Charlotte Had A Boyfriend : 4

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

 

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In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.
— Novalis

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Lucy said, "No promises," but she did make one promise: that she'd be back in an hour.

I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed, when Lucy didn't show. A different girl — young and skinny like Lucy, but with long, blonde hair — came, dressed in a blue apron and paper cap, to silently collect my dinner tray and leave me with nothing.

I have to admit, my disappointment made me feel like a prize idiot. Lucy's young; she must be in her early twenties... probably 21? What did I expect her to do? Look at me: apparently thirty, with no idea how to get on in life. Did I honestly believe Lucy, ten years my junior, could resolve my existential dilemma?

Honestly, though, yes, I guess I did. I did expect it from her. She said — her exact words were — I might have a solution for you. Sounded like she meant to resolve, or propose to resolve, one or both of my problems: my fear of having nowhere to go, and/or my fear that an ill-intentioned stranger would claim me and carry me off.

I'd be over the moon it if she had a way past both issues, but I'd gladly settle for getting *one* of the two issues out of the way.

Maybe I deluded myself... maybe I was too quick to pin my hopes on her, and why? For no other reason than the fact that Lucy could do the one thing I wasn't able to do: Lucy could remember life before yesterday. A working memory is an advantage not to be sneezed at.

Even now, even if Lucy had come to realize that she couldn't help me, I was still curious to know what she had in mind. If she had an idea that was only half-baked, maybe I could work it up into a real solution. Or possibly, she conceived a plan beyond her ability to execute. Whatever she had in mind, the merest hint from her could possibly trigger a more solid idea in me and bloom into a feasible plan in my mind, or in the mind of one of the adults around me: one of the doctors, one of the cops.

Outside, in the thickening darkness, lights came up in the city below. It took a few minutes before I noticed, but I spotted a cluster of bright lights — the brightest lights in the entire landscape. They lay on the river, which now resembled a thick wavy stroke of black ink. As I watched, the cluster of lights broke away from the side of the river and slowly slid off, turned left, in line with the river. It sailed away from me, toward the horizon. The river lay wide and dark, and this glowing aggregate drifted into the middle of it. As I watched, the central lights in the cluster went dark for a moment, then came back with a vengeance: flashing, pulsing, multicolor. It had to be a dance floor. If my window could open, I would have pushed it open then, to hopefully hear the music, the shouts and the laughter I imagine emanated from the floating party.

It wasn't exactly hypnotic, but as empty-brained as I was, I sat gaping like a loon, watching the slow progress of the festive lights as they pushed their way upriver (or was it gliding downriver?). Try as I might, I couldn't see the people onboard; they were too far off, too far below; far too tiny.

I'd nearly forgotten Lucy... she was nowhere in my mind, when she quietly, unexpectedly appeared, bright-eyed. She quickly, furtively slipped into my room and pulled up a chair close to my bed, between me and the window, on the far side, away from the door. She slumped down in the chair to avoid being seen.

"Don't talk too loud," she cautioned, smiling. "I'm not supposed to be here." In fact, she'd doffed the blue apron and paper hat, giving her a fairly effective, albeit superficial, disguise. Without those visible signs, she could easily be taken for a nurse — as long as no one bothered to check her name tag, reading LUCY DEERSHAW above and in smaller letters below, FOOD SERVICE.

"Listen," she confided. "I called my brother. We had a little talk." She paused and cocked her head, listening to footsteps in the hall. When those footsteps faded, she picked up the thead again. "He doesn't know what you can do about someone pretending to know you and taking you away. He says the police or the hospital would know best, but he did suggest that if someone comes to claim you, you should insist on their showing two forms of ID, photos of yourself with this person, and some third thing..." She searched her memory.

"Oh," I acknowledged, feeling somewhat relieved. "That's good! I didn't think of that."

Lucy smiled. "Yeah, Hermie's pretty smart." She bounced lightly in her chair as she remembered: "Oh! The third thing: if someone really knows you, and you're really missing, they ought to be able to produce YOUR documents, right? Your passport, drivers license maybe? Your utility bills?"

"Wow." An enormous weight lifted off me. "That's fantastic! That's a better answer than anyone's given me so far!"

