Memory (Hard Case Crime)

by Donald E. Westlake

  This was Mrs. Arndt, and the second he saw her he recognized her; much more than he had recognized Benny or the girl in the outer office. He recognized Mrs. Arndt the way he had, until now, only recognized places. Looking at her, it seemed to him he knew her as well as he had known his apartment when he’d first walked into it.

  She was a stocky middle-aged woman of brassy features, sitting behind a swirling paper-crowded desk. A turquoise hat was on her head, and a long filter cigarette dangled from a corner of her mouth. Her spectacles were horn-rimmed and sequined, designed like a cat-mask, with a thin gold chain draped from the wings down around the back of her neck. The rest of her clothing was dominated by a huge ruffle of white lace at her throat. She said, “Honey! Come in, sweets, come in! What have you been doing to yourself, you’ve lost pounds.”

  “Have I?” But he wasn’t really paying attention to the words yet. He was recognizing everything, in a rush, her voice and face, her taste in clothing and accessories, her office, her mannerisms. There suddenly popped into his mind the knowledge he was supposed to call her Helen, not Mrs. Arndt.

  She was saying, “Sit down, baby, sit down, tell me all about yourself. The last I heard, that little snotnose Gerber told me you were dropped from the troupe, in a hospital somewhere at the edge of the world, and the details were so extremely delicate I would have to wait to hear them from your own lips. Honey, you didn’t pick up a dose from one of those cornfed beauties, did you?”

  There were too many words coming at him all at once. He recognized and remembered the voice, but what she was saying made no sense to him at all. Gerber? And a hospital? The troupe? None of it meant anything to him.

  He was going to have to ask questions, and in order to do that he was going to have to tell her the truth. But somehow the idea, at last faced, and personified in this woman, wasn’t so frightening any more. He sat on the edge of the chair facing her desk, and when she finished speaking he said, “I had an accident.”

  She let him get no farther. An exaggerated expression of concern distorted her face and she leaned forward, elbows mashing papers on the desk. “Honey, you look ghastly, do you know that? What on earth happened to you? Tell me all.”

  He spread his hands and shook his head. “I don’t know very much. I guess I had some kind of accident or something, you said I was in the hospital.”

  “That’s what I was told, honey.”

  “Well, whatever it was, it did something to my memory. I don’t remember things anymore. Maybe it’s a kind of amnesia, I don’t know.”

  “Amnesia? In real life? Not total amnesia, surely.”

  “Everything in my past is just fuzzy, that’s all. I don’t know how to explain it exactly.”

  “You remembered me, honey. Here you are.” She said it as though explaining something that was not only obvious, but was also the solution to all his problems.

  “I remember you now,” he said. “Your face and your voice. But I don’t remember any other time I ever talked to you. And I didn’t come here because I remembered you, but because I found your name on my income tax forms and in my phone book.”

  “Good heavens. I don’t know if I ought to be insulted or compassionate. Everything is gone?”

  “Just clouded over.”

  “You’ve been exposed to the Shadow, poor lamb. Never mind, it was just an allusion. How long have you been back in town?”

  “Two days.”

  “But good heavens, sweetie, all this must have happened months ago! Where in the world have you been all this time? Just wandering, dazed and alone, not even knowing your own name?”

  “I was working in a place. I didn’t have much money, so I had to get a job and save up for a bus ticket.”

  “But honey, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you call me? You could have called collect, you know that. I would have wired you money instanter.”

  “I didn’t remember,” he said.

  “Oh, dear.” A slow surprise was coming over her features. “Oh, for the love of God. You just didn’t remember anybody, did you?”

  “Not clear enough.”

  “Oh, honey, there are just ramifications and ramifications of this thing, aren’t there? Honeybunch, how can I get you work? I mean, if you can’t memorize lines, baby, you can’t act.”

  Cole frowned. Was he going to act, to be an actor? If that was what he’d been and what he was supposed to be, then he would. Some day Mrs. Malloy would switch on the television set, and there he’d be, playing a part in a soap opera.

  That hadn’t occurred to him before. Of course he would act, that was a vital part of being Paul Cole. Even though the prospect was inconceivable to him right now, even though he had no idea of how to be an actor or how he had ever been an actor, he still knew he would one day soon be acting again.

  The phonograph records, and the friends like Benny, and the books, and the apartment, all were only tassels and fringes at the perimeter of Paul Cole, the trappings around the outer edge. But acting, that was the core.

  But now Helen Arndt had said if his memory was bad he couldn’t act. He frowned, and shook his head, and said, “I think it’s going to get better. It ought to get better.”

  “It has to, sweetie. Maybe I can get you a job as an extra here and there, you know the sort of thing you used to do...Or do you? No, I see you don’t. It’s all gone, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  Her eyes were bright, and she studied him now with a strange faraway smile on her face. “Do you know what you are, honey?” she asked. “You’re a virgin all over again. Aren’t you? Do you remember any of your women? I bet you don’t.”

  Her words made him think of Edna, back in the town, but he knew Edna wasn’t what Helen Arndt meant, because he had never gone to bed with Edna. Had he? No, he hadn’t. For the rest, she was right, and he nodded reluctantly, feeling the topic was wrong under these circumstances.

