Anamnesis: A Novel (2 page)

By the time I stopped under the viaduct on
University Street, my lungs burned and my throat was covered in phlegm. I
couldn’t remember the last time I ran more than a block. I hoped I’d never have
to do it again. Every breath of air I gulped down brought on a sharp pain in my
left side.

Across the street, the water in Elliot Bay
glittered as it reflected light from the gaudy Ferris wheel built a few years
back. Once I caught my breath, I crossed the street and leaned on the railing
of the waterfront, watching it spin. The Puget Sound lapped up against the
docks.

My hands shook as I retrieved my
cigarettes and lit one. There was a wild animal inside my chest, thrashing and
trying to crawl out. I needed something harder to make that feeling go away. My
self-help books called my drinking problem “self-medicating.” Fucking self-help
books. I had hundreds of overdue library books in my apartment, all of them
offering reasons why I was the way I was. They didn’t improve my life but I ate
them up and hoped one day they’d click and I’d be better.

None of them ever helped me remember. No
effort I ever made to unearth my past paid off.  The woman in the pink dress
gave me more in the space of minutes than I’d ever gotten on my own. She told
me I wasn’t alone.

I wanted to tell myself what just happened
was a freakish, unconnected event. Whatever happened to me was a mystery and
would stay that way. But she wasn’t acting. She wasn’t high. She honestly
didn’t know where she was. Just like me seven years ago when I woke up from
four years of missing time. Memories of my life before that moment were missing
or jumbled. I didn’t know what happened to me during the four years. All I
could dredge up were fragmented visions of torture and experimentation.

Whatever chance I had of gleaning
information was fucked now. I shouldn’t have let go. I should’ve dragged her
with me. I should’ve fought.

My phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the
number. Skid got a new burner every month so I answered anyway.

“E, you okay?” Skid asked. I picked up on
cars in the background. He was back at the overpass. “What happened to that
lady?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“I’m good, yeah.” He paused, waiting for
me to answer his question.

“She left,” I lied. A couple stopped at
the railing nearby. I took a few steps away and lowered my voice. “I think she
was drunk or high or something. Don’t worry about it.”

“All right. I just wanted to make sure the
po po didn’t get you. You wanna push a bit more tonight?”

“I’m fine,” I said again. “No, not
tonight. I gotta crash. Meet up tomorrow though, okay?”

“You got it. Later.”

Before I went back to my apartment I
stopped by the alley. There was no sign of the girl or thugs. Not like there should
be. I stared at the spot where I had her right in front of me. The spot where I
let her go.

I merged into the horde of Seattlites, my
unsold package of benzos and roofies feeling heavy in my pocket. I should’ve
stayed out another few hours. I should’ve done a lot of things. What I was
going to do was drink myself into oblivion and make myself forget.

My legs are under ice water. They’ve been
numb for a while, but I want to keep them there for some reason. There’s a
reward if I keep them under longer than anyone else, or beat my own record. But
I’ve never done this before, so how could I beat my own score? And there’s a
nagging in the back of my mind that no one wins. I’ve never seen anyone win. I
think of anything but the tingle climbing up my thighs where the ice water
stops, the stabbing that will follow when they haul me out and prod at me. They
give me pills with tepid water to wash them down. It’s never enough water and
they feel like stones in my throat.

What is your pain level on a scale of
1-10?

Does this pain feel familiar to you in any
way?

It does. Yes, it does. I’ve been here
before, but my whole body is under ice water. A tube down my throat. I can’t
breathe. I’m going to die. I’m going to freeze to death or choke on this
plastic tube down my throat.

Blood on my hands. Screaming. I see the
face of a girl with red hair and she’s smiling at me. Half her face is burned
and her teeth are white against the charred remains. I try to tell her I can’t
breathe, get this fucking tube out of my throat. She tells me it’s okay, she’s
going to get me out of here. Both of us out of here. But it’s too late.

I’m suffocating. I’m going to die.

M
y heart thundered
in my chest when I woke up from the nightmare. I untangled myself from the
sweat soaked bedding and brought my legs over the edge of the mattress. They
hurt. They always hurt after that dream. A phantom pain that tingled. Sometimes
I expected to look at my toes and see them blackened from frostbite. If I was
still high from the night before, I’d hallucinate that they were.

I tried to stand. My head swam. I sat down
and took a deep inhale. The smell of my apartment comforted me. It meant I was
home—or at least as close to a home as I’d ever have—and safe. Cigarette smoke,
old pizza. Curry from the neighbors next door. Piss and garbage wafting in from
the open window.

I didn’t say it was a pleasant smell, just
that it meant I was home.

