She tried to affect an attitude of unconcern, but her cynical pout gave her away. “Then you really don’t believe we’ll have a future where we’ll also remember the past. Either that or you’re trying to let me down easy.”
“No, it’s not—”
“Don’t worry, I understand. We’ll just keep things professional. After all, it’s really only the history that matters.”
She turned and exited through the heavy steel door, leaving Antoine perplexed and oddly sad. He thought highly of Dymphna, but he didn’t really like her in a romantic way. He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder and patted its bulging sides. She was right. The only thing that mattered was that they save the past.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The weeks that followed fell into a pattern of secret meetings and hushed exchanges of manila envelopes. Antoine and Dymphna changed their meeting places as often as they could in the hope of avoiding detection. Whether it was Tranquility Park with its columned waterfalls or a bagel shop nestled on the busy ground floor of a glass and steel skyscraper, they conducted their business furtively, as though not just history but lives were at stake.
In spite of their shared bond over rescuing the archives, it was hard to put that kiss on the stairs behind them. Previously, Antoine hadn’t even considered that Dymphna might have feelings for him, but now he wondered how he could have failed to see it. From his first visit to the Texas Room, she had been solicitous, always thinking ahead to what he might need or want next. She had been helpful, doing far more for him than what any other archivist would have done, and when she began to see books and other rare materials changing before her eyes, of course it was Antoine she turned to, since who else but a memory prompter would have an interest in the past on a par with that of a historian?
But she had hoped for more than a mere professional collaboration, and although they went to great lengths to keep things businesslike as they made hurried handoffs in building lobbies, parking lots, and the anonymous shops and blind spurs of the downtown pedestrian tunnel system, it was always with a raw undercurrent that spoke of a wrong turn having been made and a path not taken.
Antoine hadn’t told Rafa about his efforts to save the archives for fear of being laughed at or being accused again of delusions, but his friend wasn’t easily fooled. After a long string of evasive answers, missed lunches, and cancelled pub plans, Rafa cornered him in the Everett Blair training room after a required workshop on the use of scent to evoke memories. “Something’s been up with you lately, bro. Want to talk about it?”
Antoine glanced around. Most of their coworkers had already left, but he lowered his voice anyway. “I’m just tired, you know how it is. All these crazy hours.”
“Whatever’s on your mind isn’t going to get better by pretending everything’s okay.” Rafa indicated with a jerk of his head that they should move out into the hall. “Your family doing all right?”
“Sure. My mom still thinks I should come home and work for the historical society again, and my sister had a memory scare a couple weeks ago, but she was just taking too many antihistamines. She’s allergic to damn near everything and takes those pills like they’re candy.”
“Well, I know it’s not your work that’s bringing you down. You’re the big star around here these days, thanks to having Rory Tennenbaum on your client list.”
“She’s a nice lady,” Antoine said. “Her brain is turning to mush, but that’s not her fault.”
“You’re not banging her, are you?”
“What?” Antoine stopped and looked up and down the hall to make sure no one had overheard. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Rafa shrugged. “She may be old enough to be someone’s grandma, but I’ve seen those society page photos. Her plastic surgeons have kept her looking hot. And it’s not like she’d remember and tell her husband.”
“She’s not my type, and besides, I prefer a woman who’s still going to remember who I am the next day.”
“Well, if it’s not your job, your family, or an affair with a crazy society lady, what is it that’s got you skipping lunch, not returning texts and just generally running around all secretive?”
Antoine didn’t answer.
“Shit,” Rafa said, lowering his voice. “It’s those damn books, isn’t it?”
He started to lie, but then realized there was no point. “Let’s get out of here, then we can talk.”
They took the elevator down to the main building lobby and found an unobtrusive spot away from the elevators. “Since you feel like you have to know, Dymphna and I have been smuggling out copies of original archives. We had no choice. Books and other resources were changing, being replaced with replicas that altered or omitted historical facts.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Dymphna told me about it and then showed me some examples.”
“But how do you really know?” Rafa said. “What if she’s got amnesia and just can’t admit it to herself? It makes her feel better to say it’s everything else that’s wrong. Doesn’t that sound like a more rational explanation for what’s happening?”
“Dymphna’s memory is fine,” Antoine said. “I work with amnesiacs all day long. You think I can’t recognize one when I see one?”
“Yeah, but the idea that someone is sneaking into the library and switching out the books is crazy. Think how expensive and time-consuming that would be. Occam’s Razor, you know. The simplest answer is probably the right one.”
“Well, maybe in this case Occam doesn’t shave. There’s an exception to every rule.”
Rafa ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Okay, let’s say for a minute someone’s got the money and the time to go changing the books at the downtown public archive for ones that look almost exactly alike. That’s just one library. There’s a whole world of libraries out there, public and private. Are the books being changed there too?”
“Sometimes. Dymphna has contacts at other libraries, other archives. She’s called a few to fact-check and gets different answers.”
“But that’s just hearsay. She’s telling you, and you’re believing it.”
“Okay, that’s true. But I trust her judgment.”
