Chapter Six

Chapter SixAfter I dropped off Lou at his space in Soho, where he was house sitting for an estate now in the courts, I decided to head on home. The more I thought about Alex Goddard, the more I felt frustrated and even a little angry that I'd com­pletely failed to find out any of the things I'd wanted to learn about him. I replayed our interview in my mind, got nowhere, and then decided to push away thoughts of Quetzal Manor for a while and dwell on something else: Sarah, my film, anything.It was Saturday, and unfortunately I had no plans for the evening. Translation: no Steve. Back to where I started. How many million stories in the naked city, and I was just so many million plus one. It's not a jungle out there, it's a desert.The truth was, after Steve took off, I hadn't really been trying all that hard to pick myself up off the canvas and look around. Besides, I didn't want some other guy, I wanted him. Added to that, I somehow felt that when you're on the short countdown for forty, you shouldn't have to be going out on blind dates, wondering whether that buttoned-down MBA sitting across from you in some trendy Italian restaurant thinks you're a blimp (even though you skipped lunch), tell­ing yourself he's presentable, doesn't seem like a serial killer, has a job, only mentioned his mother once, and could qualify as an acceptable life's mate. There's no spark, but he's prob­ably quite nice. You wanly remember that old Barney's ad jingle, "Select, don't settle," but at this stage of life you're ready to admit you've flunked out in Love 101 and should just go with Like.Which was one of the reasons I missed Steve so deeply. He was a lover, but he was also a best friend. And I was running low on those.Every woman needs a best pal. After my former best, Betsy, married Joel Aimes, Off-Broadway's latest contribu­tion to Dreamworks, and moved to the Coast with him, I was noticing a lot of empty evenings. In the old days, we could talk for hours. It was funny, since we were actually very different. Betsy, who had forgotten more about clothes and makeup than most women would ever know, hung around the garment-center showrooms and always came away with samples of next season's couture, usually for a song. I envied her that, since I usually just pretended not to care and pulled on another pair of jeans every morning. But she shared my love of Asian music.Anyway, now she was gone and I could tell we weren't working hard enough at staying in touch. She and Joel had just moved to a new apartment and I didn't even have her latest phone number. . . .Which brought me back to Steve. I'd often wondered why we were so alike, and I'd finally decided it was because we both started from the same place spiritually. In his case, that place was a crummy childhood in New Haven—which he didn't want to talk about much because, I gathered, it was as lonely and deprived as my own, or at least as depressing. His father had owned a small candy store and had wanted all his four children to become "professionals." The oldest had become a lawyer, the next a teacher. When Steve's turn came, he was told he should become a doctor, or at the very least, a dentist.Didn't happen. He'd managed four years of premed atYale, but then he rebelled, cashed in his med-school schol­arship, and went to Paris to study photography. The result was he'd done what he wanted, been reasonably successful at it, and his father had never forgiven him. I think he was still striving for the old man's approval, even after all the years, but I doubted he'd ever get it. Steve was a guy still coming to grips with things that couldn't be changed, but in the meantime he lived in worlds that were as different from his own past as he could find. He deliberately avoided mid­dle-class comforts, and was never happier than when he was in some miserable speck on the map where you couldn't drink the water. Whatever else it was, it wasn't New Ha­ven. . . .Thinking about him at that moment, I had an almost irresistible desire to reach for my cell phone and call him. God, I missed him. Did he miss me the same way? I wanted so much to hear him say it.I had a contact number for him in Belize City, an old, Brit-like hotel called the Bellevue, where they still served high tea, but I always seemed to call when he was out some­where in the rain forest, shooting.Do it. Don't be a wuss.But then I got cold feet. Did I want him to think I was chasing after him? I didn't want to sound needy . . . though that was exactly what I felt like at the moment.Finally I decided to just invent a phone conversation, recreating one from times past, one where we both felt secure enough to be flip. It was something I did more than I'd like to admit. Usually there'd be eight rings at his Park Slope loft and then a harried voice. Yes. Steve, talk to me. . . ."Yo. This is not a recording. I am just in a transcendent plane. And if that's you, Murray, I'll have the contact sheets there by six. Patience is a virtue.""Honey, it's me. Get out of the darkroom. Get a life.""Oh, hi, baby." Finally tuning in. "I'm working. In a quest for unrelenting pictorial truth. But mainly I'm thinking of you.""You're printing, right? Darling, it's lunch hour. Don't you feel guilty, working all the time?"The truth was, it was one of the reasons I respected him so much. He even did his own contacts. His fervor matched my drive. It's what made us perfect mates."I've got tons of guilt. But I'm trying to get past it. Be­come a full human person. Go back to the dawn of man. Paint my face and dance in a thunderstorm." He'd pause, as though starting to get oriented. "Hey, look at the time. Christ. I've got a print shoot on Thirty-eighth Street at three."He was chasing a bit of fashion work to supplement his on-again, off-again magazine assignments."Love," I said in my reverie, "can you come over tonight? I promise to make it worth your while. It involves a bubble bath, champagne, roses everywhere, sensuous ragas on the CD. And maybe some crispy oysters or something, sent in later on, just to keep us going."Then I'd listen to the tone of his voice, knowing he'd say yes but putting more stock in how he said it. Still, he always gave his lines a good read."Then why don't we aim for about nine?" I'd go on, bliss­ful. "That ought to give me a chance to get organized. And don't bring anything except your luscious self." The fantasy was coming together in my mind. Thinking back, I realized how much I missed him, all over again. . . .That was when the phone on the armrest beside me rang for real. For a moment I was so startled I almost hit the brakes. Then I clicked it on, my mind still buzzing about Steve, and also, in spite of my resolve, about the curious runaround I'd just gotten from Alex Goddard."Listen, there was a message on my machine when I camein. I've got to go up to the hospital. Right now." Lou's voice was brimming with hope and exuberance. "They said Sarah was stirring. She's opened her eyes and started talking. They said she's not making much sense, but . . . oh, God.""That's wonderful." I felt my heart expanding with life. For some reason, I had a flash of memory of her climbing up into the rickety little tree house—well, more like a plat­form—I'd helped her build in my thirteenth summer, no boys invited to assist. A year later that part had seemed terminally dumb. "I'll meet you there."I was almost home, but I screeched the car around and headed east. Racing over, though, I tried not to wish for too much. I kept remembering all the stages to a complete re­covery and telling myself that whatever had happened, it was only the first step on a very long, very scary journey. . . .I hadn't realized how scary till I walked into the room. Lou, who had gotten there just minutes before I did, was sitting by her side, holding her hand, his gaze transfixed on her. She was propped up slightly in her bed, two pillows fluffed behind her head, staring dreamily at the ceiling. Three attentive middle-aged nurses were standing around the sides of her bed, their eyes wide, as though Sarah were a ghost. I very quickly realized why. She was spinning out a fantasy that could only come from a deranged mind. Had she re­gained consciousness only to talk madness?"Lou, does she recognize you?" I asked.He just shook his head sadly, never taking his eyes off her face. She was weaving in and out of reality, pausing, stut­tering, uncertain of her incoherent brain. Once, when she'd fallen off a swing and got knocked out for a brief moment, she came to talking nonsense. Now she seemed exactly the same way."Lights ... so bright," she mumbled, starting up again to recount what seemed to be a faraway fantasy, ". . . like now.Why . . . why are there lights here?" Her lips were moving but her eyes were still fixed in a stare. Then, with that last, odd question, her gaze began to dart about the room, looking for someone who wasn't present. She settled on me for a moment, and I felt a chill from her plaintive vulnerability. When I tried to look back as benignly and lovingly as pos­sible, I couldn't help noticing how drawn her cheeks were, doubtless from the constant IV feeding, and again my heart went out. "I'm scared," she went on, "but—""I'm here, honey," Lou declared, bending over her, his eyes pained. "Do you know who I am?""The jade face . . . a mask," she babbled on, still ignoring him. "All the colors. It's so . . . so beautiful."Her hallucination didn't relate to anything I could under­stand. She clearly was off in another world, like when she was a kid, weaving the lights of the room now into some kind of dream. I touched Lou's shoulder and asked permis­sion to turn off the overhead fluorescents, but he just shrugged me off, his attention focused entirely on her.His eyes had grown puzzled, as though he wanted to be­lieve she was returning to rationality but his common sense was telling him it wasn't true.I was having a different reaction. What she was saying was random babblings, all right, but I was beginning to think she was reliving something she had actually seen.However, she wasn't through."I want to pray, but . . . the white tunnel . . . is coming." She shuddered, then almost tried to smile. "Take me . . ."She was gone, her eyelids fluttering uncontrollably."Honey, talk to me," Lou pleaded. He was crying, some­thing I'd never seen him do, something I was not even aware he was capable of. What he really was trying to say was, "Come back."It wasn't happening. She stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment, then slowly closed her eyes, a shutter descending over her soul."She'll be okay," I whispered to him, almost believing it. Her brain had