  “I knew I was right,” she said. Her gaze roamed him, and the faraway smile was fixed on her face. “You’re a brand new virgin, that’s what you are. Some girl’s going to have to teach you everything all over again.”

  She was making him uncomfortable, and he couldn’t remember why he’d come here in the first place. He knew he hadn’t intended to see his agent or anyone else until he was in better shape, but something had made it necessary...

  She was snapping her fingers at him, in a humorous manner, and saying, “Hello? Are you there?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was thinking about something else.”

  “What I asked you,” she said, “was your financial condition. How are you fixed at the moment?”

  Then he remembered. “Oh,” he said. “I’m going to collect unemployment insurance.”

  “Good. Got a little cash to carry you in the meantime?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you been to see a doctor here in town?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, you certainly should. Here, let me give you my doctor’s name and address.” She rummaged amid the papers on her desk, and found a memo pad and a wickedly sharpened pencil. As she wrote she said, “Would you like me to call him now, make an appointment for you?”

  “Not now. I don’t think so, thank you.”

  She paused in her writing and studied him again, this time critically. “You’re altogether different,” she said. “Do you know that?”

  “I suppose I am, yes.”

  “Much quieter, much less sure of yourself. You were always a brash self-confident boy. You knew you had talent, you knew you had looks, and you knew you had a future. I don’t know whether I like you better this way or not.” She shrugged, and suddenly smiled meaninglessly, and finished writing the doctor’s address. She ripped the top sheet off and extended it to him, saying, “You call him now, you hear me? I’ll be in touch with him, and if you don’t go see him I’ll know about it.”

  He took the paper and stored it carefully in his pocket. “I’ll call him,
” he said, not sure yet whether he would or not. He felt a reluctance to rely on anyone but himself, but at the same time he longed for outside help.

  “You’re living alone, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you’re eating properly,” she said. “Don’t eat at home, will you do that for me, honey? Eat in restaurants.”

  He shrugged, not seeing the point. “All right,” he said, to be polite.

  “If you’re broke any time, I can always feed you. Do you have my home address? Do you remember it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  So she wrote again on the memo pad, and when she handed him this second slip of paper there was a sad humor on her face. “Everything’s gone, isn’t it?” she said. “Honey, you’re depressing the hell out of me, do you know that? No, never mind. Was there anything special you wanted? I’ll see what I can do for jobs for you. Extras or walk-on, that’s about it until your memory comes back. Is there anything else?”

  “There was something...” Lowering his head, he massaged his brow, trying to get it back again, and in this position the payment book in his inside coat pocket pressed against his chest, causing him to remember. “I’ve got it,” he said. “I want to collect unemployment insurance, but they want to know about my employment for the last year, and I don’t know it.”

  “Oh, that’s easy enough. Just a sec.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button, then said, “Cindy, bring me Paul Cole’s folder, will you? That’s a good girl.” She hung up, and smiled brilliantly at Cole again. “Won’t take long at all,” she said.

  Talking to himself as much as to her, he said, “I don’t know about the other job, either. I worked in a tannery, to get the money to come home. I don’t remember the name of it, or exactly how long I worked there.”

  “Honey, honey, you’re just a babe in the woods. Don’t you say a word about that tannery, not in the unemployment insurance office. You’re an actor, sweetie, and you don’t tell them about any kind of job but acting jobs. Because it’s only an acting job you’ll take, do you see what I mean? If you mention any sort of factory work, they’ll try to put you to work in a factory the very first thing.”

  “Oh.” The near-miss frightened him; it hadn’t occurred to him to hide his tannery job.

  She said, “You left your last employment because you fell ill, but now you’re available for employment again. Can you remember that, sweetie? Want me to write it out for you?”

  “No, I’ll remember it.”

  “And I’ll back you up on it,” she said. “Just tell them you’ve been to your agent again, and I’m out looking for work for you. And you’re completely healthy, baby, remember that. If they ask you if you’re still sick at all, you tell them no.”

  “All right.”

  The red-haired girl brought in the folder then, put it on the messy desk, and smiled and winked at Cole on the way out. Cole gave her a weak smile in return.

  When he left five minutes later, he had a list of his acting jobs for the last year, and he had promised to call Helen Arndt to tell her if he could go to her place for dinner Friday night.

  Now he had exposed himself to someone from his past, and it surprised him how much relief he had felt in doing it. Still, he wasn’t sure it had been the best thing to do; something dark and sly had opened behind Helen Arndt’s eyes after he’d told her, when she was talking about him being a virgin again. His original plan might have been best all along; hide from the old friends, the old ties, and if forced into contact with them avoid letting them learn the truth.

  He walked crosstown through the rain to the unemployment insurance office.

  18

  The voice said, “Look at this. This is your life.”

  Hands were holding out to him a square of shiny metal, very thin and about a foot square. He said, “I never saw it before,” but in his heart he knew he had seen it somewhere.

  The voice said, “You must remember, or you will die.”

