The Hardest Science to Forget (Kirk/McCoy, R), part 1
Summary: Written for the Reel Love Challenge at jim_and_bones. Modern AU inspired by (i.e., largely ripped off from) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Jim and Leonard meet, date, argue, and then independently go through a memory-wiping procedure to forget each other. It works as well as you'd expect.
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, minor Chapel/Rand, even more minor Leonard/Jocelyn
Warnings: Language, boys arguing, mind/memory manipulation.
Tremendous thanks for beta reading to the adorable and perspicacious caitri, Keeper of Bones's Snark. Also thanks to norfolkdumpling for the delightful banner!
Valentine’s Day was invented by people in relationships to make the rest of us feel like crap.
It’s not enough that they have love; the smug bastards need a national campaign to rub it in our faces. And there’s not a shred of honesty about it, because if you said “love is digging a splinter out of someone’s dirty heel even though the thought of hurting them makes your flesh crawl,” the poor bastards wouldn’t know what to make of it. So it’s either infantilized bullshit with chubby pink cupids crapping rainbows, or clichéd “romance” purchased with a credit card: a dozen mutant roses from the gas station, red satin underwear made by underpaid children, Double Suicide by Chocolate served with two forks by candlelight at your local snotty bistro.
You know what an honest Valentine’s Day card would look like?
Thank You, My Darling, for Fucking Me in the Mornings When My Breath is Bad
This Valentine’s Day, I got you something special: an extra hour of sleep while I try to calm our screaming infant
To My Sweetheart: You’re the Person Who Will Give a Shit When I Die
...but that’ll never happen, because it wouldn’t make the lonely people weep into pints of ice cream and buy tickets to movies about adorably awkward young people finding love in Manhattan. The funny thing is, it would work on me, but then I’m different: I’ve been there before.
And so this Valentine’s Day starts with an email from Jocelyn. Just seeing her name--her new, not-married-to-me name--pop up on my phone makes my heart pound.
Len--
Hope you’re well. I got a call from St. Bridget’s saying they need another $500 for student activity fees. I thought you had it covered but I guess there was some confusion. It needs to be paid by Wednesday so Jo can go on a field trip. Can you call them today and straighten it out?
Thanks,
Joss
P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re spending it with someone. Just don’t sit home and drink, because thinking about that makes me sad.
That’s an arrow to the heart, alright, and there will be no raspberry truffles to staunch the bleeding. Instead, my day looks like this:
Staff Physician Training Agenda - February 14
8:00 Continental Breakfast
8:30 Welcoming remarks from Dr. M’Benga
9:00 Overview of Electronic Medical Records Initiative at Piedmont Hospital
….
5:00 Closing remarks from Dr. M’Benga
I could handle a day at the hospital, up to my chin in other people’s disasters. But this? Flowcharts. Cold cut buffets. PowerPoint.
I wouldn’t be much of a doctor if I couldn’t fake a sick day, would I?
One-handed, I type out an apologetic message to Dr. M’Benga, leaving out the capital letters so I’ll seem extra unwell. I get off at the next exit and head in the opposite direction, and just keep going--past the outer suburbs, past the small perimeter towns, and finally to the Ocalee National Forest. I yank off my tie but keep the blazer, since the morning mist is a little cool. It’s not really hiking, but I wander the morning away, birds cocking their heads at the strange man in the middle of the woods in a navy blazer and loafers. Two squirrels chase each other around an around a tree.
“You’re better off not catching her,” I say to squirrel #2. He ignores me. Thirty seconds of frantic squirrel sex follow, and then squirrel #1 wriggles away and runs off. I look around for the squirrel lawyer.
Another hour and I’m in a Waffle House outside of Greensboro, sucking back coffee as if it could clear my head and pushing around a cold pecan waffle with my fork. It’s between breakfast and lunch and so the place is mostly empty, just a few retirees and people who have nowhere else to be--people like me, I guess.
And that guy.
He sticks out like a sore thumb because he’s trying so hard not to look as pretty as he is. He’s got messy blond hair, pink lips, radiation-blue eyes, and an ugly plaid shirt open over a graying T-shirt. He’s sitting sideways in the booth, feet in ratty Chuck Taylors dangling over the edge of the seat, but nothing about him says hipster or college kid or delinquent or anything else. He looks like nobody but himself. He’s vibrating with energy, eyes darting around the room, until, with the randomness of an atomic collision, they hit mine.
He doesn’t do the lookaway like a straight guy would, but he doesn’t give me the cruisey stare, either. Instead he blinks at me, direct and curious, and the corners of his mouth quirk up, hopeful. An angler, and I’m a fat trout in shallow water. I tilt my head down with purpose and keep reading the New York Times in five-word segments on my phone.
After a few minutes, I chance a look up. He’s moved two booths closer. I give an involuntary shiver and clutch the phone more tightly.
“Hi.”
He’s popped up over the neighboring booth, both hands wrapped over the back of a seat like a Kilroy cartoon.
“Uh, hi.” I give him a weak smile and immediately hate myself.
Beg me for money, I think. Ask me for drugs. Just don’t--
“Do you mind if I sit there?” He points to the seat opposite mine.
“Knock yourself out.”
He slides in with the music of jeans on vinyl and sits there, vibrating, apparently waiting for me to entertain him. I cast around, desperate; I am not an entertaining guy. He leans forward and the rolled cuff of his shirt slides up, revealing a tattoo on his wrist, a stylized sun.
“Nice tat,” I say. And it is nice, as much as pigment trapped in fibroblasts by an immune reaction can be.
“Thanks.” He brushes it with his fingers like it’s still fresh and sore. “You hate tattoos, don’t you? You don’t get why somebody would take weird art they’d never have on their wall and put it on their body. You probably think the human body is enough of an art work, right?” I don’t know how he knows that, but I can’t disagree. “It’s not about art. Tattoos are like instant personality. Whatever you want to do--piss off your parents, make lovers think you’re dangerous and sexy, get strangers to talk to you about philosophy and life--you can get that in a tattoo. And then there’s the pain. Most people won’t say it but they get off on the fact that you’re willing to suffer for something that’s meaningful to you. Even though it’s a non-sexy procedure, just buzzing and wincing. Like the dentist. By the way, I’m Jim.”
I stare at the hand he’s reached out to me while my neurons try to catch up. After a few stupid seconds I grip it. It’s large and dry and warm.
“I’m Len.”
“Len. Is that short for Lennox? Cool name. Are you going to eat that waffle?”
“No, but it’s cold and disgusting.” He immediately yanks the plate toward him, grabs my fork, and glugs half a cup of syrup on it. “What the hell are you, a hummingbird?” It crosses my mind that he’s on something, but his hands are steady, his pupils aren’t dilated, and his color is good. Really good.
“I have a fast metabolism.” The waffle disappears, washed down with some of my coffee, leaving his full lips shiny and sticky. Worse and worse. “Do you have a car, Len?”
“In general? Yes,” I say, sensing danger in the question.
“Great! Let’s go to Tybee Island. I love the beach in the off season. But the slacks won’t cut it. Do you have shorts with you?”
“What, you want to go now? It’s a three-and-a-half hour drive, at least.”
The blue eyes regard me with the same unsugarcoated kindness as my therapist. “You got anything better to do?”
