Forget Me Not

Clifford Royal Johns

Billie has paid to forget something, but she can't remember what. She has eaten dinner, cleared the table and washed the dishes. She brushes her hands down the front of her calf-length pleated khaki skirt and sits down again at her kitchen table, knees together, hands folded in her lap. She chews on her lip, thinking, fearful of what she might have forgotten.

Although paying a forget company to surgically remove a memory isn't considered bizarre behavior anymore, Billie doesn't think of herself as a forgetter . The label feels like quitter or failure. Forgetters tend to lose a part of themselves each time they forget something, and she can't imagine doing that on purpose.

She lifts her hands, splays them out at arms length and considers her nails. Her right thumbnail is shorter than it should be and a bit ragged. She goes to the cupboard to get her emery stick.

Of course, she wouldn't know she's had a memory forgotten if she hadn't received the call before dinner.

“Ms. Markham?” a man had said.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember Wednesday night, July tenth? Do you remember what you did?”

“That's what, six months ago? Of course not. Who are you and why would you ask such a question?” Normally, she didn't answer the phone unless it was from someone she knew, but she'd just picked it up without thinking, assuming it was Carl. She'd been hoping he would call. When she looked at the phone, she saw that it didn't display the caller's name or number.

“Ms. Markham, I do know what you did, and I know you went to a forget clinic and had your memory of the event removed. I will inform your fiance of your, uh, transgression, unless you make it worth my while not to do so. Think about it.”

The man had hung up then, and Billie hasn't stopped thinking about what he said. The man has not called back.

Billie goes to bed and dreams of things she might have had forgotten like stealing, being raped, having an abortion or giving up a child, beating children, animalistic sex in dirty alleys, murder. In the morning, she washes her hair and thinks that she might have had any of these things forgotten. She focuses on the worst scenes, the most dreadful and distasteful, so she won't believe it, so the vision is so dramatically unlike her that she simply can't believe it of herself. But in the back of her mind, she knows there are less horrible things, minor transgressions, which she might have actually committed and then chose to forget. Things that, even with their relative tameness, would disturb her sleep for sometime if she didn't remove the memory of them.

Then, as she's polishing her brown loafers, the ones with the little free-swinging tassels, she starts to wonder if she leads a whole other life, a life that's full of dangerous or vulgar events, a life that she inexorably slips into at certain intervals, then always pays to forget when she again comes to her senses. Who might she be in that life?

She walks to the bus stop. She thinks people are looking at her there. The man in the yellow ski jacket stares at her over his magazine. The boy wearing mittens and holding his mother's hand watches her, studies her, unsmiling. She fantasizes that they know what she did. That they are horrified or revolted by her behavior. She tries to overdramatize their reactions so she can get past this obsession, so she can see how silly she is being. After all, she may not have had anything at all forgotten. Perhaps the caller was playing a prank, or just trying to get her to pay him some money based on a general sense of guilt, or on her belief that she could have done something wrong.

On the bus, she stares out the window, finally distracted by the frenetic activity of the commute: five million people all trying to get to work at the same time.

During the day, Billie is kept busy. There's a bug in her circuit layout program and the customer is behind schedule and very angry. Billie finally finds the problem, a trivial, stupid error she'd overlooked while searching for a more complicated logic error in her program. She fixes it and delivers a new version of the program at five-fifteen. She catches the five-thirty bus, plenty of time to make a six-thirty date with Carl.

At the restaurant, Billie watches Carl, waiting for him to make some remark or cast her a glance that would tell her that he knows what it was she did. Finally, she decides to dive in. “Have you ever had a forget?” she asks him.

“No,” he says, but then his eyebrows lower and his mouth scrunches up. “At least I don't think so. I wouldn't really know for sure, would I? Why? Have you?” He smiles.

“Oh. No,” she says. Can he tell she's lying? At least she thinks she might be lying.

After the waiter sets lasagna in front of them, Carl, suddenly solicitous and worried, says, “Is something bothering you, Billie?” He's such a sweet man, she thinks. He's tall and handsome and strong, and everything she's always hoped her future husband would be. She's dated some before, but usually chose her boyfriends based on who her father would not have wanted her to go out with. Carl started out that way too, but he is different. He works driving truck and doesn't use illegal substances. He's nice to her. They are getting married in the spring, although no specific date has been set.

Carl walks her home early. He declines the cup of decaf she offers to make. He has to drive the truck to Rockford first thing in the morning, pick up twenty-two refrigerators, and deliver them to Indianapolis by four.

In her condo, she sits down with a cup of hot chocolate and watches the evening news on her computer. A fire near the river, someone shot by an off-duty policeman while trying to rob a White Hen Pantry, still no progress on the killings in Oak Brook. Billie realizes that they said the killings occurred in July, but they didn't mention the day.

She switches to a news search and finds lots of references to the killings. July twenty-seven, not July ten, not the date the man on the phone had mentioned.

The phone rings. She sets her computer aside and looks at the phone display. No name or number shows, just as before. She considers not answering it, but then this man might tell Carl about it, whatever it is. She presses the button, “Hello?”

“Have you thought about what I said before? Can you remember what you did? Can you remember what you paid to have forgotten, Billie?” She tries to place the voice, but can't. He sounds slightly New England . He drops his ‘r's and puts them where they don't belong. He says, “rememba” instead of “remember.”

He continues. “You used your engagement ring to pay for your forget so you wouldn't see a payment to the forget company from any account, then you had that forgotten too, didn't you?”

Billie remembers having lost Carl's ring. When she couldn't find it, she told him she couldn't imagine how she'd lost it, that it was dear to her. She'd felt deeply guilty and all that feeling comes back to her now. Her eyes hurt, remembering. She feels herself flush.

