The Whispered Elision

A Story by dominic79

A man with a failing memory is led into confusion by the uncertainty of a friend's email correspondence.

That was all many months ago. Sometime later another incident occurred during a stay in Los Angeles. I had flown there for more examinations on my brain and Scoop was going to join me in a few days.

Since the accident I’d been sleeping very badly and my doctor in London, concerned at the extent of my memory loss, had suggested I seek a second opinion. My friends in L.A. encouraged me to visit a doctor they knew there and as I hadn’t seen Paul and Kerry for a long time, I decided to make a holiday of it. The break from my everyday surroundings, I thought, might do me some good.

I had a number of appointments already scheduled with a physiatrist, a cognitive therapist and a physiotherapist as well as with Dr Ferguson, the neurosurgeon friend of Paul’s (they were all set out on a calendar in case I forgot). So the holiday I’d been looking forward to was beginning to feel just like the round of hospital visits that had become my daily routine over the past months in London. But I was determined to enjoy the change of scenery.

I’d slept badly; a combination of jet lag and insomnia had left me feeling more exhausted than usual and so to head off the nausea before it arrived I took an early morning walk from my hotel. It was 7am and my appointment with Dr Ferguson wasn’t until 9am.

The nausea, or the waves as I called them, had become sort of malign companions to me. Each day at around 10am they would start and could last three hours before passing. Sometimes they would stretch on for longer and by the end of the day I’d feel like a beach that had been raked over, again and again, by a lead-weight sea. Most of the time, though, I could set my watch by them and they’d pass by lunchtime.

The sun was starting to burn through the early morning mists and the deserted streets were glowing. I didn’t drive in those days and this suited me fine in London. It suited me fine in L.A. as well, actually. I took a pleasure in it and besides, my friends all had cars.

I walked south down Gower Street drawing in the smells of the flowers that covered the banks of the freeways and that sprayed out from behind buildings in yellows and pinks. The eucalyptus and cedar trees were shining vividly against the blue sky and the sun was already very strong. It made the pavements radiate a throbbing white heat.

It was dizzying. I noticed I walked in a different metre here and the drop from the curb was a chasm. The unusual spatial tension of the buildings and the roads and the vastness of the empty pavements made me feel unsteady on my feet. If I turned a corner, I was no longer sure I’d arrive at the next street. Everything seemed to be in doubt.

I continued slowly until the sound of my shoes on the concrete oppressed me and by the time I arrived at Dr Ferguson’s office it was 8:50am and my head was spinning.

Scoop felt indirectly responsible for the accident and so was trying to help in the recovery of my memory. There was no great science behind our efforts; nothing much more than the objects on a tea tray game but we’d spend a few evenings a week on this project and though fun, we’d had little discernable success. I mentioned this to Dr Ferguson during our half hour consultation and he’d said that even though these memory games didn’t seem to be improving things it was, nevertheless, useful to my recovery to spend time with the people I love and to maintain a stable routine.

He asked me many questions about the accident: how it happened and the immediate aftermath; my long term and short term memory, but I didn’t mind. I’d been through the story a number of times in London and though it wearied me to reimagine it, Dr Ferguson was patient and friendly and I was eager to see if he could make a difference.

He also asked me about Scoop. I told him about how we’d met at university and that Scoop used to be a journalist but was now hoping to become a novelist.

“Close friends?” he asked.

“My closest” I replied. “We’ve had our moments in the past but since the accident we’ve never been closer. It’s a strange kind of love affair, I suppose.” I stopped. I’d wanted to tell him more but I became self-conscious.

I left Dr Ferguson buoyed. His main concern was with my short term memory loss and he’d given me a stack of journals on research into rehabilitation and recovery and had mentioned a possible new direction he’d like to take with my treatment. I felt renewed as I stepped onto the now crowded street. I made my way back to the hotel for my usual afternoon rest and, as it grew dark, went downtown to meet Paul and Kerry, excited to see them again and exchange news.

