“That’s so cool,” said Randy.
“What does Albert do?” said Megan.
“He runs an online design magazine. It’s one of the only local design magazines that really matters on a national level.” He turned to Randy and said, “You know how stuff is around here.”
“So, are you writing about design or are you . . . designing for this design magazine?” asked Megan.
“Oh, Albert likes to do most of the design himself, so I’m writing.”
“Oh, right, you said he said he liked your writing from class.”
“Yeah,” said David. “Actually, the only person he lets help him out with the design is Carrie.”
The night plummeted on. Randy and David talked about books they’d been reading and design techniques they liked. They laughed together about mutual acquaintances. Megan drank and smoked and thought about Carrie a little. She thought, I read books and do things, too. But not the same things, and not the same books. Occasionally she interjected, but the things she said were answered with polite questions and did not fit well into the flow of the conversation, so she mostly sat back and tried to relax. She must have spaced out. When she came to, David was saying, “Toothpaste, hacksaw, People magazine, a bag of carrots, red gym socks, Jean-Luc Picard, tomato paste, cardboard cutout of Austin Powers, CD player, toothpicks.”
“Whoa, cool,” said Randy.
“What are you doing again?” asked Megan.
“A memory palace,” said Randy.
“It’s a medieval memory technique. If you need to remember a list of things, what you do is pick a place that you remember well, like your childhood home or your office or your apartment, and you make a narrative. Like, I walk up my front steps and I step on a tube of toothpaste and I get toothpaste all over my foot, so I pick up a hacksaw and I cut off my foot. Then I open my mailbox and see a copy of People magazine that has a photo of me cutting off my foot on the cover. My landlord is standing in my entryway and he offers me a carrot, and I notice he’s wearing red gym socks,” said David. He kept talking through his memory palace, but Megan was somewhere else.
“Can I try one?” asked Randy.
“Yeah, absolutely.” David took a piece of paper and started writing a list.
“This is awesome,” said Randy.
Memory palace. Megan opened another beer. She said, “This is awesome,” in her head to mock Randy. Then she whispered, “Memory palace.”
“You want to try one?” Randy asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” said Megan.
They weren’t disappointed about it, or outwardly happy. Megan stared at them while they were sitting in silence, Randy looking at the list and David looking at Randy. What’s in my memory palace? she wondered. A driveway. One with a basketball hoop on a pole. Megan was eleven and playing with her new friends. They grinned at each other and approached her, tied her to the basketball pole with two jump ropes, attached Rollerblades to her feet, and then drew penises on her face. Her hair was dressed, then, with shaving cream.
Randy recited his list in the background.
They dragged her, on the end of the jump ropes, to a soft-serve ice cream stand and forced her to order them all an extra-large Twister with gummy bears. The guy at the counter was cute—though, in retrospect, he probably was not—and he pointed out to her that she had a penis and the words “I am gay” drawn on her face. As she had not yet learned to be self-deprecating, she had not handled herself well, and she realized, just then on the couch, that she still held a burdensome grudge against those girls for what they had done to her.
She set down her beer and knew she was drunk.
“No, it’s cool, guys, I just did one in my head a second ago. A memory palace, I mean,” she said. This statement was unprovoked.
“Uh, okay,” said David. “Wanna do it for us?”
“Not really.”
“Aw, come on, why not?” said Randy.
“You don’t want to know what’s in my memory palace.” But since she was drunk and feeling moved by the rediscovery of the memory, she told them what she had just been thinking.
“That’s not really what a memory palace is,” said David. “That’s just a memory.”
“Well, it’s the setting of my memory palace,” said Megan.
“Yeah, but what were your items?” he asked. Megan looked at him. “And what’s the big deal, anyway? Everyone has bad middle-school memories. That just sounds like a little bit of hazing.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you say,” said Megan.
Randy was annoyed with Megan for moodily describing past social disappointments. And he was well lubricated. “That’s not even the worst of Megan’s memories,” he said.
David laughed encouragingly.
“Honey, I’m surprised you didn’t choose your fourth grade living room as the setting for your memory palace,” said Randy.
“What happened?” said David.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Megan.
“You know, honey, the time your parents caught you masturbating to cartoons with that—what’s it called?—that Dizzy Doodler.”
David spit out his laugh. “What is a Dizzy Doodler?” he asked.
“It’s one of those,” Randy continued, “vibrating pens for children. They draw curlicues, and they’re powered by a little motor. Megan used to masturbate with her Dizzy Doodler every Saturday morning while she watched cartoons. Even after she lost the protective cap for the motor in the couch cushions, she kept going. She just had to be more careful when she used it, isn’t that what you told me? Didn’t you say that one morning you caught an arm of the motor in your underpants and were worried you would someday really injure yourself?”
David was cracking up, and Randy was looking at Megan spitefully.
“He’s kidding,” said Megan to David.
David waved his hand at Megan and said, “Sure, sure.”
“I didn’t do
