Faces in the Fire (6 page)

“And you like doing that?”

“I don't.”

“Why don't you like it?”

“No, I mean I don't do it. I . . . ignore them.”

She sipped from her glass of water. “You don't do it.”

“I go to estate sales, auctions, buy all the clothing that belongs to dead people so I can listen to the ghosts inside,” he said. “But I don't talk to them. I don't answer them. I don't help them.”

She leaned back in the leather booth, shifting her weight to get more comfortable. Kurt waited, listening to the sounds of metal utensils clanking on plates all around them. The comfortable sounds of dining.

“Well,” she finally said, “it would seem you're one sick puppy.” She raised her glass of water to him in a toast, smiled, and took a drink. “Welcome to the club. I'm the president.”

“What qualifies you to be the president?” he said.

“Cancer, for one,” she said. “But that's not the half of it. You got an e-mail account?” she asked.

Odd question, but they were in odd territory. “Yeah.”

“Get spam?”

“Who doesn't?”

“Well,” she said, “you can thank me for that. You're about to have breakfast with a woman who sends out a million e-mails every week for fake degrees, online prescriptions, and—what's a delicate way to say this?—male enhancement. Bon appetit.”

He waited for a few minutes, and was about to ask her about the tattoo when she looked at it herself, as if reading his intentions.

“Those numbers on my arm. I didn't even know they were there, but—they're kind of what brought me here.”

“Well, if you don't mind going a bit deeper into the twilight zone,” he said, “one of the ghosts told me I was supposed to give you a ride. Just before you showed up. So—no offense—I'm a little worried this is all some kind of hallucination. The brain injury I told you about.”

She shook her head. “Oh, I'm real, Kurt. I'm so real it hurts.”

The waitress brought their food. Kurt took a bite of steak, picked up his ceramic mug, drank from the hot, dark liquid. It looked like black tar, he thought. Like the boxes in the shipping container. Maybe he was hauling nothing more than some strange Chinese coffee. He closed his eyes, exhaled loudly.

“So about the numbers . . .” he said, opening his eyes and focusing on her once more.

“I don't know much about them.” She forked a bite of hash browns into her mouth. Part of the gravy dribbled down her chin, and she dabbed at it with her napkin, looking embarrassed.

“You don't know? So why'd you get them?”

“I didn't ask for them. I didn't even know they were there until you saw them.”

“But they mean something to you, don't they?”

She paused for a long time. “Yeah, they mean something.”

“They . . . they mean something to me, too,” he said. “I just can't put my finger on it now.” He continued staring at the tattoo, as if searching it for more hidden answers.

He found none.

The waitress brought the check, and he paid the tab. As he put away his wallet, Corrine dug in her bag for a few minutes, then quickly pushed her way out of the booth.

“Be right back. I'm going to the restroom.”

He watched her walk away. He had no illusions about her really coming back. Not after what he'd just told her. He'd be lucky if she didn't sneak away somewhere and dial 911.

Actually, that might be good.

He stood, noticed something on her side of the booth; she must have dropped it when she got up to leave. He bent over and picked it up: inside a plastic sandwich bag, a napkin with the numbers 1595544534 scrawled on it. The same numbers hidden inside her tattoo. He caressed it between his thumb and forefinger, lost in thought. What was so special about this napkin, these numbers, the catfish connection?

(brain damage)

“So where you headed?”

He spun around, slipping the plastic bag and the napkin into his front pocket as he did. “Huh?” he asked, flustered by her sudden return. “Oh, Chicago.”

Was she actually hoping to catch a ride with him? Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.

He smiled, instantly feeling a cathartic clarity in his thoughts for the first time that morning. He started to walk toward the doors, and she followed.

“How about you? Where you going?”

“No clue,” she said. “Just trying to outrun my past.”

“It's a vicious circle,” he agreed.

She stopped walking suddenly, and he turned to see what had stopped her. For a moment, he thought she'd been shocked, or maybe she'd bitten her lip.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“A vicious circle,” he repeated.

