Amanda gave him a playful nudge. “No cheating. Pick a number.”
“Thirty-one.”
Sergey’s eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”
Antoine had thrown out the first number that came to mind, but he supposed he was on the hook now. “Why not?” He headed toward the coffee maker. Scientists at Johns Hopkins had declared coffee to be a memory aid, and employees of Everett Blair were required to drink at least two cups a day.
“If he’s at it that long, I’ll give you two HerbaBrain capsules.” Naomi said. “It’s the new maximum strength variety. Contains ginseng and gotu kola.”
Sergey turned away from the window. “You didn’t say there was a prize.”
“You can’t pick again,” Amanda said. “The number you say is the number you play. It’s not like there won’t be another one an hour from now.”
“Yeah, but hopefully I’ll be back on the road by then. I’m the new prompter for Randy Goodman and we’ve got a lunch appointment across town.”
“That’s the guy with all the barbeque restaurants, right?” Amanda sighed. Although New Englander all the way, her brief time in Texas had awakened a passion for the local cuisine. “You lucky dog.”
“Good eatin’ as they say around here,” Sergey agreed.
“I wonder why they didn’t put Antoine on that one,” Naomi said, casting him a sly glance. “All Southern men like barbeque.”
“I don’t think we would’ve gotten along,” Antoine said. “Texans don’t do barbeque right. They make it too sweet. Vinegar is the only right way to go.” By now his phone was buzzing with a text from Elaine, his manager. “Looks like the boss is ready.” He grabbed his satchel. “Let me know if I win the HerbaBrain.”
CHAPTER THREE
Elaine’s office was tidy, almost obsessively so. Its precise placement of lamps, vases, and tabbed file sorters gave the impression of an office concepts photo shoot, and the careful arrangement of stapler, paper clip tray and pen cup suggested a formidable organizational prowess. After a year of memory prompting, though, Antoine could spot the cracks. Elaine had always been neat, but not to such a manic degree that she even put her pen in the same place each time she set it down. It was a spot marked faintly on the desk pad with seemingly casual pencil marks, but Antoine knew better. She was losing her mind and hiding it with every trick she knew.
He didn’t begrudge her this. Her job required such heavy reliance on automated computer processes that she might be able to continue for months or even a year with only modest degradation of her effectiveness. Antoine’s turn would come too one day, and this thought enabled him to take a seat across from her with a benevolent smile.
“How is it out there?” she asked.
Antoine gave a little shrug. “About the same as always. Hot and humid. Crazy drivers.”
Elaine nodded. “I was nearly sideswiped by a guy crossing three lanes of traffic on I-45. He was using his blinker, but he was signaling right and moving left. No one got hurt, but it was just pure luck.”
“Maybe that federal grant for more public transportation will come through.”
“Perhaps,” Elaine said without conviction. She glanced at her computer screen. “You checked on Jeb Hendrickson this morning. How did that go?”
While Antoine described his morning appointment, Elaine typed a few notes. “He’s showing a little hostility,” she noted. “But it sounds like you smoothed things over.”
“Tact is everything.”
“Yes.” She turned to face him. “That’s why I have a special assignment for you this afternoon.”
Antoine kept his features smooth but inside, he cringed. A prompter’s job wasn’t conducive to regular hours, since he might be needed anywhere: an early morning prep, a little guidance before a business lunch, or attendance at an evening gala. A free afternoon was a precious thing and now Elaine wanted to rob him of it by giving him another assignment?
Early stage amnesia hadn’t dimmed Elaine’s powers of perception. “I realize you’re disappointed about the extra workload, but we’re having to redistribute Haley’s cases.”
“I see.” There had been rumors that Haley’s skills were slipping but she had hidden it well.
“Rory Tennenbaum needs some assistance. She’s the wife of David Tennenbaum, CFO of American Fortune Investments.” Elaine turned to her computer and scrolled through the recent case summary. “She seemed stable for a few weeks but her husband called this morning and says she’s having a crisis.”
“I’m happy to help,” Antoine said with a small frown of concern. “But why me? It’s not our usual policy to put prompters with opposite-sex clients.”
Elaine gave a little sigh of frustration. “Everyone else is either booked, sick, or…well, you know we don’t like to change a client’s prompters too often.”
“I’ve always wondered about that policy. Seems like once they’re far enough gone, you can just tell them you’re their regular prompter and how will they know?”
“It’s not about the patient, it’s about the people around them who may still have their memories intact. The last thing we need is a lawsuit from someone saying we gave their mom the wrong memory about that family trip to Yosemite thirty years ago.” She turned back to her computer, opened up a new window, and sent something to the printer. I’m giving you Rory’s case history and directions to the house in both hard and soft copy so you can look at it before you go. The appointment is at 2:00. Take a few minutes to read it in one of the temporary offices and let me know if you have any questions. I’ll have a few minutes after my appointment with…” she darted a glance at her computer screen. “John.”
Antoine stood and took his new case off the printer. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he assured her, but a single glance at Rory Tennenbaum’s client summary told him there would be a lot more to this one than a few Sudoku puzzles and a review of a map of Qatar.
