Memory (Hard Case Crime) (24 page)

He’d recognized her voice. That was a good sign, that; and if the blurred image in the lavender hat turned out to be meaningful it would be an even better sign. He’d know in less than three hours.

The record on the phonograph came to an end, and he went over and replaced it. This music was still harsh and callous in his ears, but he was determined to adapt to it. Turning away from the phonograph after replacing the record, he glanced across the room at the plank-and-brick bookcase, and it occurred to him to wonder whether the books would be like the records, or if here at last he would find some common ground with his former self. He went over to look, and for the next two hours, he sat on the floor and studied his books.

There were books on acting, plus volumes of plays among the hardcover books on the bottom shelf and anthologies of plays in paperback form, and paperback biographies of current entertainers. Half a shelf was taken up by paperback collections of cartoons, most of a sexual slant, and the rest of that shelf was given over to collections of short stories and paperback editions of bestsellers. There was some science-fiction, too, and a few private eye novels. Finally, there were two or three books on the movies.

Cole looked into almost all the books. Here and there a phrase or chapter title or cartoon would strike a familiar chord, but most of what he saw was strange to him. His old self, of course, had read all these books, contained them all within his mind. So they must still be there in Cole’s mind now, part of the knowledge still buried under rubble. Should he reread them all in hopes of the rereading helping to open his memory, or should he wait until other things opened it, when rereading would no longer be necessary? He wasn’t sure, and finally decided to let matters take their natural course; if he felt like reading one of these books, he would, but he wouldn’t force himself.

At ten past two he left the apartment and walked through the still-falling rain to the subway. The sidewalks were greasy now, the rain beginning to freeze where it landed. Trucks and taxis splashed down Seventh Avenue, most of them with their headlights on though it was still early afternoon. But the cloud layer seemed even lower and darker and thicker than this morning, and the slanting rain was like veils, obscuring everything behind a few feet away.

Mrs. Arndt’s office was in a grim building on Eighth Avenue, between 46th and 47th Streets. There was a single elevator, very old-fashioned looking, operated by an old man in a faded flannel shirt and gray workpants. He took Cole up to the third floor, and Cole, walking down the hall amid faint rustlings of recognition, found the office for himself.

HELEN ARNDT
Theatrical Representative

Cole walked in and found himself in a small room shoulder-deep in dark green filing cabinets. In an open space in the center was a small desk and a young red-haired girl who smiled at him and said, “Hi, Paul. Long time no see.”

But this wasn’t Mrs. Arndt. He knew who she was, this girl, but he couldn’t quite get the knowledge out where he could see it. He forced a friendly smile on his face and said, “Hi.”

The girl spoke into the cream phone on her desk, and then said to Cole, “Go right on in.” The friendly smile was still on both their faces, but Cole was suddenly terrified. He would never be able to keep Mrs. Arndt from finding out. What would she do?

A wooden door that said
Private
on it was on the other side of the desk. Cole went over there, nodded at the girl because he was at a loss for what to say to her, and pushed open the door.

This
was Mrs. Arndt, and the second he saw her he recognized her; much more than he had recognized Benny or the girl in the outer office. He recognized Mrs. Arndt the way he had, until now, only recognized places. Looking at her, it seemed to him he knew her as well as he had known his apartment when he’d first walked into it.

She was a stocky middle-aged woman of brassy features, sitting behind a swirling paper-crowded desk. A turquoise hat was on her head, and a long filter cigarette dangled from a corner of her mouth. Her spectacles were horn-rimmed and sequined, designed like a cat-mask, with a thin gold chain draped from the wings down around the back of her neck. The rest of her clothing was dominated by a huge ruffle of white lace at her throat. She said, “
Honey!
Come in, sweets, come in! What have you been
doing
to yourself, you’ve lost
pounds
.”

“Have I?” But he wasn’t really paying attention to the words yet. He was recognizing everything, in a rush, her voice and face, her taste in clothing and accessories, her office, her mannerisms. There suddenly popped into his mind the knowledge he was supposed to call her Helen, not Mrs. Arndt.

