One of Us Read Free Page A

earlier in the day. But this realization faded in and out, like a signal from a television station where the power is unreliable. Other memories were trying to shoulder it aside, clamoring for their time in the spotlight. The memories were artificially sharp and distinct, and trying to hide this by melding with my own recollections, but they couldn't, because the memories weren't mine and they had no real homes to go to. All they could do was overlay what was already there, like a double exposure, sometimes at the front, sometimes merely tickling like a word on the tip of your tongue.
    I walked back to the car and fumbled in the glove compartment, hoping to find something else I knew was mine. I immediately discovered a lot of cigarettes, including an opened pack, but they weren't my brand. I smoke Camel lights, always have: These were Kim. Nonetheless, it was likely that I'd bought them, because the opened pack still had the cellophane around the bottom half. It's a habit of mine to leave it there, which has given my best friend, Deck, hours of fun taking it off and sneaking it onto the top half of the pack when I'm in the John. The memory of Deck's trademark cackle as I yanked and snarled at a pack after such an incident suddenly bloomed in my mind, grounding me for a moment in who I was.
    I screwed up my eyes tightly, and when I opened them again, I felt a little better.
    The passenger seat was strewn with twists of foil and a number of cracked vials, and it didn't take me long to work out why. A long time ago, in a past life, I used to deal a drug called Fresh. Fresh removes the ennui that comes from custom and acquaintance, and presents everything to you—every sight, emotion, and experience—as if it's happening for the first time. Part of how Fresh does this is by masking your memories, to stop them grabbing new experience and turning it into just the same old thing. Evidently I'd been trying to replicate this effect with a cocktail of other recreational pharmaceuticals, and had ended up blacking out. On an unlit mountain road, in Mexico, at night.
    Great going.
    But it had evidently worked, because for the time being I was back. I started the car and pulled carefully back onto the road, after a quick mental check to make sure I was pointing in the right direction. Then I tore the filter off a Kim, lit her up, and headed south.
    I passed only one other car along the way, which was good, because it meant I could drive down the middle of the road and stay as far as possible from the precipitous drops that line the route. This left me free to do a kind of internal inventory, and to start panicking about that instead. Most of the last six hours were missing, along with a number of words and facts. I could recall where I lived, for example—on the tenth floor of the Falkland, one of Griffith's livelier apartment houses—but not my room number. It simply wasn't available to me. Presumably I'd remember by sight: I hoped so, because all my stuff was in there and otherwise I'd have nothing to wear.
    I could remember Laura Reynolds's name, and what she'd done to me. She'd evidently been with me for some of the trip down, in spirit at least: It must have been her who bought the cigarettes, though I opened the pack. I didn't really know what Laura Reynolds looked like, only how she appeared to herself, and I had no idea where she was. I'd probably had a good reason for heading for Ensenada, or at least a reason of some kind— assuming, of course, that it had been I who made the decision. Either way, now that I was here, it seemed I might as well go on.
    I made good time, having to stop only once, while a herd of coffeemakers crossed the road in front of me. I read somewhere that they often make their way down to Mexico. I can't see why that would be so, but there was certainly a hell of a lot of them. They came down from the hill in silence, trooped across the road in a protective huddle, and then headed off down the slope in