4

Despite herself, Susan compared Lou and Tara.

In the next few days, as Susan grew tight and wary (the ringing of a phone, any phone, would frighten her), Lou tried to help, but his male rationality lead quickly to disbelief, and then, most degrading of all, to solicitousness. Tara, however, was there, believing it all, eyes wide with honest concern, even becoming angry that anyone or anything would so upset her friend.

They called the phone company (Tara dialed). That was supremely hopeless.

“. . . Madam, are you reporting a dead phone?”

“No, I’m trying to explain to you—” Susan took a deep breath and repeated herself once more—“There’s a sound on my phone . . .”

“What kind of a sound, madam?”

“I don’t know; I can’t describe it! A dreadful . . .”

“Would you like to speak with my supervisor? I’m sorry but there’s really very little I can do. If you want the phone removed . . .”

And so Susan spoke to the supervisor and that was worse.

Then, one morning at the office, Tara had the answer.

She entered Susan’s cubicle, lowered herself heavily, as she always did, on the drawing board and gloated. “Don’t thank me. A small token from Tiffany’s main floor will do.”

Susan looked up from disloyal thoughts of Lou. “What shouldn’t I thank you for?”

“I think I’ve got your phone problem licked.”

“What?”

“I think I know what’s been going on, and boy, is it something!”

Susan recognized Tara’s tone; she was going to stall, better to enjoy her moment of glory.

“What is it?”

“You know my friend Joan Petrowsky? The one who’s got the antique shop?”

“Yes?”

“Well, last night I was at her apartment with a few of the Village dingbats. Jack, that guy I introduced you to at . . .”

“Tara, don’t give me a guest list, just tell me what you’re talking about!”

“Joan’s had the same thing.”

Susan felt a premature welling up of relief—if someone else had experienced the fear, then it was real, explainable!

“She’s heard that noise?”

“Yup. Well, not exactly, but it’s the same thing, at least the way Yuri explained it . . .”

“Who’s Yuri?”

“I thought you didn’t want a guest list.”

“Please.” Susan laughed. “You’re toying with a woman’s sanity!”

“Okay, I’ll get to the point, but you owe me one. Yuri Gross was one of the guys at Joan’s . . .”

“One of the dingbats.”

“Not this one. He’s an associate professor at the University of Haifa who came over here to do some research at NYU and, between you and me, to screw every American girl he can get his hands on, I’ve got a date with him tonight, anyway—” she took a quick breath—“I told everybody about your experience, I know you told me not to, but I didn’t mention your name and if I hadn’t told them, we wouldn’t have found out what was going on . . .”

“Simple declarative sentences, please!”

“Don’t nudge me, I’ll work cheaper. Anyway—” and Tara paused for dramatic effect, which irritated Susan—“Joan started telling about an experience she had with the phones and pretty soon everybody was adding their two cents and then Yuri took over. God, he’s a hunk. Guess what his field is?”

“If you don’t get to the point, I’m going to stab you with a Magic Marker.”

“Extrasensory perception. That’s not what he calls it, but that’s basically it. You know, psychic phenomena, telekinetics . . .”

“Oh, shit, Tara,” Susan said, turning away, the disappointment sharp.

“Don’t ‘oh, shit’ me, Susan. The man has degrees coming out of his ears, and you know how many people like you he’s interviewed in the past few weeks? Hundreds! They’re lined up all the way to Eighth Street and each and every one of them has had an experience that scared the hell out of them and can’t be explained. Not in the usual way . . .”

“ESP,” Susan muttered to herself, taking up her brushes to wash them.

“Susan, every major university in the world is working their asses off studying ESP. Now maybe they didn’t make a big deal about it in art school—” and she made the word sound arch—“but the rest of the world is pretty damn interested.”

“God, Tara, a psychic?”

“He’s not a psychic, for crying out loud. He’s a professor. A scientist. Look—” and it was obvious that Tara was losing patience with Susan—“either there’s an explanation for what happened to you, a good solid explanation, or you’re going out of your mind, right?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Susan answered sardonically.

