Memory (Hard Case Crime) (26 page)

“I guess so.”

“So go tomorrow. Right?”

Cole nodded. “All right, I will.”

Nick stood up and stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Get your coat on,” he said.

“Where we going?”

“Around. See who’s doing. Lot of people gone home for the holidays, but there’s still some around.”

“Nick, I don’t think I ought to—”

“Just put your coat on, clown. You don’t think at all, period.”

“Maybe I ought to,” said Cole. He felt excited at the prospect, and frightened of it, too, like a man getting out of prison after twenty-five years.

They put on their coats and went out. The weather was good for Christmas Day this year, clear and cold, and few pedestrians were moving on the sidewalks. Nick led the way; they crossed Sheridan Square and headed east.

The first coffee shop they entered was nearly empty; a few solitary people sat at tables reading books or just stirring coffee. Nick looked around and said, “Nobody here. Come on.”

“Let’s have a cup of coffee here anyway.” Fear was beginning to overcome excitement now; who were his friends, what were they like, what would they think of him once they knew the truth?

But Nick said, impatiently, “Come on, clown. We’re not here for coffee.” He pushed his way back out to the sidewalk, and Cole had no choice but to follow him.

At the second coffee shop, Nick recognized a group of four people at a table near the rear. He shouted, “Hola!” and advanced, waving his arms. They all shouted back, and shouted also, “Hey, Paul! When’d you get back?”

Two more chairs were dragged over to the table, and they sat down. Nick said, “You’ll have to excuse Paul, he’s had an accident.”

They all started asking questions, and Cole stammered, “Let Nick tell it. You tell them, Nick.”

“Sure.” Nick seemed to take a proprietary air in him, or maybe a showman’s air, displaying an unusual exhibit. He told the story Cole had told him, and told it much better.

While Nick was talking, Cole studied the faces of the four people at the table, seeing if he remembered them. Two were named Ed and Frances, he knew that. He remembered their faces, and could put first names to them, but could remember nothing more about them at all. The other two he knew were married, but even their names escaped him. He had the feeling he’d been to their apartment, probably more than once, at parties in their apartment.

Nick had finished telling the story, and all four of them were offering him sympathy and looking at him with fascination and curiosity, as though they’d never seen him before. Nick turned to him and said, “You remember these people?”

“You’re Ed and Frances,” he said, pointing. “But that’s all I remember. And I remember you two are married—”

They laughed, and the man said, “I’m glad of that. Just keep it in mind.”

“I’ve been to parties at your house, haven’t I?”

“Check. But you don’t remember our names?”

Cole shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

The man named Ed said, “Are you two putting us on?”

“Honest to God,” Nick said. “I thought it was a gag at first, too, but it isn’t. It’s straight poop.”

“I’m Fred Crawford,” said the other man. “You remember now?”

“You live in Brooklyn.”

“Sure. You remember my wife’s name?”

Cole felt embarrassed, as though to admit ignorance would be insulting. He frowned, concentrating, trying to remember.

The girl said, “It’s Mattie.” She said it as though she felt sorry for him.

He nodded. “That’s right, Mattie.”

“
She
knows it,” said Fred, and they all laughed.

Nick said, “We can’t stick around. I want Paul to go see everybody, everybody we can find.”

“Lot of people gone home for the holidays,” said Ed.

“There’s still some left.”

Fred Crawford said, “Hey, Paul. We’re having a New Year’s Eve party. You coming?”

“I’d get lost.”

“Nick’ll bring you, won’t you?”

“Sure,” said Nick. He grinned and said, “You’re my date, baby.”

Cole tried to laugh, too, to get into the spirit of it, but he was too self-conscious. All of these people were so sure of themselves, so solidly placed. He felt like a bubble, floating, doomed to disappear with a pop any second.

Nick got to his feet, saying, “See you later. Come on, Paul.”

Cole rose and said, “Glad to have met you,” because he was self-conscious. They all laughed at that, except Mattie, who looked embarrassed and pitying. In confusion, Cole turned away and hurried after Nick out of the place, knowing it was going to go on like this all day.