I think that the answer is “no,” and that I have a gym bag in my car, with shorts and a T-shirt and a towel.
“I can kick in for gas,” Jim says, grabbing his backpack and slapping a couple of bucks on the table for a tip. His butt’s already half off the seat, a bird about to fly, with or without me. “C’mon. Are we going to do this thing?”
No, the answer should be. No no no no.
“Yes.”
By late afternoon we’re lying on a quilt on the nearly deserted beach, on white sand made damp and clean by the receding tide. The quilt is from my bed, a factory-made simulacrum of the priceless one my grandmother gave to Joss on our wedding day. It’s been in my trunk for a month waiting to be dry cleaned, and now it’s well and truly trashed. I couldn’t be happier.
“Do you want another mochalattawhatever?” Jim rattles the ice in his empty cup like a maraca. He needs regular infusions of sugar and caffeine or he gases out.
“How about some real food?” I say, and he nods enthusiastically. I reach for my wallet, but Jim waves me off and comes back a half hour later laden with grouper and sweet potato fries and pie, and won’t even let me pay my share. Maybe Jim doesn’t pay for it either; maybe he just gives that expectant half-smile that makes you want to do anything to please him, and people just hand over the goods.
We watch a pink, clear sunset together, and eleven hours later we see an equally pearly sunrise. Yes, we spend the night on the beach, occasionally dozing but mostly talking. Somehow I never ask Jim where he’s from, or where he lives, or what he does--we’re too busy talking about the important stuff, like what’s the most overrated movie in history, pirates vs. ninjas (who would win?), what chances of dying you’d accept to go into space. My answer to that is easy.
“None. Space is like football--you can see everything better on TV.”
“Seriously?” Jim cranes his head around to stare at me. “I’d do it no matter what the risk. Best case, you’re a fucking astronaut; you get to be somewhere other than Earth. Can you even imagine that? Your friends would say, ‘Where’s Jim? Oh, right, he’s not on the planet right now.’ Not on the planet. And if you die, you’re famous--memorials and a eulogy from the president and shit. It’s a no-lose situation.”
I look up at the stars and think that they might as well be Christmas lights. I’m just fine right here.
He takes my hand; his own already feels as familiar to me as an old glove. “What are you thinking?” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a cliché. It sounds like he really wants to know.
“That I’m happy. Really happy.” I mean it. I don’t if I’ve known I was definitely, positively happy since I was a kid, but I know it now.
“Good,” he says, and gives my hand a squeeze. “That’s good.”
Under the kind regard of a slowly warming day, we brush the sand out of our clothes, grab breakfast, and hit the road. It’s lucky it’s Saturday or I’d be out of a job and unable to care. Yes, I’m that far gone already: I know the symptoms, which include being happy about the fact that I’m at a truck stop outside of Savannah, filling the car and getting ready for a long drive on two hours sleep while the guy who did this to me snores in the passenger seat.
Just before Macon, I nudge him. His chin’s deep in his chest and his uncombed hair is, objectively speaking, adorable.
“Hey, where do you live?”
He hugs his arms around himself and frowns, slides a pink tongue out to wet his salt-dried lips. “Inman Park. But is it okay if I sleep at your place? I think I’m having caffeine withdrawal. And since you’re a doctor--”
My answering growl doesn’t even convince myself. I’m done, I’m toast, I’m crispy on both sides. Somewhere above the fluffy clouds, Cupid’s project manager is looking at a task called Get Leonard McCoy to fall in love with a hyperactive drifter and marking it Complete.
+++++
“So, Len, do you and Jim have any ‘special plans’ for Valentine’s Day?” Lee’s eyebrows make the air quotes for her.
Lee Inouye is my immediate superior, but that doesn’t give her any right to pry into my love life. She’s only met Jim a handful of times when he’s materialized at happy hours and holiday parties, and she can’t shut up about what a handsome couple we are, and how happy we look, and how second time’s the charm. It’s like she’s personally invested in my relationship, like if anything went wrong kittens would cry and romance would die out in the world.
Which is unfortunate, because I haven’t talked to Jim in five days.
“Oh, you know, nothing special,” I say, slopping burnt coffee into my mug. It’s going to be hell on my stomach, but I haven’t been sleeping and I need the boost. “Dinner. A movie, maybe.”
“Hope you’ve made a reservation,” she says, adding with a wink, “or maybe you’re just as happy staying in.”
I give her a weak smile and dump two big spoons into the coffee. Two hours later my shift’s over and I bolt out of the hospital still jittery, and not just from the caffeine.
I grip the wheel like my hands have to wrestle control of it away from my brain. I’m going home. Not to Janice and Chris’s, not to Madras Palace (although I could really go for some of their pakoras right now) and certainly not to Grant Park. Home.
I’m halfway there before my hands lose the battle and I make a U-turn in the middle of the street, almost side swiping a parked car. Damn it.
For the last three months Jim has worked at a bike shop near Grant Park, which is a month longer than he’s worked anywhere else, as far as I can tell. His M.O. is to apply for low-wage, medium-glamor jobs whether he’s qualified or not, smile at the interviewers until they say “yes,” and then crush their low expectations to dust by becoming competent to the point of indispensability. Then, he quits for vague, knee-jerk reasons. That guy was pissing me off. It wasn’t enough responsibility. I got bored.
In hindsight, I guess that pattern ought to have made me cautious.
The shop is called Tough Nutz and sells fat tire bikes with names like Monster and Ninja. During the week, the shop is a mellow flow of CamelBak-toting young urbanites who are happy to pay $2000 to have Jim pat the wheel of some death machine and say, “You’re going to hit the side of that mountain like the fist of an angry god.” They’d be transformed, on the spot, from customer service reps and paralegals into fearless warriors. Jim had that power; it worked on even the most timid.
Even on me.
It took me a couple of months to believe he wouldn’t just vanish in a cloud of empty Red Bull cans and cupcake crumbs, and another couple to believe he actually enjoyed talking with me and not just taking contrary positions because he liked to see me get worked up. He was an energy drink in human form with a mind as deep as the ocean and changeable as the sky. But when I broached the subject of college or technical training or even--God forbid--the military, I got a cold stare and a pugnacious jawline. Jim, who could talk about any subject for hours, would clam up, or sneer and say, “I’m not your project. I’m not your rentboy diamond-in-the-rough. I’m happy the way I am, and who’d know that better than me? You?”
“I pity your parents,” I said once, and he was gone, out the door and somewhere beyond the reach of cell phones. Then he came back three hours later with a full grocery bag and started making chili like nothing had happened.
The last time, though, he didn’t come back. Hasn’t returned my calls, or my texts, or my email. I feel like a god-damned stalker, especially now, when I slip in the open door of Tough Nutz and keep my head down, pretending to browse, while Jim and the other clerk wait on customers.
Of course Jim’s customer is young and pretty. Of course he has to help her adjust her new purchase, kneeling like a prince to slip her tiny cleat-shod foot into the pedals while she wiggles her perfect little peach of a behind just above his head.
Just then he looks up, his eyes meet mine, and my heart stops.
“Hi,” he says. “Give me just another minute, I’ll be right with you.”
