Oubliette

  “Not right now,” Rafa said.

  “I see. I guess it’s over, then.” After a long bitter silence, Dr. Chatterjee opened the door and walked away, not even looking to see if the men would stay or go, lock the door, or leave it open for whoever happened by next.

  Rafa and Antoine waited a few minutes before slipping out of the closet and pulling the door shut behind them, speaking all the while in low tones.

  “Do you really believe all that?” Antoine asked.

  “He’s worked up over something,” Rafa said as they headed down the hall. “He’s right that some of these guys really struggle to get some of the rarer chemicals and compounds. The government has pretty tight controls over certain things, and it can take months to get the proper paperwork filed. It’s especially hard in this case, since it’s not like they can come right out and say why they need it. They have to make up something that sounds convincing. It’s probably not easy.”

  “Yeah, but going through back channels is pretty risky.”

  Rafa shrugged. “I’m just glad none of this can be traced back to me.”

  Antoine nodded agreement and they continued toward the elevator and down to the garage in silence.

  CHAPTER TWENETY-SEVEN

  The incident at the research lab put Antoine behind on his appointments. Late in the day, with his weekly office check-in next on his list and his instincts warning him otherwise, he got on I-10 hoping to get to downtown from Piney Point a little faster than via Memorial Drive, which was becoming dangerous due to stray joggers from the park now that the weather was cool enough for daytime running. Traffic on the interstate was not much better, tangled by random lane changes and sudden slowdowns. A minor fender-bender near Shepherd was attracting gawkers and he was relived to finally reach his exit. He navigated the downtown construction, had to go two extra blocks out of his way due to a train mishap and finally arrived at the office grumpy and out of sorts.

  If Elaine noticed his tardiness, she didn’t mind. She was standing at a window gazing pensively at the skyline when Antoine entered her office. “An alert on my phone says it’s about to rain, but it sure doesn’t look that way to me.” She turned around with a sheepish smile. “So much for crowdsourced apps, right?”

  Antoine glanced at the window. He had been too distracted by amnesiac drivers to pay much attention to the weather, but although the anemic sky was washed of color, nothing he could see suggested an approaching storm.

  “Let’s get down to business.” Elaine sank into her leather office chair while Antoine pulled a guest chair up to her desk. “I read your latest report on Rory Tennenbaum. I’m glad she’s stable and is still willing to exercise and eat her vegetables. We have Amanda prompting for Rory’s friend Jane Culver, but Jane appears to have taken a turn for the worse. Amanda thinks she’s drinking.”

  Antoine often wondered why more amnesiacs weren’t heavy drinkers, since once one’s memory had degraded past a certain point, there was little hope of improvement, no matter how many prompters, apps and organic herbal supplements one had at one’s disposal. “It happens.”

  “Yes.” Elaine gazed into the middle distance for a moment, then brought herself back to reality and glanced at her notes. “We have a new client for you.”

  “Oh?” Antoine did a mental run-down of his days, wondering how he would fit in another client and still manage his off-the-books appointments with David Tennenbaum, in addition to keeping tabs on Dymphna’s mental state.

  “I think you’ll like this case. It’s sort of a break from your usual type of client.” She checked a stack of folders on her desk, compared them with the words on her computer screen, then handed him one.

  Antoine opened the folder and read the client summary. “A retired philosophy professor?”

  “I thought you might enjoy someone a little different from all those wealthy society types. And don’t worry, Dr. Bartlett has more than adequate funds for our services. He appears to have been something of a miser in his younger days and is worth quite a penny now.”

  How his clients paid was of little concern to Antoine, but he accepted that it was company policy to only take on clients who could commit to at least six months, since memory stabilization could easily be sabotaged by the application of inconsistent and contradictory techniques.

  “How do you feel about this? I realize you already have a full caseload, but can I have him put on your schedule?”