But it would help. That was the only reason he’d put up with it; it would help.

The girl named Rita was walking homeward with him, but he didn’t know yet whether she would be coming up to his apartment or not. He wasn’t even sure whether he wanted her to come up or not.

In a whispered conference in the men’s room at the East Side coffee shop where he and Nick had wound up a little after midnight, and where they’d run into Rita and three other people, Nick had told him that Rita and the old Paul Cole had been going together for about six months prior to Cole’s going off with the touring company. Cole then had hemmed and hawed, but there hadn’t been any roundabout way to ask it, so finally he’d just blurted the question out: “Did we sleep together?”

“Beats me. Maybe.”

All in all, in their wandering throughout the day and half the night, they’d met fifteen or twenty people who had known the old Paul Cole, ranging from party acquaintances to close friends. As with the first group, Nick had in each instance taken over the task of explaining Cole’s memory problem, always with that bit of flair in his manner, a hint of fanfare in his voice.

There’d been nearly as many reactions as people. Some had seemed sincerely concerned about him, wishing him well. Some had acted awkward and uncomfortable in his presence, after hearing about him. And some had found a kind of rough humor in his condition, making jokes he sometimes understood. Half a dozen times Cole had been on the verge of bolting, of running flat out across the sidewalks and home, of locking the door behind him and crawling into bed to cower there in misery, ignoring any ringing of phones or knocking at doors, until the memory of tonight would have faded and disappeared. But each time he had restrained himself with the same argument: Meeting these people again, talking with them, moving through these surroundings, all would help him regain his memory.

And it did seem to be working. Through conversations he had learned much about himself, adding to the information he had gleaned from constant reading and re-reading of the tax forms and resume and the other treasures in the desk at home. He had learned tonight about the tour he had been on when he’d had his accident, though he hadn’t met anyone who had been along on that tour or could tell him specifically what sort of accident it had been. But slowly the parts of Paul Cole were being made known to him, and this accretion of knowledge made the uneasiness and the self-consciousness and the nervousness all more than worthwhile.

As to the people, most of the ones he’d met tonight he did recognize, and even here and there caught sight of a faint visual memory glimmering down at the end of a long tunnel in his mind. Exposing himself to his past this way was agitating his brain, forcing his memory to start to work again, and that was all to the good. He understood now why it had been so necessary for him to leave that town; if he had stayed there, his memory might never have gotten well. He was only lucky he’d obeyed the urge to come here, even though at the time he hadn’t understood it.

Not that his memory was well now, not at all. Only a few faint memories had been sluggishly stirred so far, and some of the people he had re-met tonight he didn’t remember or recognize at all, including this girl Rita, whose arm was now linked with his as they walked westward across Eighth Street toward his apartment. Her face, her voice, her words and mannerisms, all were as foreign to him as though she had just this night been created. Yet Nick had said this stranger had been his girl for six months, and it was possible they had gone to bed together.

There was an eerie feeling in it, to be walking with a girl who was such an unknown quantity to him, yet who knew him, perhaps, as much as any woman knows any man. It was like the eeriness of dreams where one walks naked through crowds.

He wished Nick had come along. But Nick had winked and grinned and pushed him toward the door, saying, “I’ll see you around, you silly bastard. Go for a walk with Rita, go on.”

She did all the talking, now. She would mention someone’s name, and say something about what he or she was doing right now, and then try to remind him of the person by telling anecdotes from the past. A few times the anecdotes rang small bells in his memory and he’d say, “I remember now. A short fat girl,” or something like that. But most of the time there was no memory at all, and nothing for him to say, and for the last few blocks Rita’s chatter faded away and they walked silently together.

She was, all in all, a beautiful girl, a natural beauty. Twenty or twenty-one, with gleaming black hair and large dark eyes and a clear soft milk-white complexion. Her features were regular and cleanly drawn, and if they contained any flaw at all it was not in the features themselves but in her expression, which, because she was tired and because she’d been drinking, was somewhat loose and vague.

