Anamnesis: A Novel (4 page)

I’m lying on my stomach on a hospital bed,
head turned to the side so I can breathe. The pillow is soggy with sweat. My hands
are cuffed to the railings. They dig into my wrists and make them bleed when I
tug on them. A man in a lab coat is beside me. A doctor? He’s dabbing rubbing alcohol
into my back. It stings. How did I get hurt? Fuck. I hurt everywhere. My eyes
water and the room spins.

There’s another person in here. I can’t
see him but I feel his presence. He wears so much cologne it fills the shabby
exam room. I’m gasping for air. I can taste that scent and it makes me sick.

“How did he do?” cologne man asks.

“They flogged him for two hours,” the
doctor answers.

“That’s not what I asked,” cologne man snaps.
“How did he
do
?”

 “He did exactly how you wanted him to. He
didn’t know anything.”

“On what dosage?”

“Forty milligrams.”

“Can we go thirty?”

“He developed tolerance to thirty.”

Cologne man grunts. “Get him cleaned up
and downstairs. We need him for the endurance trial, so don’t forget the
Viagra.”

“I don’t think you should.”

“Did I ask for your fucking opinion?”

He leaves. The doctor continues cleaning
my back. At one point I think he whispers ‘I’m sorry’ but blackness overtakes
me and I’m gone.

F
irst I heard music. Some kind of 70s rock
on low volume. Then the smell; cigarette smoke, stale beer, and despite the complaints,
patchouli incense. I knew where I was and opted to keep my eyes shut a moment
longer before Lucya kicked me out. It was a miracle she hadn’t already.

Of all my nightmares, the one I’d just
woken from was the best. Or least terrible, I should say. The others jolted me
back into the world in blind panic, sweaty and confused with my heart beating
out of my chest. The cologne man dream was one I could deal with. It was the
kind of dream I tried to get answers from after I first woke up from my lost
time. Who was the doctor? Could I remember his face? Had I smelled that cologne
again? Would I recognize it, or the doctor, if I saw them on the streets?

During one of my binge reading sessions I
turned to philosophy. Most of it was beyond me—it was the pointless bullshit of
college students—but one thing stuck. Plato’s theory of anamnesis. He believed
the soul was immortal. All knowledge it obtained carried on to each of its
incarnations. But during the trauma of birth, it forgot everything. Learning
was only recovering what we already once knew.

For a while, I was obsessed with
anamnesis. During my four year blackout, there were intermittent times where I
was me, where I formed those memories that now haunted me. Each of those times I
surfaced from the darkness was a little traumatic birth. Each time I forgot
more and more until the last birth, when I woke up on Alki beach for good.

If learning was recollection, didn’t that
mean I had answers buried in some deep, mystical part of my soul? I wanted to
think the dreams were a cue from my soul that would help me remember.
Everything I wondered, I had the answers to. The space between my memories
appeared empty, but what if it was just hidden? What if it only needed the
right circumstances or trigger for me to recall?

Just because anamnesis stuck with me
doesn’t mean it was excluded from the whole college student bullshit theory.
After having the dreams enough times, I realized they were jacked up remains of
memories my mind wanted me to relive for its own sadistic pleasure. That was
it. My mania to discover what happened to me knew no bounds, and at the time,
anamnesis seemed a legitimate concept to cling to.

According to my rough count, this was the forty-fifth
time I had the doctor dream in the past year. It might seem frequent, but I was
on my two hundredth replay of the ice bath nightmare. There’s that for
comparison.

The nightmares are the same. The feeling I
have when I wake up is the same. I kept a dream journal for months, tried
self-hypnosis, meditation. No matter how I try to interpret them, they give me
nothing.

It was Olivia’s reprint of my blog that
got me to thinking of anamnesis. Maybe that sparked the rare dream to replay.

At the thought of Olivia I couldn’t help
but groan. Then I remembered the girl in the alley. They set me on this bender.
The splitting headache, dry mouth, and nausea were their fault. It began after
I left Skid at Goodwill. From there, things get fuzzy.

“He’s awake.” Lucya’s rough voice came
from across the bar. “Ethan, I let you sleep long enough. You get the fuck out
of here or I’m going to have Artur toss your ass out.”

