We moved closer to her family after the scandal. With me looking for work, and a baby on the way, we needed their support more than I liked to admit, and she needed them in ways I used to be good enough for. I got a job in a warehouse. There was no need to promise not to go to Lucid because Lucid had made a show of firing me too. But that’s all it was; a show. I was kept on as a sort of thank you for the publicity. You know, just so we could pay the bills.
By the time Danny was born we never talked about the good times anymore, so I sold a few.
We got married before Danny was born. Neither of us were religious, and our families didn’t push for it, but we wanted it done before raising a family of our own. I often wonder if Jo knew back then that I’d eventually sell the day and so did me the courtesy of keeping Danny out of the picture. Maybe it just turned out that way. He would have been barely a bump back then.
I’ll never sell my memories of him. Not ever.
There are still some things I haven’t forgotten. I remember the day we met. I remember Jo asking me to move in, and then us deciding she’d be better at mine then getting the most drunk we’d ever been. We ended up singing karaoke in a gay bar somehow. I remember her hiding her Sex and the City DVDs for the first three months we lived together. I remember the time she laughed so hard she wet herself because of the way I looked in scuba gear. I remember the way she shudders if kissed on the back of the neck during sex, and I remember the way she sings in the morning after an all-nighter. I remember her at the kissing gate, sobbing so hard she had to say “yes” three times before I heard her, and I remember the way the ground felt under my knee, and the way we kissed against the fence, and the bikes toppling over, and the way we cycled to the pub so fast that our faces were red with cold, and I remember grinning so hard for so long that my cheeks actually hurt for a while after.
She’s remarried now.
When divorce looked like a possibility I went to my guy at Lucid and tried to buy back everything I’d ever sold about Jo. I got a few of them. Some people I couldn’t find, whereas others wouldn’t believe the memories were mine in the first place. One man even got violent and broke my nose. I broke his. I was cautioned by the police.
When divorce was discussed, I thought about forcing the names I’d been given to sell back what was mine. I fantasised abductions and drugged cooperation and wondered how much a Lucid employee would need to extract a memory by force. But they were only daydreams. I stole Jo’s diary instead and tried to recall firsthand the things she’d written. She found me reading it and used it as the final straw.
We split up, divided our things, and arranged custody and visitations.
I got to keep the diary.
At 19.37 on Tuesday the 25th of March I kidnapped James McVey from a supermarket car park. I forced him into my vehicle at knifepoint and instructed him to drive us to a remote location where I held him captive and threatened him with violence for two hours. I only released him when the recollection provider—Lucid Ltd—notified authorities after I attempted to bribe an employee to perform an illegal transfer. I was arrested and James was returned home to his family who were described as “relieved and thankful.”
The newspapers tell me all of this.
Charges were dropped provided I sought psychiatric help, though a restraining order was put in place. I’m not allowed within a thousand feet of Mr McVey or his family due to a history of violence and the broken nose to prove it.
His family?
The papers can only speculate as to my motives, but they’re more than happy to do so. Theirs is a feasible story. I don’t know for sure because I sold the kidnap (like I said, you’d be surprised what people will buy), but considering James McVey is Jo’s new husband, it seems likely I wanted at least a few of his memories.
He sees my son more than I do.
I’m a newsagent now, selling papers that printed me on their front pages once upon a time. That’s how I saw Danny this morning; he came in for sweets. I watched him walk slowly up the rows of confectionary, choosing carefully just like I do with books. He took so long deciding that his mother had to come in and hurry him up. She looked good, dressed smart in a skirt and jacket. I wonder if she still carries a tangle of hearts beneath it all.
“Come on, Danny boy, your father’s waiting.”
For a foolish moment I’d thought she meant me. All my breath escaped in a rush and I smiled a ridiculously thankful smile. “There’s no hurry,” I almost said, then realised she hadn’t seen me. She was talking about someone else, waiting outside. My heart clenched and forced a deep noise from me, a guttural groan that was primal in its depth of grief. That was when she saw me in my stupid uniform, waiting to serve them.
She handled it well.
“Hello.”
I only nodded. It was all I trusted myself with.
“I want this one,” Danny said. He was only talking about a Mars bar.
Jo’s eyes were still on me. She wiped at them before tears could fall. I’ve no idea why she might have wanted to cry.
“We can get it somewhere else,” she told him, “Come on.”
I wanted to tell her I’m okay now. I wanted to tell her the things I remember and see if she remembers them too. I wanted to tell her I’ve read Sense and Sensibility for the hundredth first time and that I liked it, except for the ending. Most of all I wanted to ask if we could try again, or try something different, wipe the slate clean, but she was ushering Danny out the door. The bell above it tinkled and he looked back. He smiled and then he was urged outside.
She needn’t have rushed him away, though.
He doesn’t remember me at all.
THE EYES OF THAR, by Henry Kuttner
He had come back, though he knew what to expect. He had always come back to Klanvahr, since he had been hunted out of that ancient Martian fortress so many years ago. Not often, and always warily, for there was a price on Dantan’s head, and those who governed the Dry Provinces would have been glad to pay it. Now there was an excellent chance that they might pay, and soon, he thought, as he walked doggedly through the baking stillness of the night, his ears attuned to any dangerous sound in the thin, dry air.
Even after dark it was hot here. The dead ground, parched and arid, retained the heat, releasing it slowly as the double moons—the Eyes of Thar, in Klanvahr mythology—swung across the blazing immensity of the sky. Yet Samuel Dantan came back to this desolate land as he had come before, drawn by love and by hatred.
The love was lost forever, but the hate could still be satiated. He had not yet glutted his blood-thirst. When Dantan came back to Klanvahr, men died, though if all the men of the Redhelm Tribe were slain, even that could not satisfy the dull ache in Dantan’s heart.
Now they were hunting him.
The girl—he had not thought of her for years; he did not want to remember. He had been young when it happened. Of Earth stock, he had during a great Martian drought become godson to an old shaman of Klanvahr, one of the priests who still hoarded scraps of the forgotten knowledge of the past, glorious days of Martian destiny, when bright towers had fingered up triumphantly toward the Eyes of Thar.