The Memory Thief (29 page)

I don't know how to respond to this, and silence falls between us. J. C. is the one to break it. “Goddamnit,” he says.

“Goddamnit, what?”

He takes his time in answering. I can hear him breathing in and out. I can picture him sitting out on Roma's deck, his legs crossed at the ankles, staring up at the stars like he said. Then he says, “I can't do this. I'm sorry but I can't.”

“What can't you do?” I sound like a parrot.

“For one thing, I can't sit here and listen to you tell me how you kissed some other guy, and how incredible it was,” he says, and his voice is cold.

“I never said it was incredible. I said it freaked me out.”

“Because it reminded you so much of A. J. Come on.” He lets out a long, slow breath. “What do you think I'm made of? You call me at one in the morning and get me all worked up over the idea that something horrible's happened to you. Then I'm dumb enough to think that you called because you want to talk to me, like you miss me or something. But instead you want me to listen to some cock-and-bull story about this guy who shows up like some kind of reincarnation of A. J., there's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, blah blah blah. How twisted is that? And then you tell me that you let this guy kiss you, and it freaked you out, and you expect me to just listen and—what, console you? Make it better?” His voice is growing louder and louder. I have never heard him yell before. “You don't want me to come there. You don't want me to take care of you. Hell, maybe you don't want me at all. Or maybe you do. Who knows?” I hear him inhale again, get hold of himself. “I could've gone home with about three different women tonight,” he says, quieter now. “But do I want them? I do not. And why? Because I am hung up on your sorry ass, lovely as it is. So instead I'm sitting here, getting drunk in Roma's living room and playing a video game I got for your son to put a smile on his face, and you call and I'm thinking that we have a chance, that maybe you're calling to say that you're coming home. But no. Of course that's not it. When will I ever learn? God fucking
damn
it,” he says, and I hear something slam, loud. “What do you want from me, Maddie? How much more can I give? Because I'm telling you now, baby, I don't have anything left. You want sympathy, I am fresh out. You call me when you've made up your mind, sweetheart. Because I can't take any more of this shit.” There's a hitching noise, like a sob, and then it cuts off midstream. The phone goes dead.

I watch Nicholas walk out the door, see Maddie lock it behind him. Good girl. I can still taste her in my mouth, feel the texture of her hair between my fingers. God, I've missed her. I can feel it now: My time here is short. I've done what I came to do, almost. Just a little bit more, and then I'll be free.

I watch her lean her forehead against the door, but I don't touch her. What if she can't feel me? Or worse yet, what if she can, and it repulses her? So I stay back, watching her wander from room to room. Eventually she picks up her phone from the kitchen table and sits down on the living room couch. I sit next to her, waiting. She dials. “J. C.?” she says.

It makes sense that she'd call him. I get it. But I don't want to listen to their conversation, either. I get to my feet, pleased with my newfound mobility, and walk down to Gabe's room. My fingers close around the knob. I push the door open and step through.

“You came!” Gabe says when he sees me.

“I promised I would, monkey boy.” I walk over to his bed and brush his hair back from his forehead. Wonder of wonders, he can feel my hand; my touch makes him shiver, but he doesn't back away. Instead he leans into me, like a cat.

“Nick was here, Daddy. And I did what you said.”

“I know you did, buddy. You did a great job.” I sit down next to him, tuck the blanket tighter around him so he won't be cold, and drape my arm over his shoulders.

“Then why do you look so sad?”

“I'm sad because I miss you and Mommy,” I say. “And because we're not going to get to see each other anymore.”

He squirms out from under my arm, so he can face me, and grabs my sleeve. I look down at myself and realize I am wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Interesting. “Why, Daddy?”

“You know why, little one.”

“Daddy, no. I won't tell anyone else, I swear. I'll tell Mommy I made it up. Just don't go away.” His eyes well up, and this time the tears fall. They freeze before they reach his chin, and I brush them away. Bits of ice fall onto his blanket.

“It's not you, Gabe. You did just right by telling Mommy. And there's nowhere I'd rather be than here with you. I wish I could stay, buddy. But I just can't.”

“Where will you go? To heaven?”

