Passenger (7 page)

“Me, too,” Tabitha says.  She leans closer to me now, nearly resting her chin on my shoulder.  She smells warm and domestic, like a wife.  “I used to be rich.”

“What happened?”

“Was robbed. By every goddamn man I ever met.  Clarence Wilcox included.  I tell you he’s a son of a bitch?”

“Yes,” I say.  “A deadbeat son of a bitch.”

Tabitha smiles and looks instantly tired.  “You’re funny.  What’d you say your name was?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t remember.”

“Yeah,” says Tabitha, “that’s right.  You a spy with your memory erased.  You don’t remember nothing about all your spy work?”

“No.”

“Clarence says you was in the Middle East, fighting the Iraq peoples.  You remember any of that?”

“No.”

“The Iraq peoples?”

“Sorry.”

She runs a hand behind my head and caresses my scalp with those long fingernails.  “Did it hurt when they took your memory?”

“I can’t remember.”

“I wonder,” she goes on, “if they had to actually cut out a piece of your brain.  Because, you know, there’s a piece of the brain that does all the memory stuff.  And then there’s a piece of the brain that handles, like, all your regular functions.  Like walking and talking and breathing and all that.”  She winks.  “And sex.  The animal part.  You remember how to do all that all right, huh?”

“I guess so.”

She laughs.  Across the room, Clarence raises the bass on his stereo.  A flashbulb goes off, nearly blinding me, and I see the large-breasted woman pointing a camera in my direction.

“Or maybe,” Tabitha continues, “they just have some transmitter device or something inside your head.  Like a little electronic thingamajig.  Somethin’ that goes ‘beep-beep-beep.’  Some white fool in D.C. don’t need you no more, presses a button, and zap—”

“Zap,” I say.

“Zap,” Tabitha parrots.  “Zap.  Just like that.  Your memory’s all gone.”

“Could be.”

Tabitha says, “You think I don’t like white boys?  Because I like white boys just fine.  I dated white boys before.”  Her hand is still caressing the back of my head.  Suddenly, my eyelids weigh a hundred pounds each.

“Okay,” I hear myself say.

“You wanna smoke some opium?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ever smoke any?”

“I don’t know.”  We could go on like this all night…

“Got regular weed, too, if that’s your thing.”

“I don’t know if I have a thing.”

She laughs; my statement sounds funny to her.  “Listen, spy,” she says.  “You ever hook up with a sister?”

Because I can’t stand to repeat myself, to tell her I can’t remember, I lie and say, “Yes.  Of course.  All I do is date black women.”

“Yeah?”

“All I do is hook up with sisters.”

“Well!”  Another laugh.  She must think I’m the funniest guy around.  “Well, now!  You ain’t married, are you?”

“No.”

“Got any kids?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“I don’t got no kids.  You like kids?”

“I don’t have time for kids,” I say, leaning into her.  “Not enough time, what with being a government spy and all.  I’m on the road too much.”

“You’re very cute.  And clever.  But maybe you ain’t no spy.  Maybe Clarence just pulling one over on me.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.”

“Hey.”  Her smile is instantly warm and inviting.  If it has been this way all this time, I am only now just noticing it.  When she touches my hand, I feel something go woozy inside my stomach.  “Hey,” she says.  “Come with me.”

We are in a small room off the basement—a storage room, cluttered with old hot water heaters and the snakelike spirals of garden hoses, hardened with dry rot.  Tabitha produces a joint from a small purse and lights it, the flame reflecting in her curling, manicured fingernails.  She wraps her lips around the joint and smokes.  The smell makes my mouth water.  Her eyes are wide, are brilliant, over the glowing cherry.

“Here.”  She hands the joint to me.

I suck the life from it.  My head goes swimmy.  Then I cough, and Tabitha’s eyes, just slightly glassy now, never leave mine.

“Yes,” I say.  “Oh, yes.”

“Yes,” Tabitha says, suddenly very close to me.  Soon, her breath intermingles with my own, and both our scents join the smell of the smoking marijuana.  Kissing her, I taste the pot on her breath and the gum she’d been chewing earlier in the evening.  An erection immediately voices its opinion, and in no time I am rubbing myself against Tabitha.  I grope her, feel her breasts through the form-fitting, leopard-skin top she wears.  Some fumbling, some more sharing of the joint, and I manage to work my hands up under her shirt.  She doesn’t wear a bra and her breasts are heavy and full with generous nipples.  Together we finish the joint.  I tell her I want to have sex with her.  I think she laughs—I can’t be certain—and she says something in my ear, low-voiced and seductive, that could be nonsense, could be Swahili.  Either way, my pants never make it off and sex does not seem to be in the cards.

