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double
habitation.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five: Body and Soul
     
     
     
    If you have never heard the term "double
habitation," and I would suppose that many well-informed people
have not, it refers to a peculiar and really quite rare human
situation in which a single body seems to be host to two separate
personalities. There are cases recorded involving multiple
habitation. The shrinks talk about it in terms of a schizophrenic
manifestation—split-personality, dissociation, etc.—but other
learned people with equally valid credentials prefer to see it as
something else.
    The opposing poles of
thought are best exemplified in the public mind by a couple of
motion picture dramas—with the psychiatric view presented in The Three Faces of Eve ,
the story of a woman whose personality was split into three
distinct and disparate identities; the other view given the widest
public exposure by The
Exorcist , the supernatural story of a
young girl possessed by a demonic spirit.
    Not being credentialed
either way, I had always felt free to make my own conclusions,
though I had never done so because I had never really been faced
with the need to do so.
    I did have the opportunity a couple of years
ago to study some video footage of a young man in the San Francisco
area who appeared to exhibit five different personalities, only
two, of which were male—and I ran into a guy at Big Sur last year
who slipped over into an identity as Alexander the Great when faced
with a difficult problem beyond his immediate abilities. This guy,
when in one of these "spells," held one-sided conversations with
none other than Aristotle, in a strange tongue that I am told is
Classical Greek.
    I did not have any clear idea as to what any
of this might have to do with Karen Highland or her strange
behavior, but I was rather impressed by the way Kalinsky reacted to
that stunning stunt. His wife had run on behind Karen and followed
her inside the house, pausing at the doorway to snatch up a terry
cloth robe that apparently had been abandoned there.
    Some of the ladies present were shooting me
guardedly measuring looks. Mainly, though, everyone was just
standing about in giggly-embarrassed clusters, wondering maybe if
this meant that the party was over.
    Enter Kalinsky, then, moving casually from
group to group, grinning and talking a mile a minute, putting the
guests at ease. By the time he got to me, everything seemed just
about back to where it had been before.
    He strolled past me with
the same grin he'd worn for the others, but the vocal tone was
tailored just for me as he delivered his orders without breaking
stride: "We need to talk."
    I left my unfinished drink at the bar and
gladly followed his unhurried tracks across the patio and into the
house. Entry there was via a large lounge area—for want of a better
name; I'd almost call it a nightclub. A full bar that would be the
envy of many commercial clubs occupied an entire wall. A dozen or
so heavy leather couches arranged with marble tables and computer
games still left plenty of room for a decent dance floor and a
small, raised stage outfitted with grand piano, drums, amplifiers,
and whatnot. Two guys who looked the bartender role were working
stock behind the bar and apparently getting set up for a long
evening. Otherwise, the lounge was deserted.
    We went on through there and along a bright
hallway past another room, which could have lobbied for a small
resort hotel, before Kalinsky spoke to me again.
    This time it was over the shoulder as he
veered left into another, broader hallway with doors spaced along
either side. "Executive wing," he told me, with the air of a bored
tour guide.
    "Naturally," I replied, but under my
breath.
    We were, it seems, at the seat of
government. One of the rooms we passed—actually a broader hall teed
off behind an archway and sealed in glass—had OPERATIONS CENTER
engraved in gold on the double glass doors. In smaller letters
below: Authorized Personnel