“Why not? Heaven sounds good to me.” In truth I have no idea what my next stop will be. Something's waiting for me, I can tell. It doesn't feel bad, though, or scary. It feels … welcoming.

“Where is heaven, Daddy? Is it on top of a mountain?”

“Darned if I know. Get your mommy to show you on a map,” I say. Let her deal with that one. I'd probably just fuck it up. “I love you, buddy. So much. You be good, and you take care of Mommy. I'm … so proud of you. You're going to grow up to be a great man. I just wish I could've been around to see it.”

I hug him then, and kiss the top of his head. Whatever's waiting, its pull is growing, getting stronger. With the time that's left to me, there's something I still need to do. “Bye,” I say into his ear, and as much as it pains me to do it, I unwind his fingers from my sleeve.

My breath must be icy, because he shivers all over. “No, Daddy,” he says, tugging on me. “Daddy, wait. Draw me a picture.” He climbs down from his bed, gets crayons and paper and a book, and hands the lot to me. “Here.”

I don't want to leave him, either. Whatever is waiting will just have to be a little patient. I sit on his bed and draw. When I'm done, I write something at the bottom, then hand him the piece of paper. “Show this to Mommy tomorrow,” I say. “Maybe then she'll believe you, if she doesn't already.”

“What does this say?” he asks me, but I can't answer. I am hovering above him now, looking down. I can see the dent in the pillow where I was leaning against it, see Gabe sitting there in his favorite rocket ship pajamas, holding the drawing I made him in one small hand. Tears drip down his cheeks, but he ignores them. Carefully, as if he's handling one of Maddie's mom's Swarovski crystals, he places the picture against the pillow. He sits back then and looks at it, his lower lip trembling.

“Bye, Daddy,” he says.

When Maddie asks me to leave, I don't argue. For one thing, I am stunned by the feeling of electricity, of rightness that flooded through me when I kissed her. From the shocked look on her face when she pushed me away, the way she responded to the things I said, I'm pretty sure she felt it, too.

For another, I am overwhelmed by the conviction that whatever I've come here to do, making love to her is not a part of it. I don't know where that conviction comes from, but it is there and it is strong. So I get up from the couch and I leave without another word. I hear her lock the door behind me.

I'm staying in an apartment on Eleventh Street, and I don't have far to walk. This is a good thing, because I'm not sure that my legs would hold me. Everything looks different, more real somehow. I run my hands over the bark of trees, I kick pebbles along the sidewalk, I peer up at the starless sky. Probably anyone who sees me thinks I'm tripping, but I don't care.

Back in my borrowed apartment, I sit on the edge of an overstuffed chair and go over everything that happened tonight, from the moment I saw her standing at the bottom of the stoop to the time I walked out the door. I feel more confused than ever. I should be ecstatic that I kissed her, but instead I feel detached, like I checked something off a list. I look inside myself; where that powerful sense of purpose that's driven me since I opened my eyes should be, there's a void. I can no longer tell how much of what's happened was of my own making, or how much of it was Aidan's doing. The two of us are all muddled together somehow so that I can no longer tell one from the other. It makes my head spin.

For want of a better alternative, I try talking to Aidan.
Here I am. I did what you wanted. Now what?
But nobody answers, and I'm left sitting in the living room of an apartment in a strange city, conversing with the furniture. It's not like I haven't become used to living in the moment, but still.

I put my head in my hands, trying to focus, to force my memory to come back. If I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do, it would at least be nice to know who I am. But nothing happens, and I stretch out in the chair, no more knowledgeable than I was before. I close my eyes, and the exhaustion of the day catches up with me. If you'd asked me, I would've told you there was no way I could fall asleep after my conversation with Maddie, after that kiss. But after all, I'm no expert on myself, and the next thing I know, I am dreaming.

I know it's a dream, because I don't see the living room of the apartment around me anymore—green overstuffed chair and couch with darker swirls, mahogany coffee table and bookcases, Japanese lanterns and prints on the walls. Instead I'm outside, on a deck. There's a grill, and a pair of weathered deer antlers, and two Adirondack chairs, one of which I'm sitting in. When I turn my head, I see Aidan James sitting in the other chair, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. His legs are stretched out in front of him, and he's got a pair of sunglasses pushed up on top of his head. “Hi, Nicholas,” he says in that husky voice I'd know anywhere, and he smiles.

