After the First Death

remembered her body moving under mine, and I remember to this day, and without any particular sense of lust, all the details of her body. I remember the feel of her flesh in a way that transcends normal memory, and I have wondered whether it is not false memory indeed, for it strikes me as incredible that I can remember this once- possessed whore’s flesh, taken in deep drunkenness, a flash of memory in a sea of black, that I can remember this flesh in a far more vivid fashion than I can recall, for example, the oft-possessed body of my own wife.

That I remember. I don’t remember the murder, a knife slash across the jugular, blood spurting, everything. I remember none of it.

Well.

The point of this is, simply, that a blackout is a selective thing, and yet there would appear to be something of random chance in its operation. I can for example recall evenings, pleasant social evenings, pleasant evenings of social drinking and conversation with faculty members and their wives, pleasant social evenings after which I would awaken with a three-hour memory lapse and the horrid certainty that I had in that unremembered gap done something unpardonable, committed some irredeemable sin, insulted some dear friend, performed, in short, some nameless but unspeakable horror. And I would subsequently find out that I had done nothing wrong at all, that I had impressed my friends as having been completely sober, at least no more than slightly high.

And yet it would be blacked out, gone.

Well.

Now, while Randolph Scott shot Comanches, I sucked on a cigarette and picked at my brain like a fussy eater. From the first drink there was no neat chronology, no full history. There were only flashes of memory, some vivid, some fuzzy, some barely present at all. I played with the memories like an archaeologist with a shredded scroll of papyrus, trying to straighten them out and fit them in place and read meaning into them.

A boisterous conversation with a large red-haired man, a merchant seaman. Each of us standing rounds of drinks, and then something that he said (his words lost to memory now) and I threw a punch at him, I missed, and fell on the floor, and I think he kicked me. Then several men hustled me out of the bar and dropped me at the curb. They were neither rough nor gentle, they took me out as if carrying garbage, took me out, dropped me.

Trying to get into a sidewalk phone booth, but it was occupied, a woman, a fat woman with an armload of packages making a phone call in the booth, and I outside, trying to get in, and stumbling from booth to curb and being violently ill in the gutter. Late at night by then, streetlights, neon, and I puked up my guts at the curb while the world cautiously ignored me.

Later or earlier, a cop trying to decide whether or not to run me in. Was I sick? Was I all right? Could I get home myself? God, if only he had run me in. God in heaven, if only he had run me in.

But when had I got hold of the knife? Where and when had I picked up the girl?

The girl’s face then, remembered vividly, not as I had seen it that morning in death but as I had seen it the night before on Seventh Avenue somewhere between Forty-sixth Street and Fiftieth Street. The girl’s face, very pale skin, black hair worn long and loose, a thin sharp nose, a red mouth, intensely blue eyes, and the waxen sunken eyelids of a heroin addict The slightly junked-up stare of those immaculate blue eyes. A slender girl, a reed of a girl. No makeup, just the lipstick. Low-heeled shoes. Toothpick legs. A black skirt, a wet blouse. Breasts full beneath the blouse, large breasts for so slim a girl. Age? She was as old and as young as a whore.

Her name was Robin. I remember now, her name was Robin. At least that was what she told me, and I told her my name was Alex.

An echo-

“Hi, honey.”

“Well, hello.”

“Do you want to go out?” I still remembered the euphemisms. Four years, four and a half years, I still remembered the euphemisms. Some things you never forget, like swimming.

“Sure.” An arm tucked in mine. “How much can you give me?”

“Ten?”

“Could you give me twenty?”

“I guess.”

“You’re not too drunk, are you, honey?”

“I’m all right”

“Cause it’s no good if you’re too drunk, and all.”

“I’m all right.”

“You got a room?”

“No.”

“Well, I know a hotel-”

Then a long blank stretch. Nothing, no matter how I go over it Just nothing. Evidently we walked or rode to the hotel. I’ve no idea which. We could have taken a cab, we could have walked. Perhaps the newspapers will tell me what happened, perhaps someone will have seen us walking together, perhaps a cab driver will remember conveying us to the Maxfield. But I cannot summon up the memory.

Oh. I used my name at the hotel. My own name, my own address. Just the single lie of Mr. & Mrs., the usual hotel room lie. But my own name.

That would make it easier for the police, as if it were not already sufficiently easy for them.

Memory of checking in, no memory of getting to the room. Just the memory of being in the room, and giving her money, and getting undressed. And Robin getting undressed.

This last memory was too vivid, too sharp. I cowered in my balcony seat and closed my eyes to shut out Randolph Scott. The white blouse, the black skirt, both off. The breasts-I had not previously believed them-bobbing in a white bra. “Help me with this, honey?” And turning her back to me so that I could unhook that bra. The silken feeling, so long forgotten, of her sweet skin. My hands surrounding her, cupping those breasts, those unbelieved breasts.

(The memory ached. Pain in the groin, in the pit of the stomach. A fantastic visual and tactile memory, total recall of how she looked and felt. Those thin wrists, those thin legs, that round bottom, flat tummy, soft soft, oh!)

I could not cease touching her. I had to touch and embrace all of her, every square inch of her.

“Oh, lie down, honey. Here, let me French it for you-”

Floating, on a bed, on a cloud, on the waves. Boneless, limp, floating. The memory of those hands, of that mouth. The Hindu flutist charming the snake. Robin Red Breast Robin Hood. Sweet Robin. Here, let me French it for you.

Four and a half years.

Some things once learned are never forgotten, like swimming.

There the memory ended. I fought with it played with it and for a long time I could dredge up no more of it. I wanted to remember the killing, and yet I did not want to, and I fought a quiet battle with myself, then gave up at last and went downstairs to the stand in the lobby. I spent my last dime on a candy bar and took it upstairs again. I found the same seat unwrapped the candy bar, ate it in small thoughtful bites, and watched the movie for a few minutes.

Then more memory.

We had finished, Robin and I.I lay, eyes closed, sated, fulfilled. A door opened-Robin leaving? What? A variety of sounds which I did not open my eyes to investigate.

Then-

I could almost get it, but at first I was afraid. I sat in my seat and clenched my eyes tightly shut and made small hard fists of both my hands. I fought and won, and it came into focus.

A hand clasped over Robin’s mouth but not my hand and another hand holding a knife but not my hand and Robin struggling in someone’s arms but not my arms and a knife slashing slashing but not my knife and blood everywhere but I could not move, I could not move, I could only gasp and moan and, at last, slip back under blackness.

I sat bolt upright in my seat. Sweat poured from my forehead. My heart was pounding and I could not breathe.

I remembered.

I hadn’t killed her. I hadn’t done it. Somebody else killed her. Somebody else did it, wielded the knife, cut the