A Shade in the Mirror

by Tracey Lander-Garrett

  I nodded, and went back to reading, not trusting my voice not to give me away.

  Confession: I don’t hate comic books. In fact, I kind of like them. I guess I used to read them when I was a kid, because I know a little bit about a lot of different ones—old ones, though, not recent issues. When I’d seen the HELP WANTED sign in the front window, and Mac had interviewed me and asked me if I knew anything about comics, like different titles for Spider-Man, I’d rattled off Amazing, Spectacular, and Web of. Some of those hadn’t been published in years. Impressed with my arcane knowledge, he hired me on the spot.

  The other thing—and the main reason why I’d accepted the crappy pay—was that Mac didn’t care that I didn’t have any previous experience working in a comic book store, or any work experience at all, for that matter. Every other job I’d applied for wanted applicable experience among many other requirements I didn’t meet.

  So, I worked for Mac, despite the not-great hours and minimal pay. It was the best a non-entity like myself could hope for in a world where you didn’t exist if you weren’t in the computer.

  When I took a quick break later in the evening to call Kara back from a kiosk on the street. First, I asked how she and Little Bean were doing, and she said they were fine. I told her I had the next day off and could meet her at the apartment whenever she wanted.

  “Who cares about that?” she said. “Tell me about Derek.”

  I told her I’d fill her in when I saw her, which did nothing to do satisfy her curiosity. Then I grabbed a slice from the pizza place on the corner and went back to work.

  When my shift ended, I went to Derek’s store. I could see him through the window, perched on the stool behind the counter, reading a book. He was dressed in jeans and a striped dress shirt unbuttoned over a gray tee.

  “Hey,” I said as I entered. Derek looked up and smiled.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was wondering if I was going to see you tonight.”

  “And here I am. When are you closing?”

  “At 7:30. Did you want to go up to my place until I’m done?”

  “No, that’s okay, I’ll just look around the store if you don’t mind.”

  “You sure?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe I’d find anything interesting to pass the time.

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said. “Look around, the posters, the books, this bulletin board—holy crap, do people really still hold séances?”

  Multicolored flyers were tacked all over the old corkboard across from the counter, featuring ads for psychic readings, new age healers, and yes, séances, among other oddities, like ads for a “genuine” crystal ball, or someone who would pay for “REAL EVIDENCE OF UFOs!” The word “real” was underlined three times. Another flyer wanted volunteers for a ghost hunt at a historic house in Tarrytown, which was north of the city.

  I wasn’t sure how I knew that, like many odd bits of information my brain coughed up.

  “Yep. Séances, voodoo, witches, we get ‘em all,” Derek said with a disgusted sigh.

  “How do you stand it?” I asked.

  “Can’t,” he said in what sounded like an English accent.

  “You can’t stand it . . . but you still work here?” I asked, puzzled.

  He laughed. “No, no. Not ‘can’t.’ Kant, K-A-N-T. The philosopher,” he said and held up the book he was reading.

  “Never heard of him,” I said.

  “Too bad. You might be interested in his definition of enlightenment.”

  “Would you hate me if I said I wasn’t interested?”

  “No, not at all. Most people aren’t interested in philosophy. I was dumb enough to major in it.”

  “I don’t think it’s dumb.”

  “Well, it didn’t exactly prepare me for a job on Wall Street,” he said, perhaps a little bitterly.

  “Do you want to work on Wall Street?”

  “Not really. Just . . . parents. You know how it is.”

  I wished I did. I gave a non-committal nod and picked up a book on one of the nearby shelves. It turned out to be about dowsing—the practice of finding underground water deposits with a forked stick—a subject I had even less interest in than Kant.

  “Nevermind my white people problems,” he said. “Go ahead and browse. I’m going to pre-count the register and if no one comes in, I’ll close up a little early. You feel like Chinese delivery tonight? My treat.”

  One thing that you learn when you’re poor: Never turn down free food.

  Approximately half an hour later, we were eating sesame chicken and mu shu pork in his living room. Derek asked me how long I’d been working at Christopher Street.

  “Just over two months.”

  “You like it?”

  “Yeah, so far. The pay isn’t great but it’s casual and the owner is nice.”

  “That’s cool,” he replied. “So how long have you been living in Dumbo?”

  Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O. “About a month,” I said, immediately stuffing an enormous piece of chicken in my mouth. This was the conversation I’d been dreading most of the day.

  It was one thing to hang out and watch a movie for the evening and sleep on the guy’s couch. It was another to sit down and eat food together and chat like we were on a date and might conceivably see one another again. And that was the problem; I thought that maybe I did want to see him again.

  “Mmm,” I said, as I speared a piece of broccoli. “This is really good.”

  “Mine too. So, where’d you live before that?” Rat heads.

  I chewed my broccoli a little longer than I needed to. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, you don’t have a New York accent, so I guessed you probably weren’t born here. Yesterday you said you didn’t have friends or family to stay with, and if you’ve just been living in that apartment for a month, I figured you just moved here.”

  Double damn, he’d been paying attention.

