Passenger(47)

“Okay,” I say before she feels forced to answer. “It’s a date then.”

“Walters Art Museum,” she says. “They have a nice celebration on Christmas Eve.”

Somewhere between Cathedral and Monument, Nicole seeks out a narrow stone building with a bronze plaque by the door. Across the street and farther down I can see the building for the Maryland Historical Society. How ironic that I, a man with no history, am here, looking at this building. Lately, it seems my life is a series of ironies. I follow her into the building, which is dark and smells vaguely of antiseptic, and she grabs my hand and leads me up a short flight of stairs. In the distance I hear music. We pass a bulletin board covered in notices and our shadows, passing through panels of sunlight, walk ahead of us.

“Where are we going?” I say, my voice a whisper. For whatever reason, I feel it is important to whisper here.

Nicole does not answer.

We enter an auditorium where a young child plays Chopin on a piano at the center of the stage. The child, a little boy, is no more than six years old, yet he plays with the astuteness of a seasoned professional. Hearing him, a chill breaks out along my body. I drop into one of the many seats that are empty, high in the auditorium, and Nicole sits silently beside me. There are a few people down by the stage, watching and not making a sound. I watch the boy and something tugs hard at me.

“What you need,” Nicole whispers, leaning close to me, “is to stop searching for your old memories, if just for a moment, and let yourself create a new one.”

The boy concludes the piece, the final notes dying like a suicide all around us.





EIGHTEEN





Walking up the stairs, I am accosted by two police officers standing outside my apartment. They are the same officers that were waiting for me outside the building the other night. I do not recognize them but, rather, it is a feeling of certainty that overtakes me and tells me I’m right.

“Mr. Howard?” says one officer—decidedly the younger of the two. He is looking at a slip of paper. “This your apartment here?”

“That’s him,” says the other officer. He is older, harder, in some fashion of boredom. “Looks like him.”

“Here.” The first officer jabs the little slip of paper at my chest. I happen to see it is not a slip of paper at all but a driver’s license. With my face on it. “Convenience store clerk turned it in. Found it in the back alley behind his store, out by the trash. Place over on Lexington, the one with the inflatable milkshake on the roof.”

“Guess I must have dropped it,” I say.

“You’re required to report it missing, you know,” the bored older cop informs me.

I take the license. “Yes, sorry.”

“It’s been weeks now.” The bored older cop is relentless.

“Sorry.”

They pass by me on the stairs and vanish into the pit of darkness below. Even the sounds of their footfalls vanish.

It is my face on the driver’s license. I look healthier in the picture than I do now, though my hair is still somewhat short and there are green-brown bruises circling my eyes.

The address on this license is 1400 St. Paul Street, Apartment 3B. Right here.

The name is Paul Howard.

I enter the apartment, tired and beaten like a mongrel, still staring at the driver’s license.

Place over on Lexington, I think.

Inflatable milkshake on the roof, I think.

There is blood on the floor. Not a lot, but enough to stop me dead in my tracks. Enough to cause my mouth to go dry and my tongue to swell up.

Blood.

Also—movement down the hallway. Peripherally, I witness a shadow slide across the wall.

“Who’s there?” I shout.

Because this is a trick.

Because life is a game.

The shadow reappears. It hangs on the wall like a frame, unmoving, the undeniable figure of a man. Looking around, I own nothing with which to bludgeon this intruder. Not even a goddamn umbrella in a stand by the door or a heavy vase to drop on someone’s head…

The shadow moves. It grows bigger as the figure comes toward me. My tongue is an entire roll of toilet paper. My heart does not beat, caught up in the tension.

The figure emerges. It takes my brain a moment or two to realize it is Clarence Wilcox. His face is ashen, his eyes hollow. I feel I could look into them and see straight through to the back of his skull. He is dressed in red sweat pants with white piping down the legs, and an Adidas pullover. He is bleeding profusely from a gash over his right eye.

“Clarence…”

“They gone?” There is caution to his tone.

“Who?”

“The cops. That’s who was knocking at the door, right?”

“Jesus, what happened? How’d you get in here?”

“Think this the first place I ever break into?” He takes a few more steps forward before he is overcome by dizziness. With a sigh, he strikes the wall with his back and rides it down toward the floor. Pulling his knees up and draping his arms over them, if it wasn’t for the black streaks of blood running down the side of his face and the pained expression in his eyes, he might have been sitting on a porch about to have a cigarette.

“What happened to your face?”

“Connected with a metal pipe.”