***

The man who had lent some of his chromosomes and much of his heart to the creation of Umberto lay shriveled and white-haired in his hospital bed. With careful and unconscious precision he folded and refolded the corner of his sheet into and out of a meaningless pattern. He had been in this hospital many times already, and all with life-threatening catastrophes plaguing him. Still, he clung to life with the small allotment of strength left. His crankiness of confinement had been displaced by the inclusion of Xanex into the regimen of medicines the nurses brought him at unpredictable intervals. He had an odd complacency and crooked smile for the creakiness of fate which had returned him here. Not due to a raging humor at the bizarre irony of life but from a mixture of druggy soma and the iron will that had brought him from the nothing of his youth to the orderliness of his constructed and devolving existence. He asked his few visitors how they were feeling and shrugged when they asked the same. It was through him that Umberto learned that true heroes were both dutiful and boring.

It pained Umberto to visit. He saw in the old man's symptoms of doddering and palsy his own pitiful mortality. Visions of erotic sirens melted into the dull hospital smell of banished urine heated under florescent lighting. Still, he attempted to make eye-contact and flirt with the nurses. They must have thought him an odd nuisance if they thought anything at all, he believed. Most likely they paid him no mind, or considered him a nice and polite clone of the relic on the bed.

The father of Umberto sometimes fought for his next breath. Umberto had to avert his own eyes knowing that he himself had only so much time and had accomplished little. The father of Umberto had at least created Umberto, and in this Umberto had to fold his face into his arms and choke back the surge of laughter that threatened to break out. The old man thought Umberto was withholding grief and sought to comfort his boy with a withered and cool hand. "It's all right Sonny..."

One of the nurses making the next bed seemed momentarily moved by the emotional interlude and Umberto wondered if he should try to capitalize on it. Even in such places life tries to struggle on.

*

The hospital visit had left Umberto momentarily stripped of illusions. Thus he felt depressed. That his father might die (had in fact begun to die; barely resembling the handsome aviator of many decades ago) was a burden too heavy to face. That his own world was still unmade became a taunting challenge.

It was Thursday evening and he forced himself to follow the directions on the scrap of paper from the girl who mistook him for someone else. What was left of his imagination attempted to construct an intriguing instruction in who he was not.

*

The coffee house was almost empty of people and light. Lori sat upon a stool in a tepid spotlight that shone on a very small stage, a mere platform of particle board. She held a guitar which she strummed as she sang-talked, sometimes causing a melody to come forth, though fairly unrelated to her guitar playing. Some young heads bobbed at a table near the stage. Her message seemed suicidal which did not go with her happy face. Again Umberto felt like burrowing his head into something soundproof and wailing with laughter.

She and the lone waitress spied him simultaneously. The waitress, a voluptuous (to chubby) girl wearing (naturally) black tights and a black and white-striped top. This time it was Umberto’s grin which loomed contagiously forcing the waitress to smile uncontrollably. He was being made into a new person.

"Coffee or Expresso, or…?"

"How about a Coke?"

"Pepsi?"

"Fine."

Lori grinned horrendously from the stage. Her imagined mentor had arrived. An infection of enthusiasm leapt from her throat as she belted out a lyric that had some musical qualities. Umberto hid his humor and his expression behind the soda which he tried not to gag on while slurping away the dryness of the hospital. He felt so full of bizarre, happy cheer his mood would not allow him to dampen the girl’s spirits. At a pause that could have been the end of the particular piece, Umberto applauded approvingly. Oh, he felt so foolishly gleeful. He would have applauded a dog’s yelp or a child’s charade. It must have been the effect of show business.

After an repetitious duration of more talk-singing that lasted an eternal five minutes, Lori finished with her final line, "…drink my own blood…" followed by vigorous guitar strumming. All applauded wildly. None wilder than Umberto.

She joined him at the table, as a timid student sitting with the Professor. "What did you think?" She asked, sitting stiffly with the kind of posture her parents had been begging her for all these years (to no avail). She slipped the guitar pick into a little holder. He could see perspiration on her face.

"Marvelous!" Umberto said.

"Really?"

"Very funny," Umberto added.

"Funny?" She asked, uncertainty at the corner of her eyes but joy in her face.

"Yes!" Umberto exclaimed.

"Oh… Well, I try to be…. You know entertaining." She laughed loosening up with some expressive body language as if she were throwing the whole suicidal shtick out the window in favor of vaudeville. They both laughed, and Umberto tried not to think about the fact that this little girl might want to sleep with him. It was really not what he had in mind.

She was just finishing up high school: A senior. Though precocious she was not exactly a prodigy, being eighteen already. Umberto was of the age that Jesus’ career was reputed to have had its impact.

"Fifty?"

"No, thirty three. Do I look Fifty?"

She shrugged, sucked her soda through a straw, wondered if she really knew the difference. "No, you look like twenty-nine."

Her school (and her parents) were permissive. She had classes a few half-days a week. The rest of the time was spent in ‘Real World Apprenticeship’ which meant doing whatever she liked. She had to check in with her Counselor but had some sort of unusually close, though unspecified, relationship with him. She was adamant in her abhorrence of going to college the following year, but Umberto surmised unless she was discovered and catapulted to fame she would go anyway.

She was not terribly subtle, and insisted on showing Umberto some of her reams of lyrics or free verse or whatever they were. Lots of computer paper. She also had dog-eared and doodled notebooks. Lilac and orange, with pages ripped out. Alienation, sex and frustration. Lots of explicit descriptions. Umberto felt nervous reading them in front of her. Alone he would have laughed.

"How did you get your start?" She asked.

"I never did. Or actually, I’ve had many starts, and have always found excuses for leaving the race." Their eyes were locked, she was busy drinking him in.

"I am not who you think I am…" Umberto warned with a knowing grin.

It no longer mattered. It was as if she were a lost duckling imprinting him for a mother. She was fixated. He seemed to be taking her seriously and given his supposed maturity, that was enough.

"You’re better," she giggled, her face screwing up into a smile so large it distorted her features, giving her nose and eyes much more prominence than they usually had. She squeezed his hand briefly with hers. At least one ring per finger. Then she let go and slumped forward in her chair. "When will I… You know… see you again?"

Umberto flushed. Half of him shouted a silent never. The other half was passively silent. She was so young. "Let’s go into the city this weekend. Saturday night. We’ll take in some performance art. I’ll get tickets. Okay?"

He almost hoped she would say something, like I can’t, or I have to be home by… Instead she touched him again, holding his wrist. "I’d love to… Let me give you my home number."

***

The performances they saw, in Umberto’s estimation, sucked. There were only two reasonable shows in town and those tickets were unavailable. Lori, however, loved it all. She talked non-stop as they walked, comparing everything to everything. Asking Umberto for all his opinions as to whether this, that or the other thing would enhance her own efforts. Umberto grunted. She gave him little opportunity to speak. Then she began reality checking. "Do you think I’m crazy? Other people at school do. But I think they are emotionally castrated, you know? They are afraid to live! But sometimes I think, maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who’s crazy. Did you ever think that way?"

"All the time," Umberto said, steering her into a place where they might be served without her getting carded."

They sat at a little table in the dark and she continued to talk. At last a server arrived.

"Rum and Coke…" She said, looking up to evaluate whether she could get away with it.

"I.D. please?"

"Oh… sure…" She began rummaging through her wallet. There seemed to be a plethora of cards there, many of her own design created by desktop publishing.

"Cappuccino?" Umberto asked.

Lori gave up trying to fake it. Her hands collapsed on top of her swollen wallet. "Can I get one too, please?"

The server vanished. "Rum and Coke!" Umberto joked.

"That’s all I could think of!" She admitted, smiling with embarrassment.

Umberto had to marvel at her. She seemed to be a painting, perhaps unfinished, that in some light appeared to be of a woman of little pretension who wore her faults proudly as if they were fashionable. But then the light would shift and he saw a child, a few years past menarche who could not understand that play was still only play. While he fiercely admired such attitudes, he had enormous inhibitions of developing a relationship with someone else so afflicted. Besides, she had parents somewhere who still thought of her as their little girl and who was Umberto to intrude into such a development?

"I’m so glad you brought me, tonight. I’ve really learned a lot," she said.

"Such as?"

"About performing. About life." She chuckled.

Umberto raised an eyebrow in defense of the unspoken.

"When you see something, go for it!" She said, nodding.

Umberto nodded too, not knowing what about.

They were served. She took a big gulp and almost spit it out. After swallowing she coughed. Umberto comforted her. He showed genuine concern that she not choke. Her coughing paroxysms turned into laughter. She tried speaking but had to wait till she had breath over a dry throat. Then she touched his arm and spoke.

"Is there someplace we can go, you know, to be alone together?" Her eyes were soft and full of expectation.

Umberto exhaled. He struggled for the best excuse.

"You don’t want to?" She asked, looking more serious.

Running from a lion I meet a bear; looking for a woman I find a girl… His expression was not encouraging to her.

"You don’t think my work is very good, do you?" She asked.

"You posses one remarkable ingredient that is worth more than money," he said.

"What?"

"Enthusiasm."

Her face dropped and for a moment it seemed she might cry. "Is that all?"

Umberto put his arm around her shoulders. "What do you mean is that all? A half billion people would die for it, if they knew what it was worth. It IS a gift. What you do with it is something you… we all have to work on. I love your enthusiasm…"

She tried not looking at him. She was repairing some hurt inside. "I’ve been told that, you know…" Then she looked at him again and he saw the part of her which was almost a woman and not as crazy as she could work up to.

"I could learn so much from you, Umberto. I know I could if you give me the chance. Don’t you like me?" What a way to clinch a deal.

*

He followed her outside, leading her to his lair from behind. Two voices argued in his head. One voice sought to offer congratulations, this was a voice he had overheard from the conversations of others. The second voice was sorrowful at the approach of a mistake, this was Umberto’s voice. He didn’t know how to say no to her; couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her feelings. Yet, it seemed like an act he already regretted. Walking with her he felt like a friend and not a lover. Maybe, he would simply fail to act and let such an improbable union dissolve from lack of interest. The other voice had plenty of rebuke for this thinking. ‘Umberto you are being a coward about the fruits of life. Take what ever you can get and throw the consequences to the winds. You can not make up for lost time by hiding from danger!’

Umberto thought he saw a woman across the street resembling the enigmatic librarian. Tall and commanding. She bent her frame to get into a car. Umberto sighed. Why did he want such a thing? To discuss Beowulf? To discuss the monsters of life? To reawaken a passion that might have fallen dormant? To tease himself about what he did not know? Yes, yes, yes and a thousand yeses. He wanted to throw himself at a greater, more improbable danger! This realization made him feel better.

Lori stopped to use a pay-phone. She was going to give herself the night off from her parents by inventing a flimsy excuse with a girlfriend. But first she had to find a girl friend who could provide the correct alibi.

No one was home yet, and she was running out of quarters. She had trouble reading the directions on her phone card. Then it seemed that one particular girl friend was home but leaving. She had bad news for Lori. A member of their group had been involved in an accident and the group was gathering to provide mutual comfort. Lori seemed shaken.

"I have to go…" She implored him.

Yes of course. Umberto seemed shocked to be getting out of something so easily. Maybe, even, the non-Umberto voice had been winning the case, and he would be disappointed!

"Please, can you give me your phone number?" She asked. "I’ll call you tomorrow."

Maybe she would come to her senses or rediscover a bond with a member of her own group. Who knew about such things? Their relationship was based on the most tenuous of connections. After all, she had mistaken him for somebody else.

***

It was late but he felt no inclination to go home. He stopped at another night spot and ordered something he intended to nurse. There was a man at a table behind him who seemed happily drunk. He was with two women and they were tipsy also. The man’s face was red, his eyes were red, his long, straight hair falling in greasy locks over his forehead. He half leaned on the table and said things that made the women laugh. Umberto knew him and turned away.

"Hey don’t I know you?" He called, titled crookedly on one elbow while pointing to Umberto.

It seemed inappropriate to shout something back so Umberto picked up his drink and reluctantly walked over to the table. The two women, one with her arm around the man, smiled.