I opened my eyes to get a glimpse of my
surroundings then squeezed them shut. Lucya’s bar was a room twice the size of
my studio in the basement of a shitty apartment building in Belltown. It was a
total dive the Melnikov family used as a meeting place and drug front. Windowless,
it was lit by year-round multicolored Christmas lights, hanging lanterns, and a
couple overhead lamps. Other than the bar, there were a couple mismatched card tables
and a scattering of homeland photographs on the walls.

I dredged through the past two days and
tried to figure out how I ended up at Lucya’s. I remembered seeing the bottom
of a bottle of Bulleit, waking up drunk and in desperate need for a meatball sub,
and walking around Seattle. My jaw ached and I recalled asking someone for a
cigarette and getting punched. After that, nothing. The irony of my
self-inflicted memory loss didn’t fall short on me.

Lucya hadn’t always hated me. This was the
sixth or seventh time I’d ended up at her bar after a bender. The bar was
secluded and rarely had patrons. It was near two of my favorite food joints and
a 24 hour Safeway. The perfect spot to crash. The first two times she was cool
about it. Every time after she became increasingly hostile.

I’ll admit, I’d puked in there before. On
her. On the floor. Came close to burning it down when a cigarette slipped from
my fingers when I drifted off. There’d been numerous hysterical rants that
ended with Artur escorting me out.

“Ethan! I know you’re awake. Get up.”

This time I kept my eyes open. There were
no patrons as usual. Lucya stood behind the bar lighting an incense. When she
finished, she hauled a bag of peanuts onto the counter and sliced it open with
a box cutter. She kept a fierce scowl on me the whole time.

Lucya had a huge bosom that hung over a
cherry-patterned apron I’d never seen her without. Her hair was pure white, kept
in a complicated braid. Lucya looked matronly. She wasn’t.

“Artur!” she bellowed. “See him out!”

Lucya’s husband wandered over. He was a
behemoth of a man with hulking shoulders and a greying beard that went to
mid-chest. Artur was much nicer than Lucya. I bet he was the one who convinced
her to let me stay. He set a glass of water on the end table next to me.

I straightened up in the lounge chair and
took the drink. The chair squeaked and my headache punished me for it with a
deep throb from my temple to the base of my skull. The cool water felt good on
my parched throat.

“Hey, guys. Long time no see.”

“Long time no see?” Lucya cursed in
Russian. “For fuck’s sake, boy. You’ve been here since yesterday afternoon and—”

“Lucya.” Artur patted me on the shoulder.
He was a man of few words. Literally. The guy didn’t know much English. “He
good. He good boy. Donovan friend.”

She scowled. “Fine. He can be a good boy
at his own place. Go home, Ethan.”

I finished my water and hauled myself out
of the chair.

Artur smiled and ushered me to the front door.
Peanut shells crunched underfoot as we walked. I braced myself for sunlight
then stumbled out. A putrid scent from garbage cans outside the door hit me. I
keeled over and puked. Lucya’s patchouli incenses wafted into the mix and I
vomited again. Why the fucking patchouli?

The meager contents of my stomach expelled—meatball
sub for sure—I stood and stumbled a few steps before stopping for a breather.
The acidic flavor of bile and tomato made me want to be sick all over again.

My phone buzzed. Trisha again. I hit
ignore and noticed I had three missed calls from Skid and two texts.

U bailing again?

Come on e!! call me. worried

The last text was at 3am.

There was a single missed call from
Donovan and a voicemail. “Haven’t heard from you, E. Call me.”

Shit. I was supposed to see Donovan days
ago. He sounded calm and easygoing in the voicemail. That meant he was fucking
pissed. I couldn’t go to him without selling all my inventory. Looks like I had
plans for the night.

I thumbed out a response to Skid.
Sorry,
been out. Gotta push hard tonight. Need my best streerer. You in?

The sky was overcast yet blinding white,
typical for winter in Seattle. I squinted to keep the foul light from my eyes
and made slow progress back to my apartment. There was a sharp knot in my lower
back from sleeping in the lounge chair that made walking difficult.

