Passenger, Page 4

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh, I’m just busting your balls. You want another drink?”

  I am already drunk. “No, thanks.”

  “Mind if I have one?”

  “Not at all. Go ahead.”

  She disappears behind the bar and, when she returns, she is nursing from a bottle of Heineken. She pauses against the bar, examining me from over the bottle, her coiffed auburn hair curling down her forehead. Her eyes shift around the room and I can tell she is thinking of something.

  An impulse overtakes me and I turn and begin playing the low, resonant keys. I run a scale in A-minor. Unlike all the other songs, I do not recognize this one. Yet I play it with inexplicable confidence, with the genetic instinct of a migratory bird. It is a possessing, melancholic melody, furiously simple yet, at the same time, breathtaking in its complexity. It is nothing like the barroom, barrelhouse piano I played earlier.

  “That’s so sad,” Patrice says from across the room once I’ve finished playing. The final note still resonates, underscoring her voice.

  “I think it’s supposed to be a love song.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

  “I can’t get you anything?” she asks after too much silence passes between us. She is still holding her beer, still halfway across the barroom floor. “Anything at all?”

  “A pen,” I say, glancing down at the inky smears on my palm.

  Patrice seems confused. “A—pen, did you say?”

  “Please…”

  She scrounges around behind the bar and manages, after a time, to locate one in the vicinity of the cash register. Tapping it against the air, she stalks across the bar toward me like a predatory creature. Along the warped tavern floor, her shadow is multiplied by the countless Christmas lights above her head. She is playful when handing me the pen—extends it, jerks it away, prods me gently in the center of the forehead.

  “Before I give you this,” she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot, “I want you to answer one question.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember much.”

  “Much of what?”

  “Of anything.”

  “You’re an odd duck.”

  “Well,” I say, “go ahead. Ask it. We’ll see what happens.”

  She says, “How would you feel if I told you I’m married?”

  While the question stuns me, I also feel a sense of relief. My mouth is dry; beads of sweat roll down my ribs.

  “I don’t mind,” I say. “Why would I mind?”

  She drops the pen in my lap and watches as I rewrite the address on my left palm. I mutter, more to myself than her, “I’m right handed.”

  “I see that. What are you writing?”

  “My address.”

  “Shouldn’t you be writing that on my hand?”

  “It’s a long story. And I’m afraid I don’t know any of it yet.”

  “You are a mystery man.” Again she touches the top of my head. This time more sensual, slower. “You wanna get out of here, hon?”

  FIVE

  Time, like my memory, is lost.

  We arrive at the St. Paul Street apartment in the early hours of morning before the sun has time to rise. An eerie radiance burns up along the horizon from the east and, in the foreground, the formidable brownstones and tenements rise like the smokestacks of sunken battleships. As we walk, Patrice runs her fingers along the fencing that serves as a barrier to the construction site along the street, and briefly, pauses over a grate in the sidewalk. Shoes hollow and scuffing on the pavement. She leans against the placard that reads hanely construction. Cars slide soundlessly through the intersection. The green bulbs in the traffic lights appear blue. It is the time of morning when you think all time has paused and everything is standing still. Mounting the steps to the apartment building, Patrice nearly stumbles and requires assistance—an arm at the small of her back—to climb to the top.

  “You live here?” she says. “These are nice apartments. What do you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, and she laughs.

  The stairs moan as we campaign to the third floor. Immediately, I spot a newspaper outside one of my neighbor’s doors. I gather it up and fold it under one arm while producing the key to my own door.

  “You’re a thief,” Patrice whispers, very close to my face. I can still smell the perfume and the cigarette smoke on her, but those smells are overshadowed by the stronger scent of alcohol.

  In the apartment, Patrice walks in slow revolutions about the main room, in awe over the lack of things to be in awe about.

  She says, “You have nothing, Mozart. No pictures on the walls, no furniture, no little yapping dog at the door. Did you just move in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?”

  “Today, in fact,” I say. And for all I know, this is the complete truth.

  “No books, no stereo, no clocks tick-tick-ticking on the walls.” She sounds almost sad in her recital. “Where is all your stuff?”

  Because I am tired of saying I do not know, I lie and tell her all my belongings are still in storage.

  “So you’re new to Baltimore?”

  “Sure.”

  “I knew it! Because I knew you didn’t look familiar.” Something about this makes her laugh. She seems glad. “I knew you were a stranger.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  “Not even a bottle of wine?”

  “No.”

  “Not scotch? Not whiskey?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So sad.” She staggers through the room and leans against the wall of the hallway. An exhaustive release of heavy breath rushes up her throat. Suddenly, in the half-light, she looks ancient. A strong gust of wind would reduce her to rubble. “This whole city burns. It’s lava, molten lava. Did you know?” She’s drunk and doesn’t know what she’s saying. “Towering inferno. Be kind, be kind.”

