“Can we help you?” said the woman holding open the door.
“I’m looking for Maureen Jones,” Ellie said.
“She’s not here.”
“I’m betting she is there.” Only slowly did the horrible truth dawn in Ellie Knight-Cameron. It worked its way up her esophagus. The revelation.
“Who are you?” the woman said.
“I work with Maureen.”
“Well, if you work with her, then you know she’s still at work.”
“I don’t know any such thing, because I saw her leave work this afternoon, early, along with everyone else.”
“She’s still at work.”
“I don’t think I believe you!”
This argument might have continued escalating, had not Maureen herself happened upon the scene. Yes, Maureen Jones was soon present. As the above exchange was taking place, Maureen was in the midst of yanking her purse out of the passenger seat, locking the car door, and taking her sweet time. Maureen was coming up the street. What she was coming up the street in was a uniform, and the uniform was of her second job, her night shift, where two nights a week she worked as a cashier at a certain fast-food enterprise. And the color of the uniform was teal, and the function of the uniform was to render Maureen Jones selfless, indistinguishable, objectified. Before the situation between Ellie and the woman at the door of Maureen’s house had been resolved, Maureen herself did have the opportunity to mediate, just as the cry of Surprise was altered and became instead the cry of Happy birthday! Happy birthday, Maureen!
Maureen began laughing in an easygoing and careless way that was impossible not to see as beautiful, even moving, because Maureen, despite the fact that she didn’t smile easily, had a sweet smile, at least until Maureen realized that Ellie Knight-Cameron from K&K, her grim day job, was standing on her doorstep at some forbidding hour of the morning. Ellie Knight-Cameron was meanwhile apprehending the facts, namely that she, Maureen Jones, mother of two, was working two jobs, and Maureen was somewhat unhappy that this bit of information was now in wider distribution. But before Ellie could say anything, before she could defend herself about turning up on the doorstep of Maureen Jones’s residence, before Ellie could say anything about it, Maureen was inviting her inside. And so the conclusion was delayed.
Which conclusion? The one in which Ellie was herself the only possible author of the suggestions? And if she was the only person who could have failed to see this, if it was evident to even the most casual observer that she was both protagonist and antagonist, what did this tell us about the way we lived in those days?
III. The Albertine Notes
The first time I got high all I did was make sure these notes came out all right. I mean, I wanted the girl at the magazine to offer me work again, and that was going to happen only if the story sparkled. There wasn’t much work then because of the explosion. The girl at the magazine was saying, “Look, you don’t have to like the assignment, just do the assignment. If you don’t want it, there are people lined up behind you.” And she wasn’t kidding. There really were people lined up. Out in reception. An AI receptionist, in a makeshift lobby, in a building on Staten Island, the least affected precinct of the beleaguered City of New York. Writers spilling into the foyer, shouting at the robot receptionist. All eager to show off their clips.
The editor was called Tara. She had turquoise hair. She looked like a girl I knew when I was younger. Where was that girl now? Back in the go-go days you could yell a name at the TV and it would run a search on the identities associated with that name. For a price. Credit card records, toll plaza visits, loan statements, you set the parameters. My particular Web video receiver, in fact, had a little pop-up window in the corner of the image that said, Want to see what your wife is doing right now? Was I a likely customer for this kind of snooping based on past purchases? Anyway, recreational detection and character assassination, that was all before Albertine.