I was stirred from my half sleep the next morning at 8:30am by the sound of an email arriving in my inbox. It was from Scoop and I already knew what it was about. Scoop had always enjoyed mocking me; mocking my compulsive habits; my need for things to be ‘just so’. It didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I found it funny too and Scoop knew that.

Recently I started receiving a daily email reporting, in lurid detail, what Scoop imagined I’d been doing the previous evening. Evenings in particular were often when I’d lose most of my short term memory and Scoop thought it would be amusing to fill in the gaps for me. It was all part of the service of rehabilitation, Scoop said, and they were invariably hilarious. Scoop clearly had plenty of time to kill.

This one was titled “Tequila Sunrise” and told the story of my evening with Paul and Kerry. According to Scoop’s sharpened extra sensory antennae, I’d met them at a bar. That much I did remember. The rest was all a pleasant revelation.

The small bar was very noisy and dark and was longer than it was wide. The bar itself ran along the right hand side with three red leather booths on the left and a couple of tables down the middle. Paul and I pushed our way through the crowd to get drinks and Kerry went to sit down. We shouted “how are you?” and “what are you drinking?” into each other’s ear with our arms round our shoulders and eventually Paul caught the attention of the bar maid.

“This is my good friend from England” he said to her. “You’ll like him”

“Pleased to meet you” she said in a bad English accent and leaning forward across the bar she offered me her hand.

“Pleased to meet you” I replied and she sprang back in delight.

“God, I love your accent” she giggled and mimicked me. “Pleased to meet you”

She was blonde and very pretty and Paul was nudging my elbow.

This was the usual tone and content of Scoop’s stories. The dialogue was particularly tired in this one.

We made our way through the press of drinkers and smokers towards the booths. The music was very loud, drowning out the clamour and the cocktail of heavy bass and trebly chatter was almost too much. I was glad to reach the table without passing out and spilling the drinks.

At the table Kerry was sitting with another girl who was introduced to me as Antonia. She immediately beckoned me to sit down next to her and started an insistent conversation, while Kerry and Paul kissed and cuddled. I got the impression that Kerry was trying to set me up but I didn’t really mind. Besides, she was very pretty. Just the type I like.

Come on, Scoop, I thought. You can do better than that.

The conversation lasted all night and a good few drinks. Antonia was half Mexican and her parents had come across the border when she was a teenager. As a result she’d never felt at home in either L.A. or Mexico and she considered herself a free spirit. Though I would normally wince at this type of talk, her large, warm brown eyes, framed by her thick, dark, long tresses were enticing me. We’d stepped outside for a cigarette and she’d whispered a secret into my ear and then gave me her number saying that we should hang out together while I was in town. At the end of the night we all shot tequilas and as they dropped me back at the hotel Antonia had blown me a kiss goodnight.

The end.

Scoop finished with “Not bad, eh?” said we’d see each other in a couple of days and I shut the email.

I smiled, as usual. Scoop’s imagination, though fairly one-track at times, always amused me. But it had also made me angry. The few counselling sessions I’d attended in London had told me that the loss of my memory might lead to a period of grief. That I would grieve for the loss and I should be prepared. I understood this but I didn’t think it applied in my situation. I’d always tried to be an attentive and observant person. I remembered birthdays and anniversaries, even old telephone numbers. Before the accident I’d had a job and a circle of close friends but now I could not maintain either. At dinner, or in the pub, conversation would either revolve around the past, which I could no longer remember, or the future, which I was sure I’d forget. I decided to cut myself off from people rather than have to face the pitying look in their eyes when ever they’d direct a question at me that started, “Do you remember when?”

I wondered if this fury that was rising in me was because of the girl in the story. Even though it was a fantasy, was it the fact that I hadn’t met this girl that made me boil? But it wasn’t. I knew it. My libido had been killed by the accident anyway, so romance was hardly on my mind. This was a different inadequacy. I felt ashamed. It was the fact that whatever might have happened the previous evening, the fantastic or the mundane, I wouldn’t remember it. I felt that I was letting people down by forgetting. That was what made me angry; the possibility that people might think I was rude. Then the waves started again.