  I set my key down on the table beside the front door. I set the newspaper down, too, and flatten out the front page, smoothing it with my hands. December 2. There will be a local section, a metro section. Faintly, I wonder if I will come across my face in any articles—local man mugged and left for dead in the street. But, no—that would have involved the police. And the police wouldn’t have shoved me onto a bus with no memory of who I am or what had happened to me. Unless, of course, I still had my memory at the time…

  The police. It is like an audible bolt sliding into a lock in my brain. The police can take my fingerprints. They will know my identification.

  If, of course, I have been fingerprinted in the past.

  The police.

  I nearly laugh, I am suddenly so relieved. You can’t stay lost forever, I realize. No one can be a stranger for very long.

  “Come here,” Patrice growls, still propped against the wall. She looks sloppy and dark. What the hell is she even doing here? I feel myself waiting to shout at her, scream at the top of my lungs for her to get the hell out. But I don’t. I am thinking about the police, fingerprinting and the police, and something is swimming around in the back of my skull. Headfish.

  We are both too drunk to make sense of anything. I go to her and she is quick to pull my face to hers. We kiss, and it is a messy affair. Her mouth tastes like an ashtray and her tongue is overly forceful in accessing my mouth. I feel warm breath from her nose on my upper lip.

  When I pull away, the look on Patrice’s face is one of content slumber. Childlike in its simplicity. In fact, I believe she has fallen asleep slouched against the wall. Then, lethargically, her eyes peel open and a smile widens her face.

  “Damn you,” she says, not angrily. “I try to be so good.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course. Everyone is sorry. It’s a world of regret a
nd apology. A lava-filled world.”

  “This is something you’ll regret?”

  “Your questions are nearly childlike. You know that?”

  “I’m a child,” I say. “I’m starting fresh. Right here and right now. I’m a newborn.”

  “Call me a whore.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  She turns her head away from me, looking instantly miserable. “Never mind.”

  “Why would I do that?” I repeat.

  “Bathroom,” she says, sidetracked. Dreamily.

  When she vanishes, I use the Bic pen to scribble the following on the back of an advertisement that slides out of the folds of newspaper:

  If you wake up with no memory, know this—

  You are in an apartment in Baltimore, Maryland.

  It might be your apartment.

  You woke up yesterday on a bus and could not remember who you are.

  The address of this apartment was written on your hand.

  You do not know your name.

  Go to the police station and get fingerprinted.

  I am you, writing this to myself.

  I leave the overturned advertisement on the table by the door. And stare at it for quite some time. As if burning it into memory. The last sentence sounds awkward, confusing…but how else would you say it?

  I am you, writing this to myself.

  We make clumsy love in my empty bedroom and it is over very quickly. We are too drunk and too trembling to make it account for anything. In the dark, we lay talking in hushed tones. Patrice talks about her husband, who is out of town at the moment. Barry. His name is Barry and he sells ceramic floor tiles. She talks about him with the nostalgia and melancholy of someone recounting their childhood friends. It is the perfect name for a ceramic tile salesman. Barry-Barry-Barry. For a time, breathing beside this woman, I wonder if Barry exists at all.

  Or maybe I don’t.

  Maybe no one truly exists, anyway.

  “Sometimes,” she says, “I think relationships are not relationships at all, but a series of indiscretions we suffer until we finally get tired and settle for who we’re with when we happen to become tired.”

  “Sounds like a sad way to look at things.”

  “Oh,” she agrees, “it is.” I feel her head turn on the pillow. “But nothing about it has to be beautiful. Or even happy. Who says relationships have to be happy? Who says life has to be free and clear? It’s not. Anyone tells you otherwise, they’re a fucking liar. We all owe something. All of us.” She does not wait for me to respond; anyway, what could I say? So she clears her throat and goes on: “I lost my virginity at age thirteen. Nothing happy about it. He was twenty-six. Thirteen and twenty-six. I bled the way sap can ooze from a tree.” She sighs. “Just one of a million indiscretions. Not, of course, that I’ve been with a million different men. But thirteen and twenty-six—I mean, that’s something.” Another sigh. “What about you, hon?”

  “What about me?”

  “I know nothing about you, Mozart.”

  “Me, either.”

  “Stop it.”

  I say, “I woke up this evening on a bus with no memory of who I am. I don’t even know my name. I only found this apartment because of this.” I hold up my hand and show her the inked address. My palm floats blue and ghostlike in the gloom of night. “It was written there when I woke up on the bus.”

  “But not when you got on the bus?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t remember getting on the bus.”

  “That’s strange.” She sounds sleepy and unimpressed.

  “I must have written it,” I tell her. “Which means I must have anticipated losing my memory. Wouldn’t you think?”

  “So you can’t remember anything? Any memory at all?”

  “No.” Then I consider. “Well, I guess—maybe one. I remember a stretch of roadway winding through pine trees. A long, vacant stretch of roadway. Far from here.”

  “Where does the road go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  “No. The image just appeared in my head.”

  “When?”

  “Earlier tonight. When I first came to the apartment.”

  “What apartment?”

  “This one.”

