Superstition

21

She went into the kitchen, boiled some water, and poured it over a sachet of vervain tea. Then she sat nursing her cup and looking at the postcard and debating whether to call Sam and tell him about it. In the end she decided not to; it would be pointless without showing him the picture. She would do it tomorrow.

Although she had been pleasantly tired when she arrived home, her mind was racing now and all thought of sleep abandoned. She rummaged through her desk in search of the magnifying glass she knew was there somewhere.

Enlarged, the face in the painting was even more unmistakably the same as the one sketched by Drew Hearst that hung on the wall of Sam's lab, in the basement that they now called Adam's room. The expression wasn't the same. Here he was animated, caught up in the excitement of the moment, cheering on his hero. But it was the same man.

The most likely explanation, she told herself, was that Drew had seen the picture somewhere and unconsciously reproduced the face when she made her drawing. Yet the drawing had been a committee project. They had all made their suggestions as to how Adam should look, the length of his hair, the color of his eyes, and so forth. Like a police artist, Drew had sketched the person they were trying to describe from the picture they had formed of him in their imaginations. It was impossibly unlikely that they had all seen this particular painting or a copy of it and remembered it unconsciously. Certainly, Joanna was sure that she hadn't. And the notion that they had come up purely by accident with a face in a picture they had never seen was too improbable even to consider.

Tomorrow, she told herself, she would start looking for answers. This had to be resolved before she could go any further with the story. She checked the back of the postcard once again for the name of the collection. She would make inquiries, find out everything that was known about this picture-including the names, if they were recorded, of the people portrayed in it.

She drifted at last into a fitful sleep, comforting herself with the thought that she was a journalist and her job was to find answers. There were always answers if you looked hard enough.

Always.

When she awoke at four a.m., she knew at once what was happening. Perspiring and shivering, with an aching head, she had obviously picked up the flu that had been going around her office for the past two weeks. After making her way groggily to the bathroom and taking two aspirin, she dozed uncomfortably until dawn, then fell heavily asleep until almost nine.

She accepted the fact that she was going to feel like this for at least forty-eight hours regardless of any medication she might take. The only thing to do was stay in bed and drink endless cups of herbal tea. Luckily she had a good supply in the apartment. She called her office and told them to forget about her for the next few days. Then she called Sam and told him that she would have to miss that evening's meeting of the group.

Normally when someone missed a session, which had inevitably happened from time to time, the others carried on without them. However, as the whole thing had been set up originally for Joanna to write about, he suggested they should cancel and wait until she was better. She hesitated. She wanted to tell him about the postcard, but would rather show him than try to describe it over the phone. Almost as though reading her thoughts, he said he would come by at lunchtime. She warned him about catching her bug, but he laughed and said he never caught anything, adding that if she thought of something she wanted him to bring she should call him at the lab.

She slept again until the phone rang. It was the doorman to say that Sam was downstairs. Joanna quickly tried to repair the unattractive image she saw in her bathroom mirror. When the bell rang she hurried to the door and let him take her in his arms, almost crushing the flowers and the carrier bag containing lunch that he had brought.

Before they ate or did anything else, Joanna went to the desk in the annex of her living room where she had left the postcard. She clearly remembered leaving it on her computer keyboard, but now it wasn't there. Nor was it anywhere among the papers on her desk. The rest of her mail was there, including the still unread letter from Australia. But not the postcard.

Feeling annoyed and a little bit strange, she went through to the kitchen where Sam was preparing a salad. She found him standing with the postcard in his hand, flipping from the picture to the message on the back.

“Where did you find that?” The question came out more sharply than she had intended, almost an accusation.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry. It was just propped up here and caught my eye.”

She looked at the shelf he nodded toward and frowned. “I don't remember putting it there. I was trying to find it to show you. Isn't it amazing?”

He looked at her as though he didn't know what she meant. “Isn't what amazing?”

“The picture. Look!” She pointed to the figure on the left. “It's Adam-exactly the way Drew drew him.”

Sam stared harder at the picture. “I suppose there's some similarity,” he conceded grudgingly, “but I can't say I'd have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out.”

She almost snatched the postcard away from him in disbelief. “For heaven's sake, it's absolutely obvious!” But then she stopped. In all honesty, it wasn't as obvious as it had seemed last night.

He watched her, his concern growing as he saw the puzzlement in her face. “What's all this about?”

She looked from the card to him and back to the card. “I looked at this when I got in last night. I was so bowled over that I almost called you. It was Adam to the life!”

“And now it isn't?”

“Well, obviously it isn't. There's a similarity, as you say, but no more.” She put the card back on the shelf where he said he'd found it. “Is that where it was?”

He moved it slightly to the left. “Right there.”

“That's really odd.”

“I guess this is where I'm supposed to say it can't have gotten there by itself.” He laughed gently as he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. “Listen, I think you're getting a little spooked about this. When you got home last night you must have been already starting to run a temperature. Your responses were a little off. You saw this, and after what we'd been talking about all day…!”

“I know what I saw.”

“I'm not saying you didn't. But you just admitted you don't see it now. This picture happens to be in one of the books about the revolution that we have at the lab. Even if you don't remember seeing it, you must have. Next thing, you get this card from your parents and realize there's something strangely familiar about it. Which is where the mind starts to play tricks-especially when there's a flu virus messing with it.”

“That's very rational. I just wish it sounded more convincing.”

“What's not convincing?”

“For one thing, it's quite an odd coincidence that my parents should send this particular card.”

“I don't see why. They know that what we're doing involves Lafayette, they find themselves in some museum…”

“All right, all right!” She held up her hands in surrender. “Let's forget it. ‘Hysterical Woman Gets Flu and Sees Ghost.’ Enough.”

“Seeing a ghost is what we're hoping to do-one that we've created just as you created one in this picture by projecting your mind's-eye view of Adam onto it.”

“I said I'm not arguing, okay? I quit.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to be a bore…”

She held her hands up further, then made a zipping motion over her lips to indicate that the conversation was at an end. He laughed again. “Go sit down and I'll bring you some lunch.”

A few minutes later they were sitting by the window with plates on their knees. “By the way,” he said, “I've been thinking about it, and if it's all right with you I think I'd like to go ahead with tonight's session.”

“Sure,” she said, “it's fine with me.”

“After all, we'll have it all on tape, so you won't miss anything. And we've got such a good momentum going I don't want to lose it.”

“You're right. I'll be okay for the next one.”

He reached for the salad bowl as she finished her plate. “Can I give you some more?”

“Isn't there some rule about feed a cold and starve a fever?” she asked as he served her.

“Old wives’ tale,” he said with a dismissive grin. “Don't believe a word of it. Worst kind of superstition.”