found extremely disagreeable. So he took it a little slower than he might have.
Today was like any other. He arrived at the club a little after dawn, stretched, jogged, and lifted without saying much of anything to anyone. Then he returned to his apartment, showered and shaved.
Standing before the mirror, drying his hair with a towel, he caught a glimpse of himself, and remembered Nico’s remark of the day before:
You oughta get out more, Doc. You’re pale as a ghost.
And so he was. And so he
would be
—unless he overcame the peculiar phobia that was keeping him indoors.
You need a shrink
, Duran told himself, chuckling silently, but not with much conviction. He
was
pale. Not sickly looking, but white—
like a vampire in his prime
, he joked to himself.
Returning to his bedroom, Duran strapped his watch onto his wrist, and noticed the time. It was 8:35, which meant that he had less than half an hour to prepare for his meeting with the day’s first client, Henrik de Groot. Dressing hurriedly, he strode into his office, sat down at the desk and turned on the computer.
Once the machine had booted up, he went into the caseload folder, and opened the file on the Dutchman.
At twenty-eight, de Groot was a successful and sophisticated businessman, commuting between the U.S. and Europe. His firm, one of the world’s largest in the field, designed and installed fire suppression systems for hotels and office buildings, specializing, as De Groot put it, in “human occupied facilities.” The company had pioneered a method of retrofitting halon-based systems in a way that minimized costs. (“Halon,” de Groot explained, “is being phased out in the same way as freon and for the same reason: it’s destroyingthe ozone.”) Although Duran had not asked, the Dutchman had explained how “his” fire suppression system worked. When triggered by smoke or heat, a series of nozzles emitted inert gases which lowered the level of oxygen to a point where combustion became impossible—but not to the point that human beings suffocated.
Recently, de Groot’s firm had signed a contract with a major hotel chain in the mid-Atlantic region. This was why Duran had the Dutchman as a client—de Groot had relocated to Washington so that he could oversee the work.
Handsome and powerfully built, Duran’s client spoke four languages fluently and claimed to be “conversant” in Portuguese and Thai, as well. Duran didn’t doubt him.
When de Groot wasn’t working or visiting his therapist, he had one other passion: “trance music.” When asked, the Dutchman described this with a disciple’s enthusiasm. “It’s synthesized stuff, you know—upbeat, fast 4/4 beat. It energizes you, you get lost in the sound, you dance and you go into another dimension. Your mind … kind of explodes.” The Dutchman, jerking and spinning, had launched into an amazing imitation of a synthesizer playing a weird techno version of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.”
“Wow.”
De Groot had smiled. “It’s great! You ought to try it, Doc.” He’d named a couple of D.C. clubs. Duran had said he wasn’t much of a dancer and then he’d warned de Groot against using any of the drugs common to the club scene. (Given the medications de Groot was on, recreational drug use would be a big mistake.)
But the image de Groot projected—that of a capable and cosmopolitan businessman, multilingual and hip—was an illusion. Or not an
illusion
, really, but a gloss upon something so dangerous that his other qualities dwindled into irrelevance. Public persona aside, the businessman was in the grip of “command hallucinations.” Specifically, the Dutchman believed that “a worm” had taken residence in his heart and that, as his heart pumped, the worm whispered to him,counseling de Groot on all manner of things, from politics to finance.
In fact, de Groot exhibited most of the diagnostic criteria listed under paranoid schizophrenia in the
DSM-IV
, the
Today was like any other. He arrived at the club a little after dawn, stretched, jogged, and lifted without saying much of anything to anyone. Then he returned to his apartment, showered and shaved.
Standing before the mirror, drying his hair with a towel, he caught a glimpse of himself, and remembered Nico’s remark of the day before:
You oughta get out more, Doc. You’re pale as a ghost.
And so he was. And so he
would be
—unless he overcame the peculiar phobia that was keeping him indoors.
You need a shrink
, Duran told himself, chuckling silently, but not with much conviction. He
was
pale. Not sickly looking, but white—
like a vampire in his prime
, he joked to himself.
Returning to his bedroom, Duran strapped his watch onto his wrist, and noticed the time. It was 8:35, which meant that he had less than half an hour to prepare for his meeting with the day’s first client, Henrik de Groot. Dressing hurriedly, he strode into his office, sat down at the desk and turned on the computer.
Once the machine had booted up, he went into the caseload folder, and opened the file on the Dutchman.
At twenty-eight, de Groot was a successful and sophisticated businessman, commuting between the U.S. and Europe. His firm, one of the world’s largest in the field, designed and installed fire suppression systems for hotels and office buildings, specializing, as De Groot put it, in “human occupied facilities.” The company had pioneered a method of retrofitting halon-based systems in a way that minimized costs. (“Halon,” de Groot explained, “is being phased out in the same way as freon and for the same reason: it’s destroyingthe ozone.”) Although Duran had not asked, the Dutchman had explained how “his” fire suppression system worked. When triggered by smoke or heat, a series of nozzles emitted inert gases which lowered the level of oxygen to a point where combustion became impossible—but not to the point that human beings suffocated.
Recently, de Groot’s firm had signed a contract with a major hotel chain in the mid-Atlantic region. This was why Duran had the Dutchman as a client—de Groot had relocated to Washington so that he could oversee the work.
Handsome and powerfully built, Duran’s client spoke four languages fluently and claimed to be “conversant” in Portuguese and Thai, as well. Duran didn’t doubt him.
When de Groot wasn’t working or visiting his therapist, he had one other passion: “trance music.” When asked, the Dutchman described this with a disciple’s enthusiasm. “It’s synthesized stuff, you know—upbeat, fast 4/4 beat. It energizes you, you get lost in the sound, you dance and you go into another dimension. Your mind … kind of explodes.” The Dutchman, jerking and spinning, had launched into an amazing imitation of a synthesizer playing a weird techno version of “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.”
“Wow.”
De Groot had smiled. “It’s great! You ought to try it, Doc.” He’d named a couple of D.C. clubs. Duran had said he wasn’t much of a dancer and then he’d warned de Groot against using any of the drugs common to the club scene. (Given the medications de Groot was on, recreational drug use would be a big mistake.)
But the image de Groot projected—that of a capable and cosmopolitan businessman, multilingual and hip—was an illusion. Or not an
illusion
, really, but a gloss upon something so dangerous that his other qualities dwindled into irrelevance. Public persona aside, the businessman was in the grip of “command hallucinations.” Specifically, the Dutchman believed that “a worm” had taken residence in his heart and that, as his heart pumped, the worm whispered to him,counseling de Groot on all manner of things, from politics to finance.
In fact, de Groot exhibited most of the diagnostic criteria listed under paranoid schizophrenia in the
DSM-IV
, the
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