1

That’s what I remember. I swear that every bit of that is as solid as any memory I have, as solid as any of the other building blocks that make up who I am out of who I’ve been.

But I’ve been sitting in bed not in my parents’ house for several minutes now, staring at the indistinct form of a woman lying beside me, feeling the warmth coming off of her, human warmth, human contact that I feel starved for though we’ve been lying side by side all night long. I’ve been examining my body as I run through these memories, and I have no scars. What I have are ten fingers, two eyes, and a scalp covered in long, loose curls.

I’m afraid to move, afraid to do anything that might awaken me back into that nightmare world of agony and hopelessness. I remember so many times through all that wishing that I’d just wake up, and now I have. A few minutes ago my alarm went off and I awoke from what seemed like an endless nightmare.

So why am I so scared?

I have other memories. Memories somehow occupying the same spot on the time-line as the ones I just described, just as vivid, just as real.

Everything is one until I lean into the fryer, hurrying to get done with cleaning duties so I can head to the Barrington’s party. But then everything divides. In one set of memories Madison calls and I forget to flip the switch and I burn, and I remember burning. I remember watching the flame approach. I remember feeling the pain, and trying to hurl myself back like you’d reach away from a hot burner but not being able to, the pain following me. I remember the flames going deeper until it felt as if my bone marrow was on fire, and I remember hearing my fat sizzle.

But I also remember not receiving any call. Instead, unharried, I flip the switch off before leaning into the fryer and scraping all the crust from the sides. Instead of lying on the floor covered in flour, praying to die as I continued to cook inside the powdery coating, I go out to my car and get my change of clothes, a suit, and head into the bathroom and emerge looking nice, smelling of cooked food and hoping that no one notices the incongruity but knowing that people will even though they won’t say anything.

Instead of an endless ambulance ride in which I beg over and over to be knocked out, I enjoy a long drive to the country club, singing along to my radio because I don’t feel like committing to a single CD, instead flipping around, using my famous memory to drag up the lyrics to pop, rap, R&B and classic rock songs as something catches my ear.

My famous memory, which possesses several months of two distinct layers.

I feel about for a shared memory of this moment, whole, in bed, a nightmarish memory, one in which my flesh is melted and fused and I’m staggering through my parents’ house without purpose. Memories of a living death. There isn’t one. Things have converged again.

I arrived at the party to find that Madison had just left around the same time I was lying beneath fast food heat lamps, freezing and cooking at the same time as plasma flooded my burnt flesh and my blood turned to pudding and my heart almost stopped beating.

Mr. And Mrs. Barrington greeted me warmly, introducing me as their future son-in-law to whoever they were talking to. They didn’t know where Madison had gotten to, but they were sure she’d be back any moment.

I’m sitting up. I slide back down beneath the covers, reach over and put a hand on a smooth, naked hip, breathe in the musky warmth.

I get out of bed. I need to see something. My feet go from a soft rug to hardwood and then one foot through the bathroom door lands on tile as I flip on the bathroom light, which cascades out, drawing a groan from the bed.

I cross the bedroom, but I can see the truth already. As she turned away from the light, she revealed long, blond hair. I continue, though, kneeling on the bed, crouching over the sleeping woman.

Janet Ericsson, the beautiful, foul-mouthed hostess from Pajino’s. She opens one eye and looks at me. “What?” she mumbles thickly.

Our schedules are dissimilar. She closed Pajino’s last night, while I get up at five to get in a workout before heading in to the Gerhardt Fund.

“Just wanted to look at your beautiful face.”

She smiles sleepily, barely turns her head toward me and puckers her lips, twisting them to the side for a kiss. I kiss her and stroke her silky hair once. Despite her crass, hard-nosed front, she’s wonderful. She helped me so much when Madison disappeared the night of her parents’ party, abandoning me and leaving me at the mercy of the local police.

“Now turn the fucking light off,” she mutters before slipping back into slow-breathing sleep.

I walk back to the bathroom in the master bedroom of the condo I recently bought. Shutting the door behind me so as to not further disturb Janet while she sleeps, I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m me.

Standing straight, I know I’m 6’4”, and quite a few inches taller if you include the pile of sleep-mussed curls atop my head. My shoulders are broad, my arms and torso covered in gym muscle, my body no longer wasted to a twisted skeleton by months of hypermetabolism. My skin is the flawless milky-coffee tone that confuses so many people. I’m young and strong and beautiful. The nightmare is over. I smile. It broadens and broadens until I look like a maniac. The nightmare is fucking over.

