The Art of Forgetting (3 page)

              Now she was grinding her pelvis with increasing forcefulness. The pretense of submission had evaporated. A drop of perspiration trickled between her breasts, gathering speed on its downward flow, then slowing as it found the shallow trench of the
linea alba
of her abdomen. Lloyd smeared it with his thumb, then brought his hands up to her breasts and smirked.

              She leaned forward and grabbed his shoulders, clenched her teeth. Lloyd swept his hands down her flanks and clutched the small of her back. She dug her nails in his shoulders and pushed harder still.

              She seemed intent on punishing him for the impudence of bringing up her fiancé. But if the price to pay was a little rough play, he was all for it. He brought his hands over her buttocks and pulled her to him with deep, lunging thrusts. She fell onto him, nibbled his lower lip, tugged at it with her teeth then licked it before nipping at it again.

              The last bite brought a sharp pang of pain, accentuated by its utter unexpectedness. Lloyd wrapped his arms around her, arched his back and spun her over. Her eyes widened with a sudden trepidation, those beautiful almond eyes. But as Lloyd continued his rhythmic thrusts every shred of apprehension vanished, her features relaxed.

              Lloyd’s beeper vibrated. It inched to the edge of the nightstand like a wind-up toy and tumbled onto the hardwood floor, buzzing at a higher pitch for just a few more seconds before zonking out. Lloyd and Alison exchanged a curious look of surprise and laughed, never stopping their love-making. At last, she wrapped her arms and legs around him as Lloyd collapsed and Alison convulsed with jolting twitches of ecstasy.

              Minutes later, after catching his breath, Lloyd sat up on the bed, leaned down to pluck his beeper off the floor and studied the number on the backlit screen.

              “I thought you weren’t on call today,” Alison said

              “I’m not. It’s the lab.”

              Alison rolled onto her side, propped on her elbow. “Did a mouse escape the asylum?”

              “Maybe. They’re smart mice.”

              “You should call.”

              Lloyd shrugged. “It can wait.”

              She brushed a finger down his spine, ever so lightly.

              “Really, you should call. I don’t mind.” Sensing his reluctance, she got up and walked towards the bathroom. “I gotta pee. Call the lab.”

              Lloyd looked at her as she walked away, her silky hair pulled over one shoulder. A sepia tattoo of a pair of luscious eyes adorned her lower back.

             
Low, flat ass
.

              Lloyd found it necessary to start finding faults in his lovers when it came time to start letting go. It was a form of debriefing he subjected himself to.  A way to script his memories to preserve the raw physical aspects while air brushing away any lingering romantic vestige.

              There was Ingrid, for example, the German flight attendant with the looks of a supermodel in all respects. Well, almost all respects. Lloyd was startled when he saw her feet poking out from the bed sheets. Enormous, masculine feet replete with sparse dark hairs standing erect on her big toes like misplaced exclamation marks. Amanda had a sharp eye-tooth that gave her otherwise angelic face a menacing aspect when she smiled. Melanie was a beautiful brunette but she had shaved her pubic hair in a way that it reminded Lloyd of Hitler’s mustache. And Rachel’s peccadillo was to ask Lloyd (after the first sex date!) if he was going to call her. When he told her he would – and he almost meant it at that moment – she expressed an unjustifiable, downright sinister skepticism. “Will you really?” she asked. What nerve!  How dare she doubt him! Such brazenness could not go unpunished. He never called her again.

              Lloyd turned on his phone. He scrolled down, found the programmed number for the lab and pressed, “Select”. As he listened to the ring tone, he picked up an old silver cigarette lighter from the surface of his nightstand, read the inscription etched on its face, then buried it in a drawer.

              By the time Lloyd ended the call, Alison had returned and was slipping on her panties. The soft light filtering through the curtains set her aglow. There was a fluid elegance in her movements which reminded Lloyd of a geisha.

              He pictured her on her wedding night, radiant, with clueless Craig looking dopey in a tuxedo with tails and an oversized clip-on bow tie. He imagined the two living in a quaint suburb, a German luxury SUV in the driveway, a golden retriever frolicking on a lush lawn, a baby carriage on the front porch.

              A tide of envy surged in Lloyd like bitter bile. An unwarranted enmity materialized towards the man who would have her in a way that Lloyd would never experience. A searing pain bore into him like a hollow pang of hunger. It swelled as if propelled by every beat of his heart. He put the phone back on the nightstand.

              “Come here, Alison.”

              “What happened in the lab?”

              “A mouse bit a lab technician, but he’s fine.”

              “Who’s fine, the mouse or the technician?”

              “Both.”

              “But you meant the mouse.”

              “It’s not just any mouse. He’s maybe the smartest rodent in the world.”

              “I thought that was
your
distinction, Lloyd”.

              Lloyd put a hand over his heart and winced. “Now that really hurts.”

              Alison smiled. “Go check on your mice Lloyd.”

              “Where are you going?”

              “Look, I had fun. A lot of fun, but I think I should be going now.”

              “I have a split of Prosecco I could open,” Lloyd said.

              Alison reached for her bra; a pink lace number that looked brand new. Had she purchased it just for him?

              “God, no,” she said. “I should try to study a little tonight.”

              “What for?  You already matched in Dermatology.”

              “So?”

              “So you can study the rest of your life.”

              She walked over and turned her back to him. “Can you help me with the bra?”

              “Sure.” He stood up behind her, slowly slipped the bra straps off her arms, cupped his hands over her breasts and nuzzled the nape of her neck. His lust had been fully sated but he felt an overwhelming urge to take her from Craig just one more time.

