Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

  “What happened in California?”

  “Oh, you know, same thing as everywhere, only weirder, since it’s California. You from there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, I understand. There’s a lot of that going around. Well, you sound like it to me. You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

  “When you say what happened in California is the same thing as everywhere”—Chaos felt a little embarrassed about the question—“what is it that happened?”

  The hippie shrugged. “You know, the weirdness came out, that’s all. It’s not like it wasn’t always there. Things got all broken up, localized. And there’s the dreamstuff, you know. The Man got into everybody’s head, so I guess everybody suddenly got a look at how severely neurotic The Man actually was. No big surprise to me though.”

  Chaos wondered if he was learning anything. “How long ago, would you say?”

  The guy squinted at the sky. “Now that’s a good question. I’d say I was on the Coast for a couple of weeks before I split. I don’t know, seven or eight months. Maybe a year, almost.”

  “A year?” Chaos blurted. “That’s impossible. I’ve been living—”

  “Hey, nothing’s impossible.” The hippie seemed annoyed. “And I’ll tell you where you’ve been living: in somebody else’s dream. Probably still are, or will be again soon. So relax. You want to see the Strip?”

  Chaos turned to Melinda, who shrugged. “Uh, sure,” said Chaos. “You said you lived here with somebody else?”

  “The McDonaldonians,” said the hippie, pronouncing it carefully. “That’s just my name for them, though. They’re a real trip. You want to meet them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You hungry?”

  “Yes,” said Chaos. It was an easy question, the first in a while.

  “Then let’s go.”

  They followed him to his truck. Up close Chaos saw that it followed the model of the little cars in the shed in the desert, and of the car in his dream: made of lightweight plastic and covered with solar panels.

  “Your truck,” said Chaos. “It’s the new kind.”

  “My truck is my friend, man. We go everywhere together. Roll down the windows . . .”

  “We didn’t have that kind where I came from,” said Chaos, not sure it was right. Right if he meant Hatfork, wrong if he included the distant memories stirred up by the dreams.

  “Well then you’re not from around here,” said the hippie. “Or from California either.” He seemed uncommonly pleased with himself for this conclusion, as though he’d solved a major problem.

  He climbed up on the driver’s side and opened the passenger door of the cab. “Put her up here, man, right between us.” He seemed incapable of addressing Melinda directly.

  They drove five or six miles down the empty highway before hitting the first signs of the Strip, the hippie talking all the way.

  The Strip began with dingy trailer parks and sprawling, concrete-block motels, all abandoned. Then came gas stations and gift shops and fast-food restaurants and auto dealerships and topless bars, all with their neon signs lit up and glowing in the sun, all completely vacant and still. The Strip went on for miles, mind-boggling in its repetitiveness. The hippie gestured at it, waving his hand. “Everything, man, everything. It’s all here.”

  “Why is it all lit?” said Chaos.

  The hippie patted the dashboard. “Solar panels, man. It runs all by itself. Probably will until somebody shuts it down. Pretty far out if you think about it, the sun lighting up all this useless neon, the neon blinking its pathetic little light back at the sun all day, nobody here to see it but me. Ah, sunflower, weary of time. I thought about going around and shutting it all down, but who gives a shit? Not the sun, man, that’s for sure.”

  They pulled into the parking lot of a building made out of molded orange and yellow plastic. McDonald’s, Chaos remembered. Hatfork didn’t have one, but Little America did—abandoned, of course, and bared of its decorations. This one glowed gaily. Solar panels.

  The hippie parked and led them inside, saying again, “You’re gonna love these cats. They’re a trip.” The building was bright but quiet, apparently empty. For a moment Chaos wondered if the hippie was crazy, his McDonaldonians only imaginary companions.

  “Customers!” the hippie yelled. He guided them through the maze of plastic furniture to the front counter.

