Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

  There wasn’t really enough room for Chaos beside Edie on the couch, and at dawn he crept upstairs to sleep on the double bed beside Melinda. But he woke alone, to sounds from the kitchen. He went downstairs and found them—Edie and Ray and Dave and Melinda—eating breakfast without him. Edie quickly got up, ladled out another bowl of oatmeal, and put it in front of an empty chair at the table. Chaos sat down. Edie smiled at him, nervously, and Melinda glared.

  After breakfast Ray and Dave invited Melinda outside. Edie stood at the sink, washing dishes.

  “There isn’t enough in the house to eat,” she said fretfully, her back to him. “Now, I mean, with you and Melinda—”

  She dropped a plate, which shattered on the tile floor, and began hurriedly searching for a broom, but couldn’t seem to find one. “People leave houses in the worst shape . . .”

  He saw that she was waiting for some sign from him. So he went to her, and gently placed his hand on the small of her back. It was the only thing that didn’t feel presumptuous or unnatural. She was stilled by the touch, the broken plate at their feet now irrelevant.

  “Last night was good for me,” she said, surprising him with the directness.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “I forgot about this place, about Ian and all his luck nonsense.”

  “Good.” He wasn’t sure he should say that it was good for him for the opposite reason, because it made him remember. Chaos couldn’t actually recall having sex with a real woman before. Even his fantasies had been pretty vague, until the series of dreams about Gwen. Now there was suddenly this.

  He wasn’t getting Edie and Gwen mixed up, he told himself. But maybe the dreams about Gwen had helped him to want Edie, to recall what it was to be with a woman. He was afraid of analyzing it further. Edie might see that he was confused and draw away.

  He didn’t want that.

  They all piled into her car and rode into town, to the Vacaville Mall. The cars here were the old kind, that ran on gas, like back in Wyoming. The buildings here, too, suggested an intact version of the ruined townscapes back in Little America and Hatfork. Chaos didn’t know what this meant. He kept feeling that somehow, intending to travel across land, he’d traveled through time instead.

  The mall featured two distinct populations. The adults, who milled nervously, in couples or alone, greeting one another in clipped exchanges or not at all. And the kids, who ran and laughed and talked together, apparently in another world. Ray and Dave seemed to know anyone roughly their size. Melinda scampered after them, shadowing their conversations, sticking out her tongue when introduced, sticking out her tongue if challenged about her fur. Edie tried to keep them close at first, then compromised by making Ray agree to bring them all back to the car later. That decided, the three children disappeared.

  “See these stores?” asked Edie once they were alone. She pointed out a drugstore, a magazine stand, a barbershop, and a hardware store. “I’ve worked in them all.”

  She seemed pleased to have this to point out to him. He didn’t ask why she’d worked at so many places, or what her job was now.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever worked in a store,” he said instead.

  “That must be strange,” she murmured.

  Chaos followed her into the supermarket, and pushed the cart as she gathered up a mound of supplies. None of the products had familiar names. Chaos picked up a box of cereal and showed it to Edie.

  “Who’s that?” he said, pointing. It was a face he vaguely recognized.

  “Sandra Turfington, remember? She was on television last night.”

  “She makes cereal?”

  “All the brands are endorsed by government stars.”

  A tune was playing, something arranged for strings, that he thought he remembered.

  He asked Edie, and her odd, dismissive reply was “Muzak.”

  They took the groceries out to her car and loaded them into the trunk. The parking lot was full of kids, but not Ray and Dave and Melinda.

  “There’s no hurry,” Chaos suggested.

  “I know where they’ll be,” said Edie. “We might as well go round them up.”

  He followed. It was absurdly easy to tag along with her, to forget that they hadn’t been doing this for years. It was almost a version of the Kellogg effect, he thought. Almost but not quite.

  The kids were sitting together paging through comic books at a shallow storefront full of candy and magazines. The cover stories were all about the television and the government, even when they were versions of magazines like Time and Rolling Stone and Playboy, which Chaos knew from before. Nothing referred to anything outside Vacaville. Ray tugged on his mother’s sleeve and pointed at what Dave was reading: a violent cartoon adventure starring Ian Cooley.

  “I told you not to give him that,” she said. “You should know better, Ray. You’re the older one.” She plucked the magazine away from Dave.

  “Can I see that for a minute?” said Chaos.

  Edie shot him a look.

  “Never mind.”

  They drove home. Melinda sat in the backseat with Ray and Dave, pontificating, suddenly in her element. She told them about Hatfork and her former life in the desert; she explained how the television shows they liked were stupid because they weren’t real; she told them how things would be different “when they grew up.”

  The boys had relaxed her, Chaos saw. With them she could stop trying to prove she was an adult. Yet for all her expansiveness she still seemed resentful towards him. She hadn’t spoken to him directly, hadn’t met his eye, since the night before.

  After they unloaded the groceries and packed them into the kitchen, Edie went upstairs and the boys switched on the television. Chaos got Melinda alone for a minute.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “You don’t like me being with her?”

  “I don’t mind that,” she said, her expression sardonic. “It’s just you keep on dreamin’ about that other one. That’s what I don’t like.”