Well, that was easy. The slow walkback I’d planned in my mind--a talk outside, maybe coffee, dinner, negotiation, apology--melt away along with the tension in my upper back. In another hour we could be in my living room, in another three in my bed, and an unspecified time after that I could be getting my first decent sleep in a week.
Jim turns his attention back to his customer. “That’s good enough for now. I can make more adjustments on the trail if you need them. We still on for this weekend? Steeplechase Loop?” His hand slides up from her ankle to her calf.
“Try and stop me,” she says, giving her sporty braids a toss. The look they exchange makes it clear that five miles of mud, rubber and possibly busted teeth are going to be just so much foreplay before the main event.
Jim stands up slowly, adjusting his jeans, and puts on his best, bright customer-service smile.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. How can I help you?”
Sir. Cold, so very cold, to make me listen to him arrange a date, and then to treat me like any other customer. It makes me freshly angry again that he can invent his own rules, not tell me about them, and then levy the stiffest possible penalties. It’s shockingly cruel. The knot in my stomach moves to my throat and I try to beat it to the punch, opening my mouth to say something, and then I see it.
His eyes are blank, nothing behind them but pleasant semi-interest, most of his big brain taking a vacation, leaving just enough behind to make a commission off some eco-trendy businessman looking for a fixed-gear bike to ride to work. No recognition, no acknowledgement, as if I hadn’t sewn a button back onto the very shirt he’s wearing now.
I have just enough presence of mind to mumble something about doing more research online, and then I get the hell out of there, before my head explodes all over the pricey nylonwear.
+++++
“It was like he’d never seen me before in his life. Like I was a complete stranger.” I’ve said a hundred permutations of this in the last half hour, and it’s still not making any sense. I’m not angry or indignant so much as freaked the fuck out.
Janice just nods and pours more Kahlua into my coffee--it’s the strongest thing she’s got in the house.
“Maybe it was his way of trying to make a clean break. You know, why argue if he’s already decided he wants to go? Maybe he was trying not to hurt you.” Even sweet, optimistic Janice--who’d tell you that a strangler was doing you a favor by keeping blood off your carpet--is having a hard time spinning this.
“Or maybe he just wanted to see what it looked like if he ran over my heart with a Kevlar tire.” There are track marks; I can feel them. But romantic grief always sounds ridiculous in real life.
Janice sighs into her cocoa and exchanges a look with Christine, who’s sitting at the kitchen table painting a birdhouse to look like a Swiss chalet.
“What’s with the birdhouse?” I say. “You live in an apartment.”
“It’s for the farm,” she says with a straight face. Janice is a cube-dwelling administrator at the hospital and Christine’s an R.N. Between them they barely make enough to afford a two-bedroom, but Christine has been talking about buying a goat farm for years, even though Janice is a city girl born with an iced mocha in her hand. The copy of Progressive Dairy Farmer on the coffee table is a reminder that successful relationships seem to thrive on fiction.
“I hope the birds can afford the mortgage,” I say, and go back to sulking, which feels better with an audience. Because I am miserable, damn it, and I don’t know what to do to make it better.
“We should tell him,” Christine says, and Janice waves her pink-manicured hands frantically.
“No, don’t! He’s not going to--”
“Tell me what?” Janice and Christine are having an argument with their eyes. Apparently Chris wins, because she wipes her hands and picks up her iPad and hands it to me.
“I got this email today,” she says.
Subject: James Kirk re: Leonard McCoy
Dear Friend/Colleague/Family Member:
JAMES KIRK has forgotten LEONARD MCCOY. Please do not mention Mr. McCoy’s name in Mr. Kirk’s presence.
Thank you,
Ji Yi Institute
“What the hell does this mean?” It makes no sense. It makes the opposite of sense. “Is it some kind of joke? What’s the Ji Yi Institute?”
Christine gives me a pitying look and taps a couple more times on the iPad. The Ji Yi Institute has a website, all soothing beige and bamboo leaves and vague references to meditative memory therapies and herbs. It’s like a parody, part of some sick, fake conspiracy that reveals unimagined depths of creative cruelty in Jim, because to go this far to--
“Hey,” Janice says, having reached over to click on the Contact tab of the website. “They have an office in Lakewood.”
My madness has an address, and it can be Googled. I’m halfway out the door and Christine, ever practical, is yelling, “Len, wait! That’s not a great neighborhood after dark, and they won’t be open.”
I don’t care, I want to see it. Nothing seems real right now; maybe nothing has been since that golden morning a year ago. I want my life back. No, I want Jim back, but I’ll settle for my life. Bland as it was, it’s better than this.
+++++
The address turns out to be a squat brick building on Tidewater Avenue, and I disbelieve that it’s anything but a cheap furniture store until I see the discreet brass sign on the door: Ji Yi Institute. If it’s a joke, it’s going pretty damn far.
It’s 9 PM and it should be closed like Chris said, but there’s light leaking from the back, just visible through the glass doors, and so I ring the bell. After a few minutes a dark figure comes to the door without turning on the lights in the lobby. All I can see is glossy black hair reflecting the street lights. The figure cracks the door open.
“Yes?” He’s got that psychiatrist’s inflection in his voice, questioning and presuming at the same time.
“Are you one of the Ji Yi people? A friend of mine got an email. I want an explanation.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He’s maddeningly calm when he ought to be intimidated by a large-ish stranger in a leather jacket in a so-so part of town.
“No, I don’t have an appointment. I have no idea who you are or what you do.”
He tilts his head, considering. “I am Spock, and I believe you are Dr. Leonard McCoy. I’ve seen your photograph. Perhaps you ought to come in.”
He leads me through the dark lobby and into the back, which is bland as any low-rent medical office, with the addition of some watercolors of cherry blossoms and cranes and one of those tabletop waterfalls. When he ushers me into an office and flips on the lights, I see that he’s donned a black Fedora, which is puzzling and makes him look vaguely Rabbinical.
“Please sit down, Doctor. May I offer you some tea?”
“No, thanks. A god-damned explanation will do fine.”
He slides noiselessly into a leather armchair behind the desk and steeples his fingers, a familiar gesture that makes me want to call the American Medical Association and report him, because if this character isn’t some pseudoscience-peddling charlatan, I’ll eat my (or his) hat.
“Dr. McCoy, the Institute provides services to those wishing to forget. Persons and companion animals are the most common--the dead or departed, or those our clients would prefer never to have met--but specific incidents are not uncommon: an embarrassing moment, a childhood trauma, even a particular fact. I had a client recently who had discovered that red food coloring is derived from beetles, and found that that fact interfered with her enjoyment of many foods, notably Red Velvet Cake. I cannot guarantee that clients will not re-learn the same information, of course, but we take reasonable precautions, such as the email I sent to your friend.”
“That’s impossible. You know that, right?” I’m suddenly desperate for confirmation that this is a scam, which would at least make some kind of sense. “There’s been research on erasing specific traumatic memories in mice, but not humans. Mice, damn it!”
“Indeed. But our techniques do not require biochemical intervention.” His eyes are dark, glittering, and direct, and it’s deeply disturbing because he’s so earnest.
“What, then? If you say ‘ancient Chinese wisdom’ I’m going to have to smack you. I’ve noticed you aren’t Chinese, by the way.”
