Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy) (35 page)

“What are you reading?” Cassandra said. “It’s gotta be more interesting than this stuff.”

“A collection of quotes from Carl Jung,” Dani said. “He was a Swiss psychiatrist.”

“I know you think I’m just a silly actress, but I know who Carl Jung was,” Cassandra said.

Dani put her book down. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. Will you accept my apology?”

“I will,” she said. “I could also name a dozen actresses who, if you asked them, ‘Who was Carl Jung?’ would probably say, ‘The same guy before he was Carl Old.’ You’re a psychiatrist, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Tommy when I spoke to you in the parking lot?”

“I didn’t think it would matter to you.”

“It was kind of like lying to me.”

“You’re right.”

“And why did you tell me there was a party? Tommy told me it was you who sent the invitation, not him. That was a lie too.”

“It was,” Dani said. “I’m sorry. I’m not handling this very well.”

She recalled Charlie’s admonition: “
How you handle it will make all the difference
.” At the time she’d sent Cassandra the e-mail, Dani had convinced herself that she was confronting the situation head-on and acting with integrity. She could see now that she’d lied and she’d gotten someone involved who might not be prepared for what was ahead.

“I guess I was just hoping we could all have a nice little chat and find out what’s going on,” she said.

“Well, we’ve certainly had that,” Cassandra said. “One minute I’m looking forward to a nice holiday in the country, and the next minute I’m fighting a vast satanic conspiracy to destroy the earth. I’ve seen that movie. I was
in
that movie. But this isn’t a movie and it isn’t funny.”

“No,” Dani said. “It isn’t. Tommy says he must have pocket-dialed you. He says he never told you, ‘You have a home in me.’”

“If Tommy says he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” Cassandra said. “He’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.”

“You can’t pocket-dial an entire text message,” Dani said.

“Well, then one of these Satan’s people must have done it,” Cassandra said. “With all the weird things you’ve all been talking about tonight, a mysterious text message doesn’t seem so implausible, does it?”

They looked at each other for a moment, wondering which way the conversation was going to turn. Were they going to be friends or enemies?

Cassandra smiled. “As long as we’re being honest,” she said, “I was always jealous of you.”

Dani guffawed. “Are you kidding?
You
jealous of
me
? That’s the most ridiculous . . .”

But she could see Cassandra wasn’t joking.

“I find that hard to believe,” Dani said, “coming from ‘one of the most intensely beautiful actresses on the American screen,’ as I recall reading in
Entertainment Weekly
.”

“I don’t ordinarily read anything written about myself,” Cassandra said. “Which sounds like I’m so above it all, but I’m so not. The good stuff is just silly, but the bad stuff
kills
me. I am
not
thick-skinned. Even when there’s a mostly positive article, it might have one bad little sentence like, ‘Morton was miscast in the part and yet . . .’ I never finish the sentence to see what the ‘and yet’ is because I’m too upset. If people who dream of
being famous only knew how awful it is to pick up a magazine or a newspaper and see where someone . . . I mean, I know it’s part of the deal. Just don’t be jealous of me. Pretty girls in Hollywood—well, you know all the clichés. And I’ll be completely honest with you—you know what’s going to happen in ten years to pretty girls in Hollywood?”

“What?”

“Unemployment,” Cassandra said. “One hundred percent, because in ten years you won’t be able to tell the difference between a real woman and CGI, and computer-generated women will be prettier and they won’t grow old or gain weight or ask to be paid what they’re worth.” She set her magazine on the desk. “I was jealous of you because you were the one who got away. He was too much of a gentleman to talk about you, but I knew what you meant to him.”

“You didn’t think he was trying to get back with you when he sent you the text message?”

“Assuming he sent it,” Cassandra said, “which I don’t think is the case. But at the time that I thought he had sent it, no. Not at all. Do you want to know what he said when we broke up?”

“I don’t know,” Dani said. “Do I?”

