The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (6 page)

“Fuck,” he said, gasping. “Fuck me.” Sunlight pounded in the windows, and his skin was sticky. He flopped back against the seat.
Sleep was becoming more trouble than it was worth. What were these dreams, this feeling of a terrible looming danger? Was it just his subconscious painting a picture of his situation? Electrical signals bouncing around the inside of his very confused brain? Or did it mean more than that?
Something must have caused all of this. Something set him in motion. No matter who he had been, he couldn’t believe he just woke up one morning and decided to drive across the country to drown himself.
He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on the world he’d just left. He remembered a tunnel and an abandoned place. A darkness that loomed. But the details were melting away even as he tried to hold them. He could invent reasons for being there, but that’s all they were, inventions, and he couldn’t be more certain of them than of anything else.
Maybe I did something horrible. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to go back.
Daniel rubbed at his eyes, listened to the settling beat of his heart. He’d made some distance last night, all the way from rural Maine to rural New York, long blank stretches of night country briefly broken by shimmering cities. Somewhere east of Buffalo his chin had hit his chest for a second time, and so he’d pulled off into this hideous parking lot of a KOA campground. RVs hunched on concrete pads, electrical cords trailing to junction boxes. Amazing how ugly much of the country was.
We had the whole wide world, and the best we could come up with was McDonald’s and miniature golf.
He sat up, pushed open the car door, and went in search of the bathrooms.
Back on the road, he kept to the speed limit. Daniel figured he was safe so long as he avoided notice. He’d swapped plates again last night, trading the stolen Maine plates for freshly stolen New York ones. And the cops couldn’t stop every BMW on the road. He should be safe.
Simple as that, huh? So let me ask you, genius. You woke up without your memory once. What if it happens again?
Shit.
Shit.
Another thing. Money. His remaining cash wouldn’t even cover gas to Los Angeles. Plus he had a thing about eating, wanted to keep doing it.
Okay, well, so. No one said it would be easy. He’d have to be smart.
He spent the day sliding down the spine of Lake Erie, then across the flat, bland plains of Ohio into Indiana. Somewhere outside South Bend, as the sky began to sadden, he left the highway for a grungy strip of retailers, car dealerships, and gas stations. There was a drugstore beside an Applebee’s. Daniel bought himself a school-lined notebook and a pack of pens, then went next door. Bypassed the chipper teenage hostess and took a seat at the bar, a gaudy mess of Christmas lights and televisions tuned to sports. A guy who looked like he’d sampled a few too many appetizers took his order.
“A,” flipping through the menu, “steakhouse burger with everything. Rare.” Saying it with confidence this time.
“Something to drink?”
Daniel stared at the taps. God, a beer would be good. Money, though. He should save—“Yeah, gimme a tall Sam Adams.”
He uncapped the pen. How to start?
Simple. Start with what you were trying to say. That was the secret to writing. Daniel bent over the page:

Your name is Daniel Hayes. At least, you think it is. That’s the name you found on the insurance card of a BMW that saved your life. And in case you haven’t yet guessed, I’m you.

His burger arrived, and he ate one-handed, not noticing the taste, getting lost in the process of telling his story so far. He’d only intended the journal in case his memory went on the fritz again, but as he wrote, he found that he was enjoying himself. There was a strange pleasure in stringing sentences together, in trying to evoke the scene as fully as possible with the fewest number of words. Something trance-like about it, and therapeutic, too—

Daniel blinked, looked up. The woman sitting next to him had a white blouse and real estate agent hair. He hadn’t noticed her arrival, wondered how long she’d been sitting there. “I do?”

“Yeah. I can’t put my finger on why, though.”
“Me either.”
“Maybe you just have one of those faces.” She reached into her

purse, pulled out a pack of Parliaments. “You mind?”
“Nope.”
“Want one?” She held the pack out.
Huh. Do I smoke?
“Thanks.” The cigarette felt natural between his

His throat caught fire. A thick wave of smoke bellowed out of his mouth. His eyes teared as he coughed and struggled not to gag.
Apparently not.

Massive steel mills blasted flame into the night like something out of
Blade Runner
. Gary, Indiana, Chicago’s reeking stepson—cracked earth fronting twisted mazes of pipes and smokestacks. One of them had a Christmas tree on top.