Was it a nightmare? It seemed so real. It still seems so real. Nightmares are supposed to fade, to feel real while they’re happening and then to fade. They aren’t supposed to claim space in the real time-line of memories. But all of my memories are doubled from the night of the party until I just awoke.

I shake my head. It will fade. It must have been the dose of Klonopin Janet gave me. I’ve been sleeping badly recently. Work is going so well, providing me with these problems that are more like puzzles that my brain won’t let go of even when I get home so that I’m in a constant manic state. I’ve been sleeping so lightly that I’m not used to vivid dream anymore. That’s all it is.

I rub at my chest. Remember how it had resembled a cow carcass left out in the desert sun, scraps of rawhide stretched haphazardly over blasted ribs.

The nightmare is over.

I brush my teeth and force my thoughts to my coming workout, the routine I’ll go through down in the building’s badass gym, one of the amenities that comes with my hefty homeowners association fees.

I’m me. The nightmare is over.

* * *

It’s back and bicep day, and I warm up with some easy curls. I remember reading that Arnold Schwarzenegger loved lifting weights so much that once he got his pump going and got deep into a set, every rep felt like an orgasm. I’d always thought he was a nutbag, especially imagining him talking about it in that thick Austrian accent, but now I know what he’s talking about.

I grip the bar of the chin / dip stand and begin pulling myself to it, and it feels amazing. I’m so damn strong. After a warm-up set at body weight I cross my ankles, settle a twenty-five pound dumbbell between them and start my working sets. For being 6’4”, that’s pretty damn good, but it feels better than pretty damn good. It feels like I’m flying up to the bar, like my 215 pounds plus the dumbbell could be blown about by the wind. Even when I get to the seventh rep and my pace slows and I’m grinding the reps out to get to ten, the point where the ache of my assaulted body usually overwhelms my pleasure in physical exertion, I still feel fantastic, am loving every straining flex. I’m not quite jizzing my gym shorts like Arnie, but my nightmare has lingered, the events real enough to make me appreciate even the pain of a healthy body, so different from the sour, sickly pain of disability.

As I shake the acid out of my biceps, the door beeps and Todd steps in, pocketing his keycard.

“Sup Cody?” Todd says, a big smile crossing his handsome-but-goofy face.

“Sup Todd?” I say, walking over and grabbing his hand in a semi-elaborate way that I know he enjoys, me being the only ethnic friend he’s got.

“What are you hitting today?” he asks.

“Back and biceps. Got some burnout curls left. You?”

“Second chest day. High rep.”

I nod. He does have a massive chest, and his barrel torso and short arms help him move crazy weight. Chest was the only day he’d ever beat me. Competing with him put an extra fifty pounds on my bench, but I started coming in a half-hour earlier because, despite enjoying the friendly competition, I needed that time to myself. Todd was a bit much at 5:30 in the morning. A few of the other residents worked out at 5:00, but none I worked with and felt compelled to pal around with. Todd was the guy who let me know someone in his coveted building was selling.

Then it hits me again, a tidal wave of alternate memories flooding over my brain, drowning my present reality, leaving it bobbing dead beneath the water. I live with my parents again, in my old bedroom, where I do nothing all day but pray for time to pass faster though I’m not looking forward to anything in particular. The memories hit me so hard they knock me dizzy. I close my eyes, stagger back a step.

Todd’s calloused hand grabs my bicep, steadies me. “You okay, man? You must have pushed it too hard.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I just slept badly.” Which isn’t exactly true. Not true at all. I slept so deeply that I can’t let go of it.

“You didn’t eat, did you?”

“You know I never eat before I work out.”

Todd rolls his eyes and huffs in exasperation. “Dude, you’re cut. You’re beach ready all the time. The only reason to not eat before you workout is if you’re cutting. If you’re lifting, you need sugar and amino acids in your blood or you won’t gain.”

I flex. My blood-filled, vein-roped bicep rises impressively. “I’m gaining just fine, my friend.” He looks like he’s about to speak. After that wave of vertigo and fearing another, I’m done with my workout and definitely done with this conversation I’ve had a hundred times. So before he can get a word out, I say, “In fact, I’ve got to go eat right now.”

He shuts his mouth, recalibrates, nods. “That’s a good idea. I’ll see you at the office.”

We slap palms again and I gather my water and towel and head for the door. Despite the normalcy of that interaction, or maybe even because of it, I’m even more creeped out than when I woke up.