“He said, ‘Cass, the thing that was there inside of you, that I fell in love with, will always be there, and I will always love that part of you, because that was the piece of the puzzle where we interlocked. But you know, there’s a lot more than two pieces to a puzzle, and the rest of them don’t fit. That doesn’t make them good or bad pieces. They just don’t fit.’”

“Wasn’t that a line you used in your last movie?” Dani said.

“It was,” Cassandra said. “I stole it from Tommy. But when he said it, I knew how I’d been trying to force the pieces to fit, like when you’re doing a picture puzzle and you try to jam it in and hit it with a hammer and then pretend the whole thing works. But
you
fit him. I knew that then, and I can see that now.”

“Wow,” Dani said. “You really are America’s sweetheart.”

“Oh no, I’m not,” Cassandra said. “I’m a BC. Basket Case. Some people fake their own deaths. I just learned at an early age how to fake my own life.”

“There’s a kind of therapy based on that idea,” Dani said. “It’s called behavioral modification. Sort of like the longer you act normal, the closer you get to being normal. Fake it till you make it.”

“I must have missed that one,” Cassandra said. “I’ve tried all the others. Being with Tommy put me on the right track in so many ways. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still jealous, seeing the way he looks at you. I wanted that to be me, but it’s not and it never will be.”

“Knowing him has put me on the right track too.”

“Let’s bake the boys cookies,” Cassandra said. “Or is that too wholesome? Darn. I’ve been trying to be edgier.”

“That’s not the problem,” Dani said. “I’m not exactly handy in the kitchen.”

“The kitchen!” Cassandra exclaimed. “See? I
knew
you’d know the best place to make cookies.”

“What kind?”

“Depends on what we can find in the cupboards,” Cassandra said. “I have an app on my phone where you put in the ingredients and it tells you what you can make.”

31.

Tommy and Quinn took the second watch. As they changed shifts, the women mentioned that there was a plate of cookies on the counter. When they’d left, Tommy took a bite of one.

“What kind are they?” Quinn asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tommy said. “It’s like a fried oatmeal patty with either Craisins or Gummi Bears in it.”

“Is it good?”

“
Good
isn’t the word I’d use.”

“What is?”

“Words fail me. Maybe chewy. What are you looking for?”

Quinn had asked if he might plug in his laptop because he wanted to follow up on some of the research he’d been doing. The computer screen in front of him was a jumble of numbers.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It would certainly expedite things if I did.”

“Well, in that case, what aren’t you looking for?” Tommy said. “Maybe that would narrow it down.”

“Well, I’m not looking for miracles,” Quinn said. “I just don’t understand something about Provivilan. We know Linz is making it. We know Bauer is a graduate of St. Adrian’s, and we know his name is on Dani’s list, but I can’t figure out how the drug counter-indicates, which is a soft way
of saying it ought to be the same poison Amos was taking, because that would make sense, but it’s not. I heard a colleague call it ‘world peace in a bottle.’”

“Can you get other samples to test?”

“Don’t need other samples,” Quinn said. “We broke it down. Which I suppose is something I should have done when I started taking it, but I had no reason to suspect.”

“Wait a minute,” Tommy said. “You’re taking it?”

Quinn looked up from his laptop. “I am. It’s a dirty little secret among big pharm workers. When we discover a drug that works, we sometimes cadge a sample or two for ourselves.”

“Your friend Illena didn’t get it for you?”

“She helped. Please don’t tell Dani.”

“I think she knows about Illena,” Tommy said.

“No—don’t tell her I’m taking Provivilan. I once spouted off, back when I thought I knew everything, how the only thing keeping half the known world from slaughtering the other half is the pharmaceutical industry. I’d look like a hypocrite if she knew.”

“Okay,” Tommy said. “But why are you taking it? Or is that too personal?”

“It is,” Quinn said. “But I can’t see why one wouldn’t. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing a full-grown human being has to fear from this drug. I would say, from personal experience, it could be the wonder drug they say it is.”