I had a 2pm appointment with the physiatrist on Hillhurst Avenue so after lunch I washed, dressed, checked the map and headed out into the sunshine. It was a forty five minute walk across block after block of identical, dull, low rise shopping streets so I spent the time trying hard to remember last night. The doctors in London had suggested I devote a part of each day to focussing all my thoughts on remembering something from the previous day, or week. I’d recall only moments: a glance at my watch or catching an eye but try to use these as staging posts to work forward or backward from, stitching together the moments that surrounded them.

I told the physiatrist about these attempts and how this afternoon’s had failed and he was sympathetic but I could tell he wasn’t really interested. I can remember deciding at that moment that I definitely spent more time speaking to doctors than anyone else. When I got back to the hotel I checked the pockets of all my trousers and jackets for Antonia’s telephone number but I found nothing. Just my neatly hung trousers and jackets.

Scoop’s next email was very different from any I’d received before. It had no title and the first line warned, “I don’t know where this came from.”

“Last night you were walking along a double railway line that stretched for miles through a wide, dusty valley. Black mountains on either side were lit by a bright, low moon and the valley floor was yellow in the twilight. As you pass through the valley the silence is disturbed by two ravens flying above. They are punctuating their flight with rhythmic swoops and tumbles, more like acrobats than birds and you follow their play till you lose them in the darkening sky. You pick up the scent of burning and then the distant sound of a train rattling the tracks behind you. You step off the railway to allow the train to pass at speed and as it does you see that the engine is on fire. The blaze is fierce and you shield your face from the searing heat. The train disappears into the night, leaving a trail of black smoke drifting across the valley and the sound of the engine reverberating between the mountains. Impassive, you continue to walk for a mile but are then gripped at the throat by a feeling of dread. You stop as you see another train slowly coming through the valley in the opposite direction. The sun starts to rise as it approaches in a shadowy silence. It limps upon you and when it passes it is destroyed by fire. The scorched, black carriages form a grim gallery as you see the passengers still sat upright in their seats. They are all dead; killed in the inferno and where their eyes should be there are large ashen smudges. The smoking train emits a slow rattle as it creeps away down the track.”

I had no idea where it had come from either. One of the few things I had recollected over the past few months had been a conversation with an excited Scoop about the unusual behaviour of ravens. I could find no reason for why this memory had survived but the raven, apparently, indulges in games and play purely to amuse itself. Scoop had been amazed but I remember thinking it seemed quite natural. Scoop had seen a documentary that week about them and was so keen to tell me about it that we’d wasted two hours on the discussion before starting the memory game.

I was very pleased with this solitary but successful flexing of my memory and I savoured it many times in my mind, like rolling a favourite sweet about my mouth. Nevertheless, I wrote back to Scoop to say that I enjoyed the lightly humorous speculations on my activities but if I was now going to start receiving depressing experiments from a creative writing class then they should be sent elsewhere.

I should say that the argument between Scoop and I had been playing in my mind recently as well. It was one of the other fractured memories that I had retained after the accident and though we’d spoken about it and apologised to each other I sensed that it was still on Scoop’s mind too.

It happened the night Tristan and Katie threw a party at their house in London. It was Katie’s birthday party really but she also insisted on making a celebration of me finally moving out from their place and into my own flat. Katie’s kindnesses were beautifully crafted but it didn’t take too much looking to find the mechanics working in the background. She was pleased to be rid of me and I didn’t blame her. It had been three months of forced breakfast smiles and tense evenings and I’d hated it.

Katie’s theme for the party was Heroes and Villains and she requested that the girls come dressed as their favourite superhero and the boys as a villain. I loathed these types of evenings and I knew that Tristan did as well so I didn’t foresee any problem in not indulging Katie by dressing like an idiot. The mistake I made was in arriving late.

