by Ann Pino
Antoine jerked his bag away and went to wait for Rafa outside.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Seriously, bro, he was trying to steal your book?” Rafa dunked a piece of bread in herbed olive oil and popped it in his mouth. They had found a midtown Italian restaurant that was rumored to still be run by people who remembered how to cook. “You’re sure he wasn’t just an amnesiac who thought it was his own satchel? Or maybe he was after one of those Sudoku puzzles you keep in there. Good brain strengtheners.”
Antoine suppressed a sigh of annoyance. For a friend, Rafa could be damn annoying at times. “I’m not kidding around. Dymphna gave me this book like it was some kind of weird contraband. A few minutes later, there was this guy trying to steal it.”
“What is it about this book that’s so interesting?”
“I’m not sure. She said to wait until I get home to look at it, and after what happened at the library I’m not taking any chances.”
Rafa gave a little shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen if you look at it here? A waiter might spill soup on it?” At the look on Antoine’s face, he added, “Okay, whatever. A weird rare book makes for a good story, at any rate. You’re a literary Indiana Jones.”
At that moment the waiter came with their salads. Everett Blair was very particular that its prompters eat fresh fruit or vegetables at every meal. Antoine wasn’t much of a salad guy, but it was a simple rule to comply with. While he ate, he listened to Rafa recount his morning in the Texas Medical Center.
Antoine nodded and said all the right things, but his mind was elsewhere. Maybe Rafa had a point and the incident with the dropped cell phone was just an innocent misunderstanding. If the book were truly an important artifact of some sort, why would Dymphna have let him take it off the premises? But there was something strange about her behavior and it wasn’t just about the book and her customer’s inability to remember an old amusement park. Something bigger was going on, but instead of telling Antoine outright, she was going to make him figure it out on his own.
By the time their entrees arrived, Rafa had gone from describing the memory foibles of a high-ranking administrator at the Baylor College of Medicine to telling about a pretty radiologist he had chatted up in Methodist hospital’s parking garage. Antoine found Rafa’s love life a sore subject since he himself had little interest in dating after the disaster with Naomi and a few half-hearted attempts at meeting local women. Fellow prompters remembered too much and everyone else remembered too little. What was the point of developing attachments when any woman he fell in love with was doomed to forget him? Rafa had no such compunctions, though.
“How do you keep running into these women?” Antoine asked. “I was in a parking garage today too, and saw only a few middle-aged men in suits.”
“It’s all in the vibe, bro. You gotta send out that call.”
“I think I’ll wait until the plague is under control. I deal with enough people whose minds are like Swiss cheese. I don’t need one in my bed, too.”
“So they forget your name once in a while.” Rafa gave an elaborate shrug and speared the last piece of tilapia off his plate. “I forget their names too, and I’ve still got all my brain cells working.”
“Fair enough, if that’s the kind of relationship you’re looking for.”
“What other kind can a guy have these days? It beats being celibate, and it’s not like I’m taking advantage or anything. They like me just fine when we’re together, and it’s not my fault they forget who I am later on.” Rafa returned to the topic of his radiologist, which lasted until their meal was over, then he fumbled in his wallet and pulled out a credit card. “Allow me, amigo.”
“You’re too generous.”
They both laughed. The card, like nearly everything else in their lives, was owned by Everett Blair.
* * * *
Rafa dropped him off at his car where Antoine checked the address for his next appointment and then headed into downtown traffic and onto Allen Parkway, which was a straight shot into the upscale River Oaks neighborhood. This neighborhood, dating to the 1920s, was one of the city’s richest and oldest, but although Antoine felt these homes lacked the gravitas of the Federal and Greek Revival mansions of Charleston, he liked the way they faced the street with broad welcoming lawns and only rarely a gate. Back home, the domiciles of Charleston’s old guard faced away from the public, disdaining a stranger’s approach, their high walls suggesting secrets. Houstonians with something to hide did it out in the open, behind a friendly smile.
