Twenty-eight

With each rumble of the subway a fine dusting of sand loosened from the crumbling rock above Maslow's face and rained down on him. It felt as if the earth itself were alive and trying to entomb him. When Maslow became fully aware of it, the feeling had returned to his hands and arms in stinging tingles. But his legs were still numb.

Dirt was in his eyes and mouth. "Oh God!" He raised his hand and smacked it on the ceiling only inches from his face. It jumped to the right and hit a wall of gravel. Panic-stricken, he felt around him and discovered another wall to his left. Whimpering, he realized that he was buried alive. The only thing between him and death was a thin pocket of foul air.

"Oh God, save me," he whispered. He closed his flooding eyes and saw nothing. He was alone in his grave. All he heard was the pounding of his heart and the rasp of his breath, louder than any thunder he'd ever known. He struggled to breathe, and terror became the animal that consumed him.

If he could have moved his legs, he would have thrashed in agony. If he could have yelled, he would have shrieked his protest. But he could not move, could not utter more than soft moans. He was able to raise his wrist to his face but could not see well enough to read the dial of his watch. Nor could he estimate the time that had passed by the condition of his body.

He felt weak. He felt sick. He felt cold, then hot. He'd been hungry earlier, but was not so hungry now. As a doctor, he knew that loss of appetite always occurred after the first day of fasting but returned with a fierce vengeance very soon thereafter. He also knew a healthy person could live in moderate temperatures without food or water for a long time. Earthquake victims trapped in the rubble had been known to live four, five, even six days. But Maslow was no victim of a natural disaster.

His whole situation seemed to come directly from his own childhood dreams. To be paralyzed and unable to escape an enemy. To be trapped in the dark, cold and hungry. To be all alone with his terror. Everything that was happening to him now had been common features of his own private nightmares. Except for one thing, to have a patient capture and kill him. That scenario had never occurred to him.

Maslow felt as if he had been dreaming all his life. Wake up. A patient had done this to him, and he could not let her win. Slowly Maslow organized his thoughts. He had made a promise to help his patients. In return they were supposed to respect his body and space. They didn't always, but on psychiatric wards he had never found it terrifying to deal with persons acting on orders from Venus to rape him, to get his sperm and plant it inside themselves just for a while so they could take it back and propagate the moon. Once a highly educated young man who had reminded Maslow of himself had become upset in the hospital and suddenly erupted in a rage. He picked Maslow up, and threw him across the room. Maslow grabbed a chair and held the man off like a matador until a male nurse arrived to subdue him.

He'd felt like a jerk for not being more careful then. Now he felt like a monumental fool. He had no chair, no weapon, nothing. He could hardly breathe, let alone sit up. Maslow was furious at himself. How could he have let this happen?

As he lay on his back, buried, terrified that he would die, he kept thinking, If I were a more experienced doctor this wouldn't have happened. He blamed himself for everything. It was obvious to him that Allegra had a psychotic transference and wanted to possess him. His memory of the day stopped at meeting her outside the park. He was certain that somehow she had overpowered and gotten him here, but he had no idea how she might have accomplished that. Allegra was a small girl. She might have been able to surprise and knock him down but not move him. He would not have come in here on his own. He was packed into the ground. She could not have done that alone.

Some hours after his discovery of the fanny pack, he realized he still had the granola bars and the water bottle. He lifted the bottle to his lips and wet his mouth. The taste of the water made him think that maybe Allegra never intended to kill him. His hands were not bound. He had air and water and food. Maybe this was a test of some kind.

An analyst never stops analyzing. Slowly Maslow relived all of his sessions with Allegra, trying to find a clue in something she said that would help release him. So many times the humor or sadness in her remarks had resonated in him. He had felt as close to her as he had felt with anyone in his life. During the months they were together in therapy, he'd thought of her almost as if she were his friend, his sister.

But some of the things she'd said never rang true. Something was wrong with her stories. He'd ignored his suspicions and believed her at the time, but now he saw what the clever young woman had done with him. She had given him a sense of ease. He'd felt comfortable with her and that feeling of comfort had eroded the boundaries between them. His own trust of her had encouraged the violation. He was a stupid jerk, a giant sap for trusting and believing a borderline patient.

And now he was in a hostage situation with no one to help him get out. If he could talk with her now, he would tell her she was a good girl, that he understood and cared for her, that everything she'd done he could explain to her and others. He'd tell her that he would protect her and she'd be all right. And he'd ask her to tell him all that she wanted from their relationship. He'd assure her that he would give it to her as soon as he got home and had a bath.

Don't ruin your life with this, Allegra, don't go a single step further. I'll give you whatever you want. He played it through in his mind. Maybe she'd show up.

He took two tiny bites of granola bar and chewed them down to nothing before wetting his tongue with the water from his bottle. He consulted frequently with his body, praying for feeling to return to his legs. If he could move his legs, he could crawl out. He heard the rumble of the subway and the wind blowing in the trees. He heard honking horns. It was not hopeless. He was not on Mars or Venus. His city was all around him. Someone would find him. He prayed that someone would find him soon. He did not want to think about dying there.

Twenty-nine

Allegra Caldera was ashamed of herself for not telling the detectives her secret. She should have told them everything she knew the minute they said Maslow was missing. The whole city knew he was missing-everybody except her. This was all her fault. The whole thing. She could not forgive herself for continuing the lie.

After the police locked her out of his office, she walked downtown, back to the building where he lived. There, she wandered back and forth, waiting for him to return. When it started getting dark, she marched back uptown and hung around his office some more. She knew she was the most pathetic creature on earth.

She kept thinking that wherever she looked for him she had a ninety percent chance of missing him. By eight o'clock she was on Eighty-second Street again, standing by the park entrance where she had seen him last. He'd looked very small in his shorts and white T-shirt, really slim, about the same size as her father. Her father had his disappearances, too. She should have gotten used to them, but she never did.

When she was so dizzy with hunger that she could hardly stand up, she went to the coffee bar on Columbus and had a cup of espresso, no sugar. For her it was dinner. Finally at ten o'clock she entered the park once again.

Allegra thought she must have walked miles going nowhere at all before she finally sank down on the bench and let her grief out in great heaving sobs. She couldn't lose the only person in the world she really loved. She couldn't lose him before he knew her.