"Yeah, like I said: Hermie's pretty smart," she agreed, proudly.

"Hermie?"

"Herman," she confirmed, almost apologetically. "But he tells people that Hermie is short for Hermetic." She studied my face, interested in my reaction.

"Hermetic," I repeated, triggering a response from my inner dictionary: "Secret, esoteric."

Lucy's face lit up. "Wow, vocabulary girl! Not many people get that. He'll like that." She grinned. "Anyway — unless you don't want him to — Hermie's coming to meet you tomorrow. If he agrees, you can stay with us."

"Stay with you?" I repeated, hardly believing.

"Yeah. We inherited a house from our grandmother. It's not a big house or a fancy house, but it's a nice little house, and there's an extra bedroom. And frankly it's not a big room. It's pretty tiny, but it's a nice little room with a big window. It's a good place to land, if you want it."

"And you'd let me live there?"

She shrugged. "For a while, yeah. Sure. If you behave. If you're a good citizen. If you clean up after yourself and help around the house. There's a lot to do: cleaning up, fixing up..."

"That I can do," I assured her, "but — putting all my cards on the table — I don't have any money, as far as I know."

"I didn't think you did," she said. "In time, though, you can get a job. I'm sure you could get a job here, in the hospital, in fact. You won't have to explain yourself; they already have your story on file. You know?"

I was silent for a few beats, taking it in. "That's really nice of you," I told her. A single tear formed in my left eye. I don't think Lucy noticed. If she did, she ignored it.

"Okay, cool," she said, pulling a piece of paper from her pocket and showing it to me. Written on it was the name Lucy and a phone number. She put in the drawer of my bedside stand.

"I don't have a phone," I said (without meaning to).

"Oh, that sucks," she said. "How do you look stuff up?"

"What do you mean, look stuff up?"

She gave me a puzzled look, then answered, "Well, anything." She cast her mind out, and hit on something. "I mean, you have amnesia, right? I imagined you'd be looking things up like mad! Like... for instance... okay: how much do you know about Robbins?"

"The town?"

"Yeah."

"Almost nothing."

"Okay. If you had a phone you could find out everything: history, geography, climate, fun facts to know and tell. Or... you could look up your doctors. You could read about amnesia." While that soaked in, she came up with some more ideas. "You were in an accident, right? You could look *that* up, see if there are any news stories about it. Find out things you don't know. Find out who else was involved."

"Oh, I know that part. I know their names. Amos Cashon and Wade... uh... Wade—" I paused looking back into my admittedly shallow memory. "Huh! I don't know Wade's last name! I guess he didn't tell me."

"You could find out easily, if you had a phone," she told me, in a bright tone.

"Shit. My phone is somewhere out in the desert, I suppose." (It actually wasn't, but we'll come to that later.)

"Hey," I said, suddenly struck by an idea. "One of the doctors told me to jot down random things as they came to me, and he gave me a book to write them in. I don't know what any of them mean, but he told me not to worry about that."

"That's stupid," Lucy declared. "What's the problem with knowing?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Let's look 'em up!" she offered, firing up her telephone and pointing with her chin at my book. "Tell me the first one."

I read it off: "Person Woman Man Camera TV."

Lucy groaned.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

She fidgeted. "Do you know who's president now?"

"I'm not sure. I want to say Obama?"

"A lot of people want to say that, but it's not. It's Donald Trump."

The name meant nothing to me.

"Okay. So, his doctors gave him a cognitive assessment." She paused, gave me a querying look. "Do you know what that is? They probably gave one to you, too. Do you remember?"

"Right, yes. In case I had a concussion." I paused for a moment. Then I asked: "Why did they give the president a cognitive assessment?"

"Oh, Jesus," she muttered. "Can we skip this one? It's complicated. You can remember it or not. It isn't important. It really doesn't matter. What's the next one?"

I skipped the two about pushing the river, and read the next: "Asa Nisi Masa." I had to spell it out for her.

She frowned at her phone. She scratched her head, fussing, and told me, "It's a complicated thing from a Fellini movie." As my mouth began to open, she cut me off: "Don't ask who Fellini is — or was. Sheesh! Don't you have any easy ones? Have you got anything normal there?"