"Yes, we got out of the Army at the same time and were new students together. Freshmen orientation for overgrown post-adolescents." Umberto related.

"Oh…" He seemed disappointed he hadn’t met Umberto under more socially relevant circumstances.

"Yeah, you had the weird first name, Dumbert or something…" All laughed.

"Or something." Umberto knew the man’s name was Frank but never liked him. He had been a liar, cheat and show off. He had a lot of girlfriends, none of them very bright and he was usually in trouble.

Frank kicked the fourth chair out from under the table.

"Si’down take a load off…"

Reluctantly Umberto sat.

"So what-a-ya up to these days?" Frank asked.

"Smuggling contraband," Umberto said taking a nonchalant sip from his beverage.

"Oh…" This time Frank seemed impressed. "Like what?"

"From digital processing parts to the more exotic," Umberto was usually a poor liar. But he was also a poor Dumbert.

"You know I could use… I got myself into a bit of a jam, you know…" Frank laughed.

"Oh?" Umberto raised an eyebrow at the ordinary quality of such a statement.

Both of the women at the table were attractive and Umberto fought the compulsion to posture. He thought he’d mine Frank’s woes for any amusement and then leave.

The woman with her arm around Frank nuzzled his ear making him laugh. The other woman addressed Umberto, "I’m Wendy."

"UM-Bert-o," he said, smiling.

"Not Dumbert?"

"No."

She seemed the more sober of the three. Frank broke his lack of concentration with the woman masticating his erogenous zones, "Hey, how’d you like to make some money? Say five hundred bucks?" He asked Umberto.

"Probably not…" Umberto replied.

"Just have to deliver a package, that’s all. It’s easy money," Frank insisted.

"I don’t courier drugs," Umberto said emphatically.

"No, no, no… Nothing like that. I haven’t played with that shit since college. Really. It ain’t even stolen. I promised to deliver this thing to a guy. I’m bein’ sentenced Monday. Tomorrow’s my last day off. ‘Cause I’m probably gonna have to do like 3 months in club Fed, you know. Strictly white collar bullshit. A misunderstanding…" While he spoke his girl friend rubbed his back and grinned at Umberto. Why the grin, Umberto wondered.

"Deliver what?" Umberto asked.

"A manuscript," Wendy answered. "It’s at my house."

Umberto made a puzzled face.

"Wimen!" Frank exclaimed throwing up his hands. "The guy who gets the thing, well he’s kind of unreachable, if you know what I mean… Wendy’s nervous about going alone. I don’t know why!"

Wendy shot Frank a quizzical look but let it go.

"Who is he?" Umberto asked.

"You never heard of him. He’s got money. His family was in publishing a long time ago. No, no. He’s not a heavy, nothing like that. I was gonna go tonight. Throws some good parties, if he’s around." Frank leaned across the table, "This guy knows how to party…but I’m beat." He rubbed his girlfriend’s back and she arched forward jutting her breasts into the center of the table, "You know how it is. I just want to go home and get some," he winked, "--peace and quiet… Right baby?"

"If it’s so easy why pay five hundred bucks for it? Send it Federal Express." Umberto asked.

"I maybe shoulda done that," Frank said pulling at his lower lip. "But this guy can be tough to get a hold of. Wendy knows. And as for the money, it ain’t enough to pay my fine, so what the fuck difference does it make?" He laughed and finished up with a smoker’s cough.

All very interesting, but Umberto wanted to leave. He looked at Wendy and he looked at Frank and the woman with her arms around his neck. Frank looked at Wendy and then Umberto. Frank shrugged, reached into his wallet and began pulling out hundred dollar bills. He counted out five and left them on the table. Umberto was not tempted. Five hundred dollars was five hundred dollars but what was it buying at what risk?

"Easiest money you ever made, guaran-fucking-teed," Frank said with a wave.

Wendy touched Umberto’s arm, "Take it, it’ll be fun…" Her eyes were flushed with the late hour and promise of excitement. Now he was tempted.

"A manuscript that isn’t even stolen…" Umberto prodded.

"For sure!" Frank said.

Umberto scooped up the bills in his right hand. His left hand pulled out the wallet from his left pocket. Wendy smiled, stood and turned. She waved with four fingers at the other two and sashayed on staccato heels under black jeans toward the door. Umberto shoved his wallet back into his pocket and folded all the bills into his other pocket, as if they were not permanent assets.

*

She invited him upstairs into her apartment but kept most of the lights off. She insisted they have a quick drink. She produced the manuscript which occupied a manila envelope next to her bag, with her apartment keys on top.

He sat next to her on the couch. Her legs touched his from the upper thigh to the knee. None of that was his doing. Perfume.

"So you and Frank were old buddies," she said.

"I knew him…"

She took a sip of her drink, (Umberto had declined one) and touched his arm, "That thing," she indicated the manuscript, "is worth more than a half grand…" She smiled and began nodding, "Know what I mean?"

"If you say so. Actually, I have no clue what it is, or what it’s worth… Where are we supposed to go with it?" Umberto asked.

She nodded to herself, giggled and looked at her watch. "Oops, we’d better start going…" She picked up her bag, the manuscript and her keys in kind of a clutch as if she were a student heading to class. But she stopped; "I have to pee," she laughed and went into her bathroom holding everything.

Umberto supposed he should look around her apartment to discern what type of a person he had inherited for a partner. There seemed to be decorative rugs or prints on the wall. But it was dark. He was tired. He didn’t know what to think.

She emerged from the bathroom with fresh lipstick on. "Have to pee?" she asked.

"Might as well," he agreed.

"Sure, do it now!" She announced happily.

Umberto was not surprised that her bathroom was small, and crowded with things, water hoses, clothing, many jars and lotions. Her medicine cabinet door was not shut and he looked inside. There were many varieties of pharmaceuticals. Some over-the-counter drugs, other prescribed. Some were prescribed to Wendy Horndower, others to a Richard Tomisini. There was both a diaphragm and birth control pills on separate shelves.

"You musta had to really go; you were in there for awhile," she commented when he rejoined her in the darkness.

"I’m nosey. I was looking in your medicine cabinet, but didn’t touch anything," Umberto declared matter-of-factly.

"Oh?" They exited and she locked the door three times with two different keys.

"I’m always impressed meeting a bigger hypochondriac than myself." Umberto said.

"That’s okay. Help yourself. My life’s an open book," she said as they walked down the stairs. She held onto the rail.

"Who’s Richard Tomisini?" Umberto asked.

A moment of silence. The book seemed closed. "My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, really." Her tone did not invite further comment. Then she changed the subject. "This guy that we’re going to see… --If he’s there. He’s very different. But the parties go on all night. I mean all night. They are so cool!"

*

"What a place." A statement uttered by Wendy as she sped-walked along the foyer, blowing hair out of her face to see better. There was a cornucopia of refreshments. Tables stocked with bottles of everything that came with alcohol. More varieties than Umberto thought imaginable. There was food too, or the remnants of it, the hour being quite late. They prowled room after room, he following her. There were other people there of course. But they were paid no mind.

"I wonder if he’s here… if he is I gotta show him this…" Wendy clutched the manila envelope with a determination bordering on frenzy. She paused long enough to help herself to what looked like a martini being created by a bartender making many of them.

Umberto spied punch pissing out of a fountain and helped himself to a cup hoping it would ease the dryness gathering in his throat.

"Oh yeah, I’ll have some of that too…" Wendy said filling her already empty martini glass with punch. "Wouldn’t you kill for a place like this?" She asked him with a leer.

"No. The booze bill alone would break me," Umberto replied.

"Not if you had mon-ey!" She sang out.

"And so? How do I earn my five hundred?" He asked her.

"Maybe you don’t!" She smirked. Excuse me a minute…" She touched his arm as she backed away. Umberto felt like sitting, no laying, down. He set his glass down and wandered off.

*

He seemed more like a retired quarterback than the scion of publishers. Tall with a square cut jaw, a checkered sport shirt under a beige jacket. There were many years on golf courses upon his skin.

"So you’re the man!" He clasped Umberto’s hand with two of his own and did not let go right away as he beamed into Umberto’s eyes with the illogic in his own.

Umberto grinned. "I am? Perhaps not," already feeling bad for the imagined future embarrassment of his host.

"Oh no, no I’ve read that manuscript, or actually parts of it… I know beauty when I see it." Still holding Umberto’s now life-less paw, which Umberto wished were his own again.

"I can even quote one inspiring passage: ‘ I have lived as a flame devouring and dying, falling to a spark and rekindling always for one last time. I walk through the unknowable streets as if lost in a reverie, path after path after path; quiet, passive buildings peopling the night. Who knows me, how do I know myself? From what fantasy is love born? What secret knowledge teases me from the corner of this dream? Across yellow-lit silhouettes I traverse, talking with the many selves I meet. All of them me. Awake it leaves a vapor that vanishes in the light…’ That’s writing!"

Umberto had his hand back, for a moment the passage seemed like some amateurish project he had completed in college. But then it was the lateness of the hour. He was practically asleep on his feet. In fact it seemed like his host was still holding his hand. Umberto looked down to make sure this wasn’t so. It wasn’t, but when he looked up his host’s nose seemed purplish and the dimensions of his face were both alien and familiar. Shit! There had been something, maybe THC, in the punch. He could feel paranoia and bizarre humor competing for his internal attention. His host was elsewhere, mentally, in a business meeting or on a putting green.

"My contacts in the business are not what they once were. But I think I can make it happen for you; for us actually!" The man laughed and clasped Umberto on the back. Umberto felt his knees begin to give way. They didn’t but they seemed like they might.

*

Umberto thought that food might help and he prowled the rooms for something. Anything, a piece of bread. From room to room he traversed the yellow-lit indoor panorama. There seemed to be only acres of alcohol. Finally he settled for some fruit, but as he slid a pineapple slice into his mouth Wendy approached.

"UM-BerT-OH!" She sang gaily waving her arms and then rotating her middle as if in a dance.

"Yes?"

With dramatics reminiscent of play-acting, she seized him on the shoulders and kissed him on the mouth. "Pineapple. Yummy!"

Umberto finished chewing and swallowed it.

"Are you a good lover?" She asked him.

"I’ve had my moments. At least in my own mind," he said.

"Frank and Richie thought they were STUDS…" She rolled her face into the parody of a macho grimace and thrust her hips out as if fornicating. He realized that she had a lot more of what he was suffering from.

"Studs! Banga-a-da-banga-da-banga…" her voice trailed off as she began eating pineapple. "We should find a spare room somewhere, or a closet, or…" She stopped eating for a moment, "Maybe we should just leave."

"Shouldn’t we say goodbye or get a receipt?" Umberto started laughing, thinking a receipt perhaps on a stained napkin to be sublimely funny."

"You are weird, man!" Wendy said with too much arch in her eyebrows. She hugged his shoulders and ground against him for a moment. He clasped her back with only medium enthusiasm.

"You’re not into me are ya?" Wendy asked suddenly, as if straight and sober.

"You’re okay," Umberto said.

"Nah, I can tell. You’re a very honest person. Too honest. No bullshit. You want nothing that ain’t yours. I respect that."

She lit a cigarette and after one monster inhalation held the cigarette between two protruding fingers with her elbow cocked on a tilted hip.

"Yeah that depresses me, I’m constantly fucking up opportunities before they can become real by this perverse sense of truth." Umberto said.

"The opposite of most men I know or have known."

"Sorry to disappoint you…"

"Not by that. I want an honest man to give me everything I need, because then, sugar," her eyes opened very wide, "I know it’s real."

Umberto shrugged, she puffed again and blew a languid smoke ring. They both became aware of the buzz of the ongoing party filtering around them. Finally Wendy crushed out her mostly un-smoked cigarette. "C’mon, let’s blow."

