Crazy for Cornelia (32 page)

His plan was so insane that maybe he really did belong in a psychiatric hospital. He could probably just tell the Sanctuary
doctors what his plan was, and they would look at one another and open their doors to him. Any struggling artist who blew
off Jessica Fernandez was a certifiable lunatic.

He shook his head to try to throw off his fuzzy paralysis and think. If a sane young artist had done something like that by
accident, by some tragic misfire of the brain, he would still have time to call Jessica and beg. He stepped up in his pace
again until he was trotting. She had definitely said “by five o’clock.”

Then he was flat out running, working his legs like pistons, his breath hoarse as he thundered toward his apartment.

It was 4:47 with only four blocks to go.

He rounded the corner of Avenue A at 4:51, zipping around the pinheads and junkies. His arms didn’t pump anymore, they flailed
around in front of him so people moved away as he sprinted toward his building.

He counted on his building’s front door still being broken, and it was. He tore into it at ramming speed, rehearsing his apology
to Jessica, a story about some new virus that invaded the brain and shut it down for only twenty-four hours, then went away.

At 4:57, he was clattering up his staircase with three glorious minutes to spare.

Then he saw the envelope sticking out of his mailbox. It looked expensive and tasteful, even from a distance.

He stopped.

Slowly, he started back down the stairs and plucked it out of his box. The address was handwritten. But there was no stamp,
and no postmark.

Somebody must have delivered it by hand. And recently, because it hadn’t been stolen yet.

He opened the envelope carefully and extracted the note. The paper had the texture of linen napkins. Under the embossed initials
“CJL,” it read:

Dear Kevin

I feel badly that I could not properly say goodbye to you
.

Since it is my sad belief that we are unlikely to see each other soon, I wanted to thank you for the world we shared for thirty-two
and one half hours
.

I’m sorry that I must put down my pen now, but my medication makes me quite sleepy and I feel another nap coming on
.

Love
,
Cornelia

Kevin read the letter standing in the dark foyer of his building. Walking upstairs to his apartment, he read it six more
times. When he finally noticed his watch again, it was 5:26.

But he didn’t care.

“And when did your brother first present these symptoms, Ms. Doyle?”

The psychiatrist had straight silvery hair and a winter half-tan, probably from hopping to islands and ski resorts. His suit
looked expensively rumpled, to signal that he was no coarse Wall Street moneychanger, but a keeper of the intellectual torch
passed by Freud and Jung.

For Kevin’s purpose, Dr. Blackwell had the perfect combination of impeccable credentials and bad judgment. He had clout not
only to refer him to the Sanctuary, but to bump him up to the front of the waiting list. Philip Grace had identified him.
But Philip also had his doubts about Kevin’s plan.

“Problem is, you’re nobody,” the reporter summed it up.

“Then maybe I’ll have to be somebody else,” Kevin decided.

Now he sat mute in a chair beside Marne, dressed primly in a blue suit with her hair neatly combed. She folded her hands in
her lap and planted both feet on the floor. Kevin thought of her as a pretty pilgrim amid the pre-Columbian sculptures of
fertility goddesses with jutting breasts that cluttered Blackwell’s office. Marne kept her mouth shut, for the most part,
exactly as Kevin had begged her. She looked up at Dr. Blackwell from under her bangs, and they discussed Kevin as though he
had left the room.

“He’s been a little flaky all his life, Doctor, but he got worse after the accident. He got hit on the head, you know.”

“Yes. I examined him, and I looked at his neurological tests from the hospital. He seems fine physically, Ms. Doyle, but I’m
afraid that I see a red light here.”

“Excuse me?”

“A red light signals a need to stop. In your brother’s case, to take time out from his life and get help.”

She flashed Kevin a “Jackpot” kind of look. “Stop how?”

“I believe that he would benefit from in-patient care. Perhaps at Manhattan Hill Hospital…”

“Doctor,” Marne’s eyes burned with righteous fire. “Is that
absolutely
the best private hospital in the area for… what Kevin has?”

“Hmmm.” Dr. Blackwell pondered that. “Actually I happen to be on the board of the Sanctuary, a hospital in northern Westchester
County…”

Marne’s eyes flicked at Kevin. Philip Grace had already turned up that little morsel for them.

