Lost Memory of Skin (37 page)

The Kid never should have taken responsibility for Annie and Einstein. What was he thinking? It’s all the Professor’s fault, he thinks. He never would have taken them with him when he left Benbow’s if the Professor hadn’t given him the illusion that he was capable of taking care of them. That illusion is gone now too. Those two helpless creatures are way worse off with him than they were at Benbow’s.

Then to his amazement just as the Kid reaches the top and steps over the guardrail he sees the Professor’s van coming down the highway from the west. Every time he thinks about someone that person suddenly appears in reality. He should start thinking about people he actually wants to see except that he can’t think of anyone he really wants to see. Nobody he knows in person anyhow. He wouldn’t mind seeing Willow the French Canadian porn star. He wouldn’t mind seeing Captain Kydd the pirate so he could ask him about the buried treasure.

The van crunches to a stop beside the Kid. The Professor gets out of his vehicle and hurries up to the Kid. He’s in shirtsleeves with huge sweat circles under his arms and a gray wet blotch across his heaving chest. His face is red and he’s breathing rapidly as if he’s climbed several flights of stairs.

Put the animals and the rest of your gear in the van!

The Kid answers,
You can take the animals if you want. But I’m stayin’ put. I don’t need you.

The Professor slides open the side door and lifts Annie into the back and sets Einstein’s cage beside her.
Yes you do. The storm’s only half over. You can’t stay here.
He reaches for the Kid’s backpack but the Kid yanks it back from him.

Fuck you, fat man! Like I said, I’m stayin’ put.

Look at you! You’re soaked through.
He glances down the hillside at what was once the settlement beneath the Causeway.
Your camp is wrecked. You can’t stay here.

Fuck you.

The Professor picks up the Kid’s duffel and places it on the backseat.
Come with me. I’ll take you to my house. You can come back here and rebuild tomorrow or the next day, after the hurricane’s passed out to sea.

The Professor takes hold of the backpack again. This time the Kid doesn’t resist. He’s remembered that he’s an object, a thing, not a human being with a will and a goal, and that he’s only capable of reacting, not acting. The Professor’s the human being here, not the Kid. So he opens the passenger door of the van and gets in.

CHAPTER THREE

T
O
THE
K
ID
AS
THEY
DRIVE
ACROSS
THE
city and along deserted suburban streets the Professor seems agitated and uncharacteristically urgent. Usually he’s calm, slow-moving, and talks in long complete sentences that keep your attention but today he rattles on about how until now he’s been protected and that’s all going to change so he’s going to have to protect himself. The Kid’s not sure what he’s talking about and thinks at first that it’s the hurricane that’s got the Professor in a lather so he asks him if he means protected from the hurricane.

No, no, of course not, the Professor’s not afraid of the storm, he’s been in far worse storms than this, he insists. He’s been in typhoons at sea in an open boat.

No shit,
the Kid says, not knowing what a typhoon is exactly but admitting to himself that it does sound worse than a hurricane. Especially at sea in an open boat.

And besides
, the Professor adds,
wherever I go, the eye of the storm goes. The I of the eye.
He laughs loudly at this, a joke the Kid definitely does not get.
As you may have noticed,
the big man says and laughs again.

Yeah, whatever
.

Dodging fallen tree branches and uprooted foliage to the end of a looping tree-lined residential street, the Professor turns the van onto a driveway and pulls up before a double bay garage attached to a sprawling ranch house. He raises the overhead door with an electronic remote and drives the vehicle into the garage and parks it.