  One by one the McDonaldonians appeared, slinking noiselessly out of the back kitchen. Three rail-thin white ghosts in their late teens or early twenties, wearing grease-stained food service uniforms in the company colors. Two of them hovered near the frying machines, while one stepped up to man a cash register. “Hey, Boyd,” he said, smiling sadly. Chaos saw that the kid’s cheeks were swollen with acne.

  “Yo, Johanson,” said the hippie, Boyd. “You cats aren’t looking so good. You ought to eat something.”

  “C’mon, Boyd. Keep your voice down. You know we ain’t supposed to eat the stuff. It’s against the rules.”

  “Hey, man. Time to break the rules if you ask me.”

  Johanson shrugged. “What you want?”

  “Give me a minute, man. Got to make up my mind. I brought a guest here to your fine dining establishment, man. Johanson, this is Chaos, Chaos, Johanson.” He gestured at the two in the back. “Stoney, Junior, this is Chaos.” Stoney and Junior nodded and looked at the floor. No one looked at Melinda. Boyd pointed up at the backlit menu over the counter and said, “Pick something out. You got money?”

  “Uh, no. We stopped using it where I was.”

  “No problem, man. It’s on me.” He lowered his voice, put his mouth to Chaos’s ear. “It’s all over the place, you know. Piles of it. I keep trying to tell these cats to go get some, then they can pay for the food they take. But they can’t leave the premises. That’s against the rules too.”

  Chaos studied the menu. “I’ll just have a burger, I guess . . .”

  “Hey, man, have a couple of burgers, they’re small. And fries. This is the U.S.A.”

  Chaos didn’t ask what the U.S.A. was. “Burgers okay?” he asked Melinda. She nodded, her eyes nervous. “Okay, give me four burgers and two, uh, packages of fries,” he said to Johanson.

  Johanson leaned over and repeated the order into the microphone, then punched it into his register, on keys that featured pictures of the food. Behind him Junior pulled a box of frozen patties out of the freezer while Stoney switched on the frying belt.

  “You ready?” Johanson asked Boyd.

  “Sure man. I’ll have a Whopper.”

  “C’mon, Boyd,” whined Johanson. “We been through this. That’s Burger King. You know I can’t make a Whopper—”

  “Okay, okay, just kidding. Big Mac, hold the dirt and grease and stuff.”

  “Big Mac,” said Johanson into the mike. He gave Boyd the total, and Boyd paid.

  “Let’s sit down,” said the hippie. “Takes them a while to get things cranked up again.” He led them to a table at the other end of the room, to Chaos’s relief. Chaos didn’t want to have to look at the McDonaldonians while he ate. Boyd leaned back in his seat and grinned. “Did I tell you?” he said.

  “They’re the only ones left on the whole Strip?” asked Chaos.

  “Apart from me and the raccoons.”

  “I don’t get it. Why—”

  “These cats are from the mountains, man. They probably dropped out of kindergarten. Probably never even seen television. We’re talking Appalachia here, man. Tobacco Road. They came down here to the Strip and got jobs for three-fifty an hour and it’s all they know. The company rulebook is their bible. So when everyone cleared out of the Strip, these cats just stuck, because they didn’t know anything else.”

  “What do they think—”

  “They don’t think, man. That’s the point. Like Elaine is to those cats up in the green, Ronald McDonald is to these guys. They live to serve. I call them McDonaldonians because that’s where
they live now—McDonaldonia. Just another little pocket of weirdness.”

  “How can the food hold out?”

  “Are you kidding? They’ve got whole freezers full of it. Not allowed to touch it themselves, and I’m the only customer. And I hardly ever eat this shit more than two or three times a week. Mostly canned stuff from the supermarket, which reminds me. I’d better remember to bring some cans next time I’m through here, some vegetables or something with some C in it because these cats are looking bad.”

  “Four burgers and two fries and a Big Mac,” said Johanson over the microphone.

  They went up to get their food. Stoney and Junior were still busy catching burgers as they fell off the fry line, building Big Macs, packing them into styrofoam boxes. Chaos looked at Boyd, who raised his hand and smiled. “Tell them about the batches,” he said to Johanson.