She stared off into the horizon, a smile creasing her face. “Yes, it is,” she said, almost dreamily.

Her next question was even more of a surprise.

“Do they . . . ah, have a computer I could use in here?”

Odd question. But then, he'd hit the jackpot on odd this morning, hadn't he?

“Truckers' lounge upstairs. Wireless Internet, a computer workstation you can use. Nothing special.”

“I don't need anything special.”

“I think . . .” he started, then shook his head. “I need to get going.”

They were standing at the glass doors, looking at the parking lot. He wasn't the person who ever offered to shake hands, who ever offered to touch anyone else at all, but for some reason, it seemed right this time. He extended his hand, waiting for her to shake it. He wished he was still wearing gloves, but that was one habit Todd had managed to help him break several years before. He didn't have to wear gloves anymore, but he secretly yearned for them. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic; once a glove addict, always a glove addict, he supposed.

She looked at his hand a moment before she stepped close, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. It felt awkward, but on a deeper level it also felt right. He was a bit disappointed when she stepped away again.

“You take care of yourself,” she said.

He nodded numbly and felt his body turning toward the doors, his legs carrying him to the clear air outside, leaving her behind the double-paned glass.

As he walked toward his rig, he turned to glance back, and she was still standing there, watching him walk. When he turned a second time, she was gone.

Kurt opened the door to the cab, climbed inside, fired up the diesel, sat, and listened to the clattering of the exhaust for a few moments. On the floor of the passenger side the dead man's shoes seemed to glow with a dark, oily sheen, pushing the image of the catfish into his mind once more.

He waited for the static to break in again, but it didn't. Only the catfish, implanted in his brain.

Instead of static, he heard the sound of hydraulics nearby. He turned and noticed a large garbage truck emptying giant bins of trash into its belly, compacting the trash into tight folds.

Kurt smiled.

He grabbed the shoes, crawled out of the cab of his truck, and walked over to the garbage truck. He hailed the driver, held up the shoes, and pointed to the rear of the truck. The driver gave him a thumbs-up, so Kurt walked to the rear of the truck to throw the shoes into the gaping maw.

The driver emptied another bin of trash before he hit the hydraulics again. Iron jaws clamped down on the garbage, and a large plate of metal pushed it to the front of the truck's payload. Kurt caught a glimpse of one shoe, pinched against the side of the compartment for a moment before the iron compactor shredded it with the rest of humanity's discarded past.

18.

“So, Kurt, tell me about yourself,” Todd said, sitting in his chair.

He hadn't yet adjusted, folding one leg up in the chair and staring at him thoughtfully. But Kurt knew he would soon. Todd always did in these sessions.

“Like, what do you want to know?”

“What kind of person are you?”

Kurt shrugged. “Working on being a trucker, you know. That's about it.”

“A trucker, yes. Why do you think that is? What is it about your past that makes you want to be a trucker?”

Kurt bit his tongue, literally and figuratively, as he thought about the only thing he knew of his past. Because when he'd awakened, in the fire, the only items he had were a driver's license with his name, an acceptance letter from High Road Truck Driving School, and about ten thousand dollars in cash.

The cash thing had always troubled him, but he'd never told Todd about it. Or the fire. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“What I mean,” Todd continued, “is just this: you were going to become a trucker before your blank slate, right? You'd already applied to the school, been accepted. So that's a link to your past. Something to explore. But more than that, I think it says a bit about you.”

“Like how?”

“What's appealing about trucking?”

Kurt had to admit the whole thing did appeal to him; he'd done well in the school and felt perfectly matched to trucking. “Well . . . I suppose the open road.”

“And where does the open road lead to?”

“I don't know. Anywhere, I suppose. Forward.”

“Forward. Interesting.”

“Why?”

Todd folded his left leg beneath him, shifted, and settled in the chair again. Kurt smiled; he knew it had to happen sometime. It was something solid, something that marked their time together.

