The Memory Painter: A Novel Page 5

  Diana stormed over to the liquor cabinet. “How about a real drink?”

  Michael debated. A stiff one might help. “No, then I can’t drive.”

  “Where are you going?” Her back was to him. He could hear the hurt and bafflement in her voice.

  He wanted to apologize to her—he knew he should—but instead he said, “I need a library.”

  “At five a.m.?” Diana abandoned the drinks and sat on the couch, putting her head in her hands. “I knew this was a mistake. I can’t believe you talked me into letting you take it. Everything was on track. This could derail the study, our grant … everything.”

  “Diana, you have to trust me.” Michael couldn’t stop his voice rising again. “I will tell you everything, but not tonight.”

  “Well guess what?” She glared at him. “It’s morning.”

  Feeling helpless, Michael gently shook his head no.

  “Honey, I’m scared,” she pleaded with him. “Something happened to you. Ever since you took Renovo and woke up on that table, it’s like you’re not even here. Look at yourself in the mirror. What the hell happened?”

  Michael turned away from her, unable to deal with this right now. He could count on one hand the number of times they had fought in their six years together. She was his partner in everything and he had never kept her in the dark before. He grabbed the keys.

  His voice sounded far away, even to his own ears. “I can’t do this tonight. You’re not helping me.” He left before she could respond.

  He got into the car. The first thing he did was adjust the rearview mirror so he could see his reflection. Diana had not been imagining things. Something was different. Outwardly, he still looked the same—the same Roman features, the same thick, black hair peppered with gray, the same five o’clock shadow he could never seem to lose. But there was a barely perceptible change within his eyes. Of course Diana had seen it. She knew him better than anyone.

  He readjusted the mirror and drove, trying to kill the guilt he felt for shutting out his wife. She would forgive him later, once he explained, but for now he needed solitude to sort out the chaos in his head and prove that what existed in his mind was not some elaborate delusion triggered by the drug. He needed books.

  Checking the time, he knew the Research Services Desk at Harvard’s Lamont Library wasn’t open yet. He would have to wait. Driving aimlessly, he saw St. Francis de Sales up ahead and pulled over. Michael had driven past the church countless times but had never felt the urge to go inside, until now.

  He found the doors unlocked, inviting those in need of quiet reflection before the six-thirty mass inside. He walked in and was relieved to find no one else in sight.

  As he sat on a pew, the enormity of it all hit him: his team had just created a super drug that made LSD seem like baby aspirin, he had just relived the life of a priest in third-century Rome, and he was not sure if what he had gone through was a series of hallucinations or actual memories.

  All he knew was that the dream had felt as real as life and would bring ramifications. In one day, another man’s experiences had been added to his—a man who had lived over eighteen hundred years ago. Michael also couldn’t ignore the feeling that he had recovered a piece of himself he hadn’t even known was missing.

  The scientist within him could not accept those findings. He wasn’t sure how to even begin to form a hypothesis, let alone how to analyze the data.

  He found himself kneeling and closed his eyes. The Act of Love prayer came to his lips of its own accord. “Domine Deus, amo te super omni et proximum meum propter te, quia tu es summum, infinitum et perfectissimum bonum, omni dilectione dignum. In hac caritate vivere et mori statuo. Amen.”

  As he spoke, he listened to the Latin, simultaneously translating the words in his mind: O Lord God, I love you above all things and I love my neighbor for your sake because you are the highest, infinite, and perfect good, worthy of all my love. In this love I intend to live and die. Amen.

  The prayer sounded alien to him, and he wondered how he, a declared atheist, could have internalized these beliefs. But his spirit embraced the words and the emotions they inspired, making him forget the question. He felt tears well in his eyes, and despite himself, he cried without shame.

  Soon the sounds of parishioners intruded on his thoughts as they began to file in for mass. The curtain at the altar parted and an elderly priest came out from behind, busy preparing the table. He gave Michael an inquisitive look. It was obvious he had been listening.

  Michael hurried to the exit, wanting nothing more than to avoid people. Outside, he got back in his car and stared at the church. What in the hell was that about?

  Without warning, he felt an urgent need to sleep. The library would have to wait.

  He locked his doors, leaned back in his seat, and within moments sank into blissful oblivion.

  TEN

  Bryan opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his car, still feeling himself fall asleep as Michael Backer. His visions had never brought such clarity before.

  He was Michael Backer.

  Bryan sat up and laughed at the irony of it: he no longer thought he was crazy because he believed he was a forty-year-old neuroscientist from the eighties. But somehow it made perfect sense. Although he still had a thousand questions—to begin with, who the hell were these people and what had happened to them?

  He closed his eyes and tried to recall more, frustrated that he had only remembered a small part of Michael’s life. This man was the key to everything, just as he felt certain that Linz had been Diana, Michael’s wife.

  Bryan abandoned his attempt to retrieve more memories and checked his watch. He had been in Linz’s parking lot for over nine hours. Their meeting this morning felt like a lifetime ago. He grabbed his cell phone and called her.

  * * *

  “Hello?” Linz answered, between bites of pizza as she worked on her computer.

