And that Möbius strip of poetry.
He liked poetry, which stuck to his mind like frost—especially love poetry, not because he loved but because he couldn’t. It was like some alien language he tried to decipher, his own Linear B.
Maybe it was because he had banged his head earlier that day, but his mind was particularly active—and from someplace he kept seeing flashes of a big smiling Happy Face cartoon.
It made no sense.
Nixon.
He almost had caught it earlier. Nixon.
Big blue oval face and a sharp almond odor he could not identify—an odor that was distinct and profoundly embedded in his memory.
Memory.
That was the problem: He had Kodachrome memory, ASA ten million, and one that didn’t fade. Ever. He had been cursed with a mind that would not let him forget things. Although the Dellsies thought it cool having a waiter with total recall who could tell you the nutritional value of everything in the kitchen and remember what you ordered three weeks ago for lunch, his head was a junk-heap torture chamber. While other people’s recollection was triggered by a song or a familiar face, Brendan’s mind was an instant cascade of words and images, triggered by the slightest stimulus—like the first neutron in a chain reaction in a nuclear explosion. It was horrible, and it led him to avoid movies, music, and television. To keep himself from total dysfunction or madness or suicide—and there were many days he contemplated braiding a noose—he had worked out elaborate strategies. Sometimes he would project the images onto an imaginary book page then turn the page to a blank sheet. Or he would write down words or phrases that just wouldn’t go away—sometimes pages worth, including diagrams and stick drawings of people and things—then burn them. When that didn’t work, he would torch whole books.
Medication also helped. But when he turned sixteen, he had to quit school because he could not take the reading, not because he couldn’t understand the material—au contraire, the subjects were stupefyingly easy. It was that he couldn’t clear his mind of what he read, and just to release the pressure, he would gush lines of memorized text—like verbal orgasms. Teachers complained. Classmates called him “freak.” They called him “Johnny Mnemonic.” They wanted him to do mind tricks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man—look at a shuffled pack of cards, then turn them over and recite the order, or spout off the telephone numbers of all the kids in class, or the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Stupid razzle-dazzle memory stuff. It was easy, but no fun being a one-man carnie sideshow. So he stopped reading and quit school.
The other day he happened to walk by DellKids, and because the door was ajar he overheard that little Whitman boy, Dylan, complain that he didn’t remember something that he was supposed to. Brendan envied him that. He would kill to turn off his brain.
But some things remained buried, like his parents. They had died when he was eight, yet he could only recall them in their last years—and nothing from his early childhood—as if there were a blockage. Also, there were things he wished he could selectively summon to the light—like that big smiling Happy Face that sat deep in his memory bank like the proverbial princess’s pea sending little ripples of discomfort up the layers … blue.
Big blue cartoon head and big bright round eyes and a big floppy nose. Bigger than life.
Brendan slapped himself in the face.
Don’t be afraid …
Dance … Mister …
Almost. Big eyes. Funny nose. He felt it move closer.
He slapped himself again.
Mr. {SOMETHING} makes you happy.
And again.
He almost had it. Almost.
His face stung, but he slapped himself once more … and like some night predator, it nosed its way up out of a dense wormhole toward the light … inching upward ever so cautiously, so close … so close he could almost grasp it … Then suddenly without mercy it pulled back down into the gloom and was gone.
Brendan let out the breath that had bulbed in his chest and felt his body collapse on itself. He rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes, feeling spent and chilled from perspiration.
So close, he could almost see it take form out of the gloom … and hear vague wordless voices … and almost make out a room and faces … hands and lights.
He banged the back of his head against the tree.
A bloody membrane away.
Brendan lit a cigarette and let his mind wander. He thought about how the tars in the smoke were filling the micropores of his lungs with dark goo that might someday spawn cells of carcinoma and how he didn’t really give a damn. How nothing in his life mattered, including his life. How different he was from others. A freak who could recite the most exquisite love poetry ever written, yet who passed through life like a thing made of wood.
It was crazy, which was how he felt most of the time. Crazy.
Just before he climbed down, he let his eyes wander across the stars, connecting the dots until he had traced most of the constellations he knew, then reconnected the stars until they formed constellations of his own. The arrow of Sagittarius he stretched into a billion-mile hypodermic needle.
And Taurus he rounded out into a smiling blue face.
“Mista Nisha won’t hurt you”.
The words rose up in his head with such clarity Brendan gasped. Instantly he clamped down on them before they shot away.
He had them. HE HAD THEM.
“Mr. Nisha wants to be happy …”
“ … Don’t be afraid …”
“Dance with Mr. Nisha,” he said aloud. And he groaned with delight.
Thirty feet away, Michael Kaminsky also groaned with delight as he shed himself deep inside Nicole.
She felt the warm ooze fill the condom and kissed him. “Was that good?” she whispered.
“Ohhhhh, yeah.”
“Would you give it an A?”
“A-plus,” he panted. “Did you … you know, enjoy it, too?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why? Well, because I’m never sure with you. You don’t react much.”
She didn’t answer, but tapped him on the shoulder to get up. The clock said 12:43. “You’ve got to go, and I’ve got to get up in four hours.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
“I know, but my mean old history teacher wants my term paper by noon Monday.”
“What a prick.”
She slid her hand down his body and touched him. “I’ll say.” Then she got up and slipped on her nightgown.
Michael peeled himself off her bed and began to get dressed. “If they ever found out, I’d be hanged at dawn.” He pulled up his shorts then sat at her desk and put on his socks.
“Well, that won’t happen if you’re real nice,” she said, and put her arms around him. “Michael … ?” she said, glaring up into his eyes in her best pleading look.
His body slumped. “Come on, Nik, I can’t do that.”
“You have to, Michael. Just two-hundredths of a point.”
He sighed. “You’ve got your A, but I can’t do that to Amy, or any other student. I can’t give her a grade lower than she deserves.”
She squeezed his arms. “I want you to do this for me. Please.” She kept her voice low so her parents wouldn’t hear them.
“You know these Vietnamese kids. She killed herself on her paper. I’d have to make up stuff to justify a B. It was excellent. So was yours—”
“Then you’re going to have to make up stuff, because this American kid won’t settle for second place.”