  Johanson shrugged. “We, uh, can’t just make four burgers, gotta make a batch. Box it up, put it under the warming lights for ten minutes.” He pointed to the glowing orange bin where the finished burgers were accumulating. “If it don’t sell in ten minutes, we throw the batch away ’cause of, uh, guarantee of freshness.” He wiped his hands on his grease-blackened apron and grinned.

  Boyd raised his eyebrows. They took their trays back to the table and ate. Chaos and Melinda each polished off two burgers easily. “Told you they’re small,” said Boyd. “You want more?” He pulled out some money and tossed it onto the table between them. “Go ahead, just hurry, for God’s sake, catch them before the next batch.”

  Chaos went to the counter and bought another two hamburgers from under the lights. The McDonaldonians seemed pleased.

  After the meal they went back out to the parking lot. Boyd noticed Chaos staring at the two other solar-powered cars in the lot, and said, “Hey! Want a car? Not one of these, man. We’ll find you a new one. Get in.”

  He drove them to a dealership another half-mile down the Strip. The safety glass of the showroom walls had been kicked out of the frames and lay in crumbled sheets across the floor like frozen waves. There were four cars in the building and another ten or so in the lot. “Want a truck like mine?” said Boyd. “Or one of these little grapefruit seeds here?”

  Chaos pointed to the smallest compact in the lot, the one that most resembled the car in his dream. He looked at Melinda, and she nodded.

  “Fair enough,” said Boyd.

  They climbed in over the glass while Boyd went rummaging in the office compartment. He emerged with a book-sized device made of colored plastic and emblazoned with the insignia of the dealership. Back out in the lot, Boyd switched on the device and had Chaos press his hand to the front of it, which lit briefly. Then he pressed the device to the lock on the driver’s side door. “Go ahead, try it,” said Boyd. Chaos put his hand on the door; it clicked open, and the engine rumbled into life.

  “You mean to hit the road?” said the hippie.

  “I thought I’d have a look at California,” said Chaos.

  “That’s cool, that’s cool”—as if it weren’t quite. “Here.” He went to his truck and came back with a handful of maps. “Route 80. It’s a big, ugly road. Good luck. You want my advice, skip Salt Lake City. Fact, skip Utah altogether. Stick to the road.”

  Chaos took the maps. “Thanks.”

  “For that matter, Nevada’s got some military stuff going on. The map is not the territory, man. That’s all I’ll say about it, the map is not the territory. Not anymore.” He squinted up into the sun. “What do you plan to do in California?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chaos.

  “Well, you won’t be alone. That state has its head up its rear end. It’s an epidemic. You sure you want to leave? There’s plenty of head space right here, if that’s what you’re looking for. More than enough Strip to go around.”

  “Thanks,” said Chaos. “But I’m curious to see what else is going on.”

  “That’s cool, that’s cool,” said Boyd quickly, nervously. “I’m just saying we got plenty of stuff to go around here, and so what’s the hurry?” He glanced agitatedly at Melinda. “Because the one thing we’re short on is chicks. So why not stay a few days at least?”

  “No,” said Chaos. He swung the door open and Melinda scooted in, past the steering wheel, to the passenger seat. “We’re moving on.”

  “That’s cool,” said Boyd, turning away. “Take it easy, man.”

  They loaded up the backseat with cans and bottled water from a demolished grocery store, then drove on through the mountains. The first night they pulled over and slept in the car, but Chaos woke after a few hours, the moon still up, Melinda asleep beside him, and without waking her he started the car and got back on the road. He was practiced at avoiding sleep from all his years dodging Kellogg’s dreams, and sometimes he couldn’t sleep when he wanted to. He took Boyd’s advice and stayed on the highway through Utah, and by the time night fell again, they were across the state line, into Nevada. He slept, but lightly, for five or six hours, then pushed on.

