Placebo (4 page)

5:28 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time

I'm anxious to get to the center, and it's not far, only ten minutes or so.

As we pass through Pine Lake, I realize it's exactly like I remember it: the Cascade Mountains rising majestically from the horizon with Mt. Hood dominating the range, creating a picturesque backdrop to the town that the demise of logging in the region had turned into a virtual ghost town.

I haven't been here in over fifteen years, but when I was a boy, I used to gaze at Mt. Hood every day on my way to school to see if it had snow on it. Usually there were a few days a year when the snow on the very top would disappear. One year, though, when I was in sixth grade, the snow stayed up there all summer.

Tapping the brakes, I slow down and guide the car off the highway and onto the winding mountain road that leads toward the Lawson Research Center's entrance.

I can still hear my dad talking about how the year-round snow cover was going to help the tourists stay longer. Good for the economy, the town. Good for the ski shop he ran.

That was two months before my mom left us and moved to Seattle,
where I only saw her twice before she remarried and left for France with her new husband.

As a kid I thought that no matter how much the snow might've helped the local economy, it didn't help us, and in my childhood naïveté, I blamed the snow for what happened to my family, as if it were some sort of convoluted cause and effect. It's funny what you associate together when you're young, things that aren't related at all but that seem to be somehow interconnected.

I'd dabbled in magic before that, but that was the year I started taking it seriously. In the hope of somehow making my mother reappear.

“Jevin?” Charlene's voice draws me back to the moment. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry, I was . . . Yeah, I'm fine.”

“I was saying, we're almost there. The turnoff is in a quarter mile.”

“Right.” A stillness passes between us. For some reason I feel the need to explain myself. “I was just remembering the last time I was here. As a kid.”

“Good memories or bad ones?”

“A little of both.”

I make the turn.

The newly paved access road winds through the towering pines of the old-growth forest. A large sign sits at the entrance, painted with both the name of the center and a symbol of a rather rotund woman in the lotus position with lines that make me think of electric sparks emanating from her head. I can't decide if it looks more like she's morphing into a porcupine or getting electrocuted while meditating.

We park and grab our bags from the back of the car.

Charlene closes the trunk. “I've been thinking a lot about this study, Jevin, wondering if it might be legit. I mean, this isn't the first research in mind-to-mind communication.”

We haven't been on the same page with this project since I first proposed that we debunk the research. “True. But that's over the last seventy years, and with every year that passes, you have a more discern
ible decline effect: with more stringent testing procedures, the results are less and less conclus—”

“Conclusive, yes, I know, but this one was replicated nearly four dozen times with hundreds of subjects. I just don't see how they might have faked it.”

“Nonrandom timing on the video-image generation, selective reporting, coached participants, confirmation bias, or something to do with the movement or focusing of the camera. It could be something as simple as switching the equipment or using a computer to mimic the sender's responses and create the atypical results before the external review of the findings. We'll find out.”

Silence.

We head toward the main building. She looks at me. “Your dad still in the area?”

“My dad?”

“Yes . . . Is he still in the area?”

“He is.”

“I was wondering . . . ?”

“He's still here.”

“Okay.”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering if you might want to see him.”

“You were wondering . . .”

“Go over to his place and—”

“Probably not a good idea. And I have to say, this conversation is starting to sound like a David Mamet script.” As a fellow filmophile, I figured she would know what I was talking about.

“A script? You think? By Mamet?”

“Would you stop already.”

She smiles.

Two elegant Japanese rock gardens with Native American symbols engraved in sandstone sculptures lie to our left. They look like they might've been more at home in New Mexico than here in Oregon.

I've never explained to Charlene why I ended up living with my grandmother the last four years I was in Pine Lake, and this doesn't feel like the right time to get into all of that.

“There should be time after the study,” she offers.

A pause. “We'll see.”

I imagine she must know this is a way of saying no without actually saying it.

“Right. Okay.”

The path leads to a surprisingly modern building with solar panels, a garden to the south, and a fountain that's gurgling from the top of a three-dimensional sculpted peace sign. Beside the office door is another sign of the overweight, spiky-haired porcupine lady.

I open the door.

Gentle sitar music, along with the fragrant scent of a flowery incense, welcomes us as we enter the building.

The young woman at the counter has blonde dreadlocks dangling across her shoulders, a loose-fitting Indian shirt, an indiscernible number of bead necklaces, and a disarming smile. “Welcome to the Lawson Research Center. I'm Serenity.”

I can't imagine that it's her real name, and despite myself, I end up trying to think of a cool New Age nickname for myself to help me fit in.

In lieu of a handshake, Serenity presses her palms together in front of her chest in a posture of prayer and gives me and Charlene a small, reverent bow from behind the check-in counter. I see that she has intricate tattoos on the back of her hands. Symbols from nearly every religion I'm aware of, and some that I am obviously not.