Carl had been graceful about it, even though the ring had cost him more than he earned in a month. But she'd hurt him, she could tell. He thought she didn't care enough to keep track of the ring. He thought she felt it was beneath her, since she made so much more money than him and because she had a wealthy father. She told him that she loved him and how sorry she was, but he just laughed it off as though it didn't matter, but it did. He was distant and overly polite the rest of the evening and said he couldn't see her for a week because of his work schedule. But things had returned to normal after a while. Now life is just fine, and she wants it to stay that way.

“Why are you calling me?” she says. “Why are you telling me this? What do you want?”

“I want five thousand in twenties, and I want you to deliver it to me personally. I'll call you back tomorrow night.” He hangs up.

Now she tries to think who he is, that he knows about the ring. She thinks he works for the forget company and decides to go talk to them during her lunch break the next day.

***

The forget company has a store front on Hacker Street . The neon sign says “Forget What?” in pale blue script with the question mark in a deeper blue. She hesitates at the door, but convinces herself to bluster in, and she walks up to the front desk.

There's no one there right then, and she turns, thinking she is wasting her time. She might have gone to a different clinic, perhaps “Forget About It,” which is just down the street, but this one is the closest, and she thinks it's where she would go.

There are two benches in the waiting room, a water cooler, a few shiny poinsettias and a coffee table covered with pristine magazines. There's an older man sitting at the far end of the bench on the left, curled into a magazine so she can't see his face. He's hiding.

“Can I help you?”

Billie turns and looks at the woman behind the counter. She has short perky blonde hair and a smile made a bit garish with strong red lipstick and excessively cheerful rosy cheeks.

“Maybe,” Billie says, damning herself for not being firm and specific as it says to be in, Negotiate Like a Man , a book she read on her rooftop while on vacation. “I need to know if I forgot something this summer.”

The woman's smile droops slightly. She glances toward a man who has come from the back room and is collecting his coat, then confides, “We can't possibly provide any information about previous forgets. Would you like to forget this idea that you've had -- that you've had a forget in the past? We do that too, you know. When you find yourself out on the street, you won't have any interest in trying to determine what you've forgotten and you won't remember being here!” She pauses for a moment, then adds, “Forgets related to forgets are half price.”

She's still smiling, but not hopeful. Billie looks at the counter, not wanting to look at this woman. “But I've lost my engagement ring, and I think I might have sold it to have this forget, or perhaps I've traded it for a forget, and I need to get the ring back.” She knows she's whining, and she hates it, but it just comes out that way.

“I'm sorry ma'am,” the woman behind the counter says. The smile is gone. She looks as though she has other things she would rather be doing. “As I said, your problem can be forgotten, but we can't get your ring back for you even if what you suspect were true.”

Billie turns slowly and walks toward the door. She should go back and demand to speak to her supervisor, but she just can't manufacture the courage. The man who was putting on his coat holds the door for her, then follows her out. He walks near her until they pass the glass of the store front, then says, “It's a standard way to obscure payment to forget companies, you know.”

Billie looks at him. “What do you mean?”

“They have you bring in something of value that you could easily lose like jewelry to pay for your forget, then they have you forget about that item along with whatever it was you wanted to forget in the first place. This way, you can't find any evidence you ever had a forget, and you think you just lost the item. Works out for everyone.” He considers for a moment, his breath steaming in the cold. “Of course it's also possible you just lost it. In fact, that's the most likely possibility.”

The man looks at her, pauses, then walks off leaving Billie wondering what to do next. She can afford the five thousand, but she worries about the way the extortionist said, “Deliver it personally.” He sounded predatory.

She could go to her father, but she can't stand the idea of him bailing her out of another problem with his disappointment, his I-told-you-so attitude. And she doesn't want to call the police for the same reason. Her father has good friends in law enforcement, and he would find out. What's more, the news media would find out.

While standing at a light, waiting for the traffic to clear, Billie looks at the men around her. Any of these men could be the caller. He could be watching her all the time; following her. She notices a man who looks to be in his forties dressed in brown except for his shoes which are black. He's watching her, little furtive glimpses with quick eyes. Billie knows she's pretty and is used to being looked at, but now she wonders. Is this the caller? Once across the street he turns and walks west as she continues north.

Billie walks home and tries to remember. She looks back through her records, which are careful and complete, and can't find anything interesting for the week of July ten. She tries to place herself in that part of the summer, but it all blends together. Who can remember a particular day almost six months ago? Looking at her calendar, she finds out that day was a Wednesday. She also finds a reference to three days before and four days after, a charge from the grocery, and a receipt from their favorite restaurant.

There is an extra notation in her records saying that that was the dinner when she told Carl about losing his ring. She remembers searching her apartment for hours, cleaning it carefully as she went, hoping to find the ring. She'd even taken out her vacuum cleaner bag and sifted the contents. She always wore the ring when she was out with Carl, though most of the time when she wasn't out with Carl, she kept it in her upper dresser drawer with her other jewelry, so she wouldn't lose it.

Billie looks around her apartment again, trying to think of other places where she might have placed her ring, when she answered the phone, say, or broke something or somehow disturbed her usual routine and ended up setting the ring aside. She feels again that sense of intense frustration combined with a stomach ache of worry about what Carl would do. Not that she'd worried he would get overly angry, but rather that he wouldn't. That he'd be hurt, that he would feel she didn't care. Which was just how he'd reacted. She thinks of the bathroom drain.

She rushes to the bathroom, and gets the dishpan and puts it under the drain. She opens the trap and looks inside, but it is empty except for a small clog of hair and congealed soap.

She goes to the kitchen drain and finds grease and a couple orange seeds, but again, no ring. Would it still be there after nearly six months anyway? She washes the dishpan and the floor around the sinks and drops onto her sofa.