"Okay," I acknowledged, and read the next one: "Better dead than wed."

Lucy's face registered shock. "What the hell?" she exclaimed.

"Isn't that, like, a saying? An old saying? Like, a thing people say?" I asked her.

"No! Nobody says that! Not even *guys* say that!" She tilted her head and stared open-mouthed at me. Scoffing, half-laughing, she teased, "Who are you?"

"Oh, my God," I babbled. "I"m sorry! Okay, how about this one: 'Charlotte had a boyfriend.'"

"Who's Charlotte?" Lucy asked.

"I was hoping you'd know."

Lucy began to laugh, and didn't seem able to stop. Each time she'd slow down, she'd glance at my face, and kick off laughing again.

"Is Charlotte someone famous?" I asked her, but the question only evoked a fresh cascade of giggles.

At last, she got control over herself, and clutching her sides, asked, "I don't know anybody named Charlotte, famous or not." She took a deep breath to steady herself and lifted her face to peer into my book. "Is that it?"

"No, that's not it," I informed her, proudly. "I remembered the 'Deep Space Nine' song."

Her eyes were wet from laughing, and she was clearly ready to kick off again. "The 'Deep Space Nine' song?" she repeated. "Uh-oh. I'm afraid this one might just kill me. Let me check the hall before you lay it on me."

She scurried to the door and peeked out, quickly returning to whisper, "The nurse is coming. I'm going to hide until she's gone. I'm not here, okay?" Lucy scurried into the bathroom.

A moment later a nurse entered my room, took my vitals, asked if I needed anything, and left. A few moments later, Lucy returned to my bedside.

"Okay," she said, bracing herself, the corners of her mouth twitching with incipient laughter. "Let's hear it."

I read it off:

Deep Space Nine, the cow said 'fine'
The monkey chewed tobacco on the railroad line
The line broke, the monkey got smoked
And they all went together in a little motor boat

Lucy's face was a study in animation as I read. Her eyes widened, her jaw worked, opening and shutting, and she kept clasping herself with her arms. She was fighting the urge to chortle. A few snorts escaped her.

"Oh my God!" she softly exclaimed. "I want to scream with laughter!!"

"Do you recognize it?" I asked her.

"Don't talk! Shh! Shh! Don't get me going again!" she cautioned. "I'm trying SO hard to not laugh! Don't say any more!"

"What is it? I mean, I got it right didn't I?"

"Shh! Shh!" Lucy cautioned, struggling to keep still. Then the dam broke: "No," Lucy breathed, her voice rippling with suppressed laughter. "It's wrong, all wrong, from beginning to end. Gimme."

She took my book and read the lines several times. "I can't believe it," she muttered. "My mother used to sing this to us. I mean the real song, not this. Can I fix it?"

"Um, yeah, sure."

At first Lucy corrected one word, then crossed out another. Then she gave it up and crossed out all the entire four lines I'd written.

At the bottom of the page, in a clean empty space, Lucy wrote this:

Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
They all went to heaven in a little row-boat

I read it, frowning. "Are you sure about this?"

"Absolutely!" Lucy responded, dancing, miming a silent clap, softly singing the words.

"How are these words better?" I demanded.

"It's not about being better," Lucy replied. "It's about being right."

At that point, we hadn't exhausted the random phrases from my book, but Lucy was tired.

"Hey," I called to her, "Could I borrow your phone?"

She gave me a sideward, canny look. "To make a phone call?"

"To look things up."

"No, sorry. I need my phone. It's my connection to the world."

"Yeah, I get it. Sorry for asking."

"No problem. Doesn't hurt to ask. Okay. Anyway, remember: I don't know *when* Hermie's coming tomorrow, but he'll be here, okay?"

"Okay."

 

---

 

After Lucy left, I turned my attention back to the dark world outside the window, and searched out the lights of the party boat. It was still visible, wending its way back now, fresh from its trip to the horizon, heading in my direction, the direction of the hospital, toward me. Before it reached its berth, the dance-floor lights stopped flashing, stopped pulsing. Yellow and white lights came on, only to dim right away.

