Rick Moody - Right Livelihoods

Remember to be vigilant about forgetting .

Which reminds me to remind you of the diachronous theory of Albertine abuse patterns , which of course recognizes the forgetting as a social phenomenon coincident, big-time, with a certain pattern of Albertine penetration into the population. The manifestation of forgetting is easy to explain, see, because it has to do with bolstering the infrastructure of memory elsewhere. Like anyone who’s a drinker knows, you borrow courage when you’re drinking; you are emboldened for the night but depleted in the morning. Addiction is about credit. That amazing thing you said at the bar last night, that thing you would never say in person to anyone, it’s a one-time occurrence because tomorrow, in the light of dawn, when you are separated from your wallet and your money, when your girlfriend hates you, you’ll be unable to say that courageous thing again because you are wrung out and lying on a mattress without sheets. You borrowed that courage, and it’s gone.

So the thing with Albertine was that at night, under its influence, you remembered . Tonight the past was glorious and indelible — Serena in the park with the rum and the bittersweet revelation of her boyfriend — tonight was the beauty of almost being in love, which was a great beauty, but tomorrow your memory was full of holes. Not a blackout, more like a brownout. You could remember that you once knew things, but they were indistinct now, and the understanding of them just flew out the window. It was like the early part of jet lag, or Thorazine. Why did I come into this room? I was going to get something. Suddenly you had no idea, you stood looking at the pile of clothes in front of the dresser, clothes that were fascinating colors, that old pair of jeans, very interesting. Look at that color. It’s so blue. Maybe you needed to do something, but you didn’t, and you realized that things were going on in your body, and they were inexplicable to you. You were really thirsty. Maybe you ought to have had some juice, but on the way to the bottle of water on the table, you forgot.

The history of Albertine became a history of forgetting. A geometrically increasing history of forgetfulness. The men in charge of its distribution, by reason of the fact that they started using it for organizational reasons, to increase market share, they were as forgetful as the hardcore users, who after a while couldn’t remember their own addresses, except occasionally, and who were therefore on the street, asking strangers, Do you know my name? Do you happen to know where I live? The history of the drug, requested by Cortez, was therefore important. How else to plan for the future? If the research and development team at Cortez enterprises didn’t forget how to read, then, as long as they had a hard copy of the history, everything was cool. I would write the story; they’d lock it away somewhere.

Before I had a chance to agree or disagree, I was going down in the industrial elevator, alone, and it was like being shat out the ass of the smelting plant. It was dawn, with the light coming up under the lip of that relentless cloud. Dawn, the only time these days there was any glimmer on the horizon, before the debris clouds massed again. But listen, I have to come clean on something. I missed Cassandra. That’s what I was feeling. She’d sold me out to Eddie Cortez, made me his vassal, like she was his vassal. Trust and fealty, these words were just memories. So was Cassandra, just a memory. A lost person. Who’d reassured me for a few minutes. Who’d have sold out anyone for more drugs and a few minutes on an industrial sex machine. Was I right that there was something there? For an Albertine second, the slowest second on the clock, it seemed that she was the threshold to some partially forgotten narrative, some inchoate past, some incomplete sign, like light coming in through window blinds. Boy, I was stupid, getting sentimental about the mistress of a drug kingpin.

Daylight seemed serious, practical. It was the first time I could remember being out in the daylight since I started compiling these notes. On the way back to the armory, I waited on the line up the block for the one pay phone that still worked. Usually there were fifty or sixty people out front. All of them simmering with rage because the connection was sketchy, the phone often disconnected, and everyone listened to the other callers, to the conversations. Imagine the sound of the virtual automaton’s computerized warmth: We’re sorry, the parties you are contacting are unable to accept the call. Who was sorry exactly? The robot? Guy holding the receiver shouted, “I need to know the name of that prescription! I’m not a well man!” Then the disconnection. A woman begged her husband to take her back. Disconnection. And a kid who had lost his parents, trying to locate his grandparents. Disconnection. The phone booth offered that multitude of sad stories.

Soon it was my turn, and my father got on, man of few words.

“We told you not to call here anymore,” he said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I haven’t called in. . ”

I tried to put it all together. How long? Measuring time had become sort of impossible. There was nothing to do but make a stab at it.

“. . three weeks.”

“We can’t give you anything more. Our own savings are nearly exhausted. You need to start thinking about how you’re going to get out of the jam you’re in without calling us every time it gets worse. It’s you who is making it worse. Understand? Think about what you’re doing!”

I could see the people behind me in the pay phone line leaning in toward the bad news, excited to get a few tidbits. Their own scrapes were not nearly as bad.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve told you before,” he said. “Don’t raise your voice with me.”

His own voice defeated, brittle.

“Put Mom on the line!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Let me talk to Mom!”

Then some more nonsense about how I had caused my mother unending sorrow, that it was her nature only to sacrifice, but I had squandered this generosity, had stamped up and down on it with my callousness, my American callousness, as if my family had not overcome innumerable obstacles to get me where I was. I made the selflessness of my heritage seem like a deluded joke. I had dishonored him by my shameful activities, et cetera, et cetera. It was as bad as if I had died during the blast .

A bona fide patriarchal dressing-down, of a sort I thought I had left behind long ago. I was watching the faces of the people in the line behind me, and their faces were reflecting my own. Incredulity. Confusion.

“Dad, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Listen to me.”

“You can’t call here every day with your preposterous lies. Your imagined webs of conspiracy. We won’t have it. We are exhausted. Your mother cannot get out of bed, and I am up at all hours frantic with worry about you. How are we supposed to live? Get some help!”

I smiled a befuddled smile for my audience, and I replaced the receiver. In midstream. Of course I hadn’t called my parents recently, hadn’t called them the day before, or the week before, or the week before that. Hadn’t called them often at all. My crime, in fact, was that because of shame about where I lived and what I was doing, I didn’t really call anyone anymore.

I looked at the next guy in line. A melancholy African American man, with a fringe of gray hair and eyeglasses patched with some duct tape. It was beginning to rain, of course, and I saw a blob of obsidian ooze splatter the surface of his glasses.

“I guess I just called them,” I said. “I mean, I guess I forgot that I called them.”