Charlene and I return the gesture.

“Is this your first visit to the LRC?” Serenity's voice is tiny and melodic. Birdlike.

I nod. “Yes. We're here for the study with Dr. Tanbyrn.”

“Of course.”

She glances at a sheet of paper taped to her desk, reminding me of a flight attendant referring to note cards on her first attempt at
solo-announcing the preflight instructions. An open journal with a half-finished entry lies beside the cheat sheet. Scribbles fill the margin of the journal. “And you are?”

Charlene takes my hand and leans close to me as she tells Serenity the aliases we used when we sent in the video to apply for the study: “Brent Berlin and Jennie Reynolds.”

“We prefer Wolverine and Petunia,” I tell Serenity.

Charlene looks at me questioningly.

I shrug.

Our New Age nicknames.

“I'm Wolverine,” Charlene explains.

“Actually, I—”

“He's Petunia.”

“That's nice.” Serenity nods understandingly. “Yes, of course.”

Charlene winks at me. “Right, dear?” There's no way I'm going to be Petunia for the rest of our stay, but arguing in front of Serenity doesn't seem like the loving thing to do, so I let it drop. I'll reaffirm my identity as Wolverine later.

“Sure,” I mutter. “Dear.”

Serenity consults her notes again. For walk-around and street magic, you need to be able to read other people's handwriting upside down and backward so that when you use mirrors you can decipher what they've written on cards you're not supposed to see. In time I got pretty good at it, and right now that skill was coming in handy.

“I think you'll find our campus inviting and restful. A place to quiet your thoughts, still your spirits, and bring a more harmonic centeredness to your inner being and to your relationship with each other.” The words are obviously scripted, but she makes them sound authentic, like she genuinely means them, and I like that about her.

“Thank you, that sounds nice,” I tell her honestly.

Charlene thanks her as well, then mentions something about how we'd been so looking forward to this, but I'm giving my attention to the lobby, taking in the simple, rustic setting that also carries an air of
high-end architectural design. Outside the window lies a porch with elegant stonework and round porch tables with umbrellas spreading above them like protective canvas wings. I imagine the metal is recycled, that the canvas is organic and somehow both waterproof and biodegradable.

Charlene is still holding my hand, which is okay by me.

“They're serving in the dining hall until six, if you haven't eaten yet,” Serenity tells us. I want to get settled, so I'm thankful Charlene and I grabbed a bite on the way here. “Breakfast is in the morning, six to eight. Dr. Tanbyrn will meet you at nine at the Prana building.”

Charlene looks at her curiously. “I'm sorry—the piranha building?”

“Prana.” Serenity seems surprised that Charlene doesn't know the word. “The life force. The life-sustaining force. Hindu.”

“Right.”

Charlene lets go of my hand.

Serenity holds out a map uncertainly. “I'm sorry, did you say you've been here before?”

“No.” It's a dual-purpose answer—I hadn't said that, and we haven't been here. I accept the map from her.

Serenity settles back into her script: “There's a 7:00 yoga class tonight that you're welcome to attend, all at your discretion, of course. Here at the Lawson Research Center, we care more about your experience than your attendance at any of our quality scheduled events.”

She hands Charlene a schedule. “We want this to be a place apart from the normal distractions of daily life. Too many people are tethered to technology, and it gives them a false sense of connection with other sojourners but splinters their attention from the most vital relationships, those with the people around them, and all too often it keeps them from being present in the moment.”

Serenity makes it through all of that in one breath, which I find pretty impressive.

“So”—now she looks nervous—“Wolverine, Petunia, I will need to ask you not to use your mobile phones or other electronic comput
erized devices here on our campus. It's our policy.” She sounds like she's apologizing.

Fionna and her kids had researched this place extensively, and Serenity's request comes as no surprise. We don't have any intention of forsaking our electronic devices during our stay, but Charlene fishes through her purse, produces her phone. Shuts it off. “Of course.”

I turn off my cell as well. I wonder what the reception up here in the mountains will be like anyway.

Serenity directs us to our cabin, wishes us well, and prayer-gesture bows to us again. We reply in kind.

As we're walking down the path toward the cabin, Charlene shakes her head. “Wolverine and Petunia?”

“I was trying to fit in. And I'm supposed to be Wolverine.”

“I kind of like you being Petunia.”

“I'll bet you do.”

We walk in silence until I make my suggestion for the evening's plans. “Tonight, instead of going to yoga, I think we should have a little look around the research center.”

“Jevin Banks, you read my thoughts.”

“Well, if I can actually do that, tomorrow's test is going to be a piece of cake.”