*

She seemed to be carrying the manuscript with her, but insisted it was something else, another manuscript or nothing. He felt no will to argue or even be too curious. She seemed to hold onto his shoulder, not in a romantic way but as if to steady him. They walked, path after path. Umberto got a mild shudder which made him shiver. They stopped to cross a street. Wendy seemed to be leading him though slightly behind with one hand on the seam along the back of his arm. Leading from behind. This reminded Umberto of something similar that happened in a recent universe he had inhabited and he started to say something. Traffic seemed to have passed, but the light was not green and they did not cross because a police car was paused on the opposite side of the street.

From the left Umberto could see a bus approach the intersection though it appeared to be slowing down. The light changed, the moment was held in stillness. Umberto stepped to the curb.

He was hit from the right side and flung into a sign. He thought, ‘I am going to feel embarrassed,’ then a moment of great fear which subsided into resignation as if falling asleep. The bus braked unsteadily, finally stopping in the middle of the intersection blocking the view of the patrol car which erupted in silent lights flashing from its bubble.

***

John Doe hovered about consciousness for hours or days. There was no measure to tell one from the other. When he blinked at the opaque film that seemed to coat his eyes the attendant making the next bed noticed and buzzed for the nurse. It was many minutes later, or even hours, when the nurse arrived carrying a clipboard. She asked how he was feeling, checked his pulse and pressure and informed him that a resident from neurology was going to examine him that evening or the next day. Then she asked him his name.

"Name?" It hurt to talk.

"Who you are," The nurse said.

His hand moved toward where a wallet had been. The hand didn’t seem to be completely in his command. And there was no wallet. No pants. Only a hospital gown.

"We have your money. It’s at the nurses’ station. Didn’t you have a wallet?" The nurse asked.

"Yes." Sounded like ‘yeth’ to his own ears, and he wondered if his teeth were still there.

"Name?" She asked again.

"Don’t you know?" He asked.

She sighed, "We have you down as John Doe…" She shook her head. "It sounds like you have a good case. Getting hit by a bus in front of a police car. Do you remember anything?"

"No."

In a nearly conspiratorial tone the nurse asked, "Do you have a good lawyer?"

"No."

"Well my sister-in-law might be a good one to talk to. She has a law degree but doesn’t practice, therefore you could get an honest opinion from her."

"What’s wrong with me?" He asked trying to move parts of his stiff body.

She saw his toes wriggle under the blanket. "No spinal damage, thank God! Not so sure about the extent of your head injuries. The neurologist will want to do some tests."

"Oh."

"What’s the last thing you remember?" The nurse asked.

There was a pause as the nurse prepared for John Doe’s last distinctive memory. She was prepared to write it down if it had any relevance to his condition.

"…You asking me my name."

"Oh."

*

John Doe spent his time languishing under the protection of morphine and its cousins. It was a drug that was boredom personified, but it allowed the time to pass in unrecognizable segments. It did not end the pain or in his case, significant discomfort, but separated it along with anxiety and any other intrusion of reality into another dimension. Maybe he knew it was there. But ‘there’ was someplace next-door.

The resident, a physician of Indian extraction made him touch his nose and the back of his arm and other foolish things. Mr. Doe was stiff and sluggish, and felt on the verge of nausea.

"I see there is an old scar near the location of your wound. Did you have an accident some time ago, hitting the same place?" The doctor asked.

"I don’t know."

"That’s right, you say you have no memory. No knowledge, even of who you are."

"Uh huh…"

"Can you get out of bed and walk for me please?"

"I might throw up." Mr. Doe replied.

"Why is that; are you feeling nauseous?"

John Doe closed his eyes. It was the only thing he had confessed and the doctor could not remember. Perhaps not having anything to say was better than talking to one who would not listen. A thought came to him of hospital rooms. An old man who was losing his strength. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps it was a dream.

"How old am I? Is there a mirror here?"

"Maybe thirty. A mirror?" The doctor thought this would be interesting so he broke his protocol and searched for a shaving mirror. This he held up for Mr. Doe.

At first John Doe recoiled. Maybe it was the bandage along one side of his head. But the face! Both alien and familiar. Was that him? He had his teeth.

"Your eyes are swollen," The doctor said.

"How come I can speak? I haven’t forgotten language."

"No, you haven’t become a vegetable. Good thing too. This is positive. Very positive. Perhaps in a few days you will begin to remember everything right up until your accident. You probably will never recall the accident."

He took several steps with the doctor steadying him. He seemed to recall someone else steadying him, recently, or was it him helping someone else, or another dream?"

"Can you walk better than this?" The doctor asked letting go and facing him. Mr. Doe was shuffling. He felt weak and dizzy.

"I don’t know. I want to lay down now, before I fall."

"You should try harder," The doctor encouraged.

John Doe tried to nod in agreement. It hurt. "You are very correct. At some point in the near future I shall try harder. I promise." He turned and shuffled back to the bed he had emerged from. The white-ness of sheets and an often washed cotton blanket encapsulated him, and he drifted away from the noises and smells in the ward. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

"Maybe I will be seeing you again in a day or so…" The physician said.

"Hmmmm," Mr. Doe replied.

*

After another day Mr. Doe’s nausea passed. The heavy doses of painkillers were rescinded and his appetite returned. Now the time seemed to weigh imponderably upon him. While eating a turkey sandwich, and not a very good one, a hospital administrator visited him.

She drew up a chair and presented him with a document. She said something about assigning his claim against the bus company to the hospital in lieu of paying for his already enormous medical bills.

"Contact the bus company," he replied.

"Well… You see…" The administrator persisted, holding the document in front of him.

"I am not signing anything. I don’t even have a name to sign," he said.

"The cost of maintaining a medical facility is very high," she replied.

Tiring of the rubbery sandwich lacking any flavor beyond mayonnaise, he laid it down upon the plastic plate. "How much are meals here?" He asked.

"Meals?"

"Meals."

"The cost break-down is about fifty dollars per meal," The administrator replied.

"Fifty dollars?"

"Approximately."

"Fifty dollars for this excuse for a sandwich?"

"Mr. --… uh… sir, there is an entire infrastructure here. An entire kitchen and dietary staff and…"

"I’m sure there is. And there are usually kitchens at restaurants too. Only they can make a better sandwich at a much lower price. You should look into it, really."

"I will. So you are not signing anything?"

"Not with out benefit of counsel."

"Oh… Do you have a lawyer?"

"No," he smiled.

"Well okay. I’m really sorry to have bothered you… But I had to. – I mean come up here and…" she stammered.

"It’s okay," Mr. Doe replied magnanimously.

After lunch he asked the nurses for his personal belongings, to see if they offered any clues to his being someone.

The jacket smelled slightly of cigarette smoke, though this did not entice him and he assumed that he did not have the tobacco habit. Keys on a plain key ring. Keys to what? Shirt, pants, shoes, nothing unusual. The clothes were okay, neither cheap nor expensive. The nurse who had first questioned him brought him something else wrapped in tin foil. She had it locked in the cabinet with the opiates. Mr. Doe unwrapped the tin foil and found five hundred dollar bills. How nice.

"I thought we should protect it. But there was no wallet. Maybe someone swiped it in the two minutes before the police got to you. People are something."

"I suppose,"

"Maybe we should put everything back until you are transferred," The nurse said.

"Transferred where?"

"To a rehab facility," The nurse said.

"I think," declared Mr. Doe, "I should get dressed and leave."

"To where?" The nurse replied, aghast. "Where will you go? Wait, maybe in a day or so some television people will come and do a little story on you. Maybe somebody will recognize you."

"I’ve got clothes and five hundred dollars, which is more than I had when I was born. And keys," he said hefting them, "all I have to do is find the magic lock that accepts one of these keys."

"You’ll have to sign a form. The hospital won’t discharge you until…"

"Not a problem."

"Do you remember what I said about my sister-in-law?"

"Sure."

"I’m Harriet, if you need to get in touch with me," the nurse said.

He shook her hand.

When she was gone he dressed and left taking the elevator down to a never-before-seen first floor and walked into a foreign world having signed nothing and with a left side that was still weak.

***

Where does one pause in one’s wanderings when there is no place to go? Bars or libraries. Something sounded appealing about a library. Knowledge to be discovered, images arising from text or pictures that could be the springboard to fantasy; an adventure for the mind in a body going nowhere. John Doe considered this but elected to visit a bar in a train station. This was a springboard to an adventure in which the body went first and brought the mind along for company.

He had no taste for alcohol, his equilibrium already fairly numb and fuzzy around the edges. But he ordered tomato juice and snacked on pretzels. Trains came and went as did patrons. Some stayed. They drank and drank those potions and elixirs that put out the fires or started them. The bartender favored Mr. Doe, after all he had broken a hundred and was not drinking. And like the bartender he represented a frustrated sobriety.

"What happened there?" The bartender pointed at his bandage.

"I got shot in the head, or run over by a bus. One or the other."

"Wow. You’re not sure, huh?"

"Would you be?"

The bartender laughed, "I guess not. Waiting for a train?"

John Doe considered the question. "A train of thought… I could use some direction, actually…"

"Yeah, where are you going?"

"Don’t know. Any suggestions?" Mr. Doe asked.

"Me… --If I was you I’d take a drink," the bartender confessed. The man didn’t work around booze for the hell of it. He was following a passion, even if it didn’t love him anymore.

Mr. Doe exhaled. "I spent the last several days, or week maybe, with an immense headache. I don’t know that I want another one. Besides, I have only a handful of hours relating to direct experience on this planet and I don’t know if I want to confuse them."

The bartender laughed. "You an alien? No, I get what you mean. In the hospital with a bullet or a bus getting removed from your head. I get it. But, maybe what you need is to get confused! When the details don’t make any fuckin’ sense, screw ‘em up and see if you stumble onto the bigger picture."

"Does it work?" John Doe asked.

"Look at me." The bartender implored, "I had a nagging wife who didn’t love me, three kids who had no use for me, even a dog and mother-in-law who showed me not one moment of respect all in a house that sucked money right out of my pocket… Now, I got nothing. And I did it all myself."

"Lucky you…" Doe commented.

"I’m on the road back, really I am. But in order to get on the road back, sometimes, my friend, you got to get on the road outa here!" The bartender said.

"And so?"

"Have you ever liked the taste of booze. I mean just the taste?"

"I don’t recollect…" Mr. Doe said.

"Well then, okay. I’ll make up something special that even virgins could drink. But, it’ll do the trick, I warn ya!"

After much work behind the counter the bartender put a tall glass of something that looked like ice tea before him. "Take a sip."

Mr. Doe did. It tasted friendly.

"There you go my friend," the bartender said taking a five from Mr. Doe’s pile and giving it a snap on the way to the register only to be summoned by a man sitting before his ninth empty vodka. A man with a small voice and large red capillaries on his cheeks and nose.

*

By the end of the tall glass Mr. Doe was intoxicated. It seemed like more fun than morphine, at least at the present. The man with the small voice had moved himself and his twelfth vodka next to John Doe, and began regaling him about misbegotten adventures in finance and infidelity. In a meandering tone, with one thin wrist waving in small motions, he painted a picture of being a half-assed investment broker turning every winning trade into a losing one all the while losing a good woman while chasing floozies. It sounded made up. The man looked like an alcoholic clerk with a life of bad stories. But Mr. Doe had less to tell. He had never made any money, save the five hundred (now $ 490) dollars he knew nothing about, never been in love and never had an affair. At least that he could remember!

"And what about you?" The man asked him.

Mr. Doe warily stepped off of his stool. "I, sir, was born yesterday. Whatever good or bad there is to my life lies ahead," he nodded looking for the men’s room and scooping up eighty five of the ninety dollars on the bar. "And I aim to have a go at that beast directly."

*

It was the ‘rush hour’ when most of the offices released their employees into the world and John Doe fell into a pattern with the flood of commuters. He stood in a line, bought a zone ticket, waited in a queue. Boarded one train, then changed for another, then walked through a turnstile, and then was on the street. By now the rush of men and women in business clothes had thinned but had not disappeared. Street lights lit the maze of unknown, unyielding byways. He had to urinate again and looked for an establishment or an alley. He was traversing a dimension of deja` vu. There was something vaguely funny about his predicament, as it was soulfully perplexing as well.