CHAPTER FOUR
Feeling out of sorts, Antoine headed to his next appointment after first stopping by the break room to see if he had won the Satellite game. The driver had circled a record thirty-four times and since Antoine’s guess was the closest, he pocketed the HerbaBrain, which Naomi had left on the counter with his name attached to it with a sticky note. Then he headed toward the elevator bank.
He was meeting next with a vice president at the University of Houston Downtown, which spared him the ordeal of getting back on the road with the amnesiac drivers, but subjected him instead to having to watch out for them on foot while walking to Main Street to catch the train to the former M&M building, a massive brick deco affair that hunched beside a bend in the bayou just before downtown gave way to barrio.
That he knew it was once called the M&M building was due to a secret he shared with only a few close friends: he was avidly studying Houston’s history. Having grown up in a city obsessed with its own past, the study of history had been a natural fit in college. Antoine gravitated toward the annals of urban development, the steady forward march of progress intriguing him not so much for what was gained but for what was lost: the crunch of macadam giving way to brittle concrete, the scent and softness of wood becoming steel, the hand-crafted and unique abandoned in favor of the convenience of anonymous glass and pre-fab. The raw newness of Houston shocked him, as did the residents’ mania for knocking down and paving over everything in sight.
As a means of grounding himself, he had made it his mission to learn what he could about his new home. Early on he had discovered there were precious few places where one could delve into anything more archaic than a sale on the last season’s fashions or tech gizmos, and his attempt at meeting local amateur historians hadn’t gone well. The members of the area historical societies were so steeped in amnesia that meetings often devolved into bitter arguments over the fate of the previous incarnations of City Hall or whether such a building as the Coliseum ever existed and whether the Beatles had played there, if it had. That was when the historical societies remembere
d to meet at all. Just as often, Antoine found himself waiting in a bare room at a church or school, gazing uncertainly at the glum faces of the one or two other non-amnesiacs who had remembered the meeting date and location. After several months of this, Antoine discovered the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, and it quickly became his second home. It was a rich source of material on nearly any Texas topic, and even now some new books were waiting for him if only he could spare a few minutes to get there.
In the meantime he was going the opposite direction, wading through the discarded fast food cups and wrappers of the streets, an unfortunate result of the plague making inroads on minds of the city trash collectors. The train stop was particularly challenging, not just due to the refuse but because of squabbles at the ticket machine where amnesia-befuddled travelers puzzled over the screen, unsure where they needed to go, while those still in possession of their faculties urged them to action.
Antoine had a monthly pass and was able to bypass the ticketing machines, so he got onto the next train as soon as it arrived. There were no open seats, but he hadn’t far to go and didn’t mind standing. Once at the university, however, he had to contend with the meandering students of the self-contained campus, all of whom were gazing intently at their phones, oblivious to their surroundings, whether attempting to remember who they were or trying to escape from that knowledge was not clear.
The VP’s office on the ninth floor was well-ordered and the VP himself almost painfully polite. This was one of Antoine’s favorite clients and he lingered a little longer than necessary assisting him with a crossword while an mp3 playlist of memory-prompting pop tunes from forty years ago played softly in the background.
By the time he finished his appointment, his friend Rafael had texted him about lunch. Antoine called him back as he headed toward the third floor where, due to peculiarities of building construction and the sloping banks of the bayou, the train platform was located. “Where do you want to go?”
“Bro, I’m starving and I’ve got one more client before I can take a break. I don’t care where we go as long as the chef hasn’t lost his mind.”
“Let me think on that,” Antoine said, ducking a windblown snack cake wrapper. A few months ago a rumor had begun circulating that the preservatives and other chemicals in heavily-processed food had a protective effect on the brain, and now that the college students were cramming for summer finals, they were availing themselves of any thread of mnemonic hope they could lay hands on. “Pick me up outside the downtown library?”
“You were just there last week. What did your friend find for you this time?”
Antoine frowned, peering down the track in hopes of seeing his train. “I don’t know. She was vague. I think it’s getting harder for her to get me copies of things for some reason.”
“This ain’t Charleston. Books about Houston history are hard to get because there isn’t much to write about.”
Antoine sometimes had trouble understanding when Rafa was being serious and when he was just playing around, but now he could see his train coming, a faint silver speck in the distance. “Gotta go, man. I’ll text you when I know what time I’ll be ready.”
The train pulled up to the platform with quiet efficiency. As he searched for a seat, Antoine allowed himself a moment of gratitude that here at least the city had gotten something right. When the true nature of the plague became known, human train operators were quickly replaced with computers. As long as there were techs who were sane enough to fix any glitches, the trains themselves could run promptly and effectively, amnesia be damned.
Except, of course, for the accidents. Drivers and pedestrians alike were prone to wander into the train’s path, but today Antoine enjoyed a quick trip to the other side of downtown where he walked the few blocks from the train stop to the Julia Ideson Building, which housed the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.
The Ideson Building was a rare artifact for Houston, harking back to a different age. Although by Charleston standards, its 1920s construction was practically new, around here it might as well have been constructed by ancient Carthaginians. The graceful Spanish Revival structure had been built to house the public library but was converted into an archival resource during the latter decades of the previous century. This was Antoine’s favorite place for learning everything old about Houston.