Nothing quite as festive as toxic waste.
Farther west, the south suburbs of Chicago were a blur of strip malls and big-box signs. Modern constellations; instead of gods and heroes, his sky was filled with Home Depot and Best Buy. The clock told him it was after midnight, though his own time sense had gotten skewed. Had it been less than twenty-four hours since the cop hammered on his door, bellowed his name with weapon drawn?
Speaking of which. How about you stop dodging the subject?
During the safety of daylight, he’d concentrated on not thinking. Every time questions had crowded his mind, he’d forced them out by concentrating on practicalities. But now, hemmed in by darkness, he had nowhere to hide.
The Glock, for example. It was one thing to tell himself that lots of people owned handguns, that there was no reason to feel strange about the fact that he knew how to hold one, how to handle it. That it smelled of smoke because he’d taken it to the range. But a uniformed sheriff banging on his door made that harder to believe.
The amnesia, too. Or fugue, or lapse, or whatever he called it. He could call it Roy if he liked, didn’t change the facts. It had to come from something. Maybe he was right and Roy sprang from the trauma of his suicide swim. But maybe not. Maybe Roy was a bomb in his head. A brain tumor, for example.
And if that was true, it could have an impact on everything else. Including his personality—or what he thought was his personality. Daniel rolled down the window, let cold air rush in. Took deep breaths.
Really, all of the questions come down to one.
Who are you when you don’t remember who you are?
He didn’t feel like a bad man. Didn’t have murder in his heart, hadn’t wanted to jump the sheriff, or sideswipe the cars that cut him off. Even if he hadn’t left the Glock in Maine, the thought of holding it on a clerk and demanding the cash in the register turned his stomach.
And yet the cops were after him for something. It wasn’t a mistake. They knew his name, they knew his car, and they had come at him with guns drawn.
What if you were a bad man? A criminal, a killer? Are you that person still?
It was a haunting thought. Part of the point of life was that you looked around, you made choices, and those choices had consequences. Rotten consequences were fair because you had made the choice that got you there. Walk out on your kids, you don’t get to complain about gut-deep loneliness on Christmas morning. Tell off your boss, no whining that the promotion goes to someone else. Do murder, and you burn. Maybe not in hell—he didn’t feel particularly religious—but in life. Prison, yes, but beyond that, a shadow thrown over every day to come, a separation from every other person.
But this. To just wake up, bang, eyes open, and discover that everything was wrong. That he was suicidal and wanted by the police and maybe a monster, and to have had no choice in the matter.
If the person I was before did something wrong, do I have to pay the price?
And just how high is it going to be?

Daniel hocked the Rolex at a pawnshop west of Des Moines. He hated to do it, but couldn’t see another way. Maybe in the past he’d robbed liquor stores—hell, maybe he’d killed presidents—but best he could remember, he wasn’t that guy, and he didn’t want to be.