“Hi, yourself,” I say to him. “It's about time.”

He just goes on grinning, so I say, “Where are we?”

Aidan looks around. “Oh. This is the back yard of my house, in Boulder. Not sure how we ended up here.”

“It's charming, in a
Pet Sematary
kind of way,” I say, gesturing at the antlers.

“You're funny. I like that about you.”

“A laugh a minute,” I say, deadpan. “What are we doing here?”

He drums his fingers on the arm of the chair. “I wanted to thank you for what you did. I know it wasn't easy.”

“You didn't exactly give me a choice,” I say. “Plus, I think I scared the hell out of your wife several times over.”

“She'll be okay. Maddie's tougher than she looks.”

“I'm confused,” I tell him. “All of this time, I was so sure that I was falling in love with her. I felt it more strongly than anything else. And in her parents' apartment, I felt that way, too. But now … I don't know what I feel.”

He bites his lip. “I'm sorry,” he says. “It was sort of necessary, at the time.”

“What was?” I have a horrible feeling that I know what he's getting at, but I am going to make him say it anyhow.

“You felt what I felt,” he says. “How could you love Maddie? You don't even know her.”

“So everything … it was all fake? How can that be?”

“Not fake. Just … not yours.” He fidgets, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “If you didn't feel that way about her, why would you come all the way up here?”

“You manipulated me,” I say, trying it on for size. Anger shreds the edges of my voice.

“She didn't want me to go,” he says. “She begged me not to go. I was so arrogant, so stupid. I told her there was no way she could know that anything was going to happen. I laughed at her. And all the time, she was right.” He shakes his head. “The night before I left for McKinley, I promised I would come back. I told her she and Gabe were my life.”

“From what I could tell, they were,” I say. “But does that give you license to take over mine?”

“I kept my promise,” he says then, his eyes on mine. “I told her I would come back, and I did. Even if it wasn't quite in the way I'd planned.”

“You could say that again,” I mutter, and he laughs, a low humorless sound.

“I just wanted to be with her one more time. I'm sorry you got caught up in it, but I didn't know what else to do. It's not like I had a lot of options.”

I put aside the morass of conflicting emotions with difficulty; I don't know how long I'll have with him, and there are some questions I desperately want to ask. “How did you do it?” I lean toward him, my palms on my knees.

“I don't know, Nick. I've always been a stubborn guy. If there's a way, I'll find it. I'm not sure what happened. I made up my mind, is all. And the next thing I remember is waking up in that hospital bed, with you.”

“So you've been with me, all this time?”

“Sure,” he says, his eyebrows drawing down. “Where did you think I was?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know, Aidan? It's not like you came equipped with a manual.”

He laughs again. “I was trying to give you some privacy. Also, you're pretty guarded, most of the time. It was a lot easier for me to get through when you were asleep.”

I take a deep breath, then ask him the burning question. “Why me?”

“You were … how can I say this? Empty, it felt like. Like you'd lost your way, kind of. There was lots of room for me.”

I think about that one. “Empty, huh? How do you mean?” But I think I know what he means: the sense that my life has no larger meaning, that my career is a trap, that the days are just hours strung together like beads on a chain. The scary thing is, loving Maddie was the bright spot in an otherwise hazy existence. Without her, what will I go back to? And what have I done to Grace?

“I don't know how to describe it any better than that.” His fingers are drumming on the arm of the chair again. “It happened pretty fast. One second I was on the mountain, and then I was there, with you. I'm pretty sure we were just in the same place at the same time, metaphorically speaking. I was dead. You were unconscious. And voilà.” He waves a hand.

“My memory?” I say, raising my eyebrows.

“I'm sorry about that, too. I'm sure it's been frustrating.”

“Frustrating?”
My voice rises. “Try disorienting. And terrifying. And infuriating. And embarrassing. And God knows what else.”

“Okay, okay. All of those things. But how else was I supposed to get you to listen to me?”

“How did you do it?” I ask again.

“I'm not sure. You were empty, like I said. I just filled in the crevices.” He laces his fingers together and stretches his arms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles.

