“How many people are there in Amorea, Walter?”
That stops him. Then, “One hundred and twenty-six.”
“And you know all of them.”
“Yeah, yes. So do you, Mike. Why, it’s the greatest little town there is!”
Mike thinks, Is it? Is it really? Because what are we comparing it to?
Out loud, he says, “If you know everyone, why don’t you know her?”
“Gosh, Mike. I couldn’t say. You know how it is.”
No, Mike doesn’t know, and that’s the problem. There’s something wrong here, and he doesn’t know what it is. “She knows you,” he says. “Look how she’s looking at you. Walter, she knows you. In fact, I would even go so far as to say she loves you a little bit.”
Walter laughs. “Mike, y
ou feeling okay? You look a little peaked.”
And yeah, maybe Mike’s not feeling so well. Maybe his stomach is rolling and his head is pounding because he’s almost there. He can see it in his head. He sees a man sitting at nightfall, a dark man, smoking a cigar, the smoke curling up around his head. He can hear him too, and it’s not a voice he can ever remember hearing before, but he knows it.
He says, “Mikey’s got jokes now. Ba-zing, folks. Come one, come all, listen to the funny man, sure as shit, fo sho!”
Walter says, “I… don’t understand? You okay there, Mike?”
Someone used to call me Mikey, he thinks.
Someone used to call me Mikey and we’d sit outside and it’d smell like cigar smoke, fo sho.
There’s a pain in his head, just like a loose tooth.
He looks back down at the photo.
He wants to push, but something is telling him not to. Not yet.
Because that loose-tooth pain is getting deliciously worse, and he’s worrying at it, poking it with a metaphorical tongue, but the photo in his hand feels like it’s already slipping. Not from his grasp; no, he’s clutching it so tightly that it’s starting to wrinkle. It is slipping, though, like he’s being pulled one way and it’s being pulled another.
Walter’s still staring down at him, and there’s something almost like fear in his eyes. Mike doesn’t know what he can possibly be afraid of, unless it’s Mike himself. And yeah, Mike’s acting a little weird, a little off his rocker, and yeah, he’s showing Walter a photo that Walter says he took but can’t remember everyone in.
He prods that pain. Just a little bit.
He could ask Sean, couldn’t he? He could ask Sean because the woman is standing right next to him in the photo. Sean would know. Sean wouldn’t be looking at him with the cow-dumb expression Walter’s got on his face. It pisses Mike off a little bit, if he’s being honest with himself. To the point where he has to stop himself from reaching out and gripping Walter’s shoulders and shaking him until his head snaps back and forth while demanding to know why Walter doesn’t remember, why Walter doesn’t know who this woman is.
The loose-tooth pain throbs in his head.
He stands. His knees pop and his body feels the heaviest it’s ever been.
When Mike’s fully upright, Walter says, “We should probably clean up that glass, you know? Wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves on it.”
Mike needs Sean.
Mike needs Sean because he hears the sound of shattering glass, of twisting metal. He takes a lurching step toward the kitchen, and Walter says, “Whoa there, Mike. You all right?”
No. He’s not. He’s not all right. Because in his hand is a photograph that shows a woman who does not exist in Amorea, and as he takes another step, he knows her name. He knows her name as clear as he knows his own.
His name is Mike Frazier.
And she’s Nadine.