  I exhaled. “You could say that.”

  “I could say that. I could. But should I say it?” he asked nonchalantly, rolling bits of pork and vegetables up in a sort of tortilla thing that had come with his food.

  “Probably not,” I said and frowned.

  “So you didn’t just move here?” he asked, then took a bite of the mu shu pork burrito he’d made.

  “Wellll . . . if I tell you,” I paused, trying to figure out what to say next.

  “You’ll have to kill me?” he asked.

  “No. Yes. I mean—no. No literal killing. It’s just complicated.”

  “Did you run away from a cult?”

  “No?” I didn’t think I had. But it was possible, I supposed.

  “You don’t sound sure of that.”

  “What if I’m not?”

  “Not sure? Not sure if they were a cult, not sure if you ran away, or not sure about something else?”

  “Something else.”

  “You really don’t want to answer this question, do you?”

  No. I really didn’t. But if we were going to date, it would have to come out some time.

  “Would you believe me if I told you that I don’t actually know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know where I lived before.”

  He’d put down his fork and gave me a critical look.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  Chapter Four

  The day is gray, with a chill in the air. I’m standing on a sidewalk in New York City and I have no idea how I got there. I don’t know what day it is.

  I’m wearing jeans, a large black V-neck sweater over a hot pink tank top, and a pair of black Converse sneakers. I see my reflection in a shop window: bobbed blonde hair, high cheekbones, a wide mouth, and I know that I’m seeing my own reflection. But who am I? What name goes with this face? I check my front and back pockets, and find only a matchbook for a restaurant called Raoul’s. I see my hands, and I know that they’re my hands. But I’m not wearing any jewelry on them, no rings, w
atches, or bracelets.

  Scared, confused, I look around and see a sign for Madison Avenue, and beneath that sign, I see a man in a dark blue uniform with a shiny brass badge. I approach and ask him to help me. And he does, calling an ambulance because I’m an EDP, Emotionally Disturbed Person, even if I’m not so much disturbed as confused and upset, because shouldn’t I remember who I am?

  They drive me over to Bellevue, because that’s where the EDPs go, and that’s where I remain for the following week. The first couple of days involve tests of all kinds. MRIs, CAT scans, blood tests, psychological questionnaires, along with physical examinations. The doctors have difficulty diagnosing me. I have no brain trauma, no physical trauma, not even a single bruise or bump on the head. No drugs or alcohol in my bloodstream. As far as my body is concerned, I’m perfectly healthy.

  When it’s determined that I am not a danger to myself or others, a case worker escorts me to the local precinct, where my face is compared to hundreds of missing persons photographs. Nothing matches. I don’t have any tattoos or distinguishing marks for them to go on. They ask if they can fingerprint me and I say yes, but my fingerprints don’t turn up anything useful either. They even send my info to Interpol and Canada, without any results.

  I pick up the name “Madison” when one of the interns, on hearing my “oldest” memory, says it reminds him of a movie. “Just like in Splash. Tom Hanks falls in love with a mermaid. He names her ‘Madison’ because he found her on Madison Avenue.”

  It’s better than Patient 551236, or Jane Doe, which is a bit too corpse-like. After that, everyone calls me Madison. We pick the last name Roberts because I smile really wide, which one of the nurses says made me look like a famous actress I’ve never heard of.

  Now that I’ve seen a couple of her movies? I don’t really see the resemblance.

  Or maybe I just don’t smile very often.

  I have all of my wisdom teeth, which probably puts me, based on other physical characteristics and my appearance, anywhere from eighteen to twenty years old. My natural hair color is strawberry blonde.

  I am not a virgin.

  I speak French, almost fluently. Though my accent is not that of a native speaker, it’s good enough to pass. I know my multiplication tables. I can read and write. I know traffic laws, and it seems likely that I know how to drive, but I have weird blind spots. Mostly technology related.

  I know essential things about the world I live in, like the names of cities and general rules of etiquette. But as far as my cultural and personal memory? A book missing half its pages seems to be an apt description.

  A reporter writes a story about me, then a couple of others, and I’m interviewed on a morning TV show. The hosts implore any viewers with information concerning my identity to call in, but no one does.

  I take a polygraph test and pass, then another one and pass. I agree to try a dose of sodium pentathol—popularly and erroneously known as truth serum—to see if it will help me remember. It doesn’t. We even try hypnosis, but it doesn’t conjure up a single detail about my identity or past.

  At that point, the psychologists feel they’ve exhausted all options. My official diagnosis is dissociative fugue, a condition in which a person who has experienced trauma loses all sense of their own identity. Personal information—including memories—are inaccessible. Unexpected travel is part of the diagnosis as well, as the person flees the inciting traumatic event.

  So my brain is trying to escape . . . something. They said it should go away on its own one day, and I’ll just suddenly remember who I am.