She runs a hand along the back of my head, the base of my skull.  Pressing too hard, a sharp, searing pain launches from the base of my skull straight along the upper circumference of my head, zapping me between the eyes.  Stars go off beneath my lids.  Zap.

Tabitha is breathing heavy. We are both breathing heavy.  The whole room smells of marijuana and breath.

“I think I love you,” I whisper.

“Is that so?” she whispers back.  Her voice comes from everywhere.

“Why not?” I say.  “Why the hell not?”

When she speaks again, her voice sounds very far away.  “You need to find out who you are.  You need to get your memory back.”

NINE

It is a dreamless sleep.  And when my eyes open, there is a sense of displacement that lasts for the extent of a single heartbeat. Sitting up, my head pounding so hard I wince, I realize I am still on Clarence’s couch in the basement of his apartment building.  The whole room is dark, empty, and silent. Cigarette smoke haunts my nostrils.  Through the barred windows at street-level, I can see the silver orb of the moon behind a veil of clouds.

I have fallen asleep.

Panic rises in me.  But as the events of the past two days swim back to me, I begin to relax.  I recall everything that has happened since waking up on the bus.  Sleep, it turns out, does not erase my memory.

Not tonight, anyway.

The urge to urinate propels me from the couch and sends me stumbling down a darkened, alien hallway in search of a bathroom.  The air stinks of weed and incense and the deeper, headier stench of body odor.  I find the bathroom and unleash a burning, foul-smelling stream that seems to take forever to fully evacuate from my system.  It is a small bathroom with ceramic blue tiles (missing in places) and a plastic shower curtain adorned with goldfish.  Beard stubble is sprinkled like confectioner’s sugar in the sink.  A woman’s purse sits open on the sink and a pair of white briefs is draped conspicuously over the doorknob.  Briefly, I examine my reflection in the mirror above the bathroom sink.  My skin jaundiced, my eyes sunken into dark pits, I look like death, a death camp.  Hello, Auschwitz Jew.  Hello, skull-face.  When I grimace at my reflection, displaying my teeth, the image is so much like a cadaver’s that I quickly press my eyes shut to chase the image away.  Behind closed lids, the world seems to spin.  My head continues to throb and I wonder how much longer I can put up with the pain.

When I open my eyes, I find myself staring into the woman’s purse.  It is open like a mouth and, inside, I can see toiletries and a tube of lipstick and a compact and an angry-looking hairbrush with bristles like porcupine quills.  I remove the compact and flip it open, wiping pink powder from the little circular mirror with my thumb.  Then I turn around and hold the mirror directly in front of my face with the back of my head reflected in the mirror above the sink.  My hair is short enough for me to see the nasty scar I feel when I trace it with my fingers.  I can’t see it perfectly, but it’s there all right.  So I open the medicine cabinet and locate an electric razor.  I click the switch and it hums to life.  The sound is almost soothing.  After a moment, the electric burning of the razor is all I can smell.  I use the razor—Clarence’s razor—to carve a narrow path from the base of my hairline up over the scar, midway to the top of my head.  A dusting of hair wafts into the sink.  Repositioning the mirror, I can clearly see the scar now—an angry, crooked, puckered train track of flesh coursing along the protrusion of my skull.  The damn thing must be five inches long.  I touch it…and while it does not hurt to touch it, the unnatural shape of the skull beneath causes a shiver to course through me.

That stranger.

This stranger.

So I won’t look like a complete psychopath, I take time to shave the rest of my head then clean the hair up from the sink with a damp piece of toilet paper.

Back in the basement area, I stagger like a drunkard for a moment in the dark, pausing briefly to watch the veil of clouds pass over the moon through the barred windows.  I recall talking with Tabitha on the couch, but I cannot remember much after that.  I wonder if my lack of memory is a result of my mysterious condition or simply from exhaustion.  From drinking and marijuana smoke and exhaustion.  And on top of that, I realize I cannot continue doubting and questioning and wondering everything about me.  I cannot continue being a stranger to myself.  Either way, Tabitha is no longer here.  The whole place has been evacuated.

Someone has taken my shoes off while I slept.  They are placed side by side near the couch.  I climb into them and lace them up, listening to nothing but the traffic outside and my own respiration.

Outside, the night is bitter, cold.  A soupy mist sinks down to the tops of the buildings.  The sodium street lamps are dull, faded smears through the fog.