Street name for the buzz of a lifetime. Bitch goddess of the overwhelming past. Albertine. Rapids in the river of time. Take just a little into your bloodstream and any memory you’ve ever had is available to you all over again. That and more. Not a memory like you’ve experienced it before, not a little tremor in some presque vu register of your helter-skelter consciousness: Oh yeah, I remember when I ate peanut butter and jelly with Serena on Boston Common and drank rum out of paper cups. No, the actual event itself, completely renewed, playing in front of you as though you were experiencing it for the first time. There’s Serena in blue jeans with patches on the knees, the green Dartmouth sweatshirt that goes with her eyes, drinking the rum a little too fast and spitting out some of it, picking her teeth with her deep red nails, a shade called lycanthrope, and there’s the taste of super-chunky peanut butter in the sandwiches, stale pretzel rods. Here you are, the two of you, walking around that part of the garden with all those willows. She lets slip your hand because your palms are moist: the smell of a city park at the moment when a September shower dampens the pavement, car exhaust, a mist hanging in the air at dusk, the sound of kids fighting over the rules of softball, a homeless dude scamming you for a sip of your rum.
Get the idea?
It almost goes without saying that Albertine appeared in a certain socioeconomic sector not long after the blast. When you’re used to living a comfortable middle-class life, when you’re used to going to the organic farmers’ market on the weekend, maybe a couple of dinners out at that new Indian place, you’re bound to become very uncomfortable when fifty square blocks of your city suddenly look like a NASA photo of Mars. You’re bound to look for some relief when you’re camped in a school gymnasium pouring condensed milk over government-issued cornflakes. Under the circumstances, you’re going to prize your memories, right? So you’ll skin-pop some Albertine, or you’ll use the eyedropper, hold open your lid, and go searching back through the halcyon days. Afternoons in the stadium, those stadium lights on the grass, the first roar of the crowd. Or how about your first concert? Or your first kiss?
Only going to cost you twenty-five bucks.
I’m Kevin Lee. Chinese American, third generation, which doesn’t mean my dad worked in a delicatessen to get me into MIT. It means my father was an IT venture capitalist and my mother was a microbiologist. I grew up in Newton, Mass., but I also lived in northern California for a while. I came to New York City to go to Fordham, dropped out, and started writing about the sciences for one of the alternative weeklies. It was a start. But the offices of the newspaper, all of its owners, a large percentage of its shareholders, and nine-tenths of its reporting staff were incinerated. Not like I need to bring all of that up again. If you want to assume anything, assume that all silences from now on have some grief in them.
One problem with Albertine was that the memories she screened were not all good, naturally. Albertine didn’t guarantee good memories. In fact, Albertine guaranteed at least a portion of pretty awful memories. One guy I interviewed, early on when I was chasing the story, he spoke about having only memories about jealousy. He got a bad batch, probably too many additives, and all he could see in his mind’s eye were these intense moments of jealousy. He was even weeping when we spoke. On the come down. I’d taken him out to an all-night diner. Where Atlantic Avenue meets up with Conduit. Know that part of the city? A beautiful, a neglected part. Ought to have been a chill in the early-autumn night. Air force jets were landing at the airport in those days. The guy, we’ll say his name is Bob, he was telling me about the morning he called a friend, Nina, to meet her for a business breakfast. In the middle of the call Nina told him that his wife, Maura, had become her lover. He remembered everything about this call, the exact wording of the revelation. Bob, Maura has been attracted to me since as far back as your wedding. He remembered the excruciating pauses. He could overhear the rustling of bedclothes. All these things he could picture, just as though they were happening, and even the things he imagined during the phone call, which took place seventeen years ago. What Nina had done to Maura in bed, what dildo they used. It was seventeen years later on Atlantic and Conduit, and Maura had been vaporized, or that’s what Bob said: “Jesus, Maura is dead and I never told her what was great about our years together, and I’ll never have that chance now.” He was inconsolable, but I kept asking questions. Because I’m a reporter. I put it together that he’d spent fifty bucks on two doses of Albertine. Six months after the thyroid removal, here he was. Bob was just hoping to have one sugary memory — of swimming in the pond in Danbury, the swimming hole with the rope swing. Remember that day? And all he could remember was that his wife had slept with his college friend, and that his brother took the girl he dreamed about in high school. Like jealousy was the only color in his life. Like the atmosphere was three parts jealousy, one part oxygen.