The boat executed a neat ninety-degree turn, pulled into the shore, and stopped moving. The tiny cluster of brilliance was still easily visible. Even dimmed, they were the brightest lights on the dark river. On either side of the black strip of water, the isolated, fainter glows of Robbins were colder: Pale yellows and blues of street lights. Hazy blurred auras eminating from sources shielded, hidden by curtains and shades. An incandescence pointed inward, from houses, from offices and stores closed for the night.

It's like fireflies, I thought. A city lit by fireflies.

While my eyes were busy searching for signs of life in the scattered, glimmering pools down there, out there, half the lights of the party boat winked out. As soon as their absence pulled my attention back to it, the rest of the party boat fell into darkness, apart from one blue light that bobbed up and down — with the waves, I supposed.

"What are you watching?" the night nurse asked me. I hadn't heard her come in.

I raised my hand to point out the blue light, explained about the party boat, how I'd watched it pull out, sail off, and return.

She stood at the window, looking. I could sense that she didn't find the same romantic strangeness I felt. For her, I guessed, it was the same old Robbins, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow; closed down, rolled up for the night. Still, she looked. She scanned the empty rooftops and the dark stripe of the Robbins River. At long last she said, "I hope you can enjoy this time you have: to sit, to think, to watch."

"I am," I replied. "I do. A little. Some. When I'm not afraid."

"Afarid? Afraid of what?"

"Afraid that my memory won't come back."

She nodded. "Is that why you're having trouble sleeping?"

"Oh! I guess so."

She gave me a tired smile, but thankfully didn't tell me I'd remember soon. She didn't make the mistake of assuring me everything would be alright. All she said was, "When you get tired enough, you'll sleep."

Which is exactly what happened. My bed was one of those hospital beds (naturally!) where little motors bend the knees up and raise the head. The night nurse lowered the knees down flat, and brought the head down to a very slight angle. She gave me a sip of water and covered me up well. The lights were already dim, but she turned them off, and left me alone. There was still a low level of illumination coming from the hall, but not a sound to be heard.

I rolled onto my left side, facing at the window, and wondered whether I'd remember today when I woke up tomorrow. I didn't have a high level of confidence.

In spite of my apprehensions and taut nerves, I soon fell deep into dreamland, where I found myself fully engaged in a vivid, hyper-realistic dream. Have you had dreams like these? Dreams full of colors, people, relationships, connections, conversations, places... dreams as populous and complex as real life. All of it cooked up and molded out of pure fantasy; none of it taken from real life. Above all, these dreams are full of action and rich with emotion. I, me, my dream-self, was completely taken in. A total, involuntary, abrogation, suspension, and nullification of disbelief. The critical sense was so far in abeyance it may as well have never existed. I believed I was awake, alive, in this amazing world: it was real, it was life. In this dream I had a name, I had friends, I had a home, I had a job. It was wonderful, entertaining... totally immersive, funny, and full of fun. There was one weird twist, though: in the dream, I was a man. A guy. A young man, in my twenties.

I had a girlfriend or a wife, I'm not sure which. But she was there, in that dream, next to me, holding my hand...

Until...

There came a lurch in the dream. A mote to trouble the mind's eye... Specifically, somebody shouted "Hey!" so loudly, so unexpectedly, that it jolted me awake. I lay there, not quite trembling, bathed in sweat. One moment I was holding someone's hand, and in the next moment I was acutely aware of the beads of perspiration on my forehead. Confused, disoriented... not sure for one brief half-moment which was real: the dream or the hospital bed. Even while my inner gears shifted to engage with waking reality, I couldn't parse that shout: had an actual, breathing, living person shouted, or had an internal circuit-breaker overloaded in my dream? Had two cerebral wires crossed and caused a short-circuit in my subconscious?

My head was wet. My hospital gown was soaked. My sheets were damp. And yet I felt a grand sense of relief, as though a fever had broke. A powerful thirst came on me. I grabbed the big water container and drank three huge swallows of ice-cold water. I had to stop drinking because the gellid intensity made my sinuses ache.

