Unidentified Woman #15 (7 page)

“No. Why would I do that?”

She gave it a few moments’ thought before answering, “Then I will. I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“She’s been so kind to me, it’s only fair.”

“Fifteen, wait—”

She was out of her chair and heading for the steps that led to the bar downstairs before I got the words out.

Evingson did a nice mash-up of Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” and the more up-tempo “Yesterdays” by Otto Harbach and Jerome Kern, and I thought, I’m the one who’s going to get mashed up when Nina gets her hands on me.

Fifteen returned ten minutes later. Her eyes were bright and shiny.

“I told her,” she said. “I told Nina what happened. I told her everything; that I went into your bedroom.”

“What did she do?”

“She hugged me and kissed my cheek and said, ‘Don’t ever do it again.’” Fifteen spoke as if she couldn’t believe her own words. “Someone that kind—McKenzie, Nina’s even nicer than you.”

“Everyone says that.”

We settled in and listened. Evingson sang “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from her first CD. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Fifteen’s lips move with the lyrics—
All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air …

She sighed deeply when the song finished, and I wondered if like Eliza Doolittle, she had come to a decision.

*   *   *

The three of us left Rickie’s together. I arranged it so that Nina and Fifteen rode in Nina’s Lexus. I sat in the Jeep Cherokee and waited while Nina started her car, let it warm for a minute, and drove off. I followed cautiously behind. Traffic was light at that time of the morning. If there was a white Toyota Corolla lurking about, I didn’t see it.

*   *   *

Nina and Fifteen reached the condo ahead of me. When I entered, Judi Donaghy, another one of my favorites, was on the stereo system and threatening to
drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log
at a volume that invited ill will from our neighbors. Fifteen was in the middle of the room dancing and twirling about with reckless glee, completely unconcerned that Nina and I were watching. Or that I took several photographs of her with my cell phone.

“How many ice cream drinks did she have?” Nina asked.

“Let’s just say that if we learn nothing else about the girl, we know she’s not lactose intolerant.”

Nina managed to attract the young woman’s attention.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Can I have another one of those mochas?”

“Sure.”

Nina poured a mug from a coffee and espresso maker I had purchased a couple years ago. Fifteen waved at it as she danced.

“Jura-Capresso,” she said. “Retails for about thirteen hundred dollars.”

“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Although I got a deal on it.”

Fifteen pointed.

“The Baccarat vase on the dining room table?” she said. “Full-lead crystal handmade in France, worth about four hundred and fifty.”

Nina leaned in, giving Fifteen a good look at her diamond pedant necklace—a large diamond cradled by a circle of smaller diamonds that I bought at Nordstrom’s. Fifteen lifted the pendant off Nina’s chest, glanced at it, and let it fall.

“Eighteen hundred,” she said as she danced away.

Nina looked at me, and I nodded. She seemed impressed but I don’t know if it was from Fifteen’s expertise or the fact that I paid so much.

“You’re starting to make me nervous,” I said. I showed her my watch. “What about this?”

She stopped moving for a moment and looked close.

“McKenzie, you’re filthy, stinking rich and yet you wear a thirty-dollar Casio? Where did you get this? Sears?”

“How did you do that?” Nina asked.

Fifteen paused before answering. Most of her cheerfulness seemed to dissipate.

“I have no idea,” she said. “Maybe I worked for a department store or something. Or I was a personal shopper—there are people you can hire who will shop for you. Make sure you’re always in fashion. Maybe I did that.”

“I used to date a woman who had a personal shopper,” I said.

“The psychiatrist?” Fifteen asked.

“No, a corporate attorney.”

“You’d be amazed at the riffraff McKenzie spent time with before I came along,” Nina said.

Fifteen repeated the word “riffraff” and laughed more heartily than the joke deserved.

“Let’s get you to bed, young lady,” Nina said. She sounded just like she did when she spoke to her daughter.

*   *   *

Nina returned from the guest room ten minutes later.

“She’s going to feel it in the morning,” she said.

“That’s what happens when you have too much ice cream.”