  They spoke little, Melinda seemingly content to gaze out the side window, just as he was pretty much content to watch the asphalt roll away in front of the car. The mood between them was anticipatory, as though, a destination having been set, there was nothing left to do but get there. He didn’t ask what she knew about California, or whether she’d even heard the name before. He did ask once if she missed her parents, breaking an afternoon’s silence, and she said no, and then half an hour later they argued about nothing, and sulked, and he understood that she wanted him to treat her like an adult. So he withdrew into himself and enjoyed the space and silence, two tastes he’d cultivated back in Hatfork. He still didn’t know how old she was, but he guessed thirteen.

  Both nights he dreamed of the house by the lake. The first night he talked to the computer, which insisted on calling him Everett and on discussing the question of what he did and didn’t remember. It told him that the woman he missed was named Gwen.

  The next night he met Gwen. They were in a darkened room together, and he felt her beside him, touched her hands and face. They spoke intimately, though after he woke, he couldn’t remember any of what was said.

  The dreams seemed designed, either by the computer or by some part of his sleeping self, to nudge him towards speculations about his life before. They succeeded in that, but they confused him too. He suspected that some of it was just dreams, not actual memories. Anyway, he’d learned by now to distrust dreams and memories both. Both could be inauthentic. But he believed in Gwen. The short time with her had left a pulse in him, a sense of something long-buried but stirring in the murk, rising to the surface.

  If the new dreams had any effect on Melinda, she kept it to herself.

  Nevada was different, all casinos and advertising. Some of the billboards had been cryptically altered, words blotted out with white and graphics repainted, and others had just been mutilated. Some towns looked dead, at least from the highway, and some looked active; Chaos let them all pass, never even slowing the car. Soon enough he was back in the desert.

  Late afternoon on the third day, fifty miles outside Reno, they heard a roar in the sky, and a moment later two aircraft came into view. They were unmarked craft, and wingless, like helicopters without propellers. Their noise shattered the silence of the day. Chaos stopped the car. The two craft swerved low over the road, soaring towards the distant mountains, then one doubled back while the other disappeared.

  The pilot was pointing at their car. Chaos shouted and waved from his open window. The craft circled and made another pass, even lower, and the man in the passenger seat aimed a device through the side window, at the car. The craft stopped and hovered directly overhead while the man worked his device, pushing keys and peering intently at the results. Chaos got out and yelled, but it was hopeless against the sound of the flying machine.

  The man in the passenger seat put the box away and lifted a short, stubby rifle and trained it on the car.

  “No,” shou
ted Chaos.

  Melinda, who was watching from her side of the car, got out and ran across the road. The man fired. Something shot out of the mouth of the rifle, landed on the roof of the car with a thump, and broke into a thick, viscous glob of phosphorescent pink. They were marked. The craft shot up into the sky and rushed away in the direction of the mountains.

  As the sound died, Chaos went to the car and inspected the pink goo. It covered most of two of the solar panels, and was already beginning to dry into a hard shell, impossible to remove, like nail polish. But when Chaos started the car, it ran as well as before.

  Melinda climbed back in, not saying a word. There were thin rivulets of sweat running through the fur of her temples. Chaos wondered if she’d ever seen anything fly through the air before. Probably not. Kellogg had broadcast some dreams about airplanes, but Kellogg’s dreams were full of impossible things. It was different to have it come true.

  They were silent for a long time, then she said, “What a couple of jerks.”

  “There’s a lot of jerks around,” he said.

  “Is that what it’s like in California?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. They were almost there.

  The incident unnerved him, made him feel exposed. That night, when they parked, the spot glowed in the moonlight like a beacon. Chaos walked around gathering shrubbery and branches and tried to cover it, but the pink still shone through.

  The car broke down the next day, outside a small city called Vacaville. Chaos felt the engine laboring after an hour or so of driving in the midday sun, and tried to ignore it. But soon the car spluttered and stopped. He assumed it had to do with the blocked solar panels. He opened the hood and looked inside, but it was pointless; he didn’t understand the engine. Melinda got out, and they sat together on the guard rail eating from cans and staring at the wounded car with its big pink splotch.