My thirst slaked, I rolled onto my back and did my best to recover whatever bits of dream-memory I could snatch, as they slithered away. The threads were disappearing — yes, they were vivid, compelling, packed with meaning... and naturally, I meant to piece together whatever shards I could find. Unfortunately, by now, reality had uprooted and totally supplanted the dream. The moment I knew where I was, the door to dreams was closed.

Every trace of the dream had gone, evaporated. Even the bit about my gender... I wasn't sure how that part worked, how it was. All I was left with was a sense of the action, of the people, of the connections. None of the content. Even so, I felt quite sure it was all dream-stuff; it wasn't my old life, my forgotten life. It wasn't my real life. It wasn't my memories. Just fluff my subconscious dredged up: the dryer lint of my inner world: random bits, flotsam and jetsam, vigorously tossed in the mixing-bowl of my skull along with super-long strands of psychic spaghetti. A feast for my sleeping mind... but not approved, not allowed, for daytime viewing. I struggled mentally to get beyond and behind the fading sensations, but it was no use. All I could remember was the impression of its vividness and the shock of someone shouting hey.

In the real world, in the hospital ward, everything was quiet. The world was still dark. I had no idea what time it was.

Probably, I should have asked for dry bedclothes. Maybe I intended to do just that. I'm not sure, though. I did waft my sheet and blanket, lifting and letting it fall like a parachute, to pull some fresh air in, to dry it off just a little. While I considered calling the nurse, I rolled onto my right side, facing the door. I blinked twice, and bang! in an instant, I fell sound asleep again, as if I'd turned off a light.

 

---

 

This time my sleep was deep, dark, and dreamless. I slept like a dead man. Of course I have no idea how long I slept. I had no way of telling time. It could have been minutes or even seconds. It could have been hours.

Until... at some moment, for some reason, I opened my eyes.

To my shock and amazement, another pair of eyes stared straight back into mine. It was a woman, a young woman. She blinked. I blinked. I felt surprise, but I wasn't afraid. Not at all.

I think... in those first moments... and after my previous dream and awakening, I wasn't 100% sure that the woman was actually there. For all I knew, she could easy be a vivid hallucination, a remnant of an as-yet unfaded dream.

In spite of all that... in spite of the fact that... well, what I mean to say, is that in a single moment I understood several things at once, at a glance. For one thing, it was still the middle of the night. I could tell by the darkness out my window and the dimness of the hallway light, as well as the general hushed silence that only comes when all the world's asleep.

And, yes, in spite of the fact that I'd just woken from a deep slumber... I could plainly see... and well, to not put too sharp a point on it, but, obviously, the woman was disturbed. To put it more broadly, I was sure, through and through, that this woman, who stood next to my bed in the night's darkest hour, staring at me — well, she had a few screws loose. She was a few eggs short of a dozen. She was nuts, if we're still allowed to say that world.

So why wasn't I afraid? Because somehow, I *knew* her... I recognized her. I'd go so far as to say that I had history with her. Isn't that wild? She was Charlotte. And I already knew something about Charlotte, didin't I? My jaw fell slack, and I said it. In a whisper, that cryptic phrase: "Charlotte had a boyfriend."

In that same moment, my eye skipped from her face to her name tag. It read CHARLOTTE RAFFLYAN, R.N.

"Charlotte," I breathed, sotto voce. I can't explain why. Her name tag was a confirmation, not an explanation, if that makes any sense.

Charlotte's reaction, on the other hand, was explosive to say the least. She swallowed hard. Her eyes popped. Her jaw started working and her hands and forearms shook.

She let out a blood-curdling scream.

And sure, it hurt my ears. It made me jump because it caught me unawares, but it didn't frighten me. It somehow seemed natural, expected. It was like... well, if you see a duck, it's no surprise if it goes quack-quack. In the same way, here was Charlotte, screaming in my face. That's what Charlotte does, isn't it. It startled me, but it didn't surprise me.

That's why I didn't reach for the call button. I didn't ring for the nurse to come. I did what I always did — somehow I knew, I remembered (I guess you could say I remembered) — that this was what I always did: I waited to see what Charlotte would do next.

What did she do? She backed away from me, as though *she* was frightened. "How do you know me?" she shouted. "How?"