“Well, we both know you’re too mean to go crazy, so that leaves us with trying to find out what’s happening, right?”

“Right,” Susan begrudged. “So?”

“So you show up at my place tonight at seven-­thirty and talk to Yuri. Then, when it’s all settled and there’s nothing to be afraid of, you get out of there and leave us alone. God, what a hunk!”

“What’s he going to do?”

“To you or to me?”

“I’m dying and you’re making jokes.”

“You’re not dying. He’s just going to talk to you. I don’t know. But one thing I do know is he wasn’t the least surprised or scared over what happened.”

“Sure, it didn’t happen to him.”

“I’m gonna smack you soon, girl.”

Susan put her arms around Tara, felt the warmth of her ample body, thanked God for her and said, “If this doesn’t work, will you go to a voodoo doctor with me?”

“That did it.” And Tara smacked her bottom.

She didn’t want to tell Lou.

It wasn’t that she was angry with him, exactly. But the night before, when she mentioned her fear, he tried to erase it by making love to her, and the odd humiliation of it still lingered.

“Do you mind if I go out tonight for a while?” she asked casually, reaching over to cut Andrea’s lamb chop.

“Where to?”

“Just to Tara’s. Girl stuff. Don’t eat that, honey. It’s fat.”

“But I like it.”

“I know. Spit it out.”

“Okay, but don’t be late.”

“Yes, mein Führer. Come on, Andrea, out with it.”

The first lie between us, Susan thought, sitting there eating silently. But, of course, it wasn’t. There had been a parking ticket that went undiscussed, a guilt-­induced expensive present for her mother that was never agreed to, and even the classic headaches when Lou wanted to make love at, rather than with, her.

At seven, Susan made a fuss over Andrea (“Who’s the prettiest girl in the world?”), dutifully put up a pot of coffee for Lou and left the apartment.

Yuri Gross was indeed a hunk.

As Susan entered Tara’s small living room (two throw pillows were already on the couch with more to come; they did look precious), she tried to hide her surprise at seeing him. Tara called nearly every man a hunk, but this one, sitting there in jeans and a bulky knit sweater, was the real thing. His curly blond hair was in disarray, as if he’d just stepped off the kibbutz to check for snipers, his pale-­blue Sabra eyes could cut clean through the dark of a desert night, or a woman, his hands, huge, larger than Lou’s, seemed at once capable of great damage and gentleness.

Susan was surprised to find that she was blushing. Happily, Tara took it to mean discomfort with the subject to come, and so didn’t push it. They had drinks and spoke amiably (his accent, too, was riveting) of the differences between Israel and America, of the Mideast, movies, whatever. And then Yuri (could he, too, have been anxious to be alone with Tara?) broached the subject.

“Tara tells me you’ve had an experience.”

“I suppose you could call it that,” Susan answered, pouring herself another needed glass of wine.

“Tell me about it,” he demanded, and although the demand was made gently, it did unnerve her.

She tried to tell it calmly, almost matter-­of-­factly, lest he think her a hysteric and withdraw whatever help he might give. She succeeded all too well, for Tara interrupted at one point. “Jesus, Susan, tell the man how frightened you were.”

“Terrified,” she admitted.

“Don’t be,” Yuri said, and as if on command, Susan was comforted.

When she had described the sound (lack of sound) a dozen ways (“It’s not like anything on earth; it’s as if it were coming from another place, no place, a horrible place. . . .”) Susan looked into Yuri Gross’s ice-­blue eyes (which never wavered) and asked, “What is it?”

“What do you think it is?” he asked, and she thought of the analyst she’d seen for two years. He, too, had answered questions with questions.

“I don’t know.” And she looked to Tara for some sort of support.

Tara gave it. “Whatever it is, it’s scared the hell out of her.”

There was a silence then, while Yuri stretched his immense, capable hands in front of him, cracked his knuckles, and thus, having introduced the seriousness of what was to follow, started.

“Have you ever heard of precognition?”

It was going to be as Susan feared, useless.

“Yes,” she answered but the weariness of her reaction came through despite her intention of hiding it.