Twenty minutes later I unlocked my front
door. The apartment was trashed and smelled like piss. My mattress was halfway
off its box spring. At some point I must’ve shoved all the garbage and library
books to the walls to make space for the documents Olivia gave me. Some were
scattered, others in stacks. No logical organization. I picked up a paper
closest to me. My handwriting was illegible. Something about an octopus and the
key to unlocking all secrets?

I navigated around the mess to the kitchen
where I started a pot of coffee. The coffee maker was a godsend. The motions of
preparing a pot was meditative. While the coffee brewed, I combed the kitchen
and bathroom for something to relieve my throbbing headache.

Four ibuprofen and a quick shower later, I
sat on my easy chair sipping a giant mug of steaming hot coffee. Still no
response from Skid. I could work without him, but he made it a hell of a lot
easier.

Hungover, no Skid, and a shitload of drugs
to push.

It was going to be a long, long fucking
day.

I handed a tiny
plastic package of Ecstasy to the leader of the bachelorette party. There were
five of them. They teetered on high heels and pulled at the hems of their short
dresses. Penis necklace straws hung from their necks, gross caricatures that
would make their mothers blush. The bride wore a tiara that shimmered every
time she moved. A decorative swirl near the top of it was broken, revealing the
plastic it was really made of. At first glance they were a vibrant, lively
bunch. When you looked harder, you saw too much makeup and a feral viciousness
known well by a group of twenty-something women.

They were antsy, looking anywhere except at
me as their friend handled the transaction.

Tolerate the drug dealer just a moment
longer, honey, and we can get on our way and party. He’s a necessary evil.

“We’re just going to hang out in the
hotel, you know? Relax,” the girl said as she handed me the money, fresh from
the ATM machine. People made excuses sometimes when they bought from me. It
wasn’t for them, of course not! It was for their friend. They didn’t normally
do this. It was just a special occasion.

Maybe for them it was special. What they
didn’t realize was that I didn’t give a fuck. This was every day for me.

“Jesus, Miranda! Don’t tell him that!” The
bride’s hand flung to her mouth as though she were shocked by what she said.
She looked to her comrades for support.

I folded the money and put it in my inner
jacket pocket. I grinned wide, knowing it would probably freak them out. “Maybe
I’ll stop by later.”

They fidgeted. Some looked interested. I
won’t even begin to describe what I thought was going on in their minds. The deal
complete, I set off down the street to return to my usual spot. It had been a
busy night. I had some downers left but everything else was gone. Donovan had called
every hour asking why I hadn’t come to restock.

There was no explanation or excuse that
would satisfy him. I could tell him about the girl in the alley or Olivia
Holloway, how they shook me up. How I was trying to help Skid and it was taking
up time. How I’d been drunk two days straight. Donovan’s friendship—if that’s
what you called it—was advantageous when I first met him. I was his personal
project and he helped me get some semblance of a life together. Then the
micromanagement started. People like him got off on controlling others and
making them feel like a charity case. Like they owed him big time, forever.

None of it mattered. If I didn’t come to
restock soon, he’d know I was slacking. Then it would be hell to pay. He’d say,
Maybe you aren’t selling anymore? Should I take you back where I found you?

Back where he found me. I thought of Alki
Beach. The smell of saltwater. Of feeling more alone and out of control than I
ever had in my life. Waking up confused, trying to dredge up a memory of where
I was last and coming up with nothing.

Fuck. My hands were shaking. I reached
into my pocket and took two of my remaining Valium. You’re not supposed to use
your own inventory, but I had to. The second I stopped self-medicating I
started looking at the black voids in my memory. Sometimes they looked back.
They wanted something from me. There wasn’t anything I could give. It was a
zero sum game.

I looked around. The Friday night crowd
was still budding. Happy hour was almost over. All the businesspeople enveloped
in warmth and booze, wishing that in-between moment could last a little longer.
Along with the highest crime rate, Belltown had the best bars. Workerbees found
the reward greater than the risk.

In about twenty minutes they’d spill from
the bars and restaurants, dazed. Once they remembered where they were, they’d
flag taxis or wait nervously at the bus stops. Some went back to work. Some
drove home drunk to unsatisfied partners.

