Jack Mays stopped by as I sat there drinking a beer. Big, freckled, always grinning, blond hair sunbleached nearly white, he had a perpetual schoolboy air about him which many people found engaging on first encounter. He was the most completely unserious person I knew. He was often in trouble, though there was nothing really malicious about him. He was basically a pleasure-seeker and, like me, he received a monthly deposit in his account. Only he knew where his money came from. His parents kept putting it there on the condition that he never return to Philadelphia. Jack and I had always gotten along well. It might be that he thought my situation was similar to his, if he thought about it at all. On those rare occasions when I hung one on, I liked to have him around, because he could hold a lot more booze than I could and still function, and he would keep an eye on me, keep me out of tight situations.
“Don!” He slapped me on the shoulder and sat down on the next stool. “It’s been a while! You been away?”
“Yeah. Traveling a bit. What about you?”
“Got it too good here to want to leave,” he said, slapping the bar. “Hey, George! Bring me one of those!”
“Got a couple of girls banked up with me,” he continued. “You’ll have to come by later. Fix you up.”
His beer arrived, and we sipped and talked. I didn’t tell him my troubles, because he’s not the sort of person you tell your troubles to. He’s great at small talk, though, which was exactly the size I felt most like dealing with at the moment. We talked about mutual friends, about fishing—which we sometimes did together—about politics, movies, sports, sex, food, and then started on a round again. It was a relief, it was such a relief, not thinking about the things that bothered me most.
Before I knew it, it was getting dark. We had something to eat then—I forget exactly where—and stopped in another place afterwards for a couple of more drinks. My head was swimming by that time, but Jack still seemed in great shape and kept up the steady flow of talk till we turned up the walk to his place.
Then we were inside and he was introducing me to a couple of girls, turning on some music, mixing drinks, more drinks. After a while we danced a bit. After another while I noticed that he and the tall one, Louise, had disappeared, and I was sitting on the sofa with Mary, my arm around her shoulders, my drink in my lap, hearing the story of her divorce for the second time. I nodded occasionally and kissed her neck every now and then. I am not certain that she was interrupted in her narrative by this.
After an even longer while, we were in one of the bedrooms in a state of undress, hugging. Later still, I woke up briefly with vague memories of having disappointed her, and I noticed that I was alone. I went back to sleep.
I did not feel well the next morning, but I remembered that Jack’s bathroom was a virtual pharmacy, and I staggered off after a mess of remedies.
As I was gulping vitamins, painkillers, stomach settlers and a muscle relaxant I had come across, a shape suddenly moved into sight from beyond that magic curtain. At first, I didn’t quite realize what it was. When I did, I paused in the midst of rinsing my mouth, afraid that I’d choke myself.
There was a noise in the hall. I spit out the mint-flavored stuff, rinsed the bowl and stepped outside.
It was Jack, wrapped in an orange and yellow beach towel, coming to the john.
“Jack! I used to work for Angra Energy!” I told him.
He just stared for a moment, bleary-eyed, and then, “Commiserations,” he said and went on in.
He’d been to almost all the Ivy League schools. You can always tell.
I went out to the kitchen and made coffee. I got dressed and I drank some orange juice with a raw egg and Tabasco Sauce while it finished brewing. Then I took a cup out onto the porch.
The sun was several meters above the horizon, but the morning was still somewhat cool. A breeze full of moisture and salt reached me. Birds were questioning one another in the bushes on both sides of the house.
It bothered me when I thought about Cora, but in some ways I felt better than I had in a long while. I was remembering, and that pushed everything else out of my mind…
Yes. I had worked for Angra. Not as a roughneck, a driller, or anything like that. It had not been out in the field. Not manning a station… I almost said to myself ‘nothing technical’, but something told me that that was not strictly true.
I took another swallow of coffee.
Data processing, maybe. I did know something about computers…
Somewhere in a central office, or laboratory, something… Yes, a lab of some kind. That might be it.
Then, for just a moment, I had a vision—whether memory, imagination or some combination thereof, I could not say for certain—of a door, a door paneled in old-fashioned frosted glass. It was swinging shut, leaving me on the outside. Its black lettering read COIL DEPARTMENT.
Of course, electrical coils of wire, inductances, still played a part in some devices such as relays, not having been superseded by the chip and the microchip…
How about this, I suggested to myself, for a scenario? A laboratory accident, resulting in a head injury, accounting for the scars. Then false memories implanted, covering years of my life, a step somehow necessary to cover up the liability, the responsibility, of some people in the company? And then a pension, to keep me away and quietly secure?
But a lot of people were in accidents of one sort or another—and I’d never heard of anything so exotic happening to anyone as a result. Big companies can afford to make settlements. They do it all the time.
No, it didn’t sound quite right.
But I could feel that there was more coming. I finished the coffee and rose. I set the cup on the railing.
It was time to go and square things with Cora. At least I had some good news.
I entered my place and called out:
“Cora?”
No answer.
Well, it was understandable. I expected her to be miffed. I’d only said that I was going for a walk. She’d probably done some worrying, too. It made me feel a little more rotten. I formed instant resolutions to do all sorts of nice things for her—dinner and flowers and…
“Cora?”
I looked into the next room. Empty. Could she have gone and checked into a motel? Really mad? Well…
MESSAGE WAITING said the light on the phone/computer screen, right where it would be if someone had phoned—or left. My stomach clenched itself and a taste of coffee came into my mouth.
I crossed the room and touched the switch. The screen read:
DON—WHAT WITH ONE THING AND ANOTHER, TIME THAT I MOVED ON. ITS BEEN GREAT SUMMER FUN BUT WE SHOULDN’T TRY TO MAKE ANYTHING MORE OF IT. YOUR’S IN MEMORY, CORA
I looked through the other rooms with sufficient thoroughness to be certain that all of her things were really gone. Then I returned, sat down, stared at the screen again. On a display screen, of course, there is no way of checking handwriting, no signature to scrutinize. But any English teacher who switched her apostrophes around like that…
I was almost surprised by my reaction. I felt neither depression nor hysteria, not sadness, not fear. Something else, altogether.
My mouth was dry, though, and I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the only cold drink in sight, a can of beer, flipped the lid open and drained it in a short series of gulps.
My hand holding the empty can was shaking slightly, partly doubtless with hangover, but partly from fresh adrenalin. The adrenalin was from anger, not from fear. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be this angry.
My fingers could move under my control with perfect ease. Why not? And yet, to a part of my mind, this seemed an oddity. Later, later… Think about that later. I watched the empty can crumple in my fingers like a flower.