“It’s considered the premier facility on the East Coast. In your brother’s case, there’s a very interesting pattern of delusion.
Quite fascinating, really, from a psychiatric standpoint.” Dr. Blackwell glanced at a copy of
The New England Journal of Medicine
on his desk. He licked his lips, as though contemplating how his name would look on the cover.

“I’ll recommend an open-ended inpatient program there, although I’m afraid that it also would preclude working at his job
of…” he struggled to recall.

“Doorman.”

“Yes, doorman. Unless, of course, he works in the Roman Catacombs.” The doctor’s body jiggled a little, laughing to himself.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, nothing. But my office has checked your brother’s health plan, an excellent one, and I would urge you to let him take
a thirty-day observation at the Sanctuary. It could be a very pleasant break for him. No responsibilities except to get well.”

Marne put on a nearly over-the-top show of a Ping-Pong match going on in her head, working her fingers in a fret. “I just
don’t know what we’re supposed to do with him now. I can’t get Kevin into a place like that, with waiting lists and all.”

She pouted and crossed her buffed legs.

He smiled charmingly. “I don’t believe in waiting lists for my patients, Ms. Doyle. I can get him in this evening, if you
can get him packed.”

She frowned deeply. “So soon? I don’t have transportation.”

“Oh, I’ll put it on his plan.”

K
evin examined the hi-fi and air conditioning controls above his seat in the stretch Lincoln Town Car. He had never ridden
in a limousine before.

Heading north, he watched the four-acre zoning part of Westchester County whip by at night, outlines of mansions on vast stretches
of woodland. It seemed like a time warp. Just half an hour before, the limousine had sped through the South Bronx, like fire-bombed
ruins of World War II he’d seen on the History Channel.

The driver, Majik, wore a black suit and white turban. A six-pointed brass crown had been attached to the dashboard. Close
to Kevin, a brass statue of a multi-armed Hindu goddess sat glued to the plastic-walnut bar.

A dark-skinned man with a neatly trimmed black beard, Majik tried more than once to engage Kevin in conversation. But Kevin
had already resolved to say as little as possible.

“What is your occupation?” Majik asked twice.

Oh, well. “I was an officer.”

“Ah! A military man,” Majik pronounced it the British way. “What branch of the service?”

“The Praetorian Guard.”

“I am not familiar with this branch.” In the rearview mirror Majik’s dark eyebrows rose. “Where are you stationed?”

“In Rome.”

“Of course, you guard the Pope in the Vatican.” Majik spun his head around. “Such a coincidence! My family’s caste is Rajput.
For centuries we were India’s warriors. Oh, yes, my grandfather drove the official Rolls-Royce for Lord Mountbatten.”

Kevin listened to Majik but followed a wire mesh fence along the road. Far behind it, he could make out a great stone building.

Majik turned off at an exit, spinning gravel under the tires.

“This… is the Sanctuary,” Majik said with reverence.

No signs identified the hospital. Kevin could only see, on the high wire fence, a sign posted “Danger. High Voltage. No Trespassing.”
The limousine stopped at an unmarked guardhouse where uniformed security guards peered in the car.

Majik handed one of the guards an envelope. Kevin’s admissions note from Dr. Blackwell. As they waited, another limousine
passed in the other direction. It was a shiny new stretch Mercedes with blackened windows that roared off onto the unlit country
road.

“Take him to Admissions,” the guard told Majik.

Kevin scanned the property, not brightly lit like a penitentiary, but with discreet security lights planted just where they
were needed. He counted two pairs of security guards patrolling the property in golf carts.

Philip Grace had told him that the Sanctuary was the “Canyon Ranch of psychiatric hospitals.” It sure didn’t look like any
ranch. Despite the large grounds, the space felt closed in. Kevin saw a footpath resembling a dog track, open and circular
with no privacy. Kevin thought of Cornelia, so small and helpless. If she tried to escape from here, she’d be manhandled by
security men who probably knew the body’s pressure points and smiled when they used them.

How could her family treat her this way?

Majik pulled onto a twisting driveway. Lumpy speed bumps jolted the limousine, threatening to loosen the Hindu goddess from
her perch.