  Since the client’s initial screening indicated he only needed bi-weekly sessions for the time being, Antoine nodded. “Sure. All my appointments are up to date, so schedule him for whenever is convenient.” With any luck, by the time the good professor started needing more frequent prompting, one of Antoine’s other clients would have dropped off, having advanced beyond the point where a memory prompter’s services could provide any improvement.

  Elaine typed a few words into her computer, setting up Antoine’s new case. They reviewed a few of his ongoing clients after that, with her frequently checking her computer screen or the files on her desk and sometimes writing things on post-its. Antoine pretended not to notice, but finally Elaine put down her pen and sighed.

  “Take your time. I don’t mind,” Antoine said.

  “I don’t mean to be so obvious.”

  “There comes a time when it can’t be helped.”

  Their eyes met in shared understanding.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “that even here, where we know all the tricks, we’re still so vulnerable. I thought I’d have more time.”

  “I think we all feel a little immortal,” Antoine said. “We have to. We wouldn’t be able to stand what we see every day if we really believed we were next.”

  Elaine smiled. “That’s just it, though. I actually thought I wouldn’t mind so much. I didn’t have a very happy upbringing and it took me a long time to find myself. I’ve always thought amnesia would be a blessing, and it is, in a way. I still know I had an unhappy childhood, and if a year ago you had asked for specifics I could’ve filled a book with them. But now, it’s all just words. There’s nothing behind them. It’s not like that movie you see in your head when you’re experiencing a real memory. I like that. It’s everything else that’s…not so nice.”

  “How much longer do you think you’ll be able to work?”

  “I’ve put in my notice effective January first. You’ll probably be reporting to Joe or Dale after that, but some of the details still need to be worked out. Reporting lines might change.” She shook herself slightly. “Anyway, sorry for the ramble. It’s a little unprofessional of me.”

  Sensing that he was being dismissed, Antoine stood up. “I appreciate your confidence in me. And let me know if there’s anything you need.”

  He walked down the hall feeling subdued. Although persons in his line of work were trained to be sensitive and supportive of amnesiacs, they were all secretly terrified of the disease. No matter how patiently they might work with their clients, a colleague who developed symptoms was anathema, another breed entirely. Everyone would be achingly polite, of course, but in reality, an amnesiac at Everett Blair was an outcast to be shunned.

  As he neared the break room, someone called his name.

  “Antoine! Come check this out.”

  It was Sergey.

  Antoine went into the break room where a cluster of prompters, including Naomi, huddled around the window. “Another game of Satellite?”

  “No man, look.” Sergey pointed.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Naomi said, her eyes searching his for confirmation.

  Far in the distance a black line was spreading rapidly across the horizon. Above it swirled a mass of storm clouds and below it a ragged line of rain was beginning to fall.

  “You ever seen anything like it?” she asked. Her hand hesitantly touched his. An appeal for forgiveness for her indiscretion with Rafa? Or was it a gesture of simple friendship?

  Antoine had witnessed similar scenes and yet he hadn’t. Storms comi
ng in over the Atlantic were majestic and powerful, but this driving wedge of black churning across the sky was somehow different. Malevolent, almost. “No,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The squall line hit with ferocious intensity, howling through the streets and flinging rain and hail against the windows. The outside world vanished in a gray, wet haze and the normally quiet rooms of Everett Blair filled with the clatter of rain. Since there was no point in attempting to leave until the storm had passed, Antoine accepted a cup of herbal tea from Naomi and joined his fellow prompters at a table for a rare opportunity to socialize.

  He couldn’t enjoy it, though. As he looked from one face to another, he asked himself who had been approached by Civ and his cronies. Who had stood firm and who had given in? Behind the smiles, any one of these people with whom he shared client case stories and workshop findings might also be sabotaging the very memories they were supposed to be preserving. The thought made it hard to enjoy the usual prompter banter about amusing amnesiac doings.