What could she have done that would have made her go under a forget company's gamma knife? She can't imagine. She just wants her life to be normal again. She can't stand the discord.

She decides to go to the bank and get twenty-five hundred out. That sum won't arouse the curiosity of the tellers, and she can go to another branch tomorrow and get the rest.

***

When he calls again, he tells her to bring the money to a garage near the train station in Glen Ellyn at nine-thirty the next night. “It's three streets north of the station, turn right then find the yellow garage that doesn't have a house beside it. Just walk in the side door. If I'm not there, wait for me. Come alone, or Carl will find out.” He hangs up. He sounds lecherous, and the garage sounds secluded and dangerous. He pronounced Carl as “Cahl.”

She sits on her sofa, picking at the fabric pills on the cover, trying to decide. She even considers taking a gun with her and shooting the man. This thought concerns her. She thinks maybe that's what got her into this trouble in the first place, but she also knows that forget companies are not allowed to let you forget any criminal activity, or the witnessing of any criminal activity, without legal authorization from the court. She had to have forgotten something that, at least on the surface, sounded like a legal event.

Still, she's tempted to go, pay her five thousand and leave. Get it over with. Put her life back in order. She knows without thinking it out in detail that paying is stupid. It's utterly insane to think that even if he doesn't rape her or kill her, that he won't demand another five thousand next month, but she doesn't have another angle. She doesn't know what else to do.

After sitting for a while, thinking about it, Billie calls Carl. She just wants to hear his voice. “Hello Billie,” he says.

“Hi, do you want to get a quick cup of coffee or a dessert somewhere? I'd really like to see you tonight.” She thinks she might tell Carl about the caller. Perhaps if she tells him all about it, he will forgive her whatever it is she has done.

“You know I can't, Billie. I'm on call for package delivery Wednesdays. I'll see you Friday night. We can spend some extra time. I have Saturday off.” He sounds lecherous too, but in a nice way, in an amusing and sensual way.

After she hangs up, she realizes that the extortionist used Carl's name. He'd said he'd tell “Cahl.”

Whoever it is, he knows a lot about her. That's a limited set of people and none of them have a New England accent. But it is at that moment that she remembers Carl's former roommate bragging that he could do accents. She tries to replay his voice in her head, she tries to recall what he sounded like, but can't.

Is this the man, the extortionist? Carl's old roommate, Jerry? Where had he moved to? The suburbs somewhere, but she can't remember where. Could it have been Glen Ellyn ? She remembers thinking it was west.

If it is Jerry, she is less worried and more annoyed. He wouldn't hurt anyone, at least she doesn't think so. She doesn't remember much about him. She remembers his manner only as labels she must have given him. He was offensive and a buffoon, but dangerous wasn't on her list of labels.

She spends the rest of the evening and most of the following day at work convincing herself that the man is indeed Jerry, and that she can shame him into telling her what it was she forgot and also convince him not to take her money.

She catches the eight-fifty-one train and stands at the doors all the way, not wanting to miss Glen Ellyn station. She sways back and forth with the train and with three suited men going home late from work. They look weary and stare at the flashing scenery. Billie misses the clickety racket of the old trains. The new ones are whisper quiet. They ride on a magnetic field instead of rails which always leaves her feeling wobbly and slightly seasick.

At Glen Ellyn , she steps down to the pavement, pauses for a moment to get used to solid ground, then following the directions given her, she walks to the garage. It's dark and she can't see the neighborhood very well. There are large leafless trees, and not much traffic once she's off the main street leading away from the station.

She's not sure it's yellow, but it's the only garage near where she was to meet the man who she is convinced is Jerry. She picks her way to the side door, cursing herself for not bringing a flashlight.

The side door is unlocked. She opens it and peers inside, but her eyes only make out the shape of a small car. She stands outside the door trying to discern a person in the shadows, then someone pushes her into the garage.

She stumbles, then turns shivering, frightened.

“Give me the money,” he says.

“No, Jerry.”

There's a pause, then a brief laugh. “I don't know who Jerry is, but I'm not him. Give me the money, then take off your clothes.”

Her heart jumps, and she can feel herself shaking. “Are you going to rape me?” She is getting ready to defend herself. She has put a rock in the bottom of her purse, and she can swing it at him. She wonders if it is a large enough rock.

“No, it'll just take you a while to follow me if you have to get dressed first. Take off your clothes, then step back.”

His phone chimes. It chimes again. “Shit.” He digs in his pocket. “Yeah.” There's a pause and Billie tries to hear the other side of the conversation, but can't.

“No,” he says. “I'll call you back later.” He closes the phone and shoves it back in his coat pocket.

She gives him the money. Five thousand in twenties is a large stack, which she has put in an envelope. It makes her feel like she is the criminal when she hands it to him.

“Now your clothes.”

She strips off her clothes in the near dark, leaving her panties and bra on. She is shivering and holding her hands to best conceal herself. He looks her up and down, then gathers up her clothes. He goes through her coat and takes her phone. From her purse he takes a swipe card with about fifty on it. She wonders why he would need her emergency fifty when she'd just given him five thousand. He does not comment on the rock. He bundles up her clothes and purse, then throws them over the dark cloth-covered car into the back of the garage. “In March, I'll ask again,” he says.

He stops and looks at her, thinking. “You were a pretty one,” he says. Then he darts out the door. She thinks he had on a blue sweat shirt and jeans but it was too dark to be sure. He wore white sneakers.

She collects her clothes, shakes them to free the dirt and puts them on, shivering uncontrollably. She checks her purse when she's outside under a street lamp. He left her the return train ticket and her keys which are a small blessing.

