[Corentine] Read online

  The second night, I searched through all of the trash for something that might point me in the right direction, just in case I'd missed it and thrown it out earlier. And I didn't sleep.

  I called Janine.

  She didn't answer.

  I called her again.

  "Corentine's not coming home," I said into Janine's machine as it dutifully recorded my message after the tone.

  I smoked packs and packs of cigarettes, extinguishing them in the sink, in empty bottles, in glasses, in the toilet. I had more than a few drinks.

  I stared into the mirror. I pulled at the circles beneath my eyes. I stood in the shower, as hot as it would run, and once the hot water ran out, I stayed in the shower. Hours passed. More time went by. I needed to shave, but I couldn't find a razor. In my frustration, I punched things. Walls. Doors. The mirror. It hurt.

  I cried. It hurt.

  I didn't know where to turn. I had no idea what I was even looking for, what to do, or why it was happening. The one thought kept echoing in my mind: She'd left me. I'd done something wrong. I'd offended her. She'd remembered her past and hated her present, and so she'd fled.

  Then it hit me. She'd mentioned a doctor once, one that was supposed to be helping her out with her memory problems. Why hadn't I thought of that before? What was his name?

  I grabbed a phone book and began searching. No names came to mind. Nothing seemed to ring any bells. No luck.

  I decided, with a little bit of guilt, to sift through a bundle of documents that she kept in a desk drawer –

  …But there weren't any. They were gone.

  I started up her laptop, loading her address book. It was completely empty. I opened her email client: no accounts. No images, no documents, no files of any sort – nothing that would lead me to her.

  I called Janine again.

  "Janine, you aren't going to believe this," I said into the machine. "All of her personal info's been erased off of her laptop. I can't find the name of a single person she's made acquaintance with since she showed up here, anywhere in the apartment. Her papers are missing. It's as if someone came into the house and cleared her out of it. It's got to be something worse than what we thought it was. Call me back," I paused, looking around the apartment. I'd turned the place inside out. Everything was in disarray. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I figured out what had happened. Or who was behind her disappearance. Her abduction.

  "Things are getting really weird for me over here," I finished, hanging up.

  "I'm not worried about it all," she said. "I am who I am, the product of all of the choices and decisions that I've made, even if they aren't things that I can instantly recall. I think that when there's a blank spot in your mind where your past should be, your perspective changes. You are willing to make sacrifices like that, taking all the bad with the good, all the negative things that you'll probably hate about yourself, just to be able to have a story, a complete picture of yourself in your head. It's something that you never really focus on, your own self-image, this culmination of all of the events in your life, things you've said, things you've done. People you've known, influences, and so on. It's just always there. And with me, it's like have this personality and these likes and dislikes, but no past to reconcile them with, no history to connect myself to. I'm drifting, lost, and searching for the origin point. So no, I'm not worried about it; I welcome it. I want to remember it all."

  "I see," I said to her, and I did understand. It just seemed like there were so many things that I could easily throw away in my own past, just trade them in for a big black empty space, so I wasn't really looking at any of it from her side of the fence. It seemed like amnesia would be a welcome and beneficial affliction when I was depressed about how everything had turned out in my life. A less than perfect childhood colored by a disinterested father and an absentee mother. A terribly wasted youth spent couch surfing, culminating in a doomed marriage with an emotionless, cold, and calculating addict. The loss of a child. But I pushed all of that to the side, psychologically, because no good was coming from dwelling on things that had come before while I was sitting in a swing in the park with her, watching her as she somehow defied all of my expectations, both for maintaining her balance despite gravity's pull, and for matters of the heart.

  I checked the papers and was reminded of a company that she'd visited when looking for treatments for her memory loss. Synchro Systems had pioneered new therapy methods for memory regression and restoration, and had recently begun field trials on human volunteers for various methods of treating people who'd been injured in car accidents and as a result suffered from memory disorders. There had been an open call for new volunteers, so Cor had signed up for the first day they'd had available, making an appointment for a consultation to see if Synchro could help her.

  There had been a series of deaths in one of the first trial runs, and a number of affected families had joined in a lawsuit against Synchro Systems for their loss. They'd made enough noise that the papers had latched on to the story and started covering it, and it wasn't long before the government got involved and started investigating the inner workings of the company, too. Something about ethics violations and the use of technologies and treatments that were not approved for use in humans.

  Because of the publicity, finding the number for the Synchro Systems main office was pretty easy. Speaking to a real person, however, was a much more difficult task.

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  With the federal investigation mandating that their research halt and all of the recent media attention, the company appeared to have shut down completely. I knew that massive layoffs of employees had recently occurred when the company shareholders bailed out and caused the recently publicly offered stock to tank, so I didn't rule out the possibility that one or more of the individuals that had lost a job or would be losing their job soon might be motivated to give me some information about what had happened inside of the company when she'd gone in for treatment. Maybe they'd be able to lead me in the right direction, if I could just get one of them on the line. Revenge was a motive that I assumed would work towards my cause in finding anyone who would assist me in the search; although I didn't really have anything financially to gain from what I discovered about Synchro, it was still conceivable that people might be attempting to strike a blow back to their former employers in any way possible. I was okay with being used like that, if that's what it took. There was always the chance that someone who actually cared about what was happening would be able to help me, too, but my cynicism told me otherwise.