undergone a physical trauma, enough to cause a coma, but some kind of mental trauma must have preceded it. Was she now trying to exorcise that as part of her path to recovery?The nurses in the room stirred, perhaps not sure what to do. The overhead lights were still dazzlingly bright, and I moved to shut them off, leaving only a night-light behind the bed. Perhaps the lights had brought her awake, but I was convinced what she'd just gone through had tired her to the point that she would not revive again that day.Then one of the Caribbean nurses came over and placed her hand on Lou's shoulder. She had an experienced face, full of self-confidence. Something about her inspired trust."I wouldn't let this upset you too much," she said, a lovely lilt in her voice. "What just happened may or may not mean anything. When patients first come out of a coma, they can sometimes talk just fine, and yet not make any sense. They ramble on about things they dreamed of like they were real." Then she smiled. "But it's a good first step. She could wake up perfectly fine tomorrow. Just don't pay any attention to what she says for a while. She's dreaming now."Lou grunted as though he believed her. I nodded in sym­pathy, though no one seemed to notice.I also thought that although what Sarah had said was bi­zarre, it sounded like something more than a dream. Or had she gone back to her child-state where imaginary worlds were real for her?Then in the dim glare of her bed light, Lou took a wrinkled blue booklet out of his inner pocket and stared at it. I had to stare at it a moment before I realized it was a passport."What—?""The American consulate in Merida, Mexico, sent it up to 26 Federal Plaza yesterday, because my name and office address are penciled on the inside cover as an emergency contact. The police down there said somebody, some gringo tourist fly-fishing way down on the Usumacinta River, near where the Rio Tigre comes in from Guatemala, snagged this floating in a plastic bag. He turned it in to the Mexican authorities there, and it ended up with our people." He opened the passport and stared at it. "The photo and ID page is ripped out, but it's definitely Sarah's." He handed it over. "Guy I know downtown dropped it off last night. I'm not sure if it has anything to tell us, but now, I was hoping it might help jog her memory."I took it, the cover so waterlogged its color was almost gone. However, it must have been kept dry in the plastic bag for at least some of its trip from wherever, since much of the damage seemed recent.Lou shook his head staring wistfully at me. "I still don't know how she got down there. She was in California. Re­member that postcard? If she'd come back East, she'd have got in touch. Wouldn't she?" His eyes pleaded for my agree­ment.I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged. I wanted to be sympathetic, but I refused to lie outright. He took my ambivalence as assent as he pulled out the locket containing her picture, his talisman. He fingered it for a moment, staring into space, and then he looked down and opened it, as if seeing her high school picture, from a time when she was well, would somehow ease his mind."This whole thing doesn't sound like her," he went on. "Know what I think? She was being held down there against her will."My heart went out to him, and I reached over and took the locket for a moment, feeling the strong "SRC" engraved on its heart-shaped face. "Lou, she's going to come out of it. And when she does, she'll probably explain everything. She's going to be okay any day now, I've got a hunch. A gut feeling."I had a gut feeling, all right, but not that she was going to be fine. My real fear was she was going to wake up a fantasy-bound child again.Then I handed the locket back. He'd seemed to turn anx­ious without it. He took the silver heart and just stared down at it. In the silence that settled over us, I decided to take a closer look at the passport. I supposed Lou had already gone through it, but maybe he'd missed something.As I flipped through the waterlogged pages, I came across a smudgy imprint, caked with a thin layer of dried river clay, that was almost too dim to be noticed."Lou, did you see this?" I held it under the light and beckoned him over. "Can you read it?""Probably not without my specs." He took it and squinted helplessly. "My eyes aren't getting any better."I took it back and rubbed at the page, cleaning it. It was hard to make out, but it looked like "Delegacion de Migracion, Aeropuerto Internacional, Guatemala, C.A.""I think this is a Guatemalan tourist entry visa." I raised the passport up to backlight the page. "And see that faint bit there in the center? That's probably her entry date. Written in by hand."He took it and squinted again. "I can't read the damned thing, but you're right. There's some numbers, or something, scribbled in."I took it and rubbed the page till I could read it clearly. "It's March eleventh. And it was last year.""Hot damn, let me see that." He seized it back and squinted for a long moment, lifting the page even closer to the light. "You're right." He held it for a second more, then turned to me. "This is finally the thing I needed. Now I'm damned well going to find out what she was doing down there.""How do you think you can do that?" I just looked at him, my mind not quite taking in what he'd just said."The airlines." He almost grinned. "If they can keep track of everybody's damned frequent-flyer miles for years and years, they undoubtedly got flight manifests stored away somewhere too. So my first step is to find out where she flew from.""But we don't know which—""Doesn't matter." He squinted again at the passport. "Now we know for sure she showed up at the airport in Guatemala City on that date there. I know somebody down­town, smooth black guy named John Williams, the FBI's best computer nerd, who could bend a rule for me and do a little B&E in cyberspace. He owes me a couple. So, if she was on a manifest for a scheduled flight into Guatemala City that day, he'll find it. Then we'll know where she left from, who else was on the plane." He tapped the passport confidently with his forefinger. "Maybe she was traveling with some scumbag I ought to look up and get to know better.""Well, good luck."In a way I was wondering if we weren't both now grasping for a miracle: me half-hoping for a baby through some New Age process of "centering," Lou trying to reclaim Sarah from her mental abyss with his gruff love. But then again, miracles have been known to happen.Chapter Seven"Quetzal Manor could have the makings of a great documentary," I was explaining to David Roth. "I just need some more information-gathering first, to get a better feeling for what Alex Goddard is up to. So going back up there will be two birds with one stone. I'll learn more about him, and he might even be able to tell me why I haven't been able to get pregnant."He was frowning, his usual skeptical self. "How long—?""It's just for the weekend, or maybe a little . . . I'm not sure exactly. I guess it depends on what kinds of tests he's going to run. But the thing is, I have to do it now, while he and I are still clicking. An 'iron is hot' kind of moment. The only possible problem might be if I have to push back my schedule for looping dialogue forBaby Loveand then some­body's out of town.""You check with the sound studio to warn them about possible rescheduling?" He wanted to appear to be fuming. But since he'd invited me down to his Tribeca loft at least once every three months, now that I'd finally shown up, he also had a small gleam in his eye. What did that mean?"Yes, but I've already spotted most of the work print, and I've made tentative dates for people to come in. In a week and a half. Everything's still on schedule."He leaned back on his white couch, as though trying to regroup. It was Saturday morning and I'd already made theappointment to see Alex Goddard. I was going. I probably should have run it by David first, but damnit, it was my life.Truthfully, though, I'd been dreading telling him all week, so to try and make him as congenial as possible, I'd arranged to see him at home and relaxed. It seemed to be working, more or less."Okay, okay, sometimes I guess it's best to just go with your gut," he said, beginning to calm down. He'd offered to whip up some brunch when I first arrived, and now I was feeling sorry I'd turned him down. I really did like him. But, alas, only as a friend. "Before I cave in totally, though, do me a favor and tell me some more about this . . . documen­tary? What, exactly, makes you think it's—""Everything." Whereupon I laid on him the full story of Carly and Paula, the children, and my encounter with Alex Goddard. The only thing I left out was the story of the His­panic hood since I didn't think he could handle it."This Quetzal Manor sounds like a funny operation," he declared solemnly when I'd finished. "I say the less you have to do with a place like that, the better. Who knows what's going on.""But, David that's what makes it so interesting. The fact that itisa 'funny' operation. I really can see a documentary here, after Baby Love is in the can. But I'll never have a chance if I don't get to know this guy while I've got a good excuse. That's how my business works.""So you're going to go back up there and . . . Is this like going undercover or something?""Well . . ." What was I going to say? I was actually half beginning to believe that Alex Goddard might be able to figure out why Steve and I couldn't conceive. It was certainly worth a few days of my life, documentary or no documentary. "Look, I really want to find out what's going on. For a lot of reasons."He sighed and sipped at his coffee."Morgy, this has got to be quick. Nicky Russo called again. The thing I've learned about loan sharks, they keep your books better than you do. He knows exactly how much money we've got left and how long we can last. He's licking his chops, getting ready to eat us whole.""What did you tell him?" The very thought of Nicky gave me a chill. If we missed so much as a week on the juice, he'd have the legal right to just seize my negative. When you're desperate, you sign those kinds of loans."I told him something I haven't even told you yet." He smiled a wicked grin. "I know you've been schmoozing Life­time about a cable deal, but before we put the ink to that, I want to finish some new talks I've started with Orion, their distribution people."I think I stopped breathing for a second or two. Was there a chance for a theatrical release forBaby Love, not just a cable deal?"When . . . You've actually met with them? How—?""Late yesterday." He was still