He reached a building and tried the handle. It was locked. A woman approached, her heels clattering on the pavement. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the keys. The first key didn’t fit. The second did. He turned the key, the door opened. Maybe the world wouldn’t be so tough after all, he mused.

He walked up one floor in the dark. The cooking smells in the hall were familiar. He wondered if there would be someone who knew him, missed him… Up another flight. This time his hand went out and the light switch was right there on the wall and he could then see the walls by the dim, undersized bulb high overhead. He stopped at a landing and tried the first key. This door opened. It was dark, even cold inside.

"Hello?"

No answer.

He went to the bathroom which was where he supposed it would be, and when finished returned to the main room. He put on a lamp and looked around. He hoped to find pictures. Pictures of people. Maybe, even, a picture of himself, though he hoped not. No, the denizen of this lair had no celebrated keepsakes, no cherished moments frozen on film. No memories…

The phone rang. He sucked in his surprise and answered it. It sounded like a girl past puberty. Maybe selling magazines or conducting surveys, or…

"Umberto?"

"Who?"

"Umberto. Is that you… Have I dialed…"

"Who’s this?" Mr. Doe asked.

"Lori."

Lori? He wondered. "Lori?" He repeated.

"Oh, Umberto I have been trying to get hold of you for days!"

"Hmmmm…"

"Is this Umberto?" The voice named Lori asked.

"Maybe. I really don’t know…" John Doe said.

"Umberto!" She laughed, "I’ve been worried."

"And for good reason."

"Why? Are you OK?"

"I was in an accident. I just got out of the hospital. In fact I’m not quite sure I am Umberto."

She laughed but abruptly became serious. "You’re not making fun of me, are you?"

"No. I was hit by a bus, so they tell me. I don’t remember."

"A bus!" The humor strained through her voice enjoying the full range of her enthusiasm. But then concern got the better of her and she changed tone, "Were you, like, laying on the road for days or what? What happened?"

"Some cops saw it, I’m told. I was in the hospital."

"A bus hit you and cops witnessed it?"

"Uh huh."

"Cool! Are you OK, like can you walk and stuff?"

"Basically."

"Wow. You got stitches?… How long were you in the hospital?"

"Maybe a week?"

"Wow. My Dad is, like, a lawyer who specializes in this stuff. Once one of my brother’s friends had this freaky accident and like they were all drunk and it was their fault but he made them a ton of money. Can I come over? I’ll bring a camera. We’ll need pictures. And the police reports, and the hospital records. Cool!"

"Jeeze, everybody is a fucking attorney. .." Mr. Doe said.

"Can I come over? Just tell me where…"

Not only didn’t he know who she was, but he didn’t know where he was, not in relation to the rest of the world. Finding the door that matched the key in his pocket had been an act of serendipity proving that sometimes God watches out for drunkards before hitting them with out-of-control trains (or busses).

"If you can find me…" Looking out of the window he noticed a bistro across the street. It had an unusual name so he repeated it to her. "I’ll be there in about an hour…"

"I’ll find ya," she said.

He set the phone down. He could have rummaged through the drawers looking for tax returns or check stubs to find out about this Umberto, but he wasn’t sure it would be the right thing to do, looking through a stranger’s things. True, he had little knowledge of himself, and this caused considerable apprehension. Yet such unease was offset by excitement concerning the possibilities of who he might turn out to be. In fact, it was better to be an interloper into this Umberto’s life, then find this was him, with a life he would only want to cast away.

He felt an approach of despondency, as one would upon awaking from a pleasant dream and realizing that an ongoing trauma loomed in one’s day. Perhaps this Umberto was an engaging fellow with an exhilarating future full of significance and achievement. Perhaps he was loved by beautiful women and able to be with them with out commitment. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… But from what Mr. Doe saw, he assumed Umberto to be fairly ordinary. No, it was better to assume that they were not one and the same, at least not metaphysically.

*

He sat stifly in a chair expecting the real Umberto to arrive. What sort of a person was he? By his Spartan existence Mr. Doe could only assume Umberto had utilitarian habits. Feeling sleepy he forced himself to rise, shower and borrow some of Umberto’s clothes. They fit well. Then he searched through Umberto’s medicine cabinet and linen closet for some gauze and surgical tape to re-make the bandage on his head. Looking at the wound made him feel faint. There was a roll of bandage gauze but he had to use masking tape to fasten it together.

*

John Doe was very hungry and without waiting for Lori, whom he did not know, he ordered a hamburger and french fries. A young woman in her late teens spotted him. Walked over to his table, letting her bag drop.

"Umberto, my God… I almost didn’t recognize you…" She touched his face in such a way that Mr. Doe assumed that if she and Umberto hadn’t been lovers they were at least brother and sister. And the latter could not be true!

He grasped her hand warmly. Someone knew him and liked him! Yet he also felt that this could be a case of mistaken identity. He kissed her cheek gently. There was a hint of tobacco there from experimental smoking or an other.

"Wow…" She said happily rolling her eyes at the romance of being kissed by a heroic bus victim. She sat and lifted her satchel. "My camera’s in here. We’ll need some pictures you know."

"Hmmmm. I’ll get the waitress, so you can order."

"I’m not hungry," she said.

"Does it hurt?" She asked of his wound.

"Only if I look at it," he replied.

His food arrived and he took a big bite. "Hmmmm it’s good. Sure you don’t want anything? A soda?"

"No…" She watched him eat. "I thought you were, you know, avoiding me…" she said sadly.

He shook his head, and attempted to pick up a glass with his left hand which he almost knocked over. The thought occurred to him that perhaps he was not all right. He wondered if he would be able to have sexual relations with Lori. He knew about such things in a vague way but couldn’t for the life of him conjure up what it would be like. Did he really want her? Could he be in love with her? What was her relationship with this Umberto? Was Umberto a man who robbed the cradle?

When he had finished eating she asked if they could go to his place. He blanched. "I don’t really feel it’s mine…"

"Where is it?"

He pointed out of the window behind them and up one floor. "That’s the window I was looking out of when I was talking to you on the phone."

"So you really don’t remember anything?" She queried.

"No."

"How’d you get home?" She asked.

"It’s a mystery. I had a buzz. I had a stiff drink in the train station and must have reverted to some subconscious rush hour pattern… The keys opened the door. The clothes fit. That’s all I know!" He declared.

"I met you in the city during the lunch hour thing. So I guess you must have worked there. What’s the last thing you do remember?" She asked.

"The hospital. A nurse asked me who I was."

"So you don’t remember our –date?" She asked coyly.

"When was it?" He asked.

"Last Saturday," she said.

"Today is…"

"Friday," she finished for him.

"You might be the one who stole my wallet," he replied.

She looked at him slyly.

"What did we do on our date?" He asked.

She blushed slightly, "You don’t remember!"

"No. I don’t. I’m sorry…"

"Jesus, I might be the last one who saw you Saturday night… What time was the accident?"

Mr. Doe shrugged.

"It’ll be in the police reports," Lori said.

"You sound like a lawyer," he remarked.

"I could be. I’ve worked in my dad’s office since I was ten."

"Precocious."

"—Set up files, make phone calls… Not when I was ten. But, like, during school breaks and stuff."

He paid the bill. She sat across from him her arms laying limply along the sides of the table, beyond relaxed, offering no resistance. "So, you think going to your place is sorta uncool?"

He nodded.

"Well that’s okay, because no one’s home at my house this weekend except me!" She sang out and hefted her bag, "So let’s go!"

Why not? A man has to learn sometime. He followed her outside and waited beside the passenger side of an older, black Mercedes. "Wanna drive?" She asked hopefully.

Driving seemed more complicated than picking up a soda with his left hand. "No."

She seemed nervous behind the wheel and after fidgeting to get comfortable fastened her seat belt. "You’d better do the same," she advised.

Mr. Doe complied, and it wasn’t a bad idea. She pulled out too quickly causing oncoming traffic to honk angrily. "Whoops!" She laughed.

"So where is everybody?" He asked.

"Greg didn’t come home this weekend. He’s a senior at Penn. My parents are away till Sunday night." Though she maintained a funny, twisted smile she become quiet as she concentrated on driving. Perhaps her vision was not perfect either. Mr. Doe watched her.

She was not bad looking for a youngster. He already liked her. She had spunk… --enthusiasm for life he believed. But she was a kid. Not what he had in mind, if he had anything in mind. He assumed there was some level of intimacy between her and this Umberto he seemed to be mistaken for. He recognized nothing of the streets and towns they went through. He might have come from another state; another world.

They pulled into the sunken driveway of a three car garage. Above loomed a many-roomed monstrosity of a house about ten years old. A neo-modern bi-level something; a tribute to the improvement of particle board and siding over the last decade.

"I can still remember living in a three bedroom condo," she said as way of an excuse.

"You poor thing," he teased. "I can still remember sleeping in a hospital ward."

She laughed and opened the door with the remote, garage door opener. She seemed self-conscious doing it as if this was the definitive thing about being middle class. Obviously she had friends without such conveniences. She made a mimicking sound as the garage door shuddered open. They both laughed.

Inside she got right to work, putting on several lights in the finished recreation room and taking her camera out. "Here sit down in this chair and look like you feel like shit…"

He did and she took several pictures. Then she had a brainstorm. "C’mon… No, this won’t do…" She brought him to her bedroom tossed all the pillows and junk off her bed, and ran to the linen closet to fetch a white sheet. Lie down. Maybe I can crop it so it looks like you’re still in the hospital.

Though he made a few faces it all seemed like fun. "I have shoes on…"

"You could take them off," she remarked suggestively.

He removed his shoes and lay back on her bed. She drew the sheet over him and began framing her photographs. Her scent was upon the pillow. There was a familiarity to it.

"What have you got on that bandage, packing tape?" She teased.

"Could be…"

"We have to take it off anyway…" she advised.

"The wound looks gross," he warned.

"Good! The uglier the better!"

He sat up so she could unwind his bandage. She made cartoon noises which made him laugh. "Ugh!"

"I told you it’s disgusting."

"Cool… See if I can count the stitches. Scars are good, too bad it’s under your hair line, even if you should get bald. A scar on top of your head could be worth more!"

She took several close-ups. "Got any bruises on your body?"

He thought before answering. "My left shoulder."

"Take your shirt off…"

While he undressed she retrieved new surgical supplies from the bathroom. This house had everything! But she decided to wrap a turban of gauze on her own head as well. Half undressed he rose, took the camera and tried to get her picture. She squealed with joy but ran with him following. They were having so much fun.

He caught up with her in another bedroom and she quickly pulled off her turban but opened her blouse and thrust both her brassier and tongue out for this pose. So precocious. He didn’t know what to do. She did. She took the camera from his hands and kissed him. He barely responded.

"What’s the matter…" she cooed, sounding more like a grownup, "never done it before?"

"No. Not that I remember…"

"Well it’s like riding a bicycle. It’ll come back to you…" She ran her hands along his arms and shoulders.

He had a thought of mounting a bicycle and falling off, making him chuckle. "Ooo, what’s that matter, did that hurt?" She asked thinking she had touched his bruised side too harshly.

"No…"

She urged him down to the carpet. "What’s the matter; do you think I’m too young?" She asked.

He said nothing, though it was the case. "I am eighteen and am quite experienced here. I’m losing nothing I haven’t given away. I will not get a baby from this. So don’t worry. And I haven’t got any diseases, I don’t think," she laughed.

Mr. Doe exhaled, he felt like a wounded beast in the arms of his only friend. He kissed her softly on the cheek. She began to kiss him in earnest, closing her eyes and allowing a passion to devour her with hunger. Her taut body grasped him with more strength than appeared evident in her thin limbs. She began pulling off her garments with frenzy. The thing Mr. Doe wanted to do most was laugh. He was not into this thing for whatever reason. He was observing from the middle, a bad place to be.

"What’s the matter?" she croaked in a throaty voice.

He sat up. "I’m just not with you in this moment," he replied trying to strip the humor and incongruity out of his voice.

"You’ve been through a lot, I know… but… I just want to feel your skin against me… please…" she asked.