“So … what? This whole thing was just some sort of cosmic coincidence?”

“Maybe at some level,” he says. “On another … probably not.”

Well, that clears it right up. “Fantastic. Could I have my memory back now, please?” I sound petulant, like a five-year-old asking someone to return his favorite Power Ranger.

Now he looks abashed. “I don't know how to give it back.”

“What the hell do you mean? You took it, didn't you?”

“I think so. Maybe it would have been gone anyhow.”

“Not like this!” I say, and now I am yelling. “Not everything I've done, everything I am.”

“It'll come back, Nick,” he says. “It'll come back when you finish what you're supposed to do.”

“Cut that crap out. What do you mean, what I'm supposed to do? I did what you wanted me to, didn't I? I fucked up my relationship with Grace, I tracked your wife down, I humiliated myself to get her to listen to me. I thought I loved her, for Christ's sake.” A thought occurs to me. “You were there, weren't you? When I kissed her? All those things I said, that weird feeling I had, that was you?”

“Did you have a weird feeling?” he says. “What kind of feeling?”

“Like electricity,” I say. “Like … like a circuit closing.”

“I just wanted to say goodbye.” His voice is sad. “I wanted her to know I kept my promise.”

I'm poised to fire another series of questions his way, but the look on his face stops me. “It's not fair,” he says, and rage is clear in his voice. “To find what I want, after all these years, and have it snatched away like that. It's not right.” He swipes a hand under his eyes. “But I want her to be happy, no matter what. You tell her I meant what I said, about J. C. Make sure you tell her that, okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Mysterious.”

“She'll know,” he says. “No need to burden you with the details. And tell her to tell him … the universe isn't so fucked-up after all. Or if it is, the joke's on me. Tell him he deserves to be happy. You tell him to take care of her, or I swear to God I will find a way to haunt his sorry ass with every step he takes.”

“What do you think I am, Western Union?”

“Remember,” he warns me. “Or here, write it down.” He grabs a pad and pen off the picnic table. I could have sworn they weren't there before, but hey, in dreams anything can happen, right? “On second thought, I'll write it myself,” he says, flipping the pad open to a blank page. “Or … wait. I have an even better idea.”

“Why can't you talk to them yourself, Aidan?” I say as I watch his pen fly over the paper. He's got it tilted toward him, and I can't see what he's writing. “Why did you have to do it this way, with me and Gabe?”

“I don't know,” he says. “I tried to talk to them. I tried over and over, but … nada. So here I am.” He turns his attention back to the pad of paper. “
X
marks the spot,” he says, and chuckles. I consider asking what he means, then decide I don't want to know.

“I'm sorry you died,” I say to him after a few minutes.

“I'm sorry you lost your memory.” He turns the paper around so I can see it. It's not a note at all; it's a drawing of Maddie, Gabe, and J. C. Behind and above them is an incredibly detailed mountainside. I would know it anywhere. It's the mountain from my dream. As I stare at it, the background transforms so that I'm looking at Aidan's face. He fills the spaces between the three of them, he holds them close, he surrounds them. I blink, and there's the mountain again. On the bottom of the drawing, he has printed,
Not as much as I love you.

I feel my mouth fall open. “I didn't know you could do this.”

“Give this to her, please,” he says. “And then go home. Clean up your life, starting with your office. That place is a mess. Who knows, you just might find what you're looking for.”

“What do you know that I don't know?” I ask him.

“How to be happy, for one. Took me a while, but I learned that.” He flips his sunglasses down, over his eyes. “Give this to Maddie, and I won't bother you anymore. And tell her what I said, okay? Don't forget.”

“I won't,” I say. “Don't worry.”

“You did good, Nick. I owe you, big-time.” He stands up and stretches. “And now I really do have to go.”

“Where are you going?” I stand up, too, and he reaches his hand out toward me. We shake. His fingers close around mine, calloused, rough. His grip is firm.

“On,” he says, wearing a cryptic grin. “You tell J. C.… peace out.” He lets my hand go and strides toward the back door of the house. Then he opens it, turns and waves, and steps through. He doesn't close it behind him, but when I walk to the doorway and look inside, he is gone.