The house was there. I can’t say if I was glad or not. I parked the car and walked around the back, just for the sake of nostalgia. The lot in the backyard was still empty; whoever had the blueprints drawn up six years ago had changed his mind about spending the money. I walked most of the way around the house, but didn’t bother to look in the windows. Nothing on the outside was any different.
Encouraged, I went up to the front and rang the bell. The wait was long enough that I was turning away when the door opened. It was Pansy Greenleaf, or Patricia Angwine. I didn’t know which name was righter. She looked considerably more than six years older, but I recognized her immediately. She didn’t recognize me. I hadn’t aged a day—well, maybe a day—but she stood blinking in the sunlight, drawing a blank.
“My name is Conrad Metcalf,” I said.
The name didn’t make any more of an impression than my face had. I waited, but she just stared.
“I want to talk to you,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Come in. I’ll consult my memory.”
She led me through the foyer. The house wasn’t kept up the way it had been or could have been, but when I walked into the living room to face the sun through that big bay window, it didn’t matter. The architect had designed the room to make you feel small and out of place, and it worked. Pansy still crept through the house like a burglar, and by now she’d lived here at least eight years, so I knew it worked oh her too. She brought me in, pointed to a seat on the couch, and stood for a minute studying my features, knitting her brow in a parody of thought.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. Her voice was light. She looked twenty years older, yet the pall of guilt and sorrow she had carried with her everywhere before seemed completely lifted.
I sat back on the couch and waited while she went into the kitchen. As far as I could tell we were alone in the house. The spot where I was sitting was warm, and spread out on the table in front of me was the last of what looked to have been a bunch of lines of make, and a razor and a straw. I didn’t have to guess what Pansy had been doing when I rang, the bell. The only thing I felt was a vague jealousy.
When she came back, she sat down across from me and put what looked like a pocket calculator with a microphone on the table between us.
“Conrad Metcalf,” she said into the microphone.
I almost responded, but I was cut off by the sound of her own voice coming out of the device on the table. “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “You don’t remember that.”
She looked up at me and smiled, puzzled. I tried not to stare like too much of an idiot. “I don’t recognize your name,” she said. “Perhaps you should check your memory. This could be the wrong house.”
I thought fast. “You got my name wrong,” I said. “Maynard Stanhunt. Try it again.”
“Oh,” she said, chagrined. She depressed a button on the microphone and said the new name.
“Maynard Stanhunt,” repeated the machine. “That nice doctor. He and Celeste were so nice to you, before. They’ve been away.”
“You’re that nice doctor,” she said guilelessly, as if the words hadn’t been spoken in her voice just seconds ago by the thing on the table. “It’s been such a long time. It’s nice to see you.”
I was dumbfounded, but I worked double time to cover it up. “Yes,” I said. “It’s nice to be back”
“Well,” she said. “I’m so glad.”
“That’s nice,” I said. The word was like an infection. “It’s nice to be glad.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I want to ask you a few questions,” I said.
“Oh,” she said again. “Questions.”
I guess her hand was on the button, because the thing on the table said: “Only if it’s completely necessary.”
“It’s completely necessary,” I said before she got a chance to repeat it.
She looked in confusion at the machine and then up at me. She was unsettled by my responding to the recorded voice. I guess it was impolite to admit that it was there.
“Oh,” she said. “I suppose it’s all right. If it’s completely necessary.”
“Tell me how you can afford to keep the house,” I said.
She knit her brow like a housewife whose cake has fallen in the oven. “The money for the house,” she said into the mike.
“Joey gives it to you,” came her voice right back.
“Joey gives me the money,” she said. “He’s so nice to me.”
“Joey,” I repeated. “What happened to Danny?”
“Danny,” she said to the machine.
The thing said in her voice: “Danny Phoneblum. He’s so big and fat. He used to be your best friend, practically. He got tired and went to live in the rest home. He’s very good to Joey. Treats him like the son he never had. A whiskey and soda with just a twist of lemon, that’s what he likes.”
“I guess I didn’t understand the question,” said Pansy haplessly.
I was beginning to get it. Memory was permissible when it was externalized, and rigorously edited. That left you with more room in your head for the latest pop tune—which was sure to be coming out of the nearest water fountain or cigarette machine.
“Forget it,” I said. “Tell me who got pinned with the rap for Celeste’s murder.”
“Celeste’s murder,” echoed Pansy.
“Celeste went away for a while,” replied the voice.
“Celeste went away,” said Pansy. “That’s not the same as being murdered.”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s not the same.”
“You must have made a mistake,” she said. “Consult your memory.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I made a mistake. Tell me about your brother. Is he out of the freezer?”
“My brother,” she said.
“You don’t remember your brother,” said her memory.
She looked at me and shrugged.
“Orton Angwine,” I said.
“Orton Angwine,” she said.
“The name just doesn’t mean anything to you,” said her memory.
“The name just doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” I said. I was getting tired of the conversation. The ratio of redundancy to information was a little on the high side. I’d been playing with the idea that it might be the memory machine and not Pansy herself that I ought to interrogate. Now I changed my mind. The memory had too many gaps in it. Not as many as Pansy, but too many.
“You’re so full of funny questions, Dr. Stanhunt,” said Pansy. “I wish I understood.”
“I’m sorry, Pansy. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t completely necessary.”
“You ought to use a memory.”
“I have the new kind of memory,” I said. “It’s a cranial implant. You don’t have to speak out loud. You just think, and it talks to you in a quiet little voice in your head.”
“Oh,” she said. She thought about that for a minute. “It sounds very convenient.”
“It’s great,” I said. “And I really appreciate your helping me fill in a few blank spots here and there. I’ve been away, and I guess I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“You and Celeste,” she said brightly. “You’ve been on a trip.”
“That’s right. Now tell me about Dr. Testafer. Do you remember him?”
“Dr. Testafer,” she said into the mike.
“Old Dr. Testafer,” said the memory. It sounded like the beginning of a nursery rhyme. “He lives on the hill. He was Dr. Stanhunt’s partner, but he retired. A gin and tonic on the rocks.”
“He’s your partner,” she said to me. “I’m surprised you’re not in touch.”