The Tennenbaum mansion was a sprawling whitewashed affair modeled after a 1930s architect’s vision of what a Provence palace might look like if it had been designed for a land of kudzu and hurricanes. He parked in the circle in front of the house and was let in by a stern white-haired woman with a slight Spanish accent who directed Antoine to a formal living room decorated in black and white, with furniture so modern as to be devoid of nearly all angles. Antoine sat on the edge of a curved sofa and tried to relax as the servant went to see if Mrs. Tennenbaum was ready to see him.
Although he had learned not to be intimidated by signs of excessive privilege, Antoine still found these first meetings with a new client a little trying. Back home in Charleston, not only was he solidly middle class, but his ethnicity represented an additional subtle, but quite real barrier to mingling as an equal with the elite. Here at the Tennenbaums’ his anxiety was heightened by the knowledge that serving as Rory’s prompter broke one of Everett Blair’s primary rules about assignments. Unless the client or prompter was known to be gay, pairings were supposed to be of the same gender so as to limit possible suspicions of impropriety. The persons in need of prompting were often confused and easily led, which along with the possibility of amnesia infection, was one of the more dangerous aspects of the job. It only took one jealous spouse or a memory-jumbled client to put a prompter in handcuffs, heading downtown and with a lot of explaining to do.
At the sound of a woman’s voice, Antoine got to his feet. With any luck, Rory would be old – too old for him to have any worries about this assignment.
Antoine wasn’t lucky. The woman who stepped into the room was lithe, blonde and although middle-aged, she had the bank account to make sure the years didn’t show on her face except for a certain leanness in her sculpted cheekbones. She approached Antoine on legs toned from years of pilates and spin workouts with her personal trainer, and instead of shaking his hand, squeezed it in a familiar way, as if they were long-time friends.
“I’m so glad you could make it, after all.” She flashed a brilliantly bleached smile. “Sylvia said my appointment might be cancelled.” By now the housekeeper had moved silently into the room, keeping an eye on her employer. Rory turned the high-watt smile on her. “See, I still remember things.”
Sylvia didn’t answer and met Antoine’s eyes with a steely look that brooked no nonsense.
Antoine knew the look. Clearly Rory didn’t remember Haley, and he wasn’t to mention her. He turned back to Rory with his most polite manner. “It was a small matter that came up, but we were able to move a few appointments around to accommodate. Your sessions are very important.”
“Yes they are, and I had an upsetting memory this morning.”
“Would you like to sit down and talk about it?”
Rory glanced away. “Not right now. I’m feeling a little better.”
She had obviously forgotten the details, but Antoine wasn’t about to correct her and risk bringing on a scene.
“How about I show you something, instead?” Rory suggested. “I think you’ll be very impressed.” She looked at Sylvia. “We’re going to use my craft studio.”
“That’s a great idea.” Sylvia led them up the stairs and down a long hallway to a pleasant airy room with windows overlooking a bend in Buffalo Bayou. Iced tea and cookies had already been set out, leading Antoine to conclude that the decision to use the studio had already been discussed and Rory had merely forgotten.
/> “This is a nice room,” Antoine said, looking around at the easels, yarn, and felting materials. “It looks like you’re an artist.”
“Oh yes, I’ve been painting and doing crafty things since I was a little girl.” She darted a quick glance at Sylvia for confirmation. “I like watercolors best, though.”
“I see.” Antoine was no art connoisseur but it was obvious that the amateur paintings on the walls were acrylic.
As if sensing a small critique on his part, Sylvia pointed out that Ms. Tennenbaum was on the board of the fine arts museum and was a patron of the Menil Gallery.
Rory nodded enthusiastically. I adore the Menil. Dominique and I had lunch just last week to discuss her latest acquisitions.”
Antoine suppressed an inner sigh. Everett Blair required prompters to attend regular training on art, ballet and other topics their wealthy clients might be interested in, so he knew that Houston art collector and museum founder Dominique de Menil had died in the late 1990s. “That must have been fascinating.”