By that time, the night nurse had come. She bravely placed herself at my bedside, between me and Charlotte. In another moment, a second nurse appeared at the door. She said, "Security's on the way." In a third moment, an old woman — another patient, one of my neighbors — stood in the hallway, peering past the nurses into my room.

"You don't need security," I told them all. "It's okay."

They all ignored me. They must have thought that *I* was off my rocker as well as Charlotte. The nurse near my bed faced Charlotte and demanded in a low, serious voice, "What the hell are you doing?"

Charlotte gestured at me and ventured, with shaking hand, "She was found in the desert."

"Oh," the night nurse groaned, getting it.

"Two years ago—" Charlotte stammered. The night nurse, put her hands in the air, with the air of one who'd heard it one too many times before, and tried to cut Charlotte's recital off, right at the start, saying "—I know, I know..."

Charlotte, insisting, finished the thought: "—my boyfriend disappeared. In the desert. And that—"

"That's enough, Charlotte," the nurse commanded, with the voice of authority. The look in her eye forced Charlotte to end her explanation there.

Then the night nurse turned to look at me. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

"Do you know her?" She gestured at Charlotte.

"I know that her name is Charlotte. I'm pretty sure I know her. Somehow." I scratched the back of my head. "I don't know how."

Charlotte frowned, angry now. "You don't know me from shit!" she hissed. "And I don't know you!" Appealing to the night nurse, she pleaded, "She said Charlotte had a boyfriend! She knows something!"

The night nurse turned back to me. "Do you know anything? About Charlotte? About her boyfriend? About things that... things that might have happened in the desert?"

"No," I said. "All I remember is that phrase: Charlotte had a boyfriend—" Charlotte winced as I said it "—and I recognized her as soon as I saw her. That's all."

Charlotte shook her head. "No. No. I reject it. She doesn't know me. She read my name tag. I saw her looking at it." She gestured to her tag. "My name's right there. That's the proof. She looked at it, then she said my name."

The night nurse turned to me again. "You sure you're okay?"

"Absolutely. Except for my memory."

"Which seems to be coming back," the nurse observed. I shrugged.

Turning to Charlotte, the nurse asked, "Which floor are you supposed to be on?"

"Nine," she replied.

"You'd better get back up there."

Charlotte nodded, acquiescent.

The night nurse added, "And don't come back down here, waking up my patients, understand?"

Charlotte nodded again, chastened. She took a few steps toward the door, then stopped. Turning to me, she asked, "Why is your name Mason? Why?"

I was stumped. She was obviously waiting for an answer, but all I could tell her was, "I don't know what to say."

 

---

 

After Charlotte left, the nurses had to put some of the other patients back to bed and in general quiet things down. There was soothing to be done and explanations (or excuses) to be given. I took advantage of the fact that I'd been left alone: I pulled out my little book and pen, chanting the entire time Rafflyan, Rafflyan, Rafflyan so I wouldn't forget the name.

Once I got the book open I scribbled

Rafflyan
Charlotte Rafflyan, RN

After a moment's thought, I added Charlotte's question:

Why are you called Mason?

 

---

 

Thistlewaite came to see me early the next morning. The nurses had already informed him about Charlotte's visit, but he wanted to hear the whole story from my point of view.

"I knew her — I recognized her!" I exclaimed, perplexed, excited. "But she said she didn't know me! I don't know what to make of it."

Thistlewaite hemmed and hawed and kept turning my questions back on me. (What do *YOU* think?) He was so obviously hiding something, that at long last I lost all patience and demanded that he tell me whatever he knew.

"Okay," he grudgingly admitted. "You might have seen her on TV. On the news. Maybe."

"Why would she be on the news?"

Again he squirmed, uncomfortable.

"What the hell?" I asked. "Why can't you answer my questions? Look: if you won't tell me, I'm not going to talk to you. At all. How does that sound? Would you like that? I'll throw your fucking book in the trash! Tell me: Why are you clamming up on me?"

"I want your recollections to come organically," he admitted. "I don't want them to come from suggestions and explanations. You might believe you remember something only because you heard it from someone else, because it fills in a blank for you."