“Through direct contact of minds. Specifically, the theoretical construct of quantum pseudo-telepathy--”
“Horsehockey. Every huckster on the planet uses that ‘quantum’ crap to hand-wave the impossible. Quantum mechanics is an actual branch of physics, and it’s got nothing to do with forgetting about your dead cat.”
“In general I agree, although quantum theory as currently posited contains notable errors.” I have no choice but to roll my eyes at that. “However, as is often the case in science, it is unnecessary to understand the underlying construct in order to derive value from the application. In this case, I am confident enough that I offer a 100% money-back guarantee.”
“By God, I hate you quacks like poison. There’s nothing about you that’s any different from any huckster I’ve ever met. Except maybe the hat.”
“Fees are held in an online cash escrow account established with a disposable account,” he continues, ignoring me. “We erase the memory of this account along with the other undesirable memories. If we are unsuccessful, it is a simple matter to retrieve the money. Otherwise, there is no trace of an interaction with the Ji Yi Institute to trigger the client’s memory.”
“‘We’. You mean ‘you’.” I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this sallow fraud has had his hands--literally or figuratively--on Jim, and it fills me with pity and a desire to punch Spock in his aquiline nose. Jim may not be college-educated but he’s bright as a penny, and only desperation make him pay some shady character to hypnotize him or give him Rohypnol or a whack on the head or whatever snake oil this Mr. Spock is selling. I have to figure out what his game is, and then get Jim to take his money back, and hopefully me with it.
“All right then, fine,” I say, trying with all my might to make my face look like I believe him. “If there’s no risk, then I’d like to try it myself. Jim’s forgotten me, huh? I want to forget him back.” I don’t, of course, not as long as there’s still a chance, and I probably wouldn’t even if I thought Jim were never coming back. But to be able to sequester him, to not think of him when I look at every damn thing and every damn place, not to have to remember him on Valentine’s Day but maybe some time safe, like Groundhog Day or when my taxes are due--it’s tempting. I understand why poor saps take their sorrows to the Ji Yi Institute.
“Very good.” He begins shuffling papers, a good act, not at all like a con artist who’s just found an easy mark. “Here is a consent form, and the escrow information. You will need to remove all items associated with Mr. Kirk from your home and car and place them in marked boxes or trash bags. All salvageable items will be donated to charity; the rest will be destroyed. The digital record presents a larger challenge; we recommend simply creating new email and social networking accounts. And we will require a list of all mutual acquaintances with their email addresses.”
“Sure, fine.” I grab a pen off the desk and begin filling out forms. “How much will it cost?”
“Two thousand dollars per year of acquaintance for humans. Five hundred for pets.”
“Lord have mercy.” After just one year, I guess we’re relative bargains, but I think of Jim earning $10 an hour for his bright smiles. Poor Jim. But I’ve got money in the bank and I know lawyers, so-- “Okay, okay. How soon can we do this? Tonight?”
The corners of Spock’s mouth turn down, the closest thing I’ve seen to an expression on his face. “You will have to call tomorrow and arrange it with the scheduler. Two weeks’ notice is generally sufficient, but this is our busiest time of year.”
All right, so it’s not like a huckster to turn down instant cash. But still. “What if I throw in a 50% rush fee? Could you do it tonight?”
“Impossible, I fear. I already have two bookings--”
“And I don’t spend tomorrow morning reporting you to the AMA and the Better Business Bureau. I’m not on it, but I understand that Facebook can be quite effective, too.”
One eyebrow tilts up, and the corners of his mouth twitch. “Perhaps I can fit you in. However, it will be quite late--3 AM at the earliest. And you must still complete all the preparatory steps; otherwise, the probability is high that you will not be satisfied with the results.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be very satisfied with the results.” I’ve never been so happy to cheated in my life.
+++++
It’s midnight and I’m running around my apartment throwing things into cardboard boxes:
A refrigerator magnet from Stu’s Gator Shack (two alligators fornicating and the slogan “C’mon back, we can always make more!”).
A paper crown from a pancake restaurant in Athens (fake jewels and I Rule scrawled in crayon by Jim).
A birthday card: “Feliz cumpleaños para mi novia” (Jim was only just starting to learn Spanish).
A paperback copy of The Fortress of Solitude (KIRK written in marker along the edge because one of his co-workers is a kleptomaniac).
At least ten things with the Tough Nutz logo emblazoned on them (because after all this time Jim still thinks it’s funny).
I look at this collection of effluvia and wonder why none of it seems solid or significant. That would have come eventually, I hope: marriage and permanence, hard metal bands and the Law. Not impossible to dissolve, but requiring effort and forethought. From here, my time with Jim looks like a weekend at a second-rate resort, quickly forgotten when the hangover wears off and you vacuum the sand out of your car. But these bits of junk aren’t Jim, they’re signifiers, pointers to the location in my brain where the memory is kept. I see, I smile, I remember, until time smears them with the back of its hand into Oh, him? Some guy I used to date.
Between the ridiculous busy work and nerves, I can’t sleep and I don’t try to. There’s a soft knock on the door at 3 AM precisely and Spock enters, grave and somber as a vampire. I’m not worried on a primal safety level: Spock is pasty and narrow-shouldered and I’m 99 percent sure I could take him down if it came to that. I’m just not sure how it will play out--if I’ll get a good show for my two grand, or if it will just be embarrassing, like the time that Janice invited her friend the “pet psychic” over, and she’d waved her palms over the head of a disgruntled tabby and said he’d been the Duchess of Polignac’s cat in a past life and that his hairballs were caused by trauma from the Revolution.
“Please seat yourself in a comfortable chair,” Spock says, keeping the black Fedora on. “This will take approximately one hour.”
He has no psychoelectromothingamajigs, no herbal concoctions or tin cans connected with twine. He merely dims the lights and pulls up a hassock, tenting his fingers, elbows on knees, a look of intense concentration on his face. I have no idea what’s coming--in the frantic shuffle of paper and objects, I’d neglected to read the information sheet--and it’s a strangely intimate place to be in with someone I hate at 3 AM on a Tuesday morning.
He stretches long, pale fingers toward my face and whispers, “My mind to your mind--”
His dark eyes fill my vision, turning briefly to a desert landscape of red rock and heat haze, and after that there’s nothing in my mind but Jim--
...Jim walking so close to the edge of Tallulah Gorge that I’m afraid to breathe, even to tell him to move the hell back, but he grins and looks down and then back at me yells, “Hey! Toss me your phone and I’ll take a photo!”....
….Jim with a very well-researched fake migraine headache, sneaking into rooms and violating all sorts of protocols, all with the goal of giving me a blow job at work but getting fascinated with the MRI machine instead (“Those are some big fucking magnets!”)....
….Jim’s lips on the inside of my thigh, finding a spot that makes the world narrow to nothing else but his warm mouth and wet tongue, on the knife edge between laughing and shouting, cock so hard I can barely move....
….Jim dismantling a lobster with medical precision, me wondering where a broke kid learned a skill like that, before getting distracted when his fine hands dipped the claw in melted butter and he sucked out the meat....
…..Jim in the booth at the Waffle House, backpack in his lap, phone in one hand and a book in the other, free of sin and history, as if he’d been waiting there every one of his 25 years just for me to arrive...