Before Rory could answer, Sylvia broke in. “Ms. Tennenbaum, you wanted to tell him about your book.”
“Yes!” Her face lit up. “I’m working with some of my friends from the Junior League on a collection of our favorite Houston memories so the real Houston won’t be forgotten, no matter how many people catch amnesia. Now where did I…” She began hunting in drawers and cabinets. “Don’t tell me Sylvia. I can remember this myself.”
For several uncomfortable minutes Antoine and Sylvia watched as Rory searched the room for her manuscript. Finally she found it underneath a magazine about corgis and presented it to Antoine with a flourish.
“It’s just a start,” she assured him. “But we’re very committed.”
Antoine read the title, Remembering Our Time, and thought it made a fitting acronym. “Did you come up with the name of it yourself?”
“Yes, do you like it?”
He gazed into her vacant blue eyes but saw only the disintegrating wasteland behind them. “It’s perfect.”
CHAPTER SIX
On the way home from his session with Rory Tennenbaum, Antoine found himself wishing for the first time in months that he could stop for a beer like a normal person who didn’t have to report to Everett Blair. The society queen had been sweetly enthusiastic about her memory tests and music therapy, humming along to popular tunes from her teenage years, as noted in her case file. She didn’t seem to mind at all when he checked the electronic dossier on his tablet and corrected what she thought she remembered. But it was enormity of the memory failure that disturbed him, along with her casual acceptance of it. Couldn’t she see she was losing everything that made her who she was? Antoine understood rage and fear, and had dealt with those emotions often among his clientele, but Rory’s lighthearted dismissal of her personal past gave him cold chills and made him mutter a silent prayer that when his turn came, he wouldn’t give in so easily.
When he arrived at his apartment building he gave the valet his keys, scheduled his car pickup time at the front desk and took the elevator up to his floor. He felt his shoulders relax and the day’s tension ease as he stepped into his home and was surrounded by familiar things. Although the rooms had come pre-furnished in tasteful modern cubes and orbs that passed for furniture and light fixtures, Antoine had done much to make the space his own. The living room contained framed photos of friends and family from home laughing at barbeques, jumping into the surf at the beach, and holding up newly achieved diplomas in front of colleges with white columns. The kitchen had large glass jars for storing pasta and rice, hand-painted by a cousin, and the white towel looped over a drawer pull had been embroidered by his grandmother. In the bedroom were more family photos, and on the nightstand a few favorite books and a photo of Ace, the golden retriever who had been his childhood companion for many a neighborhood ramble. Ace could always elicit a smile and transport Antoine back to an easier time, although like all children, he hadn’t thought life easy while he was living it.
He took off his tie and slipped out of his suit, already thinking how good a session in the weight room and a couple miles on the treadmill would feel. Everett Blair required prompters to get a minimum of five hours a week of vigorous exercise, which was no particular hardship since he would have done it anyway. But as he was pulling on an Underarmor t-shirt, his mind returned to the book Dymphna had given him that had been the source of so much trouble earlier in the day. Rory and her rapidly disintegrating memory had distracted him from this more urgent matter.
He went into the living room, retrieved his satchel and pulled out the long gold envelope containing the scans of the books Dymphna had shown him in the Texas Room. Then he took out the book she had given him with such an air of secrecy.
At first Antoine thought there must be some mistake because the book he pulled out of his messenger bag looked like the one he had seen before, of Houston in 1970. It was the same size, same font, and even the same worn patches on the cover and yellowed pages inside. But as he flipped through it, something felt off. He reached for the envelope and pulled out the scans of what should have been the same book.
The pages and photos didn’t match.