They reached the main house, a dark gray stone mansion with elegant French windows and shutters. But the double doors looked
solid
as a dungeon’s, and the windows displayed the same kind of wrought iron security bars that covered the street-floor windows
at 840 Fifth Avenue. Behind their wrought iron, the rich started out eccentric and went crazy.

A male aide dressed in white with a very blond crew cut answered the doorbell. He took Dr. Blackwell’s note and gave Kevin
a doorman’s forced smile.

“Hi, Mr. Doyle, I’m Tim. I’ll take you from here.”

The black Mercedes stretch limousine that had passed Majik’s smelled of old wood and new leather. Chester slumped into the
plump, biscuity rear seat next to a console full of Sony, not Koi, components. Tucker used the space to spread his legs just
as Kevin had in the Lincoln, while he made Chester a drink from the mini-bar.

“She’s in good hands,” Tucker told him. “We can visit her again next week.”

Chester nodded, looking idly out the window.

“We can probably skip that family therapy stuff,” Tucker told him smoothly. “It’s just bad for everyone’s morale. The best
thing we can do now is focus on the wedding plans. I can get the invitations sent out this week for February 14. A Saturday
wedding right before our board meeting the end of next week.”

“Jumping the gun, aren’t we?” Chester took the drink from him. “She only agreed to an engagement.”

“We still need to be practical,” Tucker said, and Chester noted that even he sounded tired. They had all made such an effort
to get through the visit. “She can always call it off, but the announcement is the important part. It’s what the Kois think
that counts.”

Chester sighed. “Keep it very small. Just a ceremony and reception at the apartment.”

“Good idea.” Tucker smiled. “We’ll cut it down to four hundred people. We don’t want to put too much stress on Cornelia.”

We already have, Chester thought.

“I’m doing this for you,” she had whispered to him at the hospital, nodding in Tucker’s direction. “All of it.”

He’d felt the awful anvil of shame and doubt settling in his chest
again. This hospitalization could be a horrible mistake. He wondered what Elizabeth would have thought about it.

Tucker played with the laptop.

“The Kois are buying up eighteen thousand shares a day now. Here’s an odd lot.” Tucker squinted, then his face broke into
a big appreciative grin. “Ha! It’s the same number as the Chinese Year of the Rat. He’s got some stones, old man Koi.”

Chester slunk even lower into the pillowy leather of his plush rear seat.

“We should invite the Kois,” Tucker suggested. “It’ll be a hoot.”

Chester felt the anvil sink into his stomach. How could Tucker keep a sense of play about this catastrophe?

Only a few minutes inside the heavy doors, Kevin felt a wave of class anxiety. He could handle a snake pit. This place came
at him from a different angle entirely.

The admissions area looked like an expensive hotel lobby. An antique desk had an inkwell perched on top. An inkwell? A discreet
sign read “Concierge.” What did that mean? Some kind of specialist who screened for malingerers?

The cheery aide named Tim led him to a chair beside the desk. Then a woman appeared in a tailored black suit with blond-gray
hair and chin angled up. She sat down and gave him an X-ray look. It lingered over his battered clothes and, he supposed,
working-class face. She frowned as she read the letter from Dr. Blackwell, and asked briskly to see Kevin’s health plan.

He set his Platinum Health Care card on the desk. She tapped out numbers on her desktop computer, and looked entranced. Then
her face rearranged itself from guard dog to hostess mode.

“Well, Mr. Doyle,” she flashed a sunny, approving smile. “It’s a pleasure to have you with us.”

She dipped a gold fountain pen into the inkwell and scratched a notation on his admission form, “Code Green.” He hadn’t heard
about this code at Bellevue, or read about it anywhere in his library research. He should find out what it meant.

“Tim will see you to your room. You’ll spend your first night here in Reception. Tomorrow you’ll begin your tests, and you’ll
be assigned
to a wing.” She didn’t say
ward
, but
wing
. “I hope you enjoy a beneficial stay with us.”

Tim picked up Kevin’s cheap duffel bag and invited him to walk ahead, down a jade-carpeted corridor off the lobby.

“Room 10. This will be yours for the night,” Tim told Kevin. He used a plastic key that punched up a green light over the
door latch to admit them. Tim opened his bag and began to unpack it, but stopped when he examined Kevin’s clothing. He pushed
the grungy clothes back in.