"And in the meantime I flounder, like an imbecile, wallowing in ignorance? Is that your idea?" I shot back.

"Okay, look," he began. He seemed profoundly unhappy about breaking down and giving me information. "I'll tell you. About two years ago, Charlotte's boyfriend — his name was Ross something-or-other — disappeared in the desert... probably in the same general area where you had your accident. Anyway, he was a college freshman with a promising football career ahead of him. He was widely regarded as a rising star, as one to watch, you know? The general consensus is that he ran away because couldn't handle the stress of success and the weight of expectations."

"Okay."

"Charlotte, on the other hand, believes that Ross was murdered."

I nodded. That explained her intensity.

"And what do you think? What do the police believe?"

"The police found no evidence of foul play. Like I said, the general consensus is that he ran off."

I rolled this information around in my mind. "I don't see what any of that has to do with me. I mean, why would Charlotte want to see me? What could she possibly want with me?"

"It doesn't have anything to do with you at all," Thistlewaite said. "Charlotte is grasping at straws."

"It sounds like you know her well," I observed.

"I provide counseling for many hospital employees," he replied. "But that's all I'm going to say."

"Okay. Well, thanks for that much." I considered what he'd said while I replayed last night's incident in my mind. "You know, she asked me why I'm called Mason. Can you make any sense out of that?"

He shook his head. "None." When I shot him a challenging look, he protested, "Seriously! I have no idea."

We spoke a little while longer, but not about anything significant. I was pretty irritated with him, but before he left me, he partially redeemed himself: "I'm not making any promises, but I am trying to pull some strings so you can get another night here in the hospital. That is, unless your memories return or someone who knows you comes forward."

I appreciated his efforts, but I took the opportunity to tell him my fears that a stranger with bad intentions might come forward and claim me. He actually laughed! He laughed and told me, "That wouldn't happen."

Which did nothing to calm my fears.

 

---

 

Around mid-morning, a young man knocked on my door frame (the door was always left open) and entered my room. He was a little rumpled looking, with a long shock of dark hair falling to the top of his glasses. He radiated nerd. My eye fell on his name tag. It was unusual in that it was covered by white tape. The words OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY were handwritten on the tape with black ink.

"Don't look at that," he said. "It's bullshit. Camoflage. Lucy's getting me a better one in a bit." He walked quickly toward me and sat in the chair to my left, between me and the window.

"I'm Hermie Deershaw," he informed me. "Lucy's brother." He scratched his head. "So... amnesia, huh? That must suck."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"You're a little older than I expected," he observed, tactlessly. "What are you, about thirty?"

"Just about. I guess."

"Did they find your phone yet? Did they give you a phone yet?"

"No."

"Okay." He pulled a smart phone and its charger from his pocket, and handed them to me. "This might help. It's an older model, but it will get you on the internet," he explained, apologetically. "In fact, it will *only* get you on the internet. You can't make phone calls. I've already connected it to the hospital wi-fi. Lucy said you need to be able to look things up."

"It would help," I admitted. "It will help a lot. Thanks! The doctor is trying to keep me in the dark. He wants to wait and see what I remember organically."

Hermie twisted his mouth to the side. "Sounds like you don't appreciate that approach."

"No, I don't!"

"My feeling is this—" Hermie declared "—what if you don't remember? What if your memories never come back? Then what?"

"That's what I've been saying!" I exclaimed.

"At least with this phone you can connect with the world. Understand what's going on around you. Otherwise, you're running blind."

He made sure I knew how to search the internet. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. But I got it. I looked up a couple of things just to be sure.

"Maybe you better hide this from your doctor," Hermie said.

"Probably."

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to get out of here now, before they throw me out. It's happened before."

I laughed, but he didn't. In fact, he was quite serious the entire time he was there.

"Wait," I called to him as he was about to leave. "Can I ask you something? If I tell you my name is Perry Mason, what's your reaction?"

He considered for a moment, then answered, "Perry? Like Katy Perry? It's a nice name, a good name. It suits you." For the first time, he smiled.

And then he was gone.