Now, he felt badly, and took off his grin and pants and lay beside her. They kissed again and her passion flamed back. Soon she was astride him moving vigorously against his chest and midsection. She reached for his hand and guided it to a particular spot. Upon applying pressure she arched, "Ooo… yes!" She undulated and sank upon his right shoulder with her mouth open.

"Hold me now," she asked in nearly a whisper and he held her, thinking of everything and nothing. But his soul was a million miles away.

Later, she was briefly more sedate, but that didn’t last. She raided the fridge for beer and offered one to John Doe. "Beer, Umberto. It’s domestic."

"Sure you won’t get in trouble; have to hide the empties?"

"They’ll never count them. The recycling can has a month-full in it," she waved the worry away.

He took a sip. It tasted interesting but not something to quench a real thirst. He swallowed a gulp. Belched and then uncontrollably yawned. " ’Scuze me."

"Oh, you must be exhausted," she said of him. "What did the doctors tell you about, you know, your recovery and rehabilitation?"

"I don’t know…"

"Well, before they discharged you…"

"They didn’t. I got dressed and left."

"You did?" She sounded concerned. "Were they done with all their tests and everything?"

"I don’t know."

"You just walked out? What if your… your brain stem is, like, hanging by a thread?" She demanded.

He laughed, "Maybe it is."

"Oh no," she said feeling guilty about having forced a casualty to provoke her desires.

The man she called Umberto set the beer down minus it’s gulp and teetered off toward a couch.

The turned him around worrying about his comfort and insisted that he sleep in her bed. It was a single. She would sleep elsewhere. He demurred, but she insisted. This time she helped undress him in a nurturing way, still making silly noises as she yanked his socks off two at a time. She covered him with her blanket and while tucking him in sat on the edge of her bed.

"No matter what, we’re still okay with one another, right?" She asked.

"Sure." He squeezed her wrist.

"You won’t be weirded out by…"

"No, no… Don’t worry…" He kissed her hand and lay on her pillow, this time not posing for photographs.

"Good. Because I don’t want you pulling away from me…"

He was almost asleep when a red flash invaded his eyelids. She had taken a picture for posterity. Her prize sleeping in her bed. Poor girl. The man she called Umberto slept.

In the morning (he supposed it was morning because Lori insisted it was) he didn’t want to wake up.

"C’mon I made breakfast. Bagels and French toast."

"Yum… a carbohydrate feast…"

"You gonna sleep all day?" She asked.

He searched for her clock. "Nine thirty? Don’t you teenagers sleep all day Saturday?"

"Not when we go to bed early on Friday night."

*

He didn’t mind breakfast even if his mind was still dozing.

"See what I don’t know is if we can file a ‘John Doe’ complaint or whether we have to truly discover your identity. Like first and last name," she said. "And if it’s a municipal bus company we have to act much quicker than a regular civil action…" she remarked crunching on a spoonful of marshmallow cereal in addition to bagels and syrupy French toast. "I’m really hungry!" She declared in defense. She sat cross legged on the chair in an oversize tee shirt.

"But the bus company part is because of it’s the tort claim act. Sovereign immunity and all," she continued.

"What are you talking about?" he asked with half a mouthful of everything.

"I know… My friends get really weirded out when I talk like this. They HATE me when I get this way. But it’s true, I mean, maybe, we have to declare you incompetent and appoint a guardian before suing."

"You’re being my lawyer again," he observed.

"Hey that’s me," she said sounding real serious.

Mr. Doe spied a family portrait in the dining room. "Well look at that, I guess that’s your brother and your folks…" he said pointing a fork at it.

"Yeah… I’m surprised my father’s actually in it," she said.

"Why?"

"He was never around." Her back was straight and her eyes on her plate. Something was bothering her, he surmised.

Mr. Doe’s hands held a question he did not ask.

"That’s why I know so much about this plaintiff business. I grew up in that fucking office. Either that or no Dad."

Mr. Doe nodded. Lori continued, "See Dad is way more than a mere workaholic; he leaves the house by six in the morning, home between nine-thirty and midnight. Saturdays, eight to five in the office, Sundays he works in his home office. Saturday nights were baby-sitters and he did whatever my mother wanted or she would have probably left him…" her voice trailed off. "So Greg and me hung out Saturdays and vacations with Dad. By the time I was ten I was little miss photocopier. Hey it bought all this." She gestured around her, "but sometimes…" her head sunk, "I wished we lived in that little condo and I had a Daddy…" She sniffled a little and chewed on one side of her mouth keeping her eyes away from his.

"I’m not complaining about you being my lawyer. I like the service," he offered.

"I know," she faced him, "see with you I can be myself like I can’t be even with my long-time friends. I didn’t get too bummed when you told me my performance art was shit."

"I said that?" He asked.

"Yeah. But I had great enthusiasm," she mocked.

"You do!"

"But I want to be an artist!" She whined.

"Be an artistic lawyer," he joked.

"Fuck no!" she tossed her bagel remnants to the side of her plate. "Anyway, I think it’s important that we find out who you are. And I’m going to get my hands on that police report ASAP!" She nodded with conviction.

***

John Doe was tired. He had claimed this and gotten Lori to drop him off at Umberto’s apartment. She would retrieve the police report by herself. She had a business card claiming she was a paralegal assistant at her father’s firm. She was anyway. Actually he was feeling a little dizzy. Or imagined a lively buzz on the edge of his consciousness. He sat in a chair, his eyes fixated on a drawer in a nearby table. Finally he opened it and found bank statements and a check book inside among other things. His heart produced a palpitation. The name on the papers was Umberto Cain. He felt so disappointed. But, yet, this might not be him!

He made a studious, exploratory journey into the bedroom and found an answering machine overwhelmed with red blinks. There were many messages from Lori of varying lengths and tones, some sing-songy "Hi Umberto!" others more stressed and unhappy, "—Umberto?" There was a formal message for "Mr. Cain… This is Gloria in Human Resources… we haven’t heard from you…" There was a voice of an old man barely able to speak to a recording, "Sonny?…" Mr. Doe’s heart fell. Last there were several calls with no voice. Lori? And at the tail end of the tape a new voice, a woman’s that just began to say a word as the message was aborted.

So he had fallen into a Mr. Umberto Cain’s life. He remembered nothing past his rebirth in the hospital. And like a newborn he was still weak. He lay on the bed and drifted into unidentifiable images. The door buzzer sounded. His first thought was that it was Lori exploring some new angle. He liked her. Yes indeed, but needed a small vacation, a brief respite. Maybe it was his recent lack of stamina.

He found the downstairs door release and pressed the button. Someone with platform heels climbed the steps slowly. He looked down and saw a brunette with reddish tones. She was very sexy, from above anyway. A saleswoman?

"Hi…" she said.

"Hi," he replied.

"I heard about your accident," the woman said.

Mr. Doe made no response, "I have lost my memory," he announced.

"How convenient," the woman did not enter his apartment but stood on the landing outside his door which Mr. Doe leaned upon for support.

"I’ll get to the point," she began, "Wendy is missing. I talked to her last Sunday and then… Well she’s gone. Peter Lynch does not have the mani… the writing he optioned, and Frank is pissed. I guess you kept the five hundred dollars for a job not done!" There was a coldness in her eyes and demeanor.

Wendy, Peter Lynch, the manuscript, Frank meant nothing to Mr. Doe. But the five hundred dollars did. "What about the five hundred dollars?"

"Oh, so now you do remember," she smiled, but it was not a friendly smile.

"I have it, or had it. But nothing else. No wallet… no recollections…"

She put her hand out, "I’ll take the five hundred dollars. Every little bit helps,"

"What was it for?" He asked.

"Oh Come on!" She said angrily throwing her hand away and stamping one foot.

"Who’s Wendy? Who’s Frank? What’s this talk about a manuscript? How come I got hit by a bus? Who took my wallet?" Mr. Doe asked trying to restrain his own ire.

She fumed. "Look, I don’t believe you," she said harshly.

"Who are you?" He asked.

She must have believed he didn’t recognize her, "I’m Angie, Frank’s girl. We met last Saturday night. You went to college with Frank… Wendy took you back to her place to get the document…"

Dizziness real or imagined wafted through him. His stomach began to rebel. "Give me a phone number, so I can get in touch with you…" he offered.

"Fuck you!" She turned and stormed down the steps almost losing her balance on the narrow stair rise."

He held onto the door knob until she left the building. Then he bolted inside, beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. He took a gamble that would cost less than a dollar, picked up the phone and dialed *69. He expected it to ring at Lori’s house. He was surprised to hear another voice on somebody else’s answering machine recite: "You have reached 776 - 9599, no one’s available now…" It was Angie’s voice and Mr. Doe wrote down the number. Then he set down the phone and made for the bathroom with great deliberation dropping to his knees before the commode and vomiting Lori’s French toast and bagels into it.

*

He slept fitfully and dreamt of a Norse woman who sang opera. Was this Wagner? The phone rang and he answered it from the bed. It was Lori on her car phone. The connection was not perfect.

"I got the police report…"

"Uh huh…"

"The accident happened at four o’clock in the morning…" There was a pause. "What did you do in the four hours after I left that night?"

"I don’t know…" He had more questions to ask than she did, but kept them to himself.

Another pause this time longer. "Maybe hypnosis would work…"

"Hmm?"

"I know somebody who’s good at it," she said.

"Who?"

Another pause, "My… uh, guidance counselor, Steve…"

"Steve?"

"Mr. Goodman…" she said slowly with charged sarcasm.

By the change in her voice Mr. Doe came to the conclusion that ‘Steve’ had been closer with her than the typical teacher student relationship should be in high school.

"I have Umberto’s last name. It’s Cain," and he spelled it.

"That’s cool," I guess. "How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Not well… I have to go, I’m feeling nauseous…Bye…" He let the phone slip into its cradle and lay back on the bed holding his eyes closed.

*

By the afternoon he was feeling somewhat better and decided to re-trace his route to the hospital. Perhaps he had some notion of checking back in.

It was a nice day and the dizziness retreated into a nearly comfortable malaise that lingered in the nether regions of his psyche. He stepped off the bus onto hospital grounds and decided to stroll through the small park that several employees and visitors were using to eat their lunch or just sit. He put his hands into his pockets and drank in some of the fresh air.

"You, hello!" It was Harriet the nurse and a companion. A tall woman with flaxen hair who kept her glance on her sandwich.

Harriet was excited to see him. "And my sister-in-law is here!" She exclaimed gaily. "Look Virginia, it’s the man I was telling you about, with the amnesia…"

"Who was hit by the bus," Virginia said looking at Mr. Doe. Both of them froze their expression. To Mr. Doe, whose knees became weak, this was the Norse woman of his dream!

The distance in Virginia’s eyes melted for a moment, but looking to her sister-in-law, she let it pass. "This is Umberto Cain…" She announced to Harriet.

"How do you know that?" Harriet asked with astonishment.

"I looked up his library card once," she said allowing the significance of this to pass into silence.

Umberto was dumfounded. "My library card? I haven’t even a wallet…"

"You did once… Don’t you remember me?" Virginia asked.

He said nothing. Yes, from a dream…

"Beowulf, Grendel…" Virginia prompted.

"Virginia runs the library at…" Harriet began.

"The amnesia…" Virginia reminded herself taking a bite of her sandwhich.

"And why did you leave the hospital?" Harriet asked sharply, the good nurse perturbed by the recalcitrant patient.

"Do you want the other half? It’s tuna. I can’t eat it?" Virginia asked him.

"No thanks. I’ve lost my appetite…" Umberto Cain, AKA John Doe answered.

"So what do you think of his legal case?" Harriet asked Virginia.

"Did you jump in front of the bus to kill yourself?" Virginia asked Umberto.

Umberto shrugged.

"No, I saw the statement of the officer who came to ER… Crossing on the green light!" Harriet said and then to Umberto, "Virginia graduated nearly tops in her class from law school, passed the bar the first time and…"

"Never really practiced. Law as a business was not for me…" Virginia said. "But the case sounds like a winner. Have a lawyer?" She asked Umberto.