  “But I can’t remember,” he said. The square of metal began to grow, getting larger and larger but never any thicker, always staying just as thin, getting larger and larger till it was a mammoth wall, stretching away on either side to infinity and looming up into incredible heights of darkness over his head.

  The voice said, “If you don’t remember, you’ll never get on the other side.”

  As the huge square of metal began very slowly to topple over on him, he cowered, and then he turned and tried to run away, but the slab of metal was too huge, it was miles long and toppling so slowly over onto him, he couldn’t even run halfway to safety before it would land on him. He ran and screamed, and ran and screamed, and the slab of metal lowered with a grinding rushing noise like horses’ hoofs.

  He sat up in bed, terrified, gasping for breath. The sheets and blankets were twined around his legs, imprisoning him. He kicked himself free, as though life itself depended on his speed now, and lunged up onto hands and knees on the disheveled bed, looking wildly around. But even as he was doing all this, the terror was fading, and the dream was fading with it.

  When he lifted his hands to rub his face, he saw that they were shaking. He looked around, disoriented for a second, and then found the night table, containing his cigarettes. He crawled across the bed, got a harsh-tasting cigarette going, and then, too late, tried to remember the dream. He frowned, furrowing his forehead, but couldn’t remember a single image of it, though he had the feeling one of the characters in it had been the girl back in that town. After a minute the name came to him: Edna. He thought Edna had had something to do with the dream.

  “What am I dreaming about her for?” He said it with a kind of impatient irritation, not only because of the fact, but because he was talking to himself out loud again, a habit he was trying with no success to break.

  He sat up in bed, frowning and smoking, trying to ignore the uneasiness that still remained with him even though the details of the dream had vanished, and trying also to keep from vocalizing his thoughts. The electric clock he’d bought the day before yesterday—forgetting to read all the notes strewn around the room before going to bed at night, he would also forget to wind the clock—read twenty minutes past ten, which meant he had slept too long. His head was thick, and his nerves stayed jumpy from the terror with which he’d awakened.

  Hunger pangs forced him to put out the half-smoked cigarette and get up from the bed. He padded nude to the living room, where he put water on for coffee, and thence into the bathroom for his morning toilet. He was brushing his teeth when the kettle started whistling, and he walked out with the toothbrush stuck at an angle into his mouth. He made the coffee, and then went back and finished in the bathroom.

  The mornings were developing forms of habit now, and what bothered him was that these habits, this routine that was developing, might differ in significant respects from whatever his routine had been here in the old days. Any new habit that was a departure from old habits would only interfere with his struggle to return to that old self. Still, routines and habits developed naturally, and there was nothing he could do about them.

  For instance. He always started the record player going immediately after coming out of the bathroom, and this was only natural. He was trying to fill himself with those records, readapt himself to the person who had bought those records, so the earlier in the day he started listening to them the better. So he started them playing right after he came out of the bathroom, then carried his cup of instant coffee into the bedroom and got dressed.

  Normally, the coffee was finished by the time he was dressed, and next he would go carefully around the room, reading all the notes, and checking off one more day on the desk calendar. Then he would go back to the living room and put on the bacon. Bacon and scrambled eggs, toast, and a second cup of coffee, this was his inevitable breakfast, every morning.

  But this morning his pattern was disrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

  He looked at the phone with
dislike. It had only rung twice before, both times being Helen Arndt inviting him to her apartment for dinner. Something dark and greedy in her manner repelled him, and he made up excuses both times.

  If this were her again, what would he say this time? Not yet knowing, and trying already to find a sensible-sounding excuse, he picked up the phone and said hello.

  It wasn’t Helen Arndt. A male voice said, “Merry Christmas, you son of a bitch. Why didn’t you call?”

  Oh, God. A friend. But the voice meant nothing to him, rang no bells at all. He said, noncommittally, “Hello.”

  “Don’t you know who this is, you silly bastard?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sorry...”

  “It’s Nick, you clown. Where the hell you been keeping yourself?”

  Nick. He got an image, a piece of paper and written on it NICK ↔ CARICATURE. His mind slithered off, away from the problem of who is Nick, wasting itself on the problem of What is that piece of paper, and he said, “Oh. Hi. I’ve just been around, I guess. Around the apartment.”

  “You know who’s pissed off at you, you silly bastard? Benny is, that’s who. That’s the only way I knew you were back, I heard him pissing and moaning.”

  “Oh, yeah? Because I made him leave here, I guess.”

  “Threw him out in the street, the son of a bitch. The best thing that ever happened to him. What are you doing?”

  “Eating breakfast.”

  “You gonna be in today?”

  Cole knew what the question meant. This stranger/friend, this Nick, wanted to come over and see him. He thought desperately for a way out, and his eye fell on the unemployment insurance payment book on his desk. He said, “No, I’ve got to go up to the unemployment insurance office.”

  “On Christmas Day? You gone loco, you silly bastard?”

  “Oh. I forgot. It—it must be tomorrow.”

  “What’d I, wake you up?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, look alert. Today’s Thursday, clown, the twenty-fifth day of December. If you’ll hark a minute, you’ll hear the herald angels singing. Hear them?”