  Sergey interrupted a narrative about a celebrity chef’s forgetfulness at the grill and the inevitable, inedible result. “Why so pensive, Charleston?”

  Antoine forced a smile and tried to pretend he had been paying attention. “Oh, nothing. I just remembered I have to prepare something for Mr. Hendrickson’s upcoming meeting with the CEO.” He stood up. “If you’re still here when I’m done I’ll rejoin you.”

  Over their teasing and protests he went down the hall and selected one of the temporary offices. Without any windows, it would be hard to know when the rain had died down enough for it to be safe to drive, but at least here he didn’t have to wonder who among his supposed friends was a tool for the enemy.

  He plugged in his laptop and scrolled through the messages on his phone while it booted up. He confirmed an appointment with a finance VP and answered a question from Sylvia as to whether Rory could eat beets. Why anyone would want to eat beets seemed like the more important question, but Antoine shot back an answer and by then his laptop was ready for business.

  He did indeed have work to do for his clients, but since he had some unexpected free time he decided to check a few history sites instead. He had lapsed in his habit of regularly checking for errors, so when he encountered an apparent mistake about the Texas governorship of Jim Hogg, he hesitated. Had this particular discrepancy been there before? He cross-checked a few other references but the odd data point was the same on all his sources. Was the error on his end? This didn’t seem likely, but he had been collecting these little mistakes in an app on his phone, so he checked.

  The app matched the website, not his memory.

  Antoine stared, scarcely believing what he was seeing. This wasn’t the sort of detail he would have forgotten, but here it was, consistent through all sources except his own mind. He shut his laptop with a snap and stuffed it in his bag. He needed to see Dymphna immediately, rain or no rain.

  He could hear his colleagues still chatting in the break room but the rain against the windows had subsided to a gentle patter. Naturally it seemed that the elevator stopped at nearly every floor to let people on or off and it felt like an hour had passed before he finally made it to his car.

  It was only a few blocks to the library but with high water in the lower areas of the streets and some of the traffic lights out, all semblance of traffic rules had evaporated and it was every man for himself. A Volkswagen blocked a lane, its driver refusing to move until he could remember his destination. A Camry darted impatiently for openings in the traffic and the driver of a 450 pickup leaned on his horn regardless of the speed of the person in front of him. A Porsche driver, pure kamikaze, gunned his way through any gap in the chaos he could find. It was bewildering and overwhelming, even by usual Houston standards, but Antoine took a deep breath and dove in, muscling his way to a spot in the center lane and then staying the course, willing himself to patience, until he came within sight of Lamar and cut in front of a perplexed woman fiddling with her GPS. He slipped into the underground parking garage and breathed a sigh of relief as though he had made some sort of great accomplishment.

  He hurried up to the ground floor and across the courtyard to the Ideson building only to be told that Dymphna was at some new Mexican restaurant in the tunnel, attending a going away party for a colleague.

  “She’ll be back,” the junior archivist assured him.

  Antoine thanked her and went to the Texas room to text her. She replied that she’d be there in about thirty minutes, so he decided to use the wait time to see what the books in the room had to say about Governor Hogg. By the time Dymphna arrived, he was ready.

  “Either I’m getting amnesia or they’ve finally done it.”

  Dymphna stared. “They found where you were hiding the archives?”

  “No. Or at least I don’t think they have.” Antoine pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Tell me if this looks right to you.”

  She took his phone and frowned. Just because she was in the early stages of amnesia didn’t mean she remembered nothing. The Mnemosyne had stabilized her and she knew something wasn’t right about what she saw. “I’m pretty sure that’s incorrect, she said. Jim Hogg won the election to the state legislature in 1876, he didn’t lose to anybody named Griffith.” She paused. “Or at least I don’t think he did.”

  “It’s on the other websites too,” Antoine told her. Then he showed her the app. “I’m sure I wrote that he won, but it’s here on my app too.” He picked up a book he had been looking at while waiting for her arrival. “It’s even in this book that he lost the 1876 legislative election to some guy so obscure that he doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia mention. Either we’re both amnesiacs, or someone has managed to change a totally inconsequential fact in multiple resources.”