              “Lloyd!  You’re such a bad boy!”

              “Let’s make love.” He was getting aroused again.

              “You haven’t had enough?”

              “Or we can just cuddle in bed,” he said feigning a perverted innocence.

              “No. I don’t think I can do that.”

              He pulled her closer so she could feel his erection against the small of her back. She brought her shoulders back and stood on tiptoes to raise her bottom and rub against him. They kneaded their bodies together in slow rolling waves. She placed a hand behind his head and combed his hair with her fingers.

              Lloyd bent down and tried to slip her panties off. She grabbed his hands and said, “Stop!  Wait... let’s take a shower. I have things I want to do to you.”

              Chapter 2

             
L
loyd stood on a dais at the front of the lecture hall, his white coat unbuttoned, hands in his trouser pockets, while a student in the front row, a heavy-set fellow with strawberry blond hair, flipped through a deck of playing cards. In synchrony with the drawing of each card, Lloyd called out its suit and rank with feigned nonchalance, masking the considerable mental effort he was employing.

              “Four of clubs, Jack of spades, Two of spades, Queen of hearts (hiding as usual), and last but not least, the Six of diamonds.”

              The dozen or so students in attendance clapped. One or two cheered with exaggerated enthusiasm that bordered on rudeness. Lloyd raised his hands, palms forward and sneered.

              “Okay clowns, enough.” He slipped his hands back in his pockets and started pacing, stepped off the dais. “So, do I have a good memory?  Is it even above average for someone of my age and intellectual aptitude?”

              “Yup” said the strawberry blond. A few students laughed.

              “Actually, my memory is only average. Believe me, it’s been tested often enough. So how did I manage to memorize an entire deck of cards in just a matter of minutes and recall its precise order with perfect accuracy?  Well, I used a crutch. A trick any one of you can master... with more than a few hours of practice.”

              Lloyd stopped in front of the class, stood with his legs planted apart. He pointed to a gangly man in the third row.

              “Mr. Mills, how well do you remember your gross anatomy?” Lloyd asked.

              “Um, not so well,” the student said.

              “Please recite for me the bones of the hand, in their correct order, starting from the proximal row, radial aspect.”

              The man looked at his palm and traced over it with the index finger of his other hand.

              “Uh, Scaphoid...”

              “Good start.”

              “Lunate, Tri... or is it Trapezium?  Wait, there’s a Trapezium and a Trapezoid.”

              Lloyd frowned. “Keep going.”

              The girl next to him whispered something. “Oh yeah, Triquetrium.”

              “No helping, Miss Thomas” Lloyd admonished.

              “Then there’s something with a P.”

              “What specialty are you planning to pursue, Mr. Mills?” Lloyd asked.

              “OB-Gyn.”

              “Well, we can all be thankful you’re not going to be a hand surgeon.” There were subdued laughs. “And I hope you know the anatomy of the female genitalia better than that of your own hand... which I’d say is unlikely.” This time, the class erupted in laughter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mills. That was a bit harsh, but I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself. Can you tell me what mnemonic you used to memorize the bones of the hand, way back in Freshman Anatomy?”

              The student smiled. “Slowly Lower Terri’s Pants To The Curly Hair.”

              “Ah, my personal favorite. The only problem with this mnemonic is that there are not one, not two, but three Ts to keep track of. The redundancy weakens its power. Over time, the crutch splinters and falls apart.”

              Lloyd started pacing again.

              “Now think of a childhood memory: your favorite teacher, your first pet, your first kiss. Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?” He paused. “Now those are some memories! These are things that really stick in your mind. Those memories are alive, vivid, lucid. No need for mnemonics here, right?”

              He stopped again and lowered his voice.

              “Or are we fooling ourselves?  How well do we really remember?  Are memories a reliable permanent record of our existential experience?” Lloyd waited. “I submit to you that they are not. Our brains are not computer hard drives. Our experiences are not recorded in a matrix of bits and bytes with high fidelity. A memory is more like an essence that may linger a while, but the more we try to cling to it, the more we corrupt it. Each time we conjure a recollection we inevitably alter it and mold it and refurbish it before we file it back in the recesses of our mind. We constantly re-forge our memories to adjust them to our changing prejudices and to reduce any hint of cognitive dissonance. We adapt our remembrances to fit a haphazard, continuing narrative: the story of our life. And we blithely forget what is incongruous with the fairy tales we spin to complete our delusion. Paradoxically, the best trick human memory ever came up with is the art of forgetting.”

              Lloyd paused again. The classroom remained silent. Good. He had their attention.

              “That our courts would rely on the memory of eye-witnesses to determine the guilt of a defendant is nothing short of obscene. The ninth commandment – the most sophisticated and thoughtful out of the ten – admonishes us not to bear false witness. But like most of the laws on Moses’ tablets, this is a mandate we are incapable of obeying. It is contrary to our very nature, at odds with our neurophysiology. How many innocent men have been jailed based on false witness?  How many have faced the death penalty on the inaccurate testimony of sincere witnesses who didn’t wish to deceive, didn’t aim to perjure themselves, but who committed the deadly sin of relying on their flawed memories?”

              Lloyd put his hand around the front of his neck.

              “If someone wants to hang me, do it on circumstantial evidence, please!  Not on the testimony of eyewitnesses. Our memories are false. Our memories deceive us. Our memories are nothing more than a flawed personal construct.”