“It's not like I've done a personality inventory or anything, Kurt, but I'm guessing a lot of truckers like the lifestyle because it's solitary. Not much contact with other people, lots of time on the road alone, being the captain of your own ship, as it were.”

“I suppose. I mean, that sounds good to me.”

“Being on the road means never staying in one place for long. In your case, it may mean you're running from something in your past—running from something even before you lost your memory.”

Kurt hesitated, thinking of his recent conversation with Jenny Lewis, the detective. If she was right, he had a lot to run from. “Maybe.”

Todd leaned back in his chair. “But when I asked you why you wanted to be on the open road, you said because it meant you would always be moving forward.”

“Yeah.”

Todd unfolded his legs again and pushed his chair away from the desk, out onto the open floor so he was facing Kurt. “You know much about sharks, Kurt?”

Kurt shrugged.

“I guess I don't either. But I heard a story once, and it's always stuck with me. Sharks, you see, are one of the few animals that can't move backward. Incapable. Other fish, other animals of just about any kind—even amoebas—can reverse their direction. But a shark always has to move forward to stay alive.”

“Okay.” Kurt wasn't sure where this was going.

“So that says to me it's sometimes healthy to move backward, to see your past. That's something you've been unable to do, even after our several sessions together, but it's something you
have
to do. We need something to help you move backward before you can really start to move forward again. You're human, Kurt. You're not a shark.”

Kurt thought about the fire, thought about the heavy stash of bills strapped to his midsection, thought about the pain in his body starting to fade as he walked away from the scene of destruction.

“Don't be so sure,” he whispered to Todd.

64.

Ten miles down the road, Kurt was feeling better. Like the sky above, his head was clear. Sharp. Fresh. He could hold on to that sharpness, lose himself in the blur of miles streaking by, clear his life of everything that had happened in the last day.

After dropping this load in Chicago, he'd deadhead it back here—at this very moment, he was within an hour of the small town where he normally hid—and get to work on new projects for Macy. For the show she'd lined up for him.

There would be no catfish sculpture, of course. He'd have to abandon that. In some odd way, the catfish (shark?) was what had opened up the door between his world and the ghost world. He was sure of it. And now that the shoes were gone—not just gone, but destroyed—he could return to the life he'd had before, such as it was. When he made it home, he was going to pull out that silk dress, start working on the hands reaching for a face. That was the kind of thing Macy would want, anyway.

But those thoughts were instantly pushed away by a terrifyingly familiar image. The catfish, bathed in orange, filled every corner of his mind with equal parts brilliance and violence.

Shocked, Kurt tried to push the image away, but it would not leave. Even more terrifying, he heard a burst of static,
followed by the voice of the ghost inside the shoes.

“You can't hide anymore, Kurt.”

The voice was loud, painful, felt as if it were inside his head.

“You have to see. To understand.”

“To see what?” He tried to concentrate on the voice. Was it Jonas again? It didn't sound like that voice, but it was familiar nonetheless. Eerily familiar.

“To see everything. Look in your mirrors.”

Kurt did as instructed, and saw the headlights of another rig—another Peterbilt like the one he was driving—coming up fast. Terror raked his stomach with dull claws.

Jonas again? Had to be. Okay, so Jonas wasn't in the truck with him this time. He was in a truck behind him, intent on . . . something. That was impossible.

Okay, so
impossible
was something of a relative term in the world of Kurt Marlowe, Amazing Amnesia Boy. After all, following his head injury, he'd been able to communicate with the ghosts trapped in the clothing of dead people. He'd even spoken to one sitting in his front seat not so very long ago this morning. But this was even breaking all the rules of that world. The shoes had been destroyed in the garbage truck several miles behind.

He bit his lip. Had he really thought that would work? Deep down he had known it wouldn't. He'd thrown the shoes down a canyon just a few hours earlier, and Jonas, wearing the very same shoes, had reappeared inside the cab of his truck shortly after. Why would such shoes let a little thing like shredding keep them away? He knew they had to be in the truck directly behind him, waiting to be delivered by Jonas or whatever other ghost was driving his twin Peterbilt.