Eating Memories (31 page)

Author’s Note:
For fifteen years I worked an 8-5 job at the Dallas Morning News; and, being one of those anal-retentive folks who must be on time, I always arrived at the main downtown Dallas DMN location by 7:15. This put me at Pearl and Main, a busy intersection, by 7:00 A.M.

It’s dark at 7:00 in the winter, and one morning while I was turning onto Pearl, I saw a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye
—
something very close and very dark. Just a blink, if you will, of total blackness, a momentary view of oblivion. Only when I was a block away from that corner did I realize that the dark spot which had come so near my left side window had been a pedestrian in dark clothing who was crossing against the light (Dallas being a caveat-driver/caveat-pedestrian sort of place).

That morning I didn’t ponder the horror of nearly hitting someone. I pondered the darkness.

Sergeant Tunny, wire basket in hand, stopped in front of Cohen’s desk and started flipping out manila envelopes. The sound they made when they hit the steel-and-Formica top were the only due to what lay hidden inside them.

Clink. Clink. Jewelry.

Tap. Something light: A photograph or maybe a letter. Plop. A wallet? The form inside the envelope was thick enough.

Thunk. Cohen eyed that one for a moment, his gaze briefly following the drawn curve of the five.

Tap. Whatever was in six was thin and bigger than a business card, smaller than a sheet of regular paper. He could sense that much without touching it.

“Come on, guys,” Tunny said in his raspy bass. “We need witnesses.”

Four cops left what they were doing or not doing to walk over: three uniforms; one plainclothes detective.

“Begin,” Tunny said to Cohen.

Cohen reached a hand out to envelope number one. Before he could touch the edge of the manila paper, the darkness was back. And it stayed for a count of twelve. Cohen had been timing it lately so that he could describe it to any doctor who was interested the details of the symptoms.

It wasn’t just his imagination. Everyone sees bright spots in their field of vision; Cohen knew that. Bright floating spots were indications of a brief lack of oxygen to the brain. Big deal. So sometimes the brain said
send,
and the circulatory system, like an overworked file clerk, said
send what?

And sometimes vision went dark. That was a circulatory problem, too, Cohen had learned. You have low blood pressure, and you get up too abruptly and—blam—you’re down again.

But vision wasn’t ever supposed to go dark in precisely the way Cohen’s did, and with precisely the same feeling. In that twelve seconds, he could dimly see, in the background, Tunny’s blossoming smirk; and in the foreground, like a panel of smoked glass, the square of darkness.

The darkness was his private black hole, a thing that sucked in all thought and held it like a startled breath.

After a count of twelve, it blinked out of existence and let him go.

“Worried you can’t get it up, Cohen?” Tunny asked. “Forgot who the perp was supposed to be?”

When the darkness evaporated, Cohen found himself staring directly into Tunny’s baby-blond good looks. The sergeant’s eyebrows were so fair that they blended into the pale of his skin. He was a lump of flesh and a thatch of yellow, relieved by two primary-blue eyes. Simple, even in colors, Tunny was.

For an instant Cohen hated Tunny. I could be dying here, he thought. I could be having a stroke. If Cohen fell off the chair, he could picture Tunny saying, Worried you can’t get it up?

Tunny upset him so much Cohen was afraid he couldn’t go on and that he’d have to delay the lineup for a while.

Cohen pushed his anger into the tight space where the black hole lurked, then reached forward and picked up the first envelope.

He could feel a chain inside; a thick, short chain, “A cop’s bracelet,” Cohen said. Tunny’s smile soured. Cohen stared hard into the sergeant’s eyes, a cruel turn to his mouth. “His wife’s running around on him.” One of the witnessing officers, a uniform, made a hasty snatch for the envelope. His face was purple. Tunny tore the envelope from the uniform’s hand and threw it back on the desk. Clink. “Fuck it, Ojeda. You don’t freak in the lineup, okay?” Tunny’s cheeks were pink from embarrassment or perhaps anger. “Let the man do his thing.”