grinning. "I ran into Jerry Reiner at Morton's and pitched the picture. Actually, I heard he was in town, so I wore a tie and ambushed him at lunch. He wants to see a rough cut as soon as we've got something ready.""David, you're an angel." I was ecstatic. It was more than I'd dared hope for."So stay focused, for chrissake, and finish your picture. We're this close to saving our collective asses, so don't blow it. I've gone over all the schedules pretty carefully, and I'd guess we can spare a day or two, but if you drag this out, I'm going to read you your contract, the fine print about due diligence, and then finish up the final cut myself. I mean it. Don't make me do that.""Don't you even think about that." Never! "This is my picture.""Just business. If it's a choice between doing what I gotta do, or having Nicky Russo chew me a new asshole and be­come the silent partner in Applecore, guess what it's gonna be.""David, you know I would never let that happen." I walked over and gave him the sweetest hug I knew how, still filled with joy. "And thanks so much for trying to get us a theat­rical. You don't know how much that means to me.""Hey, don't try the charm bit on me. I'm serious. I'll cut you a weekend's slack, but then it's back to the salt mines. Either this picture's in the can inside of six weeks, or we're both going to be looking for new employment. So go the hell up there, do whatever it is you're going to do, and then get this damned picture finished. There'll be plenty of time after that to worry about our next project. With luck we might even have the money for it."With that ultimatum still ringing in my ears, I took my leave of David Roth and headed north, up the Henry Hud­son Parkway. My life was getting too roller-coaster for words. . . .As I drove, I tried not to dwell on the practical aspects of what was coming. It was hard to imagine what tests Alex Goddard could perform that hadn't already been done by Hannah Klein. Just thinking back over that dismal sequence made me feel baby-despondent all over again.When I first mentioned I was thinking about trying to get pregnant, she looked me over, perhaps mentally calculating my age and my prospects, and then made a light suggestion."Why don't I give you a prescription for Clomid. Clomiphene citrate enhances ovulation, and it might be a good idea in your case. You're still young, Morgan, but you're no longer in the first blush of youth."I took it for six months, but nothing happened. That was the beginning of my pregnancy depression.By that time, she'd decided I definitely had a problem, so she began what she called an "infertility workup." The main thing was to check my Fallopian tubes for blockages and look for ovulatory abnormalities. But everything turned out to be fine. Depression City."Well," she said, "maybe your body justthinksyou've released an ovum. We need to do an ultrasound scan to make doubly sure an ovarian follicle has ruptured when it's sched­uled to and dropped an egg."It turned out, however, that all those hormonal stop-and-go signals were working just fine. In the meantime, Steve and I were doing it like bunnies and still no pregnancy.Okay, she then declared, the problem may be with your Fallopian tubes after all. Time to test for abnormalities. "This is not going to be fun. First we have to dilate your cervix, after which we inject a dye and follow it with X-rays as it moves through the uterus and is ejected out of your Fallopian tubes. We'll know right away if there's any kind of blockage. If there is something, we can go in and fix it.""Sort of check out my pipes," I said, trying to come to grips with the procedure. I was increasingly sinking into de­spondency.She did it all, and for a while she suspected there might be some kind of anatomical problem. Which brought us to the next escalation of invasiveness."We've got to go in and take a close-up look at every­thing," she said. "It's a procedure called laparoscopy. I'll have to make a small incision near your navel and insert a tiny optical device. In your case, I want to combine it with what's called a hysteroscopy, which will allow me to see directly inside your uterus for polyps and fibroids."But again everything looked fine. I began to wonder what had happened to everybody's mother's warning you could get pregnant just letting some pimply guy put his hand in your pants.Prior to all this, I should add, Steve had provided samples of sperm to be tested for number and vigor. (Both were just fine.) Then, toward the end of all the indignities, he actually paid to have some kind of test performed involving a hamster egg, to see if his sperm was lively enough to penetrate it. No wonder he finally went over the edge.Now I was reduced to Alex Goddard. I'd brought a com­plete set of my medical test records, as Ramala had requested on the phone. I'd also brought a deep curiosity about what exactly he could do that hadn't already been done. I further wondered how I was going to talk Steve into coming back long enough to share in the project. As I motored up the driveway to Quetzal Manor, I told myself he loved me still, wanted a baby as much as I did . . . Well, let me be safe and say almost as much. The problem was, he was so demoralized about the whole thing. And then what? What if nothing hap­pened?I started to park my car where I had the last time, then noticed the place actually had a parking lot. It was located off to the left side of the driveway, near the second, modern building, and was more or less hidden in amongst the trees. The lot was filled with a lot of late-model but inexpensive cars, basic working-girl transportation, and it seemed a better bet for long-term parking.The front lobby, which had been empty the first time I was there, was now a minimalist reception area, a long metal desk rolled in from somewhere. I had the odd feeling it was there just for me. The woman behind the desk introduced herself as Ramala, the same person I'd talked to twice on the phone. She looked to be about my age, with long dark hair and quick Asian eyes, punctuated by a professional smile.She knew my name, used it the minute she saw me, and then abruptly handed me a twenty-page "application" to complete."It's not just a formality," she explained, businesslike and earnest. "Dr. Goddard feels it's essential that he come to know you as a person. He'll read this carefully, believe me."She ushered me to a chair that had a retractable table for writing, then gave me a ballpoint pen.The document turned out to be the most prying, nosy thing I'd ever filled out. The pages demanded what amounted to a mini life history. One of the things that struck me as most strange was the part asking for a ten-year employment and residential history. If you've moved around as much as I have, worked freelance a lot, you'll understand how difficult it can be to reconstruct all those dates and places, but I did my best.There were, of course, plenty of health questions too. One page even asked whether there was anything out of the or­dinary about my own birth: Was the delivery difficult, a ce­sarean, a breach baby? It was, as noted, a life history."Why does he need all this information?" I asked finally, feeling the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist. "I brought all my medical records."Ramala gave me a kindly smile, full of sympathy."He must know you as a person. Then everything is pos­sible. When I came here, I had given up on ever having a child, but I surrendered myself to him and now my husband and I have twin boys, three years old. That's why I stayed to help him. His program can work miracles, but you must give him your trust."Well, I thought, I might as well go with the flow and see where it leads.When I'd finished the form, she took it back, along with the pen, then ushered me into the wide central courtyard where I'd met Alex Goddard the first time. He was nowhere to be seen, but in the bright late-morning sunshine there was a line of about twenty women, from late twenties to early forties, all dressed in white pajama-like outfits of the kind you see in judo classes, doing coordinated, slow-motion Tai Chi-like exercises. They were intent, their eyes fixed on the fringes of infinity.These must be some of his acolytes, I thought, the ones I heard in their nuns' cells the first time I was here. What on earth does all this orientalism have to do with fertility? I then found myself wondering. I've studied the Far East enough to do "penetrating" documentaries about it, and I still can't get pregnant.I took one look at them—none of them looked at me—and my heart went out. They were so sincere, so sure of what they were doing. For somebody who's always questioning everything, like me, it was touching, and maybe a little daunt­ing too.Without a word, Ramala led me past them and on to an entryway at the far end of the courtyard, past the giant Danc­ing Shiva. The door was huge and ornate, decorated with beaten-copper filigree—much like one I'd seen in a Mogul palace in Northern India. Definitely awe-inspiring.She pushed open the door without ceremony and there he was, dressed in white and looking for all the world like the miracle worker he claimed to be. He seemed to be meditating in his chair, but the moment I entered, his deep eyes snapped open."Did you bring your records?" he asked, not getting up. While I was producing them from my briefcase, Ramala dis­creetly disappeared."Please have a seat." He gestured me toward a wide chair.The room was a sterile baby blue, nothing to see. No diplo­mas, no photos, nothing.Except for another, smaller bronze statue of the Dancing Shiva, poised on a silver-inlaid table. I also noticed that his own flowing hair seemed to match that of the bronze figure.Yes, I thought, I was right. That's who he thinks he is. And he has complete power over the people around him. How many chances do you get to do a documentary about somebody like this? I should have brought a Betacam for some video.He studied my test records as a jeweler might examine a diamond, his serious eyes boring in as he flipped through the pages. The rest of his face, however, betrayed no particu­lar interest. I finally felt compelled to break the awkward silence."As you can see, I've had every test known to science. And none of them found anything wrong."He just nodded, saying nothing, and kept on reading.After a long, awkward silence, I decided to try and open things up a bit."Tell me, do you have any children of your own?"The question seemed to be one he didn't get asked too often, because he stopped cold."All those who come here are my children," he replied, putting aside my records, dismissively finished with