She is angry, but mostly at herself. On the train, she thinks how stupid she was to believe the extortionist was Jerry. She feels ill at the thought that this could have been anyone. She could have been raped and murdered and no one would have known for days. The garage had been very dusty. She brushes at her slacks, but she just makes the dirt marks worse.

If this wasn't Jerry, who was it? Someone who had never seen her before because he'd said, “You were a pretty one,” as though he'd regretted not having the time to rape her.

***

At work the following day, Billie scans her computer, looking for files dated July tenth. She finds two source files and some object files dated that day, and a few pieces of e-mail, but nothing that jogs her memory. July ten was just like any other Wednesday, although since it was a Wednesday, she knows she didn't go out with Carl. He's on call Wednesdays. Other than that, she has nothing to go on.

She's tempted again to call the police. She's out five thousand, and she feels violated even if he didn't touch her. Perhaps humiliated is a better word. Why had she gone to that garage?

Then she starts to wonder who owns that garage. Why did the extortionist pick that spot? Was it near his house? Was that his car in there? Probably not, but he did know the area well enough to know the garage was there and that it wasn't used very much.

At lunch she decides to take the rest of the day off, hops the train back to Glen Ellyn and goes back to the garage. It's daylight this time, and she sees that the neighborhood has neatly cut lawns and nice cars on the white concrete driveways, not even cigarette butts in the gutters. She walks to the garage. There's no house with it because the house has been torn down. The lot has a for sale sign which includes a builder's number. “Build to suit.”

She reaches into her coat pocket for her phone then remembers that the man stole it. Billie wonders what the man might have done with the phone. He probably threw it away, but she decides to call her own cell phone number anyway. She goes back to the train station and uses a pay phone.

A woman answers, “Hi-lo.” Billie knows the voice. In the background she hears someone yell, “No, don't answer that!” then silence. She thinks she recognizes that voice too. It sounds like Carl.

Lots of people in Chicago sound like Carl. It could be almost anyone, Billie tells herself. It couldn't be Carl. Could it?

***

On the train again, Billie tries to pull together what makes no sense. The person who met her at the garage and took her phone was not Carl. Of that, she was sure. But her phone has ended up at Carl's place. She knows this because it is the woman who lives across the hall from him who answered. She always says “Hi-lo” instead of hello: very distinctive. In fact, Hi-lo is her nickname.

No doubt the phone is destroyed or powered off completely now, but Billie has learned enough. Enough to be indignant, yet hurt and confused. But mostly indignant right now. Why would Carl do something like this? If he needed money, he could have asked her.

In retrospect, she believes she should have guessed. The caller knew too much about her. But she was blind to the idea that Carl had anything to do with this extortion.

She wonders if making her take off her clothes was Carl's idea. She thinks not, then ridicules herself for still thinking of Carl as the good guy.

She closes her eyes and pictures his face close to hers, his eyes drifting shut even as hers do, a tilt of the head.

She shudders. Even as she tries to tell herself Carl is not the sensible, caring man she thought he was, she is making up possible scenarios where he is not behind the whole thing, where he's not an evil bastard. It's just some sort of misunderstanding. Carl found the phone and doesn't know it's hers. Carl was mugged and the mugger dropped the phone. Maybe he knows it's hers and was waiting for the police to take the phone so they can trace any calls because he thinks she's been kidnapped. No, probably not, but she still hopes.

When the train pulls into Ogilvie Station, Billie wipes tears from her eyes and shuffles off the train. She finds herself walking more and more slowly, until finally she stops in front of a shoe shine stand, now closed, the gate pulled down from the ceiling, and says to herself, “Billie, you've got to snap out of this or you'll never make it home.”

She straightens her shoulders, hoists her purse strap higher on her shoulder and strides toward the entrance, trying to appear important, in a hurry, and confident. Inside, she feels ashamed for having loved Carl. What would her father say?

She can feel Carl's hot, insistent breath on her ear, hear him whispering that he loves her too.

***

At her apartment, Billie is fuming. She pours herself some coffee, but leaves it steaming on the table while she stomps back and forth across the living room. She kicks off her shoes, because they are twisting over every time she reverses direction. She's determined to do something, but she doesn't know what exactly she's determined to do. The gun idea pops into her head again. Disgusted with herself, she paces the room a few more times, chewing on her thumbnail until it bleeds.

She picks up the phone and stares at it for a moment before dialing Carl's number. It rings twice. It's picked up, but there's a pause. “Don't you dare hang up, Carl.”

A man answers, “Carl is no more, Ms. Markham.” It sounds like, “Cahl is no mo-ah.”

“Who are you? What's happened to Carl?”

The phone goes silent. Billie drops it and rushes to the door grabbing her purse as she leaves. She's outside before she thinks she should have called the police, but she still hasn't replaced her phone, so she'd have to go back and that would take too long.

Carl's apartment is only a few blocks away. She doesn't like to be out in his neighborhood at night, it's on the other side of the elevated train, but she resists the urge to turn back, to hide. She enters his apartment building and waits frantically for the elevator, chewing on the index finger of her leather glove. When the doors open she almost knocks down an elderly woman who is trying to get out of the elevator while Billie is rushing in. Billie presses eight. The doors wait an interminable time before closing and the elevator is unbearably slow. Billie imagines Carl dead on the floor, blood leaking from his neck, or maybe his back. Or maybe he's on the kitchen floor where the blood would be easier to clean up.

The doors open, and she looks down the quiet hall. Somehow she expected police, emergency personnel, a gurney, but the hall is dim and quiet.

Billie goes to Carl's door. She can't decide if she should knock or use her key. What if the murderer is still in there? She doesn't have a rock in her purse anymore. There's a vase that looks heavy on the table in the hall. She tries to grab it as a weapon, but it's bolted to the table to keep people from stealing it, or perhaps to keep people from hitting someone else over the head with it.

