Mahogany's Dream Read online

  He stopped writing and smiled at her. “I like it when chicks fight over me.”

  “I’m serious, Brian. How can you put up with her?”

  “I’ve put up with worse.”

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  “You put up with Carl for six years,” he said.

  He had a point. “That’s true,” she said. “That man drove me up a wall. And he did the same thing to you.”

  “Only for the first ten years. After that I was used to it.”

  They both laughed at that.

  “That’s not quite the way I remember it, Mr. Cool. Anyway, I’m headed out for lunch. Do you want something?”

  He gazed at the shapely silhouette filling his doorway. He had never been particularly attracted to black women, but Janaya was gorgeous. And not just on the outside. There was an intangible quality about her that enticed him in a way he could never voice.

  “You look very nice today,” he said. “Is that new?”

  She looked down at her outfit. “I shop when I get depressed.”

  “Depressed? Why in the world would you be depressed?”

  “I miss D.C.,” she said wistfully. He’d brought Janaya with him when Carl promoted him.

  “Oh,” he said. “If it helps, I do too sometimes.”

  Seconds went by without words.

  “What about lunch?” she asked finally.

  “Will you come over tonight?” he blurted out.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Kaohsiung, Taiwan

  At her small flat in Kaohsiung, Dawa gingerly slipped out of bed, being careful not to wake Koxinga. She tiptoed over to the rumpled pile of clothing on the floor and found his PDA. She took it into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She copied all five hundred and twelve megabytes of the PDA’s memory into a USB microdrive that she kept hidden in a bottle of aspirin inside her medicine cabinet.

  Five minutes later, she flushed the toilet and ran water in the sink. She crawled back into bed and nestled against Koxinga’s back.

  In the darkness she hadn’t noticed that his eyes were wide open.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Whenever Dyson visited Norma’s office at the Academy, he felt like he was walking into a living room in the Hamptons. All the wood was imported cherry. The walls were covered in a Peruvian brocade, except where they hid behind framed impressionist pieces. Man sized fern trees in terracotta pots stood sentry in two corners. An overstuffed sofa and a matching armchair upholstered in mohair velvet dominated the center of the room, spaced equally apart from a glass coffee table with sandblasted nickel legs.

  A few folders and a small computer workstation were the only hints that it was a place of business.

  Dyson had always been intrigued by the coffee table because of its frosted border decorated with Chinese ideograms. He recalled Norma telling him that she’d purchased it in Hong Kong when she and Blake lived there. He’d never had the chance to fully decipher the lettering because every time he’d been there, Norma had fretted over him like a surrogate mother.

  Today was no different. As soon he stepped in the room she greeted him like she hadn’t seen him in years. “Dyson!” she shouted. After hugs and kisses, she ushered him over to the sofa. She plopped herself down in the facing armchair, bouncing on the thick foam padding. He admired the fact that she was always so full of life.

  “So when are you going to get married?” she asked right off.

  “I thought you wanted to discuss Academy business,” he answered lightheartedly.

  As far as Norma was concerned, Dyson’s love life was Academy business. “Michelle tells me that the two of you were an item at Princeton.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “Word for word. So is it true?”

  “I never disagree with a beautiful woman.”

  “Michelle said that’s your problem, why you can settle down.”

  He just smiled the smile that kept the beautiful women around. “Did the two of you discuss anything besides me? “

  “Not really. You know me. Ever the therapist.”

  “Ever the matchmaker.”

  “Maybe. But no one with at least one good eye could say that the two of you don’t make an adorable couple. Two underwear models with matching Ivy League degrees. You’re perfect together.” She drew an imaginary square in the air when she said the word degrees. “And God knows she’s smart enough for you. You know it was the cutest thing. The other day Michelle called and told me that headmistress is an antiquated way to refer to a female chief executive.” Norma leaned her head back and chuckled. “I thought that was just hilarious. I told her if I come across a real female chief executive that I’d pass that tip along.”

  “You’re as chief as they come around here,” Dyson said.

  “That’s not saying very much. Before you came along, my job description had two duties: The first one was begging for money and the second one was coming back with a cute kid and begging for more. I don’t know any chief executive who does that for a living.”

  “Sure you do,” he said. “Pick the president of any university.”

  “That’s the same thing Michelle said. I told you the two of you were two peas in a pod. I’ll tell you the same thing that I told her: I work for the children. You can give me any title you like, but that’s what I really do. That’s what I really believe.”

  And that’s why Dyson believed in the Academy. For its one hundred students, the school was no less than a bridge to another world. A world filled with resources that no orphanage or group home could ever offer. For some of them, it was the only home they would ever know.

  “Do you know what else Michelle told me?”

  “No, but my spider sense tells me it has something to do with my personal life.”

  She picked up a twelve-inch ruler from the coffee table. “If you were one of my students, I would crack you over the knuckles to help you control your sarcasm.”

  “Is that the Rittenhouse Way?” he teased. “I must’ve missed that section of the Bylaws when I joined the Board.”

