I flip back through a few entries in my diary, but don't find any reference to the dye job. (No excited news about upcoming auditions, either.) No boxes in the trash, and, according to the bank's automated response, no charges pending at any beauty salons. I wrote that down. Machines don't screw up, so as long as you don't misremember what they told you (and no fallible humans input data), they're reliable. I make it a practice to always write down reliable information, and note it as such.
This is disturbing. I'm usually very careful not to surprise myself with things like this. No matter how hard I look, I can't find a note anywhere in the apartment. Maybe I had a brainfart, falsely remembered writing a note to myself, and then forgot the false memory. I hate brainfarts. They're monstrously unfair. I can deal with losing real memories, as long as I know I have some chance of making a record.
There is, of course, always the possibility (as the truly paranoid remind us at every possible opportunity) that the "me" of this particular moment is quite different from the "me" of last night (or whenever). Maybe the previous me was just a sadistic bitch who liked the idea of playing mind games with her successor.
A less sinister possibility occurs to me. Maybe I was elsewhere when I dyed my hair. I might have come back late, and just forgotten to write a note.
This suspicion gains greater weight when I step into the shower. There's a new bottle of color-safe shampoo, sitting next to a mostly empty bottle of what I believe is my regular shampoo. I might well have paid cash for such a small purchase at the drugstore, and not left a telltale debit record.
I have to stop doing that. I think I've made that same resolution before. Decided not to withdraw cash, except for twenty or thirty in emergency funds. Hit McDonald's a couple of times, that's another stop at the ATM, lots of fives and ones lying around, just begging to be used.... I need to be more concerned about my sanity than momentary convenience. Maybe I should just deposit the change every week, even if it is only a few dollars; be really anal about balancing my checkbook. I make sure to hold on to the thought, and write it down when I get out of the shower.
I head over to Sylvie's. She's the most likely co-conspirator in the dye job mystery, and she has the day off, too. And no auditions, either.
When I get to Sylvie's, it takes her a long time to come to the door. She's been crying. And not any picturesque weeping: her nose is bright red, and last night's mascara is running.
"What's the matter?" My concern about my hair fades rapidly. "What happened?"
"I had sex last night," she blurts.
I give her a hug, and don't ask for details. I steer her toward the couch.
Who hasn't woken up to a tousled bed, dried puddle of semen, and an empty depression beside you? Even before, that happened. He didn't leave his real name or number, or he has a wife, or you were both drunk.... And now, no matter how good we all say we'll be, how we'll always write in our diaries right before we go to sleep, the last thing that we do every day.... No matter how compulsive you are, you never get everything.
And, no matter how good you are, sometimes you don't want to.
"I don't know who it was," Sylvie sobs. "I don't know who it could be."
"It's okay," I say mindlessly, because what can you say? I get her a glass of water. "It happens to everybody. I know that doesn't make it better, but-"
"He paid me," she says dully, staring at the glass.
I take a moment to digest this statement.
"I've been...the last few weeks, I've been finding cash around the place," Sylvie says. "A twenty in my pocket, five under the couch.... I know it happened a few times for sure, probably more. I just didn't think about it, because all the bills were small, but they add up...."
"So? That's what happens when you use cash." I'm suddenly wondering who I'm defending.
"I stopped. Cut up my ATM card. It's in the ashtray. To remind me. I've only used my Visa for the past few weeks. I checked all my records; I never took out any cash."
"Oh." She must have given this some thought.
"I must have known," she echoes quietly. "But I didn't write anything down. How could I do that? How could I think I'd be so stupid, that I wouldn't notice--?" She breaks down again, wracking sobs. "I can't do this any more, Lil. I can't do it."
I rock her, and pat her, and say soothing things. And I really am concerned-she's my friend, my best friend-but all the time I'm thinking about myself. About the cash I sometimes find. Maybe I'm not just a waitress/aspiring actress, maybe I'm a waitress/aspiring actress/prostitute.
"Will you come with me?" Sylvie asks, looking desperate.
I remember that look. I know how she's feeling, remember it from the day when we decided to stay. There's a feeling of safety in numbers. No matter how illogical the brain knows it is, the comfort is undeniable.
It's been six months, one week and three days since...whatever localized phenomenon it is happened. Six months, two days since the media reports gave us some idea of the scope, and let us know where we could go to meet the Red Cross and get pulled out of the quarantined area.
