“The cops won’t let you down there. And even if they would, what you gonna do?”

Ricky didn’t have an answer. He slumped back in the seat, as if he’d been slapped. The cabdriver nodded, pushing the car so that the carriage rattled and the engine roared. “You get back to the city, then call the Rhinebeck State Trooper barracks. They’ll have some details. Call emergency at the hospital, they’ll fill you in. Unless you want to go there now, but I wouldn’t advise it. Just sit around waiting out the ER doctors and maybe the undertaker and the cop doing the investigation and still not know much more than you do right now. Haven’t you got someplace important to be?”

“Yes,” Ricky said, although he was unsure of this.

“The guy with the car, he a real good friend?”

“No,” Ricky replied. “Not a friend at all. Just someone I knew. I thought I knew.”

“Well,” the driver said, “there you have it. I think we’re going to make the station on time.” He accelerated again, pushing the cab through a yellow light, just as it turned red, then laughing a little, as they plowed ahead. Ricky leaned back in the seat, just once glancing over his shoulder through the rear window, where the accident and whoever it involved remained hidden, tormentingly out of sight. He strained to see flashing lights, and tried to hear sirens, but they all eluded him.

He made the train with a minute or two to spare. The need to hurry seemed to obscure any opportunity to assess what had happened to him on the visit to the old analyst. He ran frantically through the empty station, his shoes making a clattering echo, as the train pulled down to the platform with the assaulting sound of its air brakes. As when he rode the train north, there were only a handful of people waiting for the midweek, midmorning trip back to New York City. A couple of businessmen speaking on cell phones, three women apparently on a shopping trip, some teenagers in jeans-that was all. The growing summer heat seemed to demand a leisurely pace that was alien to him. He thought that there was an urgency to the day that was out of place, and wouldn’t seem normal until he returned to the city.

The train car was almost empty, with just a smattering of folks spread out through the rows of seats. He went to the rear and scrunched himself into a corner, immediately turning his head and pressing his cheek to the window, watching the countryside slide by, once again sitting on the side where he could inspect the Hudson River.

Ricky felt like a buoy cut loose from its mooring, what was once a sturdy and critical marker of shoals and dangerous currents, now adrift and vulnerable. He did not precisely know what to make of the trip to see Dr. Lewis. He believed he had made some progress, but wasn’t certain what that progress was. He felt no closer to breaking through and recognizing his link to the man pursuing him than he had before he traveled up the river. Then, in a second thought, he realized this wasn’t true. The problem he understood was that there was some mental block between him and the right memory. The right patient, the right relationship seemed to be just out of his reach, no matter how hard he stretched for it.

Of one thing, he was sure: All that he’d become in his life was irrelevant.

The mistake he’d made, that lay at the core of Rumplestiltskin’s anger, came from his initial foray into the world of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. It came right from the moment that he’d turned his back on the difficult and frustrating business of treating the disadvantaged, and headed into the intellectually stimulating business of treating the intelligent and wealthy. The neurotic rich, as one doctor he knew used to term his clientele. The worried well.

This observation enraged him. Young men make mistakes. This is inevitable, in any profession. Now he was no longer young, and he wouldn’t have made the same error, whatever it was. He was infuriated at the idea that he was being held accountable for something he’d done more than twenty years earlier and a choice that he’d made that was no different from the choices made by dozens of other physicians in his same circumstances. This seemed unfair and unreasonable. Had Ricky not been so battered by all that had happened, he might have seen that his entire profession was more or less based on the concept that time only exacerbates the injuries done to the psyche. It rechannels these injuries. It never heals them.

Outside the train window, the river flowed past. He was at a loss as to what his next step would be, but of one thing he was certain: He wanted to get back to his apartment. He wanted to be someplace safe, if only momentarily.

Ricky continued to stare through the window, throughout the trip, almost trancelike. At the various stops, he barely looked up and hardly shifted in his seat. The last stop before the city was Croton-on-Hudson, perhaps fifty minutes from Pennsylvania Station. The train car was still ninety percent empty, with dozens of vacant seats, so Ricky was startled when another passenger came up from behind and slipped in beside him, dropping into the seat with a heavy thud.

Ricky turned sharply, astonished.

“Hello, doctor,” the attorney Merlin said briskly. “Is this seat taken?”

Merlin’s breathing seemed a little labored and his face a touch flushed, like a man who’d had to run the last fifty yards in order to catch the train. A slight line of perspiration marked his forehead, and he reached inside the breast pocket of his suit coat and removed a white linen handkerchief, which he dabbed at his face. “Almost missed the train,” he said providing an explanation where none was needed. “I need to do more exercise.”

Ricky paused to take a deep breath, before asking, “Why are you here?” although he thought this was a fairly stupid question, given his circumstances.

The attorney finished drying his face with the handkerchief, then slowly spread it out on his lap, smoothing it before folding and returning it to his breast pocket. Then he stowed his leather briefcase and a small waterproof carryall in the area at his feet. He cleared his throat, and replied, “Why, to encourage you, Doctor Starks. Encourage you.”

Ricky discovered that his initial surprise at the lawyer’s appearance had fled. He shifted about, trying to get a better look at the man sitting next to him. “You lied to me, before. I went to your new address…”

The attorney looked mildly bemused. “You went to the new offices?”

“Directly after we spoke. They hadn’t heard of you. No one in the building had. And certainly they had no office space being rented to anyone named Merlin. So, who are you, Mr. Merlin?”

“I am who I am,” he said. “This is most unusual.”

“Yes,” Ricky said briskly. “Most unusual.”

“And a bit confusing. Why did you go to my new office space after we’d spoken? What was the purpose of that visit, Doctor Starks?” The train picked up some speed as Merlin talked, lurching slightly so that the two men rubbed shoulders together in an uncomfortable intimacy.

“Because I didn’t believe you were who you said you were, nor did I believe anything else you said. A suspicion I shortly discovered to be true, because when I arrived at the location printed on your business card…”

“I gave you a card?” Merlin shook his head, and broke into a small smile. “On moving day? That explains much.”

“Yes,” Ricky said with irritation. “You did. I’m sure you recollect that…”

“It was a difficult day. Disorienting. What is it they say? Death, divorce, and moving are the three most stressful events for your heart. And your psyche, too, I’ll wager.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, the first batch of business cards I ordered from the printer came back with the wrong address embossed on them. The new offices are a single block over. The fellow in the shop got one digit wrong and I’m afraid we didn’t notice right away. I must have handed out a dozen or so before recognizing the error. These things happen. I understand the poor guy got fired from his job, because the printing company had to eat the entire order and do up new cards.” Merlin reached into his jacket and removed a small leather card case. “Here,” he said. “This one is right.” He handed it to Ricky, who stared at it dully, then made a sweeping gesture of refusal.