Perhaps the answer to the question of who you were when you couldn’t remember was simple: whoever you chose.
The man behind the counter offered him $325. Daniel countered with $7,500, half the retail price. Where they settled was nothing like the middle, but the man paid cash, a thick stack of worn bills. Daniel celebrated with breakfast at a truck stop and discovered that chicken-fried steak tasted way better than it had any right to.
Iowa in morning light. Sky a pale blue bowl and air just the crisp side of cold. Interstate 80, still. Still flat, still straight, still mindnumbing. Farmland sprawled on either side of the road. Corn, he thought. Or wheat. Barley. How the hell should he know?
Man
, but the country was big. Things were getting bleary. Too much world, and nothing for context. No family to think of, no home to remember. Nothing to do but count the electrical towers looming like metal monsters, Dali animals come to life. The radio was all preachers and country music and one lonely station of teenage pop-tarts with nothing to peddle but firm thighs and the dream of a youth he couldn’t recall.
He imagined Emily Sweet in the seat next to him. The window open and her hair whipping in the breeze and that quirky crooked smile on her face. Neither of them talking, just comfortably passing the miles.
Nebraska. More corn.
He passed the time telling stories about people in other cars. The faded Saab was driven by a middle-aged sociology professor; though the love was gone from her marriage, they were staying together for the kids and had settled into the comfortable camaraderie of soldiers on a long campaign. But this morning she had steeled herself against the hurt in her husband’s eyes, made a long-distance phone call and a flimsy excuse, and flown westward wild and free, head full of the doctor of romance languages who was waiting at the North Platte Best Western, a man with thinning hair and an unfortunate chin but eyes that were soft and kind and long fingers that would bite into her skin as he muttered French syllables she couldn’t define but understood perfectly.
Choreographing their affair—the professor’s husband, it turned out, was not so passionless as she imagined, and would spend tonight pacing, trying not to wake the kids as he sucked a bottle of scotch and planned ways to win her back; only, her Frenchman too was smitten with her, wanted more than an affair, and would follow her east, which brought all of them into a nicely orchestrated conflict on the lawn of their suburban home—carried him into Colorado and the afternoon.
Time to check your head.
Last night he’d wondered if maybe there was something physically wrong with him. It was an uncomfortable thought even in his present state, when discomfort was pretty much the status quo. To think that something might be growing in his head, that some biochemical quirk was the cause of all his present troubles, and that it could happen again, well, it didn’t settle the nerves. And yet, he couldn’t exactly go to a hospital. No ID, no insurance, not enough money, the cops looking for him—no.
He pulled into the outskirts of Denver around four. The Rockies were just a ghost on the horizon, a blur highlighted by the lowering sun. He stopped at a gas station, filled the tank, bought some jerky and a Diet Coke he could have parked a Jet Ski in. In the hallway by the bathrooms, he used the Yellow Pages chained to the pay phones to find what he was looking for. A three-foot map pinned behind plastic laid the city out. He sipped his soda, found the address, and traced a route with his finger.
The shopping mall, like most of the city, was long and low, huddling beneath the dome of the sky. There was an organic food market, a sushi place, an Aveda salon. At the end, a pale blue sign read

The ad in the phone book had listed the hours as 8
_A.M.
to 6
_P.M.
Daniel parked, killed the engine, and tucked a wad of jerky in his mouth.

Early darkness had fallen by the time people started trickling out of the clinic. The patients were gone by five-thirty. The doctors followed hard on their heels, well-dressed men and women heading for expensive cars. At six o’clock, a couple of receptionists in blue scrubs strolled out chatting. Daniel watched carefully, hoping he hadn’t been wrong, but neither of them stopped to lock up.

When he pulled open the heavy glass door, a bell dinged somewhere to announce his arrival. Daniel rocked from foot to foot, glancing around the waiting room—comfortable chairs, abstract art,
Esquire
,
InStyle
, and
Vanity Fair
—and ran through the script he’d written for himself.

