Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  No, no, of course not, the Professor’s not afraid of the storm, he’s been in far worse storms than this, he insists. He’s been in typhoons at sea in an open boat.

  No shit, the Kid says, not knowing what a typhoon is exactly but admitting to himself that it does sound worse than a hurricane. Especially at sea in an open boat.

  And besides, the Professor adds, wherever I go, the eye of the storm goes. The I of the eye. He laughs loudly at this, a joke the Kid definitely does not get. As you may have noticed, the big man says and laughs again.

  Yeah, whatever.

  Dodging fallen tree branches and uprooted foliage to the end of a looping tree-lined residential street, the Professor turns the van onto a driveway and pulls up before a double bay garage attached to a sprawling ranch house. He raises the overhead door with an electronic remote and drives the vehicle into the garage and parks it.

  Lugging Einstein’s cage and leading Annie by her rope leash, the Kid follows the Professor into the house. The Professor, still in shirtsleeves and sweating, drags the Kid’s expedition backpack and duffel across the carpeted floor and drops them by the entrance to the living room. It’s a large comfortable tastefully furnished home, a professor’s and a librarian’s home with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, paintings and framed photographs on the walls, Oriental carpets, an elaborate stereo system and racks of CDs, a large flat-screened TV, and a long shelf of DVDs next to it. The Kid can’t remember ever being inside a house like this before. He wasn’t aware that comfy good-looking rooms like this even existed except in magazine ads and on TV. It’s more like a set for actors to use for an upscale porn film than a real home for real people, he thinks. Then he flashes on the night he got caught by Dave Dillinger and the girl he thought was brandi18. Except for the books and pictures this house is a lot like that one.

  You don’t have like any hidden cameras or anything here, do you?

  Of course not! What made you ask that?

  Just wondering. Is this where you live?

  Yes, it is.

  You live here alone or with a wife?

  With a wife and our two children.

  They around?

  Yes, yes, of course. They wouldn’t go anywhere in this storm.

  Maybe I oughta leave. If there’s kids in the house.

  No! You have to stay! Wait out the storm, and I’ll cover for you.

  Too late now anyhow.

  They pass through the dining room into the kitchen, a large open space with stainless steel restaurant-size appliances and copper-colored tile countertops and floor to match. The Professor heads straight for the refrigerator and then abruptly stops. A sheet of white paper with a long typed paragraph on it has been taped to the door.

  The Professor peels the paper off the refrigerator door, reads it quickly, and passes it to the Kid. He opens the refrigerator door and caresses its brightly lit interior with his gaze. At least she left us plenty of food, the Professor says and starts carrying bowls and plastic containers to the table. He sets out two plates and forks, sits down at the table and opens several of the plastic containers.

  Soaked and chilled to the bone the Kid stands by the refrigerator reading:

  I have taken the twins and gone to my mother’s in Port Vitalie. It may be temporary, it may be permanent. I don’t know. I need time to think this through without you present. I need to decide how seriously to take all your secrets and lies. I realize that I’ll never know the truth about you and that you will probably always keep secrets and will continue to lie to me. I have to decide if in spite of that I can go on living with you. Right now I don’t think I can. Please don’t call or e-mail me. Please don’t try to speak with me at the library when I’m working or at my mother’s. I need to listen to my own voice and the kids’ voices, not yours. If you want to speak to the kids, call my mother’s number, not mine, and ask for them. If they want to speak to you, I will let them call you. Please don’t try to contact them when they’re at school as my mother will be driving them in and picking them up afterward, and as you know, her view of you has always been negative and will likely be even more so now. When I have made up my mind about what to do with this marriage, I will let you know. —Gloria

  The Kid lays the sheet of paper next to the Professor’s loaded plate. So I guess no kids. But, dude, that’s cold.

  The Professor glances at the letter and goes back to eating. Between mouth-filling bites of cold macaroni salad he says, Yes . . . but appropriate . . . and in some sense . . . useful.

  Useful? To who?

  To her. To our children. And to me.

  I don’t get it, man.

  You will, you will. He stops eating and looks at the Kid. You’re really wet. Go down the hallway on the far side of the dining room. There’s a guest bedroom and bath at the far end. Take a shower and get dried off, and then we’ll feed you and look after this poor dog and parrot. I think like you they’ll be fine once they’ve gotten dry and are fed.

  The Kid points out that his duffel and backpack are soaked through and he doesn’t have any dry clothes. The Professor says there’s a laundry located next to the guest room, he can run his clothes through the dryer while he’s showering, and he better do it now while they still have electric power. If the storm knocks out the power, they’ll have to get by with candlelight. The Professor estimates the hurricane will last the rest of the day and abate during the night. We’re lucky it’s only a Category Three. Now that we’re safely sheltered here the eye of the storm can move on. By tomorrow everything will be back to normal. Damage should be minimal, except out at the Barriers.

  Yeah. And under the Causeway. That’s totally trashed, man. I’m never going back there.

  We’ll discuss that later. Meanwhile, go on and dry your clothes and shower and come back to the kitchen for something to eat. I’ll still be here.