  “Let me see what I have in the back,” Dymphna said. “Wait here.”

  Antoine tried to read more of the book about Jim Hogg but was too distracted to give it the attention it was due. When Dymphna returned, she had a copy of the state legislative archives of 1877 and a couple of brittle yellow newspapers safely sealed in plastic. She set the items down and handed him a pair of white cotton gloves.

  “I’ve already checked one of these,” she said. “I have a feeling the others are the same.”

  “And?”

  Since she refused to answer, he took one of the newspapers out of its plastic wrap. It was a copy of the Longview News, detailing the election results of 1876. “John S. Griffith,” he read aloud. “Damn.”

  “The only other place to check would be the Tennenbaums,” she said. “If Hogg really did win that election, the only remaining proof might be in Jimmy’s bedroom.”

  “Wouldn’t that be pathetic, to have one of your life events reduced to a Xerox under the bed of a socialite’s dead son.”

  “Better than being forgotten altogether,” Dymphna pointed out.

  “Yes,” Antoine said. “Some days that’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

  “Do you have an appointment over there today?”

  Not unless Rory has a problem with her beets, he thought. Aloud he said, “Tomorrow. I have to give David his bi-weekly memory exam.” He gave a little half-smile. “And if I’m able to locate the right document and it says Griffith, I guess I’ll need to start administering those exams to myself.”

  “You can test me too,” Dymphna said. “I’ve been resisting because if it’s bad news I don’t want to hear it. But this is bigger than me and you. If we’re sick, we need to find someone trustworthy to hand this project to.”

  Antoine agreed. “I’ll check the copies as soon as I can and let you know. Then…we’ll do whatever comes next, I guess.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  He left the Ideson building with a deep sense of foreboding. It was all starting to be too much: the mysteries, the shadowing, and of course the plague itself. Unbidden, Antoine’s thoughts turned to home. For the first
time in years the idea of being surrounded by family felt comforting, like a warm and well-worn quilt on a chilly evening. He had left Charleston out of a sense of suffocation, a straightjacket of familial expectations that held him in and demanded conformity. Now far from home and isolated from even his closest friends, he could recognize and appreciate the value of family. They may try their best to mold you, but they were also the only ones with whom you could be your true self.

  He was musing on this paradox when he blundered into a small crowd gathered around the street preacher in the courtyard in front of the main library. With a curious amnesiac behind him and two more blocking evasive action toward the sidewalk, there was no other option but to push through the knot of onlookers and hope to avoid the preacher’s eye.

  No such luck.

  “You! Fancy man with the expensive suit and Italian leather shoes.” The preacher took a step toward him. “I see you here often, but you pretend you don’t see me.”

  This, of all things, Antoine did not need. “I see you,” he said in terse tones that invited no further discussion.

  “Why are you always in such a rush? You can’t outrun it. The only way to save yourself is to repent.” He moved closer and raised his voice so all could hear. “Have you accepted Christus Memoriae as your mental savior?”

  Antoine scanned the people around him, seeking allies and finding none.

  “Those who fight his mnemonic judgment shall be doomed to wander the deserts of amnesia. Do you repent and accept his doing and his will?”

  He was saved having to answer by a woman who screeched, “I repent!” She pushed her way through the crowd and dropped to her knees in front of the preacher. “Forgive my sins, even though I can’t remember what they are.”

  Antoine took advantage of the distraction to slip away quickly. Rather than go straight into the parking garage where he might be followed, he went into the library where security would offer some protection. Cursing himself for allowing himself to get distracted, he went into the stacks and attempted to calm himself by reading the titles on the books’ spines. There was nothing of interest here, it was just words to take his mind of the incident outside, but it helped. He felt his heart quit racing, his thoughts slow.