“I thought it was developed to treat autistic kids,” Tommy said.

“Ten years ago, when the research and the development work first started, yes, that was true,” Quinn explained. “But it’s often the case that a drug developed for one purpose can serve another. They just learned that a fairly common sleeping pill can rouse patients from their comas who were believed to be brain-dead. No one would have thought. And if Provivilan can help adults, Linz is going to sell a lot more of it than if it just helped
autistic kids. Look at me. Living proof. Haven’t you noticed how full of good cheer I am?”

“I’ve seen you trying, but it comes off a little phony. No offense.”

“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “You can’t hurt my feelings. I’m taking the feel-good wonder drug, remember?”

“Maybe there’s another way to look at it,” Tommy said.

“Well,” Quinn replied, “as I said, I can’t find any reason to be alarmed by the interactions of Provivilan with gonadal steroids. The other drug, whatever Amos was on, absolutely, but this just won’t do it. I mean, maybe if you took massive doses . . .”

Tommy thought a moment. He remembered the riddle of the lightbulb and the three switches. The fourth dimension was time. Look forward in time.

“Maybe you don’t have to be grown at all,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Just thinking out loud . . .”

“No—tell me—
what
?”

“Well, the clue Abbie gave us was
Don’t look back
, which I took to mean
Look ahead—look to the future
. So then I thought of the Groucho Marx joke, ‘I’d save the world for future generations, but what have future generations ever done for us?’”

“That’s funny,” Quinn said.

“So I was thinking that from conception on, anywhere along the line, we could be poisoned, right?”

“Right,” Quinn said. “They’ve done studies with various endocrine disrupters that affect cognitive development in utero.”

“I was on a talk show once on ESPN, where the topic was Title Nine. Funding sports for girls in college,” Tommy said. “And one of my teammates at the time said they need sports for boys to channel all that testosterone—”

“A popular premise.”

“Yeah, but this guy was a moron,” Tommy said. “He accidentally shampooed his hair with BenGay. Twice. So I called a doctor friend and found out that everybody thinks little boys are full of testosterone, but in fact, they don’t have any more than girls do. Boys start getting testosterone again when they hit puberty, but before that, the embryo gets a dose when it’s only been in the womb for a day or two and that’s about it.”

“When sexual differentiation begins,” Quinn said. “The stage at which the embryo becomes either male or female.”

“So what if Provivilan does something to the embryo?” Tommy said. “When it’s only a day old, and it changes it so that when it grows up, if it’s a boy, it turns into Amos Kasden? Times ten. On steroids. Literally.”

“Well, for that to happen . . .” Quinn stared at his computer screen for a second, then punched a few keys and called up a molecular diagram. “Unless . . . No, that won’t do . . . But maybe . . .”

Tommy let him work. He went to his security monitors to make sure everything was okay. He saw the chickens nesting peacefully in the yard, and his rooster, Elvis, perched on the Adirondack love seat beneath the willow tree. He noticed, closer at hand, that the dishes Dani and Cassandra had used to make the cookies had been washed and put away, which ran contrary to what he knew about them.

A minute later Quinn looked up. “I think you might be right,” he said. “It’s going to take me awhile because there are a number of variables I need to look at, but what you said is brilliant.”

“What
I
said is
brilliant
?” Tommy said. “As my dad likes to say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“You are far too self-deprecating,” Quinn said. “But that’s coming from somebody who’s not self-deprecating enough. Or at least I didn’t used to be, but I’ve been humbled a bit lately. You strike me as the sort of person who’s always known himself. I’m still getting the hang of it.”

“You know, I was feeling really intimidated by you,” Tommy said. “I know I’m not stupid, but I also know I don’t have the kind of smarts you do.”
“Well, I subscribe to the multiple intelligence theory,” Quinn said. “I have one kind, at the expense of others. Trust me—my brain is not something anybody should envy.”