them."Well"—I pointed to them—"what do you think?""I haven't examined you yet," he said, looking up and smiling, indeed beaming with confidence. "Nothing in those records tells me anything about what may be your problem. I look for different things than do most physicians."He fiddled with something beneath his desk, and the room was abruptly filled with the sound of a hypnotic drone. Per­haps its frequency matched one in my brain, because I instantly felt relaxed and full of hope. Much better than Muzak. Then he rose and came over.Is he going to do my exam right here? I wondered. Where's all the ob/gyn paraphernalia? The humiliating stirrups?Standing in front of me, he gently placed his hands on my heart, then bent over and seemed to be listening to my chest. His touch was warm, then cold, then warm, but the overall effect was to send a sense of well-being through my entire body."You're not breathing normally," he said after a moment of unnerving silence. "I feel no harmony."How did he know that? But he was right. I felt the way I had the first time I tried to sit in Zen meditation in Kyoto. As then, my body was relaxing but my wayward brain was still coursing."I'll try," I said, attempting to go along. What I really was feeling was the overwhelming sense of his presence, drawing me to him.Next he moved around behind me and cradled my head in his hands, placing his long fingertips on my forehead, sort of the same way he'd done when I was standing with him on the windy heath, nursing a killer cold. All the while, the drone seemed to be increasing to a piercing, overwhelming volume, as though a powerful electrical force were growing in the room, sending me into an alpha state of relaxation."What are you doing? Is this how you do an exam for—?""The medical tests you had showed there's nothing wrong with your uterus or your Fallopian tubes, nothing that should inhibit conception. There's no need to pursue that any further. But the mind and the body are a single entity that must be harmonized, must work as one. Although each individual has different energy flows, I think my regimen here could be very helpful to you. Already I can tell your problem is aself-inflicted trauma that has negated the natural condition wherein your mind and body work in unison.""What 'trauma'?" I asked.He didn't answer the question. Instead he began massag­ing my temples."Breathe deeply. And do it slowly, very slowly."As I did, I felt a kind of dizziness gradually coming over me, the hypnotic drone seeming to take over my conscious­ness. Instead of growing slower, my breathing was actually becoming more rapid, as though I'd started to hyperventilate. But I no longer had any control over it. My autonomic ner­vous system had been handed over to him, as dizziness and a sense of disorientation settled over me. The room around me began to swirl, and I felt my conscious mind, my will, slipping out of my grasp. It was the very thing I'd vowed not to let happen.The same thing had occurred once before, after I broke my collarbone in the Pacific surf that slammed a Mexican beach south of Puerto Villarta. When a kindly Mexican doc­tor was later binding on a harness to immobilize my shoulder, the pain was such that I momentarily passed out while sitting on a stool in his office. I didn't fall over or collapse; it just seemed as though my mind, fleeing the incredible pain, drifted away in a haze of sensation.Now the pastel blue walls of the room slowly faded to white, and then I was somewhere else, a universe away, sur­rounded by blank nothingness. I tried to focus on the bronze Shiva directly across, but the ring of fire around him had become actual flames. The only reality left was the powerful touch of Alex Goddard's hands and a drone that could have been the music of the spheres.Chapter EightSometime thereafter, in a reverie, I felt myself in a magical forest whose lush vines reminded me of Kerala in India. It was a verdant, hazy paradise, another Eden. A child was with me, a child of my own, and I felt jubilation. I watched the child as she grew and became a resplendent orchid.But with childbearing came pain, and I seemed to be feel­ing that pain as I took up the flower and held it, joy flowing through me.Then Alex Goddard drifted into my dream, still all in white, and he was gentle and caring as he again moved his hands over me, leaving numbness in their wake. I thought I heard his voice talking of the miracle that he would make for me. A miracle baby, a beautiful flower of a child. I asked him how such a thing would happen. A miracle, he whispered back. It will be a miracle, just for you. When he said it, the orchid turned into the silver face of a cat, a vaguely familiar image, smiling benignly, then transmuted back into a blos­som.Then he drifted out of my dream much as he had come, a wisp of white, leaving me holding the gorgeous flower against my breasts, which had begun to swell and spill out milk the color of gold. . . .A wet coolness washed across my face, and—as I faintly heard the sounds of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Glenn Gould's piano notes crisp and clear—I opened my eyes tosee Ramala massaging my brow with a damp cloth. She smiled kindly and lovingly as she saw my eyes open, then widen with astonishment."What—?""Hey, how're you doing? Don't be alarmed. He's taking great care of you.""What. . . where am I?" I lifted my head off the pillow and tried to look around. I half expected Steve to be there, but of course he wasn't."You're here. At Quetzal Manor." She reached and did something and the music slowly faded away. "Don't worry. You'll be fine. I think the doctor was trying to release your Chi, and when he did it was too strong for you.""What day is it?" I felt completely disoriented my bear­ings gone."Sunday. It's Sunday morning." She reached and touched my brow as though giving me a blessing. Like, it's okay, really.At that moment, Alex Goddard strolled in, dressed again in white.Just as in the dream, I thought."So, how's the patient?" He walked over—eyes benign and caring—and lifted my wrist, absently taking my pulse while he inserted a digital thermometer in my ear. For a flash­back moment he merged into, then emerged from, my dream. "You're looking fine. I have to say, though, you had quite a time yesterday.""All I remember is passing out in your office," I mumbled glancing around at the gray plastic thermometer. And that strange dream, you telling me I would have a miracle baby."You had an unusual reaction," he went on. "You remem­ber I spoke to you about mind-body harmony. You see what can happen when I redirect the flows of energy, Chi, from your body to your mind." He smiled and settled my wrist back onto the bed. "Don't worry. I have a lot of hope for you. You're going to do fine."He looked satisfied as he consulted the thermometer, then jotted down my temperature on a chart. He's already started a medical record, I thought. Why?"I'm . . . I'm wondering if this really is working out," I said. It was dawning on me that I was getting into Alex God­dard's world a lot deeper and a lot faster than I'd expected. I'd come planning to be an observer and now I was the one being observed. That was exactly not how I'd intended it. Maybe, I thought, if I back off and make a new run, I can keep us on equal footing. "Perhaps I ought to just go back to the city for a few days and—""I'd assumed you came to begin the program." He looked at me, a quick sadness flooding his eyes. "You struck me as a person who would follow through.""I need to think this over" I really feel terrible, I thought, trying to rise up. What did he do to me? "Maybe I'm just not right for your 'program'?" The idea of a documentary had momentarily retreated far into the depths of my mind."On the contrary." He smiled. "We've shown that you're very responsive.""Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm too responsive." I rose and slipped my feet off the bed. The motion brought a piercing pain in my abdomen. "OUCH! What's . . ." I felt my pelvis, only to find it was  very sensitive.Pulling aside my bed shift, I gazed in disbelief at my lower abdomen. There were red spots just above my pale blue pant­ies.Alex Goddard modestly averted his eyes. "I didn't want to say anything," he explained to the wall above my head, "but you were in pretty delicate shape there for a while. Mild convulsions, and I think your digestive system had gone into shock. The stomach is a center of energy, because it's constantly active. So I gave you some shots of muscle relaxant. Nothing serious. It's an unusual treatment, but I've found it works. It . . . modulates the energy flows. I also took a blood sample for some tests, but the results were all normal."He then asked me about my menstrual cycle, exact days, saying he wanted to make sure it wasn't just routine cramps. "The seizure you had passed almost as soon as it came, but you might actually have been hallucinating a bit. You had a slight fever all night.""Well . . ." Something like that had happened to me years ago in rural Japan, when I stupidly ate some unwashed greens and my stomach went into shock. At one point a local doctor, Chinese, was trying acupuncture, which also left me sore."Nothing to be worried about," he continued. "But if you're the least bit concerned, maybe we ought to do a quick sonogram, take a sound picture. Ease your mind that every­thing's okay.""That doesn't really seem necessary," I said. For a clinic specializing in "energy flows" and "mind-body" programs, there was a lot of modern equipment. Odd."Won't do a bit of harm." He nodded at Ramala, who also seemed to think it was a good idea. "Come on, help me walk her down to the lab." He turned back. "It's totally noninva­sive. You'll see for yourself that you're fine."Before I could protest, I found myself walking, with some dizziness, down the hallway. This part of Quetzal Manor, which I had not seen before, was a sterile, high-tech clinic. I realized I was in a different building from the old convent, probably the new one I'd noticed across the parking lot, the one he hadn't bothered to mention that first day. But all I could focus on were the blue walls and the new white tiles of the floor.The sonogram was as he described it, quick and noninvasive. He rubbed the ultrasound wand over my abdomen, watching the picture on a CRT screen, which showed my insides, a jumble of organs that he seemed to find extremely informative."Look." He pointed. "Those lines there are your Fallopian tubes, and that's your uterus." He pushed a button to record a digital image. "Seems like whatever was upsetting your stomach is gone. Obviously nothing's wrong here."

