Part 14 (2/2)

”He's ninety years old and he owns half of Las Vegas. Why the h.e.l.l would we want to get at him?” There's something about the way breaded fried shrimp crunch that's deeply satisfying. The battered ones just aren't as good.

”Please tell me you're kidding.” His cheap knife squeaked on the cheap plate as he cut his meat.

I winced. ”Kidding?”

”s.h.i.+t,” he said. ”Oh, s.h.i.+t. Branislava Bukvajova? No? Nothing?”

”Bukvajova,” I said. ”I swear I know that name.”

”Of course,” he said. ”Who can make a city forget like the guy who runs it? Jackie, I think I know what's going on. I think I know what the problem is.”

”Good,” I said. ”Can you explain it to me?”

”Drink your coffee and I'll try.”

But I wasn't finished with the food yet, so I ate that and drank the ice water, smus.h.i.+ng army-green peas between the tines of my fork. They tasted more like porridge than like a vegetable.

”Powers wasn't anybody yet when he married Bukvajova, was he?”

”Wait,” I said. ”Who did Powers marry? He's got a wife, doesn't he? His third one. The brunette. Used to be an actress.”

”Not a very good one,” Stewart agreed. ”That's beside the point. She's his fourth wife, according to this. He married Branka Bukvajova in 1935. It seems like it was annulled less than a year later, but she never went back to the circus. Like she was stuck here, or she didn't remember that she could go home.”

”Everybody forgets stuff in Vegas,” I said, and didn't understand why Stewart would find it so troubling. It was only true. ”Vegas forgets stuff. Imploded, bulldozed, blown away.”

”Yeah,” Stewart said, and stole one of my shrimp. ”Almost makes you think somebody's stealing its memory, doesn't it? Do you want some chocolate cake, Jackie?”

”Jackie?” I said, picking up the cooling coffee in its white inst.i.tutional stoneware cup. ”Then who are you?”

I didn't really believe him when he said I was Jackie-isn't that a girl's name?-but it didn't bother me.

It really did bother me that I didn't know who he was, though. That seemed really rude. Especially when he was apparently buying me dinner. ”Stewart,” he said, and the strain on his voice cracked it clean across. He rose to fetch me cake, which made me feel bad that I couldn't remember how I'd met him. Surely I wasn't drunk? Surely I hadn't been that drunk?

”Am I drunk?” I asked, as he put the cake down before me and waved our busser over to refill my coffee mug.

”I wish,” he answered, and patted my arm. Following the line of his motion, I realized suddenly that there was an awful lot of ink on my arm. I put down my fork, a bite of cake still speared untasted on the tines, and poked my bicep with a finger.

”Huh.”

”Eat,” he said. ”You need your strength. And then we're going back to visit Ms. Bukvajova, and we're not leaving until we figure out what's going on.”

I swallowed a mouthful of cake. ”Who's Ms. Bukvajova?”

The afternoon was full of light when we walked out onto a promenade covered by an arch that seemed to be made of millions of small lights hung from a lattice. The day was like a kiln. I deduced we must be in the desert. ”Stewart, where are we?”

His face very still, he said, ”Fremont Street.”

”Fremont Street? Isn't that in Tombstone? Where the Earps shot up the Clantons. Familiarly called the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as misrepresented in a Star Trek episode.”

”All right,” Stewart said. ”You're still Jackie. And we have seriously got to get this fixed.”

I should probably have been scared, standing on a strange street corner in a strange town with a strange man, unable to remember my own name. Had I ever known my name? But Stewart was a soothing presence, for all his twisted lips and wrinkled forehead.

”I don't think this would bother me so much if you weren't a walking encyclopedia of forgotten Las Vegas.”

”We're in Las Vegas? Oh. Then this will all get pulled down in a couple of years anyway, won't it? I don't know why they even bother naming things.”

His hand was hard on my shoulder as he pulled me along. ”Come on. I'm not sure how to handle this, Jackie. As long as I've known you-”

”-As long as you've known me?”

”-Whatever happens in this place, whatever falls down or gets buried or goes forgotten, you always seem to remember that it's here, or that it was here.” He led me through crowds deftly, and I let him. He seemed to know where he was going, and I had no idea. ”All that dead history never dies, in you. And now...” He shrugged.

I put my hand over his fingers on my arm, because it seemed like the thing to do, and he smiled at me, very briefly. My heart jumped. Huh. Was he my boyfriend?

I thought that over. It seemed appealing.

”Do you remember me?” he asked.

”Maybe,” I said. ”A little. Are we together?”

”Yes,” he said. ”Well, only for the last hundred years. But what I was trying to say was, all that time, I've had this idea that you were, I dunno, the memory of Las Vegas. Where all its ghosts went. Where they wound up. And now, if you can't remember anything...”

”Do you think I'm going senile?”

”Cities don't go senile,” he said. We ducked between an arguing couple.

”You talk like I'm somehow linked to the city-”

”Jackie, you are the city. You're its genius. Its spirit. One of them. I'm the other one.”

And you know, that sounded right. Completely bizarre, mind you, but right. ”So if I'm the city's memory,” I said, ”and I can't remember anything....”

”Yeah,” he said. ”You see why I'm a little worried now.”

”Well then,” I said-and there was no excuse for my tone, because I'm sure he would have seen it if he wasn't too worried to think straight-”it's obvious what's going on. Either somebody is using the city to get to me, or me to get to the city.”

The first thing I noticed about the battered old block house on the neglected ranch estate was a glorious bottle tree in the side yard, moaning softly in the breeze. It caught the sunlight in all colors, cobalt and ruby and amber and emerald, commonplace and lovely.

I imagine most of us never really look at gla.s.s. But there it was, sun stained through it. I felt the whimpers of the ghosts trapped inside. Felt, yes. It wasn't exactly hearing.

I stepped away from the still-open door of the parked car, and the blond man caught my arm. ”Jackie,” he said. ”Don't go too close to that.”

<script>