Free Passenger by Ronald Malfi

momma says, anyway.  What do you do?”
    “I play piano and own an apartment.  Apparently.”
    “You rich?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Well, yeah, you don’t look rich.”
    “If I am, I have no idea where my money is.”
    “Me, too,” Tabitha says.  She leans closer to me now, nearly resting her chin on my shoulder.  She smells warm and domestic, like a wife.  “I used to be rich.”
    “What happened?”
    “Was robbed. By every goddamn man I ever met.  Clarence Wilcox included.  I tell you he’s a son of a bitch?”
    “Yes,” I say.  “A deadbeat son of a bitch.”
    Tabitha smiles and looks instantly tired.  “You’re funny.  What’d you say your name was?”
    “I don’t know.  I can’t remember.”
    “Yeah,” says Tabitha, “that’s right.  You a spy with your memory erased.  You don’t remember nothing about all your spy work?”
    “No.”
    “Clarence says you was in the Middle East, fighting the Iraq peoples.  You remember any of that?”
    “No.”
    “The Iraq peoples?”
    “Sorry.”
    She runs a hand behind my head and caresses my scalp with those long fingernails.  “Did it hurt when they took your memory?”
    “I can’t remember.”
    “I wonder,” she goes on, “if they had to actually cut out a piece of your brain.  Because, you know, there’s a piece of the brain that does all the memory stuff.  And then there’s a piece of the brain that handles, like, all your regular functions.  Like walking and talking and breathing and all that.”  She winks.  “And sex.  The animal part.  You remember how to do all that all right, huh?”
    “I guess so.”
    She laughs.  Across the room, Clarence raises the bass on his stereo.  A flashbulb goes off, nearly blinding me, and I see the large-breasted woman pointing a camera in my direction.
    “Or maybe,” Tabitha continues, “they just have some transmitter device or something inside your head.  Like a little electronic thingamajig.  Somethin’ that goes ‘beep-beep-beep.’  Some white fool in D.C. don’t need you no more, presses a button, and zap—”
    “Zap,” I say.
    “Zap,” Tabitha parrots.  “Zap.  Just like that.  Your memory’s all gone.”
    “Could be.”
    Tabitha says, “You think I don’t like white boys?  Because I like white boys just fine.  I dated white boys before.”  Her hand is still caressing the back of my head.  Suddenly, my eyelids weigh a hundred pounds each.
    “Okay,” I hear myself say.
    “You wanna smoke some opium?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Ever smoke any?”
    “I don’t know.”  We could go on like this all night…
    “Got regular weed, too, if that’s your thing.”
    “I don’t know if I have a thing.”
    She laughs; my statement sounds funny to her.  “Listen, spy,” she says.  “You ever hook up with a sister?”
    Because I can’t stand to repeat myself, to tell her I can’t remember, I lie and say, “Yes.  Of course.  All I do is date black women.”
    “Yeah?”
    “All I do is hook up with sisters.”
    “Well!”  Another laugh.  She must think I’m the funniest guy around.  “Well, now!  You ain’t married, are you?”
    “No.”
    “Got any kids?”
    “None that I’m aware of.”
    “I don’t got no kids.  You like kids?”
    “I don’t have time for kids,” I say, leaning into her.  “Not enough time, what with being a government spy and all.  I’m on the road too much.”
    “You’re very cute.  And clever.  But maybe you ain’t no spy.  Maybe Clarence just pulling one over on me.”
    “Maybe.  Maybe not.”
    “Hey.”  Her smile is instantly warm and inviting.  If it has been this way all this time, I am only now just noticing it.  When she touches my hand, I feel something go woozy inside my stomach.  “Hey,” she says.  “Come with me.”
    We are in a small room off the basement—a storage room, cluttered with old hot water heaters and the snakelike spirals of garden hoses, hardened with