  The only other clue to my identity I have—although I hadn’t noticed it at first—is a key. Once I was at Bellevue and changed into the backless hospital gown they gave me, I found a weird skeleton key hanging from a chain beneath my shirt. It’s oddly shaped, with not one set of teeth at the end, but two that mirror each other, like the silhouettes of two hands, side by side. It’s engraved with the word FICHET. The police don’t know anything about the key and suggest I see a locksmith.

  I see three different locksmiths at hardware stores. Each one says pretty much the same thing. There are thousands and thousands of antique keys that no one knows anything about—they’re just curiosities and decorations, sold in estate sales to dealers who in turn sell them to collectors. Some are just made as decorations. Without a serial number, there’s no way of knowing what my key goes to, if anything. None of them recognize the brand name of the key, Fichet, either.

  In the meantime, the police and doctors tell me I’m supposed to go on and live my life.

  So I do. I get a job and a place to live and friends. I get a life. But is it my life? And if it isn’t, whose is it?

  Derek looked across the table at me, a mixture of confusion and concern on his face.

  I moved my fork around inside the white carton I’d been eating from. I hadn’t eaten anything since that last bite of broccoli, and didn’t feel much like eating more now.

  “You really aren’t kidding about this.”

  “Not even a little bit,” I said.

  “That’s why you’re weird about your last name.”

  “Well, yeah, because I don’t have one. Not a legal one, anyway.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh? That’s it?”

  “Well, it’s a lot to process. This is crazy. How do you survive? Do you even have an ID?”

  “Not really. Without a birth certificate, social security number, or passport, it’s pretty much impossible to get one. My social worker took me to the DMV to get a state ID, but we couldn’t. All I have is my ID from Spring House.”

  “Then how do you have a job?”

  “He pays us under the table. A tax thing, he says.”

  “So . . . there just aren’t any clues at all to who you really are?” Derek asked.

  “Nothing useful.”

  “What about that matchbook?”

  “The matchbook was for a restaurant that’s been around since the 1970s, but no one there recognized me.”

  “Man. That’s got to be hard,” Derek said.

  “What?”

  “Not knowing who you are. Where you come from.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it was scary at first. But after a while, I got used to it. Whoever I was is gone. I’m just me now.”

  “But don’t you wonder? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Should it?”

  “It would bother me.”

  “I guess I just felt like I had a choice. I could either go nuts wondering and trying to find out, or I could just live my life. That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said. “You’re taking this pretty well.”

  “Well, my last girlfriend had three suicide attempts over two years. Two of which were before I started dating her. The other was during, and that was when I found out about the first two.”

  “Yikes.”

  He agreed that yikes was an appropriate response. “By comparison,” he said, “a little dissociative fugue is nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, not nothing. Poor choice of words. You just seem pretty stable, is what I mean.”

  “I feel pretty stable. Except for the whole I don’t know who I am thing, oh, and the creepy stalker in my apartment thing, yeah, everything’s peachy.” I sighed. “Damn. I knew I should have told you I was in the Witness Protection Program.”

  He laughed. “It’s okay. Thanks for trusting me.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. I tried taking another bite of sesame chicken, but it had gone cold. So had my appetite. Derek took our food boxes and the takeout bag into the kitchen.

  “You want to watch a movie?” he asked as he returned.

  I said I did, and he began rattling off titles of things he wanted to watch. I hadn’t heard of most of them. Derek found that interesting and wanted to do a comparison of what movies I had heard of and which ones I hadn’t. He thought it might reveal something about my past.

  “Another night, maybe?”
r />   “Sure. But for now, how about a movie about a guy with amnesia who finds out that he’s really an assassin? Could be your life story.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Almost two hours later we were both slouched low on the futon, inches apart and watching the credits roll for The Bourne Identity. I was intensely aware of the few inches that separated us and almost felt as if there were an electric current running from my hip to Derek’s leg. I found myself wanting to rest my head on his shoulder again, but didn’t want a replay of the other night.

  I tilted my head towards his shoulder and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he replied and slid his arm around me. I sighed and put my head on his shoulder.

  “This is nice,” he said.

  “It is,” I said. Some of my hair, which I’d freed from its ponytail during the course of the movie, was drifting across my face. Derek brushed it away. I was breathing a little funny.

  “I don’t want to presume,” he said, tucking the piece of hair behind my ear, “or make things awkward, but I want to kiss you.” I felt my cheeks getting warm and I bit my lip, looking down. I suddenly felt very self-conscious, so I looked away.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked. I nodded, shyly, and his hand carefully lifted my chin and his lips met mine.

  It was a funny, tentative sort of kiss, and his lips were dry at first but they hovered over my mouth and kissed me again, just as tentatively as the first time, but softer, somehow, and I found myself kissing back.

  So this was kissing. I had no memory of ever doing it before, but I knew how to do it all the same. In fact, I was pretty sure I was good at it.

  Kissing. I liked kissing.

  After a minute or three, kissing evolved into me somewhat-unconsciously moving into Derek’s lap. He broke off the kiss, taking a deep breath. “I . . . need some air,” he said, and gently helped me back to the other side of the futon. He stood up awkwardly, straightening his pants.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “No, Madison, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to rush things.”