On Tybee Island, the tide is rising, washing away the meandering footprints of gulls and winter visitors. The dry palm fronds rustle and it sounds like a whisper--
“Forget.”
part 2 >>
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, minor Chapel/Rand, even more minor Leonard/Jocelyn
Warnings: Language, boys arguing, mind/memory manipulation.
Tremendous thanks for beta reading to the adorable and perspicacious caitri, Keeper of Bones's Snark. Also thanks to norfolkdumpling for the delightful banner!
Valentine’s Day was invented by people in relationships to make the rest of us feel like crap.
It’s not enough that they have love; the smug bastards need a national campaign to rub it in our faces. And there’s not a shred of honesty about it, because if you said “love is digging a splinter out of someone’s dirty heel even though the thought of hurting them makes your flesh crawl,” the poor bastards wouldn’t know what to make of it. So it’s either infantilized bullshit with chubby pink cupids crapping rainbows, or clichéd “romance” purchased with a credit card: a dozen mutant roses from the gas station, red satin underwear made by underpaid children, Double Suicide by Chocolate served with two forks by candlelight at your local snotty bistro.
You know what an honest Valentine’s Day card would look like?
Thank You, My Darling, for Fucking Me in the Mornings When My Breath is Bad
This Valentine’s Day, I got you something special: an extra hour of sleep while I try to calm our screaming infant
To My Sweetheart: You’re the Person Who Will Give a Shit When I Die
...but that’ll never happen, because it wouldn’t make the lonely people weep into pints of ice cream and buy tickets to movies about adorably awkward young people finding love in Manhattan. The funny thing is, it would work on me, but then I’m different: I’ve been there before.
And so this Valentine’s Day starts with an email from Jocelyn. Just seeing her name--her new, not-married-to-me name--pop up on my phone makes my heart pound.
Len--
Hope you’re well. I got a call from St. Bridget’s saying they need another $500 for student activity fees. I thought you had it covered but I guess there was some confusion. It needs to be paid by Wednesday so Jo can go on a field trip. Can you call them today and straighten it out?
Thanks,
Joss
P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re spending it with someone. Just don’t sit home and drink, because thinking about that makes me sad.
That’s an arrow to the heart, alright, and there will be no raspberry truffles to staunch the bleeding. Instead, my day looks like this:
Staff Physician Training Agenda - February 14
8:00 Continental Breakfast
8:30 Welcoming remarks from Dr. M’Benga
9:00 Overview of Electronic Medical Records Initiative at Piedmont Hospital
….
5:00 Closing remarks from Dr. M’Benga
I could handle a day at the hospital, up to my chin in other people’s disasters. But this? Flowcharts. Cold cut buffets. PowerPoint.
I wouldn’t be much of a doctor if I couldn’t fake a sick day, would I?
One-handed, I type out an apologetic message to Dr. M’Benga, leaving out the capital letters so I’ll seem extra unwell. I get off at the next exit and head in the opposite direction, and just keep going--past the outer suburbs, past the small perimeter towns, and finally to the Ocalee National Forest. I yank off my tie but keep the blazer, since the morning mist is a little cool. It’s not really hiking, but I wander the morning away, birds cocking their heads at the strange man in the middle of the woods in a navy blazer and loafers. Two squirrels chase each other around an around a tree.
“You’re better off not catching her,” I say to squirrel #2. He ignores me. Thirty seconds of frantic squirrel sex follow, and then squirrel #1 wriggles away and runs off. I look around for the squirrel lawyer.
Another hour and I’m in a Waffle House outside of Greensboro, sucking back coffee as if it could clear my head and pushing around a cold pecan waffle with my fork. It’s between breakfast and lunch and so the place is mostly empty, just a few retirees and people who have nowhere else to be--people like me, I guess.
And that guy.
He sticks out like a sore thumb because he’s trying so hard not to look as pretty as he is. He’s got messy blond hair, pink lips, radiation-blue eyes, and an ugly plaid shirt open over a graying T-shirt. He’s sitting sideways in the booth, feet in ratty Chuck Taylors dangling over the edge of the seat, but nothing about him says hipster or college kid or delinquent or anything else. He looks like nobody but himself. He’s vibrating with energy, eyes darting around the room, until, with the randomness of an atomic collision, they hit mine.
He doesn’t do the lookaway like a straight guy would, but he doesn’t give me the cruisey stare, either. Instead he blinks at me, direct and curious, and the corners of his mouth quirk up, hopeful. An angler, and I’m a fat trout in shallow water. I tilt my head down with purpose and keep reading the New York Times in five-word segments on my phone.
After a few minutes, I chance a look up. He’s moved two booths closer. I give an involuntary shiver and clutch the phone more tightly.
“Hi.”
He’s popped up over the neighboring booth, both hands wrapped over the back of a seat like a Kilroy cartoon.
“Uh, hi.” I give him a weak smile and immediately hate myself.
Beg me for money, I think. Ask me for drugs. Just don’t--
“Do you mind if I sit there?” He points to the seat opposite mine.
“Knock yourself out.”
He slides in with the music of jeans on vinyl and sits there, vibrating, apparently waiting for me to entertain him. I cast around, desperate; I am not an entertaining guy. He leans forward and the rolled cuff of his shirt slides up, revealing a tattoo on his wrist, a stylized sun.
“Nice tat,” I say. And it is nice, as much as pigment trapped in fibroblasts by an immune reaction can be.
“Thanks.” He brushes it with his fingers like it’s still fresh and sore. “You hate tattoos, don’t you? You don’t get why somebody would take weird art they’d never have on their wall and put it on their body. You probably think the human body is enough of an art work, right?” I don’t know how he knows that, but I can’t disagree. “It’s not about art. Tattoos are like instant personality. Whatever you want to do--piss off your parents, make lovers think you’re dangerous and sexy, get strangers to talk to you about philosophy and life--you can get that in a tattoo. And then there’s the pain. Most people won’t say it but they get off on the fact that you’re willing to suffer for something that’s meaningful to you. Even though it’s a non-sexy procedure, just buzzing and wincing. Like the dentist. By the way, I’m Jim.”
I stare at the hand he’s reached out to me while my neurons try to catch up. After a few stupid seconds I grip it. It’s large and dry and warm.
“I’m Len.”
“Len. Is that short for Lennox? Cool name. Are you going to eat that waffle?”
“No, but it’s cold and disgusting.” He immediately yanks the plate toward him, grabs my fork, and glugs half a cup of syrup on it. “What the hell are you, a hummingbird?” It crosses my mind that he’s on something, but his hands are steady, his pupils aren’t dilated, and his color is good. Really good.
“I have a fast metabolism.” The waffle disappears, washed down with some of my coffee, leaving his full lips shiny and sticky. Worse and worse. “Do you have a car, Len?”
“In general? Yes,” I say, sensing danger in the question.
“Great! Let’s go to Tybee Island. I love the beach in the off season. But the slacks won’t cut it. Do you have shorts with you?”
“What, you want to go now? It’s a three-and-a-half hour drive, at least.”
The blue eyes regard me with the same unsugarcoated kindness as my therapist. “You got anything better to do?”
I think that the answer is “no,” and that I have a gym bag in my car, with shorts and a T-shirt and a towel.
