“I don’t take any medications,” I said.
“That is remarkable,” said Abed. “Did the voices you were hearing—did they just…stop in adolescence or…?”
“I still converse with inanimate beings,” I said.
“Truly?” he said.
I said, “Well I tend to think so. I don’t expect you to.”
“No, no,” Abed said, “I didn’t mean ‘Truly?’ as in, ‘Do you really think you converse with inanimate beings?’ but more like, ‘I am surprised to hear you say that you still converse with inanimate beings.’ It wasn’t even really a question, you see. And this is why I never became a clinician. A good clinician would have known to say, ‘I see,’ or, ‘Ah-ha,’ and then move on to his follow-up question.”
Even if he weren’t Herb’s only lead on Lisette, I would not have wanted Abed to feel as badly as he sounded, or, for that matter, to feel badly at all—I had nothing but fond feelings for him—so, “What was your follow-up question?” I said.
“I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable,” he said.
“Abed, please. I’m very comfortable.”
“Okay,” he said. “Do you converse with inanimate beings often?”
“I don’t know what counts as often,” I said.
“When was the last time?”
“A couple hours ago,” I said. “A spoon I was using to stir my coffee asked me if I’d noticed how ‘warped’ it was becoming.”
“ ‘Warped,’ you say.”
“Right,” I said. “Exactly. I mean I saw what it meant. The bend of its neck was a little exaggerated, but to tell me it was ‘warped’—that sounded pretty dramatic.”
“And you said so?”
“No. I was in a rush—I’m trying to work on a new book, having lots of trouble—so I didn’t want to get into a whole thing with the spoon, and I just said, ‘You’ll be fine,’ and bent it back into shape, dropped it in the sink.”
“And that was all?”
“Well, I mean, between getting it into shape and dropping it in the sink, it started to say something about the ‘terrible, corrosive power’ of certain sponges, but it was just being more dramatic, and, like I said, I was in a rush to get back to work.”
“And incidents like this happen how many times a day, Belt?”
“Depends on the day. Probably two or three on average. Some days none at all.”
“Yet it doesn’t faze you. You live your life, do your writing.”
“If other people are around when an inan speaks up, I get a little anxious, but mostly, no, I guess it doesn’t really faze me.”
“Fascinating,” Abed said.
“Thanks?” I said.
“Please. I didn’t mean to make you feel like a laboratory animal. It’s just—you must know, it’s not very common for people who suffer psychoses to…thrive without the aid of medication.”
“I’m not sure I would say I was thriving, exactly. I don’t have a job. I doubt I ever could. I haven’t been able to write this—”
“Well, thriving…strange word. But you wrote a spectacular novel, Belt. A terribly intelligent and moving novel, and if that doesn’t come from thriving, perhaps none of us should ever hope to thrive.”
“You’re too nice, Abed.”
“Nonsense. Now, I know you did not call to be grilled by a fanboy,” he said. “You called about Lisette Banks.”
“Lisette Banks?” I said.
“Is that not why you called?”
“No, it is,” I said. “It is. I just wanted to be sure I heard you right. It’s spelled B-A-N-K-S?”
“Yes.”
“Lisette Banks,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Abed, thank you. This means so much to me. I owe you.”
“It is nothing,” Abed said.
“It’s everything,” I said. “It might be everything. To me. It’s big. I think we should be able to find her, now—Herb’s good at his job. I can’t thank you enough. And I want you to know that I know I’ve put you in a bind, and that I wouldn’t have faulted you for keeping her name from me. I would have understood. You’ve really come through for me.”
“You have not put me in any bind, and you do not need to find her, Belt. I know where she is. I have her permission to put you in contact.”
“Lisette’s permission?”
“Yes,” Abed said. “And it is not for me to withhold her information from you, so I will tell you how to reach her, but the joy I’m hearing from you, the expectations you seem to have—they are worrying me a little—so please hear me out first.”
* * *
—
Lisette, Abed went on to explain, had a hard time after my exit from the Friends Study. During the first two Saturdays after I’d left, she refused to fill out her questionnaires and persistently, disruptively, badgered each of the researchers for my full name and/or telephone number, which of course they couldn’t give her. On the third Saturday, by which point they had already begun to discuss the possibility of asking her to leave the study, Abed, returning from lunch, found her in the office (she’d picked the lock), searching through files. Though discovered, she didn’t show any remorse, demanded Abed tell her my last name and/or phone number, and, on being rebuffed, shoved his computer onto the floor, shattering the screen, and, with that, she was out.
Since then, she’d written Abed five letters, which he summarized for me. In the first, which she sent about six months after the end of the study, she began by apologizing for her previous behavior, spending a page or so “calmly and articulately and quite heartbreakingly” (Abed’s words) explaining that, other than her younger brother, who had died in a fire (Abed had doubted she’d had a younger brother, let alone one who’d died in a fire; neither Lisette nor her mother had mentioned such a brother at any point during the Friends Study’s vetting process), I had been the only person with whom she’d ever felt a connection, and that she had been desperate to tell me something—something she should have told me but had failed to tell me, and something that she was still desperate to tell me—and this desperation she’d felt had caused her “to lose sight of social norms and act with too much unrestrained passion” (Lisette’s words, verbatim, according to Abed), and now that she was feeling more like herself again, and now that she had “been honest” with Abed about why she needed him to tell her my last name and phone number, she was certain he would give her my last name and phone number, and, for his help and understanding, she thanked him in advance.