Lugging Einstein’s cage and leading Annie by her rope leash, the Kid follows the Professor into the house. The Professor, still in shirtsleeves and sweating, drags the Kid’s expedition backpack and duffel across the carpeted floor and drops them by the entrance to the living room. It’s a large comfortable tastefully furnished home, a professor’s and a librarian’s home with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, paintings and framed photographs on the walls, Oriental carpets, an elaborate stereo system and racks of CDs, a large flat-screened TV, and a long shelf of DVDs next to it. The Kid can’t remember ever being inside a house like this before. He wasn’t aware that comfy good-looking rooms like this even existed except in magazine ads and on TV. It’s more like a set for actors to use for an upscale porn film than a real home for real people, he thinks. Then he flashes on the night he got caught by Dave Dillinger and the girl he thought was brandi18. Except for the books and pictures this house is a lot like that one.

You don’t have like any hidden cameras or anything here, do you?

Of course not! What made you ask that?

Just wondering. Is this where you live?

Yes, it is.

You live here alone or with a wife?

With a wife and our two children.

They around?

Yes, yes, of course. They wouldn’t go anywhere in this storm.

Maybe I oughta leave. If there’s kids in the house.

No! You have to stay! Wait out the storm, and I’ll cover for you.

Too late now anyhow.

They pass through the dining room into the kitchen, a large open space with stainless steel restaurant-size appliances and copper-colored tile countertops and floor to match. The Professor heads straight for the refrigerator and then abruptly stops. A sheet of white paper with a long typed paragraph on it has been taped to the door.

The Professor peels the paper off the refrigerator door, reads it quickly, and passes it to the Kid. He opens the refrigerator door and caresses its brightly lit interior with his gaze.
At least she left us plenty of food,
the Professor says and starts carrying bowls and plastic containers to the table. He sets out two plates and forks, sits down at the table and opens several of the plastic containers.

Soaked and chilled to the bone the Kid stands by the refrigerator reading:

I have taken the twins and gone to my mother’s in Port Vitalie. It may be temporary, it may be permanent. I don’t know. I need time to think this through without you present. I need to decide how seriously to take all your secrets and lies. I realize that I’ll never know the truth about you and that you will probably always keep secrets and will continue to lie to me. I have to decide if in spite of that I can go on living with you. Right now I don’t think I can. Please don’t call or e-mail me. Please don’t try to speak with me at the library when I’m working or at my mother’s. I need to listen to my own voice and the kids’ voices, not yours. If you want to speak to the kids, call my mother’s number, not mine, and ask for them. If they want to speak to you, I will let them call you. Please don’t try to contact them when they’re at school as my mother will be driving them in and picking them up afterward, and as you know, her view of you has always been negative and will likely be even more so now. When I have made up my mind about what to do with this marriage, I will let you know. —Gloria

The Kid lays the sheet of paper next to the Professor’s loaded plate.
So I guess no kids. But, dude, that’s cold.

The Professor glances at the letter and goes back to eating. Between mouth-filling bites of cold macaroni salad he says,
Yes . . . but appropriate . . . and in some sense . . . useful.

Useful? To who?

To her. To our children. And to me.

I don’t get it, man.

You will, you will.
He stops eating and looks at the Kid.
You’re really wet. Go down the hallway on the far side of the dining room. There’s a guest bedroom and bath at the far end. Take a shower and get dried off, and then we’ll feed you and look after this poor dog and parrot. I think like you they’ll be fine once they’ve gotten dry and are fed.

The Kid points out that his duffel and backpack are soaked through and he doesn’t have any dry clothes. The Professor says there’s a laundry located next to the guest room, he can run his clothes through the dryer while he’s showering, and he better do it now while they still have electric power. If the storm knocks out the power, they’ll have to get by with candlelight. The Professor estimates the hurricane will last the rest of the day and abate during the night.
We’re lucky it’s only a Category Three. Now that we’re safely sheltered here the eye of the storm can move on. By tomorrow everything will be back to normal. Damage should be minimal, except out at the Barriers.

Yeah. And under the Causeway. That’s totally trashed, man. I’m never going back there.

We’ll discuss that later. Meanwhile, go on and dry your clothes and shower and come back to the kitchen for something to eat. I’ll still be here.

