Chapter Ten #3
“When I was a kid. I got out of it with my mom, but I retained a little of the accent.” She shifts on the sofa. “It’s kind of boring, and I’d prefer not to talk about it.”
He glances up from trimming the Band-Aids he needs. “Hey, I have to tell you about my personal details all the time.”
“Yes, and when I get amnesia, you can ask me a bunch of questions about myself then.”
“Fine. Okay, lean forward a little for me.”
The dressing isn’t complicated: Neosporin and Band-Aids, with some maneuvering to figure out how to get the Band-Aids to stay in place and not obstruct her eyelid. He uses a fold of Kleenex to dab on the Neosporin. From somewhere outside the apartment, the faint strains of some jangling pop song.
Nomi tilts her head to give him better access.
Her skin is warm under his fingers, and her right eye, below his hand, is a flat, unblinking brown.
“Tomorrow I’m gonna have to dig out this girl of Ricki’s, Janice D’Addario.
I’m hoping she’ll talk to me. I want to hear more about this special delivery Ricki had to stretch. ”
“That’s tomorrow.” Simon works to fix down a corner of sticky plastic. The sutures have dried a little; they scratch against the dressing. “You did well, holding it together to get information out of Leo.”
“I’m an opportunist. And I don’t know if you noticed, but Leo’s not too bright . . .” Her pupils are contracting with the medication, and her voice is getting hazy. “S’that your standard procedure, threatening to put people’s eyes out with steak knives?”
“Only when I’m pretending to be somebody’s hired thug.”
“The outfit made it work, but you’re really too pretty to be a thug. You should let me break your nose, so you look more authentic.”
He snorts. The dressing is nearly done, and he can allow his focus to relax. “Where the hell is that stupid music coming from?”
“The Duran Duran? That’s probably Nelson across the hall. Rio is a classic.”
Those lyrics are words he knows, which is funny. “That was my name for a while in Guatemala, you know.”
“Rio means ‘river’ in Spanish, right?”
“Yes. Except in Maaya t’aan, the word for river is haw. So I was called Haw for a couple of years. Then Flores examined my old clothes and found the label . . . so I became Simon. Simón.” He says it in the Spanish way.
“It suits you better.”
“It fits better. And no, I don’t know how I know that—it’s just a feeling.” He fixes the last edge of the dressing. It’s not attractive, but it should help protect the wound in the short term. “There you go. Now if you sit back, I’ll wash up, then make us both something warm to drink.”
Remarkably, Nomi follows his instructions. He makes hot tea, because it turns out she has loose-leaf tea and milk that’s not out of date. She sips the tea, relaxing with the medication. She has no interest in eating, which is probably for the best.
He lights a cigarette—his first in hours—and settles back on the brown lounge chair. When he informs her that he’s staying in her living room tonight, to keep an eye on her, she puts up surprisingly little resistance.
“I mean, I haven’t done a sleepover since junior high, but fine.”
“What’s a sleepover?”
“Y’know, you act so normal, and then you say shit that reminds me you don’t remember growing up American . . .” She regards him over the lip of her mug. “Don’t you have work?”
“Nope. I don’t work Monday mornings.”
“Convenient.” Her tone is dry, but she’s almost fully reclined on the leather sofa, a pillow under her head and a gray crocheted rug over her lap. She sighs. “Should’ve known that fucking guy wasn’t a courier.”
“Live and learn, right?”
She sets her mug on the coffee table and rolls to face him. “I just figured it out.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Noone’—it’s a compound of ‘no one.’ Your surname means ‘no one.’”
“Wordplay in place of wit—that’s me,” Simon admits. He sips his tea. “And is Pace your real surname?”
“Pacek. But I don’t use my father’s name.” There’s a dullness in her eyes when she talks about it. She blinks it away. “What’s Guatemala like?”
He ashes his cigarette in the nearest pot plant, then eases back, watching the smoke eddy up. He’s never really explained his experience of Guatemala to anyone before. It wasn’t the standard tourist encounter.
“Well, at first,” he says quietly, “it’s just a small, white-washed room with a dark curtain over the window.
Then, when you stop drifting in and out of consciousness, it’s a gruff old man who brings you maize soup and speaks to you in a variety of languages until you recognize one.
He explains that you were found by the edge of the river.
That when you arrived at his village clinic, he had to jigsaw your head back together with superglue, and he thought you would probably die. ”
“But you didn’t die.” Nomi’s voice has a lazy burr, her head cushioned on the pillow. “And there’s really nothing from before that you remember?”
“No.” Simon tilts his head at her. “What is it about the amnesia that you find so fascinating?”
“Ah, it’s just . . .” Her body shifts as she looks away from him, toward the ceiling. “We all have memories we’d like to get rid of, right?”
Do we? Simon wonders which of Nomi’s memories she’d like to obliterate.
“I’m afraid that’s not how amnesia works—you don’t get to choose.
” He takes a drag, examines his cigarette as he explains further.
“I mean, in the beginning, I couldn’t even retain basic information.
I’d wake up in a panic every morning, not knowing who or where I was.
Flores had to reintroduce himself whenever he came into the room, had to explain the same stuff over and over—I am a doctor.
You are in Guatemala. You have a head injury.
For the time being, your name is Haw. That first month, I’d go sit outside on the porch, and neighbors passing by from the village would remind me that we’d met before.
It took a while for my brain to remember how to remember. ”
Simon hears his own voice develop the gentle rolling intonations and cadences of the storytellers in Piedras Negras. He ashes his cigarette once more.
“Amnesia is hard to describe. Physically, it feels as if your head is full of cotton—that was my experience, anyway. Your normal state is a state of confusion. It’s like you’ve lost traction, lost your foothold on the world.
Like you’re just an outline of a person.
Even after the physical symptoms fade, you experience moments when everything around you feels unreal.
Or maybe you feel unreal. Does that make sense? ”
But when he looks over, Nomi’s already asleep.