  This said, she turned and skipped into the living room and joined the boys at the television.

  Chaos still found it hard to believe he was projecting the dreams. Was he really like Kellogg? Would he go on helplessly broadcasting his dreams wherever he went?

  Here in Vacaville he had managed to hold onto his previous identity, his memories of Hatfork and the trip west. He felt a certain pride in that. He wanted to believe he was growing stronger, building up an immunity to local effects, and Vacaville obviously had its share of changes. Chaos didn’t remember much, but he knew people shouldn’t have to move twice a week and work a different job every day. Or have their luck tested.

  On the other hand, the effect was milder here. The Vacaville equivalents to Kellogg and Elaine—the government stars—lived in the media instead of invading dreams. And you could always turn the television off. So maybe his ability to hold onto his old self was just a part of local conditions.

  Edie came back downstairs. “You want to meet Gerald?” she asked.

  “Well, sure . . .”

  “I have to drop the boys off,” she said. “For the weekend. You don’t have to come.”

  “No, I’d like to. It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “Melinda will miss them.”

  She smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “Gerald lives in the Eastman-Merrill building,” explained Edie during the drive. “He used to work there, before. When we separated, he had a kind of breakdown and went and hid there. He thought he could go back to the way it was before, or something. Cooley helped get him special permission to live there all the time. Otherwise Gerald would have had to go to a bad luck camp.”

  “What was it Cooley was saying about an elevator?” Chaos asked.

  “Well, of course Gerald still feels the urge to move every Wednesday and Saturday. But he’s afraid to leave the Eastman-Merrill building. So he keeps his bed and clothes and stuff in the elevator—”

  “On Movin
g Day he changes floors,” said Ray from the backseat.

  Edie nodded, looking glum.

  “It’s fun,” added Dave hopefully.

  The Eastman-Merrill building was an abandoned office block in the middle of Vacaville’s old downtown section. The neighborhood consisted of boarded-up storefronts, everything the mall had put out of business. Compared to the residential areas it was a ghost town. Edie had the key to a side door, and she led them inside, through the big empty lobby to the elevator. Ray ran forward and pressed the button marked UP.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a thin, pale man, Edie’s age but with graying hair, sitting upright in a bed in the elevator, reading. He wore pajamas and heavy black wingtip shoes, and he had an array of pencils and toothbrushes sticking out of the pocket of his pajama shirt. The elevator was filled with ramshackle shelving, and the shelves were loaded with clothes, books, and empty bottles and cans.

  “Gerald, this is Chaos and Melinda. Friends of mine.”

  “Hello,” said Gerald amiably. “Do I remember you?”

  “They’re visiting,” said Edie.

  “Oh.” Gerald smiled mildly. “From?”

  Chaos opened his mouth to speak, but Edie quickly said, “Back east.”

  “Well. Nice, nice. I’d offer you a drink—”

  The boys were already scrambling up onto their father’s bed. The space that remained for standing was hopelessly narrow.

  “We’re not staying long,” said Edie. The bag of groceries she’d brought she put onto the end of the bed. The elevator door started to close, but she nudged it back by pressing the safety bar.

  “I saw Mr. Cooley,” said Gerald. “He came to see how I was doing. We talked about the boys.”

  “Yes?” said Edie impatiently.

  “He’s very worried about you, Edie. He says that you’re in trouble with your luck . . .”

  “He’s my trouble,” said Edie.

  “I think he cares for you,” said Gerald. “He’s certainly interested in the boys.”

  “I know,” said Edie. “Listen, Gerald, I’ll see you on Sunday. Have a good time.”

  “Yes, of course.” Gerald’s eyes seemed to mist over. “Edie, are you going to marry Mr. Cooley?”

  “No, Gerald.”

  “I’m not saying I would object,” said Gerald quickly. “I wouldn’t want you to think that.”

  “No, Gerald. But I wouldn’t anyway. Goodbye.”

  “He’s a very important man,” said Gerald. “He’s done quite a bit for you, hasn’t he?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Goodbye, Gerald.”

  “Edie—”

  “Yes?”

  “I haven’t gotten any mail?”

  “No.”

  From the way she said it Chaos suspected there hadn’t been any mail delivered in Vacaville for a long time.

  “Of course,” said Gerald vaguely. “Well . . .” He waved his hand. The boys waved too. Edie let the elevator door close.

  “God, he makes me angry,” she said the minute they were back out on the street. She clattered ahead of them, towards the car.

  “He’s weird,” said Melinda sympathetically. “That’s all.” She ran up and took Edie’s hand, as though to fill the gap left by the boys. “There’s a lot of weird people.”

  Chaos lagged behind. He got into the passenger seat without saying anything. Gerald and his elevator had made him think, for the first time since coming to Vacaville, of his candlelit projection booth back in Hatfork. His little world. Also, he was jealous of Cooley. He didn’t understand what there was between Edie and the government man, but he knew enough to feel jealous. They drove back to the house in silence.

