by Ronald Malfi
There are thrift shops in every nook of this city. I sprinkle my crinkled dollar bills onto a glass counter and purchase a red scarf. The clerk who rings me up seems more than happy to pluck the bills from the counter so he doesn’t have to remove them from my hand and risk touching my reptilian skin.
“It’s the cold,” I tell him. As if I owe him anything. “Wind-chapped.”
Like a sandcastle, I am crumbling apart.
Night rises like seawater behind the black buildings. And like the homeless that populate this city, I crouch against a brick alley wall, pulling my shapeless knees up to a chest that heaves and prickles with cold, and settle my chin in the divot that my knees and chest have come together to create. Azure lights flicker behind sheer-curtained windowpanes. The remaining snow seems to simmer and glow on the pavement. Freezing, I wrap my bald head with one end of my new red scarf and wrap my neck with the other. This reminds me of the man whose Styrofoam cup I kicked over, whose change I stole. I wonder if this is how it started for him, too. If he is this stranger, if he is that stranger. There was one time when he had a family, or at least parents, and he knew them and they knew him. He had memories of similar azure lights and sheer-curtained windows, of green lawns glimpsed through the slats of whitewashed fences. Bronze, sun-kissed leaves of dogwoods under a summer sun.
How did you get here?
What have you done?
Because you have done something to deserve this. You have committed some crime against man, against nature, against God. There is a reason you can only glimpse the festivities through shaded windows, left out in the cold to inhale like scent the sounds of laughter within these homes. And here you are trapped outside your own mind, too, banging palms-up on glass panes to be let in, but no one will let you in. You have forgotten about yourself because the world has forgotten about you. It is unusual and amazing because it is so simple and typical. Your odyssey spans a thousand lifetimes; it has been written about, sung about, painted about, performed—all of it—for centuries.
There is nothing special about you.
Not a goddamn thing.
A laugh simmers just below the surface of my throat. It sends tremors through my cold, wracked body. I think, Eres mi amor, mi amor, and it occurs to me that if I don’t get up now, right now, that I will resign myself to remain here, to die here. And when you die here, you do not fade away or disperse into granules of bone-dust but, rather, you become part of the dirty city itself, part of Charm City, where the benches preach belief while the homeless are hopeless and sleep upon them; where the city that reads is the city that bleeds—bleeds out like an arterial gash—only to drown you not in blood but in nothingness, nothingness, nothingness. Charm City is Harm City, is Alarm City. And the most frightening part of that is how it is not frightening at all. There is a comfort and peacefulness I would welcome. Yet to my astonishment, there is still some fight left in me. Almost a full month on this planet and it has not yet beaten me down.
I push up off the alley wall and stagger like a leper into the street. I am—where? My eyes target a street sign. The irony of it all, I am on Pleasant Street. Just a few blocks from my apartment, hugging my coat tight about my diminishing frame, I urge myself forward.
As I reach the intersection of Franklin and St. Paul, some blessed intuition causes me to slow my pace. I pause and linger behind a shroud of cars parked along the street. Across the intersection on the opposite side of the street, a police car sits outside my apartment complex, the blue and red swirl of its lights reflected in the many windows of the building. Two officers stand talking on the front stoop. In the dark and in their black uniforms, only their matching white faces are clearly visible.
I crouch down behind the cars and watch them through the window of a Pontiac. They have come for me. It was only a matter of time. For whatever reason, they have come for me.
It’s not very late and the streets are still awake. Two women hustle down Franklin Street, the metronome clack-clack-clack of their heels audible even as they turn the corner. At my back, light from apartment windows spills across my shoulders. Then and there I make up my mind to outlast the officers—that I will stay out here all night if they are willing to. And on the heels of such self-discipline, I wonder if this has been my mindset all along—that I am a criminal by nature, adept at waiting out the cops and avoiding capture.
A government spy.
A wanted criminal.
The reincarnation of a jazz legend.
A patient suffering from spontaneous amnesia.
After a few minutes, the two officers crawl back into their cruiser. There is a sudden bleat of the siren, then both the siren and the lights go dead. The cruiser lurches out into the street and I watch as the taillights are eaten up by the darkness.
Maybe they went for backup, I think. Maybe I’m just that dangerous.
I creep across the street and enter my apartment building like a thief. The three creaking flights of stairs sound like a symphony in the dark hallway. I anticipate a wedge of uniformed officers standing outside my apartment door the second I empty out into the third floor hallway. But the hallway is deserted; I am alone.
Sliding my key into the lock, I enter my apartment to find I have no heat, no water, no power.
SEVENTEEN
Red-eyed, bleary-faced, bearded, a homeless man lounging at a bus stop on Franklin Street sneers at me and, I swear, says, “For all you know, you could be Jesus Christ come back from the dead.”