“I can kick in for gas,” Jim says, grabbing his backpack and slapping a couple of bucks on the table for a tip. His butt’s already half off the seat, a bird about to fly, with or without me. “C’mon. Are we going to do this thing?”
No, the answer should be. No no no no.
“Yes.”
By late afternoon we’re lying on a quilt on the nearly deserted beach, on white sand made damp and clean by the receding tide. The quilt is from my bed, a factory-made simulacrum of the priceless one my grandmother gave to Joss on our wedding day. It’s been in my trunk for a month waiting to be dry cleaned, and now it’s well and truly trashed. I couldn’t be happier.
“Do you want another mochalattawhatever?” Jim rattles the ice in his empty cup like a maraca. He needs regular infusions of sugar and caffeine or he gases out.
“How about some real food?” I say, and he nods enthusiastically. I reach for my wallet, but Jim waves me off and comes back a half hour later laden with grouper and sweet potato fries and pie, and won’t even let me pay my share. Maybe Jim doesn’t pay for it either; maybe he just gives that expectant half-smile that makes you want to do anything to please him, and people just hand over the goods.
We watch a pink, clear sunset together, and eleven hours later we see an equally pearly sunrise. Yes, we spend the night on the beach, occasionally dozing but mostly talking. Somehow I never ask Jim where he’s from, or where he lives, or what he does--we’re too busy talking about the important stuff, like what’s the most overrated movie in history, pirates vs. ninjas (who would win?), what chances of dying you’d accept to go into space. My answer to that is easy.
“None. Space is like football--you can see everything better on TV.”
“Seriously?” Jim cranes his head around to stare at me. “I’d do it no matter what the risk. Best case, you’re a fucking astronaut; you get to be somewhere other than Earth. Can you even imagine that? Your friends would say, ‘Where’s Jim? Oh, right, he’s not on the planet right now.’ Not on the planet. And if you die, you’re famous--memorials and a eulogy from the president and shit. It’s a no-lose situation.”
I look up at the stars and think that they might as well be Christmas lights. I’m just fine right here.
He takes my hand; his own already feels as familiar to me as an old glove. “What are you thinking?” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a cliché. It sounds like he really wants to know.
“That I’m happy. Really happy.” I mean it. I don’t if I’ve known I was definitely, positively happy since I was a kid, but I know it now.
“Good,” he says, and gives my hand a squeeze. “That’s good.”
Under the kind regard of a slowly warming day, we brush the sand out of our clothes, grab breakfast, and hit the road. It’s lucky it’s Saturday or I’d be out of a job and unable to care. Yes, I’m that far gone already: I know the symptoms, which include being happy about the fact that I’m at a truck stop outside of Savannah, filling the car and getting ready for a long drive on two hours sleep while the guy who did this to me snores in the passenger seat.
Just before Macon, I nudge him. His chin’s deep in his chest and his uncombed hair is, objectively speaking, adorable.
“Hey, where do you live?”
He hugs his arms around himself and frowns, slides a pink tongue out to wet his salt-dried lips. “Inman Park. But is it okay if I sleep at your place? I think I’m having caffeine withdrawal. And since you’re a doctor--”
My answering growl doesn’t even convince myself. I’m done, I’m toast, I’m crispy on both sides. Somewhere above the fluffy clouds, Cupid’s project manager is looking at a task called Get Leonard McCoy to fall in love with a hyperactive drifter and marking it Complete.
+++++
“So, Len, do you and Jim have any ‘special plans’ for Valentine’s Day?” Lee’s eyebrows make the air quotes for her.
Lee Inouye is my immediate superior, but that doesn’t give her any right to pry into my love life. She’s only met Jim a handful of times when he’s materialized at happy hours and holiday parties, and she can’t shut up about what a handsome couple we are, and how happy we look, and how second time’s the charm. It’s like she’s personally invested in my relationship, like if anything went wrong kittens would cry and romance would die out in the world.
Which is unfortunate, because I haven’t talked to Jim in five days.
“Oh, you know, nothing special,” I say, slopping burnt coffee into my mug. It’s going to be hell on my stomach, but I haven’t been sleeping and I need the boost. “Dinner. A movie, maybe.”
“Hope you’ve made a reservation,” she says, adding with a wink, “or maybe you’re just as happy staying in.”
I give her a weak smile and dump two big spoons into the coffee. Two hours later my shift’s over and I bolt out of the hospital still jittery, and not just from the caffeine.
I grip the wheel like my hands have to wrestle control of it away from my brain. I’m going home. Not to Janice and Chris’s, not to Madras Palace (although I could really go for some of their pakoras right now) and certainly not to Grant Park. Home.
I’m halfway there before my hands lose the battle and I make a U-turn in the middle of the street, almost side swiping a parked car. Damn it.
For the last three months Jim has worked at a bike shop near Grant Park, which is a month longer than he’s worked anywhere else, as far as I can tell. His M.O. is to apply for low-wage, medium-glamor jobs whether he’s qualified or not, smile at the interviewers until they say “yes,” and then crush their low expectations to dust by becoming competent to the point of indispensability. Then, he quits for vague, knee-jerk reasons. That guy was pissing me off. It wasn’t enough responsibility. I got bored.
In hindsight, I guess that pattern ought to have made me cautious.
The shop is called Tough Nutz and sells fat tire bikes with names like Monster and Ninja. During the week, the shop is a mellow flow of CamelBak-toting young urbanites who are happy to pay $2000 to have Jim pat the wheel of some death machine and say, “You’re going to hit the side of that mountain like the fist of an angry god.” They’d be transformed, on the spot, from customer service reps and paralegals into fearless warriors. Jim had that power; it worked on even the most timid.
Even on me.
It took me a couple of months to believe he wouldn’t just vanish in a cloud of empty Red Bull cans and cupcake crumbs, and another couple to believe he actually enjoyed talking with me and not just taking contrary positions because he liked to see me get worked up. He was an energy drink in human form with a mind as deep as the ocean and changeable as the sky. But when I broached the subject of college or technical training or even--God forbid--the military, I got a cold stare and a pugnacious jawline. Jim, who could talk about any subject for hours, would clam up, or sneer and say, “I’m not your project. I’m not your rentboy diamond-in-the-rough. I’m happy the way I am, and who’d know that better than me? You?”
“I pity your parents,” I said once, and he was gone, out the door and somewhere beyond the reach of cell phones. Then he came back three hours later with a full grocery bag and started making chili like nothing had happened.
The last time, though, he didn’t come back. Hasn’t returned my calls, or my texts, or my email. I feel like a god-damned stalker, especially now, when I slip in the open door of Tough Nutz and keep my head down, pretending to browse, while Jim and the other clerk wait on customers.
Of course Jim’s customer is young and pretty. Of course he has to help her adjust her new purchase, kneeling like a prince to slip her tiny cleat-shod foot into the pedals while she wiggles her perfect little peach of a behind just above his head.
Just then he looks up, his eyes meet mine, and my heart stops.
“Hi,” he says. “Give me just another minute, I’ll be right with you.”
Well, that was easy. The slow walkback I’d planned in my mind--a talk outside, maybe coffee, dinner, negotiation, apology--melt away along with the tension in my upper back. In another hour we could be in my living room, in another three in my bed, and an unspecified time after that I could be getting my first decent sleep in a week.