“You’ll have to give up the pleasure of cynicism, just for a little while, okay?” he said, reading her perfectly.

She blushed for a second time. “I’m sorry. Yes, I think I know what precognition is.”

“Hey,” Tara interrupted, “what about us guys in the bleachers?”

“Think of movies,” Yuri explained, and Susan recognized an edge of the same condescension Lou used on her. “The technique of flashback is old and accepted, but now there’s a new technique, the flash-­ahead—when a character or the audience sees, for a moment, something yet to happen. It’s a familiar technique . . .”

“Gotcha,” Tara said.

“. . . Based on actual case histories. Thousands of them. All verified. Nothing unusual about them anymore.”

“You mean psychics, right?” Susan asked.

“No, not at all. At least not professional psychics or even amateurs. No, these are ordinary people, ordinary cynics.” And he smiled at Susan, a dazzling if superior smile. “People all over the world are having these experiences. They probably always have, but now that our field is recognized, they report them. People see coming calamities before they happen, happy events, even things as petty as new boyfriends—” he looked at Tara, who said, “You call that petty?”

He laughed and casually stroked her arm. (Yes, he was anxious for them to be alone.)

“You think that’s what happened to me?” Susan asked, hoping that the grain of acceptance she was feeling would mount into belief.

“Possibly.”

“What am I seeing . . . hearing?”

“It could be anything. An illness, death . . .” and he saw the fright flash across Susan’s face. “Something that needn’t happen for thirty or forty years.” Her face relaxed. “There are no time limits on precognition.”

“But I’ve never had an . . . experience before.”

“Of course you have. We all have. But we’re not trained to recognize them and so we discount them. How’s your woman’s intuition?”

“Not bad, how’s yours?” Tara kidded.

“That’s precognition of a socially acceptable kind. All it really means, all precognition really means, is the ability to tune in on possible eventualities, not to harden oneself into the here and now at the cost of one’s full faculties. Animals do it all the time. Have you ever seen a herd of antelope before a storm? They’re all over the place. . . .”

“You know, we were saying just the other day, the next time we get in a herd of antelopes, we’ve got to check the weather forecast.” Again Tara lightened the mood.

“Shut up, you,” Yuri said good-­naturedly, running his massive hand over her face.

“You think that’s it?” Susan willed her resistance down.

“Actually?” Yuri paused. “No.”

“No?” She was disappointed.

“Not with two hearings. No, frankly I think what happened to you is far more commonplace.”

“Aw, shit,” said Tara.

“What?”

“It’s what actors call sense memory.” Again Susan noticed the condescension. “We have another term for it, but it doesn’t matter. Simply, what it is—I’ll give you an example—” and he pointed a giant index finger at Susan, who felt the impulse to bite it. “Have you ever been walking down the street and heard a song coming from someone’s radio only to be strongly reminded of another time you heard the song? So strongly reminded that all sorts of things came back to you that you’d long since forgotten?”

“Déjà vu.” Susan was pleased that, for a moment, at least, she could stop playing the uninformed child to his smug teacher.

“Right. I think the probability is that that’s what happened to you. Some sound the phone gave off, some tone, registered in your ear and you ceased hearing the phone and started hearing another sound, the memory of another sound. Something from a long time ago.”

“The sound of what?”

“Have you had your tonsils out?”

“What?”

“Have you?” His gentle, reassuring smile came close to infuriating Susan.

“Yes.”

“It could be the sound of being under ether. If you want to get romantic about it, it could be the sound of being in your mother’s womb. There’s a lot of evidence that the sense memory of prenatal months is enormously important . . .”

He went on. And on. And in a little while he sounded to Susan exactly like Lou, lecturing her out of her fear.

But, miraculously, it worked.

By the time Yuri ground to a halt (“The one thing you should keep in mind is that whatever you experienced, it holds no threat. It’s no harbinger of doom”), Susan felt enormously relieved, grateful, resentful and attracted to him.

It was this last feeling that made her leave rather abruptly, saying to Tara at the door, “He’s gorgeous, but keep your dukes up.”

In the cab going uptown, she started to smile—the first genuine smile she’d had in days.