On Sunday morning the sun rose into a cloudless blue sky. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Kleinschmidt left her small apartment and cooked herself a light breakfast in Hugh Markarian’s kitchen. She did not prepare breakfast for the mister or little Karen; neither had stirred by the time her son arrived to drive her to church.
While Mrs. Kleinschmidt ate her light breakfast, Peter and Gretchen were devouring a huge one. Gretchen had slept poorly. Peter had not slept at all, and he went to the bathroom during the meal and swallowed a spansule, first chewing a few of the bitter time-release grains of Dexedrine to put them more immediately to work. He had two spansules left, and they would last the day.
Warren slept longer than the others, waking to the sound of Robin amusing herself at Bert’s piano. For a brief moment he thought that it was Bert he was hearing and that something had gone horribly wrong with Bert’s musical ability. He reminded himself that Bert was gone and ultimately guessed the source of the cacophony. Robin had an uncanny ability to strike precisely those chords which made his head vibrate, and his head was vibrating badly enough as it was. He dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water, waited interminably for them to dissolve, and used them to wash down two Excedrins.
A glance out the window told him that it was a beautiful day. He couldn’t imagine why it should be. When his headache began to recede he picked up the telephone and placed a long-distance call.
Linda Robshaw was looking at her own telephone while Warren was using his. She had just awakened for the third time. Twice before she had drawn the bedsheet up over her and burrowed back to sleep. Now she was more completely awake, and it seemed as though she ought to get up and do something. She glanced at the phone and remembered her conversation the day before with Hugh, frowning at the memory of her own part in it. She had been purposely unkind, and in a way that was difficult to understand after the fact. She ought to call him now. There ought to be something she could say.
Ah, but it was easier to remain in bed, easier to close her eyes against the light, easier to make a cocoon of the bedsheet and huddle in the womblike warmth of her own body heat. Soon it would be time to get up, to dress, to eat, to open the shop, time to give away paintings. In the meantime her bed was warm and secure.
Gretchen said, “I wish I understood more of the plan. Oh, you don’t have to tell me. We can’t talk about it now.”
“And it’s easier if you don’t know the details, Gretch.”
“It sounds as though you don’t trust me.”
“You know that’s not it.”
“I know.” She chewed a fingernail. “You and Warren will be with me. That will make it easier, won’t it? I don’t think any power on earth can stop the three of us together.”
“Not as long as we stick together, Gretch.”
“I wonder what’s keeping him.” She went to the window, eased the shade aside a few inches and squinted. “I don’t see his car.”
“He’ll honk the horn when he’s here. You remember the signal.”
“A long, three shorts, and a Jong.”
“That’s it.”
“Dah-dit-dit-dit-dah.” “Right.”
“I wouldn’t forget that, Petey.”
When the horn sounded she took his arm, and he led her out of the room and down the stairs. Warren was parked in front with the motor running. Peter held the door for her and sat beside her. They all rode in front with Gretchen in the middle, and in-obedience to the finger at Warren’s lips they did not speak until they had cleared the outskirts of town.
Then Warren let his features relax in a smile. “We can talk now,” he said. “We’re out of their range.”
“Warren, you look so different. Your hair! And when did you grow that beard?”
He did look very different, so much so that Peter would have had difficulty recognizing him. His wig and neatly trimmed brown beard completely altered the shape of his face. Heavy horn-rimmed glasses replaced his usual rimless ones.
“I am ze master of ze disguise,” he said. With one hand he removed the beard. “You see? A few bits of adhesive tape hold it in place. Here beneath it all is the Warren you know and love, and now” — he fixed the beard in place once again — “we are disguised once more. You’ll excuse me if I don’t remove the wig, I trust.”
“What a perfect disguise. Petey didn’t even mention it. Isn’t it super, baby?”
He agreed that it was super. Warren went on driving, heading south and east, keeping up a running conversation with Gretchen. In a burlesque Viennese accent he told her he was Dr. David Loewenstein, the famous Austrian mystic and psychic medium. Gretchen played along, mimicking his accent, while Peter gratefully let the two of them handle the conversation. It was a pleasure to put his mind in neutral and coast for awhile. It would have been an even greater pleasure not to be in the car at all, and he had tried to find reasons not to go along. Warren could have taken her by himself, he had told himself from time to time. But he had never managed to make himself believe this and had not even attempted to sell it to Warren. No, he had to be there. He just hoped he would be able to handle it.
At least he was past the periodic touches of mania that had afflicted him the previous afternoon. Unwelcome thoughts still came to him, questions occurred that would have troubled him, but he was having less difficulty pushing them aside now. He was growing accustomed to the drug, remembering from earlier times how to use it and how to coast with it. And he was growing similarly accustomed to the role he was playing, managing at once to fit it comfortably while holding a portion of his mind apart from it.
On the edge, of course, there was the specter of what they were doing. This would not go away. On the contrary, it drew closer with every turn of the car’s wheels. He dealt with it by keeping himself strictly in present time and banishing thoughts of the future.
It was all as Gretchen said, a matter of will and concentration.
Warren stopped the car at a gas station. He told attendant to fill the tank, then excused himself to go the lavatory.
First, though, he placed a telephone call. When he’d been connected to the person he had spoken to earlier, he said, “This is Dr. David Loewenstein. I’m about ten minutes from you at the moment. My patient is presently cooperative.” His voice was neither his own nor the comic-opera voice he’d used with Gretchen, but was quite similar in pitch and inflection to the psychiatrist’s.
“Her delusion is being supported and she does not know our true destination,” he went on. “I wanted to make sure you would have restraint available. In light of her history I can’t overemphasize that.”
He listened for a few moments, then rang off. In the washroom he took off the false beard, peeled off the bits of adhesive tape, and fixed the beard properly in place with spirit gum. He swallowed two more Excedrins before returning to the car.
“Well, this is it,” Warren said. He swung the car through the iron gates and along the narrow macadam road. “We have arrived.”
Peter heard the words and looked at his own hands, surprised at their steadiness. Warren had spoken in a voice brimming with cheer and anticipation, but Peter heard them echo in his mind in another tone entirely, one of bitter resignation. Well, this is it. We have arrived.
It was not what he had expected. No guards on the gate, none of the stark gloom he had pictured. The general feel of the place was that of a college campus.
There had been a sign, though, and Gretchen had seen it. Now, as they passed between tall trees, she said, “This is the State Hospital.”
“Of course it is. And ze internationally famous Dr. Loewenstein is expected at any moment. Everything’s right on schedule, Gretchen.”