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  Automated phone systems were waiting for me on every number that I dialed. On most of the systems, I ended up looping back to a previous menu and hanging up after exhausting all of the possible choices and options. In the main office directory, I randomly started dialing extension numbers, hoping to ring through to a telephone with a real person on the other end. I remembered a movie that I'd watched once about that last man on earth, and in one scene, when he's losing his mind from loneliness; he's calling all these numbers, trying to find anyone that might be left, just hoping to connect with someone, to find another person to talk to. I wondered how he would cope with a situation like the one I was in, and how I'd cope with his, were our positions reversed.

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  I stopped paying attention to what numbers I was dialing, falling into a repeating pattern of random button pressing, waiting, hearing the same response from a machine, and attempting again.

  Then, to my surprise, a call finally went through. The phone clicked, connecting.

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  "Department 809," a man answered. "Verification number, please."

  I didn't know any verification numbers, of course, or even where t
o begin guessing at what they might be. The irony of the situation crossed my mind for a moment when I realized that I was once again to a point of having to randomly guess a sequence of numbers in order to achieve anything productive.

  I hesitated.

  "Verification number," the man repeated.

  "Listen," I said. He didn't hang up, but he didn't respond, either. I assumed that he was listening.

  "I'm trying to find someone who works for Synchro Systems – specifically someone who can tell me about some initial patient testing that might have gone wrong and the patients that might have been involved with such testing," I continued. He was still on the line, as far as I could tell.

  "I know, I know, it sounds like every other call you've received for weeks, but I think something bad has happened to my girlfriend and I'm trying to find out if it could be the result of something that happened to her when she was possibly a volunteer patient during testing of a product or treatment called the Synchronicity Drive." I looked at the newspaper in my hand, saying the name that I'd highlighted in an investigative article released a few weeks before.

  "The main telephone line for news queries is clearly posted in multiple locations online," the man responded. "You have the wrong extension."

  "Wait!" I exclaimed. Once again, he didn't hang up.

  "I'm not a reporter. I'm not really much of anything, just a guy trying to figure things out. I don't know what the Synchronicity Drive is, and I'm not trying to get new information in order to break into a journalism career or anything like that. I don't care what it is, even, I'm just trying to find Corentine," I offered, as a way of explanation.

  "Wrong extension," the man repeated. Had I really ended up talking to another machine?

  "Why didn't you disconnect the call?" I asked him, frustrated. "When you realized that I had the wrong extension? Please, if you have anything, a number, an address: something that can help me gather just a little more information about this company – besides the stuff that the media's circulating – I could really use your help."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, and then he did disconnect the call. The static pop of the line dropping was a terrible sound.

  What was Department 809? I tried dialing the number again, wondering, trying multiple variations of 809 as an extension, but to no avail. It quickly became so frustrating that I started to lose focus, so I put down the phone and the papers and sat down on my bed, staring at the wall, trying to collect my thoughts.

  "So, you don't remember much of anything?" I asked her one night, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned overhead. She pulled herself closer to me, putting her head into my armpit, smelling my skin.

  "You smell good," she said.

  "Good thing I took a shower today. I try to stay on top of that, you know," I responded, patting her on the butt. She moved even closer, throwing her leg over me, sighed, and closed her eyes.

  I reached over and ran my fingers through her hair while she traced out some sort of messages on my chest: letters to the future or equations or doodles or love notes; I don't know. I never asked. We were quiet, dozing for a little while, relaxed and contented.

  Chapter 04

  My dream began just as my week had, except in my dream, I woke up in someone else's house. The flooding bathroom was in the same place as it was in my apartment, and she was standing in front of the mirror, calling to me.

  "Wake up," she said, her voice almost musical, as if her singing could bring me awake. I climbed out of bed and tripped over some metal pieces, falling to the floor. I gave the metal pieces a more thorough look and realized that they were the remains of what looked like picture frames. The pieces were scattered all over the floor of the bedroom. I got back to my feet and carefully made my way into the bathroom, but she was no longer there.

  "Hello?" I asked, peeking behind the shower curtain, expecting to see her there, washing her hair, or maybe just hiding like a little kid would, trying to frighten me. But she wasn't in the shower, either.

  She was, strangely enough, on the other side of the mirror.

  "I miss you," said she, holding her hand up to the glass.

  I could see condensation forming around her hand on the surface of the mirror, which I was translating more into a type of window than anything else, since there was a wall behind me, towel hanging up, and there was a vast hallway behind her, leading off into the distance. I assumed that it was cold on her side of the mirror since there was condensation forming, but then I realized that the fog was on my own breath and that there was a frost pattern on my side of the mirror.