She was saying, “Sit down, baby, sit down, tell me all about yourself. The last I heard, that little snotnose Gerber told me you were dropped from the troupe, in a hospital somewhere at the edge of the world, and the details were so extremely delicate I would have to wait to hear them from your own lips. Honey, you didn’t pick up a dose from one of those cornfed beauties, did you?”

There were too many words coming at him all at once. He recognized and remembered the voice, but what she was saying made no sense to him at all. Gerber? And a hospital? The troupe? None of it meant anything to him.

He was going to have to ask questions, and in order to do that he was going to have to tell her the truth. But somehow the idea, at last faced, and personified in this woman, wasn’t so frightening any more. He sat on the edge of the chair facing her desk, and when she finished speaking he said, “I had an accident.”

She let him get no farther. An exaggerated expression of concern distorted her face and she leaned forward, elbows mashing papers on the desk. “Honey, you look ghastly, do you know that? What on earth
happened
to you? Tell me all.”

He spread his hands and shook his head. “I don’t know very much. I guess I had some kind of accident or something, you said I was in the hospital.”

“That’s what I was
told
, honey.”

“Well, whatever it was, it did something to my memory. I don’t remember things anymore. Maybe it’s a kind of amnesia, I don’t know.”

“Amnesia? In real life? Not
total
amnesia, surely.”

“Everything in my past is just fuzzy, that’s all. I don’t know how to explain it exactly.”

“You remembered
me
, honey. Here you are.” She said it as though explaining something that was not only obvious, but was also the solution to all his problems.

“I remember you now,” he said. “Your face and your voice. But I don’t remember any other time I ever talked to you. And I didn’t come here because I remembered you, but because I found your name on my income tax forms and in my phone book.”

“Good heavens. I don’t know if I ought to be insulted or compassionate.
Everything
is gone?”

“Just clouded over.”

“You’ve been exposed to the Shadow, poor lamb. Never mind, it was just an allusion. How long have you been back in town?”

“Two days.”

“But good heavens, sweetie, all this must have happened months ago! Where in the world have you been all this time? Just wandering, dazed and alone, not even knowing your own name?”

“I was working in a place. I didn’t have much money, so I had to get a job and save up for a bus ticket.”

“But honey, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you
call
me? You could have called collect, you know that. I would have wired you money instanter.”

“I didn’t remember,” he said.

“Oh, dear.” A slow surprise was coming over her features. “Oh, for the love of God. You just didn’t remember anybody, did you?”

“Not clear enough.”

“Oh, honey, there are just ramifications and ramifications of this thing, aren’t there? Honeybunch, how can I get you work? I mean, if you can’t memorize lines, baby, you can’t
act
.”

Cole frowned. Was he going to act, to be an actor? If that was what he’d been and what he was supposed to be, then he would. Some day Mrs. Malloy would switch on the television set, and there he’d be, playing a part in a soap opera.

That hadn’t occurred to him before. Of
course
he would act, that was a vital part of being Paul Cole. Even though the prospect was inconceivable to him right now, even though he had no idea of how to be an actor or how he had ever been an actor, he still knew he would one day soon be acting again.

The phonograph records, and the friends like Benny, and the books, and the apartment, all were only tassels and fringes at the perimeter of Paul Cole, the trappings around the outer edge. But
acting
, that was the core.

But now Helen Arndt had said if his memory was bad he couldn’t act. He frowned, and shook his head, and said, “I think it’s going to get better. It ought to get better.”

“It
has
to, sweetie. Maybe I can get you a job as an extra here and there, you know the sort of thing you used to do...Or do you? No, I see you don’t. It’s all gone, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

Her eyes were bright, and she studied him now with a strange faraway smile on her face. “Do you know what you are, honey?” she asked. “You’re a virgin all over again. Aren’t you? Do you remember any of your women? I bet you don’t.”