I am fastidious about time keeping except when it comes to fancy dress parties. When I arrived it resembled the party scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I groaned as Tristan took my jacket dressed in an expensive looking Darth Vader costume. Katie was Luke Skywalker. From there the evening grew progressively blacker for me as I was first teased and then openly criticised for everything from not returning telephone calls to not showing an acceptable level of sympathy to Melissa when her house had been burgled. Everyone had drunk a lot and said their piece and I should have left immediately but instead I decided to wash down all the remaining alcohol, just to spite them.

As we were leaving Scoop accused me of lying about my excuse for being late to the party and a wave of anger broke over me. We argued in the street outside the house and as the party guests looked on I could sense my self-control ebbing away as it faced my rising resentment. I swung my fist and brushed Scoop’s chin and as I did I slipped off the curb. That’s where the memory ends; there’s a very sharp edit in the memory at that point but whatever happened next meant that I didn’t remember anything else properly again.

Scoop’s last email to me was even more bizarre than the raven story. In fact it disturbed me greatly. The preceding day I’d felt very unwell. I hadn’t slept at all and the waves had lasted well into the afternoon. When I finally managed to get up I’d stumbled, nearly hitting my head on the desk. I was exhausted from the heat and the jet lag and the mental strain of trying, every day, to remember.

Despite this I was in a good mood as I set off for my final appointment with Dr Ferguson. I felt the slow resurfacing of some long term memory and was pleased that I’d made the decision to leave London. I felt the change of environment, even the sunshine, had somehow done me good.

I went out that evening to meet Paul and Kerry for a goodbye dinner and I was determined to make every effort to remember the evening. The next morning I woke up late, delighted by a good night’s sleep and the sweet recollection of a sushi restaurant and a conversation about a mutual friend. It wasn’t much but it was enough to raise a childish yelp and pin a contented grin on my mouth.

As I dressed I heard Scoop’s email arrive and I opened it with curiosity. I hoped it wouldn’t be more bleak ramblings. It was untitled, like the last, but this one gave no warning as to its contents.

Apparently, I’d arrived at Antonia’s house late last night. She’d invited me in to her two room apartment and we sat, talking and drinking for hours. It was decorated with a jumble of second hand kitsch and the wallpaper was old and coming away in places. Antonia joked about the state of the place but explained that it was all she could afford till she found a better job. She picked up a conversation we hadn’t finished from the bar as if not a moment had passed. I was surprised by how easily she could draw me into revealing things about myself that I’d never spoken about before. She was warm and intelligent but she also seemed different. She was more cautious around me and chose her words carefully.

“I find you very easy to talk to, it’s frightening” she said

“I was just thinking the same thing” I replied

“I’ve only know you for a few hours and yet I feel like I could tell you anything.”

“Maybe it’s because we don’t know each other.” I paused. “Do you have many things to tell?”

“Many, many things” she said with a sweet, knowing look.

“In that case, maybe it’s the drink.” I said and poured us each another glass.

Conversation after conversation followed; each tumbling into the next; both of us enjoying this new intimacy and yet I realised that I was revealing a great deal more about myself than she was. It was getting late and I thought about leaving but she stood up and commanded:

“We’re going for a midnight walk.”

“It’s two thirty” I said,

“Come on. You’ve got to learn to relax more.”

We lit cigarettes and walked through the neighbourhoods around her house, the moon flitting in and out of view between the thick trees. The streets were silent apart from our laughter and whispers echoing between the buildings. Antonia beckoned me to sit down on the curb.

“Let’s just enjoy the quiet” she said.

I stood up to face her as she lay back onto the warm pavement. I couldn’t look away from her. I was entranced by her dark skin against the pale stone. She was laughing as she remembered a small bottle of vodka in her pocket.

As we continued to walk she asked me about the accident and how my treatment was going. We spoke about this for about a mile but her questioning began to bother me and I tried to change the subject. These weren’t the normal polite enquiries. She seemed to think that I was exaggerating the memory loss.

