Oubliette by Ann Pino
Annoyed, he picked up the remote and clicked off the TV, then reached for his phone. He owed his mother a phone call, even if it was just to hear her family stories and explain for the umpteenth time why he couldn’t attend every family gathering. His past was in Charleston but his future, at least for now, was in Houston.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After a night of uneasy dreams, Antoine awoke to his Whoami app softly reminding him of the facts of his existence. The window of his bedroom had a glorious view of Hermann Park and the running trails along Brays Bayou, but not at this hour when it was still dark and the soupy murk of humidity left the glass mottled by condensation.
While Whoami recited the facts of his career and the names and occupations of his friends and relatives from home, he walked into the living room and slid back the door of the balcony. The air hit him like the vapor of a steam bath, overwhelming and clinging, the aerial equivalent of a creeping kudzu vine.
When he had first arrived in Houston, his colleagues had watched him sweat at company outings and on long treks across parking lots. Charleston had heat and humidity too, but nothing like this. Over Antoine’s confident assurance that he would adjust, his co-workers merely smiled. “You don’t ever get used to it,” they told him. “You just get better at coping.”
Coping was something Antoine did well. Or at least he used to think so. After only a passing glance at the skyline, he leaned on the balcony railing, trying to recover what remained of last night’s shredded dreams. In his nocturnal imaginings, he had discovered an important secret about the odd book Dymphna had given him, but now that he was awake, not even his prodigious recollective powers could bring it to mind.
Exasperated, he went back inside and opened the credenza. If the book had been gone it wouldn’t have entirely surprised him, since the very fact of its existence was a puzzle whose meaning he couldn’t parse. But there it was, underneath a copy of Men’s Health that promised six-pack abs in thirty days. He flipped through the book and it was just as he remembered it. Since he had no early appointments and could easily cut short his planned morning swim, he pulled out the envelope of document scans so he could re-examine them. That’s when he saw it.
The scans matched the book.
A chill that had nothing to do with the humming air conditioner slid down his back. Quickly he spread everything out on the sofa and started comparing, but his first impression had been correct. Page for page, the copies matched the book perfectly. Fighting a sudden wave of panic, he looked around the room, scrutinizing the shadows as if someone with evil intent might be lurking nearby. Then he went to every light and switched it on, his movements intentionally slow and deliberate in spite of his trembling hands. All shadows banished, he turned his attention back to the books and copies, hoping some odd trick of the light had steered him astray. But no, they were an exact match, which could only mean his memory was starting to fail or someone had come into his apartment during the night. Neither possibility gave him comfort.
In spite of the early hour he called Rafa. “Sorry to wake you up, man, but I need to talk to you. Let’s get some coffee.”
“Right now? Are you serious?”
“Yes. Meet you in the first floor café in fifteen minutes?”
Rafa let out a heavy sigh. “You go waking me out of a perfectly good dream and then offer your lame-ass café americano? If we’ve got to do this thing, come to my place. I’ll make the coffee. That way we know it’s done right.”
Fifteen minutes later Antoine knocked on Rafa’s door, five floors up from his. Not all of Everett Blair’s prompters lived on this property, since the company maintained luxury apartments throughout the city, but it was convenient to have a friend in such close proximity. Rafa answered in long shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt advertising a bar on Calle Ocho. His rumpled hair stuck out wildly in all directions and he swiped at it as he shut the door, then turned to squint sleepily at his visitor. “This had better be good, bro.”
Antoine got straight to the point. “Someone broke into my apartment. Last night. While I was sleeping.”
“For real? How’d anyone manage to do that? They’ve got security all over this place.”
“I don’t know, but whoever it was must’ve had a key because everything was locked up tight when I woke up. Not a thing out of place.”
Rafa gave him a skeptical look. “Then how do you know someone broke in? You’re not making sense.”
“Remember that book from yesterday?”
His eyes widened. “They stole it?”
“No, they stole the copies of it. Or actually, they stole the copies of another book that’s exactly like it, but different.”
Rafa scratched his head, making his wiry curls stick out in even more improbable directions. “You’re right, we need some coffee. I’m not understanding you at all.”
Antoine followed him into the kitchen and waited patiently while he filled an espresso pot with a mixture of strong Bustelo coffee and sugar and set it on the stove. While they waited for the espresso to brew, Rafa took a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and set out two demitasse cups. Antoine found Rafa’s coffee-making ceremony a tedious way to get a little caffeine, but he understood that it tied him to his Miami home and by extension, Havana. There was something about remembering that seemed to require ritual, as if memories could be strung like beads to the thread of process, even a process as mundane as a cup of coffee.
When they finally had their cups of milky sweet espresso, they sat at the kitchen bar and Antoine explained about the books, starting with the discovery he had made the night before, his hiding of the items in the credenza, and his realization in the morning that something had been tampered with, the contents of the envelope switched for dummy documents intended to throw him off track.