"Sort of," he said.

"A good one?" Virginia queried.

"Seems so, though she’s only eighteen."

Harriet laughed. "Kind of young, huh?"

"It’s her father I suppose who’s the… I’m not all that interested in this legal business at the moment."

"Normally you have two years to file in a negligence claim, but not against a municipally owned entity…" Virginia said.

"Tort Claim something or other…" Umberto said lamely.

"That’s right," she said brightly rewarding him with the intelligence in her eyes.

"I seem to have other more pressing interests," Umberto related.

"Like that amnesia…" Virginia said, "maybe it hasn’t all that much to do with the accident, though I wouldn’t say so aloud… Maybe you just got tired being you…" she said smiling and perhaps speaking with some authority.

"Maybe."

"Do you want to remember everything?" Virginia asked him.

"Probably not everything…"

Harriet noticed he appeared woozy and stood to take his arm. "Here sit with us for a few minutes."

Umberto sat on the concrete bench next to Harriet. He leaned forward to maintain his line of sight with Virginia though.

"I must go Harriet…" Virginia stood, holding her half of tuna. "Sure you don’t want this?" She asked Umberto again, who shook his head.

"You were one of our favorite customers at the library. Do come back… We miss you…" Virginia said to Umberto. It appeared difficult for her to do so and maintain eye contact as she did. He smiled and watched her walk away. "What library?" He asked Harriet.

***

Umberto ‘John Doe’ Cain found himself at the crossroads of ambivalence. Unlike his former visits he had no recollection of spending so much time there, only a vague uneasiness. Reluctantly he made two small efforts at stabilizing Umberto’s future. He called the Human Resources person at the company Umberto worked for and made a disjointed appeal on behalf of his hospitalization and head injury. Mentioning his lawyer’s assistant as having more information worked gratuitous miracles with his employer. He needn’t worry about a thing (for the moment). Second on the agenda he responded to a rent notice by writing a check out of Umberto’s account, leaving a balance of $ 1,600. Other than that he hadn’t the slightest curiousity about the man, his position or past. The only thing he had was a headache. A nearly constant discomfort unrelated to stress that would neither cripple him nor go away.

Lori called often. He allowed her to chat. It was his window to the world. Her father wanted to meet him. Umberto demurred.

On a Wednesday he received mail. It appeared to have been addressed in black crayon with no return. Inside was an attempt at intimidation: ‘You owe us the maniscrip (sic) and the money! You better watch out!!!’ The penmanship was neither male nor female, large letters but neat. It made him laugh and burst his lack of enthusiasm. He rummaged for the phone number of Angie and dialed it directly.

"Hello?" She answered with a throaty, sensual pleasantness.

"It’s Umberto…"

She grunted in surprise, her mood growing cold and angry.

"—Got your letter," Umberto continued, "How bad do you want the five hundred?"

She said nothing for a long moment, "How’d you get this number?" She asked with an icy demand.

Umberto said nothing for a moment than in a friendly, sly tone added, "It’s not man-I-sciP; it’s man-U-ScripT."

"Look you fuckin’ bastard…" Running out of thoughts she slammed the phone down.

He pressed re-dial and got her answering machine. He waited until the beep and began speaking again, "What manuscript? I might pay for some information…"

She picked up the phone and threw her voice into it like a weapon, "You keep calling me like this and it’s harassment! It’s a felony!…"

"What about your love-letters?" He asked. Another silence punctuated by the feedback from the answering machine. "Wait-a-minute." She turned the answering machine off.

"We need the mani… what ever it is…" She said.

"Then you and I will have to talk," Umberto suggested.

"When?"

"I have plenty of free time. You tell me…"

***

Even discomforted by a headache this Umberto craved action as an antidote to his feeling of languishing. He used a mirror to examine the wound on the side of his head and determined that the stitches should be removed. He asked Lori for the name of a doctor or clinic and she arranged to pick him up.

There was a constant drizzle that seeped into one’s being. He waited under the overhang and was surprised to see her in the daylight. Lipstick, a tie-dyed tee shirt, sloppy jeans, but her hair was carefully done in an interesting swirl held by a ribbon and then cascading along her neck haphazardly. She was sipping coffee as she pulled up, but kissed him on the mouth. Cappuccino!

"Isn’t that your car?" She asked pointing to one.

"I don’t know, is it?" He shut her car door as he got in.

"Do you remember how to drive?" She asked.

He considered the question. "I don’t know."

"Like if I stopped and let you get behind the wheel, would you know what to do?" A truck passed them and Umberto had a thought. Once he may have driven a truck; or dreamt that he had."

"Yes, of course, but don’t…" he advised.

"You’re still not feeling well, huh?" She queried.

"Maybe not."

"Aww that’s too bad, because I was, you know, thinking that maybe later we could, you know, try and have some… --fun…" she said.

"Do you know anything about a manuscript?" He asked suddenly

She was interested, "Like one you wrote?" She asked.

He turned away, "No…"

"Because I met you at that bookstore… There was supposed to be a signing that day, this guy… Oh, he’s not really a playwright.. . kinda a… Well he’s an artist. I thought for sure he was you! But you claimed you weren’t him, or he wasn’t you… This guy is very private," she waved her fingers from the steering wheel for emphasis, "and he didn’t show up…"

"Uh huh…" Umberto coaxed, not getting the full drift of her remarks. "Did I ever mention anything about a manuscript?"

"Well, no. But you could have," she said.

"But I didn’t," he pressed.

"No."

He looked out of the window and pulled at his lip. "Did I wear glasses?" He asked.

"No," she said.

Maybe it was the precipitation, or condensation. He used his sleeve to try and clear the side window a bit.

She parked at an office building and he was prepared to follow her inside. But he could find no doctor’s marquees. Not even a dentist. Only lawyers and accountants. Then he looked at the names.

"Oh no, you’re not dragging me in to see your father?" He asked with alarm. The concept of suing the bus company made his knees sag. There was a time for such business, but Umberto felt the time was not now.

"Oh c’mon… You just have to sign some papers. It’ll only take a minute," she pleaded pulling his sleeve.

Umberto was certain she would insist on keeping her hands on him. And her father, if he was not an idiot would know Umberto was more than a victim in an insurance-go-round. And if he was an idiot why do business with him?

"Please, not today?" He urged.

"Oh OK. But it’s for your own good. It could mean decent bucks."

She had no idea of doctors or clinics. And without her father’s guidance in such matters she reverted to foolishness. She took him to her house and removed the stitches herself.

Umberto sat at the kitchen table as if getting a haircut and let her clip and pull each thread from the skin in his scalp. "How can you do this without feeling sick to your stomach?" He asked.

"I’m female," she reminded him. "We are a stronger species than you are…. Blood is something we get used to…"

"Species?"

"Whatever…"

***

Umberto heard from Angie shortly after the stitches were removed from his scalp. Her instructions were curt, explanations brief and surprisingly, she maintained a modicum of civility through her conversation. She would pick him up outside his apartment. The most bizarre component of her directions was the advice to bring a bathing suit.

She arrived in a small pick-up truck that held a large, padlocked tool bin bolted onto its bed. It had a manual transmission which she operated with ease. She barely looked at him as he got in and drove for almost a mile before saying anything at all. "It’s gonna be a bitch, but it’s gotta be done…"

"What?" He asked.

"You’ll see."

"Tell me about this manuscript, and the five hundred dollars," he asked.

She tapped her nails on the steering wheel. They were polished in red though the ends were worn and uneven. "If today works out, it probably won’t matter as much," she said.

"Well, what about it? The whole thing is a mystery to me," Umberto remarked.

"Everything’s a mystery to you; you’re so fuckin’ stupid. But that’s why you’re gonna help me because it’s all your fault," she said.

"What is?" He pressed.

She shrugged, "Lemme’ just drive for now, okay?"

In a half hour they were removed from the urban sprawl. The few houses they passed on the local roads were dilapidated and abandoned. She stopped the truck alongside the brown water of a river. She got out and he followed. She paced along the bank still wearing platform shoes. Finally she stopped and lined up her hand between a tall tree on a small island in the middle of the river and a tree with a broken limb on a hill behind her. "That’s where he dropped it in. C’mon get your wet suit on."

She unlocked the tool bin and pulled off her shoes. Then she unsnapped her jeans and stepped out of them wearing a black speedo. In minutes she had a wet suit on, with a survival knife strapped to her ankle. "You can use Frank’s," she said motioning to the tool bin.

"What for? I don’t feel like going for a swim…"

"We got to get that box up," she said rinsing the inside surface of her face mask with spit.

"Why?" Umberto asked.

"I can’t do it by myself. It’s heavy."

"Well why don’t you go find it and attach a rope to it and we’ll haul it out with the truck," Umberto offered.

She considered this as if a revelation was being explained, "I don’t have no rope."

"We could get some," Umberto offered.

She threw her hand down and stamped one foot into the dirt. "Let’s just get this thing, okay?" She said sharply.

"The current could be deceiving," Umberto remarked of the river.

"Can’t you swim?" She asked.

"I didn’t wear a bathing suit," he admitted.

"So? Just get the wet suit on, I won’t look at your weenie," she said sounding exasperated.

He stripped on the far side of the pickup and piled his clothes on the ground. While she was pacing up and down the river bank he reached inside the cab and removed the truck keys from the ignition which he secured in a pocket on the inside of the wet suit. Then he joined her on the river bank. She was short, coming up to his shoulder but in such good shape that he felt she must be an athlete.

"Put your mask on," she said pulling hers over her face.

Reluctantly Umberto did. It made the pressure in his head expand against it. A notion came to him that this was not the thing for him to be doing. They sat in the cold water and pulled their flippers on. She at least was smiling. "You do this before?" She asked before putting the snorkel in her mouth.

"No." Umberto was not certain this was a thing his previous self had ever done either. Then she was gone under the surface heading for the middle of the channel. Reluctantly he followed.

Visibility was limited in the water. He marveled at Angie. She beat the currents as a predatory fish, one moment in his shallow vicinity, the next invisible in the murky depths. Umberto’s swimming skills had atrophied to the rudimentary and he managed to become dizzy and anxious just looking for her. Nonetheless he followed after her. The drift was fairly strong as it pulled them out and south. The bottom was a murky morass of green and brown. Either it was full of junk or things were growing down there. He was tiring already and completely uncertain that anything could be spotted. He tried to raise his head to gain his bearings with the pickup truck but was turned around and saw nothing he could recognize. And he got a mouthful of bad tasting water for his trouble.

He told himself that if he didn’t panic he wouldn’t drown, at least immediately, and thought it best to try and head back toward the shore he splashed in from; which was? He tried treading water and looked around himself 360 degrees. Angie was already topside. She had removed her snorkel.

"The current is pushing us down river," she shouted making sure he could hear.

Umberto kept the snorkel in his mouth and nodded. He tried pointing to the shore they came in from which was slowly retreating.

"I don’t think so… We’d better make that island, before we pass it," she shouted, pushed her snorkel in and disappeared.

Umberto did another 360 degree turn. Perhaps it would be his last look at the world. He had been too easily challenged by adventure. Summoning what little there was to his reserves he followed Angie toward the island. Like her he attempted to swim into the current hoping that it would compensate the tide’s movement past the island and out into the full course of the river. He was faltering, however. When he looked up there was only the river. When he turned toward the island, which was only somewhat closer, he seemed to go nowhere. He could not draw enough air through the snorkel tube to stop his lungs from aching. His arms and legs were becoming numb from the exertion.

‘Sonny, you need to fight harder…’ A memory of a voice melted in his mind as if a seed was germinating. ‘No, Pa, I need to not fight so hard; I need to rest a moment,’ Umberto ceased his struggle. He could hear the water. The sound of his breathing enforced his sense of isolation and loneliness. It was all he could hear.

The irony, the tragedy, the misplaced sense of foolish proportion. A mere life gone to its conclusion without significance or glory. Somewhere in there was a joke, and Umberto wished he could remember it for later, as if there would be a later. A force touched him harshly. He could feel fingernails in his face.

