There was an expression of surprise on Madison Burk’s face when she opened her door after Lamont’s insistent buzzing. It changed quickly to concern not unmixed with fear at his haggard appearance.
“What is it?” Madison asked. She was dressed in floral-patterned pajamas and slippers, with a utility belt clipped around her waist.
Lamont thrust a battered piece of paper at her. “Read this,” he ordered.
“All right,” his neighbor agreed with forced calm. She hesitated briefly before sliding the heavy wrench she had been gripping into a pouch of her belt. She took the paper in hand and began to scan its contents with her eyes.
“No! No!” Lamont exclaimed, running a hand rapidly through tousled auburn hair. “Read it out loud! Please.”
Madison pressed her lips together, attempting to regain composure after jumping visibly at the outburst. She cleared her throat and began to read haltingly.
“I knew that she would need cheering up when I broke the news, so I stopped by the box office of the Crystal Palace on the way home and purchased two tickets to the 1989 Free World’s Fair. My plan was to surprise her with a day at the Palace later in the week and then drop news of the assignment to her as casually as possible while we were in the midst of some activity. Instead, I opened the apartment door to see her wrapped tightly in a bathrobe, tightly clutching the old Tibetan phrasebook that I had kept hidden for some time in my toiletries drawer. The look on her face…”
“You can stop,” Lamont interrupted. Exhaling slowly, he leaned against the wall of the hallway as if deflating.
Madison’s expression had begun to change into something like pity. “Why did you ask me to do that?”
“I thought perhaps I was going mad,” Lamont admitted tonelessly, clenching a fist to his mouth in concentration. “Seeing things that weren’t there.” He looked up to meet Madison’s concerned gaze furtively. “I’m not. The page is real. Unless I’m imagining you too.”
“I don’t feel imagined,” Madison offered helpfully.
Lamont nodded as if relieved.
“Come in and have a seat, Mr. Townsend,” Madison invited, pushing the door open further with her back. “I’ll get you some tea.”
“I spent some time in a prison camp while I was in the East,” Lamont was explaining a short time later. Madison’s apartment, the same size as his, was sparsely and haphazardly furnished but immaculately clean. It had never occurred to Lamont that the chrome details of the kitchenette could be polished. In an interesting decorating choice, the lighting was provided by tiny string bulbs of the kind used on Christmas trees, roped this way and that along the ceiling among small hanging baubles that had been cut from paper and foil. The blinds were tightly closed. The small utility closet tucked between the living area and the bedroom was ajar, and a tangle of tubes, wires and mechanical viscera were visible in the comparatively bright light that shone through the crack. While the tea was brewing, Madison had stepped into the bedroom to replace her tool belt with a robe.
“Yes,” She acknowledged several minutes later, setting a gleaming silver teapot down on the small table between them. “I read about that in your book.”
“Well, the first thing they did—no, the first thing they did was interrogate me. I wrote about that. The second thing they did is make me write.”
Madison winced. A section of Behind the Curtain was devoted to an account of Lamont’s systematic torture and inquiry, describing a lengthy procession of physical and mental torments. “Write what?” Madison asked. It was something that the book hadn’t mentioned.
“This,” Lamont said, slapping the half-crumpled sheet on the table. “They made me write everything. Everything I knew, everything I believed, everything I remembered. Every day for 10, 12 hours, for weeks. I typed until my fingers bled.”
“Why?” Madison whispered, astonished.
“At first I thought that they were looking for secrets—details that hadn’t come out during the interrogation. But it was more than that. They wanted me to take everything—everything!—that was in here…” He tapped the side of his head with two fingers before moving them downward to tap the page. “...And put it out here. The smallest, most petty resentment. The deepest, most ridiculous belief. Every irrational fear and unconscious affection.”
Madison shook her head uncomprehendingly.
Lamont furrowed his brow, struggling to articulate his point. He lifted his hands to cup spread fingers together in the rough shape of a ball. “In our heads, things are fuzzy,” He explained. “Every fact we know is based on a hundred assumptions. Every truth we hold dear is supported by a dozen idioms that we swallowed without questioning. Every affection is suspended like oil on a hidden sea of resentments. In our heads, it’s all bright and alive because our brains fill in all the gaps with chemical carrots and social sticks. But on paper, it becomes flat and dull. It can be picked apart, dissected, exposed in all its flimsy preposterousness.”
Madison’s eyes widened with comprehension. She tipped her empty teacup, revealing the tiny puddle of swirling tea leaves in the bottom. “They wanted to empty you out so they could put something new in,” she suggested.
“Yes, that’s it.” Lamont agreed.
“Why didn’t you include this in your book? It seems like an important detail.” Madison asked.
Lamont gulped down the dregs of his tea. “Harry—my editor—thought that it would confuse the readers.”
“So you found this in your things and it triggered a reaction,” Madison concluded, nodding toward the paper. “That makes sense, especially if you’re exhausted.”
“That’s just the thing,” Lamont insisted. “It makes no bloody sense at all! When I came back from the Orient, I didn’t have anything with me except the clothes on my back! Those papers were long gone—who knows whatever happened to them. But one thing is certain: This page didn’t come here with me. Somebody put it here, in my room.”
Next: Ashes of Lhasa