Rafa shook his head. “That’s a lot of trouble for someone to go to just because there might be two different versions of an old book out there.” A sudden thought struck him and he frowned. “How did they, I’m assuming it’s a ‘they,’ even know where to look for the stuff? I mean, you say they got in somehow and managed to swap out the copies without messing anything else up. That means they must have known where to look.”
Antoine had been so disturbed by the mystery of the different book versions that this hadn’t occurred to him. “The only way they could’ve known is if my place is bugged. But why would anyone be spying on me? I’m not important.”
“Looks like you are now.” Rafa grinned. “The library is a dangerous place, didn’t anyone ever tell you? It’s not good to look too smart.”
Although he knew his friend was joking, Antoine was now starting to see how some of the pieces were fitting together and he wondered if there wasn’t a kernel of truth in his words. “I’ve been studying Houston history, but it’s almost as if someone wants things to be forgotten. Dymphna said some of her customers no longer remember major events and landmarks, even though they have no signs of the plague.”
“Not all forgetting is amnesia,” Rafa reminded him. “They deal with a lot of that in the Med Center – people bringing in their spouses and parents for amnesia treatment only to find out it’s just ordinary strokes and Alzheimer’s.”
“Yeah, but people with Alzheimer’s typically remember the past just fine. It’s the present that trips them up.”
“True, but why would anyone want people to forget old landmarks and street names? That makes no sense. It serves no purpose.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Antoine said. “The only other possibility would be that I’m the one forgetting.” He tried to make it sound casual but Rafa wasn’t fooled.
“You don’t have the plague any more than I do. Did you test yourself against Whoami?”
“Not really. I had it running in the background, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I looked at the books first thing when I got out of bed and called you as soon as I realized they had been switched. But let’s say I do go back downstairs and listen
Rafa shrugged. “Quit going to the library?”
“That sounds a little simplistic.”
“Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.” He scooped up their demitasse cups. “How about another cafecito?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Antoine went about his morning appointments feeling unsettled. The erratic drivers annoyed him more than usual and it seemed every streetlight turned red at his approach. His clients were more recalcitrant than usual, more reluctant to have him correct their recollections, and were either sullen or outright hostile to the idea of ginkgo capsules, gotu kola supplements, and Sudoku puzzles. By lunchtime his nerves were worn to a frazzle and he couldn’t catch a break by going home for lunch or by resting for a few minutes in a quiet park because there was a birthday party for one of his colleagues at Everett Blair and he wouldn’t want anyone to think he wasn’t a team player, or worse, had forgotten. If you couldn’t remember a simple birthday, so their thinking went, how could you be entrusted with the memories of CEOs and city councilmembers?
But finally he managed to escape his obligations and went to the library to see if he could press Dymphna for more information about the books she had given him. Clearly she had intended him to notice the mismatch, but what was her motive in doing so?
He left his car at Everett Blair so he wouldn’t have to deal with traffic and parking, only to arrive at the Texas Room and be told that Dymphna was out that day. Just in case someone had followed him, he made a show of being interested in other aspects of Texas history – the Alamo, the travels of Cabeza de Vaca, and the Galveston hurricane of 1900. After poking around the old books and manuscripts for half an hour and carefully avoiding anything too obviously related to Houston, he got on the train heading back to Everett Blair and his car.
They were two blocks from his stop when there was a sudden screech of the train’s brakes followed by a jolt that threw him against the back of the seat in front of him. The impact knocked other passengers to the floor, phones and purses scattering down the aisle. After a long moment of shocked silence, Antoine heard a commotion in the street.
At almost the same time, his fellow riders began rustling about, gathering their dropped belongings, rubbing bruises, and asking each other what had happened. It soon became obvious that the train had hit a car. Since the train wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, Antoine got up, manually opened the doors with the help of a young waiter who would now be late for his shift, and stepped into the street.
The cause of the accident was a red Civic. The driver had turned in front of the oncoming train and was now trapped and unconscious inside the crumpled hunk of metal. Early in the plague, Antoine had found such scenes horrifying but by now they were so common as to be almost a cliché. Since an ambulance had already been called for and someone with first aid skills was on the scene, Antione stepped around the bystanders, who were speculating as to whether the driver was alive or dead, and walked the rest of the way back to his office.
He found his car and was about to get in when he saw the note. He pulled the slip of paper from under the windshield wiper blade and examined it. In laser-printed Ariel font he read, “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”
Antoine recognized it as a quote but couldn’t immediately think of the source. Who would leave something like this on his car? He looked around at the other cars in the reserved Everett Blair spots but no one else had a message on their windshield. Could it have been a mistake? He read the missive again and the unsettled feeling from that morning came back in a rush. It didn’t matter whether the quote was intended as a warning or a friendly reminder; his actions were clearly of interest to someone who knew his habits.
That evening Rafa came down to his apartment and together they examined every square inch of the place looking for cameras, listening devices, or anything else that might offer a clue as to how someone could have known where he kept the mysterious book. But after looking behind, under and inside every lamp, picture and piece of furniture, they were forced to admit defeat. Either they were mistaken, or the spy was too clever for them.
