“I think I’m going to let the smaller birds have you now,” he said quietly.

“Fuck you, Simon,” replied Wayne. He still didn’t remember much after the recital Sunday evening, but the voice of the man who had called himself fear itself, particularly when he said the word buddy, had triggered one of those wispy, smoke-ring memories: standing out on Van Ness with his cello case, eyes averted from the sight of the Civic Center pigeons while he waited for a cab. Shiny silver Mercedes convertible pulls up to the curb, Simon Childs behind the wheel.

Hey, buddy, I thought that was you, what a coincidence, can I give you a lift someplace?

Wayne had always been a sucker for silver-haired white guys, not to mention silver convertibles; he’d almost made a move on Simon at the PWSPD convention last spring, but hadn’t been able to decipher the decidedly mixed signals the older man was putting out.

The sexual signals weren’t the only contradictions Wayne had noticed. Simon Childs was third-generation wealthy, obviously upper-crust, but though he was well-spoken, his speech was sprinkled with just enough street snarl to suggest that he’d spent some time mucking around down at the bottom of the pie as well. And yet he never swore-Wayne had never heard so much as a hell or damn escape from those elegant lips.

Wayne had never seen Simon in a tie, either, even at the PWSPD closing banquet in Vegas-his dress was always casual and comfortable, but expensive, and the drape of those casual, comfortable clothes could only have been achieved by a tailor. Part dandy, part roughneck, intelligent and well-read, but with little formal education, Simon Childs was also the most poised phobic Wayne had ever seen. Not a stiff white man’s poise, either, but a loose, slouchy, long-limbed, easy kind of poise, so perfect it had to be studied.

But Simon’s signals must have been clear enough last night, thought Wayne: he had a vague recollection of a wild ride in the convertible, top down, of wild laughter and champagne on a balcony, of undressing in a bedroom. But everything after that was a blank. Obviously Childs had slipped a roofie-a Rohypnol capsule-into the champagne.

Fuck you, Simon? Disappointed as Simon was to have been recognized so early in the game, he refused to stoop to Wayne’s level. Simon took pride in not swearing, regardless of the provocation; it was his own private mental discipline, enforced at an early age by a few good beatings from Grandfather Childs, who didn’t swear either, and reinforced when Missy began parroting his occasional epithet.

But Simon did feel rather foolish when he realized that Wayne had called his bluff. As part of his preparation for this latest round of the fear game (the preparation was as important, and nearly as engrossing, as the game itself), Simon had read a book on the making of Hitchcock’s The Birds and learned that it was nearly impossible to get the smaller species, even the more aggressive ones, to attack on command. In the film it was all done with trick shots and chroma-key. And Simon would be the one who’d have to clean up the crap and get them back in their cages afterward.

“Wayne, listen to me-this is important.”

“Fuck you,” repeated Wayne, closing his eye and returning to the Bach. In many ways the sixth suite was the least satisfying to play, perhaps because it had originally been written for some unknown five-stringed instru-

Whap! A hard blow to the temple. Wayne toppled sideways onto the mattress, but made no effort to get up again. Fuck it, he thought as he tuned the imaginary top string back up to A. When you’re practicing an imaginary cello with your hands cuffed behind you, it doesn’t make all that much difference whether you’re sitting up or lying down.

At-teck the gigue, Mr. Summers, don’t snyeak up on it. If Wayne concentrated hard enough, he could almost hear old Brotsky’s Russian-Jewish accent. It’s a dence, Mr. Summers, make it dence!

And so Wayne attacked it, and he made it dance-in his mind his bowing action had never been freer, or more joyous, or, paradoxically enough, more under control. But there was a limit to his ability to maintain his concentration: he lost his place when Simon started kicking him.

“Wayne! Listen up, Wayne-you have to do something for me.”

That got his attention. The chutzpah, as Brotsky would have said. The sheer chutzpah.“What?”

“I need you to write something.”

“Then you’ll leave me alone?” For some reason, finishing the entire cycle of suites had taken on urgency for Wayne.

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“Well, yes. But I’ll make you a deal-if you do as I ask, I promise I’ll make it quick and painless.”

In the end, it was neither quick nor painless, though when Simon originally made his promise, he sincerely believed he was telling the truth. In the fear game, the payoff was fear, not pain-there was no advantage to prolonging Wayne’s suffering.

But while Wayne was writing the note Simon required of him, Simon had a little too much time to think about what a disappointment Wayne had been and to convince himself that he would be entirely justified in making one last attempt to recoup his not inconsiderable investment of time, trouble, and cold, hard cash.

It was all to no avail, however-the smaller birds might as well have been origami sculptures for all the effect they had on the so-called ornithophobe. Simon went so far as to try stuffing one of the canaries into Wayne’s mouth-no response other than that frenzied twitching of the fingers behind the back. Nor would the owl attack a third time, even after the blood started flowing again.

How long the beating lasted, Simon couldn’t have said-when he lost his temper, he lost all sense of time. But for several minutes after Simon collapsed on the bloody mattress, sobbing for breath, Wayne’s fingers continued to twitch. It was like a nightmare, something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story-Simon, who thought of himself as fearless, even managed to generate a little pretend terror by playing around with the notion that those blessed fingers would continue to twitch long after he cut the hands off.

But to Simon’s mixed relief, the twitching stopped of its own accord after a few more minutes. Then it was over, except for the cleanup, which would have to wait until morning. For one thing, Simon was physically exhausted and emotionally drained; for another, despite all the soundproofing he’d installed in the basement, the noise and vibration from the jackhammer still might leak up through the vents and awaken Missy.