For now, the paper was secured. And having someone read his work for him might actually do it some good. Give him the air of a maestro who had a glamorous apprentice eager to make sure the great man’s word was heard. And she had sounded pretty glamorous.

Unfortunately, she had been nowhere to be seen when he exited the toilets.

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“Shall I have another crack at it?” Dr. Frankburg asked the sound engineer in the recording studio.

“I think you’d better.”

“Have you got any tips perhaps? About the popping?”

“We could hire Samuel Thorn.”

“Yes, well, that’s not an option, is it?”

“Expensive, is he?”

“It’s got nothing to do with money. Let’s just do a take, shall we?”

He cleared his throat.

Frankburg tried to follow his own teaching on dealing with pressure moments. He tried to let his lungs fill with air, he tried to relax each muscle one by one, he tried to picture fields of wheat.

“We haven’t really got time for this,” said the sound engineer.

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So that had been that. He’d looked around the conference hall but he had no idea what the cubicle woman looked like.

Frankburg bolted Boston.

Note to the conference organizer, sudden illness, swollen glands, probably tonsillitis, sorry to let everyone down, will call in a few days.

Taxi to the airport.

He was home ten hours later. Ironically, he really did have a fearfully sore throat. He put it down to having spent so long faking one for Clara Redlake but it was more a hysterical spasm of the larynx. Plus he’d picked up an infection on the airplane. Something to do with the air conditioning.

He’d laid low for three days, didn’t answer the phone, didn’t read his mail, ate soup.

When he felt better he’d played his answering machine.

One was from Clara Redlake sounding peeved that he’d abandoned her to a “forward Freudian” but nevertheless expressing a hope that he’d recover soon and that he should call her when his voice had regained its reverberating power.

The second was from the conference organizer expressing polite sympathy but making it clear that he believed Dr. Frankburg had pulled a sickie. He went on to say how perhaps it was for the best as Frankburg’s absence permitted the inclusion of a last-minute offering from a talented young therapist who’d brought the house down with a highly original piece about air travel.

Frankburg felt a tide of injustice well up inside him and punched the wall.

Message three was the voice from the toilet cubicle apologizing for hijacking his paper but claiming she’d improved it somewhat by giving it the punchier title “Fear at Thirty-five Thousand Feet.” She pointed out that they hadn’t properly met, and so introduced herself as Ali Bronski. Hi.

Then the phone clicked off.

The robotic answering machine voice asked if the messages should be erased and Frankburg had stabbed the YES button furiously.

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