  “Oh,” she says. I can sense she is smiling in the darkness. I think I can, anyway. “Oh. I’m drunk. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So you weren’t kidding,” she says, her voice seemingly far off. “About not knowing your name, I mean.”

  “I’m going to go to the police station tomorrow. Today, I mean. As soon as I get up. See if they’ll take my fingerprints, maybe find a match.”

  “I would think,” Patrice says, “you would have had to sign some sort of lease to get this apartment.”

  Then she rolls over and falls immediately to sleep.

  SIX

  Daylight.

  Patrice removes herself from the bed and washes in the bathroom. When she does not return after a long while, I listen and think I hear her sobbing on the other side of the bathroom door. I wonder if she’s thinking of Barry, her husband Barry. I picture a small apartment with shag carpeting the color of rust, wood-paneled walls with garish paintings in cheap frames, sun-bleached card tables and lots of wicker furniture. And Barry. I picture Barry—or, rather, the essence of Barry, for he is just a blob, a form, an indistinct distinction in my head—slouched in a tattered recliner staring at the television that is not on, that is black and blank and useless, while he thinks, Patrice, Patrice, Patrice. By this time, the sun is full in the sky; it forges an assault through the single window. Leaning over in bed, I pull tight the shade, cutting off the outside world.

  Nearly twenty minutes later, when she emerges from the bathroom, Patrice tugs her clothes on over her wide hips. In the new light, her body looks old and sad. There is a horizontal crease bisecting her belly where she tries to suck in her gut. Her breasts are pale, bottom-heavy and pendulous, with faint, wide areolas capped with the mere suggestion of nipples. Her silver bracelets jangle like a slot machine’s payoff. It is a sad exercise, watching this married, middle-aged woman dress at the foot of the bed. I am disgusted with myself. I am you, writing this to myself. A fresh start, a clean slate, and this is what I do.

  “Are you okay?” I say, not moving from the bed.

  “Terrific.” She tries hard to sound positive, but the streaks of mascara running from her eyes betray her. “How about you? Didn’t you sleep?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Afraid.”

  She utters a laugh as she snaps, with some difficulty, the button of her pants. “Afraid of what? That I’d suffocate you with your pillow? That I’d smother you do death?”

  “Afraid it would start all over again. From scratch.”

  “What—what are you talking about?”

  “The forgetting,” I say. “The disremembering.”

  Her lips tighten, leaving just a colorless slash beneath her nose. She straps on her bra and pulls her halter down over her head. The flesh of her forearms jiggles.

  “Don’t you remember what I told you?” I say.

  “Listen,” she begins, “last night was a lot of fun. I like the mystery angle and I was goddamn drunk enough or stupid enough to play along. But it’s a new day out there. Let’s drop it, all right?”

  “I wasn’t playing. I’m being serious.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I told you I don’t—”

  “No,” she demands, “I don’t want to hear it. I want to know your name. I feel lousy as it is and I’d like to at least know your goddamn name.”

  “I can’t tell you my name.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I don’t know it. I don’t remember it.”

  She nearly stumbles climbing into her heels. When she looks up at me, her auburn hair matted and frizzy, her dark eyes sloppy in th
eir sockets, she looks like she wants to lash out and strike me. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “Patrice…”

  “Forget it. This is my fault. I should have never come here. Goddamn it, what’s wrong with me? I should have never come here…”

  “Patrice, please…”

  “Don’t you come back to the bar,” she barks. “Don’t you come near that place, you got me? I’ll have Tony toss you out on your ass if you do.”

  I listen to her heels clack down the hallway. She slams the door on the way out; the sound reverberates forever through the empty apartment.

  I do not realize how exhausted I am until I climb out of bed. My head still throbs, but now my muscles ache, my eyes are sore, my stomach is so empty I can almost feel wind whistling through it, and my throat is raw from the smoke at the Samjetta—an orchestra of agony.

  In the shower, I let the water go as hot as I can stand it. Steam chokes the tiny bathroom. Examining myself in the mirror, I grow more and more fearful of my appearance. I am undernourished to the point of emaciation. My eyes look as if they’ve been blackened by fists.

  “Who are you?” the Auschwitz Jew in the mirror wants to know.

  I am you.

  I dress and feel somewhat nauseous in the half-gloom of the bedroom. Peeling back the shade of the window, I wince at the over-bright day. Outside, people cross back and forth in front of the renovated buildings, and a few construction workers in bright yellow helmets and vests stand in a cluster at the corner of the street.

  For a time, I consider going door to door, asking any of my neighbors if they know who I am. This idea seems absurd, but it also seems like it will yield the best results. So I retain that as a possibility.

  Before leaving the apartment, I rewrite the address on my palm.

  I descend the stairs to the first floor lobby. I search for an office in the lobby but do not find one. In the main lobby, posted to a bulletin board above the row of mailboxes, I locate a phone number for the office. It is a 410 area code, which means it is local, but there is no address. Following a cursory glance over my shoulder, I tear the paper from the bulletin board and stuff it in the pocket of my canvas coat.