She rummages though her purse without bothering to take her gloves off and finds her key. Opening the door slowly, she sees the lights are off, but she slips inside anyway. Standing to one side, Billie reaches out and flicks on the ceiling light. She is struck momentarily by the sudden glare, but something is wrong. The floor should be open and empty, but there's something pink on the beige carpet. “Carl?” she says, even though she knows it's not him.

Lying on the floor, congealed blood showing magenta on the back of her head, is Hi-lo. She's wearing only her bra and panties. Beside her lies a stone vase not that much different from the one in the hall. She stumbles over to look down at Hi-lo then the door bursts open behind her. “This is the Police. Hands up, lady. Don't turn around.”

***

The officer's name is Argawal. He's gentle, but persistent. She reveals her story in bits and pieces, but when she has no more to tell, he starts repeating questions. “Why did you pay the man? What makes you think you forgot anything at all? Why didn't you call the police when he demanded money? Why didn't you call the police when he answered Carl's phone? Why are you still wearing your gloves? Why did you kill her?”

Billie is stuttering, something she hasn't done in fifteen years, and crying and tired. She wants to go home, but Argawal says he doesn't think he can let her go. He tells her she's a witness and that she would be in danger if he let her go home, but he leaves unsaid that if she declines to go with him, he will arrest her.

At the station, sitting in a small room with gray concrete walls, a metal table and three metal chairs which are bolted to the floor, she says again, “I didn't k-kill her. She was dead when I got there. Someone else answered the phone. He said C-Carl was no more. I was terrified, so I ran to his apartment, let myself in and found Hi-lo. The man must have killed her.”

“Do you know where Carl might be?”

“It's F-Friday, I think he had another appliance run, but the man said he was d-dead and . . .”

Argawal is calm, his voice slow, hypnotic. “And this is the man with the New England accent?”

“Yes.”

“The same man who extorted money from you and forced you to strip naked for him?”

“Yes. I mean n-no. He didn't make me t-take off all ma-my clothes.” She looked up at him and understood then that he was trying to catch her out. Trying to get her to change her story so he would know she was lying. “I've decided I would like to wait for my l-lawyer.” Her stutter makes her feel guilty. It makes her feel incapable and diminished, like a child

Argawal sighs deeply, as though he is personally disappointed in her. “If you want your lawyer present, I will stop now, but you must know this will slow down our investigation. Do you want that?”

“You're just trying to get me to confess or something. You're not investigating. You're hoping.” Billie has called her father, who said he would send Mr. Bitner. She's known Mr. Bitner since she was a child. He's a good lawyer and also an old friend of the family. Mr. Bitner will know what to do. She decides to be quiet until he gets there.

***

There is no clock on the wall, but Billie thinks she has to have been sitting there for several hours before a guard enters and takes Billie to another room down the hall. The guard is disinterested and bored -- she is unimportant, just another criminal like the rest of the criminals.

This room is smaller and the chairs have worn, flattened pads on them. The chairs here are not fixed to the floor.

A few minutes later, Mr. Bitner enters, briefcase in hand. He looks at her for a long moment, then says, “Hello, Ballantine. Cavalry's here.”

Billie just lowers her head. Mr. Bitner is a representative of her father and as such deserves all her respect. The table in front of her is dirty and deeply gouged.

“So, did you kill her, or not?”

“No!” she says surprised at the question.

Mr. Bitner opens his case and touches a few keys. “All right then, from the top, tell me the story.”

“Have they found Carl?”

“No. He's not answering his phone. They're contacting his employer to find out if he went out on a delivery.” He says this somewhat distastefully. Mr. Bitner doesn't like Carl any more than her father does. “Just tell me what happened from the beginning. All of it.”

Billie relates the story to him. Every detail she can think of. Mr. Bitner doesn't say a word, he just leans back and looks at the ceiling. She can't even hear him breathe.

When she's done, and her story has her sitting right where she is, she stops. Mr. Bitner continues to stare at the ceiling. Finally, he sighs and puts his hands on the table. “You say you don't remember Jerry very well. Why not?”

“He moved from Carl's apartment just after Carl and I started dating. We didn't interact very much.”

“How did you meet Carl?”

Billie thinks about this. How did she meet Carl? This should be an easy question to answer, but she can't remember. “A friend introduced us or something. I don't remember.”

“When would this have been?”

“June, I guess.”

“You guess? Think harder, Ballantine. This is a serious matter. Right now, they can't prove you did anything more than get there before them, but they're pretty sure you whacked Miss Platt over the head with that vase. She was mostly naked and in your boyfriend's apartment.” He sounds disgusted, patronizing.

“I can't remember right now, but I keep records of spending, and my book will show when we started going out because we've always gone dutch.”

“Except for the ring?”

Billie shrinks back into her chair. “Yes,” she whispers.

“Do you know what the ring cost Carl?”

“No, but it was excellent quality, not ostentatious, just very well designed and made. Carl had -- has, very good taste.”

“Do you think it was worth a few thousand?”

“Oh, yes. At least five or six, I should think.”

Bitner stands and walks to the wall, then back. “Let's get back to Jerry for a moment. What does Jerry look like? What was his last name?”

Billie looks at her fingernails. “I don't remember what he looks like. He's white. Medium, sort of . . . .”

“What do you mean, medium, sort of? What kind of description is that? He was your boyfriend's roommate. You must have met several times. He must have been around. What does he look like?” Bitner leans on the table and glares down at Billie. He heaves a big sigh, waiting.

“I'm sorry Mr. Bitner. I couldn't remember for that other man, and I can't remember for you.” She is surprised at herself for talking to Mr. Bitner this way. She looks at the table. “I just don't have a picture of him in my head. I can't remember.”

“Can you remember George Maples?”

