His eyes battled to remain open to the dark. Fifteen sessions and then death, he thought. Who was it?

He was not aware when he plunged into sleep, but he awakened to shafts of bright sunlight slicing through the window and striking his face. The summer morning might have seemed perfect, but Ricky dragged with the weight of memory and disappointment. He had hoped that the old physician would have been able to steer him directly to a name, and instead, he felt as adrift in the wild sea of recollection as ever before. This sense of failure was like a hangover, pounding at his temples. He pulled on his slacks, shoes, and shirt, grabbed his jacket, and after dashing water on his face and running his fingers through his hair to try to make himself mildly presentable, headed downstairs. He paced with a singleness of purpose, thinking that the only thing he would focus on was the elusive name of Rumplestiltskin’s mother. He was armed with the sensation that Dr. Lewis’s observation, connecting days and sessions, was accurate. What remained hidden, Ricky realized, was the context that the woman existed within. He told himself that he had far too quickly and arrogantly dismissed the less well heeled women he’d seen in the psychiatric clinic, preferring to center upon the women who became his first analysands. He thought to himself that he had seen the woman right at the moment that he had himself been making choices: about his career path, about becoming an analyst, about falling in love and marrying. It was a time when he was looking directly ahead in a single path, and his failure had taken place in a world he wanted to dismiss.

That was why he was so blocked, he thought. His step down the stairs was energized by the idea that he could assault these memories like some World War II dam buster; simply lob a big enough explosion at the concrete of repressed history and it will all burst through. He was confident that with Dr. Lewis’s help he could perform this attack.

The country sunlight and warmth infiltrating the house seemed to dispel all the doubts and questions that he might have had about the old analyst. The unsettling aspects of their prior conversation dissipated in the morning brightness. Ricky poked his head into the study area, searching for his host, but saw the room was empty. He walked down the center corridor of the old farmhouse toward the kitchen, where he could smell the aroma of coffee.

Dr. Lewis wasn’t there.

Ricky tried a “hello?” out loud, but there was no response. He looked at the coffeemaker and saw that a fresh pot was warming on the hot plate, and that a single cup had been left out for him. A folded piece of paper was propped up, with his name written in pencil on the outside. Ricky poured himself a cup of coffee and opened up the note as he sipped at the bitter, hot liquid. He read:

Ricky:

I have been called away unexpectedly and do notexpect a return within your time frame. I believeyou should examine the arena you left for thecritical person, not the arena you entered.I wonder, as well, whether by winning the gameyou will not lose, or, conversely, by losing, youcan win. Consider strongly the alternatives thatyou have.Please never contact me again for any reason orany purpose.

S/M. Lewis,M.D.

He reeled back sharply, almost as if he’d been slapped in the face.

The coffee seemed to scald his tongue and throat. He flushed, filling instantly with confusion and anger. He read through the words on the page three times, but each successive instance they grew fuzzy and less distinct, when he thought they should have sharpened. He finally crumpled the page of notepaper and stuffed it into his pocket. He walked deliberately to the sink and saw that the pile of dishes from the prior evening had been cleaned and stacked in an orderly fashion on the counter. He dumped the coffee into the white porcelain basin and then ran the water and watched the brown mess swirl down the drain. He rinsed the cup and set it to the side. For a second, he gripped the edges of the counter, trying to steady himself. In that moment, he heard the sound of a car coming up the gravel driveway.

His first thought was that this was Dr. Lewis, returning with an explanation, so he half ran to the front door. But what he saw, instead, surprised him.

Pulling to the front was the same cabdriver who had picked him up the day before at the Rhinebeck station. The driver gave him a little wave and rolled down his window as the taxi stopped.

“Hey, doc, how you doing? Look, we better get a move on if you’re gonna catch your train.”

Ricky hesitated. He half turned back toward the house, thinking he needed to do something, leave a note, speak with someone, but as best as he could tell the house was empty. A glance at the reconditioned stable told him that Dr. Lewis’s car was gone, as well.

“Seriously, doc, there’s not all that much time, and the next train isn’t until late this afternoon. You’ll be sitting around all day if you miss this one. Jump in, we gotta make tracks.”

“How did you know to pick me up?” Ricky asked. “I didn’t call…”

“Well, someone did. Probably the guy who lives here. I got a message on my beeper says get right over here and pick up Doctor Starks pronto and make certain you make the nine-fifteen. So I burn rubber and here I am, but if you don’t toss yourself in the back there, you ain’t making that train and trust me, doc, there ain’t a lot to do around here to keep you occupied for the whole day.”

Ricky paused one more moment, then grabbed the door handle and thrust himself into the backseat. He felt a momentary pang of guilt for leaving the house wide open, then dismissed this with an inward screw you. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The driver accelerated sharply, kicking up some rocks, gravel, and dust.

Within a few minutes, the cab reached the intersection where the access road to the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge that crosses the Hudson cuts across River Road. A New York state trooper was standing in the center of the roadway, blocking travel on the winding country road. The trooper, a young man with a Smokey the Bear hat and gray tunic, had a typically steely-eyed, seen-it-all look on his face that contradicted his youth, immediately began waving the cab to the left. The driver rolled down his window and shouted across the roadway to the trooper, “Hey, officer! Can’t I get through? Gotta make the train!”

The trooper shook his head. “No way. Road’s blocked about a half mile down until rescue and the wrecker get finished. You need to drive around. You hurry, you’ll make it.”

“What happened?” Ricky asked from the backseat. The cabbie shrugged.

“Hey, trooper!” the driver called out. “What happened?”

The trooper shook his head. “Some old guy in a rush lost it on one of the turns. Wrapped himself around a tree. Maybe had a heart attack and blacked out.”

“He dead?” the cabdriver asked.

The trooper shook his head as if to signify that he wasn’t sure. “Rescue’s there now. They called for the jaws of life.”

Ricky sat forward sharply. “What kind of car?” he asked. He leaned forward, shouting through the driver’s window. “What kind of car?”

“Old blue Volvo,” the trooper said as he waved the cabbie to get moving to the left. The driver accelerated.

“Damn,” he said. “We gotta go around. Gonna be tight on that train.”

Ricky squirmed in the seat. “I’ve got to see!” he said. “The car…”

“We stop to sightsee, ain’t gonna make the train.”

“But that car, Doctor Lewis…”

“You think that’s your friend?” the driver asked, continuing to pull away from the site of the wreck, tantalizingly out of Ricky’s sight.

“He drove an old blue Volvo…”

“Hell, there’s dozens of those cars around here.”

“No, it can’t…”