Passenger(20)

“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?”