“Sorry, we’re closed.” The man behind the desk had appeared from nowhere. He wore white scrubs, as Daniel had hoped.
He didn’t say “Sorry,
sir.
” Take that into account. Go fraternal.
“I know.”
The guy glanced at his watch. “If you want to make an appointment—”
“This is going to sound weird.” He played the pause. The last days had given him the physical appearance he needed, deep pits under his eyes and an air of haggard weariness. “You mind if I ask, is your father still alive?”
The buzzing of the overhead lights seemed loud. “No,” the man said, finally. “Lost him three years ago.”
“Mine died last week.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” He moved to the counter, leaned on it. “A brain tumor. There was a Latin name for it, but I never wanted to know. That would have made it too real. Not that it mattered in the end.” The hallway leading past the desk was dark. “My dad, he was . . . he was the strongest guy I knew. But this thing, it was like he was possessed. It took his memory, messed with his senses, took his speech.” Without meaning to, he choked back a sob, and as he did, he realized that he was actually feeling the emotions he was describing. Was he just mourning the memories that had vanished? Or did those memories hold a sorrow he hadn’t suspected? “It was awful.”
“I can imagine.”
“The doctor said that the tumor, it wasn’t hereditary.”
“Most aren’t, no.” The guy seeing where he was going. “You should talk to your doctor, but—”
“I did. He told me not to worry. That just because my dad had it didn’t mean I would. Thing is, I can’t stop. I mean, that’s my biggest fear. Losing control like that. Scares the hell out of me.”
The tech glanced at his watch. “Listen, I really am sorry—”
“Hear me out, okay? I asked my doctor if he would run a scan for it, and he said no. Said he wouldn’t write a prescription because there was no medical need. And I get it,” raising his hands, “I do. I understand that no way do I have the same thing. But I can’t stop thinking about it, you know? I haven’t slept in days. It’s killing me, the fear that there’s something in my head right now.”
“You could ask another doctor—”
“It would take me a week to get an appointment. And he might say no. Listen. I just need the peace of mind. You lost your dad. You know what I’m talking about.”
The guy hesitated. “I don’t know . . .”
“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.” Daniel pulled the money from his jeans. “Please. I’m going crazy here.”
The man bit his lip. Looked down the hall. Checked his watch again.
“Please?”
“If anyone found out—”
“How? I won’t tell, and I don’t need the film, or whatever it is. I just want someone to look and tell me I’m okay.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“The doctor’s the guy who makes bank for having his name on the door. But you probably do a dozen of these a day, right?”
“More.”
“Please. You’d really be doing me a favor.” He set the money on the counter.
The tech looked at it. Took a deep breath, then a step forward. “Come around that door over there.”
Ten minutes later, he was wearing a hospital gown—
no metal
, the tech, whose name had turned out to be Mike, had said;
this thing is basically one big magnet
—and lying on a table in a device that looked like something out of
Star Trek
. He’d imagined a torpedo tube, but this was much nicer. He was sandwiched between two broad cylinders, and the open peripheral vision was comforting. He had his eyes closed, and was concentrating on lying as still as he could, trying not to pay attention to the loud clanking and banging, and most of all, trying not to think about what Mike might find.
On the other hand, if he finds something, you’ve got an answer. If not, you’re just nuts.
It was a long half hour.
Finally, Mike’s voice came through a speaker. “Okay, I’m gonna bring you out.” The tray Daniel lay on slid smoothly, and then he was staring at ceiling tile, aware again of the draft running under the thin gown.
He sat up slowly, blinked. “What’s the word?”
Mike stood at the door to the room, holding it open with one hand. “I’m sorry to tell you this . . .”
Oh shit . . .
“. . . but you’re perfectly fine.”
Daniel exhaled. “That’s not funny, man.”
“Sorry. But you knew that, right?”
“You’re sure?”
“Come look.”
Daniel hopped off the table, followed the tech into the next room. It was dim, and dominated by a broad monitor. The screen was split into quadrants, each showing a black-and-white image.
“I’m not printing anything out, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
The man punched a button, and the monitor switched to a single image, an amoeba of black and white. The shape shifted and grew, morphed into the rough shape of a human skull, the cauliflower coils of the brain showing up in high contrast. As Mike pressed keys, the frame jumped, showing, Daniel assumed, different cutouts.
“I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“Abnormalities.”
“Unless it’s a little cartoon bomb with a lit fuse, I’m not sure I’d see it.”
“There’s nothing there. The scan is normal.”
“You’re sure?”
“Man, you want to see a doc, up to you, but this is your brain, and there ain’t nothing wrong with it.” The tech turned, looked up at him. “Physically, at least.”
“Yeah.”
“Now, I’m sorry, but . . .”
“Right.” Daniel pulled the money out, passed it over. “Thanks.”
Back in the changing room, he took off the gown, put on his jeans and undershirt. Trying not to think.
Mike walked him to the door. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just.” He shrugged. “I started to believe.”
“Well, be happy, my man. All’s well.”
Daniel nodded, stepped out.
“Oh, and hey. I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks,” he said, and walked through the dark parking lot to his car. Feeling rotten for the lie, but worse for the truth. He was fine, physically, and that should have been a relief.
The problem was, something had made him take this trip the other direction. Judging by the empty blister packs of ephedrine, he might have made the whole damn distance in one brain-rattling sprint, chewing the bitter tabs so they’d kick in faster, washing them down with Jack Daniel’s and gas station coffee. The lines in the road blurring solid, trees a green wall, “reality” less dependable with every exhausted moment. A mad dash into the eastern sky.
Which does beg the question: If it’s not physical, what is it?
What would make someone run that hard, that fast?