After I dropped off Lou at his space in Soho, where he was house sitting for an estate now in the courts, I decided to head on home. The more I thought about Alex Goddard, the more I felt frustrated and even a little angry that I'd com­pletely failed to find out any of the things I'd wanted to learn about him. I replayed our interview in my mind, got nowhere, and then decided to push away thoughts of Quetzal Manor for a while and dwell on something else: Sarah, my film, anything.

It was Saturday, and unfortunately I had no plans for the evening. Translation: no Steve. Back to where I started. How many million stories in the naked city, and I was just so many million plus one. It's not a jungle out there, it's a desert.

The truth was, after Steve took off, I hadn't really been trying all that hard to pick myself up off the canvas and look around. Besides, I didn't want some other guy, I wanted him. Added to that, I somehow felt that when you're on the short countdown for forty, you shouldn't have to be going out on blind dates, wondering whether that buttoned-down MBA sitting across from you in some trendy Italian restaurant thinks you're a blimp (even though you skipped lunch), tell­ing yourself he's presentable, doesn't seem like a serial killer, has a job, only mentioned his mother once, and could qualify as an acceptable life's mate. There's no spark, but he's prob­ably quite nice. You wanly remember that old Barney's ad jingle, "Select, don't settle," but at this stage of life you're ready to admit you've flunked out in Love 101 and should just go with Like.

Which was one of the reasons I missed Steve so deeply. He was a lover, but he was also a best friend. And I was running low on those.

Every woman needs a best pal. After my former best, Betsy, married Joel Aimes, Off-Broadway's latest contribu­tion to Dreamworks, and moved to the Coast with him, I was noticing a lot of empty evenings. In the old days, we could talk for hours. It was funny, since we were actually very different. Betsy, who had forgotten more about clothes and makeup than most women would ever know, hung around the garment-center showrooms and always came away with samples of next season's couture, usually for a song. I envied her that, since I usually just pretended not to care and pulled on another pair of jeans every morning. But she shared my love of Asian music.

Anyway, now she was gone and I could tell we weren't working hard enough at staying in touch. She and Joel had just moved to a new apartment and I didn't even have her latest phone number. . . .

Which brought me back to Steve. I'd often wondered why we were so alike, and I'd finally decided it was because we both started from the same place spiritually. In his case, that place was a crummy childhood in New Haven—which he didn't want to talk about much because, I gathered, it was as lonely and deprived as my own, or at least as depressing. His father had owned a small candy store and had wanted all his four children to become "professionals." The oldest had become a lawyer, the next a teacher. When Steve's turn came, he was told he should become a doctor, or at the very least, a dentist.

Didn't happen. He'd managed four years of premed at

Yale, but then he rebelled, cashed in his med-school schol­arship, and went to Paris to study photography. The result was he'd done what he wanted, been reasonably successful at it, and his father had never forgiven him. I think he was still striving for the old man's approval, even after all the years, but I doubted he'd ever get it. Steve was a guy still coming to grips with things that couldn't be changed, but in the meantime he lived in worlds that were as different from his own past as he could find. He deliberately avoided mid­dle-class comforts, and was never happier than when he was in some miserable speck on the map where you couldn't drink the water. Whatever else it was, it wasn't New Ha­ven. . . .

Thinking about him at that moment, I had an almost irresistible desire to reach for my cell phone and call him. God, I missed him. Did he miss me the same way? I wanted so much to hear him say it.

I had a contact number for him in Belize City, an old, Brit-like hotel called the Bellevue, where they still served high tea, but I always seemed to call when he was out some­where in the rain forest, shooting.

Do it. Don't be a wuss.

But then I got cold feet. Did I want him to think I was chasing after him? I didn't want to sound needy . . . though that was exactly what I felt like at the moment.

Finally I decided to just invent a phone conversation, recreating one from times past, one where we both felt secure enough to be flip. It was something I did more than I'd like to admit. Usually there'd be eight rings at his Park Slope loft and then a harried voice. Yes. Steve, talk to me. . . .

"Yo. This is not a recording. I am just in a transcendent plane. And if that's you, Murray, I'll have the contact sheets there by six. Patience is a virtue."

"Honey, it's me. Get out of the darkroom. Get a life."

"Oh, hi, baby." Finally tuning in. "I'm working. In a quest for unrelenting pictorial truth. But mainly I'm thinking of you."

"You're printing, right? Darling, it's lunch hour. Don't you feel guilty, working all the time?"

The truth was, it was one of the reasons I respected him so much. He even did his own contacts. His fervor matched my drive. It's what made us perfect mates.

"I've got tons of guilt. But I'm trying to get past it. Be­come a full human person. Go back to the dawn of man. Paint my face and dance in a thunderstorm." He'd pause, as though starting to get oriented. "Hey, look at the time. Christ. I've got a print shoot on Thirty-eighth Street at three."

He was chasing a bit of fashion work to supplement his on-again, off-again magazine assignments.

"Love," I said in my reverie, "can you come over tonight? I promise to make it worth your while. It involves a bubble bath, champagne, roses everywhere, sensuous ragas on the CD. And maybe some crispy oysters or something, sent in later on, just to keep us going."

Then I'd listen to the tone of his voice, knowing he'd say yes but putting more stock in how he said it. Still, he always gave his lines a good read.

"Then why don't we aim for about nine?" I'd go on, bliss­ful. "That ought to give me a chance to get organized. And don't bring anything except your luscious self." The fantasy was coming together in my mind. Thinking back, I realized how much I missed him, all over again. . . .

That was when the phone on the armrest beside me rang for real. For a moment I was so startled I almost hit the brakes. Then I clicked it on, my mind still buzzing about Steve, and also, in spite of my resolve, about the curious runaround I'd just gotten from Alex Goddard.

"Listen, there was a message on my machine when I came

in. I've got to go up to the hospital. Right now." Lou's voice was brimming with hope and exuberance. "They said Sarah was stirring. She's opened her eyes and started talking. They said she's not making much sense, but . . . oh, God."

"That's wonderful." I felt my heart expanding with life. For some reason, I had a flash of memory of her climbing up into the rickety little tree house—well, more like a plat­form—I'd helped her build in my thirteenth summer, no boys invited to assist. A year later that part had seemed terminally dumb. "I'll meet you there."

I was almost home, but I screeched the car around and headed east. Racing over, though, I tried not to wish for too much. I kept remembering all the stages to a complete re­covery and telling myself that whatever had happened, it was only the first step on a very long, very scary journey. . . .

I hadn't realized how scary till I walked into the room. Lou, who had gotten there just minutes before I did, was sitting by her side, holding her hand, his gaze transfixed on her. She was propped up slightly in her bed, two pillows fluffed behind her head, staring dreamily at the ceiling. Three attentive middle-aged nurses were standing around the sides of her bed, their eyes wide, as though Sarah were a ghost. I very quickly realized why. She was spinning out a fantasy that could only come from a deranged mind. Had she re­gained consciousness only to talk madness?

"Lou, does she recognize you?" I asked.

He just shook his head sadly, never taking his eyes off her face. She was weaving in and out of reality, pausing, stut­tering, uncertain of her incoherent brain. Once, when she'd fallen off a swing and got knocked out for a brief moment, she came to talking nonsense. Now she seemed exactly the same way.

"Lights ... so bright," she mumbled, starting up again to recount what seemed to be a faraway fantasy, ". . . like now.

Why . . . why are there lights here?" Her lips were moving but her eyes were still fixed in a stare. Then, with that last, odd question, her gaze began to dart about the room, looking for someone who wasn't present. She settled on me for a moment, and I felt a chill from her plaintive vulnerability. When I tried to look back as benignly and lovingly as pos­sible, I couldn't help noticing how drawn her cheeks were, doubtless from the constant IV feeding, and again my heart went out. "I'm scared," she went on, "but—"

"I'm here, honey," Lou declared, bending over her, his eyes pained. "Do you know who I am?"

"The jade face . . . a mask," she babbled on, still ignoring him. "All the colors. It's so . . . so beautiful."

Her hallucination didn't relate to anything I could under­stand. She clearly was off in another world, like when she was a kid, weaving the lights of the room now into some kind of dream. I touched Lou's shoulder and asked permis­sion to turn off the overhead fluorescents, but he just shrugged me off, his attention focused entirely on her.

His eyes had grown puzzled, as though he wanted to be­lieve she was returning to rationality but his common sense was telling him it wasn't true.

I was having a different reaction. What she was saying was random babblings, all right, but I was beginning to think she was reliving something she had actually seen.

However, she wasn't through.

"I want to pray, but . . . the white tunnel . . . is coming." She shuddered, then almost tried to smile. "Take me . . ."

She was gone, her eyelids fluttering uncontrollably.

"Honey, talk to me," Lou pleaded. He was crying, some­thing I'd never seen him do, something I was not even aware he was capable of. What he really was trying to say was, "Come back."

It wasn't happening. She stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment, then slowly closed her eyes, a shutter descending over her soul.

"She'll be okay," I whispered to him, almost believing it. Her brain had undergone a physical trauma, enough to cause a coma, but some kind of mental trauma must have preceded it. Was she now trying to exorcise that as part of her path to recovery?