Clarence is sitting on the front stoop, smoking a cigarette.  “Hey, Mozart.  You sneaking out on me, bro?”

“Thought you might be sleeping.  Didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Nice hairdo.  Clean to the bone.”

“Yeah…”

“You passed out damn quick last night. You get drunk?”

“I don’t think so.  Just been a long while since I got any sleep.  What happened to Tabitha?”

“Did you bang her, d’you mean?”  Clarence laughs, slapping his knee like it’s the funniest thing in the world.  “Did you get with her, d’you mean?”

“I guess that’s what I’m asking, yeah.”

“You really
do
have a memory problem, bro.”

“I think that was just an exhaustion problem.”

“You fell asleep on the couch,” Clarence says.  “You kissed a little, she said, but then fell asleep.”

“I hope I didn’t upset her.”

“Tabitha?  Shit!  Probably thought you’s the most gentlemanest white boy she ever met.  Shit.  No, dog, she’s cool.  Don’t worry ’bout it.  She ain’t a saint anyhow.  You know we used to go together?”

“She mentioned something, yeah.  I hope you’re not, you know, uh…”

“I’m cool, bro.”  Again, Clarence laughs.  “Hell, Mozart!  I ain’t branded her.  She can do whatever she wants.  
Whoever
she wants.”

“Well, hey, thanks for everything.”

“No problem.  So where you headed now?”

“Home, I guess.”

“You remember who you are yet?”

“No.”

“Must make you feel free,” Clarence says.  “Must be like parole.  I mean, you can do whatever you want.  You can start all over.  You can be anybody you wants to be.”

“Sure.”

“That’s a good deal.  I’d take it in a heartbeat, man.  You know it?  You know what I’d do for it?  To start over like that?  Man, I’d be a whole different mother.  You was born with no family, you was brought up with no choices, you got no God you pray to and, most of all, you got no regrets.”  This last part seems to resonate most with Clarence Wilcox.  “Man, no
regrets.  
You ain’t sorry for all the bad shit you done because you don’t know you done it.”

“Yeah,” I say, and wonder if Clarence realizes how poignant his statement is.

“Smoke?”  Clarence offers me the pack.

“No, thanks.”

“I know a psychic. Name’s Fortune Cookie. She’s amazing, man.  Swear to God.  I can take you, if you want.  Might be able to tell you a thing or two.”

“That’s okay.”

“She won’t charge, if that’s what you’re thinking.  She owes me favors.”

“I don’t know if that’ll help.”

“So you’re a skeptic,” says Clarence.  “See that?  You’re piecing together bits of yourself as you go.”

“I guess I am,” I say.  “Thanks, Clarence.”

“Listen,” says Clarence, crushing out the cigarette beneath the heel of his boot, “you need some work, come back in a few hours.  I got a few stops to make for the business.  You can help me load the truck, take it across town to the junkshops.  You lend a hand, I’ll toss you a few bills.  Sound good?”

“Yeah, it does.  Thanks.”

“All right,” says Clarence.  He’s already shaking a second cigarette out of the cellophane pack. “Take care of yourself, Mozart.”

The sun breaks over the horizon as I walk back toward the St. Paul complex.  The sun surprises me.  I have slept through the night after all; and in realizing this, I feel immediately refreshed.  Along the street, coffee shops open and proprietors drag plastic chairs to the sidewalk. I have enough change left over from my theft of the bum’s Styrofoam cup yesterday to buy a newspaper.  I slide the quarters into the box and remove a paper, glancing at the front page.  A photograph of the President stares back at me.  Folding the paper under one arm, I loiter outside a coffee shop, content to inhale the aroma of the percolating coffee inside.  It isn’t until the proprietor makes numerous trips to the curb—eyeing me with mounting suspicion—that I decide to move on.

I am thinking of the woman at the apartment building’s office, the elderly woman who threatened to call the police.  What lingers with me is her comment about a woman named Suzie, and how Suzie had called the police on me—or someone like me—a month ago.  Had it been me?  Had I visited the office a month earlier?  Asking the same questions?  And if so, was it for the same reason?

None of this makes any sense.

On a bench in a small park, I sit and read the day’s paper.  The morning is warming up around me as the city comes awake.  Helmeted cyclists in neon spandex stream down the bike paths while flocks of birds light onto the lawns to frolic and bathe in murky puddles.  I read the entire newspaper, searching for some incident that may lend a clue toward my predicament—city-sponsored lobotomies, neighborhood muggings, car accidents, a soldier gone AWOL, anything at all no matter how ridiculous.  But, of course, there is nothing.  I read about a tanker truck that turned over in the Harbor Tunnel just two days ago.  The article says nothing about injuries associated with the overturned tanker, but I wonder.  Is it possible I was involved somehow?  What sort of stuff do they carry in tanker trucks, anyway?  Mind-erasing stuff?

