Dean Koontz: Your Heart Belongs To Me

Safely airborne, he went to her. The jet had conference-style seating. He sat facing her, and after concluding a paragraph, she looked up from a magazine.

“You have exceptional self-control,” he said.

“Why? Just because I made you wait ten seconds while I finished reading?”

“No. You’re self-controlled in every sense. Your pretense of being without curiosity is particularly impressive.”

“Mr. Perry, each day, life presents us with much more than we can understand. If I chased after everything that makes me curious, I’d have no time for the part of life I do understand.”

The flight attendant arrived to ask if they would like a snack or anything to drink. Ryan ordered a bit of the hair of the dog in the form of a Bloody Mary, and Cathy asked for black coffee.

“Anyway,” she continued, after the attendant went away, “an understanding of what’s important comes to you if you’re patient.”

“And what’s important to you, Cathy?”

She had been holding the magazine, one finger marking her page, as if she expected to return to it in a moment. Now she put it aside.

“No offense, but of the things that are the most important to me, there aren’t any that I just talk about with a stranger on a plane to pass the time.”

“Are we strangers?”

“Not entirely,” was the most that she would give him.

He studied her forthrightly: her lustrous dark hair, her high brow, wide-set and deep eye sockets, nose with a slight endearing crook, that sensuous mouth, proud chin, strong but feminine jaw, and back to her granite-gray eyes that made you feel as if she had rolled you out as thin as phyllo on a cold slab of baker’s granite. Although attractive, she lacked the physical perfection of Samantha, yet something about her convinced him that, in profound ways, she was enough like Sam to be her twin, which made him feel comfortable with her.

“A year ago, I had a heart transplant,” he said.

She waited.

“I’m glad to be alive. I’m grateful. But…”

He hesitated to continue for so long that before he spoke, the flight attendant returned with the Bloody Mary and the coffee.

Once he had the cocktail in hand, he didn’t want it. He nestled the glass in a drink holder in the arm of his chair.

As Cathy sipped her coffee, Ryan said, “The heart I received was from a young woman who sustained major head trauma in a car crash.”

Cathy knew dead Ismay-or someone pretending to be her-appeared to him prior to the transplant, and she knew that he had experienced one dream, maybe others, related to the nurse. Now Ryan could see her fitting those pieces of knowledge together with smaller bits she knew and others that she might infer, but still she asked no questions.

“Her name was Lily,” he continued. “Turns out, she has a sister, an identical twin.”

“You were sure Ismay must be a twin.”

“I thought identical twins were a theme, I needed to figure out the meaning of the theme. But maybe twins are just a motif.”

His terminology clearly puzzled her, but she said nothing.

“Anyway,” he said, “Lily’s sister-I think she was driving the car when the accident happened.”

“We could find out easily enough. But why does it matter?”

“I think she’s eaten with guilt. Guilt that she can’t endure. So she’s resorting to what psychiatrists call transference.”

“Shifting her guilt to you.”

“Yes. Because I received Lily’s heart, the sister blames me for Lily being dead.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t an issue for private security alone. Call the authorities.”

“I’m reluctant to do that.”

Her gray eyes now seemed to be the shade of the snow-cloud layer above which they flew, and he could no more see below the surface of her gaze than he could see the land below the storm.

Into her silence, he said, “You’re wondering why I’m reluctant. I’m wondering, too.”

He looked out the porthole beside him.

Eventually, he said, “I think it’s because I’m at least a little bit sympathetic to her, to the way she feels.”

And after a further passage between the winter clouds and the fierce blind sun, he said, “Going into this, I didn’t realize the emotional weight that accompanies…living with someone else’s heart. It’s this great gift but…it’s a terrible burden, too.”

All the time he had been looking out the porthole, she continued to watch him. Now as he turned to her again, she said, “Why should it be a burden?”

“It just is. It’s like…you have an obligation to live not just for yourself but also for the one who gave you her heart.”

Cathy was silent for so long, her gaze fixed on her mug, that Ryan thought she would pick up the magazine again when she had drunk the last of the coffee.

He said, “The first time we met in Vegas, sixteen months ago, do you remember telling me that I was haunted by my own death, that I felt an ax falling but couldn’t figure out who was swinging it?”

“I remember.”

“Do you remember helping me to consider my possible enemies by listing the roots of violence?”

“Of course.”

“Lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengeance. The dictionary says avarice is an insatiable greed for riches.”

She finished her coffee, put the cup aside, but did not return to the magazine. Instead she met his stare.

Ryan said, “Do you think avarice can be a greed for something other than money?”

“A synonym for avaricious is covetous. A man can covet anything belonging to another, not just money.”

The flight attendant arrived to ask if Cathy wanted more coffee and whether something was wrong with Ryan’s Bloody Mary. She took the mug and the glass away.

Following the attendant’s departure, Cathy Sienna broke a mutual silence. “Mr. Perry, I need to ask a terrible question. Blunt and direct. Do you want to die?”

“Why would I want to die?”

“Do you?”

“No. Hell no. I’m only thirty-five.”

“You do not want to die?” she asked again.

“I’m terrified of dying.”

“Then there are steps you’ve got to take, and you know them. But in addition to going to the authorities, you’ve got to do more. I think you must make…the heroic act.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, she turned to the porthole beside her and stared down upon the field of winter clouds, the barren furrows under which seeded snow was harvested by a hidden world below.

Her skin seemed translucent in the high-altitude light, and when Cathy pressed a few fingers to the glass, Ryan had the strangest notion that, if she wanted, she could reach through that barrier as if it were less substantial than a gauzy membrane, even less solid than the surface tension on a pond.

He did not repeat his question, because he recognized that this withdrawal was different from her other silences, more contemplative and yet more urgent.

When she turned to him again, she said, “You may not have time for the heroic act. To be effective for you, it requires a future of satisfactory works.”

The directness of her stare, the tone of her voice, and her earnestness implied that she believed she was speaking plainly to him, her meaning unmistakable.

Confused, Ryan did not at once ask her to clarify, because he recalled what she had said earlier-that understanding comes with patience-and he suspected that any question he asked would be met with the same advice.

“What you need to do,” she continued, “is offer yourself as a victim.” Perhaps she saw bafflement in his face, for she elaborated. “Suffer for the intentions of others, Mr. Perry. If you have the courage and the stamina, offer yourself as a victim all the rest of your life.”