Jim turns his attention back to his customer. “That’s good enough for now. I can make more adjustments on the trail if you need them. We still on for this weekend? Steeplechase Loop?” His hand slides up from her ankle to her calf.
“Try and stop me,” she says, giving her sporty braids a toss. The look they exchange makes it clear that five miles of mud, rubber and possibly busted teeth are going to be just so much foreplay before the main event.
Jim stands up slowly, adjusting his jeans, and puts on his best, bright customer-service smile.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. How can I help you?”
Sir. Cold, so very cold, to make me listen to him arrange a date, and then to treat me like any other customer. It makes me freshly angry again that he can invent his own rules, not tell me about them, and then levy the stiffest possible penalties. It’s shockingly cruel. The knot in my stomach moves to my throat and I try to beat it to the punch, opening my mouth to say something, and then I see it.
His eyes are blank, nothing behind them but pleasant semi-interest, most of his big brain taking a vacation, leaving just enough behind to make a commission off some eco-trendy businessman looking for a fixed-gear bike to ride to work. No recognition, no acknowledgement, as if I hadn’t sewn a button back onto the very shirt he’s wearing now.
I have just enough presence of mind to mumble something about doing more research online, and then I get the hell out of there, before my head explodes all over the pricey nylonwear.
+++++
“It was like he’d never seen me before in his life. Like I was a complete stranger.” I’ve said a hundred permutations of this in the last half hour, and it’s still not making any sense. I’m not angry or indignant so much as freaked the fuck out.
Janice just nods and pours more Kahlua into my coffee--it’s the strongest thing she’s got in the house.
“Maybe it was his way of trying to make a clean break. You know, why argue if he’s already decided he wants to go? Maybe he was trying not to hurt you.” Even sweet, optimistic Janice--who’d tell you that a strangler was doing you a favor by keeping blood off your carpet--is having a hard time spinning this.
“Or maybe he just wanted to see what it looked like if he ran over my heart with a Kevlar tire.” There are track marks; I can feel them. But romantic grief always sounds ridiculous in real life.
Janice sighs into her cocoa and exchanges a look with Christine, who’s sitting at the kitchen table painting a birdhouse to look like a Swiss chalet.
“What’s with the birdhouse?” I say. “You live in an apartment.”
“It’s for the farm,” she says with a straight face. Janice is a cube-dwelling administrator at the hospital and Christine’s an R.N. Between them they barely make enough to afford a two-bedroom, but Christine has been talking about buying a goat farm for years, even though Janice is a city girl born with an iced mocha in her hand. The copy of Progressive Dairy Farmer on the coffee table is a reminder that successful relationships seem to thrive on fiction.
“I hope the birds can afford the mortgage,” I say, and go back to sulking, which feels better with an audience. Because I am miserable, damn it, and I don’t know what to do to make it better.
“We should tell him,” Christine says, and Janice waves her pink-manicured hands frantically.
“No, don’t! He’s not going to--”
“Tell me what?” Janice and Christine are having an argument with their eyes. Apparently Chris wins, because she wipes her hands and picks up her iPad and hands it to me.
“I got this email today,” she says.
Subject: James Kirk re: Leonard McCoy
Dear Friend/Colleague/Family Member:
JAMES KIRK has forgotten LEONARD MCCOY. Please do not mention Mr. McCoy’s name in Mr. Kirk’s presence.
Thank you,
Ji Yi Institute
“What the hell does this mean?” It makes no sense. It makes the opposite of sense. “Is it some kind of joke? What’s the Ji Yi Institute?”
Christine gives me a pitying look and taps a couple more times on the iPad. The Ji Yi Institute has a website, all soothing beige and bamboo leaves and vague references to meditative memory therapies and herbs. It’s like a parody, part of some sick, fake conspiracy that reveals unimagined depths of creative cruelty in Jim, because to go this far to--
“Hey,” Janice says, having reached over to click on the Contact tab of the website. “They have an office in Lakewood.”
My madness has an address, and it can be Googled. I’m halfway out the door and Christine, ever practical, is yelling, “Len, wait! That’s not a great neighborhood after dark, and they won’t be open.”
I don’t care, I want to see it. Nothing seems real right now; maybe nothing has been since that golden morning a year ago. I want my life back. No, I want Jim back, but I’ll settle for my life. Bland as it was, it’s better than this.
+++++
The address turns out to be a squat brick building on Tidewater Avenue, and I disbelieve that it’s anything but a cheap furniture store until I see the discreet brass sign on the door: Ji Yi Institute. If it’s a joke, it’s going pretty damn far.
It’s 9 PM and it should be closed like Chris said, but there’s light leaking from the back, just visible through the glass doors, and so I ring the bell. After a few minutes a dark figure comes to the door without turning on the lights in the lobby. All I can see is glossy black hair reflecting the street lights. The figure cracks the door open.
“Yes?” He’s got that psychiatrist’s inflection in his voice, questioning and presuming at the same time.
“Are you one of the Ji Yi people? A friend of mine got an email. I want an explanation.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He’s maddeningly calm when he ought to be intimidated by a large-ish stranger in a leather jacket in a so-so part of town.
“No, I don’t have an appointment. I have no idea who you are or what you do.”
He tilts his head, considering. “I am Spock, and I believe you are Dr. Leonard McCoy. I’ve seen your photograph. Perhaps you ought to come in.”
He leads me through the dark lobby and into the back, which is bland as any low-rent medical office, with the addition of some watercolors of cherry blossoms and cranes and one of those tabletop waterfalls. When he ushers me into an office and flips on the lights, I see that he’s donned a black Fedora, which is puzzling and makes him look vaguely Rabbinical.
“Please sit down, Doctor. May I offer you some tea?”
“No, thanks. A god-damned explanation will do fine.”
He slides noiselessly into a leather armchair behind the desk and steeples his fingers, a familiar gesture that makes me want to call the American Medical Association and report him, because if this character isn’t some pseudoscience-peddling charlatan, I’ll eat my (or his) hat.
“Dr. McCoy, the Institute provides services to those wishing to forget. Persons and companion animals are the most common--the dead or departed, or those our clients would prefer never to have met--but specific incidents are not uncommon: an embarrassing moment, a childhood trauma, even a particular fact. I had a client recently who had discovered that red food coloring is derived from beetles, and found that that fact interfered with her enjoyment of many foods, notably Red Velvet Cake. I cannot guarantee that clients will not re-learn the same information, of course, but we take reasonable precautions, such as the email I sent to your friend.”
“That’s impossible. You know that, right?” I’m suddenly desperate for confirmation that this is a scam, which would at least make some kind of sense. “There’s been research on erasing specific traumatic memories in mice, but not humans. Mice, damn it!”
“Indeed. But our techniques do not require biochemical intervention.” His eyes are dark, glittering, and direct, and it’s deeply disturbing because he’s so earnest.
“What, then? If you say ‘ancient Chinese wisdom’ I’m going to have to smack you. I’ve noticed you aren’t Chinese, by the way.”
“Through direct contact of minds. Specifically, the theoretical construct of quantum pseudo-telepathy--”
“Horsehockey. Every huckster on the planet uses that ‘quantum’ crap to hand-wave the impossible. Quantum mechanics is an actual branch of physics, and it’s got nothing to do with forgetting about your dead cat.”
