“Bibi? We thought you’d call long before this. Did you get a motel? Where are you staying?”
“I drove all the way to San Diego, Mom. Then I played tourist for a while, it’s a cool town, and then I found a nice little place for dinner.” She didn’t lie, not about anything important, and she particularly didn’t lie to her parents; however, to her own ear, she sounded as though she was becoming at least a good apprentice liar. Although keeping Murphy and Nancy ignorant about her situation was necessary in order to keep them off Terezin’s execution list, Bibi didn’t feel justified and wanted to get through the deception as fast as possible. “Anyway, I have a room at the Best Western. It’s clean and quiet, and I’m going to sleep like a stone.”
“Which Best Western?” Nancy asked.
“The Best Western Best Western. You know, the chain.”
“But there must be several of them in San Diego.”
“Well, I don’t know, it just says Best Western on the building.”
“There must be another part to the name. Best Western Downtown, Best Western Old Town, Best Western Harbor, something like that.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look for an ad card on your nightstand or a brochure in the drawer. It’ll have the full name. Go look.”
“Okay. Wait a sec.” Bibi clamped the palm of her hand over the phone and counted to twenty while she watched the less than thrilling spectacle of the fog. “Okay. There’s both an ad card and a brochure, but they just say Best Western. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I’m happy and well fed and sleepy, and I’m only staying one night. Tomorrow I might drive back up to La Jolla, stay there a day or two.”
She expected her mother to demand that she go to a window and describe the part of the city immediately around the hotel, but Nancy said, “You’re not going to surf at La Jolla Shores, are you?”
“No. I’m not surfing anywhere. Too chilly for me.”
“Your dad says there’s a storm in the South Pacific, supposed to be some smokin’ behemoths rolling in from Baja to La Jolla Shores. You did just get out of the hospital, remember.”
“I don’t even have my board with me, Mom. I’m going to spend the day shopping for things I don’t need, indulging myself. Listen, there’s something I wanted to ask. About the captain. About Grandpa.”
“I know you still think of him often.”
“I do,” Bibi agreed. “But this is a research thing, for the novel I’m writing. Did he ever talk much about when he was an intelligence officer? About the interrogation-resistance techniques his team developed?”
“That was all classified stuff, sweetie.”
“But he talked about it a little.”
“Very little.”
“Did he ever say anything about memory suppression?”
“Which is what?”
“Making people forget things. Wiping an entire experience out of your mind, so you don’t remember it ever happened.”
“That sounds more science-fictiony than anything your grandpa would have been working on.”
“The research I’ve done so far tells me it’s possible. But if it’s possible, I’m wondering how it could be undone.”
“This is for the book you’ve been working on? It sounds awful science-fictiony.”
“It’s not really. Not at all. Anyway, I’m wiped out. I need to grab a nightcap from the honor bar and hit the sheets.”
“If you need downtime to put the whole brain thing behind you, then you should damn well make it total downtime, honey. Forget your work for a few days.”
“You’re right, Mom. I will. Okay. Gotta crash. I love you. Tell Dad I love him. Tell him I’m not going to paddle out into any smokin’ behemoths in La Jolla Shores.”
After declarations of love bounced back and forth a few more times, Bibi terminated the call and switched off the phone.