Today he met Dymphna in a quiet corner of the Texas Room. Her long braids were collected in a knot at the nape of her neck and she was frowning over a few papers in a manila folder when Antoine approached the table. She smiled with genuine pleasure when she saw him. “I’m glad you were able to make it.”
“You seemed excited about something.” Antoine took a seat across from her. “I always know you’ll find me something good.”
Dymphna slid a large envelope across the table to him. Resting on top were two slim yellowed books. “The copies are for you to keep but I thought you’d like to see the originals, too.”
Antoine turned a few pages of a book of photos and maps of Houston in 1970, struggling to conceal his disappointment. For someone from Charleston, anything that happened within living memory barely counted as history at all. “This is a little later than I’m really into,” he said diplomatically. “But I’m sure it’s interesting.”
“More than you realize,” Dymphna said. “It probably won’t surprise you that at least half the buildings in those books are gone now. The others have been renamed, repurposed or remodeled. Thanks to amnesia, people are forgetting all of this, even though for a lot of them, it’s within their lifetime.”
“From what I’ve seen, that’s the Houston way.”
“You’re right, but I’ve lived here all my life and it’s never been this bad. Even people with no plague symptoms are forgetting.” She took the book out of his hands and flipped to a page she had memorized. “Look at this. Shamrock Hotel. It was a really big deal back in its day and its demolition in 1987 was all over the news and attracted protestors, but now even the old people don’t seem to remember. We’re talking about an iconic building here.”
She opened the other book, titled Houston Personalities. “It’s the same with people, and I’m not talking about Congressman Mickey Leland or Senator Barbara Jordan. Our people always get forgotten, but you’d think they’d remember news personality Marvin Zindler or football coach Bum Philips. Most of them don’t anymore.”
Antoine took the book from her hands. It was newer than the other, printed in 1991. “People forget. It’s just the way things are in this town,” he said without conviction.
“I’m telling you, it’s not the amnesia. Not all of it, at any rate. Something else is going on.” She cast a nervous glance around the room. “Let’s go sit outside in the garden.”
Antoine slipped the envelope of photocopies into his satchel and waited while Dymphna put the books away. Then they walked together down the staircase and out into the muggy summer air. A slight breeze kept it from being completely unbearable and they found a shady spot on a bench under the trees.
“Something strange is happening,” Dymphna said without preamble. “I know this is going to sound paranoid, but hear me out. Our history is being rewritten.”
“What exactly do you mean? We rewrite history every day just by living.”
“Not like this.” Her next words came out in a rush of descriptions: lost archives, missing books, and clients who were in seemingly good memory as far as their health was concerned, but could no longer remember famous local people or events of years past. “I had a guy in here last week, mid-fifties, native Houstonian, who didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned AstroWorld. It was an amusement park, very popular. He probably went there every summer as a kid and may have even worked his first job there, and now he doesn’t remember?”
“Maybe the amnesia virus is mutating. That sort of thing happens, you know.”
Dymphna sighed in frustration. “I had a feeling you were going to be like this. You can’t help it,
I guess. You’re not a local.” She darted a few quick looks around the garden then slipped something out of her oversized purse and into Antoine’s satchel. Her movements were so quick he almost thought he imagined it.
“What did you just do?”
“It will explain everything. But wait until you get home to look at it.”
“But what is it?”
Dymphna stood and pretended to stretch, still glancing around as if afraid they were being scrutinized. “A book. Compare it to the scans I gave you, copyright, markings, and all. Then let’s meet for lunch. My treat.”
Before Antoine could compose an answer, she walked back inside the building. He was about to take the new book out of his satchel and to hell with Dymphna’s instructions to wait, but the sudden growl of his stomach reminded him he hadn’t texted Rafa yet about lunch. Annoyed, he pulled out his phone and let him know he was ready. But since he hadn’t planned ahead, now he would have to wait at least thirty minutes for his friend to get through lunch hour traffic.
Annoyed with himself for having let Dymphna distract him from his schedule, he stood to go inside where the summer sun and humidity wouldn’t turn his shirt into a wet stinking mess. But then he had a better idea and went out the gate. From here it was a short walk to the courtyard in front of the sleek glass building that housed the main branch of the public library. After dodging an itinerant preacher promising mnemonic salvation for the faithful, he ducked into the library and made his way to the café. Here he bought an iced coffee and took a seat at a row of stools near a window so he could watch for Rafa while he caught up on his email.
He had several messages to read and return, in addition to the usual spam. Soon he was so absorbed in the task that he barely noticed when a man in a gray suit took a seat on the stool next to his. What he didn’t miss, though, was when the man accidentally dropped his phone. Ever polite, Antoine bent over to help, only to find the other man had a hand inside his satchel. Their eyes locked.
“I’m pretty sure your phone fell on the floor, not in my bag,” Antoine said in clipped tones.
The stranger managed a tight smile. “Yes, I think you’re right.” He picked up his phone. “Thank you.”