“Her symptoms,” I said. “You mean the dreams?”

“Yes,” he said. He still didn’t let go of Annie’s wrist.

“I asked Dr. Barton about the dreams,” I said. “He said he didn’t know what was causing them until he saw her blood tests this morning. They showed traces of Thorazine. He said the Thorazine was probably causing the dreams. He asked Annie who’d prescribed Thorazine for her, and she said nobody. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, that she’d never taken any Thorazine.”

“Thorazine was indicated,” he said. “It’s routinely prescribed in cases of sleep disorders.”

“Dr. Barton said that Thorazine is prescribed for institutionalized mental patients, not for people with bad dreams.”

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You still believe she’s having Robert E. Lee’s dreams.”

“Dr. Barton said it was a crime for a doctor to give a patient a drug without this knowledge. He said a doctor could lose his license for that. Is that true, Richard? Could you lose your license?”

“You bastard,” my old roommate said, and let go of Annie’s wrist. “I was only trying to help you, Annie. I had a duty as a doctor.”

“Don’t you talk to me about duty,” Annie said, cradling her arm like a baby against her, “not when you wouldn’t let me do mine.”

Broun made a sound. His face under the beard was deathly pale. He looked sick, like a writer who had just heard the words he wrote spoken in earnest.

“Call the ambulance,” Richard said to Broun.

“No,” Broun said. “She’s having Robert E. Lee’s dreams.”

“You’ve convinced him, too, haven’t you?” he said to me. “You’re all crazy, you know that?”

“Like Lincoln?” Broun said.

“Call an ambulance,” Richard said, and Broun turned and stumbled up the stairs.

“I told Annie I was going to prescribe Thorazine for her and informed her of its side effects,” the Good Shrink said. “She took the first dose herself, Thorazine will sometimes temporarily impair the patient’s short-term memory.”

“After the Civil War, Longstreet wrote long, involved explanations of how he hadn’t let Lee down at Pickett’s Charge,” I said, “how it was all Lee’s fault. But it didn’t work. There were too many eyewitnesses.”

“Is this supposed to be something Robert E. Lee dreamed?”

“No,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a warning. I have two Thorazine capsules and all those messages you left on the answering machine on tape. You leave her alone or I’ll send them to your boss, Dr. Stone, at the Sleep Institute. I’ll tell him you gave a patient Thorazine without her knowledge. I’ll tell him you gave Elavil to a patient with a heart condition.”

Broun came down the stairs, carrying the answering machine. He had wrenched it out of the wall. The shredded ends of the wire dragged on the floor beside him.

“If you still want to call an ambulance, you’ll have to use the phone next door, Richard,” I said, “only I doubt if our neighbor will let you in. Not after she had you arrested once.”

“You bastard,” he said again. “I’m not going to let you get away with this. I called you, did you know that? To tell you I had a patient who was having terrible dreams and I didn’t know what to do. I called you and you weren’t home.”

“Did you call me for help or were you trying to establish an alibi?” I said, but he had already slammed the door shut behind him.

I pulled my coat on. “He may try to follow us,” I said. “He’s parked at least a block away. If we go right now, we can lose him.” I grabbed up Annie’s gloves and thrust them at her.

“Do you have any money?” I said to Broun. He fumbled in his pockets and came up with a twenty and some change. “Is that all?” I said, shouting at him as if I were trying to wake him up.

He reached into the inside pocket of the jacket that was still hanging over the bannister with his right hand, still holding the answering machine in the other, and pulled out a wad of bills. He handed it to me and then sat down heavily on the loveseat.

“Thank you,” I said. I snatched up Annie’s suitcase and hustled her out the door. Broun didn’t answer me. I could see him through the solarium window when I started the car, still sitting there cradling the answering machine against him, like a man asleep.

The rain was trying to turn into snow. I took side streets as far as Ohio Drive and then turned onto the Memorial Parkway. After we’d crossed the bridge, I looked behind me and then went on past the Washington Memorial Parkway exit.

“I’m not going to take you to the airport,” I said. “Richard may not be that far behind us,” I went on hastily so she wouldn’t think this was another trap and that I was taking her to a hospital. “I’m going to take you to the Arlington Metro stop. You can take the Metro to the airport, if you want, or to the train station or the bus, and Richard won’t have any idea where you’ve gone.” And neither will I, I thought.

Annie nodded without looking at me, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. I pulled the car over next to the white stones that marked the entrance to the Metro station and stopped.

“I had a dream about you. On the way up today,” she said, still looking straight ahead. “I was in my room at home, in bed, propped up against the pillows, and you came in and said, ‘I’ll drive you to Fredericksburg,’ and I wanted to go with you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even answer you. I just shook my head.” She turned to me, her eyes filled with tears. “It was the first time I ever dreamed about you. I’ve dreamed about Richard and Broun, but never you, Jeff. Who do you suppose you were? I was so glad to see you.”

“I don’t know,” I said, though I had guessed almost from the beginning what part I played. “Lee’s doctor maybe? I would drive you to Fredericksburg, you know. Or anywhere at all.”

Would I? Knowing where the dreams were leading her, would I be able to take her there? Or would I call Richard again? I got out of the car and took her suitcase out of the trunk and put it on the top of the steps. I opened the door for her. She folded a piece of paper, put it in her pocket, and then got out.

I gave her Broun’s money and all the cash I had. “There’s about five hundred here. That should get you home or wherever you want to go.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“This is the Blue Line. You can take it straight to the airport. If you want Amtrak, change to the Red Line at Metro Center and that’ll take you to Union Station.”

She bent her head to fumble in her purse and put the money away. “I won’t know what happened to you,” I said. “Promise me you’ll go see a doctor.”

“After the war,” she said. She took the folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to me.

I nodded. “After the war.”

She reached up and brushed the hair off my forehead. “I was so glad to see you,” she said. She picked her suitcase up in her left hand, put it down on the wet sidewalk and picked it up in her right, and went down the stairs.

I went out to the edge of the platform and stood there long enough for her to get away, holding the folded paper and looking up the hill toward Arlington House. It started to snow. I put the piece of paper in my coat pocket and went back home.

I didn’t look at it until the next day for fear she had written the address of that house with the wide porch and the apple orchard, and that I, like Richard, would try to follow her.

It was still wet. I unfolded it carefully, so it wouldn’t tear, and read it. She had written in blue proofreader’s pencil, “Tom Tita, Arlington House.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lee only lasted two weeks after the rainy afternoon in Grace Church. For most of that time he lay in silence or dozed. Outside it rained, and the rivers around Lexington rose till it was impossible for Rob to make it to his bedside. For several nights the aurora borealis lit up the sky, as it had at Fredericksburg. Lee talked very little though he sometimes muttered in his dreams, but when the doctor told him, “You must make haste to get well; Traveller has been standing so long in the stable that he needs exercise,” he only shook his head, unable to speak.