“And I trust my own eyes. Pick a fact – I don’t care what it is. Choose something that your friend says is being changed. Then let’s each go to one of the university libraries here in town and see what they’ve got. We’ll request interlibrary loan books about it, too. If history is really being rewritten, we should be able to see the evidence.”
Antoine nodded slowly. “That sounds reasonable. And if I’m right, you’ll quit harassing me about it?”
“I’ll do you one better. If you’re right and the past really is disappearing, I’ll help you save it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They put their plan into action that very evening after choosing two facts from the most recent envelopes of archives Antoine had been given: the name of an obscure survivor of the Goliad massacre and the original name of well-known Houston thoroughfare Allen Parkway.
They began by conducting an internet search, turning up a few references to Edwin Tartt on genealogy websites, but nothing to indicate his presence at Goliad or service in the Texan army. The evidence about Allen Parkway was contradictory, with most sites making no mention of it having previously been called Buffalo Drive. But one webpage contained a photo of the ceremony that rechristened the undulating boulevard next to Buffalo Bayou as Allen Parkway in honor of the city’s founders. Antoine and Rafa each bookmarked the location and considered their web search done. They then called the valet to bring their cars around, and while Rafa headed toward Rice University, Antoine went to the University of Houston.
He had never been inside the university’s spare modern library but quickly found the service desk and was directed to a bank of reference computers that didn’t require an official university ID. Here he searched for books, journal articles, and anything else he could find about th
e Goliad massacre or Houston prior to 1961. Then he began hunting his sources down, haunting the musty stacks and carrying armloads of heavy books to common-use tables to pore over the yellowing pages.
Most sources omitted the information he needed, but he did find a reference to an Edwin Tartt receiving a free parcel of land for service to the Republic of Texas, and he came across a mention of Buffalo Drive in Houston, although the description inclined him to believe the author was referring to some other street. Nevertheless, he made copies of his finds and headed to the pub in the Rice Village where he and Rafa had agreed to meet.
His friend was already waiting for him, sipping his one weekly beer, as allowed by Everett Blair, at a corner table. From the look in his eyes, Antoine didn’t need to ask how his search had gone.
“It was odd,” Rafa said in a cold, deliberate tone that Antoine had never heard before. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but handed him a packet of copies instead.
Antoine first pored over the documents about Edwin Tartt. In some, he had purchased his land in the ordinary way. In others, he acquired his homestead through a land grant to veterans by the Republic of Texas, just as in the book Antoine had found at the University of Houston.
“That discrepancy could almost be explained,” Rafa said. “There was probably a lot of bad recordkeeping back in those days. But check out what I found about Allen Parkway.”
Rafa’s other documents concerned Houston before and immediately after 1961, and here he had struck pay dirt. In two references, Allen Parkway had never had any other name. In another, a street named Bayou Boulevard had been renamed Allen Parkway in 1961. Nowhere had he found a reference to Buffalo Drive or Buffalo Parkway, and when Antoine showed him his own reference, Rafa examined the description closely and agreed that it very likely referred to some other street. The two men fell silent, at a loss for words.
A chipper waitress bounced up to them and asked Antoine if he wanted anything to drink.
Although he didn’t usually take advantage of the weekly beer allowance, tonight was an exception and he ordered a Guinness.
“And another for me,” Rafa said.
After the waitress left, Antoine gave him a puzzled look. “You sure about that, man?”
“Hell, yeah. I’m beginning to think your friend may be right, and if someone is fucking with the past, we’re all screwed. Think about it – what good is a memory prompter if the past can be one thing today and something else tomorrow? In a world like that, who needs memories at all? Just make up a history that suits your purposes. If you don’t like it tomorrow, change it again. Who cares?”
Of all the possibilities Antoine had considered, the potential threat to his job wasn’t one of them. “Most of our customers still want the truth,” he pointed out, knowing as he said it that he was lying. Rory Tennenbaum didn’t want the truth, and neither did the majority of his other clients. People wanted to know that they and their loved ones were safe and happy. They craved security, not honesty.
“Whose truth are we talking about here?” Rafa asked. “What is truth if the sources we turn to for definitive answers can’t be trusted?”
“We’ll go to the main public library tomorrow and request some things through interlibrary loan,” Antoine offered. “That should give us an idea how far this has spread.”
“Yeah, maybe it’s just a local thing. Let’s hope so.”
The waitress returned with their beers and Antoine waited until she had gone before speaking. “What still gets me is just how trivial it all is. It’s not like anything significant is being changed. The records don’t show Germany winning World War II or Oswald’s bullet missing JFK.”
“No one’s doing that yet, as far as we know,” Rafa said. “But maybe it’s just a matter of time. Or maybe it’s already happening somewhere and we just haven’t heard about it yet.” He took a long draught of his beer. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve read maybe two history books since graduating college, and that’s a generous estimate. Most people hardly ever read history. They learn what they think they need to know through TV soundbites and gossip around the water cooler. Who knows what kind of crazy-ass shit someone could spread if there were no reliable documents for anyone to fact-check?”