"This way, stupid…" and more gently, "Just kick, I’ll steer…" This voice was tired and winded too, and speaking between breaths. He obeyed. There was a little more strength. A sense of calm. He was on the surface now. Then there was gravel beneath his knees. They were beaching themselves on the last cut of the island before the river widened to an eternity. ‘What I needed was some luck…’ Umberto thought.

He rolled onto his back pulling the mask off of his face and beheld the sky. The water tugged at the flippers on his feet.

"You’re not much of a swimmer, are ya!" Angie complained.

"I suppose not… How long have I been out of the hospital? I may not be a great swimmer, but I am a great fool."

She looked at him strangely.

"Today I cannot say ‘no’ to a challenge," he complained of himself. "And what do we do now?"

"Wait for somebody to come by on the bank, I guess," she said.

Umberto propped himself onto his elbows. This part of the river was not visible to the road. Save for an abandoned truck tire he saw nothing of human habitation along either bank. A deer ran into the woods a quarter mile across the water. "Did you see the deer?" He asked Angie.

"We got no rifles or bows or anything," she said derisively.

"I wasn’t thinking of hunting," Umberto said, "deer usually avoid people… Not a good sign for rescue…"

"I’ll build a fire she said," and pulled her survival knife from its sheath. Under the cap in the handle was a small compartment with a bit of line and a small fishing hook. There were also several wooden matches with wax over the ends. Umberto pulled himself out of the water and watched as she gathered bits of debris such as cardboard and small sticks for tinder. They were safety matches, however, and she couldn’t find anything to light them on, finding tree bark a poor substitute for the sandpaper-like substance on match boxes. Umberto removed the flippers from his feet and ambled about the end of the small island. He found a rusty can which he gave to Angie. This worked in producing a flame on the match, but it wilted in a breeze and went out. Cupping the remaining matches preciously she married them to the tinder, but like unruly sperm they fertilized no egg. Every flame went to oblivion.

"I guess there will be no bonfire," Umberto commented.

"Shut up," she said screwing the cap back onto the handle of her knife.

"Why don’t you catch us a fish. A grilled tuna steak…"

"I said shut up!" She sat cross legged on the dirt, her back arched and her shoulders straight.

"What was in the box we were looking for?" He asked.

"More trouble," she said with a touch of fervent reflection.

Feeling a chill he sat next to her letting her block the wind. "What do you want?" She asked with wide eyes but an absence of her purest malice.

"I am not entirely well," he said shivering a bit.

"You gonna die here?" She asked.

Umberto laughed, "I don’t know, it’s preferable to drowning, don’t you think?"

"Well piss on that. I don’t want you dying here!" She grasped his head firmly near the ear and maneuvered his face down so she could look into his eyes. "Follow my finger," she commanded as she moved her other hand along all visible quadrants. This time she seemed to know what she was doing.

"You a neurologist?" Umberto asked.

"I used to be a paramedic. I wanted to be a cop, but had a small… some trouble when I was a kid," she said letting go of his head. "I don’t think you’re about to croak," she said as way of prognosis.

"Cop, huh? One part criminal, one part bureaucrat. I don’t see any bureaucrat in you," Umberto said.

She laughed, "How come you were so stuck up the other night? Like you was so much better than me?" She asked.

"When?"

"When we ran into you at the bar a couple weeks ago…"

"I don’t remember anything since I woke up in the hospital,"

"Still sticking to that story, huh?" She prodded.

"Unfortunately, it’s true… Somebody told me I might not want to remember everything… But it seems to be a handicap to remember nothing…" he admitted.

"I don’t know; it was like you were this college graduate, that was too good for us…" she said.

"Me? A graduate? Cool. At least I finished something." He glanced about the island, it did not remind him of any movie or literary themes. It was a desolate spit of land with a few trees and thick brush that invited a few adventurous boaters, probably kids looking to get high or have sex, during the summer. There was junk about, floating waste that had been beached there as they were.

"So, we going to spend the night, or the rest of our days here? Eat dirt? Grow old together?" He asked.

"Some guys would think it would be a great idea. They wouldn’t be shivering in their boots about it."

"I apologize, but I think we need to get off of this island before I become delirious," Umberto said, standing.

"We’ll never buck this current to get back; maybe when the tide changes," she said.

Umberto stepped through some of the rubbish underfoot. "Why go back? Why not go to the other side, with the pull of the current?" He asked.

"You’d never make it, and I don’t think I could carry you that far," she replied.

"Look at all this stuff. Plywood… There’s got to be some floatation value here. It’ll save us from swimming…" Umberto said.

"But the truck is over there!" She said, angrily, pointing to it.

"We passed a bridge a few miles back, there’s probably another one south of here too… We can walk."

"For five fucking miles!" She shouted growing incensed. "I left the keys in the damn truck. Somebody might steal it while we’re gone!"

"Who?" Umberto asked, keeping the secret of the keys to himself. "And what’s to stop them from stealing it now?"

"Damn you!" She said making a fist.

Umberto shook his head. "Look Angie, I think I have to get off this island, that’s all. If you have a better idea…"

"No! I don’t have a better idea! I’m just a stupid, fucking cunt!" She shouted, tears of rage building in her eyes.

Umberto softened. He was fearful that she might unravel. "No you’re not… You’re a superb athlete. My savior…" He touched her shoulder gently and was surprised she didn’t recoil.

"Okay, we’ll do it your way!" She announced.

They gathered a few longer pieces of lumber and some plywood planks. As there was no wire or rope they held just enough to grasp with their thighs and arms as they glided back into the water kicking with their flippers. Angie was silent, her eyes, small and reddened, kept carefully away from him. Once in the water she applied vigorous urgency in distancing herself from him. She attempted to fight the current and make directly for the other shore. Umberto swam with the current taking him at an angle toward the middle of the channel. There, alone, and feeling cold again, he steadily worked his way across the remainder of the river getting pulled many yards downstream for every yard toward his goal.

When he reached the other bank he at first found no handhold to pull himself out of the water. He bobbled about and had to let go of his makeshift raft in order to haul himself out of the river. He was exhausted. Holding the mask and flippers took a decided effort. He ambled along the shore in the direction where he last saw Angie. She was far ahead walking, her back to him with no intention of waiting.

"You are a crazy one," he muttered to the trees and breezes.

Umberto lost himself to the melancholia of life. He was once this way even if he did not remember so. Fantasies of memories, recollections of dreams filled his weary head. He was lost in a tiresome reverie as he marched into his future, lumbered actually. Time passed slowly and became inconsequential. He became aware of a feeling of freedom and hope for possibilities that lightened his spirits. He noticed movement on the opposite bank. It was Angie having made the bridge and turned back toward the truck. She did not look at him and her pace was purposeful.

Umberto considered letting himself into the river again to wash away downstream. The idea seemed funny. Eventually he reached the bridge and wearily crossed a narrow area of the river. He could see its force in this deep channel. Then the laborious and lonely hike along the other side. Fragments of images came to him: A woman like Angie, but taller, kissing him in some burst of the unexpected; a daydream of indolent sensuality in which normal rules have been suspended.

Umberto walked on the hill along the road. From the distance he could see Angie get into the pickup truck. Then get out, look around, search the bed of the truck and look about the ground. She had intended to leave him there. Umberto tried walking faster, but decided it did not matter. Eventually he reached her. She had kicked his pile of clothes into a messy sprawl and was beside her self with anger.

Easily, Umberto retrieved his clothes. He pushed them into the truck cabin and got in after them wearing the uncomfortable wet suit. Then he locked the doors and took the key out. Angie banged on the window with her fists and pulled her survival knife from its sheath. It had a nasty blade and would offer little survival to its enemy. He doubted she would have killed him, but by that time he had the engine started. He hesitated a moment, then stepped on the clutch and eased the little truck into first. It responded nicely and Umberto moved away toward the road. He put the vehicle into second and covered some more distance. Angie ran after him. He waited till she was within four feet of the truck and accelerated to another hundred yard distance. Then he opened his window.

"I’ll turn you in for grand theft, auto, you cocksucker!" She shouted.

"I’ll say that you threatened my life, after kidnapping me," Umberto replied.

She looked at her knife and lowered her hand. Trying to be coy she ambled toward him then made a burst of speed to get onto the bed. Umberto kept away from her. Then he roared onto the road, drove quickly for a half mile. He stopped and watched her in the rearview mirror. She seemed to have less fight in her now.

He backed the truck up to within twenty yards of her. "I want some answers or you walk out of here," he told her.

"Sure," she said.

"Throw that knife away," Umberto ordered.

"It cost thirty five dollars," she protested.

"Throw it away," Umberto said with no mercy.

Making a distasteful face she dropped the knife into the weeds.

"Now talk," Umberto commanded.

"Let me into the truck…"

"Talk!" He shouted.

"Talk, talk, talk, you sound like a detective," she mocked, "What do you want to know?"

"What was in that box; or was there a box?"

"Yeah, about eight hundred dollars in old coins; not that much. Frank had borrowed it then ditched it before he went down."

"You going tell me about the manuscript, and Wendy and the five hundred?" He asked.

"Yeah… Look I’m tired and hungry, lemme in okay. I’ll be good, I promise…" she said.

Umberto unlocked the passenger side for her. She got in casting him an embarrassed, almost furtive glance.

"Wendy is my sister and I’m afraid something bad may have happened to her. The maniscrip-thing was something Frank showed this guy Peter. Peter’s got a lot of money, and he…" the words poured out of her with abandon. It made little sense to Umberto but he listened to most of it and then tried to refine the point of it with some questions.

"Frank is your boyfriend, right?"

"Sorta. I mean yes, but he’s in jail now…"

"How did he get this manuscript?"

"Didn’t you write it?" She asked. "Smart guy," she added.

"Did I?" He asked.

"It was in parts. Some handwritten on yellow paper…"

"Traversing under the dim yellow light.." Umberto said whimsically.

"What?"

"Nothing. Continue."

"Some typed. Different, you know, type styles… I didn’t read it. But Peter wanted it. It was gonna be his comeback into publishing. I don’t know, he was something of a fruitcake. Sometimes he was friendly, other times it was like he had ice in his veins… Frank would give us a cut to go the parties. Peter wanted us to go and bring some girl friends," she paused, "Just to go and have a good time," she added defensively. "But Frank said he’d get a ten thousand dollar finder’s fee. So if he said ten thousand it coulda been thirty."

"On the level guy," Umberto commented.

"Everybody can’t be a prince."

"And me?" Umberto asked.

"You’re a prince," she said.

"Right. How did I fit in?"

"You show up while Frank is trying to get out of delivering this thing. He didn’t trust Wendy because… Well Wendy is not always reliable… He told me later that he thought you wrote it, which he thought was very funny, like you were the sucker making five hundred dollars and he was the genius conning the mark for the big pile."

"How did he get this manuscript?" Umberto asked.

"Wendy knew. Frank was going with her then," she said.

Umberto looked at her.

"Hey, they had a thing and it was over. Wendy got involved with some other loser and I got Frank," she said proudly but her expression sank.

"And how long is he in jail for?" Umberto asked.

"A while. I don’t want to wait for him, but he might get pissed when he gets out…"

Umberto was approaching the suburbs. "You’ll have to give me directions, I’m not quite sure how to get to where I live," he said.

"Okay…"

"What time did you meet me that night?" He asked.

"With your superior attitude?" She mocked. "Around midnight…"

"So I was with Wendy… Where does Peter live?"

"All over. He has a penthouse in the city. Homes all over the friggin’ place."

"I’ll need his address, and what he looks like," Umberto pressed.

"Sure."

"Wendy took my wallet," Umberto declared.

Angie’s eyes widened. "How would you know that?" She asked.

He didn’t, it was only a hunch. "How else would you have known where to find me, or even what my name was… Right?"

"Could be," she said.

They pulled up outside Umberto’s building.

"I see you found it all right. By yourself," she said.

"How about that," Umberto said smiling. "So she was in touch with you after my accident."

"She called me yeah… Then she was gone."