“My father's new chauffeur? Of course.”

“You could describe him?”

“Yes, I could,” says Billie proudly, thinking this has vindicated her memory.

“You've met him once, haven't you? In April, as I remember. You didn't even ride in the car with him. You were there when I came to your house in your father's car driven by George, that's all. Yet you remember him?” He leans in closer.

Billie feels like giving up and crying. She's been trying hard not to allow the feeling of despair to come through, but she can feel it leak into her eyes now.

Mr. Bitner sits down. “Obviously, the forget you had in July was related to this Jerry person somehow. You've forgotten all the salient points about him. All you remember is that he used to be Carl's roommate. Just enough so that if someone talks to you about him, it won't bother you like it would if you didn't remember him at all.”

This revelation strikes Billie solidly in the head. Why would she forget Carl's old roommate? He'd moved out so soon after they started going together. And then her eyes widen in sudden shock. “It could have been Jerry at the garage. He said he wasn't Jerry, but it could have been. It could have been Jerry on the phone. I just forgot what he looked and sounded like.”

“Exactly.”

“I do remember a few tidbits, though. He knew how to fake accents. He used to surf near Los Angles somewhere. He moved to the western suburbs. That's about it.”

“Like I said, just enough so if the subject came up, you wouldn't suspect that you'd had him, or some events involving him, forgotten.” Bitner pauses for a moment, considering. “What's Jerry's last name?”

“Oh, no. I don't remember that either.”

“That's OK. It'll be on the lease. They might also have the forwarding address if the post office doesn't. Now, let's talk about Hi-lo.”

“She's lives, lived, across the hall. She would drop by once in a while. Sometimes she would go to the movies with Carl and me. She cooked us dinner a couple times. She was very tall and had trouble keeping boyfriends, although I could never figure out why. I remember her well.”

Mr. Bitner leans forward again. “But here's the important part. Was she living across the hall when you first met Carl. Were they already friends? Was she a friend of Jerry's?”

Billie tries to remember the summer, the time the air conditioning died, the time Carl broke the lock and they had a box dinner with a bottle of wine out on the roof. She recalls his sparkling eyes as he dramatically swirled it in his glass then sniffed the aroma as though he might send the wine back.

“I can't recall her being around, but I don't remember her moving in or anything.”

“Do you remember being introduced.”

“No.” How could she have so much missing from her memory and not have noticed? Billie feels incompetent, like she's gotten suddenly very old and is losing her memory.

“I'm going to go check a few things out,” Mr. Bitner says, leaning back in his chair. “Don't say anything more to the police. They will let you go home now, and they will tell you to stay in the area. Do that. Stay around. Don't go anywhere outside the neighborhood without calling me first and talking to me personally. Got it?”

Billie looks Mr. Bitner in the eye for the first time. She sees concern there, but not worry. “I got it,” she says, “and thank you.”

“Your father's paying. Thank him, not me.” He smiles to take the sting away from his words, then closes his briefcase, picks it up and slips out the door past the guard.

***

At the apartment, Billie waits for Carl or Mr. Bitner to call. She's anxious, and has to put on gloves to keep from biting her nails. She begins to pace, but stops and forces herself to sit down and try to remember early July.

Why doesn't Carl call? Is he at the police station right now trying to convince them that he didn't kill Hi-lo? She wants to talk to someone. She considers calling the police and asking them if they've found Carl yet, but doubts the front desk would help her find out. It's late and she should be in bed. She has volunteer work tomorrow, a shelter administration meeting that she is supposed to run at eight-thirty.

There's a knock at her door. She leaps up in surprise at the sound, then rushes to the door and flings it open, thinking it's Carl, but it's not.

It's the extortionist. He pushes his way past her and shoves the door shut behind him. He grabs her and lifts her off her feet, then carries her over to the sofa where he drops her across it. “Where is Carl?” he says, New England accent gone now.

“I don't know.” Billie shudders and tries to curl into a ball at the side of the sofa away from the man. “Are you Jerry?”

He laughs a bit, then stands back and laughs harder. “Hell of a witness you'd make. A witless witness.” He laughs some more. “Carl ought to be here by now. I called him right after I, well, a while ago. He was in Valparaiso , he should be here by now.”

“Maybe the police found him? Maybe they called him?”

“I told him about the body. He's got his phone turned off, you can bet on that.”

Billie feels her stomach knot. She's cramping, but she can't straighten out to ease the pain. She says again, “Are you Jerry, Carl's old roommate?”

“Those forgets work pretty well don't they? Yea, I'm Jerry, but I was never Carl's roommate, silly little rich girl. I was yours. Your hidden roommate. Not good enough to tell Daddy about. Not like Carl.”

***

Billie expects everything to come back then. She expects all the memories to flood in and explain it all, but they don't. Her mind sits there, blank, stunned and empty. “But you were Carl's roommate,” she says, almost plaintive.

Jerry grins at her. He has long hair tied back in a ponytail, a wide, and one would think guileless, face with dark eyes and a very sharp nose. He goes over to the door and locks it. “Everything would have worked out perfectly, but Hi-lo had to answer the stupid phone. When she saw it was yours she asked why I had it. I told her it wasn't yours, but you mark everything, don't you. Even your underwear's monogrammed.” He smiles lecherously at that. “I made up an excuse, but she didn't believe me.” He paused. “Doesn't matter now. Carl is coming here. He and I have something to discuss before I head out to California . Yes,” he says, “something to discuss.”

“I thought you'd killed Carl. You said you did.”

“No, I said I was going to kill him.”

“Why do you want to talk to Carl. What's he got to do with you?”

Jerry doesn't answer.

Billie is worried about Carl. How does Jerry know he's coming here? What's he going to do? What makes Jerry so sure Carl won't go to the police and turn himself in? That's what she would do. “The police are looking for you. Don't you think you should leave now? They may even be watching this place.”