Antoine wasn’t sure whether to congratulate himself on having finally convinced Rafa that something going on, or whether to kick himself for the distress it seemed to be causing him. The alteration of history was serious business, but it was hitting carefree Rafa at an emotional level that Antoine hadn’t anticipated. “For now all we can do is keep gathering evidence and try to hold onto the truth as we know it. Luckily Dymphna says most of what has come down to us through history is purely accidental, so it’s just as likely that our truth will get handed down as anyone else’s.”
“And how do we know ‘our’ truth is the right one?” Rafa pointed out. “What if it’s all a lie?”
“No.” Antoine shook his head. There were some things in the past, in his past, that were facts and that was all there was to it. The house he grew up in, his childhood pets, the friends and family who had passed on…these were real. To question everything that had ever happened was to open up the ground underneath one’s feet, with no way to know how far one might fall. “We know the truth. We remember.”
They stayed at the pub far longer than they intended, drinking well into the night, Everett Blair’s drinking rules be damned. Antoine had no early appointments and Rafa’s only obligation was a meeting with a hospital CFO who was so far gone he wouldn’t notice whether his prompter showed up on time or not.
“It don’t matter what I tell this cabron. I could tell este hombre que es el presidente de los Estados Unidos, or that he’s a fucking astronaut, and he would believe me,” Rafa said, trying to keep his languages straight and not slur either one beyond comprehension.
“I think we need to get a cab,” Antoine said.
“You think I can’t drive?”
“I don’t think either one of us can.”
“Entonces, be that way. Call a hundred taxis, si quieres. No importa nada anymore.”
Antoine called just one, from the city’s official list of memory-certified cabs.
The next morning, achy and cotton-mouthed after his first time drunk in well over a year, he scrolled through his messages while his Whoami app recited the facts of his life in the background. He was feeling sleepy and lazy until a text from Rafa caught his attention and sent him stumbling to his computer. Once it had booted up, he logged in and went to the Buffalo Drive renaming ceremony link he had saved the day before. It was gone, and in its place was a story with slightly different facts and the same photo of smiling city officials, but now with the caption “Celebrating the new master plan for development and expansion of Allen Parkway.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Antoine took Rafa with him to his next scheduled meeting with Dymphna. She wasn’t immediately convinced of the Cuban’s sincerity or reliability, but finally agreed to arrange handoffs with him as well, which would allow her to double her efforts. And so as febrile August melted into a steamy September, both men found themselves in the unsought role of preservationists, engaging in secret rendezvous and stashing saved materials wherever they thought they might be safe. But although Antoine appreciated Rafa’s creative mind for finding hiding places, it was becoming obvious that a real solution would soon be needed. Their apartments were luxurious but weren’t secure, and it wasn’t as if they had family homes nearby, or even their own office space.
The solution to their dilemma came from an unexpected quarter.
Antoine had just picked up some source materials on the Camp Logan riots and was about to head home and have a late lunch before meeting his next client when he received a text from the Tennenbaum household. Rory was upset. Could Antoine fit her into his schedule today? The last thing he was in the mood for was a needy and befuddled society lady, but River Oaks was on his way and he couldn’t easily afford to
brush her off. Not when his success with her had earned him so many kudos at Everett Blair.
Sylvia was waiting on the steps as he pulled into the circular drive. “Thank you for coming,” she said, barely allowing him out of the car before spilling out all of Rory’s troubles. “It’s Jimmy again. The new maid left the door to his room open by mistake and Ms. Tennenbaum went in. Now she won’t come out and she won’t stop crying.” Her eyes sought his. “Please make her better.”
Antoine followed her up the stairs and down the hall to a portion of the house he had never been in before. “I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.”
The housekeeper waved a hand. “It’s easy. We keep the room locked and if she asks why, we tell her it’s just an old closet and there’s nothing she wants in there. But the new girl went in to clean because we dust every week, and she left the door open.”
“I see.” By now they were nearing the bedroom in question and Antoine could hear crazed, muffled sobs. “How long has this been going on?”
“I sent you a message right away, so maybe twenty minutes?”
They paused in the doorway. It was a tidy room trimmed in white and navy, with sturdy oak furniture of the kind an active boy couldn’t easily damage. Posters of popular bands from twenty years ago and a framed print from a wolf sanctuary hung on the walls, along with numerous Little League team photos. A shelf displayed a gleaming array of trophies and medals for activities and accomplishments Antoine couldn’t begin to guess at. And on the bed, crumpled in a Lululemon-ensembled heap, lay Rory, screaming into a bed pillow.
Antoine set down his messenger bag and approached her softly. He laid a hesitant hand on her shoulder. “Rory. Hey, Rory, we need to talk for a minute.” He looked around for a Kleenex box. Sylvia guessed what he was after and handed him the one that had been on the desk. Antoine tried to pull Rory into a sitting position. “Stop that for just a minute. Take a deep breath.” He handed her a tissue. “Wipe your face. We’re going to talk for a little bit. When we’re done you can go back to crying if you want to, okay? But right now you need to pay attention.”