Shadow Traffic (11 page)

He continued walking toward Azure, being careful not to increase or decrease his speed as his pursuer followed about fifty feet behind. Finally, just before entering the restaurant, he paused, as if looking at a newspaper at an outdoor stand, then turned to face him.

At first he saw nothing or just the late afternoon blur of New York. Then he finally recognized Wallace, a member of the organization as he recalled, although he hadn't seen him at the last meeting.

“Hey, Wallace,” he said, waving at him and forcing a smile so it could all seem like a coincidence. “Over here.”

Wallace, holding his hat, which covered his round, prematurely balding head, half ran across the street that separated them.

He forced himself to shake hands with Wallace, while keeping his smile intact, a difficult task that made him feel like a juggler. Meanwhile, he noticed an oddly embarrassed look on Wallace's face. Would the organization choose someone as ineffectual as Wallace to follow him and report on his activities?

“So what are you doing in this neck of the woods?” Wallace said, in what Andrew thought was a pitifully transparent attempt to sound spontaneous.

“I had some business near here and then I came here to eat.”

“Oh, me too,” Wallace said quickly, as if grateful that Andrew had provided him with his own cover story as well.

“Care to join me?”

“Sure,” Wallace said, smiling more sincerely this time, which Andrew found convincing enough since Wallace had few friends and seemed to cling to anyone who showed a momentary interest in him.

“It's a self-service cafeteria. I hope that's all right.”

“Oh sure. I ate here once before with you after a meeting. Didn't you take your Memo today?” Wallace said jokingly.

Andrew forced a laugh then entered the restaurant. He didn't attempt to talk to him again until they'd both gotten their food and were seated at a table on the upper level, where it was a little less noisy.

“So you never told me what
you
were doing around here today,” Andrew said, before chewing a generous bite of chicken and couscous.

“Oh, business too, just like you.”

“Really? Something to do with the organization?”

“It's a little embarrassing, but yes.”

“Oh? What's embarrassing?”

“I thought there was a meeting today.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I got confused so I went there for nothing as it turns out. And then I got hungry and went to this place just like you.”

Andrew looked hard at him. Two preposterous coincidences delivered in a convictionless voice by a dubious man who was now almost chugging his beer. Andrew was concerned, but before he could think of what to say next, Wallace put down his empty beer bottle and spoke again.

“Can I ask you a personal question completely off the record while we're kind of on the subject?”

“Go ahead,” Andrew said.

“Well don't be offended, but do you ever have any doubts about the organization?”

“Doubts? What kind of doubts?”

“Doubts in general about their modus operandi.”

“What about it would give me any doubts?”

“Don't you think some of their methods are a trifle controlling, even militaristic?”

Andrew shrugged. Lately, he'd had similar thoughts himself, thoughts he'd generally try to kick out of his mind. For a second he wondered if Wallace had been given a different pill, which allowed him to read minds. “They're dealing with something that will have a profound effect on the world. They have to be very careful.”

“Yes,” said Wallace. “I considered all that. Still, the way they walk up and down the aisles like soldiers to make sure we're not taking any notes. And all the loyalty oaths they've made us sign, all the documented information we've had to turn over to them, whereas we don't even know any of their full names.”

“What about Dr. Rossi?”

“I don't know his first name, do you? I mean, don't you find that just a little disturbing? Aren't they supposed to be doctors, so why are they acting like drug dealers?”

“You shouldn't talk about the organization that way.”

Wallace shrugged—a mirror image of his own shrug a few minutes ago. Wallace Mirror, Andrew thought. That should be his nickname. “What about Memo?” Andrew blurted more angrily than he wanted to. “Do you have doubts about Memo, too?”

“Memo is a very powerful memory aid, no question. The question is, though, is it really ready for use by the general public? Is it really such a benefit to humanity or is it being rushed out before it's actually been tested, just so certain people can profit from it?”

“People
are
profiting from it
emotionally
, don't you see that? Don't you remember our last group testimony, how Elaine started crying while she described getting her memory back of the first rose she ever touched. What a moment of, of … priceless beauty for her. And there've been dozens of testimonies like that. You know that.”

“That was very touching, true, but not everyone reacts so positively to Memo.”

“I haven't heard of a single negative reaction in all the testimonies so far. I certainly haven't had any.”

“Fair enough, but not everyone feels comfortable making that kind of confession in group. Many feel intimidated about confessing and frightened of the consequences if they really tell the truth. Some have even been actively discouraged from talking.”

“How would you know this? Can you give me even one example?”

“Do you remember Jerome?”

“He stopped coming after the first two groups, didn't he?”

“Exactly.”

“Is he even still a member?”

“Jerome had a very bad experience with Memo. It made him relive something extremely painful in his past—his father's suicide. He'd blocked it out before but Memo removed that block.”

“Maybe he can start to work on it now.”