 

---

 

About an hour after lunch the two policewomen returned. They found me standing at the window, looking at Robbins below, trying to penetrate the mass of rooftops and get a glimpse of life; to see something of the people of Robbins. Unfortunately, as I observed earlier, most of the streets didn't align with my line of sight. There were only a few short stretches of visible street. The wider streets that ran left to right showed up as dividing lines.

It had just occurred to me that I could call up a map of Robbins on my phone and line it up with my view. Before I could do that, in the moment that I turned from the window, Carly Rentham, the detective, walked in with her sidekick, the uniformed officer Tatum Scrattan. I was happy to see them.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. "Do you have news for me? Have you figured out who I am? Did you find any of my stuff?"

"Your stuff?" Carly repeated, as though she had no idea what I meant. There was an aggressive undercurrent in her tone. I was taken aback.

"Yes," I replied. "My phone, my wallet... you said there was another car in the desert, not far from where Amos found me hitchhiking. You said you were going to check it out."

They didn't answer right away. Their manner, their attitude toward me changed since yesterday. They were considerably less friendly. Gone were the chatty pair I'd first met. Now these two were definitely cooler... more cautious with me.

"Yes, we did check out that car," Carly admitted, "but the only thing we found belonging to you was your fingerprints."

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Well, okay. I guess that's not entirely surprising, right? What does it tell us?"

"We found something else," Tatum put in, skipping over my question. "Remember you mentioned a scratchy blue blanket, like a wool blanket?"

"Yeah, sure."

She turned her phone screen toward me, showing a photo of a rumpled blue wool blanket, lying on the floor of a car. The back seat of the car.

"I guess that could be it," I agreed. The picture itself gave me that scratchy sensation I recalled.

"AND... we're pretty sure we know where you got that Robbins Police t-shirt," Tatum continued. "The car belonged to a Robbins policeman, Hugh Fencely. Does that name ring a bell?"

"No," I replied, letting the name echo in the empty chambers of my mind. "Not at all."

"Hugh is Robbins cop. That car in the desert? It's Hugh's car. Hugh is a big guy. He's extra-large." Tatum fiddled with her phone for a moment, then turned it to show me a picture of a young, husky, likeable guy. "Look familiar?" I studied the image, waiting for a feeling of familiarity, of some kind of seen-before echo inside me, but nothing came. I shook my head. Tatum turned her phone back toward herself and went on: "Another thing about Hugh: he's a bit OCD, especially about his car; he always keeps emergency supplies in the trunk — obvious stuff like flares, a flashlight, bottles of water... and less obvious things like the woolen blanket, for instance, and a complete change of clothes, sealed in a vacuum bag. The bag was ripped open, and all his other clothes were tossed around the trunk, discarded: pants, underwear, socks, shoes — but there's no shirt of any kind."

I nodded.

"Does any of that sound familiar?"

"No, sorry. Not at all. Do you figure I opened the bag and took the t-shirt?"

"Is that what you think happened?"

"I don't *know* what happened, but it makes sense, sure. If he was a big guy, none of his other clothes would fit me. Why don't you ask Hugh? Have you asked him? What did he say?"

The two women glanced at each other. Tatum informed me, "We love to ask Hugh, but we can't. Hugh has gone missing. No one has seen him since yesterday. He's not answering his phone. We're trying to put together the timeline... trace his movements since he left work yesterday."

The word trace triggered a random memory; a loose fact jarred loose. "What about— what about— you said trace—" the idea was coming through, taking form "—isn't there a way to trace somebody's phone, so you can see exactly where they are?"

"You remember that?" Carly asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

"I guess, I don't know. Can you track him? Track his phone?"

Carly hesitated before answering. Then: "Yeah, normally we could do that. But his phone is either out of range or out of power or damaged or broken."

I didn't know what to say. My eyes went from Carly's face to Tatum's, and back again, several times. I had nothing more to offer.

Carly hung fire, for dramatic effect. Then she dropped the bomb, looking me in the eye as she told me in a level tone, "You could be the last person to see Hugh."

A wave of gooseflesh washed over my arms, then up my back and neck.

"In fact," she added, "all indications are that you WERE the last person to see him."

Her eyes glued to my face, Carly finished up in a tone that felt like the distant threat of heavy thunder, "If there's anything you can tell us, now is the time."