“In general I agree, although quantum theory as currently posited contains notable errors.” I have no choice but to roll my eyes at that. “However, as is often the case in science, it is unnecessary to understand the underlying construct in order to derive value from the application. In this case, I am confident enough that I offer a 100% money-back guarantee.”
“By God, I hate you quacks like poison. There’s nothing about you that’s any different from any huckster I’ve ever met. Except maybe the hat.”
“Fees are held in an online cash escrow account established with a disposable account,” he continues, ignoring me. “We erase the memory of this account along with the other undesirable memories. If we are unsuccessful, it is a simple matter to retrieve the money. Otherwise, there is no trace of an interaction with the Ji Yi Institute to trigger the client’s memory.”
“‘We’. You mean ‘you’.” I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this sallow fraud has had his hands--literally or figuratively--on Jim, and it fills me with pity and a desire to punch Spock in his aquiline nose. Jim may not be college-educated but he’s bright as a penny, and only desperation make him pay some shady character to hypnotize him or give him Rohypnol or a whack on the head or whatever snake oil this Mr. Spock is selling. I have to figure out what his game is, and then get Jim to take his money back, and hopefully me with it.
“All right then, fine,” I say, trying with all my might to make my face look like I believe him. “If there’s no risk, then I’d like to try it myself. Jim’s forgotten me, huh? I want to forget him back.” I don’t, of course, not as long as there’s still a chance, and I probably wouldn’t even if I thought Jim were never coming back. But to be able to sequester him, to not think of him when I look at every damn thing and every damn place, not to have to remember him on Valentine’s Day but maybe some time safe, like Groundhog Day or when my taxes are due--it’s tempting. I understand why poor saps take their sorrows to the Ji Yi Institute.
“Very good.” He begins shuffling papers, a good act, not at all like a con artist who’s just found an easy mark. “Here is a consent form, and the escrow information. You will need to remove all items associated with Mr. Kirk from your home and car and place them in marked boxes or trash bags. All salvageable items will be donated to charity; the rest will be destroyed. The digital record presents a larger challenge; we recommend simply creating new email and social networking accounts. And we will require a list of all mutual acquaintances with their email addresses.”
“Sure, fine.” I grab a pen off the desk and begin filling out forms. “How much will it cost?”
“Two thousand dollars per year of acquaintance for humans. Five hundred for pets.”
“Lord have mercy.” After just one year, I guess we’re relative bargains, but I think of Jim earning $10 an hour for his bright smiles. Poor Jim. But I’ve got money in the bank and I know lawyers, so-- “Okay, okay. How soon can we do this? Tonight?”
The corners of Spock’s mouth turn down, the closest thing I’ve seen to an expression on his face. “You will have to call tomorrow and arrange it with the scheduler. Two weeks’ notice is generally sufficient, but this is our busiest time of year.”
All right, so it’s not like a huckster to turn down instant cash. But still. “What if I throw in a 50% rush fee? Could you do it tonight?”
“Impossible, I fear. I already have two bookings--”
“And I don’t spend tomorrow morning reporting you to the AMA and the Better Business Bureau. I’m not on it, but I understand that Facebook can be quite effective, too.”
One eyebrow tilts up, and the corners of his mouth twitch. “Perhaps I can fit you in. However, it will be quite late--3 AM at the earliest. And you must still complete all the preparatory steps; otherwise, the probability is high that you will not be satisfied with the results.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be very satisfied with the results.” I’ve never been so happy to cheated in my life.
+++++
It’s midnight and I’m running around my apartment throwing things into cardboard boxes:
A refrigerator magnet from Stu’s Gator Shack (two alligators fornicating and the slogan “C’mon back, we can always make more!”).
A paper crown from a pancake restaurant in Athens (fake jewels and I Rule scrawled in crayon by Jim).
A birthday card: “Feliz cumpleaños para mi novia” (Jim was only just starting to learn Spanish).
A paperback copy of The Fortress of Solitude (KIRK written in marker along the edge because one of his co-workers is a kleptomaniac).
At least ten things with the Tough Nutz logo emblazoned on them (because after all this time Jim still thinks it’s funny).
I look at this collection of effluvia and wonder why none of it seems solid or significant. That would have come eventually, I hope: marriage and permanence, hard metal bands and the Law. Not impossible to dissolve, but requiring effort and forethought. From here, my time with Jim looks like a weekend at a second-rate resort, quickly forgotten when the hangover wears off and you vacuum the sand out of your car. But these bits of junk aren’t Jim, they’re signifiers, pointers to the location in my brain where the memory is kept. I see, I smile, I remember, until time smears them with the back of its hand into Oh, him? Some guy I used to date.
Between the ridiculous busy work and nerves, I can’t sleep and I don’t try to. There’s a soft knock on the door at 3 AM precisely and Spock enters, grave and somber as a vampire. I’m not worried on a primal safety level: Spock is pasty and narrow-shouldered and I’m 99 percent sure I could take him down if it came to that. I’m just not sure how it will play out--if I’ll get a good show for my two grand, or if it will just be embarrassing, like the time that Janice invited her friend the “pet psychic” over, and she’d waved her palms over the head of a disgruntled tabby and said he’d been the Duchess of Polignac’s cat in a past life and that his hairballs were caused by trauma from the Revolution.
“Please seat yourself in a comfortable chair,” Spock says, keeping the black Fedora on. “This will take approximately one hour.”
He has no psychoelectromothingamajigs, no herbal concoctions or tin cans connected with twine. He merely dims the lights and pulls up a hassock, tenting his fingers, elbows on knees, a look of intense concentration on his face. I have no idea what’s coming--in the frantic shuffle of paper and objects, I’d neglected to read the information sheet--and it’s a strangely intimate place to be in with someone I hate at 3 AM on a Tuesday morning.
He stretches long, pale fingers toward my face and whispers, “My mind to your mind--”
His dark eyes fill my vision, turning briefly to a desert landscape of red rock and heat haze, and after that there’s nothing in my mind but Jim--
...Jim walking so close to the edge of Tallulah Gorge that I’m afraid to breathe, even to tell him to move the hell back, but he grins and looks down and then back at me yells, “Hey! Toss me your phone and I’ll take a photo!”....
….Jim with a very well-researched fake migraine headache, sneaking into rooms and violating all sorts of protocols, all with the goal of giving me a blow job at work but getting fascinated with the MRI machine instead (“Those are some big fucking magnets!”)....
….Jim’s lips on the inside of my thigh, finding a spot that makes the world narrow to nothing else but his warm mouth and wet tongue, on the knife edge between laughing and shouting, cock so hard I can barely move....
….Jim dismantling a lobster with medical precision, me wondering where a broke kid learned a skill like that, before getting distracted when his fine hands dipped the claw in melted butter and he sucked out the meat....
…..Jim in the booth at the Waffle House, backpack in his lap, phone in one hand and a book in the other, free of sin and history, as if he’d been waiting there every one of his 25 years just for me to arrive...
On Tybee Island, the tide is rising, washing away the meandering footprints of gulls and winter visitors. The dry palm fronds rustle and it sounds like a whisper--
“Forget.”
part 2 >>