  That evening nothing went right. Melinda was bored without the boys. When she switched on the television, Chaos tried to watch, but it wasn’t the same without Ray’s running commentary, Dave’s wide-eyed engagement. Edie and he sat side by side on the couch, but he felt a million miles away, separated from her by the muddle of his jealousy and his shame about the dream of Gwen. Edie seemed tense, as though worrying over where Chaos would be sleeping tonight.

  Chaos wanted time with her alone.

  What he got instead was an unexpected visit from Cooley.

  “I’m goin’ upstairs,” said Melinda, the minute Cooley walked into the living room.

  “Can’t you give me a break?” asked Edie.

  “How’s this for a break?” said Cooley, taking off his jacket and laying it across the back of the couch, their couch. “I came here to talk to Chaos.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like seeing you tonight,” she said. “You weren’t invited.”

  “Come on, Edie.” His voice was soft. “You know I don’t need an invitation. Why make me say it?”

  “You’re the one who likes to pretend you’re my friend said Edie bitterly.

  Cooley looked pained or compromised, but only for a moment. He turned to Chaos. “It’s my job to keep track of Edie’s progress, whether she wants to admit it or not.” He sighed. “And that makes it my responsibility to try and help you understand what you’re getting into here.”

  “Getting into—” Edie began.

  “Shacking up with Edie here,” said Cooley, ignoring her. “I don’t know where you come from, but you aren’t anybody’s cousin. If you want to get set up in Vacaville, we can talk about that. But you’re picking one ass-backwards way of getting started.”

  “He’s going to tell you that bad luck is catching,” said Edie in a rush, as though she could take Cooley’s point away from him by stating it first. “He’ll try to scare you. Everything he says is calculated to convince you you’re in mortal danger just by being in the same house with me. It’s meant to divide us.”

  “Edie,” said Cooley warningly.

  “I need a drink,” Edie announced. “Anyone else?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Cooley, his cops-and-robbers manner absurdly vanished. Chaos could see that all the man wanted was to be welcome in this house.

  “A beer,” echoed Chaos. “Sure.”

  “Let’s sit down,” said Cooley. He sat on the couch. Edie went into the kitchen. “I don’t know how much you know about Edie’s situation, Chaos, but it’s not good. She scored in the lowest percentile—which is to say, really, that our tests don’t even apply. We can’t say just how bad your friend’s luck actually is, only that eighty-five percent of the folks who score as low as she did end up in one of our resettlement centers. Not because we force them to go, which is what she’s going to tell you in a minute. But because they run out of options.”

  Edie came in and handed them beer, in glasses. Before, she’d given it to Chaos in the bottle. Was she trying to impress Cooley? A bad sign.

  Cooley sipped his beer, then went on. “What’s more, the mess they make on their way down costs this county millions each year in damages, lost wages, that sort of thing. Which is why we have to track them.”

  “You drive people into the camps,” said Edie fiercely, “and then you call it a statistic.” She turned to Chaos. “Look what he’s doing. Ever since I took the test, he’s been hounding me. And he admits himself that they don’t even know what the results mean!”

  “It’s a scientific test,” said Cooley, smiling. “It tells us what we need to know about your probable future.”

  “You’re making up my future as you go along,” she said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You talk about luck, but you’re the worst thing that’s happened to me.”

  “You know that’s not true, Edie.”

  “He wants me to feel sorry for Gerald,” said Edie. “Gerald’s craziness is supposed to be the fault of my bad luck.”

  “Edie’s got the worst strain of bad luck,” Cooley explained. “Fortunately it’s fairly rare. She exposes the latency in the people around her, while maintaining a reasonable level of function for herself. She’s always at the eye of the storm.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Edie sarcastically, “I haven’t bee
n able to bring down any bad luck on Ian here. Yet.”

  Chaos sipped his beer and considered. There was a familiarity between them, as though their struggle was nothing more than a game. Flirting. Or was he failing to take it seriously enough? This is their world, he reminded himself.

  “Okay,” said Cooley. “Let’s forget about Edie’s luck for the moment. Let’s talk about yours.”

  “Mine?” said Chaos.

  “Yeah. Have you thought about coming in for the test? Sooner the better.”

  “I don’t have luck,” said Chaos. “Good or bad. I just go where I go, do what I do. No luck involved.”

  Cooley laughed. “Charming. Except science now tells us that luck is there whether you acknowledge it or not. And I’m afraid in your case I see the signs of a history of bad luck. Not even a latency so much as a full-blown case going completely ignored for lack of context.”

  No, thought Chaos. I’m not surrendering to the local crap this easy.

  Cooley went on. “I wonder whether you can afford to aggravate it the way you are by cozying up with Edie here.”

  “Excuse me,” said Edie, standing. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “What do you know about my history?” said Chaos.

  “Well, let’s see.” Cooley’s smile was enormous. “First of all there’s that car you left on the highway. Cool car, incidentally; where’d you come by it? Too bad about the way it stopped working, though. Bit of bad luck there, I’d say, losing a car like that, a scientific wonder. Then there’s that poor girl of yours; that’s quite a disfiguring condition, though I’d say she’s bearing up pretty well under the circumstances. And then there’s your name. Chaos. That’s not your real name, is it?”