Recursion(6)

The trees in the park are peaking after a hard freeze several nights ago, the leaves all frost-burned into late autumn brilliance.

He finds a spot in the Ramble, takes off his shoes and socks, and leans back against a perfectly slanted tree. He pulls out his phone and tries to read the biography he’s been plodding through for nearly a year, but concentration is elusive.

Ann Voss Peters haunts him. The way she fell without a sound, her body rigid and upright. It took five seconds, and he didn’t look away when she hit the Lincoln Town Car, parked on the curb below.

When he isn’t replaying their conversation, he’s grappling with the fear. Pressure-checking his memories. Testing their fidelity. Wondering— How would I know if one had changed? What would it feel like?

Red and orange leaves drift down through the sunlight, accumulating all around him in the dappled shade. From his vantage in the trees, he watches people walking the trails, moseying by the lake. Most are with others, but some are alone like him.

His phone pops a text from his friend Gwendoline Archer, leader of the Hercules Team, a counterterrorism SWAT unit in the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit.

Thinking about you today. You OK?



He writes her back:

Yeah. Just saw Julia.

How was that?

Good. Hard. What are you up to?

Just finished a ride. Drinking at

Isaac’s. Want some company?

God yes. OMW.





* * *





It’s a forty-minute walk to the bar near Gwen’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, whose only apparent virtue is its forty-five-year longevity. Prickly bartenders serve boring domestics on tap and not a single whiskey whose bottle you couldn’t buy in a store for under thirty bucks. The bathrooms are disgusting and still contain stocked condom dispensers. The jukebox plays ’70s and ’80s rock exclusively, and if no one feeds the box, there is no music.

Gwen is sitting at the far end of the bar, wearing biker shorts and a faded Brooklyn Marathon T-shirt, left-swiping on a dating app as Barry approaches.

He says, “I thought you gave up on that.”

“For a while, I gave up on your gender entirely, but my therapist is all the way up my ass to try again.”

She slides off the stool and embraces him, the faint smell of sweat from her ride combining with the remnants of body wash and deodorant, resulting in something like a salted caramel.

He says, “Thanks for checking in on me.”

“You shouldn’t be alone today.”

She’s fifteen years younger, in her mid-thirties, and at six feet, four inches, the tallest woman he knows personally. With short blond hair and Scandinavian features, she’s not beautiful exactly, but regal. Often severe without trying. He once told her she had resting monarch face.

They met and bonded during a bank robbery turned hostage situation a few years back. The next Christmas, they hooked up in one of the more embarrassing moments of Barry’s existence. It was one of the many NYPD holiday parties, and the night had gotten away from them both. He woke in her apartment at three in the morning with the room still spinning. His mistake was trying to sneak out when he wasn’t ready for consciousness. He threw up on the floor beside her bed, and was in the midst of trying to clean it up when Gwen woke and yelled at him, “I will clean up your puke in the morning, just go!” He remembers nothing of the sex, if they had it or attempted to, and he can only hope she shares the same merciful gap in her memory.

Regardless, neither of them has acknowledged it since.

The bartender arrives to take Barry’s order and deliver another Wild Turkey to Gwen. They drink and bullshit for a while, and as Barry finally registers the world beginning to loosen, Gwen says, “I heard you caught an FMS suicide Friday night.”

“Yeah.”

He fills her in on all the details.

“Be honest,” she says. “How freaked out are you?”

“Well, I did make myself an Internet expert on FMS yesterday.”

“And?”

“Eight months ago, the Centers for Disease Control identified sixty-four cases with similarities in the Northeast. In each case, a patient presented with complaints of acute false memories. Not just one or two. A fully imagined alternate history covering large swaths of their life up until that moment. Usually going back months or years. In some instances, decades.”

“So do they lose their memories of their real life?”

“No, they suddenly have two sets of memories. One true, one false. In some cases, patients felt like their memories and consciousness had moved from one life into another. In others, patients experienced a sudden ‘flashin’ of false memories from a life they never lived.”

“What causes it?”

“Nobody knows. They haven’t identified a single physiological or neurological abnormality in those who are affected. The only symptoms are the false memories themselves. Oh, and about ten percent of people who get it kill themselves.”

“Jesus.”

“The number could be higher. Way higher. That’s the outcome of known cases.”

“Suicides are up this year in the five boroughs.”

Barry catches the bartender’s eye, gives the signal for another round.

Gwen asks, “Contagious?”

“I couldn’t find a definitive answer. The CDC hasn’t found a pathogen, so it doesn’t seem to be blood-or airborne. Yet. This article in The New England Journal of Medicine speculated that it actually spreads through a carrier’s social network.”