Memory (Hard Case Crime) (4 page)

Cole counted, and said, “Sixteen dollars and eighty-four cents.”

“Too bad.”

“Why?”

“If it was under ten I could vag you.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you. I have contempt for you. Now, listen to me. We’re going down to the bus depot, and you’re taking a bus out of town. Anywhere you want, just so it’s out of town. And you don’t ever come back here, or you’re in big trouble. You got me?”

“Yes.”

They were silent a few blocks, and then Lieutenant Murray said, “Your memory isn’t so hot now, huh?”

“I guess not.”

“You remember the woman?”

“What woman?”

“The one you were in the rack with.”

“Oh.” He thought about it seriously, and he could see her face. That was all, nothing else. “I can remember her,” he said.

“Was she worth it?”

“What?”

“Getting your head kicked in. Was she worth it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean, that’s the part you forgot? Bein’ in the rack with her?”

Cole was silent.

Lieutenant Murray laughed. “You paid all this for it, and you can’t even remember it! No, it wasn’t worth it, Cole. It’s never worth it, Cole.”

They stopped in front of a storefront that was used as the bus depot. They went in together, and Cole went over to the old woman at the ticket window and said, “I want to go east. Toward New York City. About seven dollars worth.”

“New York City?”

“No. How far east can I go for seven dollars?”

“Seven dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“East. Just east.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“If I took a bus to New York, what would the first stop be?”

“Do you want to buy a ticket or not?”

“I want to buy a ticket. If I was going to New York— No. Where does the bus to New York make its first stop?”

“Imlay.”

“How much is a ticket to Imlay?”

“Three dollars and forty-nine cents.”

“What’s the next stop after that?”

“Mister, I don’t have time for a lot of silly games. You want a ticket or don’t you?”

“I want a ticket to the stop after Imlay.”

“You mean Jeffords?”

“That’s right, Jeffords. How much is that?”

“Five dollars and sixty-seven cents.”

“That’s fine. When does the next bus leave?”

“One-oh-eight.”

“Thank you.” He looked at his watch, and it was twenty minutes to twelve. An hour and a half to wait.

When he paid for the ticket, he had eleven dollars and seventeen cents left. He went over to the one bench, where Lieutenant Murray was sitting, and said, “My bus leaves at one-oh-eight.”

“We’ll wait here.”

“You, too?”

“Me, too. I got to see to it you get out of town. Sit down, Cole.”

“I want to buy some cigarettes.”

“Machine over there.”

He got change from the old woman, and fed thirty cents into the cigarette machine. He’d left the luggage on the floor by the bench, next to where Lieutenant Murray was sitting. Lieutenant Murray looked peaceful and calm, except for the permanent discontent lines on his face.

Cole came back and sat down, opening the pack of cigarettes. Lieutenant Murray said, “Where you going? What town?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why the hell not?”

“What do you want to know for? To call the police there, and tell them to give me a bad time?”

“Are you out of your head? What the hell would I do that for?” He was serious.

Cole looked at his face, and saw he didn’t know what he was doing. He hated Cole, but he didn’t know it. Cole said, “I’m going to a place called Jeffords.

“Jeffords. That’s a nice town. You’ll like Jeffords.”

It was dark when the bus made its second stop. The driver called out, “Jeffords!” and opened the door.

Cole got down and stood on the sidewalk, and after a while they got his suitcase and canvas bag out of the side of the bus and gave them to him. He turned away and went walking down the street toward dull traces of neon a few blocks away.

It was a small industrial town, old and cramped, with buckled sidewalks. The evening air was cold, and people on the sidewalks were bundled into heavy jackets. Cole was wearing only his suit; even his sweater was still in the suitcase.

He discovered that the bus depot was on a side street away from the main downtown section, close to the railroad yards. This street was all commercial—plumbers and TV repairmen and tailors and small appliance stores and used furniture stores—with apartments for rent above the shops. There was a stink in the air, like smoldering wet cardboard.

After two blocks, he came to the main street, all of it away to the left. There were a few larger stores, and two movie theaters, and two five-and-dimes, and a couple of small office buildings. This being a Monday evening, only the two movie houses and a couple of restaurants were open.

He stood at the corner, looking that way, and then turned and looked in the other direction, and saw a red neon sign that said HOTEL, half a block away. He went down there.

The hotel was just a big house, made of brick, with bay windows on the front. It was four stories high, and blocky-looking. There was a flight of slate steps up to the entrance.

Inside, there was a very small lobby. Instead of a desk, there was a doorway, with a counter affixed to the bottom half of a Dutch door. A bald man took his three dollars in advance, and gave him a key, and told him it was two flights up. There was neither bellboy nor elevator.

The room was a box. All the woodwork and molding had outlines softened by coat after coat of thick cheap paint. The furniture was stolid and old and functional. The bathroom was at least thirty years old.

He came into the room at ten minutes past seven, and left it again at seven-thirty. He was still wearing the suit, but now he’d replaced the white shirt and tie with a cotton sport shirt and the green sweater. He went out and walked over to the downtown section and went into a restaurant that didn’t seem too high class to object to the way he was dressed. He ate supper, and then went out and looked at the two movie marquees, made up his mind, and bought a ticket at the one that was showing a double feature. He saw the last half of one picture, and then all of the second picture, and then all of the first picture, and then the lights went on. There were only four other people left in the theater, and it was twenty-five minutes to twelve.

He was going to go to a bar next, but he decided not to spend the money. He went back to the hotel instead, and when he was in the room he counted his money, and he had five dollars and seven cents.

He hadn’t yet started thinking about what he was going to do. He’d been putting it off, thinking about smaller things or nothing at all. But now he stripped to his underwear, and switched off the light, and crawled into bed, and settled himself to think it through.