They stopped at last in front of his building, and stood looking at one another, while he belatedly began to wonder whether or not he should ask her upstairs. If only he knew just what their relationship used to be, but he didn’t.

She broke the silence, saying, “You’re not a bit like you used to be, you know that?”

“I don’t know very much about what I used to be.”

“You going to change back?”

“I guess so. I hope so.”

“It’s cold out here. Let’s go on up and have a cup of coffee.”

“All right,” he said. “Good.” He was relieved to have the problem decided for him, though it still didn’t answer the main question.

He unlocked the street door, and they started up the stairs together. She took his hand and led the way, a step ahead of him, and he followed, frowning. It was stupid not to remember her. Her of all people, it was stupid.

He felt her hand warm and moist in his as she led him up the stairs. Her coat was unbuttoned, with a black wool sweater beneath; looking up at her, he saw the fullness of her breast defined by the black wool, and all at once a scene came into his mind, a full memory, of himself and a girl on a sofa, his hand touching the girl’s small breast beneath a brown wool sweater.

He frowned at the memory; it was from the wrong world. That town had no meaning for him anymore, no purpose in his thoughts. Memories of it were wasteful, consuming space needed for more meaningful memories of more meaningful times. And why should he think of Edna now, anyway, why should he even remember her name? He could see her clearly, could hear her frail voice and list the whole catalog of her nervous mannerisms. Compared with this girl Rita—No, there was no comparison. Not in looks, not in personality, not in anything. And particularly not in meaning. It was important for him to remember Rita, necessary for him to remember her, but remembering Edna could only be a barren luxury.

Nevertheless, Edna remained in his mind. That one scene, the single time they had been alone together when Edna was babysitting, the whole length of that evening coming to him compressed and clear, more clear in his mind than the coffee shop he’d just walked from with Rita. It was like a strip of movie film spliced into a circle, running over and over on the projector of his mind. The touch of her, the sound of her voice, the awkward period of darkness when she had insisted on the lights being out, and the even more awkward time after the light was on again, all circling and circling in his mind, blotting out any possibility of thinking about Rita, of trying to find some way to unlock the memories of his old relationship with her.

He tried to concentrate on physical movement, hoping to defeat the persistent memory. He concentrated on climbing the stairs, on holding Rita’s hand, on looking up at her breast. He concentrated fiercely on unlocking the apartment door and going in and switching on the lights. But nothing did any good.

Rita looked around and said, “Boy! I never saw it
this
clean.”

“I didn’t used to clean the place?”

“What a talent for understatement. I’ll make the coffee.”

“All right,” he said, suddenly remembering the notes stuck to the walls all over the bedroom. He couldn’t let her see those notes, he’d have to make some excuse to go in there and take them all down. Then he reflected that he had no assurance yet that she had even been in his bedroom, much less that she would eventually be in there tonight. Still, he didn’t want to take the chance. And doing something, doing anything at all, should help to distract from the persistent memory of Edna.

He said, “Shall I play a record?”

“Sure.”

He put a record on, turning the volume low, and said, “I’m going to go put my slippers on.”

“Be my guest,” she said, and smiled at him. But because he wanted so badly to understand every nuance of her smile, he couldn’t understand its meaning at all.

He went into the bedroom and switched on the light, and traveled around the room taking his notes down. He stuffed them all into the top desk drawer, and then surveyed the room. It seemed empty. It seemed like a room in a balloon. “I’ll put it all back tomorrow,” he promised, and went back to the living room, where the water was just boiling for the instant coffee.

They sat across from one another at the kitchen table and she said, “Paul, I don’t get it. Either you’ve got amnesia or you don’t, that’s all I ever heard of. But you’ve got something in the middle, right? Like, it’s worse than a cold but not as bad as pneumonia, is that it?”

“Yes, I guess so. I’m in the middle.”

“Mm.” She shrugged, and drank some coffee, and rummaged cigarettes out of her skirt pocket. Her skirt was black, too, and very full, and she was wearing a black leotard. The only departure from black was on her feet; she wore brown loafers.