  Yeah, I can see that. At the door the Kid stops and turns back. How come you’re so jumpy and nervous, man? I mean, your wife just took your kids and left you. Shouldn’t you be all sad and fucked-up? Or at least all pissed off ?

  You’ll understand soon enough. Go on, go on. We’ve got work to do.

  Whaddaya mean, work?

  We need to film another interview.

  No fucking way, man! No more interviews. I’m done with that.

  This time you’re going to interview me, Kid.

  That’s stupid. Why would I want to interview you?

  I need you to interview me. For me, for my wife and children. Don’t worry about it, just do as I say.

  The Kid shrugs and heads off down the hallway dragging his duffel and backpack behind him. Annie has collapsed in a puddle on the kitchen floor. From his cage next to her Einstein says, Do as I say! Do as I say!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  P: You sit there, Kid, off camera. I’ll sit here on the sofa in front of it.

  K: Whaddaya want me to ask? I mean, I never done this before, interviewed somebody.

  P: No, but you’ve been interviewed. You start by asking a question that you want answered, and then I decide if and how I’m willing to answer it. Then you ask a follow-up question that’s generated by my previous answer. Simple. Especially for the one asking the questions.

  K: Okay. How about what’s the fucking reason for making this interview in the first place?

  P: Excellent first question! The simple answer is that in the coming weeks or possibly months my body will be found, and it will look like a suicide. This interview will provide evidence that it was not a suicide.

  K: No way, man! Why would you commit suicide? I mean, you’re kind of jolly. You don’t seem the type to kill yourself.

  P: I’m not.

  K: So how come your body’s going to be found? A heart attack maybe, I can sure see you having a heart attack. On account of being so overweight. But how come it’ll look like a suicide?

  P: That’s two questions. Which one do you want answered?

  K: Okay. How come it’ll look like a suicide?
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  P: There will be a scandal, a public exposé. I know who I am, a man with a publicly certified, locally celebrated, genius IQ, a respected university professor with a wife and family, a deacon of the church, et cetera, and what I look like, morbidly obese, bearded, eccentric, et cetera. A popular parody of an intellectual. Given that profile, the scandal will be of an embarrassing, probably criminal, sexual nature. That’s how they do these things. I know the script. I practically wrote it myself. First a complaint is made to the local police by someone claiming to have been raped by the targeted party or sexually molested by him in the distant past when the accuser was a child. The police quietly begin an investigation. Then the targeted party mysteriously disappears. The accusation of rape or sexual molestation is surreptitiously leaked to the news media. Weeks pass, sometimes months. Eventually the body of the targeted party is “discovered” under circumstances and in a condition that indicates suicide. By now the accuser has disappeared. The investigation ends. Case closed.

  K: You’re just making this shit up, right?

  P: No, I’m not making it up. I wish I were, believe me.

  K: Okay, now I got a hundred questions! If you’re not just shittin’ me.

  P: (chuckles) Pick one, and we’ll go from there. I’ll answer them all eventually.

  K: You are one really weird dude, Professor. So okay, who’s the “targeted party” you’re talking about?

  P: In this case, me.

  K: Okay. That’s what I thought. Who’s doing the targeting?

  P: I’m not sure yet. It could be one of at least three of my previous employers. Let’s call them government agencies.

  K: What government? You mean the government of the United States of America?

  P: Yes. And the government of at least one foreign nation and possibly a second. Or all three in collusion.

  K: So like, are we talking FBI and CIA and shit?

  P: Not really. There are agencies that aren’t as well known as the FBI and CIA whose purposes and activities aren’t as closely monitored by Congress and the public. Agencies that are off the books, so to speak. Black-box agencies. But we needn’t go into that here. I don’t want to put you in any danger, and I certainly don’t want to endanger my family any more than I already have. My sole use for this interview is to provide some small comfort to them after my body is found. So I’ll spare you, and therefore them, some of the details.

  K: Are you not really a professor then?

  P: Oh, yes! I am who I say I am! A professor, husband, father, deacon, library trustee, et cetera. All that and more.

  K: But you’re saying besides being a professor and all you’re also like “targeted” by these super-secret agencies.

  P: That’s correct.

  K: So why the fuck would they do that, target you? Why would they set it up so they can like kill you and make it look like you committed suicide because of some sex scandal?

  P: (sighs) It’s a long story, Kid. I was recruited very early. While still in college, in fact. I was recruited because of my intellectual and linguistic gifts, no doubt, but also because my psychological and social profiles fit certain known and tested templates. I arrived early and stayed late, let us say, and consequently over the years I saw and heard and participated in much that if they became publicly known could cause great harm to powerful political and economic interests. Especially now that both political and economic interests are so intricately connected. Simply put, even though I was never anywhere near the top of the pyramid, I saw and heard and participated in too much. Those on top operate strictly on a need-to-know basis. It’s the people nearest the bottom, people like me, who know too much. More than they need to know.