Umberto nodded. His head hurt and he rubbed it gingerly. Somewhere there were pieces falling into place.

"So you gonna, like… uh… call me sometime?" She asked.

Umberto looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. "You don’t even like me," he said.

"Who told you that?" She said sliding over behind the wheel as he got out taking his clothes with him.

"I’ll borrow this," he said of the wet suit.

"Fine," she almost smiled.

"You know, I don’t think I was acting superior. I think I’m shy around attractive women, that’s all," he said.

This time she did smile and even giggled.

She was gone and he was ready to collapse. He fished his own keys out of his pants pocket and opened the downstairs door.

"Umberto!" It was Lori approaching along the sidewalk. She had a pained look about her. She must have been waiting in her car.

He sat on the steps, clutching his belongings.

"So that’s your girlfriend. I guess your memories are coming back." Her eyes were heavy with the sorrows of life.

"Lori, Lori Lori…" He put his head against her middle. "No, she’s not my girlfriend… her sister and boyfriend set me up the night the bus hit me. I was just getting some answers. The five hundred dollars brought her here. I found something out about the manuscript. I have a few explanations. And I almost drowned getting them."

She brushed his hair with her fingers. "You didn’t screw her?" She asked.

"No, I followed her into a river looking for stolen coins and she pulled me out and then tried to leave me there… It’s very confusing."

She looked into the great fatigue settling into him. "Umberto! You mustn’t do these things," she said with tenderness, hugging him as if he were a small child.

*

She took him upstairs, making more inquiries and listened to his answers until he drifted into sleep upon the couch. Then she sat in the dark watching over him for almost an hour and quietly left.

He had dreams in which he remembered everything from the night he was murdered. And yes he seemed to think of it as a crime against himself. He saw himself talking to a tall man with the face of a golf pro under the light of a yellow bulb. A party swayed around him. The man shook his hand and made him promises. Umberto felt himself mistaken for somebody else. But that somebody else was a different Umberto, yet also him. He awoke in the middle of the night and took several moments to remember where he was and what had happened to him that day. The dream taunted him until it finally let go and disappeared. Alone in the dark he absorbed questions of the metaphysical. If only he had the energy to act, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, he should cancel his credit cards.

***

He knew he would end up there, without even thinking about it. One day he would simply find himself in the quiet among the books. He was tired from sleeping, having slept on the couch from evening through morning. His brain had trouble wanting to wake up. Indeed, had it fully woken up in weeks; or in his lifetime?

He saw the tall, flaxen headed, Norse woman busy at her desk. His first impulse was to slide past her and lose himself in something or other for awhile. But this Umberto was lost enough, he approached her directly, gliding to the side of her desk which was strewn with papers.

She was bent over, busily sorting through photocopies of something very librarian-esque. She wore a gray cashmere sweater which at this stage of its existence looked more gray than cashmere and a gray wool-like skirt. He did not sense perfume in her aura but a mild, book induced perspiration. Yet, she had something he thought he wanted.

There was a moment when she was aware of another body standing close to her which she shut out in order to concentrate on what she was doing. Then, social convention got the better of her and she turned her head to offer a restrained, ‘Yes?’ She saw Umberto and froze. Then she tried smiling.

"Hello Virginia the Juris Doctor, Head Librarian…" Umberto said in a melodious purr.

"Mr. Cain… I see the bandages are off of your head…"

"Yes, I seem to look a little better this way. Less like a lobotomy victim anyway."

"I think a lobotomy is…" she began.

"Done on the front of one’s skull, hence it being called a frontal lobotomy. But where the lobo is and whether it has anything to do with wolfish-ness I do not know," Umberto finished.

She released the photocopies and stood upright. She was quite tall, even in her pumps. She slouched, however, to remain at Umberto’s eye level. "When you asked me to lunch that one day I … I just was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say…"

Umberto’s eyes clouded over.

"Oh, you still have not regained your memories," she said.

"Circumstantial evidence leads me to believe that I have been known as Umberto Cain. I see no reason to dispute that, and have little curiosity about the man. But I am puzzled by recent events caused by this fellow’s actions…" he smiled.

He had spoken in an amusing way and she enjoyed his language. Now she was smiling, and even though she had limited practice it was a good smile.

"As far as lunch, or dinner or tea I’d love to," he offered.

"Drinks?" She asked.

"You may drink. The only drink I’ve experienced had mystical qualities but was the beginning of a ten day hangover; or at least it seems that way," he said.

"Wow. So what’s it like to be born yesterday?" She asked.

"It’s different. But different than what, I don’t know," he shrugged.

"Have you filed suit against the bus company?" She asked.

"Not yet."

"I hope you’re not waiting for your eighteen year old lawyer to pass the bar," she said, perhaps fishing about this person.

"No. There seem to be other developments that hold my interest," he said.

"Oh? You must tell me…"

He became aware that his conversation with her could go to places that his conversation with Lori and especially Angie might not. This excited him.

"When would you like to drink this drink with me?" He asked.

"Soon as I get back. My mom’s having some surgery and I’m taking off a week to be with her. It’s not that serious…" she flipped through her work calendar which Umberto saw had cryptic messages written across entire days with a black, felt-tip pen. "A week from Saturday?" She asked trying to maintain optimism in her voice. "I’ll be here during the day should you call…"

The word Saturday pained him, as if he would be cheating on Lori by avoiding her, as if every Saturday was a potentially life-threatening experience.

"Or is Saturday your busy night already?" She said, reading his face and giving him an out. He smiled.

"So you’re busy on a social note," she said, "I should be back by next Thursday if that’s better?"

Umberto considered his social calendar. He was convinced that if it were something he would have pursued, none of it would have happened. "I would like to see you Thursday, if I may…"

She smiled. "Thursday!" and flipped her calendar to Thursday and wrote above her notation: ‘Fiction D - H;’ ‘Umberto’ both entries were scrawled across the entire page.

"Can you tell me what developments of your possibly former life have you so engrossed?" She asked.

Umberto considered the question. "How many crimes were committed by misrepresentation, guile, robbery, carelessness and execution… for greed, lust, art, ego, meaning or boredom?"

Uncontrollably she rose to her full height as she pondered his sentence. "Can one commit a crime to obtain meaning?" She asked.

"Of course," Umberto answered, "consider its value."

She considered its value. "Then even I have the disposition of a criminal," she declared.

"Welcome to the club," Umberto jibed. "Well, I look forward to seeing you on Thursday," he said graciously taking her hand. She smiled and blathered an equally banal compliment and quickly hunted for a distraction on her desk as he departed. Umberto floated up the library steps feeling giddy and confused upon the occurrence of making his first real date.

*

Umberto returned to his apartment just in time to take a phone call. And it was not from Lori. The caller, with a tinny connection identified himself as ‘Frank.’

"Frank who?"

"Oh, you still doing that shit! Well, look pal, I am not entirely happy with what’s going on here," he said in an angry tone. Then as an aside added, "I haven’t got too long so I’m gonna get it all out, if you don’t mind," before becoming angry again. "What was going on with Angie yesterday? What are you doing with her? I’m not going to be in here forever, guy. I just want to make sure you understand that…"

As Frank rattled on, Umberto went to the drawer in the coffee table. There behind the checkbook and bank statements was a heavier object wrapped in velveteen fabric. Cradling the phone alongside his head, Umberto abandoned caution and laid the object onto the coffee table where he unwrapped the fabric. He was somewhat surprised to see it, yet something in a dream may have hinted it had been there.

"And when you get out of prison you’re going to look me up and explain why you were trying to peddle a manuscript you claimed I wrote… and why your ex-girlfriend stole my wallet and possibly did worse…"

"Who said that?" Frank asked.

"Frank, I want you to tell me where I can find Wendy…" Umberto said, feeling an urgency that surprised him.

"Hey…" Frank began.

"Hay is for horses. As far as when you get out; I’ll bet money that Angie is not waiting for you. I’ll bet more money that she’s not going with me, or the second or third, or fourth me who stumbles across her path…" Umberto said.

"Hey!" Frank shouted with venom.

"Frank, I’m sitting here in my living room looking at what appears to be a .45 caliber automatic pistol… Do you think it’s loaded?" Umberto asked.

"Oh… you still have that, huh…" Frank said with no trace of anger in his voice.

"What is this manuscript-shit about?" Umberto asked.

"It goes back a long, time buddy. It was almost like… like, I don’t know what, when you walked into that bar, the other night…" Frank laughed. "Theeeere’s Dumbert!"

"I’m not happy right now, buddy." Umberto added with derision, "My head has been fucked up, if you get my drift."

"Okay, okay, I catch your drift…" Frank admitted.

"I want to find Wendy. I want my credit cards back."

"Okay, okay. But I want you to carry out the trade with that Peter guy… I need that," Frank said.

"Your five hundred bucks is barely a retainer against my current expenses," Umberto said.

"There’ll be a lot more for you if this thing happens for us," Frank promised.

Umberto shrugged his promise off; water on a fish’s fin. "I’m going to look him up," Umberto said with conviction. "Now about Wendy…"

Frank exhaled. Even the tinny connection couldn’t distort that. Frank might be forthcoming. Umberto massaged his head and grinned.

***

Umberto went to bed early and was summoned from his slumbers by a most convincing apparition. A woman, a muse, half-dazed with a druggy sleepiness sat naked at the foot of his bed and roused him by pulling his feet. She had no allure or romantic interest in him. She was lonely and tired of the night. She offered him a drink from a bottle still in its paper bag.

Umberto was thirsty and drank deeply. More and more. It tasted sweet and made his throat burn with pleasure. He rose and dressed. The woman lay back onto his bed and partially covered her nakedness with his sheet. She was a brunette and he felt he must have known her. He was in the bathroom when he realized who she was. Yes, many recollections returned to him. Many mysteries showed the root of their puzzle. He went to search for her. She lay sleeping. He tried to rouse her. She could not be roused. Perhaps she was dead. Her form seemed lifeless in the dark. Umberto struggled to find a light. He could find no such light. Perhaps he couldn’t see her at all. Perhaps she wasn’t there, he told himself.

He went out to a club, the drink catching up to him. A band played. Tight blue jeans, flannel shirts, boots and straw cowboy hats. Some men and a woman singer. "Cowboys," Umberto marveled. He crowded the stage to absorb their music. Strains of fiddles reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands. Umberto was convinced he had inhabited cowboy lands some years ago. The woman singer was alluring. She had a melodious voice, a melodious body…

"Hey partner, want to step back a bit?" Umberto was admonished by the fiddle player. It sounded funny to him and he laughed. Here was a man talking like country-folk who had taken violin lessons as a boy. Umberto looked for someone to share this joke with. The woman singer smiled to him and Umberto blushed. He stepped back into a group of Japanese business men.

Another man who did not appear Japanese began talking to him. "Do you like her?" He asked pointing to the singer who was now much farther away from Umberto.

"Yes, but I don’t think I’m in love with her," Umberto told the man.

"Why not? I am. We all are," the man proclaimed waving his beer. He had a thick mustache and Umberto felt his own lip to see if he had one too. He didn’t.

"I don’t know her. Besides, I think I fall in love too quickly only to be disappointed too fast, and then I don’t know what to do," Umberto admitted.

"Uh, you’re a baby!" The man said without seeming mean. "You want your mommy."

"I don’t think so," Umberto replied laughing.

"Women are to be enjoyed, not kept. They are like milk, they go bad if you keep them too long. There should be a last sale date on them, I’m serious," the man said.

"I think I’ve heard this before," Umberto admitted. "Men are like dogs, just want to eat, sleep and shit unless they haven’t been neutered then they want to eat, sleep, shit and fuck. Women are like cats, they don’t know what they want but rarely want what you think they want. Maybe it’s true but I choose not to believe it."

The man shrugged. "Some people can never learn." He drank from his beer and then began a new conversation, "What is it that you want, my friend?"

What did he want? "Whatever I don’t have, that I think I need," Umberto said.

"A good answer and what do you need?" The man asked.

"You don’t want to be alone anymore?" The man asked.

Umbe