Frowning, he checked the copyright of both. 1970. Same publisher, too. Deeply puzzled, he began comparing the pages one by one, finding buildings that were missing and names that were changed. This wasn’t true throughout, but it was frequent enough to make him doubt what he was actually seeing. Was he looking at different versions published at the same time? Why the different names on some of the buildings? Was one book printed in error and the other a correction? He racked his brain for logical explanations but none came easily to mind. How could he be sure which book was the correct one and which a mistake? Did Dymphna even know? He was confident archivists had their ways, but what was she picking up on that wasn’t obvious to him?
He flipped through the rest of the copies in the folder, hoping for a note or explanation of some kind, but found nothing. Clearly Dymphna expected him to draw his own conclusions and get back in touch. In the meantime he would need to keep these materials safe, just in case there really was something strange going on and the man at the library had staged the dropped phone in an effort to steal back the book, the copies, or all of it.
He selected the sleek credenza as a good storage spot and stashed the book and folder inside, jumbled with some fitness magazines. He then picked up his phone, thinking to tell Rafa what he had found. But what had he discovered, really? Printing errors probably happened all the time and were hardly evidence of some larger mystery that needed investigation.
Human error. What else could it be? Needing to clear his head, he returned to his original plan, put on his shoes, grabbed his key card and headed downstairs to the gym.
* * * *
Since he had no plans for the evening, Antoine ordered dinner sent up from a restaurant on the ground floor and ate it in front of the television, watching the evening news. The lead story, with its flashy graphics and concerned-looking reporters, was about amnesia tourists. Houston was attracting people from across the country and even other parts of the world, who camped in parks and slept several to a hotel room to save money, hoping to improve their odds of catching the affliction that was robbing Houstonians of their memories. In answer to an on-the-scene reporter’s question as to why he wanted amnesia, one man cited a wife lost to cancer and a series of employment troubles. The story then cut to a clip of a local psychologist who pointed out that for the disappointed, the ability to forget looked like a great blessing, which explained why the disaffected were arriving by the hundreds, breathing the air, shaking the hands of locals and even drinking from discarded cups and cans in the hope of becoming infected and entering a state of pastless bliss.
Antoine was both fascinated and repulsed.
In his family, history was everything. At large family reunions his aunts and great-aunts gathered under the spreading oaks discussing everyone absent and present in r
elation to one another: second cousin, third great-uncle, first cousin twice-removed on the mother’s side. There was no escaping the web of family and its stories. “She was Delma’s child, you know, the one who ran off with the repairman.” The past made you who you were. “He never could leave the whiskey alone and that grandbaby’s going to be just like him, I can tell.” If a boisterous game with his cousins and siblings sent him barreling into their midst, there would be clucking and comparisons. “Just like my uncle Claudius, always running somewhere until it ended on the Ravenal Bridge.” And whether you ate too much or too little of the barbeque the men spent all day perfecting, the women knew where you got that trait too, inherited through the mother or father all the way back a hundred years or more.
By the time Antoine reached high school he was a walking embodiment of all that was past, from how he wore his clothes to his penchant for books and habit of listening with all appearance of interest, no matter what he might really think. No personal trait was allowed to be his alone – they were all part of a heritage that both comforted and suffocated him, subjecting him to contradictory desires to flee and to surrender himself to the tide of his clan’s history. Leaving Charleston had been the most radical act of his life, and one that left the family matrons baffled. How to tie this act of rebellion to a recent or more distant relative was a matter for much gossip over sweet tea, which led naturally to discussion of the particulars of his return, because of course he would return one day, his antics adding to the historical burden of some future boy or girl who would in turn grow up to bestow the gifts and curses of memory to future generations.
Antoine was made of history the way other people were made of cells and sinews. Thus the crusader-call of holding back the ravages of amnesia. Embedded in his genes was a belief that no one deserved to lose their past. He darted another glance at the television, where a neatly coiffed reporter was asking a gray-haired man in a baseball cap why he wanted to catch a plague that so many were doing their utmost to avoid. Although he expounded on a veritable laundry list of troubles, to Antoine no answer he gave could justify, since the past was the only true thing anyone had.