  K: Yeah, but so what? Lots of people know too much. They don’t get killed for it, so long as they don’t talk about it to anyone. Even me, I know shit for instance about the guys who live under the Causeway that I’d never tell about, stuff they told me or I saw them do that could get them sent back to prison, and nobody wants to kill me. They just trust me not to tell anyone what I know. Were you like planning on telling what you know about these secret agencies and so on, going on TV or writing it in a book or something? And somehow these guys found out about it?

  P: No, nothing like that. But it’s assumed among my previous employers that people who lived as I did for years, for decades, can only be trusted as long as they are not who they say they are. It’s when they become who they say they are that they can no longer be trusted.

  K: I’m confused. Trusted to what?

  P: Not to reveal what they saw and heard and did in the past.

  K: So now that you are what you say you are, a professor and such, married and all, you can’t be trusted anymore to lie about who you were in the past? Like you might start by telling your wife and then a priest or a shrink or the guys in your therapy group if you had one, and pretty soon some newspaper writer would hear about it or a book writer, and then the whole world would end up knowing what you know. And that would fuck up a lot of important people like in politics and so on?

  P: Correct.

  K: So that’s why they want to get rid of you?

  P: Yes.

  K: This sounds like a fucking movie. Are you sure you’re not making this shit up?

  P: I’m not making any of it up. Unfortunately.

  K: Were you like a spy, then?

  P: Informant first. Then mole. Then spy. Counterspy. Double agent. That’s the usual progression for someone with my particular abilities and temperament.

  K: How do you know they want to do you? The suicide thing.

  P: Like I said, I know the script. The Calusa police have started an investigation. Two plainclothes officers came to my home asking to speak with me. They have already gone to the trouble to question my parents, which means the scandal will no doubt be set in my distant past. It will be a crime that I am accused of having committed when I was a young man, when my parents and I were still more or less in touch, before I decided to distance myself from them. It will therefore have to be an act for which there is no statute of limitations.

  K: What’s that mean?

  P: Misdemeanors and most felonies have to be prosecuted within a limited amount of time following the commitment of the crime. Crimes that society regards as particularly repulsive, however, have no statute of limitations. First-degree murder, for instance. Also, in most states, rape, distribution and possession of child pornography, and sexual abuse of children, especially in cases when the victim doesn’t remember the event until years later. My best guess is that someone has recently uncovered long-repressed memories of having been sexually abused by me when she or he was a child and has taken those resurrected memories to the Calusa Police Department.

  K: But you didn’t, right? Abuse anybody. You’re not a fucking chomo, right?

  P: Correct.

  K: Dude, that’s some serious shit! You could end up living under the Causeway yourself!

  P: It’ll never come to that. I’ll never be indicted or even arrested. I’ll never be tried or convicted. I’ll simply disappear. Then my accuser, whoever she or he is, will allow her- or himself to be interviewed by some local investigative journalist, or else one of the police officers will leak the nature of the accusation and investigation to the press. Sometime after that my body will be found, and the official cause of death will be ruled a suicide. Naturally, they can arrange it so my body is never found. But then my disappearance would remain an open case and would invite a long-term ongoing investigation. Who knows what would turn up? No, they want my wife, my children, my colleagues and students, the entire city of Calusa and especially the press and other news media to believe that I killed myself because I was about to be exposed as a child molester or rapist. It’ll make a titillating, convincing story. “So-called genius professor of sociology, an eccentric, bearded, fat man doing research on homeless convicted sex offenders, is a sex offender himself.”

  K: How come you’re telling me all this in front of
a camera, instead of telling your wife in person, say? Or the cops. Or why not go on TV and tell Larry King or some news guy? Or here’s an idea, why don’t you put it up on YouTube?

  P: First of all, if I tell Gloria what is about to happen, she will want me to save myself in a way that will basically destroy her and my children’s lives. She’ll want us to flee to some undeveloped country and assume new identities, for instance. Which wouldn’t work anyhow. It would only shatter their lives and postpone the inevitable. All it would do is buy me a little extra time until they found us. Ten or fifteen years ago it might have worked. But the world is digitalized now and interconnected, so it’s impossible for a high-profile American man with a wife and two small children to flee the country and change his and his family’s identity. The first time one of us went online we’d be located. And if I go to the police, as you suggest, they will merely assume I’m lying in order to protect myself against my accuser. That would make my accuser go away, which is good, and the suicide script would be scrapped. Also good. But they’ll know I’ve been alerted to their intentions, so a different way to make me disappear will be contrived. Which is not good. In that script there’s usually an accident or a fire that takes out the whole family or several other people associated with the target, fellow workers or innocent bystanders. If I’m killed alone it will appear that my story is true. An “accident” that takes others with me is messy, perhaps, but not incriminating. The same thing will happen if I go public with it by posting this interview on YouTube, for instance, or tell my story to a journalist.

  K: Okay. So why don’t you just cut out by yourself ? Leave your family here. Go to Jamaica or someplace, change your name. Shave your beard and get a haircut. If you lost a lot of weight nobody’d recognize you, man. Even your wife when she came and visited you there once in a while. If you really are an ex-spy and all, you oughta know how to disappear. Even in the digital world.