Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem

Author:Jonathan Lethem [Lethem, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Contemporary, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780151000913
Google: CaWgMZ9UIbMC
Goodreads: 32078
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 1995-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

10

The tape was about three minutes long. The first two and a half were Cale—Cale Hotchkiss—talking at the camera, a tight headshot. The first thing he said was, “Listen, Everett: do you remember when we were twelve or thirteen, and we broke into the train yard?” Chaos remembered. They’d walked the tracks to the end of the line, to the yard where the trains sat overnight, with spray cans for painting graffiti. They’d covered one car with paint from top to bottom, then gone uptown to wait for it to roll through the station, except they’d fallen asleep on the bench on the platform and missed it. Cale had been his best friend. The question was obviously meant to trigger the memory, and it had worked.

Clearly, Chaos was going to have to get used to the name Everett.

“I want to see you,” Cale went on. “I’m glad you’re coming back. There’s something I think you can help me with.”

He paused, looked away from the camera, and Chaos felt that he ought to say something, answer. The face and voice on the tape were in some way more real than anyone or anything he’d encountered in a long time. Through them he could almost taste his life before the break.

“You were right, Everett,” continued Cale. “All the stuff you used to say about what mattered, you were right. Everything else is just what you have to work through to get back to what you know matters when you’re twelve or thirteen.” Cale paused. “The change is weird.

When you’re young, you’d like to remake everything, you’d like the world to be growing up with you. Now it’s sort of true.”

Chaos wanted to believe that this dark-eyed man was his friend. He wanted it to be true that Cale needed him, missed him. Knew him. Chaos wanted to be known, known in a way that would let him know himself.

“We’ll talk when you get here,” said Cale. “I don’t want to overwhelm you. I’m just worried that you might not remember enough to know to come back. That you’ll get this close and then wander away again.”

Cale looked away from the camera, and the screen went blank. Then there was another clip, this one very short. A woman stood against a black backdrop, wearing a black suit, so she was barely more than face and hands floating in a mist of static. She pushed her hair back, and the camera moved in closer. She was beautiful.

It was Gwen, and the neutral space she inhabited on the television screen was just like the darkened room where Chaos had met with her in his dreams.

“Everett.” She blinked and looked down. “Cale says you’re really there. He says he knows from his dreams—but I don’t dream anymore.” She looked up and laughed softly at whoever was behind the camera. “I don’t know what to say. Uh, come and see me, okay, Ev? I’d like to see you. That’s all, I guess.”

The camera held her for a few seconds more, and then the screen went blank.

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