Much to my surprise, the nearest bottle of
alcohol was on the folding table by the window, lit by the dying sun outside. I
mustered up as much energy as I could and walked to it. Focused on the matted
carpet under each footstep, my body moving through space. Sometimes that’s what
I had to do; hone in on each small motion in order to get somewhere. You know
you’re fucked up when walking ten feet to a bottle of booze was a daunting
task.

It was worth it. I sat in the lounge
chair, one of the only nice things I had, and took a swig. Whiskey ignited my
mouth, burned my throat as it went down. It was cheap, not something you’d
drink to savor. I waited as warmth spread through my core into my limbs.

Like many people, I drank to numb myself.
At least I knew it. I wasn’t in denial about it. When my mind was clear, I
panicked. I was forced to face who I was, what I’d lost, and what I didn’t
know. If I drank, all that became gray and fuzzy and something I didn’t have to
think about. When all the memories of your life were Swiss cheese or gone all
together, you didn’t want to think about it. You did anything you could to make
it blurry.

My phone buzzed from somewhere below. I
took another swig and slid to the floor to rifle through the scattering of
clothes and empty food containers. I felt it in my jeans pocket, where I left
it from the day before, and pulled it out. I expected Skid, but it was Donovan.
Sometimes I wished Donovan treated me like the other hundred dealers under him.
If he did, he wouldn’t care about me unless I was right in front of him. Being
someone’s personal project was tiresome.

I could hear the low thud of bass in the
background. I imagined him outside of his strip club having a smoke as he called
me.

“Hello?”

“Been calling you all day!” Donovan’s
Russian accent always sounded heavier over the phone. “Where were you?”

I glanced at the digital numbers on the
stove. One advantage of a studio apartment is that everything is in eyesight.
It was 3:46pm. I’d been out since 10:00pm the night before.

“Here,” I said, letting that word be
answer enough. Donovan didn’t care. He had me now.

“Lazy bitch. Why were you calling me?”

I wandered to the fridge and opened it.
All food went in the fridge. Kept it safe from the roaches. It made searching
for food easy. I settled for a package of saltine crackers. They were stale,
but edible. Coffee sounded good but I didn’t have the energy to make any yet.

“Call you?” I asked. I slumped into the
chair again as the sawdust crackers sucked the moisture from my mouth.

“Ten times last night. You get wasted?”

The more I thought about it, I vaguely
remembered calling Donovan. I couldn’t get the pink dress lady out of my head. My
brain kept turning it over and pulling it apart until I had myself convinced I
should start looking for answers again. If anyone knew if there was a new drug
on the streets, it would’ve been Donovan. Then I hit my limit and the balm of
alcohol depressed me. It dulled the determined vigor. I gave up calling and
fell asleep.

But since he was on the phone and I was a
glutton for punishment, I owned up to it. “I did. I wanted to know if there was
anything new on the market.”

Donovan laughed. His voice was all gravel.
“Did you sell all your shit already? Nice work.”

“Sure,” I said. Happy Donovan would tell
me what I wanted to know. Mad Donovan? Whole other story. “So, anything new?”

Donovan’s voice escalated and he didn’t
bother to pull the phone away as he yelled. “Angel, get the fuck back in there,
your shift isn’t over yet!”

He was definitely at the strip club. I
waited for him to finish laying into one of his girls.

“Sorry about that. Anyway, funny you ask.
There is, but I don’t have any. Some new rope. Don’t really know much about it,
other than a small batch was released in the city two days ago.”

My hands were sweaty. I gripped the
whiskey bottle and took another sip to steel myself. “Who’s dealing it?”

“Not sure. My buddy heard from his
brother’s friend it wasn’t anyone already in the game. Gave it to some low end
independents.”

“What’s the price tag?”

“Free if you can believe it. Whoever’s
dealing just wants to test it out. You ask me, they’re testing the waters.
They’re getting people on it, then will send another wave out to see how much
they can get for it.”

When the doorbell rang my heart almost
stopped. My whole body jerked, sending a splash of whiskey onto the already
soiled carpet.

“Ethan, you there?”

“Someone’s at the door. I gotta go.”

“Stop by tonight and we’ll restock you.”

“Right. Bye.”

I snapped the phone shut and set it on the
card table. Maybe the doorbell was a figment of my imagination. I waited,
staring at the door and willing the bell not to ring again. The only people
that ever came to my apartment were a few pesky clients who found out where I
lived, but they came in the dead of night. Donovan stopped by occasionally to
get high together, but he was at the club.

A knock this time. Three hard, fast raps
on the door.

My palms started to sweat. I stood and
walked to the kitchen, retrieving the one gun I owned. It was a Glock 45 I
accepted as payment from someone years ago. From there I padded over to the
front door and looked through the peephole.