I'm toting the bags, so when we reach the porch Charlene opens the cabin door and we step inside.

The cabin is nothing special. No TV. No telephone. A kitchenette, a small living area, a bathroom. A bedroom with a king-sized bed lies at the end of a short hall.

Ah, that was something I hadn't thought through very well. One bed.

I consider going back to ask Serenity for a cabin with two beds, but I doubt that would help Charlene and me look like a couple who's deeply in love. I catch myself eyeing the couch to see if it'll be big enough for me.

The autumnal smell of wood smoke permeates the air, although it must be from somewhere else since there's no woodstove or fireplace in the cabin.

A sweep of the room with Xavier's latest gadget—a pen-sized radio frequency detector—tells us there aren't any bugs and that Charlene and I will be able to talk freely while we're in the room. It's probably an unnecessary precaution, but in Xavier's mind you can never be too careful about these things.

It doesn't take us long to put our things away, and as Charlene is closing the dresser drawer, she turns to me. “So you're thinking wait till it gets dark? Go check out the Faraday cage?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you propose we get into the building?”

I hold up a second hotel-style key card in addition to the one to our cabin.

“How did you get that?”

“At the front desk while you were talking with Serenity.”

“You . . . how?”

“The key card coder. Serenity had a journal open and stopped writing in midsentence when we arrived. The slant, baseline, and connecting strokes of the passcode she'd written in the margins matched those on the sheet of paper containing her orientation notes.”

“And you swiped the key without either of us noticing?”

“Yes.”

She shakes her head. “You really are good, Petunia.”

“Wolverine.”

“Well, let's hope you're right about the code.”

“We'll find out soon enough.”

“As soon as it gets dark?”

“Exactly.”

I pull out the two thick volumes that Dr. William Tanbyrn wrote—one before and one after his interest shifted from theoretical quantum physics to consciousness and its relationship to quantum entanglement. The words on the back of the second book touted:

Dr. William Tanbyrn, who received a Nobel Prize in physics for his contribution in the development of mechanisms for studying the existence of loop quantum gravity, has embarked on a daring new field of study—the human mind and its interaction with the universe around us.

As I sit on the couch, Charlene leans close. “Didn't quite finish them yet, huh?” I can smell her perfume. I hadn't noticed it so much earlier in the car, but it's nice. A gentle touch of lavender.

“Barely got started.” I'd been hoping to get through the books before our meeting this week with Dr. Tanbyrn, but he wasn't the most
concise author I'd ever read, and I'd found the two five-hundred-page tomes a bit hard to decipher. “They're pretty dense.”

“Well, tell me one thing you've learned so far.”

“Not even quantum physicists understand quantum physics.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, and something else I found interesting: when electrons jump from one level in orbit around the nucleus to another, they don't travel through the space between the rings, they just appear at the next ring.”

“What do you mean? Like teleporting? ‘Beam me up, Scotty'? That sort of thing?”

“That's one way to put it.”

“Where do they go?”

“No one knows.”

“Sounds like science fiction to me.”

“Me too. Except it's reality.”

“Huh.” She sounds more interested now. Peers over my shoulder as if she's going to stay for a while.

Her perfume really is nice.

I try to redirect my attention from her to the books.

“Let me read you a quote.” I flip through the pages, but it takes me awhile to find the one I'm looking for. “Okay. Here: ‘Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.'”

She considers that for a moment. “Sure. Even solid objects are mostly space, the electron orbiting the nucleus. Who wrote that? Dr. Tanbyrn?”

“Not quite. A little bit before his time.”

“Einstein?”

“Democritus. He died in 370 BC.”

“That's amazing.”

I hand her one of the books. “Here. You can read this one if you want. I highlighted all the good stuff. Up to chapter 9.”

But she straightens up. “Actually, I was thinking I'd take a quick shower, freshen up. It was a long day in the car.”

“Ah, yes. Well, maybe later.”

She pats my shoulder. “I'll let you do all the heavy lifting. You can fill me in when you're done.”

Then she leaves me alone to my reading, and I settle in with my pen, highlighter, and the shorter, more recent of the two textbooks, and flip to the chapter on quantum entanglement and theories about the results of a meta-analysis of studies on identical twins. As I do, I can't help but think of Drew and Tony, who, just like so many identical twins, seemed to communicate with each other in unexplainable ways—finishing each other's sentences, making up words that the other boy seemed to instinctively know the meaning of, even, at times, giving the impression that they knew what each other was thinking.

As I begin to read, the memory of my two sons pinches my heart, and I can't help but wonder if this research will help me to understand them better or just make me miss them all the more.

Riah Colette showed her ID to the security guard in the RixoTray Pharmaceuticals corporate headquarters' lobby, took the elevator to the top floor, and entered the suite where her paramour worked in his corner office.

