Passenger(12)

When I pull away, the look on Patrice’s face is one of content slumber. Childlike in its simplicity. In fact, I believe she has fallen asleep slouched against the wall. Then, lethargically, her eyes peel open and a smile widens her face.

“Damn you,” she says, not angrily. “I try to be so good.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Of course. Everyone is sorry. It’s a world of regret and apology. A lava-filled world.”

“This is something you’ll regret?”

“Your questions are nearly childlike. You know that?”

“I’m a child,” I say. “I’m starting fresh. Right here and right now. I’m a newborn.”

“Call me a whore.”

“Why would I do that?”

She turns her head away from me, looking instantly miserable. “Never mind.”

“Why would I do that?” I repeat.

“Bathroom,” she says, sidetracked. Dreamily.

When she vanishes, I use the Bic pen to scribble the following on the back of an advertisement that slides out of the folds of newspaper:

If you wake up with no memory, know this—

You are in an apartment in Baltimore, Maryland.

It might be your apartment.

You woke up yesterday on a bus and could not remember who you are.

The address of this apartment was written on your hand.

You do not know your name.

Go to the police station and get fingerprinted.

I am you, writing this to myself.

I leave the overturned advertisement on the table by the door. And stare at it for quite some time. As if burning it into memory. The last sentence sounds awkward, confusing…but how else would you say it?

I am you, writing this to myself.

We make clumsy love in my empty bedroom and it is over very quickly. We are too drunk and too trembling to make it account for anything. In the dark, we lay talking in hushed tones. Patrice talks about her husband, who is out of town at the moment. Barry. His name is Barry and he sells ceramic floor tiles. She talks about him with the nostalgia and melancholy of someone recounting their childhood friends. It is the perfect name for a ceramic tile salesman. Barry-Barry-Barry. For a time, breathing beside this woman, I wonder if Barry exists at all.

Or maybe I don’t.

Maybe no one truly exists, anyway.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I think relationships are not relationships at all, but a series of indiscretions we suffer until we finally get tired and settle for who we’re with when we happen to become tired.”

“Sounds like a sad way to look at things.”

“Oh,” she agrees, “it is.” I feel her head turn on the pillow. “But nothing about it has to be beautiful. Or even happy. Who says relationships have to be happy? Who says life has to be free and clear? It’s not. Anyone tells you otherwise, they’re a f*cking liar. We all owe something. All of us.” She does not wait for me to respond; anyway, what could I say? So she clears her throat and goes on: “I lost my virginity at age thirteen. Nothing happy about it. He was twenty-six. Thirteen and twenty-six. I bled the way sap can ooze from a tree.” She sighs. “Just one of a million indiscretions. Not, of course, that I’ve been with a million different men. But thirteen and twenty-six—I mean, that’s something.” Another sigh. “What about you, hon?”

“What about me?”

“I know nothing about you, Mozart.”

“Me, either.”

“Stop it.”

I say, “I woke up this evening on a bus with no memory of who I am. I don’t even know my name. I only found this apartment because of this.” I hold up my hand and show her the inked address. My palm floats blue and ghostlike in the gloom of night. “It was written there when I woke up on the bus.”

“But not when you got on the bus?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t remember getting on the bus.”

“That’s strange.” She sounds sleepy and unimpressed.

“I must have written it,” I tell her. “Which means I must have anticipated losing my memory. Wouldn’t you think?”

“So you can’t remember anything? Any memory at all?”

“No.” Then I consider. “Well, I guess—maybe one. I remember a stretch of roadway winding through pine trees. A long, vacant stretch of roadway. Far from here.”

“Where does the road go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t recognize it?”

“No. The image just appeared in my head.”

“When?”

“Earlier tonight. When I first came to the apartment.”

“What apartment?”

“This one.”

“Oh,” she says. I can sense she is smiling in the darkness. I think I can, anyway. “Oh. I’m drunk. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“So you weren’t kidding,” she says, her voice seemingly far off. “About not knowing your name, I mean.”

“I’m going to go to the police station tomorrow. Today, I mean. As soon as I get up. See if they’ll take my fingerprints, maybe find a match.”

“I would think,” Patrice says, “you would have had to sign some sort of lease to get this apartment.”