Cohen picked up number two and held it a moment. Another man’s bracelet, about the same size and weight. “Pimp,” Cohen said. “He’s not the one.” He glanced up to see if he was right, but this time no one was giving him clues. Cohen put the pimp’s bracelet down and picked up the flat envelope, number three. That was Dickerson, the murderer. Cohen’s sensitive fingers could feel the quick, hungry pulse under the paper. All murderers had their own rhythm. This one was as steady and measured as blood in the veins, a beat that whispered l-want-I-want-I-want. Hurriedly, he put it down. “That’s the same guy I felt on the victim’s clothes.”

Tunny settled his clipboard against his stomach and made some notes. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You want to check again?”

“No.” Cohen’s hands were shaking. He hated the touch of murder. Murder was a darkness of another sort; a darkness shot with crimson.

“Keep going,” Tunny said.

Cohen swallowed and reached for four, the one he figured was a wallet. There was a lump inside the envelope, but it didn’t tell him anything. “Zero,” he said, frowning. “Let it be noted that the psychic received no concrete impressions.” Tunny repeated the stock, formal phrase by rote.

“No feelings at all,” Cohen said by way of correction. He couldn’t tell whether Tunny made a notation. Quickly he reached out for five. When his hand hit it, an instinctive smile erupted from inside him and spread itself over his face. He glanced around the broad form of Tunny and could see the receptionist watching him. Cohen felt Tunny watching him, too. He stifled his grin. “Lila’s compact.”

“You like that one?” Tunny asked.

Cohen looked down at the table, hoping that Lila had noticed his reaction; hoping Tunny hadn’t.

And then Cohen reached for six. He had it in both hands before he realized something was wrong. By the time he sensed the danger, he was trapped. He couldn’t put the envelope down. His hands clamped to it as an electrocuted man holds moronically, helplessly, onto a live wire.

In the back of his brain, he could hear Tunny’s voice rise to a shout. “Cohen? Cohen!”

A primal wail started in Cohen’s chest, rushed up his throat and filled his mouth.

“Christ!” Tunny snapped. “Cohen! Let go!”

The policeman had hold of one edge of the envelope and was fighting a desperate tug-of-war with it. Finally, with a furious jerk, he tore it from the psychic’s grasp.

Cohen dropped back into his chair. Tunny stood with the envelope cradled at his chest. He was breathing hard.

“Thank you,” Cohen whispered.

Tunny licked his lips anxiously. “Was it the murderer?”

“No. Something else.” Whatever was in that envelope was something terrible: an unending, silent loneliness. “I want verification.”

At first Tunny looked confused. Then his cheeks went pale, pale as his hair, pale as his eyebrows. “That’s for amateurs, Cohen. You don’t need that.”

“Verification!” Cohen snapped. “Now! Right now!”

The policemen were ringed around him like a gathering of owls. Tunny tore open number one and upended it. There was a glint of gold, a clink. A bracelet dropped out of the envelope, and Ojeda quickly picked it up.

There was an identical bracelet in two. It was just like Tunny to have picked up two similar bracelets from two dissimilar men. The detective had a quirky sense of humor.

In number three was a lock of brown hair encased in plastic. He wondered how the cops had gotten it. Psychometrist’s samples were governed by search-and-seizure rules. Had Tunny, scissors in hand, asked Dickerson to give him a lock? Or, more likely, had he staked out the murderer’s barber?

“Four,” Cohen said.

Tunny glanced to the other policemen and tore open the end of the fourth envelope. There was a wallet inside. It still had the price tag on it.

“Bastard,” Cohen whispered.

The sergeant quickly opened five. It was Lila’s compact. The case was chipped, and makeup was caked in the ornate design of the white plastic.

Cohen picked up the compact and held it tenderly for a moment, as gently as he had always longed to hold her hand. The case was woman-scented, and the residue of the makeup outside was slightly greasy. Lila had a sweet, happy feel to her like the feel of a gift of flowers or a surprise letter
from a friend.

Without putting the compact down, he said, “Six.”

Tunny hesitated.

“Six!” Cohen shouted.

The sergeant ripped open one edge and upended the envelope over the table. Cohen’s MasterCard dropped out.

