Passenger(45)

A government spy.

A wanted criminal.

The reincarnation of a jazz legend.

A patient suffering from spontaneous amnesia.

After a few minutes, the two officers crawl back into their cruiser. There is a sudden bleat of the siren, then both the siren and the lights go dead. The cruiser lurches out into the street and I watch as the taillights are eaten up by the darkness.

Maybe they went for backup, I think. Maybe I’m just that dangerous.

I creep across the street and enter my apartment building like a thief. The three creaking flights of stairs sound like a symphony in the dark hallway. I anticipate a wedge of uniformed officers standing outside my apartment door the second I empty out into the third floor hallway. But the hallway is deserted; I am alone.

Sliding my key into the lock, I enter my apartment to find I have no heat, no water, no power.





SEVENTEEN





Red-eyed, bleary-faced, bearded, a homeless man lounging at a bus stop on Franklin Street sneers at me and, I swear, says, “For all you know, you could be Jesus Christ come back from the dead.”





*





A mid-route stop on Eutaw Street coincides with a fistfight in broad daylight. Despite the sunshine, I am shivering in the cold as the Green Line pulls up. Some passengers get off while others get on. A tannin-faced man with headphones bops down the bus steps and swings a hard right when he hits the sidewalk. There is a black man with cornrows in an oversized Lakers jersey that turns around at this time and slams into the tannin-faced man with headphones. I watch from beneath the awning of a pawnshop as both men start shouting. The black man claws the other man’s headphones from his head and that is all the provocation the tannin-faced man needs. He throws a punch. It strikes the black man square in the jaw, rocketing his head to one side. But the black man doesn’t drop. Arms start swinging and soon it is a brawl. Other passengers create a wide berth as they stand around in a semicircle to watch the fight.

The fight does not last long. Seizing an opportunity, the tannin-faced man shoves the Lakers fan hard enough to catch his feet up on the curb. The Lakers fan crumbles to the street and rolls over on one side, dragging one knee up to his stomach and lacing his long-fingered hands around it. A second later the tannin-faced man is sprinting down Eutaw Street in the direction of the Harbor. Someone wings a chunk of concrete at him but misses by a mile. A few more people have gathered around the fallen Lakers fan, wary to get too close. The Lakers fan is spitting and cursing and, from the look of things, really hamming it up.

I notice something has fallen to the sidewalk during the fight. Unobserved, I cross over to it and squat down.

It is a bus pass. It lists all the stops and the amount required to get on at each stop. I read all the stops and the dollar amounts and, while I notice something interesting, I am not immediately sure what it means…

It costs $2.18 to get on at the Madison Street stop.

I slip the bus pass into the rear pocket of my jeans and head due west. The Green Line stops on Madison Street right outside the post office. It is where Nicole Quinland says I was hit by a bus earlier this year. And the $2.18 is the amount of money I found on the small table by the door to my apartment on that first night—the money I used to buy beer at the Samjetta that same night.

There is a connection here. I’m just not sure what it is.

On Madison, I skulk up and down the street, waiting and hoping for a sign. I wait, and my patience dwindles. After a time, I see Nicole Quinland step out of the post office. She doesn’t see me at first—only lingers on the street corner in her post office uniform and gray overcoat as if deciding where to run. She is a squirrelly little thing, frail like china. The style of her hair is outdated and she wears no makeup. Her figure is more suited for a twelve-year-old boy than a young woman. Her skin is pale, sallow, almost sickly—but there is something endearing about all this. Her simplicity is charming.

When she sees me, her eyes light up.

“Hello!”

“Hey,” I say. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“That’s nice.”

“You’re okay?”

I shrug. “I guess I’m doing all right.”

“Would you want to have lunch with me?”

“Sure,” I say.

Across the street, we share a chicken box and I get a water while she drinks a “half and half”—a mixture of iced tea and lemonade, Baltimore’s answer to the Arnold Palmer. I tell her about the Devine Trio and she seems impressed, so I invite her to come to The Neighborhood one evening when we’re playing.

“What’s that?” I say, pausing in conversation. The sleeve of her uniform has risen up her arm and I notice a pattern of tiny brown scabs along her arm.

“It’s nothing.” She quickly tugs her sleeve down.

“They look like burns.”

“It’s nothing,” she insists. “I sometimes do it when I’m stressed out. Please don’t judge me.”

“Who am I to judge?”

“Just please don’t.”

“All right.”

We eat some more, this time in silence, the awkwardness a tangible thing between us.

Finally, just when I’m about to get up and leave, she says, “I did some research. The ones that worry me most are psychogenic amnesia and traumatic amnesia. Psychogenic, like, is a result of some psychologically traumatic event that you’re blocking out. It’s sort of similar to what they call ‘global amnesia.’ Then there’s traumatic amnesia. Traumatic—even worse—is the result of direct injury to the brain. Like that scar on the back of your head.”