My plane, which I now half-suspected flew through airspace in the Twilight Zone, touched down in Washington late in the afternoon. Motoring past the airport terminal, I picked up the car phone and called my wife.

“How’d it go with Doctor Shields?” she asked.

I coughed. “Fine. I’ll tell you more when I see you. But I’m not sure when that will be.”

“What is it this time?”

“I, uh, got an unexpected call. From the actor, Jack Nicholson. He’s here in DC, about to testify before Congress tomorrow on digital piracy, and he wants to discuss coming aboard as a client. We agreed to have dinner at the Jockey Club.”

“Jack!” she said. “Wow!”

“I don’t know how late I’ll be.”

“Oh, sign him up, honey, sign him up! I want to meet him!”

As I hung up, Sarah was reciting both parts in that scene of Jack’s with Faye Dunaway near the end of the movie, Chinatown. “My sister! My daughter!” Slapping herself silly.

Instead of turning north toward my home in Georgetown, I headed south on the George Washington Parkway. I didn’t know where to go, only where not to go.

Some instinct soon drove me toward Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and then toward Randolph House, an 18th century brick colonial mansion, long ago converted into a small, exquisite hotel. I’d stayed there years before. The first time I’d ever slept with Sarah had been in a canopied mahogany four-poster bed in the Betsy Ross Room at Randolph House. My ending up there that day, I recognize now, was my way of being with Sarah when I couldn’t be.

As I stood at the front desk, checking in, it’d been seven or eight years since I’d stood there last, yet everything appeared just the same. Authentic Federal period reproductions everywhere. Big Baccarat crystal chandelier overhead.

The desk clerk, while making an imprint of my credit card, picked his nose. I scowled, thinking the clerk should know better.

He’s not some college kid, some part-timer earning minimum wage at a fleabag highway motel. He’s a middle-aged man representing a four star hotel. Representing Randolph House!

“Here you are, sir,” said the clerk, using his nose-picking hand to return my credit card. The same hand slid a room key card at me. “The Betsy Ross Room, as requested.”

He slouches too, I noticed, taking the key card, turning away. I considered reporting the clerk to management, but blew it off and headed for the elevator.

I remained agitated, though. More agitated than I had cause to be.

“Why do I feel this way?” I asked myself aloud, and then quickly answered myself back. “Because it’s time to adjust your medication, you dumb fuck!”

Yes, that was it, I tried telling myself, and that it meant good news too. If I can blame all these strange happenings on my disease, it means that soon, now that I have a new prescription in hand, my life will return to normal.

Assuming the pills haven’t stopped working, as Doctor Shields has suggested might happen some day. Assuming that a certain gnawing, gut feeling I have is wrong. The feeling that I’m not the problem. That someone is going to elaborate lengths to convince me I’m losing my mind.

Paranoid, Argus Ward! Plain paranoid!

I laughed out loud at myself—even though by this time I was riding on the elevator with two other hotel guests. The funniest thing of all was, I still believed my gut!

I didn’t have any luggage, so the first thing I did inside my room was kick off my shoes. Through room service, I ordered dinner—a tenderloin with bordelaise sauce, as I recall—and then I opened the mini-bar. I’m not supposed to drink a lot at one time, because alcohol interacts with my anti-psychotic medication in funny—and not so funny—ways, so I focused on a row of tiny liquor bottles sitting atop the refrigerator. One or two bottles, I decided, would be just right. I grabbed the Kahlua bottle, twisted it open, and slugged down the contents in one or two gulps.

Then I threw open a window to let the stuffiness out. My room overlooked the Potomac River and a fleet of yachts anchored near the boardwalk. The wind was kicking up outside.

My skin tingled with wicked pleasure as I realized that not a soul in the world—not a soul I knew, anyway—knew of my own whereabouts.

An instant later, though, the tingle was gone. Another thought had chased it away. I was less than a thirty minute drive from my home in Georgetown, yet Sarah and Ellie and Duke might as well have been on planet Tralfamadore.

I turned from the window and stared at the big mahogany four poster bed draped in red and gold canopy. I thought, I can’t go home again until—or unless—I can trust myself. Because what if I’m really losing it? What if that disembodied Darth Vader-like voice I used to hear coming from the ceiling, or a drainpipe, suddenly returned? Spouting all those dire—yet senseless—warnings it somehow sold me every time?

I wrenched my body to face the river once more. I had to squint in the face of a sudden gust of wind. My body shuddered, head to toe. I couldn’t bear the thought of what I might do upon hearing that Darth Vader-like voice tell me Sarah’s cooking was poisoning me, slowly poisoning me. Or that my four year-old was plotting to poke my eyes out with the kitchen scissors.

Tears seeped from my tightly closed eyelids. Some cry struggled to come out, but I pressed it down inside me, pressed it down, grimacing from the strain.

“Don’t lose control!” I told myself. “Figure out what’s going on. And for God’s sake, figure out what to do!”

Next Chapter: Chapter Nine