Jerry glances at the windows, then at the door. “If they are, then it's too late, but I doubt it. I think they are out looking for poor Carl the murderer.”

“What do you mean?”

Jerry sits down on the side chair and thumps his fist rapidly against his chin with nervous energy. He doesn't answer the question.

“What do you mean, ‘Carl the murderer?'”

Jerry stops fidgeting and looks at her. “Oh, I think it's pretty obvious that if you didn't kill Hi-lo, then he must have.” He looks pleased with himself.

He is about to say something else, but they both start when someone knocks on the door.

“Get the door,” says Jerry. “If it's him, let him in. If it's anyone else get rid of them.” Jerry pulls a gun from his coat pocket. It's very small and stubby, but the hole at the end of the barrel is surprisingly large. Jerry stands behind the door.

Billie slowly opens the door.

“Billie, thank goodness. I've been at the police station--”

Jerry steps from behind the door. “Get in here now,” he says.

Carl comes in and closes the door behind him.

Jerry pushes Carl toward the sofa. “You went to the cops? Why did they let you go? They should have arrested you, you bastard. Where's the rest? I want all of it.”

“Carl?” says Billie confused. “What's he after Carl?” Her mind is flitting all over the place. “I'm so glad you're OK. Do you know this man? How can you know this man?”

Carl looks at Jerry, appearing more surprised than scared. “Who are you? Good grief, is this a robbery?”

Jerry doesn't laugh this time, he snorts. “Nice try. Both of you, sit on the couch. I have to decide which one of you to kill and which one to pin the murder on.” They sit. Jerry points his gun at Billie. “Maybe this one will stick.”

Carl hugs Billie to him. She sees Carl smile slightly.

“Oh, Carl, is he going to shoot me?” She hides her head and stiffens for the sound. She's not thinking of the pain that will come, only of the noise the gun will make in the small room. She waits for it like she waits, wide awake, for the alarm clock in the morning.

“That's all they need,” says Carl.

Billie looks up.

The door behind Jerry snicks open and Argawal enters first. “Drop the gun, this is the police,” he says.

Billie watches Jerry's grimace sag into defeat. He shifts his gun to point at Carl, then sighs. “Which one?” he says.

Carl yells, “No, don't shoot,” but Billie doesn't think Jerry is actually about to shoot. He seems too contemplative, too concerned with his decision as though he'd just stepped out of his mind for a moment when he realized that he wasn't going to California after all. Carl's yelp snaps him out of it though, and he straightens his arm to shoot. Argawal reaches in and lifts Jerry's elbow as he fires and the picture behind Billie's head explodes in a shower of glass.

Two uniformed officers enter the room. Jerry tries to aim his gun again, yelling, “You bastard,” over and over again. One of the policemen whacks Jerry on the head with his night stick. He goes down. They handcuff him anyway.

Billie is desperate with worry, burrowing into Carl's side for safety. Carl says, “It's all over,” and she sneaks a peek.

“He was going to ka-kill us,” she says. She's shaking and suddenly thirsty. “Oh, Carl, he was going to kill us.”

The policemen haul Jerry out. Billie thinks they should call an ambulance because there's so much blood coming from Jerry's head, but she doesn't say anything. Then Mr. Bitner walks in and nods. “Looks like things worked out.” He is smiling broadly as though there was never any danger in the confrontation.

***

Argawal sits down on the side chair. Mr. Bitner leans casually against the wall. Billie smells Jerry's blood and Carl's sweat.

Argawal clears his throat. “Carl, do you know who that man was?”

“No,” says Carl. “I don't think I've ever seen him, although it sounds like he knew me. You said it might be my old roommate, Jerry, but I really don't even remember what he looked like.”

Mr. Bitner grunts. “No, I guess you wouldn't remember. But I checked with the real estate company, and I found out that there never was a Jerry on your lease. That in itself would not be that surprising. People have roommates who aren't on the lease all the time. Then I remembered that Billie here had a boyfriend before you, though Billie would never tell us his name. I called her landlord. He was most irritated at being woken, but was enthusiastic when he found out he could help Billie by talking to me.” Mr. Bitner smiles at Billie as though she were a child who had her report card marked ‘plays well with others.' “He remembered Jerry Murphy was on her lease for three months last year.”

Billie thinks back, but even now, can't remember seeing Jerry before. She's still hugging Carl and squeezes him a bit tighter. Finally she releases him and asks, “Did you know Jerry used to be my roommate?”

Argawal answers instead, “Yes, well, you did know. We got a court order to see transcripts of your forgets. We can't show them to you, of course, because of the confidentiality agreement you signed with the forget company, but you were friends and he introduced the two of you. You both went in and had a forget to forget all about him. It seems he was very upset when Carl took his girl. That's all I can tell you, I'm afraid. The rest will have to wait for the trial, but even then I doubt it will be admissible, so you probably will never know more than that.

“Oh, and I need my wire.”

Carl stands up to take what appears to be a nickel from his pants pocket. Billie stands too, not wanting him far from her at that moment.

Mr. Bitner stands away from the wall. “Thank you for offering yourself up as a lamb, Carl, but things turned out OK after all.” He smiles slightly, then goes to the door. Argawal follows him.

At the door Argawal turns and says, “You'll both need to come to the station for statements and all that.”

Carl puts his hand on Billie's without looking at her. It feels cold and a bit possessive. “Can't that wait until morning? Billie's been through a lot today, and she's tired.”

Argawal looks at Mr. Bitner then nods. “I'll be sending someone by in the morning to collect you both. Be ready at ten.”

***

When they've gone, Billie sits down and thinks for a moment. It seems like Mr. Bitner was disappointed that Carl, his sacrificial lamb, wasn't dead. “Do you want something to drink?” she asks.