Her words made him think of Edna, back in the town, but he knew Edna wasn’t what Helen Arndt meant, because he had never gone to bed with Edna. Had he? No, he hadn’t. For the rest, she was right, and he nodded reluctantly, feeling the topic was wrong under these circumstances.

“I knew I was right,” she said. Her gaze roamed him, and the faraway smile was fixed on her face. “You’re a brand new virgin, that’s what you are. Some girl’s going to have to teach you everything all over again.”

She was making him uncomfortable, and he couldn’t remember why he’d come here in the first place. He knew he hadn’t intended to see his agent or anyone else until he was in better shape, but something had made it necessary...

She was snapping her fingers at him, in a humorous manner, and saying, “Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was thinking about something else.”

“What I asked you,” she said, “was your financial condition. How are you fixed at the moment?”

Then he remembered. “Oh,” he said. “I’m going to collect unemployment insurance.”

“Good. Got a little cash to carry you in the meantime?”

“Yes.”

“And have you been to see a doctor here in town?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, you certainly should. Here, let me give you my doctor’s name and address.” She rummaged amid the papers on her desk, and found a memo pad and a wickedly sharpened pencil. As she wrote she said, “Would you like me to call him now, make an appointment for you?”

“Not now. I don’t think so, thank you.”

She paused in her writing and studied him again, this time critically. “You’re altogether different,” she said. “Do you know that?”

“I suppose I am, yes.”

“Much quieter, much less sure of yourself. You were always a brash self-confident boy. You knew you had talent, you knew you had looks, and you knew you had a future. I don’t know whether I like you better this way or not.” She shrugged, and suddenly smiled meaninglessly, and finished writing the doctor’s address. She ripped the top sheet off and extended it to him, saying, “You call him now, you hear me? I’ll be in touch with him, and if you don’t go see him I’ll know about it.”

He took the paper and stored it carefully in his pocket. “I’ll call him,” he said, not sure yet whether he would or not. He felt a reluctance to rely on anyone but himself, but at the same time he longed for outside help.

“You’re living alone, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I don’t suppose you’re eating properly,” she said. “Don’t eat at home, will you do that for me, honey? Eat in restaurants.”

He shrugged, not seeing the point. “All right,” he said, to be polite.

“If you’re broke any time, I can always feed you. Do you have my home address? Do you remember it?”

“No, I don’t.”

So she wrote again on the memo pad, and when she handed him this second slip of paper there was a sad humor on her face. “Everything’s gone, isn’t it?” she said. “Honey, you’re depressing the hell out of me, do you know that? No, never mind. Was there anything special you wanted? I’ll see what I can do for jobs for you. Extras or walk-on, that’s about it until your memory comes back. Is there anything else?”

“There was something...” Lowering his head, he massaged his brow, trying to get it back again, and in this position the payment book in his inside coat pocket pressed against his chest, causing him to remember. “I’ve got it,” he said. “I want to collect unemployment insurance, but they want to know about my employment for the last year, and I don’t know it.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. Just a sec.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button, then said, “Cindy, bring me Paul Cole’s folder, will you? That’s a good girl.” She hung up, and smiled brilliantly at Cole again. “Won’t take long at all,” she said.

Talking to himself as much as to her, he said, “I don’t know about the other job, either. I worked in a tannery, to get the money to come home. I don’t remember the name of it, or exactly how long I worked there.”

“Honey, honey, you’re just a babe in the woods. Don’t you say a word about that tannery, not in the unemployment insurance office. You’re an
actor
, sweetie, and you don’t tell them about any kind of job but
acting
jobs. Because it’s only an acting job you’ll take, do you see what I mean? If you mention any sort of factory work, they’ll try to put you to work in a factory the very first thing.”

“Oh.” The near-miss frightened him; it hadn’t occurred to him to hide his tannery job.

She said, “You left your last employment because you fell ill, but now you’re available for employment again. Can you remember that, sweetie? Want me to write it out for you?”

“No, I’ll remember it.”