  "I miss you," she repeated, holding her other hand up to the glass.

  I started to speak, but the words would not come.

  The phone was ringing. Was I asleep, so soon? What was the dream, fading around the edges at first, into nothingness? The bed was warm and the sheets were soft. It was dark outside; it must have been late. For a moment, I thought that she was beside me again. I thought that I could feel her hair spilling off of her pillow and into my mouth. I licked my lips and they tasted like her skin. The dream continued to fade. The phone continued to ring.

  I reached over to the nightstand, knocking the phone onto the floor. I hadn't grown used to it being in the bedroom, where I'd moved it in the hopes that she would call. I didn't want to miss that call. It was hard to focus; my eyes weren't cooperating with me, my reflexes were all out of sync.

  I retrieved the telephone from the floor, mumbling out an apology for all of the commotion.

  "I have the information that you're looking for," a woman said to me.

  "Information?" I asked. "Who is this?"

  "You recently made a telephone call that connected you to Department number 809. Do you recall the inquiry that I'm speaking of?" she asked me.

  "I do," I said.

  "Listen to me. We are sending someone to meet with you."

  "When?"

  "Tonight."

  "What kind of meeting is this? Where?"

  "It's a meeting about something very important to you," she stated. "The kind of meeting you won't want to be late for, especially given your recent queries to the offices of Synchro Systems."

  "How did you know about those?" I asked her, surprised. "Where do you fit into all of this?"

  She ignored both questions.

  "A gentleman will be waiting for you in the parking deck on the corner of Maple Avenue and Evergreen. He will signal you to enter the deck and speak to him once he has established that the situation is secure. Be outside of the parking deck in one hour. He will not wait."

  She hung up. The line went dead. I placed the phone back on the receiver and the set everything back on the nightstand, considering what had just happened. I walked over to the window and looked out onto the street below. Raining and cold. Shit.

  I called Janine, and she answered on the first ring.

  "I need you to come with me. Synchro's arranged a meeting with someone for me."

  "Now?"

  "That's what she said," I answered. "Can you come with me?"

  A pause.

  "I need a few minutes to get ready. I'll pick you up in about 15," she answered.

  "Thanks, Janine."

  Why a parking deck?

  What kind of meeting?

  I grabbed a jacket and headed outside to wait.

  We were somewhere in Mississippi when she asked me to pull over.

  "For fresh air," she said. "And to look at the Milky Way."

  At two in the morning on a two-lane highway in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Mississippi, I didn't even check the mirrors. It was an almost cloudless night; there were a few high floating stratus clouds near the moon, which was just over the horizon. It was rare that the air was as clear as it was on that night, even so far away from the cities, with all of their traffic and their factories and their light pollution. Cicadas and crickets sang a chorus into the night sky, frogs replied with equally triumphant voices, heralding a v
ictory, however temporary, over humanity's developmental sprawl. I shut off the car, turned the radio off, and killed the lights.

  We stood by the highway for what could have been hours, and no traffic passed us by. There was no one in the world but us. The sky was ours; luminescent bands of the galaxy's arms were thrown across the heavens like the crashing waves at night. The stars sparked at us, like signals, like codes, like when you've got your flashlight pointed out on the water at just the right angle. Occasionally, stars fell across the sky, streaking tails behind them with colors shifting through the entire spectrum: blue, green, yellow, orange, red.

  "I remember this," she said, breathless. "This is something that's never changed, something I don't think I could ever forget."

  "It's amazing," I agreed.

  "It's more than amazing," she countered. "Someday we'll be out there, moving around limitlessly, exploring, discovering. Dreaming."

  I checked my watch again, wondering when the research agent was going to arrive. I assumed that he wouldn't be driving and that he'd come out of the main entrance and signal me when he was ready to talk. I didn't ask the woman on the phone how he was going to arrive, or how he'd leave, or how he'd know what I looked like; I just did as he had instructed during the phone call earlier and waited at the corner just across the street. She hadn't told me not to bring anyone along, and Janine had been my ride, anyway, although I was making her stay outside of the parking deck. I was worried about her safety, regardless of her desire to accompany me into the structure, but it was too late to send her back alone.

  If he showed up, he was going to be late. We'd arrived with time to spare, but had been waiting for almost an hour.

  "Do you think we'll have to wait much longer?" Janine asked.

  "No," I said. "It's too dangerous. I'm not standing around here all night, putting you in danger, and I'm sure as hell not doing so with the possibility of compromising the little bit of information that we've already obtained that may give us a lead in tracking her down just to get a little bit more. If he's not in the parking deck within the next ten minutes, we're leaving."

  The suggestion that we could have been in danger seemed to resonate with her. Maybe it was foolish of me to bring her along, to allow her to come, without proper regard for her safety. We were dealing with people that we didn't know. I had no ideas what their true intentions were, but I felt that I had no choice but to trust the leads the informant had given me. In my rush to get things moving, I'd possible put Janine in harm's way. I kicked myself, making a mental note to be more cautious in the future.