“Countdown begun. Twenty minute ETA,” Cruz remarks. “See you soon.”
“Yeah,” she says, placing the cold weapon in her belt and covering it with her shirt. “See you real soon.”
As night falls hard the condensation on the bubble begins to crystallize. The view becomes hazy, discordant, and her heart feels a strange release, an unwanted wave of contentment filling the void once there.
“System nominal,” says Cruz. “Run a diagnostic on—”
And although I know you will not, could not, ever hope to know me, remember me. I, in my envy, shall remember you.
Cruz’s voice cracks over the speakers. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Clear as ice,” she says, distantly. “Clear as ice.”
TABULA RASA, by Ray Cluley
I met Jo in a bookshop, I remember that much. I’ve always thought it an excellent place to meet the woman I fell in love with. Neither of my previous girlfriends had liked to read much and so our relationships didn’t last long. What can you talk about if not books? I’d picked up an Austen and was browsing through its pages, looking for annotations, when she spoke to me.
“Oh, I love that one. I can’t believe he dumps her.”
I looked up and there she was, somehow resplendent in a hoody and jeans: Joanne. She was beautiful, and something of my reaction to that must have shown, although she misinterpreted it.
“Oh God. You’ve not read it.”
I was able to recover by then. “I don’t think so.”
“Seen the movie?”
“Nope.”
“And now I’ve ruined it for you. I’m so sorry.”
I was in love. The smooth-talking type would have said, “Have dinner with me and all’s forgiven.” I said, “No problem.”
“Forget I said it.”
“Good idea. I’ll sell the memory.”
“Yeah, right, who’d buy a ‘spoiled book’ memory?”
Looking at the person who’d spoiled it, I figured just about anyone with a sexual interest in women.
“You’d be surprised what people buy,” I said instead.
“Not really. I work in a charity shop. Sold a painting of a goldfish this morning. Watercolour, naturally.” And she smiled.
That’s how we met.
I wasn’t joking about the memory selling thing, I really do work for Lucid. Yeah, it’s hard to get on their books, but sell something big and they keep you on for the little stuff. To get through uni I sold something big. Obviously I’m not sure what, but I strongly suspect it was winning a regional swim because I have the trophy at home with my name on. After that I made a little extra reading classic literature and selling the experience on; it’s popular with students. Twain said a classic is something everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read, and it seems he was right. I have well thumbed copies of Dickens, Joyce, and funnily enough some Twain. That year was Austen. Shakespeare’s popular as well, of course. Pays more, too.
But that was just a little extra to tide me over. For a proper job, when I met Jo, I worked at the university where I used to study. After my degree I couldn’t find anywhere to use it, so I taught others how to get my degree. Not very different from what I do for Lucid, really.
Jo, she volunteered at a charity place but she also worked as a florist. She’d come home smelling like camellia and carnations and forget-me-nots and I’d take deep breaths of her hair to get the scent that was hers.
“Weirdo,” she’d say, but she said it smiling and she always kissed me afterwards.
When Jo moved in we celebrated with takeout pizza and bottles of beer. She folds her pizza pieces before eating them so nothing falls off and I love her for it. One of her funny little ways.
“When are you going to read something good?” She was picking mushrooms out of the box. They must have fallen from one of my pieces.
“I always read something good.”
“You always read the same something good. Try Chandler or Christie or Crais for a change.”
“No one buys crime fiction. Those who want it, read it themselves. To work it out.”
“That’s what I’m saying, read it for you.”
“Novel idea,” I said, and drank to my own pun.
She slapped my arm. “You used to read all the time.”
“I still do.”
“Sense and Sensibility again? Law books? The fucking Highway Code?”
The truth was, money was tight and we needed the extra from Lucid. With Jo moved in, things would get easier. Then I’d read again. I told her this.
“Fine. But the first thing I’m buying, my contribution to the place, is a proper bookshelf.”
I looked to where we had boards stacked on blocks, each curving under the heavy load of books. “What about living the cliché?”
That earned me another same slap to the arm but with a bit of tickling afterwards and then we were rolling around amidst empty beer bottles and boxes full of her things waiting to be unpacked.
Good memories.
“What would we do if I was pregnant?”
We were in bed, having just made love for the second time that lazy Sunday, and without missing a beat I said, “Well obviously I’d want a paternity test.”
She straddled me with a mock cry of outrage and before long we were at it for a third time.
I sold my first memory of us when the boiler went. After nearly two weeks of our breath clouding the air, I went to Lucid and sold the time we went to the park for a picnic. We’d said “I love you” by then, but so recently that everything else we said was still a sense-heightened echo of it. Hands that touched when reaching for paper plates held a charge between them, and lips that kissed tasted for stories yet to be shared. We made shapes out of the clouds like you’d expect, fed the ducks like we were supposed to, and everything felt like we were the only ones who were ever really in love.
That’s what her diary tells me anyway.
Later, when I sold them the memory of our first holiday, it was because I thought Jo was pregnant. She wasn’t. But she was furious.
“Why would you sell that? It was personal!”
“All memories are.”
(Yeah, I know; it was pathetic.)
“But Greece! Our first holiday? Come on. We went snorkelling, took that cruise around the island—”
“We have pictures.”
“—had sex in the fucking surf. Pictures?”
“Well not of that.”
“Jesus. And now someone else has those memories. Some emotional retard loser who can’t get a girlfriend remembers fucking me in the sea and drinking cocktails every night.”
I wanted to tell her it doesn’t work that way, but she knew. She was just angry. They don’t give the memory whole, they can’t. When you buy a memory you buy the sensations of recall, the feelings, the emotional experience. Think back to a memory of your own; it’s hazy, right? Sense impressions and big gaps, a spliced movie reel of images. Well with Lucid there are no images except the ones they give you after some tinkering, and maybe there’s some token souvenirs they rustle up for an extra cost. I also wanted to tell her that if we drank cocktails every night I was surprised she could remember much of it herself.
“I thought we were having a baby,” I said. “I thought we’d need the money. I teach. You arrange flowers into pretty patterns and sell junk to help old people. We’re not exactly swimming in cash right now.”