  “Apparently. It’s right next to the section that says the Chairman is required to attend Rittenhouse Day.”

  He feigned exasperation. “Not this again.”

  “Yes, this again. I won’t drop it until you say yes and sign in blood. What message will it send if the Chairman of the Board doesn’t attend the institution’s biggest annual function?”

  “The same message that it sent last year: the Chairman values his privacy.”

  Sensing a dead end, she deftly changed tactics. “Blake always came when he was Chairman.”

  Dyson laughed. “Like he had a choice. If he hadn’t come, there’s no telling how long he would have had to sleep on the couch.”

  She grabbed a soft, fuzzy globe that one of the art students had made for her and threw it at him. “For your information Mr. Wiseass, Blake always made the Academy a priority. No matter how far he had to travel, he never missed a function. Never. Once he took a red eye from Heathrow just to chair a regular board meeting.”

  Of course that was before his self-image drowned in that damn hole, she thought longingly.

  “That’s why you married him,” Dyson said.

  “I married him because he understands that real men never miss a charity event.”

  “You know, you could’ve conducted this brow beating over the phone.”

  “Yes, but doing it in person is so much tastier.”

  “Weren’t you about to tell me something that Michelle said?”

  “Oh yes, that’s right. But don’t think I’m giving up on dragging you to Rittenhouse Day,” she warned.

  “I would never think that, Norma.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll take that as your RSVP.” Before he could object, she said, “Anyway, the last time I spoke with Michelle she told me something that really scared me.”

  “What was that?�
�

  “Well, she was yawning an awful lot during our conversation, so I teased her about staying out late with you during the work week. She said that wasn’t the problem, though she admitted she wished it were. She said she was just tired because she’d had a nightmare that had kept her up half the night. I asked her to tell me about it and she said it was nothing, just a bad dream where everyone in the world but her suddenly disappeared. She said it made her really sad and she couldn’t fall back to sleep, that’s all.”

  Dyson knew about the dream. “What’s so scary about that? Lots of people have variations of that dream. According to what I’ve read, it’s just a manifestation of a latent fear of rejection.”

  “The dream didn’t scare me, but hearing about again certainly did.”

  “What do you mean again?”

  A look of concern darkened Norma’s face. “I mean someone else I know had that same dream on that same night…and it wasn’t you.”

  Dyson leaned forward to the edge of his seat.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Washington, D.C.

  Everyone knows that foreign embassies are filled with spies parading as regular working people. That’s why Koxinga never operated from the Chinese embassy when he traveled to America. It was under constant surveillance.

  He had been taught to use other resources.

  The Ministry of State Security, the Chinese foreign intelligence service, likes to teach its new agents that the primary difference between it and its counterparts in the West is technology. Whereas the American and European agencies prefer spy satellites and exotic listening devices, the MSS relies on the most dependable technology of all: human nature. Even the most sophisticated devices sometimes malfunction. But people, they never change. For instance, the average person would never expect to come across a spy at a copy center.

  Koxinga walked into the Kinko’s Copy Center on D Street and headed straight for the checkout counter. Without looking up from his issue of Spin magazine, the bored young clerk with a goatee and a “fuck authority” tattoo on his arm said, “Yeah, can I help you?”

  “I’m here for my mail,” Koxinga said in English.

  The clerk looked up. “What’s your box number?”

  “Three twenty one.”

  “You got some ID?”

  Koxinga gave him a laminated card with a photo of himself that he had just taken that morning.

  The clerk twisted his acne-splotched face. “This is all in Chinese. I can’t accept this, dude.”

  “What do you mean?” Koxinga asked indignantly. “It’s never been a problem before.” He pointed to a placard hanging behind the clerk’s head. “Your sign says, ‘Picture ID Required’.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not supposed to accept these foreign IDs anymore. I think it’s a terrorism thing.”

  “Terrorism? Are you calling me a terrorist? I wasn’t a terrorist when I paid for the box!” He began shouting angry epithets at the clerk in rapid-fire Chinese, making quite a scene.

  “All right, all right! Calm down mister. What’s your box number again?”

  “Three twenty one.”

  “I don’t get paid enough for this, dude. I’ll be right back.” The clerk stalked off towards a bank of steel boxes along the rear wall.

  Koxinga smiled and waved to the other customers, who were staring at him disapprovingly. Works every time, he thought.

  A local company that had closed its Washington office eight months earlier was the actual owner of Mailbox 321. There were still four months remaining on the box’s lease, which made it a perfect address for receiving hard to trace mail.

  The clerk returned to the counter holding a small brown package with an airmail stamp from Taiwan.

  Koxinga took the package back to his hotel. When he passed through the lobby, the Concierge eyed him disdainfully. In the privacy of his suite, he opened the package, counting the photographs inside it three times to ensure none were missing from the set.

  Then he changed clothes. His new outfit consisted of a garish floral print shirt, khaki shorts, black knee socks, and a deluxe fanny pack with Velcro straps. He topped off his ensemble with an American flag baseball cap. The black device hanging from a lanyard around his neck was a dead ringer for an expensive digital camera.