  “Linz? This is Bryan, from this morning.”

  She sat up in disbelief.

  “I was wondering if we could meet again?”

  Linz was speechless. He literally ran out the door this morning and now he wanted to meet. This man was an utter enigma. And one thing Linz couldn’t resist was a puzzle. “Um, when?”

  “Now, I’m outside.”

  “You’re here?” she squeaked. She’d just changed into her pajamas. Linz rushed to peek out the window and was able to see him on the street.

  He pressed on. “It’s important.”

  “What’s important?”

  “Can I come up?” he asked.

  “No.” She knew she sounded irritated, but she couldn’t help it. He ran out on her, dammit. “Just tell me over the phone. I’m busy with work.”

  “I can’t. I need to see you,” he insisted.

  Linz shook her head at herself. She was actually deliberating whether she should see him—because she desperately wanted to. She hadn’t stopped thinking of him all day.

  “Linz. Please.” He said softly, his voice insanely intimate.

  That did it. She was in big trouble. “Well, there’s a bar down the street called The Corner,” she offered, hating how flustered she sounded. She had to get a grip on herself. “I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  She hung up and rushed to the bedroom to change. Debating on a little black dress in the mirror, she rolled her eyes at herself and settled for jeans.

  * * *

  The Corner was a quaint neighborhood pub with dim lighting, leather booths, and three dartboards along the back wall. Bryan sat in the far corner with a vodka shot and kept his eyes on the door.

  Linz walked in. She scanned the bar and found him. When they saw each other, Bryan’s chest constricted, making it hard for him to breathe. New memories threatened to take hold of him. He closed his eyes and tried to focus. Stay here. Stay. Here. I am here now. I am here now.

  “Bryan?”

  Bryan opened his eyes to see her staring down at him with a frown on
her face, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Something funny?” she asked.

  “My life.” He gestured, “Please.”

  She sat across from him and put her laptop on the table.

  To Bryan, the intimate booth became even smaller. He stared at the tattoo circling her arm, seeing it for the first time. “That looks like the armband from the museum,” he commented. It also made her look fierce.

  Her eyes flashed in surprise at his observation.

  “I like it,” he said simply, feeling her size him up.

  “So do you normally show up at people’s doorsteps like this?” she asked. Her laptop beeped.

  “Do you normally bring a computer everywhere with you?”

  “I was in the middle of scanning a program when you called. It needs babysitting.” She typed in a quick command. “This’ll just take a second.”

  Bryan waited, content to watch her. He had so many memories of her brimming up inside of him, but instead of dwelling on them, he forced his mind to find the most socially acceptable question he could possibly ask. “What do you do?”

  Linz focused on the monitor as her hands flew across the keyboard. “Give you a hint.” She motioned to her tattoo.

  Bryan wasn’t sure what she was getting at. He took a guess. “A spiral?”

  “A double helix.”

  He choked on his drink. “You’re a scientist?”

  “Geneticist.” Her computer beeped again. “I decipher code to determine how the brain makes memories.” She saw the expression on his face. “Your disbelief is noted.”

  “No, it’s not that. I…” he floundered, grappling with the impossibility of it. What could he say?

  Just then a gum-smacking waitress came over to take their order. “What’ll it be, kiddos?”

  Linz debated. “I’ll have a glass of the claret.”

  Bryan tapped his glass. “Another Stoli.”

  “You got it.” The waitress sashayed off.

  Linz typed one more command. Bryan studied her fingers. She has Katarina’s hands.

  Her computer beeped in response and she turned to Bryan, giving him her undivided attention. “So. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Bryan didn’t know where to start. He saw the hurt lurking in her eyes and realized she needed an apology. “First off, I’m sorry I ran out on you this morning. I’m not good with people.”

  “No kidding.”

  He ignored the jibe. “I don’t talk about myself, ever, but you deserve an explanation.” He took a deep breath, about to go out on a limb. “I did the painting after a dream I had. Well, kind of a dream.” He frowned. How to explain it? “Sometimes, I wake up, and there’s the canvas—done. It’s not painting. I don’t know what it is. Most of the time, I don’t even remember doing them.”

  He didn’t go into the fact that the paintings had been a coping mechanism for years now, or that he had started painting when he was a young teenager at the height of his attacks. He called them attacks because that was what the dreams felt like, battering the wall of his consciousness, until sometimes he didn’t know reality from the dream. He had other names for them as well: visions, recalls, episodes, foreign memories. But no matter what words he used, it was all the same.

  Linz stared at him, her eyebrows raised in disbelief. Bryan wondered if she realized he was telling her something no one else knew.

  She prompted, “And in the dream?”

  “A priest named Origenes watched his dearest friend and most loyal follower be executed. Her name was Juliana.”

  “How do you know that?” Her eyes widened with shock. “How do you know her name? I never told you that. Why didn’t you say this before?”

  He could see her working herself up, and he hadn’t even gotten started. “You know, I’m sorry. This was a bad idea.”

  She touched his arm in apology. “Wait. I’m not accusing you. I just find this a little hard to believe. People don’t share the same dream.”