* * *
A mid-route stop on Eutaw Street coincides with a fistfight in broad daylight. Despite the sunshine, I am shivering in the cold as the Green Line pulls up. Some passengers get off while others get on. A tannin-faced man with headphones bops down the bus steps and swings a hard right when he hits the sidewalk. There is a black man with cornrows in an oversized Lakers jersey that turns around at this time and slams into the tannin-faced man with headphones. I watch from beneath the awning of a pawnshop as both men start shouting. The black man claws the other man’s headphones from his head and that is all the provocation the tannin-faced man needs. He throws a punch. It strikes the black man square in the jaw, rocketing his head to one side. But the black man doesn’t drop. Arms start swinging and soon it is a brawl. Other passengers create a wide berth as they stand around in a semicircle to watch the fight.
The fight does not last long. Seizing an opportunity, the tannin-faced man shoves the Lakers fan hard enough to catch his feet up on the curb. The Lakers fan crumbles to the street and rolls over on one side, dragging one knee up to his stomach and lacing his long-fingered hands around it. A second later the tannin-faced man is sprinting down Eutaw Street in the direction of the Harbor. Someone wings a chunk of concrete at him but misses by a mile. A few more people have gathered around the fallen Lakers fan, wary to get too close. The Lakers fan is spitting and cursing and, from the look of things, really hamming it up.
I notice something has fallen to the sidewalk during the fight. Unobserved, I cross over to it and squat down.
It is a bus pass. It lists all the stops and the amount required to get on at each stop. I read all the stops and the dollar amounts and, while I notice something interesting, I am not immediately sure what it means…
It costs $2.18 to get on at the Madison Street stop.
I slip the bus pass into the rear pocket of my jeans and head due west. The Green Line stops on Madison Street right outside the post office. It is where Nicole Quinland says I was hit by a bus earlier this year. And the $2.18 is the amount of money I found on the small table by the door to my apartment on that first night—the money I used to buy beer at the Samjetta that same night.
There is a connection here. I’m just not sure what it is.
On Madison, I skulk up and down the street, waiting and hoping for a sign. I wait, and my patience dwindles. After a time, I see Nicole Quinland step out of the post office. She doesn’t see me at first—only lingers on the street corner in her post office uniform an
d gray overcoat as if deciding where to run. She is a squirrelly little thing, frail like china. The style of her hair is outdated and she wears no makeup. Her figure is more suited for a twelve-year-old boy than a young woman. Her skin is pale, sallow, almost sickly—but there is something endearing about all this. Her simplicity is charming.
When she sees me, her eyes light up.
“Hello!”
“Hey,” I say. “How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
“That’s nice.”
“You’re okay?”
I shrug. “I guess I’m doing all right.”
“Would you want to have lunch with me?”
“Sure,” I say.
Across the street, we share a chicken box and I get a water while she drinks a “half and half”—a mixture of iced tea and lemonade, Baltimore’s answer to the Arnold Palmer. I tell her about the Devine Trio and she seems impressed, so I invite her to come to The Neighborhood one evening when we’re playing.
“What’s that?” I say, pausing in conversation. The sleeve of her uniform has risen up her arm and I notice a pattern of tiny brown scabs along her arm.
“It’s nothing.” She quickly tugs her sleeve down.
“They look like burns.”
“It’s nothing,” she insists. “I sometimes do it when I’m stressed out. Please don’t judge me.”
“Who am I to judge?”
“Just please don’t.”
“All right.”
We eat some more, this time in silence, the awkwardness a tangible thing between us.
Finally, just when I’m about to get up and leave, she says, “I did some research. The ones that worry me most are psychogenic amnesia and traumatic amnesia. Psychogenic, like, is a result of some psychologically traumatic event that you’re blocking out. It’s sort of similar to what they call ‘global amnesia.’ Then there’s traumatic amnesia. Traumatic—even worse—is the result of direct injury to the brain. Like that scar on the back of your head.”
“You’ve been researching my condition?”
“It’s important to get it diagnosed if it’s traumatic. Not only because there might be a way to fix it, but if it is a physical injury, then you don’t want it to get any worse.”
“I don’t think it can get any worse.”
“You never know that,” she says, her expression severe. “Never say that.”
She has a crush on me, I think. Then, on the heels of that: No, she’s just lonely.
Suddenly, I feel very sad for her. I want to pat her on the head or pinch her cheek.
“I also read up on hypnotism,” she continues.
“For what?” I say.
“To see if I can hypnotize you, maybe help you remember all the things you’re forgetting.”
I turn and look out the window of the chicken shop. In three minutes the next Green Line bus will make its stop. “I don’t know, Nicole…”
“Or,” she suggests, “if that doesn’t work, maybe I can implant memories for you. Nice ones. Give you a whole history.”
“But it wouldn’t be real,” I say, though I cannot help but smile.
“Memories are like cancer. Cancer doesn’t just vanish because it’s never diagnosed.”
This makes me think of Sister Eleanor.
“There’s also one other option,” she says. “That you can stop trying to remember the past and start living for the future.”
“Why are you so involved in this?” The words come out harsher than I intend. They appear to hurt her, too, and her eyes drop to the bits of chicken in the little cardboard box.
“I’m just trying to help you. You said you wanted help. Remember?”
“I’m sorry.” I sigh. “Yes. You’re right. The future.”