  He left the hotel and took a short walk over to the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Standing outside the main entrance, he pretended to snap pictures of the revolving door.

  No more than three minutes went by before an overweight security guard emerged from the building and approached him. Koxinga had watched the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 at least ten times, but he still found it hard to believe that the Justice Department headquarters was not guarded by actual FBI agents.

  “May I ask what you think you’re doing, sir?” the rent-a-cop asked.

  Koxinga jabbed his finger at the building and, with a heavy Japanese accent, said, “Tay picha. Tay picha of see-i-yay. See-i-yay famous.”

  Befuddled, the guard said, “See-i-yay?”

  “See-i-yay famous.”

  “You mean C-I-A?”

  Koxinga nodded his head up and down vigorously.

  “Mister, this ain’t the CIA. This here is the Justice Department. Lemme’ see your camera.” Without waiting for a response, he snatched Koxinga’s device and examined it.

  The guard looked through the viewfinder and snapped a few pictures. He scrolled through the images on the LCD. He opened the battery compartment and removed the batteries. He shook the device and held it to one of his ears. Finally satisfied, he handed it back to Koxinga. “Look mister, the CIA is all the way in Virginia. It ain’t open to the public, so I wouldn’t advise you to stand out front takin’ no pictures. Now on the other hand, if you really wanna see this building, you have to sign up for one of the scheduled tours. They start every hour on the hour. You gotta set it up through your Embassy though. Either way, you gotta vacate this area immediately.”

  With a perplexed look, Koxinga reached into his fanny pack and retrieved a foldout map of Greater Washington. He pushed it at the guard. “You show. You show. Where see-i-yay?”

  The guard pushed it back. “I already told you, the CIA ain’t no tourist attraction.”

  Koxinga relented and began walking away.

  The guard watched him go. “Dang fool,” he muttered to himself.

  As he made his way back to his hotel, Koxinga thought of his encounter with the sloppy guard. “Fool,” he whispered to himself.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Dyson’s eyes bored into Norma. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “Who is it?”

  “One of my students, Mahogany Burrows.”

  “Really?” he asked. “And she’s, uh, like me?”

  “Yes and no,” she said cryptically.

  A look of slight confusion came across his face.

  Norma retrieved a file folder from her briefcase and removed three dark sheets. She fanned the sheets out on the coffee table.

  Dyson had a brief spell of déjà vu.

  __________

  In the six years they’d known each another, Norma had spread many dark sheets before Dyson.

  They had met just before Norma opened the Academy, during a brief period when she was torn between becoming a shrink and opening a school for orphaned children. She had managed to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology even though she had to switch schools three times because of Blake’s corporate relocations. When Blake was tapped to head the Hong Kong office, she told him she wasn’t going unless Citibank agreed to pay for the credits she would lose by transferring again. Citibank paid and Norma ended up with a diploma where everything but her name was written in Chinese ideograms.

  Even though she loved being called Dr. Hawthorn, she never harbored a passion for the field. The only area of psychology that had ever truly stimulated her was Dream Science. But it was a fled
gling specialty on the fringes of the profession, so Blake had little trouble convincing her to focus elsewhere.

  She was just finishing her clinical residency at the Medical College of Pennsylvania when she came across Dyson. One day her faculty advisor left her a note that read, “If you really want to practice dream work, then start with this gentleman.”

  The chart Norma was given indicated that her new patient had a problem with nightmares. But the dashing young man she met exhibited none of the classic symptoms of a sleep disorder. In fact, there seemed to be nothing wrong with him at all. After two sessions, she began to wonder if he had been sent her way as some kind of juvenile mockery of her clinical interests.

  Then, during their third session, Dyson said, “Tell me about the children.”

  “Pardon me?” she said.

  “The children in your dream,” he said nonchalantly. “The ones calling your name from the other side of the mountain. You’ve had that same dream three weeks in a row.”

  Norma was shaken. “How could you…”

  Then it hit her.

  “Sweet mother of Jesus,” she said. “You have PTD.”

  Dyson winced. “That sounds a little too much like STD.”

  Norma laughed and a powerful friendship took root.

  _________

  Dyson’s condition is known as Postcognitive Telepathic Dreaming. In simple terms, it is the paranormal ability to receive the dreams of others. Like most paranormal phenomena, no one understands why it occurs or how it works. The most conclusive thing we know about it is that most telepathic episodes involve nightmares. Unstoppable, unbidden nightmares. Other people’s nightmares were what had brought Dyson to Norma’s faculty advisor in the first place.

  Norma put in yeoman work trying to help him. Her clinical efforts were a complete failure, but over the course of their countless sessions, she and Dyson became confidants. He told her how he had traveled the world seeking help from every manner of specialist, including shamans and voodooists. At some point, she admitted to him that psychology was not her calling. What she really wanted to do was work with children. She said that her occasional fieldwork at a local orphanage was the most invigorating part of her job.