Passenger(21)

“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.