“Were you ever going to tell me that Fifteen hit on you?”

“She didn’t actually hit on me. It was more like she was testing the waters. You can’t blame her—I’m such a fine figure of a man. Besides, if I told you about every attractive woman that tried to pick me up … actually, now that I think about it, it would be a pretty short conversation.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

Nina prepared for bed and I watched because, well, it was one of my favorite things to do. It reminded me of a poem by Page Hill Starzinger, the one where she wrote:
I want to squander you.

“I’ve had this feeling all day,” Nina said. “A feeling that something bad is going to happen. Only I don’t know where it’ll come from, this bad thing. I don’t know which door to lock.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s an easy thing to say, harder to do, I know. Worrying, though, isn’t going to help.”

“You speak from experience.”

“Trouble is like rain. It’s gonna fall eventually. How we deal with it depends on where we are at the time.”

“Inside a toasty warm condominium above the city lights or on the street under an umbrella.”

“Sometimes without an umbrella.”

“We’ve been together long enough, McKenzie, that I understand this. It’s just … I want to help Fifteen.”

“So do I.”

“We can’t actually adopt her, can we?”

“You’re talking about a woman you’ve known for barely more than a day.”

“She’s a good person.”

“How can you tell?”

Nina tapped the center of her chest.

“The heart never lies,” she said.

“Of course it does. That’s what’s wrong with it.”

FOUR

Nina was gone a good hour before I decided it was time to rouse our guest. I knocked on the bedroom door. Fifteen grumbled something unintelligible. I carefully balanced a tray with one hand while I opened the door and stepped inside. I set the tray on the table next to the bed.

“I feel terrible,” Fifteen said.

“You should see yourself from my side.”

“Oh, God.”

I motioned toward the tray.

“First, the water,” I said. “Rehydrate the body. Second, the fruit smoothie. There’re bananas in it to replace your lost potassium and electrolytes. The egg sandwich. Protein and carbs are a good source of nutrients, plus the eggs contain an amino acid that’ll help break down the toxins in your body and reduce the nausea.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Fifteen, I’ve had enough hangovers over the years that I have it down to a science. Exercise is also good, so after you’ve eaten, get dressed. We’ll go for a walk along the river before your appointment.”

“McKenzie, I don’t want to see your friend. I’m grateful, but—I know exactly what she’s going to say. The same thing the other doctors said. There’s no Hollywood ending for me. Getting hit on the head again isn’t going to restore my memory like it does in the movies. Seeing something or someone familiar, that won’t trigger it either. What she’ll tell me, if it’s physical, the result of damage to the brain, I’ll probably never get it back. If the memory loss was caused by stress, by the trauma of falling off the truck, the memories might still be there inside my head, only I’m subconsciously suppressing them, and getting them back, it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of work.”

“It’s up to you, but sitting around here all day isn’t going to do you any good.”

“The way I feel right now, sitting around here all day sounds like exactly what I should do. Can we make it some other time, McKenzie—meeting your friend? Would that be all right?”

“Eat your breakfast.”

*   *   *

Dr. Jillian DeMarais had a suite of offices in One Financial Plaza, about a mile from my place. It seemed like a shame to waste the appointment, which I knew Jill would charge me for anyway, so I strolled over there. It was cold; what else was new? The Cities were hammered by an arctic cold front a couple of days after Thanksgiving and hadn’t experienced a moment above freezing since. The holidays, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, the St. Paul Winter Carnival, and Hockey Day in Minnesota had helped ease the pain, except now it was mid-March and winter was starting to get very, very old indeed. Even knowing that the Twins were working out in Florida wasn’t enough to cheer me up.

I waited for Jill in her outer office. There were four paintings, one to each wall—a Degas, Matisse, Chagall, and Van Gogh—and not for the first time I wondered if she had ever used them as a kind of Rorschach test.
Tell me which painting you like best. Tell me why.
In the course of our relationship, I found myself attracted to each one in turn, until I had both accepted and rejected them all. I had no idea what that said about me, and I was afraid to ask.