He had to get back to New York. As close as he could figure, he was now about a thousand miles from New York, but the first thing to do was get back to the city. His life was there, and all his friends were there, and whatever future he had was there.

And there was this memory thing. He didn’t think it was getting any worse, but it didn’t seem to be getting any better either. If he could get back to the city, back to familiar surroundings, the memory would maybe improve faster.

How to get there. He thought of phoning somebody collect, asking somebody to wire him bus fare. He could do that. But who would he call?

He shifted around in the bed, making its springs squeak. There was a fog in his head, an irritating fog. He could remember faces, he could remember first names, he could remember a few addresses. But nothing complete. Of the people he knew in New York, none of them would come in full and clear, with face and first name and last name and address. He could think of no telephone numbers at all.

They shouldn’t have turned me loose
, he thought.
They should have kept me at the hospital.

The window was open a little bit, and that stink of smoldering wet cardboard was in the room. It had been everywhere he’d gone on the street, and in the restaurant, and in the movie house. It distracted him sometimes, the way a persistent noise can distract.

The stink was interrupting his thoughts. He kept trying to remember, trying to put a name to this face, or that face, and it wasn’t working. His hands clenched and relaxed at his sides, and his mouth was twisted with strain, but it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t get them.

He kept trying, and kept trying, and under the covers he was perspiring, but it didn’t work at all. The fog was too persistent, it was more like syrup poured into his head, sticking to everything, obscuring all the outlines, like the paint muffling the lines of the moldings in the room, but more softly and more cloyingly.

And what made it worse was that it was ridiculous. It was like being on a crowded street, and your pants have fallen down around your ankles. You bend over and tug at them, but you can’t get them back up again because it turns out you’re standing on them. You stay in that position, too ashamed to straighten and show your face, and too off-balance to move your feet, and you tug uselessly at your trousers, and they just won’t come free. And it’s too absurd to be a tragedy. It’s even too absurd to be high comedy.

I can’t remember my friends.

He could imagine himself going up to a stranger, and asking for help, saying, “I can’t remember my friends. I have to get back to New York and see them again, so I can remember who they are.”

He tugged and tugged, but the names wouldn’t come free.

When he finally fell asleep, it was from exhaustion. He awoke again to a room full of thin sunshine, and the ever-present stink of wet cardboard. He wasn’t at all rested. His head ached, and he felt lumpy and awkward.

He washed himself and dressed, and then stood a moment looking at the door. He was all dressed up with no place to go. The door was old wood, aged and varnished a nut brown. It was decorated with knob and bolt and chain and framed house rules. It led generally to the whole world, but particularly to nowhere at all.

He sat down on the bed, and scraped his forehead with the palm of his hand, remembering last night’s struggle with names and faces. It was no good, and he knew it. The memory would get stronger again later on, the doctor had said so, but in the meantime what was he supposed to do?

There was only one immediate goal: to get back to New York. It called to him like the womb. There, in New York,
home
, he could crowd himself into a warm dark place and wait for his health to return. Here he was naked, unprotected, out alone on a hostile plain.

He remembered counting his money last night, but he couldn’t remember what the figure had been, so he took out the bills and coins, spread them on the bed, and counted them again, and discovered again that he had five dollars and seven cents.

Not enough. Not enough for anything. Enough to pay for this room one more night, and to eat sparingly today, and then tomorrow there would be nothing left of him at all.

When the idea came to him to get a job here in this town, he was at first surprised at it. A job—not a job touring, but a
job
—implied some sort of permanence, and his connection with this town couldn’t be more temporary. He wanted nothing more from it than its absence, its replacement by New York.

But it was the only way. He thought about it, turning it over slowly in his mind, and nodded without pleasure, gazing at the door and admitting that it was the only way. He would have to stay here, find a job, and save his money. Once he had enough for bus fare back to New York...

He got to his feet, suddenly with purpose and direction. He left the room and went downstairs, where a younger man, with a sharp guilty defiant face, was standing in the small room behind the Dutch door. Cole went over to him and said, “Where’s the Unemployment Insurance office?”

“You planning to stay over?”

“Yes.”

“Pay in advance.”

“When I come back,” said Cole with sudden irritation.

“Checkout time, one o’clock.”

Cole looked at his watch, and it was ten-thirty. “When I come back,” he said again. “Where’s the Unemployment Insurance office?”

“On MacGregor Street.”

“Where’s that?”

“First street to your left. Turn left, it’s in the second block. New building.”

“Thank you.”

Cole started away, and the clerk said, “Remember. Checkout’s one o’clock.”

Cole ignored him, feeling angry, and went out to the sidewalk, down the slate steps. He turned left, thinking that he could have paid now and not have to come back by one o’clock, but the clerk had irritated him, and in some obscure way it was a victory not to pay now.

He discovered he had to pass the bus depot to get to the Unemployment Insurance office, and he decided to stop in there first and find out how much money he was going to need. As in the other town, the one he’d left, the bus depot was a small old storefront. There were posters propped in the window of this one for square dances and stock car races.

He went inside, and once again there was a very old woman behind the counter. It was like being in the other town again, and for just a second he was confused, and wondered if his mind had more things wrong with it than the memory, and in reality he was still back in the other town. But the confusion passed, and he came on into the room and over to the desk. There was another old woman, sitting on the bench along the side wall with such stolidity and patience she looked as though she’d grown there, and aside from these two the depot was empty.

Cole said to the old woman, “How much is a ticket to New York?”

“One-way or round trip?”

“One-way.”

She looked it up, in a thick small book with flimsy pages, and told him, “Thirty-three forty-two.”

“Thank you.”

He went back outside, and turned toward the Unemployment Insurance office again. Thirty-three dollars and forty-two cents. It wasn’t much. He could earn that in no time.