Good news—the other two bottles of gin showed up. You’d hidden them in the garage, and that came to you just this morning. You might have a celebratory drink later on. You shouldn’t, because of the pills, but you will, because you want to. More good news—if you can’t shake, shake, shake the Big A, then the Big Bill from the wedding won’t worry you so much.
Bad news—you get the idea Sandra thinks you need a good suit not just for the wedding. Every dying man needs a good suit in the end, don’t they?
“You don’t remember any of yesterday?” Eric asks him.
The two of them are outside, walking past a group of people being sung to by an entertainer who comes to the nursing home twice a week. The guy is playing a guitar, he’s playing a bunch of old-school songs, the kind of music Jerry loves, only he loves it on his stereo, with loud lyrics and drums and electric guitars and saxophones blaring. He loves the way it used to get his creative juices flowing. This guy is playing the songs as if this were a cruise boat for hundred-year-olds. There’s a van parked near the front door, a maintenance worker messing around with the outside lights, and Jerry wonders how hard it would be to stow away in the back of that van and go for a ride. Quite difficult, he imagines, because there’s a dog sitting in the front seat. The sun is out but not hot yet, however it’ll get there soon, and most of the residents are in short-sleeved tops. It’s ten in the morning and he’s only just gotten up. He hasn’t had breakfast yet. Eric’s question makes him realize he hasn’t even thought about yesterday. Hasn’t realized there should be something to remember. Whenever somebody points out to him that he’s forgotten a period of time, there’s a sense of disorientation. They keep walking. He runs through a small checklist that, when he remembers to use it, he finds useful. Where is he? Well, a hotel is a hotel is a hotel, but this isn’t that. This isn’t him on tour. This is a care facility. His name is Jerry Grey. He is a man without a future becoming a man forgetting his past. He is a man whose wife doesn’t come and visit because she filed for divorce because all of this was too difficult for her.
Jerry nods. “Sure,” he says, then realizes he doesn’t remember it at all. “Was it memorable?”
“What about the day before?”
This time he shakes his head.
“The name Belinda Murray,” Eric says, “does that mean anything to you?”
“Belinda Murray?” Jerry thinks about it, letting the name filter though his memory banks. It goes through his mind without catching. “Should it?”
Eric claps him on the shoulder and smiles. “Possibly not,” Eric says. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I feel good,” Jerry says, which he knows is a stock-standard answer, which must mean at the very least he’s still remembering how human beings act in society. He also knows half an hour ago when he woke up, he was confused for a little while. He realizes he hasn’t asked how Eric is, so maybe he has forgotten a few of the social going-along-to-get-along rules. He does that now.
“I’m good, buddy,” Eric answers.
Then Jerry remembers something else. “How’s the writing?”
“Good,” Eric says, looking thrilled to have been asked, and Jerry is equally as thrilled to have remembered. “I’ve been inspired by something. In fact, I can have you to thank for that. You and your advice of writing what you know.”
Jerry wonders what that advice might be. “You’re writing about an orderly?”
“Ha,” Eric says, and slaps him on the back. “That’s closer to the truth than you’d know. I better go and get some work done, and you need to go and have some breakfast and get ready soon too, as you’ve got visitors on their way.”
“Sandra and Eva?”
“Sadly not, buddy.”
The visitors end up arriving just before noon, and it turns out to be a pair of policemen, which is disappointing, he thinks, but not as disappointing as being visited by your accountant. The first cop introduces himself. He’s a guy by the name of Dennis Mayor who looks nothing like any Dennis that Jerry has ever known, and the second guy is Chris Jacobson, who looks more like a Dennis than a Chris. They tell Jerry they came out yesterday to see him, and he almost calls them liars, because they weren’t here yesterday . . . but then he thinks it’s possible they were. Plus now that he thinks about it, they do look vaguely familiar. The introductions are made in a bedroom that is currently unoccupied, the previous patient dead, Jerry imagines, since nobody here really ever gets better. There are five of them—the two cops, Eric, Nurse Hamilton, and there’s him, Jerry Grey, crime writer. When they’re all sitting down he realizes this isn’t just an unoccupied bedroom but an interrogation room. The two cops are sitting opposite him, and Eric is to his left and Nurse Hamilton to his right. He feels concerned. He feels like he should be asking for a lawyer.
Before he can ask what this is about, Mayor leans forward and starts the proceedings. “Does the name Belinda Murray mean anything to you?”
Belinda Murray. Jerry compares the name to faces from the past, scanning through them the way fingerprints are scanned on TV shows, image after image flicking by. He doesn’t get a hit. Yet . . . there is something familiar about it. “I know the name.”
“You want to tell us about her?” Mayor asks.
He wants to, but . . . “I . . . can’t.”
“And why is that?”
“I don’t know who she is.”
“You just said you know the name,” Jacobson says.
“I know, but . . .” He runs the name against the faces again. “I just don’t know from where.”
“That could be my fault,” Eric says, and everybody looks at Eric, except Jerry, because he’s looking at the two cops who look annoyed with Eric. Eric follows it up. “I asked him earlier this morning if he knew the name. I’m sorry, probably—”
“Shouldn’t have?” Mayor asks.
Eric shrugs. “That might be where he’s remembering it from.”
“You’re right, you really shouldn’t have done that,” Mayor says.
“And why not?” Nurse Hamilton asks, glaring at Mayor. “Jerry was the one who told the name to us, and we’re the ones who gave that news to you. Don’t sit there trying to make out we’ve done something wrong here when all we’re doing is trying to uncover the truth.”
“You’re right,” Mayor says. “I’m sorry, and we’re grateful for your help. However, we’re here because he did tell you her name two days ago, so where was he remembering her from then?”
Jerry doesn’t like being talked about as if he’s not in the room. It makes him feel like an object. A subject. “Who is Belinda Murray?” he asks.
They all look back towards him.
“I don’t know who she is,” he says.
“Perhaps show him the photograph,” Nurse Hamilton says.
Jacobson nods, and opens up a folder that’s resting on his knee. He pulls out a photograph and hands it over to Jerry. It’s an eight-by-ten glossy of a blond woman with blue eyes and a beautiful smile, a girl-next-door smile, a midtwenties girl with all sorts of hopes and promises who would have had all sorts of men queuing across all sorts of miles for the chance to date her. Jerry already knows where this is going. Of course he does.
“You think I killed her,” he says.
“And why would you say that?” Mayor asks.
“Look, detectives, I may be losing my mind, but not enough to miss the obvious. This,” he says, and spreads his arms to indicate the room and all that is in it, “is an interrogation. You’re here because this girl is dead, and I’m sorry about that, I really am, but I don’t know her and I didn’t hurt her.”
“It’s because—” Mayor says, but then stops when Nurse Hamilton holds her hand up to him.