At ten fifty-five on the button, the door to her inner office opened, and Jill escorted a sour-looking woman in her early thirties out of the suite with a string of encouraging adverbs. It wasn’t until the woman was gone that Jillian acknowledged my presence.

“Where’s the patient?” she asked.

“Decided not to come.”

She nodded as if it happened all the time.

Jill motioned for me to enter the inner office. She sat behind her desk, and I took a chair on the opposite side. There was a sofa and a couple more chairs against the far wall, and I wondered briefly about the stories she must hear every day.

“Tell me about this damsel in distress,” Jill said. There was no “Hello,” no “How are you,” no “You’re looking good.” Jill had always been a no-nonsense kind of woman. It was one of the things I liked about her that eventually helped break us up.

I told her everything, including what Fifteen had told me just before I left the condo.

“She’s right,” Jill said. “If she damaged certain areas of the brain, the hippocampus, for example, then no, she probably won’t regain her memories. If the memory loss was caused by psychological disorders, therapy, psychotherapy, becomes a viable option.”

“Is it possible that she’s faking—”

“Malingering.”

“Could she still remember music, for example?”

“Oh, yes. The community has been trying to figure that one out, but yes, amnesiacs can lose all memory of their past lives—and yet remember music. We think it’s because music memories are stored in a special part of the brain. The superior temporal gyrus or the frontal lobes. There’s a famous conductor in England—”

“Jill. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Just trying to give you your money’s worth, McKenzie.”

“Could she remember the price of things, like, say, a diamond pendant?”

That caused Jillian to lean back in her chair.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not everyone is the same. Usually the memory loss is complete. Occasionally … Memory isn’t unitary. There’s more than one kind of memory. Something else that we’re just starting to understand, amnesia doesn’t destroy personal habits.”

“So if Fifteen was in the habit of pricing objects, she would still be able to do that?”

“I would really like to meet this woman, McKenzie.”

“Would she be able to remember something specific, like the first time she rode on an elevator?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but…”

“But everyone is different. How can I find out if she really is malingering?”

Jillian smiled at my use of the word.

“There is a wide variety of tests available that can help detect patients who fake anterograde amnesia,” she said. “It’s more problematic to assert whether or not a patient is feigning retrograde amnesia. The variables in question tend to be largely out of the examiner’s control. We have an Autobiographical Memory Interview, which uses samples of personal semantic memories across the patient’s life span, such as information about school days, but that requires cooperation of friends and family members with intimate knowledge about the patient’s life. There is also the Public Events Test, which involves recall and recognition of news events. Unfortunately, none of this is foolproof. Even if strong suspicions occur, it’s difficult to make accurate conclusions without a patient confession, which is rare.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do?”

“You can try the Dead or Alive Test.”

“How does that work?”

“Get a list, say one hundred names, and ask the patient if that person is alive or dead. If the patient had no memory of these people, then it’ll be like tossing a coin. The results should be near fifty-fifty. However, if the patient scores below chance, below the baseline of genuine amnesiacs, it might be because the malingerer is attempting to sabotage her own performance. In her attempt to
prove
that she has amnesia, she will score worse than patients with genuine amnesia. It’s not conclusive; you need to remember that, McKenzie. One cannot say with absolute certainty that the patient is simulating without a confession.”

“How do I get a confession?”

“You can always ask. From what I remember, McKenzie, you could charm a girl into almost anything.”

*   *   *

The return trip took me past the Depot on Washington Avenue, which was once the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Depot Freight House and Train Shed before it was converted into a couple of hotels, indoor water park, and ice-skating rink. I liked to look through the huge windows at the skaters gliding across the ice inside. I’ve skated most of my life; still played hockey thirty weeks out of the year with Bobby Dunston and a bunch of friends from our misspent youth. The thought occurred to me—skating is like riding a bicycle. You never forget. If I convinced Fifteen to lace them up, would she remember? Would muscle memory kick in? Assuming she actually did know how to skate. You’d be surprised at the number of people living in Minnesota who can’t. Probably the same percentage as those who are unable to swim despite our 11,842 lakes.