The Memory Painter

“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?”