Time’s recollections flitter like butterflies alighting from fields of sun-cast flowers as I stop before an apartment building staring as snapshots of a life like Kodak moments blur by, one after another.
I’ve been here before.
Two children and … good God! … my wife.
303.
The building is empty, plywood covers windows. A sign proclaims it’s to be torn down as part of the city's revitalization plan to become a parking lot for the new shopping mall being built. The main door is barred.
I walk around to the back. Snatches of memories that I can’t quite grasp haunt me.
Did I live …? Not possible. I’d not seen this street, let alone this building, before today. Yet, I drove here, why?
The rear door is locked. I look around in the empty parking lot. The gray sky threatens the usual rain in Vancouver’s wet winters. I walk to two faded yellow lines and stand where I used to park my car.
A Ford; red.
How did I know that?
303.
The faded numbers on the parking stall conjure more reminiscences. I met my wife living here, we had two kids.
The sweet scent of antifreeze and old tar assails me. At my feet a green stain remains, dried like blood. I changed that car’s water pump here.
A white panel van pulls up marked Ministry of Transport. Two men get out ignoring me entering the building. Minutes later they come out carrying boxes, loading them into the van.
Why would Transport want to have anything to do with a closed building? I wait until they disappear inside and decide to enter behind them. Boxes lay stacked in the entryway, stickers marking them as building number and apartment number. All marked Ministry of Transportation.
The two enter the elevator. Instinctively I head for the stairs and walk up two flights.
Dropping laundry with my kids, laughing, I’ve done this before wearing a tee-shirt proclaiming “Nazareth Live”, a rock band from Scotland.
A girl whirls around in my head. Blonde, curvy. Her name? Can’t recall.
I gasped. We were married. I stare at my bare ring finger. Old indents in the skin speak of truth and vows of unending love. ‘Til death do us part. I walk straight to the door I entered thousands of times before.
#303.
I’m dreaming this, I have to be. This is crazy.
A red paint stain on the apartment’s entrance. I smile. This is no dream. Touching the red stain, recollections of my struggle to get a red couch in the door and dropping it. The couch we watched TV and made love on. With a deep sigh I walk in.
Four crush marks in the living room indicate where the red couch once was. In the bedroom boxes fill nearly half the room.
A dismantled bed frame made of ornate wood haunts me. Its memory burned into my mind with each night of pleasure we had.
I tear open taped boxes. Clothes, my clothes, tumble out. Books I’ve read and forgotten. A chess set with a rook missing. I search for its replacement, a miniature Darth Vader. “Luke, you’ve been checkmated,” I used to say in a deep wheeze.
A lifetime flooding back. Our daughter’s first screams, playing Frisbee with my family in the park and vacations in Mexico. A life, my life. It’s all here.
But how? I currently live alone in a condo.
“Excuse me, you shouldn’t be here.” One of the men in the white coveralls speaks. I didn’t hear them enter.
“Yes, this building and its contents are private property of the Ministry.”
“No, this is my stuff and this is, or was, my apartment.”
They pass knowing glances. One pulls a computer from his pocket and punches 303 into its database.
“Name?”
“James McFadden.”
“Birthdate?”
“Current Social Registry number?”
“8412 578 0347.”
“It’s him. Sign here.”
Too nonchalantly he hands over the pad. He’s done this before, many times.
“Signature matches file,” bleeps back at the computer.
“You can take the stuff, it’s yours. The building will be torn down in two weeks. You have until then to remove it.”
Just like that they leave me and return to their job. No explanations, no ‘hey what the hell just happened?’ Only me left holding boxes of memories in an empty apartment. My life was given back to me, one that I didn’t know existed nor lost.
Numb, the next day I return with a rented truck, fill it, and drive to my condo, numbered strangely 303. I’ve lived here for two years, according to the mortgage papers. Before then?
How is this possible?
The weekend is spent laughing and crying as I unpack old possessions; my teak statue of Buddha, holding what my wife said was a skateboard and half an avocado. Inside subtle fragrances of incense cones persist recalling nights of passion. Jenny comes to me.