The nurses in the room stirred, perhaps not sure what to do. The overhead lights were still dazzlingly bright, and I moved to shut them off, leaving only a night-light behind the bed. Perhaps the lights had brought her awake, but I was convinced what she'd just gone through had tired her to the point that she would not revive again that day.

Then one of the Caribbean nurses came over and placed her hand on Lou's shoulder. She had an experienced face, full of self-confidence. Something about her inspired trust.

"I wouldn't let this upset you too much," she said, a lovely lilt in her voice. "What just happened may or may not mean anything. When patients first come out of a coma, they can sometimes talk just fine, and yet not make any sense. They ramble on about things they dreamed of like they were real." Then she smiled. "But it's a good first step. She could wake up perfectly fine tomorrow. Just don't pay any attention to what she says for a while. She's dreaming now."

Lou grunted as though he believed her. I nodded in sym­pathy, though no one seemed to notice.

I also thought that although what Sarah had said was bi­zarre, it sounded like something more than a dream. Or had she gone back to her child-state where imaginary worlds were real for her?

Then in the dim glare of her bed light, Lou took a wrinkled blue booklet out of his inner pocket and stared at it. I had to stare at it a moment before I realized it was a passport.

"What—?"

"The American consulate in Merida, Mexico, sent it up to 26 Federal Plaza yesterday, because my name and office address are penciled on the inside cover as an emergency contact. The police down there said somebody, some gringo tourist fly-fishing way down on the Usumacinta River, near where the Rio Tigre comes in from Guatemala, snagged this floating in a plastic bag. He turned it in to the Mexican authorities there, and it ended up with our people." He opened the passport and stared at it. "The photo and ID page is ripped out, but it's definitely Sarah's." He handed it over. "Guy I know downtown dropped it off last night. I'm not sure if it has anything to tell us, but now, I was hoping it might help jog her memory."

I took it, the cover so waterlogged its color was almost gone. However, it must have been kept dry in the plastic bag for at least some of its trip from wherever, since much of the damage seemed recent.

Lou shook his head staring wistfully at me. "I still don't know how she got down there. She was in California. Re­member that postcard? If she'd come back East, she'd have got in touch. Wouldn't she?" His eyes pleaded for my agree­ment.

I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged. I wanted to be sympathetic, but I refused to lie outright. He took my ambivalence as assent as he pulled out the locket containing her picture, his talisman. He fingered it for a moment, staring into space, and then he looked down and opened it, as if seeing her high school picture, from a time when she was well, would somehow ease his mind.

"This whole thing doesn't sound like her," he went on. "Know what I think? She was being held down there against her will."

My heart went out to him, and I reached over and took the locket for a moment, feeling the strong "SRC" engraved on its heart-shaped face. "Lou, she's going to come out of it. And when she does, she'll probably explain everything. She's going to be okay any day now, I've got a hunch. A gut feeling."

I had a gut feeling, all right, but not that she was going to be fine. My real fear was she was going to wake up a fantasy-bound child again.

Then I handed the locket back. He'd seemed to turn anx­ious without it. He took the silver heart and just stared down at it. In the silence that settled over us, I decided to take a closer look at the passport. I supposed Lou had already gone through it, but maybe he'd missed something.

As I flipped through the waterlogged pages, I came across a smudgy imprint, caked with a thin layer of dried river clay, that was almost too dim to be noticed.

"Lou, did you see this?" I held it under the light and beckoned him over. "Can you read it?"

"Probably not without my specs." He took it and squinted helplessly. "My eyes aren't getting any better."

I took it back and rubbed at the page, cleaning it. It was hard to make out, but it looked like "Delegacion de Migracion, Aeropuerto Internacional, Guatemala, C.A."

"I think this is a Guatemalan tourist entry visa." I raised the passport up to backlight the page. "And see that faint bit there in the center? That's probably her entry date. Written in by hand."

He took it and squinted again. "I can't read the damned thing, but you're right. There's some numbers, or something, scribbled in."

I took it and rubbed the page till I could read it clearly. "It's March eleventh. And it was last year."

"Hot damn, let me see that." He seized it back and squinted for a long moment, lifting the page even closer to the light. "You're right." He held it for a second more, then turned to me. "This is finally the thing I needed. Now I'm damned well going to find out what she was doing down there."

"How do you think you can do that?" I just looked at him, my mind not quite taking in what he'd just said.

"The airlines." He almost grinned. "If they can keep track of everybody's damned frequent-flyer miles for years and years, they undoubtedly got flight manifests stored away somewhere too. So my first step is to find out where she flew from."

"But we don't know which—"

"Doesn't matter." He squinted again at the passport. "Now we know for sure she showed up at the airport in Guatemala City on that date there. I know somebody down­town, smooth black guy named John Williams, the FBI's best computer nerd, who could bend a rule for me and do a little B&E in cyberspace. He owes me a couple. So, if she was on a manifest for a scheduled flight into Guatemala City that day, he'll find it. Then we'll know where she left from, who else was on the plane." He tapped the passport confidently with his forefinger. "Maybe she was traveling with some scumbag I ought to look up and get to know better."

"Well, good luck."

In a way I was wondering if we weren't both now grasping for a miracle: me half-hoping for a baby through some New Age process of "centering," Lou trying to reclaim Sarah from her mental abyss with his gruff love. But then again, miracles have been known to happen.

"Quetzal Manor could have the makings of a great documentary," I was explaining to David Roth. "I just need some more information-gathering first, to get a better feeling for what Alex Goddard is up to. So going back up there will be two birds with one stone. I'll learn more about him, and he might even be able to tell me why I haven't been able to get pregnant."

He was frowning, his usual skeptical self. "How long—?"

"It's just for the weekend, or maybe a little . . . I'm not sure exactly. I guess it depends on what kinds of tests he's going to run. But the thing is, I have to do it now, while he and I are still clicking. An 'iron is hot' kind of moment. The only possible problem might be if I have to push back my schedule for looping dialogue forBaby Loveand then some­body's out of town."

"You check with the sound studio to warn them about possible rescheduling?" He wanted to appear to be fuming. But since he'd invited me down to his Tribeca loft at least once every three months, now that I'd finally shown up, he also had a small gleam in his eye. What did that mean?

"Yes, but I've already spotted most of the work print, and I've made tentative dates for people to come in. In a week and a half. Everything's still on schedule."

He leaned back on his white couch, as though trying to regroup. It was Saturday morning and I'd already made the

appointment to see Alex Goddard. I was going. I probably should have run it by David first, but damnit, it was my life.

Truthfully, though, I'd been dreading telling him all week, so to try and make him as congenial as possible, I'd arranged to see him at home and relaxed. It seemed to be working, more or less.

"Okay, okay, sometimes I guess it's best to just go with your gut," he said, beginning to calm down. He'd offered to whip up some brunch when I first arrived, and now I was feeling sorry I'd turned him down. I really did like him. But, alas, only as a friend. "Before I cave in totally, though, do me a favor and tell me some more about this . . . documen­tary? What, exactly, makes you think it's—"

"Everything." Whereupon I laid on him the full story of Carly and Paula, the children, and my encounter with Alex Goddard. The only thing I left out was the story of the His­panic hood since I didn't think he could handle it.

"This Quetzal Manor sounds like a funny operation," he declared solemnly when I'd finished. "I say the less you have to do with a place like that, the better. Who knows what's going on."

"But, David that's what makes it so interesting. The fact that itisa 'funny' operation. I really can see a documentary here, after Baby Love is in the can. But I'll never have a chance if I don't get to know this guy while I've got a good excuse. That's how my business works."

"So you're going to go back up there and . . . Is this like going undercover or something?"

"Well . . ." What was I going to say? I was actually half beginning to believe that Alex Goddard might be able to figure out why Steve and I couldn't conceive. It was certainly worth a few days of my life, documentary or no documentary. "Look, I really want to find out what's going on. For a lot of reasons."

He sighed and sipped at his coffee.

"Morgy, this has got to be quick. Nicky Russo called again. The thing I've learned about loan sharks, they keep your books better than you do. He knows exactly how much money we've got left and how long we can last. He's licking his chops, getting ready to eat us whole."

"What did you tell him?" The very thought of Nicky gave me a chill. If we missed so much as a week on the juice, he'd have the legal right to just seize my negative. When you're desperate, you sign those kinds of loans.

"I told him something I haven't even told you yet." He smiled a wicked grin. "I know you've been schmoozing Life­time about a cable deal, but before we put the ink to that, I want to finish some new talks I've started with Orion, their distribution people."

I think I stopped breathing for a second or two. Was there a chance for a theatrical release forBaby Love, not just a cable deal?

"When . . . You've actually met with them? How—?"

"Late yesterday." He was still grinning. "I ran into Jerry Reiner at Morton's and pitched the picture. Actually, I heard he was in town, so I wore a tie and ambushed him at lunch. He wants to see a rough cut as soon as we've got something ready."