“Maybe they guessed this would be what I’d do next. They came in while I was at work and removed whatever they had,” Antoine suggested.
Rafa shrugged. “Could be. Or maybe they’ve got something more high-tech that we don’t know about. The government uses satellites and stuff these days, you know.”
“I thought that was just in the movies.”
“No, it’s true. The CIA has things we don’t even know about. Lasers and shit.”
Antoine gave him a skeptical look. “Even I know better than that. And even if they could track people with satellites and heat rays, or whatever, I’m not interesting enough to be worth that much trouble.”
“You never know, bro. You could be on the verge of uncovering an important state secret or something.”
“About the naming of Houston monuments in the previous century? Yeah, that’s real top-secret, I’m sure.”
They bickered genially about the matter for several minutes before concluding that they were both getting paranoid.
“There’s a reasonable explanation,” Rafa said. “I’m sure of it.”
Antoine nodded, although he was less convinced. Then, since there was nothing more to be done, they resolved to put the matter behind them for the evening and went to the first floor pub for a bite to eat and to shoot some pool.
CHAPTER NINE
For the next two weeks Antoine stayed away from the library and refrained from any activities that whoever was shadowing him, assuming anyone was shadowing him at all, might consider suspicious. He feigned a total lack of interest in historical pursuits, going so far as to skip his planned participation in Preservation Houston’s next architecture walk, which was only a minor loss, considering how thoroughly lost the previous month’s amnesiac docent had gotten them. Instead, he stuck to the rounds of work, exercise, grocery shopping, and the occasional phone calls to his mother and sister, who always wanted to know the same thing: when are you coming home where you belong?
To his annoyance, Rory Tennenbaum was added to his regular caseload. Elaine was screening possible replacements for Haley, and in the meantime it wasn’t as if Rory knew or cared who she worked with, and her family hadn’t objected to her having a male prompter. Antoine found the woman pleasant enough but he dreaded the times he had to let her down when she told him obvious untruths with such blue-eyed sincerity.
The worst moments, though, were the flashes of lucidity when she remembered her son. Jimmy had drowned at summer camp when he was eleven. He was Rory’s only child and she had struggled for years to claw her way back from the dark well of grief she had fallen into upon his death. Now she often forgot altogether that she had been a mother, and for the first time Antoine acknowledged that amnesia had its blessings.
One afternoon the housekeeper, Sylvia, called Antoine to the house in a panic. When he arrived he found Rory pacing the floors, picking up and discarding objects at random as if searching for something of importance. When she saw him enter the room, she ran up to him and clutched his hand.
“My Jimmy is missing. You have to help.”
This sort of situation was one that Antoine had trained for during many an Everett Blair inservice. Per standard protocol, he smiled benevolently. The approved technique was to get the client talking about the situation that troubled them, then keep asking questions in such a way as to lead the client gently to a less upsetting topic. “Who is Jimmy?” he asked. “Tell me a little about him.”
Rory gushed for a few minutes about her son: how he dressed, what his hobbies were and what his best subjects were in school. But before Antoine could lead her into a discussion of her own hobbies and school years, her thoughts looped back to where they had been before. “He went swimming with some friends and now he’s missing.”
&nbs
She babbled a few inconsequential things about pools and YMCA programs. “But they don’t know where he is. They sneaked away after lights out to swim at the lake. They wanted to reenact that movie – oh, you know the one.”
Antoine seized his opportunity. “Tell me about the movie. What are your favorite movies?”
In spite of her mental decline, Rory wasn’t so easily distracted. “His friends came back, but he didn’t.”
Clearly this was going to take a while. Antoine drew a deep breath and made another attempt to distract her, grabbing at any new topic that Rory might hopefully stick with. Nothing worked. Each time she returned to the disappearance, growing more distraught with each telling, until tears were streaming down her face.
By now Sylvia, who was watching patiently from the doorway, was frowning in concern. Antoine was starting to feel a little desperate, himself. This time when Rory turned wet eyes upon him and asked again where Jimmy could be, he did something he had never done before and had sworn to never do, no matter how great the temptation. He lied.
“He’s been found,” Antoine told her, the words slipping out with disturbing ease. “He finished his swim and went back to his cabin a different way. The other boys didn’t see him. That’s why they reported him missing.”
Rory started and her eyes narrowed as she considered whether she could believe him. “I guess I should call the camp,” she said. “He knows better than to scare people like that. I need to have a talk with him.”
Antoine smiled and handed her a tissue from a box on a nearby table. “That’s an excellent idea, but he’s sleeping right now. He’s very tired. The camp counselor says he’ll call you in the morning after breakfast. That’s his free time, you know.”
“Oh.” Rory nodded slowly. “Yes, that would be best, I suppose. He must be tired.”
“He’s very tired. You’re a good mom. You’ll let him sleep.”
She smiled and wiped the remains of a tear from one eye. “Yes. I’ll look forward to his call in the morning.”