“Shit,” Cohen gasped as he lurched to his feet.

Tunny looked like he was about to cry. “I’m sorry, Nathan. Jesus, you know I . . .”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Cohen held onto Lila’s compact as if he were suspended over infinity and the compact were his only lifeline. He was afraid to pick up his credit card. He was terrified to touch it.

Tunny was still talking. “You left your jacket on your chair again, Nathan. Your wallet right inside it. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

“You fucking cretin!” Cohen screamed. With a loud crack the compact shattered in his hand.

The ring of policemen watched as Cohen opened his shaking fist. A brush dropped out first, making a dull sound on the linoleum floor. His palm was covered with glistening, beige powder and shards of bone-colored plastic. Blood seeped, making dirty rivulets in his hand.

He hurried away from the table, and toward the bathroom.

“Cohen!” Tunny shouted behind him. “Cohen! What about . . .”

Cohen slammed open the bathroom door. The hydraulic mechanism caught it and, careful as a salesman in an antique shop, let it ease closed, muting the end of Tunny’s question. “ . . . your MasterCard?”

Beneath the tap the water ran red and beige. It smelled of perfume and blood. Cohen was pressing paper towels on his wounds when the door opened. He glanced up, expecting to see an apologetic Tunny. It was Schindler. The doctor gave Cohen’s bleeding hand a curious glance and then leaned up against the dirty tile wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Psychiatrists should be careful of body language, Larry,” Cohen warned.

Schindler shrugged, but didn’t change his posture. “Don’t want the MasterCard back?”

“Tell Tunny he can shove it up his ass.”

Schindler laughed. “Would that be an act that was emotionally charged?”

After a pause, Cohen laughed, too.

“Seriously,” Schindler said and then stopped. The psychiatrist had a habit of leaving dangling lead-ins behind him.

When Cohen was certain that Schindler was not going to go on, he said, “Tell Tunny to put the card back in my wallet.”

“You shouldn’t leave a wallet unattended. This is a police station. There are all sorts of crooks here.” After a perfectly timed comic pause, he added, “Some of them wear uniforms so you can spot them, but what about the others?”

Cohen didn’t bother to laugh. His hand was throbbing. When he looked up at the mirror, the darkness returned, a dead spot in the comer of his eye. As it vanished, he could see Schindler watching him.

“How’s the vision problem?” Schindler asked.

Turning off the water, Cohen threw the bloodied paper towels in the trash and yanked some fresh from the dispenser. Sometimes Cohen felt the psychiatrist could read his mind. Maybe Schindler was getting a little unlicensed Psychamine on the side. “The same.”

“Well?”

Cohen watched spots of red erupt from the nubbly surface of the towels.

“Maybe you should cut the Psychamine, Nathan.”

“They’ve done neurological tests. Nobody can find anything wrong.”

“The brain’s a bunch of weird shit, son. We don’t even know what the drug does.”

The towels had soaked through. Cohen threw them away and stuck his bleeding hand in the sink, hearing the drip-drip as his blood hit the porcelain.

“Want me to bandage it?”

Cohen shook his head. “It’ll be all right in a minute.”

“You’re working too hard.”

“I read
Forbes
so I understand I’m a workaholic. This should make you happy, not upset.”

“So what is it with you?” Schindler asked. “Power? Knowledge? What? Why knock yourself out, Cohen?”

“Why do you think I do it?”

“A power trip. You’re irredeemably awkward in social encounters, so you get a rush out of your job. Right? Am I right?”

“I’m the best psychic you’ve got.”

“Only because you’ve sublimated all your sexual desires into it. Tell me true. You think it’s the Psychamine that’s causing your blackouts, don’t you.”

Cohen applied more towels to his wounds. “They’re not blackouts per se. Besides, what am I going to do, Larry? Work in an office or what? I can’t type. I’m not trained for anything else.”

“Poor little mind reader,” Schindler said in a voice like sugared vinegar. “Your perp Dickerson’s the one. They’re calling in the verifying psychics now. If they point him out, the cops are going to pick him up.”