  Her hand sent a quiver down his body. He moved his arm away, severing the connection. “Maybe people share the same dreams all the time and just don’t know it. If you hadn’t gone to my opening, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Linz sat back and chewed on her lip. “In my dream the priest said something to her when she died. What about yours?”

  Bryan nodded with surprise and his chest constricted again. Origenes had never known if Juliana had heard him call out to her before she died—but she had.

  Linz took a napkin and wrote on it, folded it up, and handed him the pen. “Write it down.”

  Bryan did, and they exchanged napkins like contraband. He didn’t bother opening hers. He knew the same three words were written on each of them and that they were the words Origenes had called out right before the flames had devoured Juliana’s body.

  Bryan searched her face, eager to see how she would react. “He said, ‘Go to God.’”

  Linz stared at the napkin in her hands. “This is unbelievable.”

  Bryan took an even bigger gamble and asked a question—in Greek. “Do you speak Greek?”

  “No, I don’t speak Greek.” Then she froze.

  I knew it. Bryan sat back, amazed. “You do speak Greek.”

  “Trust me, I think I’d know if I…” She trailed off. The waitress hovered with their drinks, listening to Bryan reproach Linz in Greek.

  “You understand me.”

  Linz couldn’t answer. She was dumbstruck.

  Bryan insisted, “You do. I can’t believe it.”

  The waitress plopped their drinks down. “One wine, one Stoli.”

  Utterly perplexed, Linz looked up at the woman. “Did you understand anything he just said?”

  “Not a clue, honey.” The waitress popped her bubble at them and left.

  Linz nodded and took a big drink from her glass. Bryan remained quiet, giving her a moment to process everything.

  He switched to English. “See?” he said gently. “You understand me. You understand what I’m saying.”

  “But that isn’t possible. I don’t speak Greek.” She reached for her drink again.

  “I didn’t either. Until I had our dream. They spoke in Greek.”

  Linz shook her head. “But they were two separate dreams by two separate people. And mine was in English.”

  Bryan placed their two cocktail napkins side by side to make his point. “Maybe you just remembered it in English.”

  “It was in English.”

  “Was it?” he asked again in Greek.

  “Would you stop? A person just can’t become fluent in another language at a bar!” She put her head in her hands.

  “I think you’ve been fluent for a long time and didn’t know it.” Bryan reached out and held her other hand to comfort her. “The same thing happened to me.”

  Linz’s eyes grew bright, emotions churning inside her. She gently tugged her hand away and stood up, finishing her wine in one gulp. “Let’s go. I need to see something in Greek.”

  * * *

  They took a cab to the Central Library in Copley Square. Linz stood at a bookshelf labeled “Languages–Greek,” and read Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. Bryan pretended to read it over her shoulder, but in reality he was distracted by her scent. Strange, how memories could have their own fragrance.

  Linz turned to him and pointed at the page, shouting like an excited kid, “Would you look at this?”

  Bryan startled with a laugh and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “You’re yelling.”

  “I’m not yell—” She looked around, realizing people had begun to stare, and dropped her voice. “How can you be so calm?”

  “Because this isn’t new for me.”

  Linz grabbed a handful of books and headed to a reading table. “Well it is to me. Do you enjoy disrupting my world? I share dreams with strangers. Now I understand Greek. What else?”

  “Well…” Bryan hesitated. Maybe now was not the time to lay more on h
er. He didn’t want her to implode at a public library.

  “How in the world did you know I’d understand Greek?”

  Bryan wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know. A hunch?”

  Linz got an odd look on her face. “What if…?” She went to the library computer and typed in a search, mumbling to herself. “I can’t believe I never thought to look.” She backed away in shock. “Wow.”

  Bryan took her place at the monitor and saw the search results. “Whoa,” he agreed.

  He followed Linz to the Theology Section and watched as she searched the rows until she found what she was looking for.

  “Guess we didn’t have a hunch about this,” she said, showing him the title: Origenes Adamantius, His Life and Times. “The priest really existed.”

  Bryan kept silent as he studied the rows of books. He already knew Origenes had lived. He also knew all the priest’s works by heart, in their original language, but it was always interesting to hear what history had to say.

  Linz gathered more books. With Bryan’s help, they hailed a cab and headed back to her place. Neither said a word in the car. The windows were down, and the Turkish cabdriver had a classical song from his homeland playing. Bryan turned his face to embrace the wind, marveling at how luminous Boston appeared at night. Finally, he had found someone who could possibly understand his world, and yet he hesitated to reveal it to her. He wanted to hold Linz’s hand, to revel in their connection. But he knew that she was still reeling from their discoveries. Even Bryan was having trouble grasping her ability to speak Greek, that this was something she shared with him. He had no idea what it meant, or where they should go from here.

  Perhaps they could start with dinner and movie, or another battle at chess. Bryan chuckled at the thought.

  “What?” Linz looked over at him.

  “Just thinking about the future,” he said. She looked away quickly and he smiled to himself, beginning to grow accustomed to her reserve. He found it endearing, and a challenge. They were more alike than she knew. One day, he hoped, she would let him in.