"David, you're an angel." I was ecstatic. It was more than I'd dared hope for.

"So stay focused, for chrissake, and finish your picture. We're this close to saving our collective asses, so don't blow it. I've gone over all the schedules pretty carefully, and I'd guess we can spare a day or two, but if you drag this out, I'm going to read you your contract, the fine print about due diligence, and then finish up the final cut myself. I mean it. Don't make me do that."

"Don't you even think about that." Never! "This is my picture."

"Just business. If it's a choice between doing what I gotta do, or having Nicky Russo chew me a new asshole and be­come the silent partner in Applecore, guess what it's gonna be."

"David, you know I would never let that happen." I walked over and gave him the sweetest hug I knew how, still filled with joy. "And thanks so much for trying to get us a theat­rical. You don't know how much that means to me."

"Hey, don't try the charm bit on me. I'm serious. I'll cut you a weekend's slack, but then it's back to the salt mines. Either this picture's in the can inside of six weeks, or we're both going to be looking for new employment. So go the hell up there, do whatever it is you're going to do, and then get this damned picture finished. There'll be plenty of time after that to worry about our next project. With luck we might even have the money for it."

With that ultimatum still ringing in my ears, I took my leave of David Roth and headed north, up the Henry Hud­son Parkway. My life was getting too roller-coaster for words. . . .

As I drove, I tried not to dwell on the practical aspects of what was coming. It was hard to imagine what tests Alex Goddard could perform that hadn't already been done by Hannah Klein. Just thinking back over that dismal sequence made me feel baby-despondent all over again.

When I first mentioned I was thinking about trying to get pregnant, she looked me over, perhaps mentally calculating my age and my prospects, and then made a light suggestion.

"Why don't I give you a prescription for Clomid. Clomiphene citrate enhances ovulation, and it might be a good idea in your case. You're still young, Morgan, but you're no longer in the first blush of youth."

I took it for six months, but nothing happened. That was the beginning of my pregnancy depression.

By that time, she'd decided I definitely had a problem, so she began what she called an "infertility workup." The main thing was to check my Fallopian tubes for blockages and look for ovulatory abnormalities. But everything turned out to be fine. Depression City.

"Well," she said, "maybe your body justthinksyou've released an ovum. We need to do an ultrasound scan to make doubly sure an ovarian follicle has ruptured when it's sched­uled to and dropped an egg."

It turned out, however, that all those hormonal stop-and-go signals were working just fine. In the meantime, Steve and I were doing it like bunnies and still no pregnancy.

Okay, she then declared, the problem may be with your Fallopian tubes after all. Time to test for abnormalities. "This is not going to be fun. First we have to dilate your cervix, after which we inject a dye and follow it with X-rays as it moves through the uterus and is ejected out of your Fallopian tubes. We'll know right away if there's any kind of blockage. If there is something, we can go in and fix it."

"Sort of check out my pipes," I said, trying to come to grips with the procedure. I was increasingly sinking into de­spondency.

She did it all, and for a while she suspected there might be some kind of anatomical problem. Which brought us to the next escalation of invasiveness.

"We've got to go in and take a close-up look at every­thing," she said. "It's a procedure called laparoscopy. I'll have to make a small incision near your navel and insert a tiny optical device. In your case, I want to combine it with what's called a hysteroscopy, which will allow me to see directly inside your uterus for polyps and fibroids."

But again everything looked fine. I began to wonder what had happened to everybody's mother's warning you could get pregnant just letting some pimply guy put his hand in your pants.

Prior to all this, I should add, Steve had provided samples of sperm to be tested for number and vigor. (Both were just fine.) Then, toward the end of all the indignities, he actually paid to have some kind of test performed involving a hamster egg, to see if his sperm was lively enough to penetrate it. No wonder he finally went over the edge.

Now I was reduced to Alex Goddard. I'd brought a com­plete set of my medical test records, as Ramala had requested on the phone. I'd also brought a deep curiosity about what exactly he could do that hadn't already been done. I further wondered how I was going to talk Steve into coming back long enough to share in the project. As I motored up the driveway to Quetzal Manor, I told myself he loved me still, wanted a baby as much as I did . . . Well, let me be safe and say almost as much. The problem was, he was so demoralized about the whole thing. And then what? What if nothing hap­pened?

I started to park my car where I had the last time, then noticed the place actually had a parking lot. It was located off to the left side of the driveway, near the second, modern building, and was more or less hidden in amongst the trees. The lot was filled with a lot of late-model but inexpensive cars, basic working-girl transportation, and it seemed a better bet for long-term parking.

The front lobby, which had been empty the first time I was there, was now a minimalist reception area, a long metal desk rolled in from somewhere. I had the odd feeling it was there just for me. The woman behind the desk introduced herself as Ramala, the same person I'd talked to twice on the phone. She looked to be about my age, with long dark hair and quick Asian eyes, punctuated by a professional smile.

She knew my name, used it the minute she saw me, and then abruptly handed me a twenty-page "application" to complete.

"It's not just a formality," she explained, businesslike and earnest. "Dr. Goddard feels it's essential that he come to know you as a person. He'll read this carefully, believe me."

She ushered me to a chair that had a retractable table for writing, then gave me a ballpoint pen.

The document turned out to be the most prying, nosy thing I'd ever filled out. The pages demanded what amounted to a mini life history. One of the things that struck me as most strange was the part asking for a ten-year employment and residential history. If you've moved around as much as I have, worked freelance a lot, you'll understand how difficult it can be to reconstruct all those dates and places, but I did my best.

There were, of course, plenty of health questions too. One page even asked whether there was anything out of the or­dinary about my own birth: Was the delivery difficult, a ce­sarean, a breach baby? It was, as noted, a life history.

"Why does he need all this information?" I asked finally, feeling the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist. "I brought all my medical records."

Ramala gave me a kindly smile, full of sympathy.

"He must know you as a person. Then everything is pos­sible. When I came here, I had given up on ever having a child, but I surrendered myself to him and now my husband and I have twin boys, three years old. That's why I stayed to help him. His program can work miracles, but you must give him your trust."

Well, I thought, I might as well go with the flow and see where it leads.

When I'd finished the form, she took it back, along with the pen, then ushered me into the wide central courtyard where I'd met Alex Goddard the first time. He was nowhere to be seen, but in the bright late-morning sunshine there was a line of about twenty women, from late twenties to early forties, all dressed in white pajama-like outfits of the kind you see in judo classes, doing coordinated, slow-motion Tai Chi-like exercises. They were intent, their eyes fixed on the fringes of infinity.

These must be some of his acolytes, I thought, the ones I heard in their nuns' cells the first time I was here. What on earth does all this orientalism have to do with fertility? I then found myself wondering. I've studied the Far East enough to do "penetrating" documentaries about it, and I still can't get pregnant.

I took one look at them—none of them looked at me—and my heart went out. They were so sincere, so sure of what they were doing. For somebody who's always questioning everything, like me, it was touching, and maybe a little daunt­ing too.

Without a word, Ramala led me past them and on to an entryway at the far end of the courtyard, past the giant Danc­ing Shiva. The door was huge and ornate, decorated with beaten-copper filigree—much like one I'd seen in a Mogul palace in Northern India. Definitely awe-inspiring.

She pushed open the door without ceremony and there he was, dressed in white and looking for all the world like the miracle worker he claimed to be. He seemed to be meditating in his chair, but the moment I entered, his deep eyes snapped open.

"Did you bring your records?" he asked, not getting up. While I was producing them from my briefcase, Ramala dis­creetly disappeared.

"Please have a seat." He gestured me toward a wide chair.

The room was a sterile baby blue, nothing to see. No diplo­mas, no photos, nothing.

Except for another, smaller bronze statue of the Dancing Shiva, poised on a silver-inlaid table. I also noticed that his own flowing hair seemed to match that of the bronze figure.

Yes, I thought, I was right. That's who he thinks he is. And he has complete power over the people around him. How many chances do you get to do a documentary about somebody like this? I should have brought a Betacam for some video.

He studied my test records as a jeweler might examine a diamond, his serious eyes boring in as he flipped through the pages. The rest of his face, however, betrayed no particu­lar interest. I finally felt compelled to break the awkward silence.

"As you can see, I've had every test known to science. And none of them found anything wrong."

He just nodded, saying nothing, and kept on reading.

After a long, awkward silence, I decided to try and open things up a bit.

"Tell me, do you have any children of your own?"

The question seemed to be one he didn't get asked too often, because he stopped cold.

"All those who come here are my children," he replied, putting aside my records, dismissively finished with them.

"Well"—I pointed to them—"what do you think?"

"I haven't examined you yet," he said, looking up and smiling, indeed beaming with confidence. "Nothing in those records tells me anything about what may be your problem. I look for different things than do most physicians."