Yeah, I can see that.
At the door the Kid stops and turns back.
How come you’re so jumpy and nervous, man? I mean, your wife just took your kids and left you. Shouldn’t you be all sad and fucked-up? Or at least all pissed off ?

You’ll understand soon enough. Go on, go on. We’ve got work to do.

Whaddaya mean, work?

We need to film another interview.

No fucking way, man! No more interviews. I’m done with that.

This time you’re going to interview me, Kid.

That’s stupid. Why would I want to interview you?

I need you to interview me. For me, for my wife and children. Don’t worry about it, just do as I say.

The Kid shrugs and heads off down the hallway dragging his duffel and backpack behind him. Annie has collapsed in a puddle on the kitchen floor. From his cage next to her Einstein says,
Do as I say! Do as I say!

CHAPTER FOUR

P:
You sit there, Kid, off camera. I’ll sit here on the sofa in front of it.

K:
Whaddaya want me to ask? I mean, I never done this before, interviewed somebody.

P:
No, but you’ve been interviewed. You start by asking a question that you want answered, and then I decide if and how I’m willing to answer it. Then you ask a follow-up question that’s generated by my previous answer. Simple. Especially for the one asking the questions.

K:
Okay. How about what’s the fucking reason for making this interview in the first place?

P:
Excellent first question! The simple answer is that in the coming weeks or possibly months my body will be found, and it will look like a suicide. This interview will provide evidence that it was not a suicide.

K:
No way, man! Why would you commit suicide? I mean, you’re kind of jolly. You don’t seem the type to kill yourself.

P:
I’m not.

K:
So how come your body’s going to be found? A heart attack maybe, I can sure see you having a heart attack. On account of being so overweight. But how come it’ll look like a suicide?

P:
That’s two questions. Which one do you want answered?

K:
Okay. How come it’ll look like a suicide?

P:
There will be a scandal, a public exposé. I know who I am, a man with a publicly certified, locally celebrated, genius IQ, a respected university professor with a wife and family, a deacon of the church, et cetera, and what I look like, morbidly obese, bearded, eccentric, et cetera. A popular parody of an intellectual. Given that profile, the scandal will be of an embarrassing, probably criminal, sexual nature. That’s how they do these things. I know the script. I practically wrote it myself. First a complaint is made to the local police by someone claiming to have been raped by the targeted party or sexually molested by him in the distant past when the accuser was a child. The police quietly begin an investigation. Then the targeted party mysteriously disappears. The accusation of rape or sexual molestation is surreptitiously leaked to the news media. Weeks pass, sometimes months. Eventually the body of the targeted party is “discovered” under circumstances and in a condition that indicates suicide. By now the accuser has disappeared. The investigation ends. Case closed.

K:
You’re just making this shit up, right?

P:
No, I’m not making it up.
I wish I were, believe me.

K:
Okay, now I got a hundred questions! If you’re not just shittin’ me.

P: (chuckles)
Pick one, and we’ll go from there. I’ll answer them all eventually.

K:
You are one really weird dude, Professor. So okay, who’s the “targeted party” you’re talking about?

P:
In this case, me.

K:
Okay. That’s what I thought. Who’s doing the targeting?

P:
I’m not sure yet. It could be one of at least three of my previous employers. Let’s call them government agencies.

K:
What government? You mean the government of the United States of America?

P:
Yes. And the government of at least one foreign nation and possibly a second. Or all three in collusion.

K:
So like, are we talking FBI and CIA and shit?

P:
Not really. There are agencies that aren’t as well known as the FBI and CIA whose purposes and activities aren’t as closely monitored by Congress and the public. Agencies that are off the books, so to speak. Black-box agencies. But we needn’t go into that here. I don’t want to put you in any danger, and I certainly don’t want to endanger my family any more than I already have. My sole use for this interview is to provide some small comfort to them after my body is found. So I’ll spare you, and therefore them, some of the details.