Six months, one day and twenty hours since Sylvie and I discussed it, and decided to stay.
"Nothing's changed," I say, not meaning to speak aloud, not meaning to sound desperate.
"It's been six months," Sylvie says. "It's not interesting, it's not a puzzle, it's not a story to tell your kids. I don't want this to be my life."
I can't say anything to that. Some decisions aren't reasoned.
"Which is your favorite theory?" Sylvie asked months ago. I didn't write it down, but I remember. I think. The conversation where we both decided that "Mindsink" was just the wrong word for the phenomenon, no matter that everyone on the news called it that. "The quantum flux? Secret government tests? Aliens' revenge for Roswell? God's judgement against immoral Hollywood?"
I remember smiling. "How about the weed out theory?"
Sylvie'd laughed, and said that made as much sense as any other explanation.
Maybe she'd changed her mind. Or maybe she just didn't mind being weeded out.
"Is there anything else you want me to tell them?" Sylvie asks, nervous. She has far less in her bags than the average college student. I'm carrying half her luggage more as a sign of affection than anything.
"Well?" she prompts, and I think about the names I gave her.
My parents, my drama teacher and a friend from high school. The sum total of people I can remember with fondness-or bother writing about with fondness.
"No, just let them know I'm okay. That I-that I know I can leave, but I don't want to. Not yet."
That's all I say. We almost had a fight, last night.
"Not until you become a star," Sylvie says.
Sylvie imagines that she'll just walk back into a normal life. I hope she does, I really do. She's my friend.
But I just can't buy that. I picture quarantine camps outside, maybe for months or years. Studies, questions, physicals, follow up interviews.
If Sylvie wants to forget what she thinks may have happened, she's going about it all wrong.
But I don't want her to leave on a bad note. I really wish her the best.
"Promise you'll write about me every day," she says.
I nod. And that almost does it, almost convinces me to go with her to the Red Cross trailer.
Except I don't know for sure that it'll really be better, outside. They call it a localized phenomenon on the news, say it's not organic, that nothing's wrong with us, but these are the same people who bring you the weather report.
I don't want to live outside as a refugee. I came out here to be a star; Sylvie's right about that, and it's why she came, too. Being a star takes talent, endurance and luck. I have it on reasonable authority that I've got some talent, and I've always been able to stick with things to the bitter end.
Luck? I'm caught in a federal disaster area. But the competition is fleeing.
If nothing else, now I won't have to worry about auditioning against Sylvie.
Does this sound shallow? Maybe it is, a little. But what are my options if I go back home? Realistically. Sidelong looks, being treated like a leper. Maybe the talk show circuit and a book deal, the chance to become a contact celebrity until people get bored. And they always get bored.
I wouldn't have chosen this. But I was here when it happened, I didn't have a choice but to get caught up in it. I have to deal with it. Better to come out of this disaster a star, with a real career, than as a nobody refugee.
I've told Sylvie all this, and I think she remembers. I think she wrote it down.
I hope she doesn't think I think any less of her. I don't, not really. She's just a different sort of person than I am, maybe than she used to be; she's scared of different things, willing to take different sorts of chances.
"I promise I'll write," I say. And we both sort of smile, because it somehow feels right that we part on a hokey line.
Our smiles waver at about the same moment. I wonder what she's thinking. Because I'm thinking that there are lots of classic Hollywood lines I should have quoted, if I could only remember what they were-and if I could be sure that Sylvie would remember them.
"Casablanca," Sylvie says abruptly. I can tell it was a minor miracle that she managed to come up with the title. Bogart? I'll check, later. "Whatever that line is, write it down." She bites her lip. Hoping her memory's reliable, that it's a good line. "Just pretend that was what we said." And then she turns, and runs up the hill.
Megan is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband Larry and their two cats, Groundskeeper Willie and Cynwr. Larry and Megan are incorporators and board members of M3IP (http://www.m3ip.org), a nonprofit founded to do good works on the web. Megan is the editor of the speculative fiction zine, Fables (http://www.fables.org), and have had fiction, nonfiction and artwork published (or accepted) by Twilight Times, Quantum Muse, The Orphic Chronicle, Dark Planet and Weird Visions. Her webpage is at http://www.m3ip.org/~mhpm.
E-mail: mhpm@m3ip.org
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