The rest would start a drunk rampage
through the city.
It’s the weekend!
They’d shout as they slammed back
another round then stumble two blocks to their next destination. It was all the
justification they needed to lose control of themselves. I’d be there waiting.

Downtown Seattle had a mix of people like
no other. Businessmen, yuppies, homeless, druggies, college kids, hipsters, and
granola hippies walking the streets with their Northface and venti Starbucks
cups. They all thought they were something special. They all had somewhere
important to be. Really, people were all the same. Potential customers, each
and every one. I didn’t care what they wanted, only how much they would pay for
it. No one was immune to wanting a little upper or downer once in a while. The
most saintly man would come begging if the circumstances were right.

You didn’t have to put a person in my
shoes to make them see things my way. Deep down, they were all like me. They
just pretended they weren’t. Workers thought they played a critical role at
their jobs. They were just a means to an end for someone higher up than them.
College kids were certain there was a bright future ahead of them if they did
well in school. They were just being molded into cogs that fit perfectly into
the gears of the big machine that chewed everyone up and spit them out, always
greedy and always in need of more.

If I went back to my apartment I could
find several self-help books that explained to me why I viewed other people,
and the world, in this way. They’d point to my childhood, to ingrained
behaviors resulting from it, and offer me advice on how to correct it.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and waited
for the effects of the Valium to kick in. The night was still young. If I got
my act together I could sell what I had left and go to Donovan for more. If
Skid were here, it might speed up the process.

My brain froze. Where was Skid? I whipped
out my phone and checked for any new texts or calls. He never responded to my
last message. Other than the text from 3am, I hadn’t had any contact with him. It
was unusual. Normally he was always around and responded to my calls or texts
within minutes. It was possible he’d gone to see that lady from the outreach
program, but she couldn’t get him in the program that fast. He wouldn’t have
left without saying goodbye.

I called him. The phone went straight to
voicemail. Maybe he’d gotten another burner and lost my number?

I started walking, looking for anyone who
might know where he was. People were fixtures of the city as much as the
buildings were, if you knew where to look. Someone had to know. The overpass he
usually slept in was a twenty minute walk, so I headed in that direction. It
was almost all uphill. Fucking Seattle. On the way I asked a few people.
Dealers mostly, a couple of homeless. They hadn’t seen him.

Panting for my life with a layer of sweat
building on my back, I hit the Capitol Hill area and the overpass, filled with
a sea of tents and sleeping bags. Laughter and shouting, some happy and some
angry, floated above it all. The soup kitchen had been closed down. Despite the
few lights they put up on the street nearby, it was still dark in the camp.

Normal people were afraid to go under here
at night, sometimes even during the day. It was a short walk under the freeway,
but you might see a crazy guy. Maybe a naked lady. Someone begging, someone on
drugs. All things good people don’t want to see.

I wasn’t a good person. I didn’t mind. I’d
been a fixture here not that long ago.

The sweet smell of meth circulated about
the camp as I navigated my way around. Then cigarettes. Hundreds of unwashed
bodies under layers and layers of clothing. It was overwhelming.

A lady wearing a tattered neon green hat
with dog ears waved me over. I knew her. I’d sold to her before. “You got any
oil?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t sell
that shit anymore. You seen Skid?”

“Who?”

Her eyes were glazed, flickering in a
trash can fire that would undoubtedly draw the attention of the police given
time. She was already rolling on something. I saw it in her slack jaw and
fluttering eyelids.

“Skid. Teenage boy, hangs around here?
Curly hair. Nice.”

She took a gasp of air suddenly and
screwed her eyes shut. Her almost toothless mouth hung open in a disbelieving
O
.

“Dead.”

My body went cold. I sat on the empty
cinder block next to her. “Are you sure?”

“Kid died. This morning.”

“Are you sure it was
Skid
?”

“Janine, this guy giving you trouble?”

I looked up. Two burly men with more beard
than face stood on the other side of the fire. Both were familiar. I’d seen
them around.