“Come on, no one forgets everything. You must remember some things.”

“I remember some things that happened a long time ago but not last night.”

“I bet you do remember. It must be quite a convenient excuse for all sorts of bad behaviour to say that you don’t remember.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if it was me, I’d maybe put it on a little every now and then, if I’d done something bad. “Oh, sorry. I don’t remember”. There’s nothing wrong with that. It would be natural. I just think you should be honest about it.”

I was starting to feel my pulse rising and I tried to change the subject. I could tell she knew that she was bothering me. She seemed to enjoy it.

We walked on in silence, beyond the residential blocks now and along a tree lined street into one of the canyons. It was gloomy and narrow. The pine needles cracked beneath our shoes as we made our way along the road.

In a lay by we came upon a tramp asleep on a bench. We stood and looked at him for a moment and then, at the same time, silently carried on.

She asked, “Do you love people or hate people? You seem to have a lot of hate in you.”

“What makes you say that? I love people, of course.”

“Do you know how close love and hate are? I don’t think you do.”

I said I didn’t want to talk anymore. That she was drunk and becoming boring. I wanted desperately to get away from her. Suddenly I hated her voice.

But she continued, approaching me, “Do you know that a slap is just a caress? It’s just a speeded up caress. Did you ever think about that, you faker? You should, you know, mister memory man.”

She sneered, angrily at me and I could feel a heat spread up my neck and around my ears. I was dizzy. I tried to think quickly about where I was, to orient myself and slow my heart rate but couldn’t. I heard a voice in my head shout at her to shut up.

“I wonder what you really remember. I wonder what you really keep up there. Do you remember the bar the other night, mister memory man? I bet you do, really, you faker. Do you remember slapping me when we were at the bar the other night?”

She prodded my limp head and suddenly the heat exploded across my face.

I turned and after setting myself I kicked the tramp in the head with all my force so that the noise reverberated from the trees and lodged in my brain.

That was the end of the email. I was bewildered. Why was Scoop sending me this stuff? Was she trying to upset me? I tried to think straight, wishing I’d never read it. Somehow it felt like a betrayal of all she’d done for me. Had I not shown enough gratitude? I started to write an angry email in reply but then grew worried about her. Perhaps this was all an indication that she wasn’t well. Could I have caused her to be unwell?

I was disoriented, just like she’d written in the email. I could feel the waves starting and I shut all the blinds in the room and sat and waited for her and thought.

I arrived at the airport half an hour early. The time crept by slowly and I paced from one shop to another and then back again, crossing the shimmering floor of the arrivals hall until I saw one of the security staff staring at me. Outside the hall I took a long, chest filling breath and the smell of the eucalyptus hit me in the centre of my head. It dislodged a memory of playing in a field when I was a baby. There is sunshine everywhere and I pull down the brim of my hat and roll over onto my side and then roll again and again. The cut grass flies into the air and sticks to my plump arms and I roll over again and again. I could have rolled for years, I thought, and smiling to myself I turned back into the bustle of the arrivals hall.

I saw Scoop through the crowd. Her movements were unsure at first but then she saw me and walked. A wide smile appeared and I felt a joy of relief. I was waiting, anticipating her arms around my neck; my arms around her waist. I looked again and the smile was gone. I could see that she wasn’t alone. There were three men who walked with her. Two were wearing police uniforms and carrying guns. All three were tall and made Scoop look like a little girl. She was near me now and her hands took mine. She leaned towards me and whispered in my ear that she was sorry and asked me if I was okay.

After asking me who I was the detective told me that I was under arrest. A homeless man had been found badly beaten and partially burned near the railroad tracks in Glendale. The accelerant used in the burning was thought to have been alcohol. They already had a female suspect in custody. I was charged with aggravated assault that evening at 6pm.

The months that followed and my time in jail left me more angry, embittered, confused and obsessive than I had ever been before but they also saw the gradual recovery of my long and short term memory. It was this time that caused the great change; this time and Scoop’s final revelation.