“The future,” she repeats.
I toss some money on the table and stand up.
“Hey,” she says. “Will you meet me after work? I’d like to take you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
After lunch, I walk to the old stone church by myself. It is just as I left it: mostly empty, quiet, reverent, with the motes of dust floating like angels in the rafters. I take my seat in the first pew and stare at the pulpit, waiting for Sister Eleanor to appear beside me. When she doesn’t, I drop to my knees and remember what it is like to hold the old nun’s rosary beads. I try to pray. I think, Dear Lord, what the hell am I being punished for? Why am I so lost? You are a mean bastard with a horrible sense of humor. You are an ugly, clubfooted asshole with a vendetta against the world. You are a selfish goddamn prick who steals the memories of young men. You are a brutish, angry, impotent bastard with boils on His ass. Amen.
When I open my eyes, I am still alone.
Out behind the church, I cross the courtyard to the tiny rectory. The grass is crystallized with frost and crunches under my sneakers. I knock on the door to the rectory and, after a minute, it is opened by a clean-faced young nun in a gray sweater and charcoal-colored slacks. An intricate silver cross lies against her chest.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Sister Eleanor.”
The young nun’s lips seem to tighten and she asks who I am.
“Tell her it’s Luke.”
“No,” she says, “I mean, are you a relative or friend?”
“A friend,” I say…and suddenly it all comes down on me, a cascade of realizations dawning like the plummet of a waterfall. I don’t need to hear what this woman is about to tell me. I don’t need to hear it and don’t want to hear it.
She says, “Sister Eleanor passed away two days ago. It was the cancer. I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you.”
“Oh.”
“There will be a service here tomorrow at noon, if you’d like to come.”
“Oh.”
“She’ll be put to rest at Greenmount Cemetery following the service. That’s the cemetery out on North Avenue, in case you aren’t familiar.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”
The sky is a twist of colored ribbons—of reds, oranges, yellows, pinks—when I meet Nicole outside the post office again. Together, mostly in silence, we walk. The cold has settled permanently into my bones; I fear no amount of heat, save for being jettisoned into the sun, will warm me. When she finally speaks, it is as if she has been thinking about her words the entire time, but says them in a way that makes them sound spontaneous.
“Christmas is coming,” she says.
“True.”
A very long silence follows this and, like a fool, it takes me a while to realize what she is getting at.
“Would you like to spend Christmas Eve together?” I say, raising one eyebrow.
“Just as friends,” she says very quickly.
I smile. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-two. What about you?”
“I have no clue.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say…early thirties.”
“Don’t you have plans for Christmas? Family?”
“My folks aren’t around.”
“What about a boyfriend?”
She is quiet for too long; I can tell she is embarrassed.
“Okay,” I say before she feels forced to answer. “It’s a date then.”
“Walters Art Museum,” she says. “They have a nice celebration on Christmas Eve.”
Somewhere between Cathedral and Monument, Nicole seeks out a narrow stone building with a bronze plaque by the door. Across the street and farther down I can see the building for the Maryland Historical Society. How ironic that I, a man with no history, am here, looking at this building. Lately, it seems my life is a series of ironies. I follow her into the building, which is dark and smells vaguely of antiseptic, and she grabs my hand and leads me up a short flight of stairs. In the distance I hear music. We pass a bulletin board covered in notices and our shadows, passing through panels of sunlight, walk ahead of us.
“Where are we going
?” I say, my voice a whisper. For whatever reason, I feel it is important to whisper here.
Nicole does not answer.
We enter an auditorium where a young child plays Chopin on a piano at the center of the stage. The child, a little boy, is no more than six years old, yet he plays with the astuteness of a seasoned professional. Hearing him, a chill breaks out along my body. I drop into one of the many seats that are empty, high in the auditorium, and Nicole sits silently beside me. There are a few people down by the stage, watching and not making a sound. I watch the boy and something tugs hard at me.
“What you need,” Nicole whispers, leaning close to me, “is to stop searching for your old memories, if just for a moment, and let yourself create a new one.”
The boy concludes the piece, the final notes dying like a suicide all around us.
EIGHTEEN
Walking up the stairs, I am accosted by two police officers standing outside my apartment. They are the same officers that were waiting for me outside the building the other night. I do not recognize them but, rather, it is a feeling of certainty that overtakes me and tells me I’m right.
“Mr. Howard?” says one officer—decidedly the younger of the two. He is looking at a slip of paper. “This your apartment here?”
“That’s him,” says the other officer. He is older, harder, in some fashion of boredom. “Looks like him.”
“Here.” The first officer jabs the little slip of paper at my chest. I happen to see it is not a slip of paper at all but a driver’s license. With my face on it. “Convenience store clerk turned it in. Found it in the back alley behind his store, out by the trash. Place over on Lexington, the one with the inflatable milkshake on the roof.”
“Guess I must have dropped it,” I say.
“You’re required to report it missing, you know,” the bored older cop informs me.
I take the license. “Yes, sorry.”
“It’s been weeks now.” The bored older cop is relentless.