Frustrated with the newspaper, I decide to spend the morning walking around the city, hoping the sights and sounds may jar my memory.  Two hours go by and I am still blind to everything.  And while the city does not seem completely foreign to me, I have no specific memory of this place.

*     *     *

The Light Street branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library sits at the intersection of Light and Ostend, three blocks from the crowded Cross Street Market.  The library itself is unassuming and, on this late afternoon, quiet and empty.

Inside, I sit at a computer terminal toward the rear of the library and summon the Internet.  What I type in the search box is the single phrase, “spontaneous amnesia,” and I watch as the Web pages accumulate.  I search through a half dozen sites, but find nothing of substance.  I cannot even tell if it is a legitimate medical condition.

Alone in the library, I think about what Clarence said—about having a clean slate and having no regrets.  
Regrets are what make us who we are,
I think now.  
Regrets are the reason we are constantly changing.  
Does my lack of regret make me stagnant?  Am I frozen in time?  I wonder,
From here on in, what choices will I make?  
Because my choices thus far have been poor.  I think of Patrice and her saggy, married breasts, of the swirling lava city and the sobbing behind a locked bathroom door.  People spread themselves thin, like beard stubble clogging drains.  Swirling in inevitable infinity.

I also read up on the CIA and government spies.  Because I could very well be a spy.

I could very well be anyone on the planet.

Because I do not have any identification, I cannot get a library card.  So instead I smuggle a number of textbooks out under my coat, and no one is the wiser.  These are textbooks I feel may enlighten me on my condition.  They have enigmatic titles like
Sleep the Mind
and
I Dream Awake
and
The Overactive Inactive.  
I steal a paperback copy of Homer’s
The Odyssey
 as well.  Because, in a way, I am on my own odyssey.

Despite the cold, I am sweating through my clothes by the time I walk halfway across the city back to Clarence’s apartment.  I have no real desire to help Clarence work today but feel some nexus to real life in my commitment to do so.  In the face of manual labor, I may find some self-worth, some personal substance. Ripened fruit to be picked.  So I wait on the front stoop until an old pickup truck, leprous with rust and belching black plumes of exhaust, chugs around the side of the building and shudders to a standstill out front.  Two bleats on the horn summon me to my feet.  Without expression, I climb into the cab and am immediately overwhelmed by the aroma of marijuana and Slim Jims.  Clarence, grinning behind the wheel, punches the pickup into gear and pushes the shuddering vehicle through the intersection.

“You look sick,” says Clarence.

“Maybe I am,” I say.  “Maybe I’ve got some terminal disease.  Maybe I’m dying right now.”

“Man, that’s a downer.  You think?  No, dog.  Have a smoke.”

Clarence passes me a joint.  I examine the smoldering twist of white paper and smell the sweet scent of the burning weed before bringing it to my lips.  I inhale and erupt in a series of coughs that causes Clarence to chuckle and retrieve the joint from my pinched fingers.

“Maybe you never been high,” says Clarence.  “Maybe you even a cop.  That’d be something, huh?  Old Clarence chillin’ with the police.”

“I’m not the police.”

“How you know?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Or maybe you the meanest mother around.  Maybe you done shit make me turn white.  Maybe you the worst kind of white boy.  You know what I’m saying?  Like, black dudes, they bad, they fuck you up.  But white dudes—I mean, you ever see a black dude choppin’ people up and sticking ’em in the freezer, eating they skin and shit?  That Jeffrey Dahmer psycho shit, I’m talking ’bout.”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t have it in me.”

“Maybe not now,” says Clarence, “but maybe you did before.  Maybe right now you just can’t remember all the horrible fucking things in your life that made you a people-eating psycho.”

“Jesus, Clarence…”

“Well,” he says, burning through a red light, “it don’t matter now.  You can be whoever you want now.  You gets to start over.  You lucky.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“Sure,” says Clarence.  “See, I had some opportunities to make something of myself.  You know what I’m sayin’?  Maybe I’d have a better job now.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to move junk from one part of the city to the other.  But now that’s what I do.  But, see, you get to do it all over, start fresh.  Man, that’s something!”  He laughs.  “Hey,” he says, “you think I can forget all my shit, too?  How’d you do it, do you think?”