It was a girl and she didn’t belong in my neighborhood
at that hour. Her clothes were perfectly coordinated. Spotless. All creams and
blacks. She had a mane of wavy auburn hair splayed around her jacket. I
relaxed. I knew her type. Overachiever looking for some Adderall. I just
wondered who pointed her my direction. Some of the homeless outside could’ve.
Kind of a quid pro quo deal.

I opened the door a crack, keeping the gun
behind me. “You looking to get amped?”

“W-what?”

Sometimes they played dumb. It might’ve
been her first time. Coworker or classmate suggested it, the girl said no. Then
she came by herself later. I sighed. I didn’t want to deal with another
dabbler. “Do you want some bennies or not?”

“I just want…”

“I don’t take brand requests.”

“I’m here to talk to you.”

I frowned. Cop? Landlady’s kid? I said
nothing. Make her do all the talking. That was the trick to keeping the high
ground; never say anything until you’re certain you know what’s going on. All
my time on the streets, I learned that the hard way.

She shifted. Glanced left and right,
checking the hallway. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She reached into her bag. “Just give
me one minute. I swear, if you just—”

I shut the door. Jesus peddlers were
getting mighty desperate. Didn’t they watch the news? People got shot and
mugged around here.

The girl hit the door once. “Are you Ethan
Knight?”

My full name. Not even my street name, E.
Who was this girl? I looked through the peephole again. She’d retrieved a stack
of papers bound with a plastic spiral from her bag. There on the front were the
words “Memory Loss Experimentation.”

I breathed deeply, fighting the sensation
of complete emotional flooding that threatened to hijack me. Those words would
mean little to every person on the planet but me. They were a physical emblem
of why I was a drug dealer living in a shitty studio apartment in Belltown,
living off cigarettes and booze. Between pink dress yesterday and this, I
almost wanted to believe the universe was trying to tell me something.

“I want to talk to you about your missing
time.” A pause. Then, softly, “Please let me in.”

I opened the door again, enough for her to
see me.

“Why are you here? How did you find me?”

“The internet is a magical place, plus
your full name is on that blog. You talked about your drug connections so I
just started asking around for ‘Ethan’. Probably not a smart move on your part.
Please let me in and we can talk.” She cleared her throat. It was a girlish
sound that suited her. “It took a lot for me to come here. Please just hear me
out.”

There was a desperation on her face I
couldn’t say no to. That and, since she was so high strung, if I was nice
enough maybe she’d buy some benzos. I opened the door completely and waved her
in, directing her to sit on the folding chair by the card table. She sat down
gingerly, her butt on the edge of the seat. Her handbag—real leather I
guessed—in her lap. She was uncomfortable. I was good at reading people based
on how they interacted with their environment. Most people were too inside
their own heads to see what was going on around them, but if they looked they’d
see a lot.

When I closed the front door the apartment
went black, barely lit by the streetlights. The last of the sunlight was gone.
Now having company, I realized how dark I kept the place.

“What’s a bennie?”

“Learn the lingo. We have it for a reason.”
I collapsed into my big chair. “Start talking.”

“Well, I’m not sure where to start.”
Another cough. She wiggled and the chair creaked. “Now that I’m here it’s a lot
harder to talk about this.”

“You’d better start trying.”

“I’ll start with my name I suppose. My
name is Olivia Holloway. I’m a campaign manager. I put on charity events as
well.”

I knew the name. Unlike every other fuckup
dealer out there, I wanted out of the game someday. It was a fantasy, but one I
was serious about. For years I’d hijacked forgotten newspapers on the bus and
in coffee shops, kept up on the world outside my own. I even looked for jobs
when I felt particularly optimistic.

Olivia Holloway’s name showed up next to
the mayor, Lewis Ward, often. I’d seen it in dozens of news articles,
especially in regard to Ward’s recent announcement he was running for a Senate
seat. She was a pristine do-gooder. Socialite. Threw great parties and got lots
of donations. What the hell was she doing in Belltown with printouts of my
blog? It only existed because Donovan hated hearing my incoherent ramblings
about my lost time and I had to vent somewhere. There were a few reasons why I
gave up on it, but one of them was that I simply ran out of things to write.

“So?” I stared at her expectantly.

“I’ve never spoken about this to anyone
before. Not a soul.” Her voice was softer. “You have to understand, for months
I’ve been on the computer for hours a day researching what could be happening
to me. When I happened to find your blog, I knew your loss of time was the same
as mine. The way you described it was like you pulled it straight from my mind.
The strong aftertaste when you wake up, the complete obliteration of memory.
All of it.”

Any other day, I would’ve been skeptical.
With the previous night fresh in my mind, I was willing to keep going. “I
believe I was a victim of illegal pharmaceutical or government experimentation.
You’re saying that it’s happening to you?”