“Jerome won't be working on anything anymore. He hung himself last week. The memories were torturing him, filling him with unbearable guilt. He left a note about it. My information is that the organization made a big effort to keep it off of the Internet and largely succeeded.”

Andrew felt his heartbeat again. “That's a very serious allegation.”

“It's not an allegation, it's a fact. As I said, there was a note.”

“If you feel that way, how can you still be a member?”

“The truth is I'm not. I've resigned today in person and if you have any concern for your safety you will too. You look shocked, but are you really? I know they've probably got you on some special mission and maybe that's to follow me, maybe even to stop me from quitting. I realize that my telling you this may be a fatal mistake, but I had to.”

“That's ridiculous. It was you who were following me and not the other way around.”

“I'm just warning you my misguided friend,” he said, getting up from the table suddenly. “Just urging you to get out while you still can,” he added, before turning his back on Andrew.

“How can you talk that way about an organization that's given so much to you … and to the world?”

Wallace turned and looked at him.

“I did it to warn you, like I said. You won't see me again,” he said, turning once more and walking quickly down the stairs.

Andrew had trouble sleeping that night. Of course he was thinking a lot about the charge he'd been given to join Oblivion, whose next meeting would be in two nights, but he also found it more difficult than he'd imagined to forget about his meeting with Wallace. Because he'd taken Memo he had an almost total recall of their conversation, which was both reassuring and disconcerting. After reviewing it he found a number of things that could undermine Wallace's credibility besides Wallace in general, who'd always struck him as a person who, for various reasons, was impossible to trust. Hadn't Wallace said, at first, that he'd gone to the organization because he thought there was a meeting, only to reverse himself a few minutes later and admit he'd already resigned? And was that even true? How could anyone give credence to such a duplicitous liar?

And yet Wallace had expressed, albeit in an exaggerated way, some of the secret doubts that he, Andrew, had about the organization, too. Moreover, the very fact that he kept thinking about what happened with Wallace reinforced some questions he'd had about Memo, mainly that it increased “obsessive thinking” at times, both in intensity and duration.

He turned on a light and tried to read a book. He'd called Wallace an underground man but look at his own lonely, little apartment, he thought, bereft of anything intriguing, or even comforting.

He shut off the light and closed his eyes yet again and this time saw Elaine's expression when she told the group about her
rose memory, about touching each petal. Tears filled his eyes in the darkness and suddenly his crisis was resolved. Memo was bringing great beauty into the world and in that way was also changing the world. He knew again how important it really was and how important the work he had to do for it was too, work that lay just ahead.

He made his first contact with Oblivion by e-mail, Memo having provided him with the address. Then he waited, as instructed, until he received an e-mail an hour before their meeting telling him where to go and when. He was also told to wear a white shirt or sweater.

He was mildly surprised that they'd chosen Fanelli's in SoHo as the meeting place. It was a noisy bar/restaurant filled with artists talking shop and networking. The tables were all filled, but he found a seat at the bar, where, somewhat to the bartender's consternation, he ordered a ginger ale. (He'd already taken a Memo, which he knew shouldn't be mixed with alcohol.) After fifteen minutes he wondered if he was supposed to look for someone else wearing white, whether he'd gotten confused about that part although he'd been given more Memo than usual to use for the duration of the assignment.

Then he remembered a line from the literature he'd read at headquarters. “Oblivion members are notoriously late, perhaps because their goal is to forget the world instead of remembering it.”

He was embarrassed but felt he had to order another ginger ale. Just after it arrived someone tapped him on his left shoulder. He turned and saw a strikingly attractive woman with dark eyes and long black hair.

“Are you here for the meeting?” she said.

“Yes. Is it going to happen here?”

“Tell me what meeting it is.”

“The ‘O meeting,'” he said, trying not to stare at her too intensely.

“You'll have to fill out some forms and provide us with some personal information, including your credit card number. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. My name's Andrew.”

“We'll have to leave here now.”

“Where to?”

“Follow me,” she said, walking toward the nearest exit. He left a generous tip and watched as she walked ahead of him. She was wearing a black coat and big black boots that women wore back in the 1980s. He guessed her to be somewhere in the late-twenty to mid-thirty range. There was something vague in her expression that made it hard to tell, but she was certainly good looking, which was probably no accident. Perhaps her purpose was to stir up memories of lost loves, Andrew thought, to remind people of what they were missing in the present and so to make them want Oblivion even more than they already did.

She walked quickly, her boots making a strange kind of percussive music on the pavement. When he asked her name, she said, “I can't answer personal questions. My job is to escort new members to the meeting.” When he tried another approach, commenting on the weather, he received only a one-word response.

After walking a few blocks she entered a loft on Wooster Street and pressed the button for an elevator. “Follow me,” was all she said. He tried to keep his eyes off her and to stop his futile conversational forays as well. The one time he did look at her briefly
she looked distinctly uncomfortable, as if the light of the elevator not only bothered her but was also somehow her enemy.