“It’s going to start happening much faster now.”
“I know,” I breathed. We had all felt it. The size of what had been lost to save the RV. It was a big thing, an anchoring thing. We had so few of those left.
“We should go. There isn’t time to waste anymore.”
“In a moment.” I edged forward and sat down beside her, as quietly as I could. “We have a moment.”
She looked down at her hands. “A moment,” she conceded at last.
I waited for her to tell me what she’d just given up. Then I realized what it was.
“I don’t remember it either,” I said. Somehow she had forgotten it, and then forgotten it for all of us as well. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s all right.” There was nothing more to do about it, except just forget more. The woman climbed to her feet. In the moonlight, she shimmered lightly. “It was just a name. There was hardly anything left to it anyway.”
We have been driving a long time, I think. I can’t see where we came from—there’s nothing around us for miles. Wherever it was, it’s too far away to know now. The air is warm, and the road is straight.
“Where are we going?” I asked the woman driving next to me when I saw her glance over.
“It’s a place called New Orleans,” she said patiently.
“New Orleans,” I repeated. What a wonderful-sounding place, don’t you think, Ory? A place that’s new. A place for starting over. I don’t know what Orleans means, but it also sounds like your name. I don’t think I ever believed much in signs like that, but then again maybe I did, and I just can’t remember anymore. In any case, it sounds like a good sign, don’t you think? “How far are we?” I added.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “We’re just following the painting.”
“What painting?” I asked.
“The painting on the side of the RV,” she replied.
There was a long silence. An unspoken understanding. That she didn’t remember from where it had come either.
“We can stop so you can look at it if you want,” she finally continued after a few moments.
“That’s okay,” I said. A strange feeling niggled at the back of my mind. I didn’t know there was a painting, but the conversation was playing as if I should. I was in a big van with a painting on its side, so I must have seen it when I climbed in, right? I didn’t know if I didn’t want to see it because I should remember it, or because it seemed like now if we stopped the van and I looked at it, I’d just forget again in a few minutes anyway.
The driver was fiddling with the fraying leather wrap around the steering wheel. The sun was in our eyes.
“How do I know you?” I finally asked. I felt ashamed to ask it. I was comfortable sitting next to her there, in the passenger seat, as if we could’ve known each other for years. I searched her face for anger or pain. The expression I had been terrified to see on your face one day when I finally forgot something you couldn’t bear.
But the driver only smiled. “I don’t remember either,” she confessed. “But we’re here now.”
There’s just so little left, Ory. You might be the only thing that’s left. I wish I hadn’t run. I wish I’d stayed with you in that little dark shelter, hiding in the dim, musty ballroom—was it a castle? A house?—resisting the pull as long as I could. But then I think about how much I’ve forgotten—I don’t know what all of it was, but I know it was too much, because there are so many things I can’t answer anymore—and I know I couldn’t have stayed. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I’d done something to you.
“Why are you crying?” the woman driving next to me said.
I clicked the tape recorder off then, to finish talking to you later, and wiped my face.
“Is that your voice in there?” she asked. “It sounds like you.”
“Yes, I think so,” I said. The tires beneath us slowly lapped the cracked road under our hood, turn after turn. I could feel the steady hum of the engine. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” she said.
Somehow it made sense to me. “Why are we going? Is it because . . . because we know people there?” I added hopefully. Maybe you’re there, Ory? Waiting for me?
The driver shook her head. “I don’t know anyone there. I don’t think you do either. Or them.”
I looked over the seat behind us and saw two other people dozing in the semi-darkness of the backseat, a man and a woman. How long had they been there? How long have I been here?
“It’s all right,” she said. “Once we get there, things will be better. Someone will be able to tell us why we came.”
I looked down at this little machine in my hands. “Will they be able to . . .” I don’t even know what exactly I need. Help, but what kind? And how? “. . . fix us?”