He fiddled with something beneath his desk, and the room was abruptly filled with the sound of a hypnotic drone. Per­haps its frequency matched one in my brain, because I instantly felt relaxed and full of hope. Much better than Muzak. Then he rose and came over.

Is he going to do my exam right here? I wondered. Where's all the ob/gyn paraphernalia? The humiliating stirrups?

Standing in front of me, he gently placed his hands on my heart, then bent over and seemed to be listening to my chest. His touch was warm, then cold, then warm, but the overall effect was to send a sense of well-being through my entire body.

"You're not breathing normally," he said after a moment of unnerving silence. "I feel no harmony."

How did he know that? But he was right. I felt the way I had the first time I tried to sit in Zen meditation in Kyoto. As then, my body was relaxing but my wayward brain was still coursing.

"I'll try," I said, attempting to go along. What I really was feeling was the overwhelming sense of his presence, drawing me to him.

Next he moved around behind me and cradled my head in his hands, placing his long fingertips on my forehead, sort of the same way he'd done when I was standing with him on the windy heath, nursing a killer cold. All the while, the drone seemed to be increasing to a piercing, overwhelming volume, as though a powerful electrical force were growing in the room, sending me into an alpha state of relaxation.

"What are you doing? Is this how you do an exam for—?"

"The medical tests you had showed there's nothing wrong with your uterus or your Fallopian tubes, nothing that should inhibit conception. There's no need to pursue that any further. But the mind and the body are a single entity that must be harmonized, must work as one. Although each individual has different energy flows, I think my regimen here could be very helpful to you. Already I can tell your problem is a

self-inflicted trauma that has negated the natural condition wherein your mind and body work in unison."

"What 'trauma'?" I asked.

He didn't answer the question. Instead he began massag­ing my temples.

"Breathe deeply. And do it slowly, very slowly."

As I did, I felt a kind of dizziness gradually coming over me, the hypnotic drone seeming to take over my conscious­ness. Instead of growing slower, my breathing was actually becoming more rapid, as though I'd started to hyperventilate. But I no longer had any control over it. My autonomic ner­vous system had been handed over to him, as dizziness and a sense of disorientation settled over me. The room around me began to swirl, and I felt my conscious mind, my will, slipping out of my grasp. It was the very thing I'd vowed not to let happen.

The same thing had occurred once before, after I broke my collarbone in the Pacific surf that slammed a Mexican beach south of Puerto Villarta. When a kindly Mexican doc­tor was later binding on a harness to immobilize my shoulder, the pain was such that I momentarily passed out while sitting on a stool in his office. I didn't fall over or collapse; it just seemed as though my mind, fleeing the incredible pain, drifted away in a haze of sensation.

Now the pastel blue walls of the room slowly faded to white, and then I was somewhere else, a universe away, sur­rounded by blank nothingness. I tried to focus on the bronze Shiva directly across, but the ring of fire around him had become actual flames. The only reality left was the powerful touch of Alex Goddard's hands and a drone that could have been the music of the spheres.

Sometime thereafter, in a reverie, I felt myself in a magical forest whose lush vines reminded me of Kerala in India. It was a verdant, hazy paradise, another Eden. A child was with me, a child of my own, and I felt jubilation. I watched the child as she grew and became a resplendent orchid.

But with childbearing came pain, and I seemed to be feel­ing that pain as I took up the flower and held it, joy flowing through me.

Then Alex Goddard drifted into my dream, still all in white, and he was gentle and caring as he again moved his hands over me, leaving numbness in their wake. I thought I heard his voice talking of the miracle that he would make for me. A miracle baby, a beautiful flower of a child. I asked him how such a thing would happen. A miracle, he whispered back. It will be a miracle, just for you. When he said it, the orchid turned into the silver face of a cat, a vaguely familiar image, smiling benignly, then transmuted back into a blos­som.

Then he drifted out of my dream much as he had come, a wisp of white, leaving me holding the gorgeous flower against my breasts, which had begun to swell and spill out milk the color of gold. . . .

A wet coolness washed across my face, and—as I faintly heard the sounds of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Glenn Gould's piano notes crisp and clear—I opened my eyes to

see Ramala massaging my brow with a damp cloth. She smiled kindly and lovingly as she saw my eyes open, then widen with astonishment.

"What—?"

"Hey, how're you doing? Don't be alarmed. He's taking great care of you."

"What. . . where am I?" I lifted my head off the pillow and tried to look around. I half expected Steve to be there, but of course he wasn't.

"You're here. At Quetzal Manor." She reached and did something and the music slowly faded away. "Don't worry. You'll be fine. I think the doctor was trying to release your Chi, and when he did it was too strong for you."

"What day is it?" I felt completely disoriented my bear­ings gone.

"Sunday. It's Sunday morning." She reached and touched my brow as though giving me a blessing. Like, it's okay, really.

At that moment, Alex Goddard strolled in, dressed again in white.

Just as in the dream, I thought.

"So, how's the patient?" He walked over—eyes benign and caring—and lifted my wrist, absently taking my pulse while he inserted a digital thermometer in my ear. For a flash­back moment he merged into, then emerged from, my dream. "You're looking fine. I have to say, though, you had quite a time yesterday."

"All I remember is passing out in your office," I mumbled glancing around at the gray plastic thermometer. And that strange dream, you telling me I would have a miracle baby.

"You had an unusual reaction," he went on. "You remem­ber I spoke to you about mind-body harmony. You see what can happen when I redirect the flows of energy, Chi, from your body to your mind." He smiled and settled my wrist back onto the bed. "Don't worry. I have a lot of hope for you. You're going to do fine."

He looked satisfied as he consulted the thermometer, then jotted down my temperature on a chart. He's already started a medical record, I thought. Why?

"I'm . . . I'm wondering if this really is working out," I said. It was dawning on me that I was getting into Alex God­dard's world a lot deeper and a lot faster than I'd expected. I'd come planning to be an observer and now I was the one being observed. That was exactly not how I'd intended it. Maybe, I thought, if I back off and make a new run, I can keep us on equal footing. "Perhaps I ought to just go back to the city for a few days and—"

"I'd assumed you came to begin the program." He looked at me, a quick sadness flooding his eyes. "You struck me as a person who would follow through."

"I need to think this over" I really feel terrible, I thought, trying to rise up. What did he do to me? "Maybe I'm just not right for your 'program'?" The idea of a documentary had momentarily retreated far into the depths of my mind.

"On the contrary." He smiled. "We've shown that you're very responsive."

"Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm too responsive." I rose and slipped my feet off the bed. The motion brought a piercing pain in my abdomen. "OUCH! What's . . ." I felt my pelvis, only to find it was  very sensitive.

Pulling aside my bed shift, I gazed in disbelief at my lower abdomen. There were red spots just above my pale blue pant­ies.

Alex Goddard modestly averted his eyes. "I didn't want to say anything," he explained to the wall above my head, "but you were in pretty delicate shape there for a while. Mild convulsions, and I think your digestive system had gone into shock. The stomach is a center of energy, because it's constantly active. So I gave you some shots of muscle relaxant. Nothing serious. It's an unusual treatment, but I've found it works. It . . . modulates the energy flows. I also took a blood sample for some tests, but the results were all normal."

He then asked me about my menstrual cycle, exact days, saying he wanted to make sure it wasn't just routine cramps. "The seizure you had passed almost as soon as it came, but you might actually have been hallucinating a bit. You had a slight fever all night."

"Well . . ." Something like that had happened to me years ago in rural Japan, when I stupidly ate some unwashed greens and my stomach went into shock. At one point a local doctor, Chinese, was trying acupuncture, which also left me sore.

"Nothing to be worried about," he continued. "But if you're the least bit concerned, maybe we ought to do a quick sonogram, take a sound picture. Ease your mind that every­thing's okay."

"That doesn't really seem necessary," I said. For a clinic specializing in "energy flows" and "mind-body" programs, there was a lot of modern equipment. Odd.

"Won't do a bit of harm." He nodded at Ramala, who also seemed to think it was a good idea. "Come on, help me walk her down to the lab." He turned back. "It's totally noninva­sive. You'll see for yourself that you're fine."

Before I could protest, I found myself walking, with some dizziness, down the hallway. This part of Quetzal Manor, which I had not seen before, was a sterile, high-tech clinic. I realized I was in a different building from the old convent, probably the new one I'd noticed across the parking lot, the one he hadn't bothered to mention that first day. But all I could focus on were the blue walls and the new white tiles of the floor.

The sonogram was as he described it, quick and noninvasive. He rubbed the ultrasound wand over my abdomen, watching the picture on a CRT screen, which showed my insides, a jumble of organs that he seemed to find extremely informative.

"Look." He pointed. "Those lines there are your Fallopian tubes, and that's your uterus." He pushed a button to record a digital image. "Seems like whatever was upsetting your stomach is gone. Obviously nothing's wrong here."

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