Whenever Cyrus was in his office—no matter what time of day—his secretary, Caitlyn Vaughn, would be stationed at the reception desk out front. Riah nodded to her, and the young woman gave her a half-frown but waved her through.

Since Cyrus was a married man, he'd wanted to avoid his place from the beginning of their relationship, and Riah never let him come to her apartment, so that limited their choices. Sometimes they would slip off to a hotel room, but more often than not they stayed here in his office.

Riah had the sense that the twenty-something redhead was jealous of her liaisons with her boss, and she wondered how many times Caitlyn had leaned close to the door to listen to the sounds coming from inside the office during her visits. It was something to think about. Perhaps she would ask her about it one of these days.

Quietly, Riah gave the door a light one-knuckle knock, just enough to let Cyrus know someone was there, but then entered before he had a chance to call her in.

He was on the phone, and she could tell he was taken aback by her arrival, but he quickly put on a smile and signaled to her that he would be with her in a moment, then gestured toward a chair:
Have a seat.

She chose not to, but instead angled toward the window.

Impeccably dressed in a suit that cost more than most people's entire wardrobes, Cyrus looked sharp, powerful, confident. But also stern. Any gentleness he might've tried to portray was betrayed by his eyes, which were like two steel balls, blank and emotionless. Two miniature shot puts embedded in his head. Riah had seen him enjoy himself, oh yes, but had never seen him happy, not really. And that intrigued her. Because she couldn't remember a time when she'd been happy either.

He let his gaze drift from her face and slide down her body, along the curves of her dress, and she didn't discourage it. She felt no shame in using her looks and figure in her research into human nature, into attraction, into love. She kept in shape for this, and at thirty-four she'd been told that she was still striking, and she was used to eyes following her wherever she went.

Long ago, Riah had learned that sex was the way to please men. And when they're pleased they trust you, and when they trust you they share their secrets with you. As she'd overheard a female co-worker say one time, “If you can't tell someone your secrets, you make intimacy off-limits.”

So, it seems, sharing secrets leads to intimacy.

Riah wasn't sure yet if intimacy would lead to the one thing she wanted to feel most—love—but she held out hope that in time it would.

She knew Cyrus's office well: the wide windows overlooking central Philly, his framed degrees and awards hanging prominently on the walls, bookshelves that were neatly lined with medical textbooks
and packed with paraphernalia from his travels around the world. In the center of the room sat his imposing mahogany desk that she and Cyrus would clear off sometimes when they decided not to use the leather couch in the corner.

And of course, at the far side of the room, the two aquariums: one filled with buzzing emerald jewel wasps, the other with inch-and-a-half-long cockroaches. It was a curious thing. Riah had asked him about that, but he'd never explained why he kept them.

She went to the shelf and picked up the voodoo—or, more accurately,
vodou
—doll that he'd brought back from his medical humanitarian visit to Haiti after the earthquake. In one sense, it was oddly appropriate that he'd brought it here to Philly. After all, there was a large Haitian population in the city, and some people said there were between five hundred and one thousand houses where people practiced voodoo in their basements. With estimates of twenty to fifty people participating in the services, that meant there might be as many as 50,000 serious voodoo worshipers in Philadelphia, putting it on par with Miami and even New Orleans.

The cloth doll had a painted-on face with pin marks through the eyes and in the groin area. Most of Cyrus's visitors found the doll disturbing, and he seemed to enjoy using it as a conversation piece and a chance to offhandedly mention his volunteer work in developing countries. Personally, Riah wasn't bothered by the doll, just wondered who, if anyone, the pins had been intended to harm.

Holding the doll, she stood beside the window and looked at central Philadelphia's streets spreading out before her like spokes from a wheel. She'd always thought that there were too many one-way streets in downtown Philly, probably caused by the disrupted traffic patterns around the monolithic city hall.

A proud city.

The city of the nation's birth.

And, historically, a good place to base a medical center or a pharmaceutical firm.

While studying medicine at Drexel, she'd learned that Philadelphia was the home of the first public hospital in 1751, the first school of pharmacy in 1812, the first private biomedical research institute in 1892.

In addition, the greater Philadelphia area was the home of eleven other pharmaceutical firms' corporate headquarters. RixoTray, though the smallest of the twelve, actually had the second-highest profit margin. Due, in large part, to having Dr. Cyrus Arlington at the helm.

Riah stared out the window at Philadelphia's nighttime skyline while she waited for Cyrus to finish his call. Tonight she would ask him for the first time to come over to her place after work, and when they got there she would see how he responded to the surprises she had waiting for him.

Perhaps it would lead to love, she wasn't sure, but if nothing else, seeing his reaction would give her more information on how men respond to shared secrets.