This doesn’t make sense of any kind. How do I forget an entire lifetime? Like I’d awakened one morning and had it all wiped out.
Could the Government have done this? Some sort of amnesia program. Or maybe I’d been crop dusted on the way to my car one morning with some kind of hallucinogenic drugs .
And the most nagging question of all, where is my wife? My Jenny?
God, I miss her now.
My journals. I used to write everything down; funny, still do.
Frantically I begin to pull boxes apart. They must be here. A heavy carton yields my journals. I sort them and look for the most recent.
Notes two years ago describing the chaos from people wandering around like they’ve got Alzheimer’s, forgetting things. Where they live, how to drive a car even. Websites, I’d jotted down several stating the effects from radiation and radio signal interference from cellphone use and other electronics. Site after site I check no longer exists. All covered up, is this a conspiracy against the world-wide web or some kind of brainwashing?
That afternoon my buzzer rings. Two men from the Ministry stand outside. “We believe you have questions that need answers. Come with us.”
I quietly enter the van, wanting answers. A stab of pain throbs across my head as I try to use my cellphone. “Bloody things, someone told me they give you brain cancer.”
“Yeah, I was told they’re just under microwave radiation strength, can fry your brain just like eggs.” He laughs and I ease up, realizing it’s just two guys doing their job and I wasn’t the first one they had to find. The innocuous sign in front of a building proclaims, ‘Ministry of Transport’.
I’d seen such signs never paying attention to them around town.
We enter and a lady approaches. “Come with me.”
After hours of reading files on my past life I look up at the lady. “Why are you telling me all of this so freely? And all I really want to know is where are my wife and kids?”
“I’m not authorized to release that information, but I can get you someone who is.”
I stare at her fearing, yet wanting, her answer as her cellphone rings.
“It’s for you,” she says, passes it to me and presses a button. I put the phone to my ear and listen to a white buzzing noise for a few seconds before everything goes blank.
The next day I answer my buzzer and stare at a blonde lady glaring at me. “My name is Jenny McFadden, or at least was.” Something about her I find exciting. She extends her hand. The touch of her skin is electrifying. We’ve touched intimately before.
“You may find this crazy, but I had memories of the last few nights. Of you and of us. Living in an apartment building on the east side with two kids.”
I blink in shock, like something out of a fantasy. Except for one small detail. “Lady, I have no idea who you are.”
“You must remember. James, we loved each other so much.”
I blink as vague memories flutter and two men wearing white overalls enter the hall.
“Damn, I gotta go. Here’s my number, call me.”
I watch her drive away as a white van marked the Ministry of Transport follows. Tears streak her face, reminding me of a woman I knew with blonde hair. Jennifer. I stare down at the card before putting it into my pocket.
The two men in white ask me questions about her. I tell them the truth, I don't know.
“Just a second.” He dials it into his cellphone and chats to someone for a few seconds.
“Here, my supervisor’s got a couple of questions for you.”
I listen to a white buzzing noise.
Fresh black tar stings my nose as I glare at the precise yellow lines in the new parking lot for customers enjoying mindless shopping at the new mall. I stare around standing in the void where an apartment building once stood until recently.
Why did I come here? I pull my car keys out and find a crumpled piece of paper with a phone number I don’t remember getting.
A touch of a beautiful blonde woman. Intense, electrifying. Is that her number? As I get in my car I stare at the license plate; 303 JEN. Memories come flooding back.
Bio:
Frank Talaber lives in Chilliwack, BC. He currently has twelve novels released. As well as the novels, he can boast over ninety-seven published short stories, articles, over sixty blogs and twenty live interviews.
People who have read Frank’s books describe him as a natural storyteller who writes like his soul is on fire and his pencil is his voice crying out. They go further to say that they find his books grabbingly intense and hilarious at times, screaming everyday life from such a realistic viewpoint you’re drawn into his world, unable to stop; almost cursing that they can’t set the book down, page after page.