“No,” says Carl. “I think I'd better go home.” Tomorrow will be difficult and long. He looks defeated, dejected.

“You could stay a while. You could stay here tonight.” She thinks about the blood on the floor and how she's going to clean it.

“I'm beat, Billie.” And Billie thinks he looks it, but she has to ask a question that's been bothering her anyway. “Why did Hi-lo have a key to your apartment?”

Carl looks startled. “I don't remember,” he says, then he smiles.

Billie feels the blood drain from her face. “Jerry said, ‘maybe this one will stick.' What did he mean by that?”

“I don't know. I guess he thought that if I went to the police that they would keep me there on suspicion of murdering Hi-lo. Look, we're both tired. I think I'd better go home.”

“But Jerry knew all about you, he seemed to know you, not from before, but from recently. He said you had something to talk about. He asked you where his money was.”

Billie shrinks to the side of the sofa again. She knows she should drop it, but she can't. “How did Jerry know about the ring? I guess he could figure out about the forgets if we didn't recognize him anymore, but how did he know about the ring, Carl, how did he know about the ring?”

Carl is sitting on the other side of the sofa, elbows on his knees, and staring at the carpet between his feet. “Just drop it, Billie. Everything is fine now. We're both OK and everything is fine.”

“Did you know Jerry was extorting money from me? Did you send him? Were you working together?” Billie regrets the question as soon as she asks it. There's no turning back from this question. Even if he didn't kill Hi-lo, there's no turning back from the accusation that he contributed to her death, and that he has betrayed Billie.

Carl looks at her, and she knows that he instigated the whole thing. She stands up. Carl stands up and steps between her and the door. “I can't let you turn me in, Billie. They were supposed to shoot Jerry. Then this would all be done, but they didn't.”

That explained why Carl had acted like Jerry was about to shoot them when she thought Jerry was just confused by the police being there.

“What are you going to do? Are you g-going to ka-kill me too?” Billie is trembling all over. She looks for a weapon, but can't find one close. She turns and runs into the bedroom and closes and locks the door behind her.

The door knob rattles. “Billie, you're tired and confused. We can talk about it. You'll feel better after I've explained everything.”

But Billie knows. She needs no explanations. After months of feeling close and warm, after dinners on the roof and making love in the mornings, Carl has betrayed her. And now Billie is wondering if she was always just a mark.

“Oh, Carl,” she says, almost a whisper.

Carl bursts through the door, but Billie grabs a radio which she smashes into Carl's forehead. She looks frantically around for something larger, heavier. She finds her iron and grabs it. She holds it between them.

“I did love you,” Carl says. Billie watches a drop of blood slip from his eyebrow to his cheek. Bloody crocodile tears.

“Why did Hi-lo have a key to your apartment?”

Carl smiles, but it's not an evil smile. He's trying to be charming. With this smile he is saying, “I'm about to lie now. It will be a fun lie, but be careful.” Then he answers her question. “So she could watch the apartment when I was out of town?”

Standing there, hands spread, trying not to look guilty, he looks like the old Carl. Then he sags and looks defeated again. “No, I guess you wouldn't believe that, would you? Hi-lo was my Wednesday night, Billie.” He pauses for just a second then lunges for her. Billie swings the iron wildly. Carl ducks easily out of the way and grabs at her waist, but the iron is still plugged in and when it reaches the end of its tether, it snaps down and smacks the back of Carl's head just as he tackles her to the ground.

Billie starts screaming, but Carl doesn't move. She lays there panting, still tempted to hug him and tell him she is sorry. She hears a knock at her door. She climbs out from under Carl and stumbles to the door. Mr. Bitner is there. “Now that Carl's had time to go home, I have one other question, Ballantine. How did Jerry know about the ring?” Then he notices her breathing hard and crying.

“Carl's in there.” Billie stifles a sob and points to her bedroom door.

“What's he doing?”

“He's out. I hit him with an iron. Carl was in it with Jerry.”

“Yes,” says Mr. Bitner. “I thought so.”

Billie stares at him. His calm confidence now shows itself as smug indifference. “If you thought so, why did you leave him here with me? Why didn't you say something?” She wants to whack Bitner on the head too. He is her father's attorney, but she no longer thinks of him as a protector, certainly not the cavalry.

“Would you have believed me? When I took a close look at the forgets, I noticed that your forget transcript included a few subtle details that his didn't. He didn't have Jerry's new address erased, nor did he have Jerry's thefts of your belongings deleted as you did. That's one of the many reasons you threw Jerry out and why Carl knew Jerry would go along with him, or at least make a good accomplice. And he had one extra thing removed. He forgot his previous fiance. The call on that one is what brought me back to your door this late. When our man in New York found her she told him that he had tried to extort money from her too. You are a remarkably poor judge of men. Argawal is on the way to Carl's place, but I'll call him and tell him to come here.”

Billie glares at him. “You're just so damn superior, aren't you? You used father's connections to convince the police to use Carl as bait because you hoped he'd get killed didn't you. Were you trying to save Daddy's reputation?” She is pleased to hear herself say this to Bitner. She wants to say more. She wants to rail against his patronizing attitude, but Bitner sighs then, dismisses her with a wave, and walks across her living room to look into the bedroom. He takes out his phone.

Billie goes into the bathroom and washes her face, then she sits down and cries. She hears the police arrive. Someone yells to get an ambulance. Bitner knocks on the door and asks if she's all right.

Carl has left a void, and Bitner is right, she's a poor judge of men. She stands, looks in the mirror, then she closes her eyes. She can feel Carl's arms wrap around her waist as they sway gently to unheard music. She feels his kiss on her ear and wonders how she can forget him.