“It’s just E. One of Donovan’s guys. What
you doing here?” One of the newcomers asked. “You sellin’ any peanut butter?”

“I’m looking for my friend Skid. Janine
says a kid died this morning. Do you know anything about it?”

The man wearing a gray plaid jacket
squatted next to me. “I’m sorry, buddy. It’s true. One of his friends came down
off something and panicked real bad. He started grabbing at Skid, asking for
help, but he got rough. Like someone drowning you know, dragging the helper
under—”

“We all sawd it,” his friend added.

“—and before you know it, he pushes Skid.
He fell and then that was it. Dead. Head cracked open.”

I was going to puke. Skid couldn’t be
dead. He couldn’t.

“What about the kid who did it?”

“Cops got him. He confessed right in front
of us, said it was an accident. He didn’t know where he was and got confused.
Don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Show me where it happened,” I demanded as
I stood. “Then I want to see his tent.”

“Shi-it. Ain’t his tent no more. Been hours
since it happened. You know how it works ‘round here.”

“I don’t care. Take me to it.”

“Okay, come on.” He stood, too, then
paused. A knowing smirk spread across his lips. “Gonna cost you though.”

“Fuck you,” I spat. “I’ll just ask someone
else.”

The friend’s laughter was like a dog’s
bark. I jumped at the sound of it. “Yeah right. Teddy runs this place. No one’s
telling you shit unless he say so.”

So the overpass had a dictator again.
Great. Every once in a while someone thought they could call the shots. King of
the Hobos. Even though these things never lasted long, I didn’t have time to
wait it out. I wanted to see where it happened with my own eyes.

“He was one of you and he’s dead and
you’re using it to get drugs off me?” I asked, throwing in a bit of guilt just
in case it hit him.

The guy shrugged, the attempted guilt trip
ineffective. “Might as well. What you got?”

I pulled out a packet of two benzos. I had
other pills, all downers, but he didn’t know that. “This is all I have.”

He took them and smiled. “Thank ye kindly.
Come on, just at the other end here.”

Nothing could stifle the rage massing
inside my gut. In a way, it didn’t surprise me he used Skid’s death as a way to
get drugs. It was still a cheap move. I still wanted to punch the smile off his
face.

I also wanted to believe Skid wasn’t dead.
They could’ve confused him with someone else, certainly. Maybe it was a
different kid. When they took me to the steps, and I saw the crime tape, the
faded spot of blood where they hadn’t washed it completely, I was sure
someone
had gotten hurt.

“Where does Skid sleep, do you know?” I
glared at him. “I don’t have anything else to give you.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” He held up the
drugs. “This’ll get you a little further anyhow. Come on.”

He led me away from the scene. His friend
followed. “I seen it. The kid that did it was on that new stuff going around,
fine as anything, then started screaming ‘
What happened? What happened?
’”

That was the third person I could, if I
wanted to, link to my past. The numbers were stacking up. Pink dress, Olivia
Holloway—they weren’t strange coincidences. People were losing time.

We walked down a narrow, trash littered
pathway between tents and rows of sleeping bags, stopping at a gray tent
crammed between two others.

The man slapped the side of the tent.
“Chip, get the fuck outta there!”

Someone groaned, unzipped the tent, and
pulled himself out. He was thin, his face covered in sores. He reeked. I could
count the number of teeth he had on one hand. “My tent now. Got it first.”

“Nope, this gentlemen here needs to check
it out. Now, get!”

The guy said nothing. He crawled about ten
feet away from the tent and collapsed. My bearded companion grinned. “Here ya
go, Skid’s tent. Don’t take long, once Chip there comes to he’ll be pissed
you’s in there.”

I bit my tongue and chose not to respond. A
pissing match was low in my priorities. The thugs wandered off after a few
moments of silence.

Skid’s tent was close to the street, on
the outer edges of the camp. It was lit by passing cars and the ambient light
from a single streetlight twenty feet away. Beside the rank, sour smell of its
new inhabitant, the tent was nearly empty. Sacks and plastic containers were
tossed about, their contents long gone. I spotted the sleeping bag I bought him
beneath a soiled blanket. It was the only thing in the tent that was Skid’s.