Amnesiascope: A Novel Read Online Free

she’s advertising for , I assume she doesn’t actually do anything, though there’s a phone number at the bottom of the billboard for anyone interested in finding out. But as the years have gone by, with Justine bursting forth new and better each decade, ever more perfect and ubiquitous, it becomes less and less imperative that she do anything at all but watch over the city as the Red Angel of Los Angeles, from block to block and street to street and billboard to billboard and year to year. Nonetheless, I make note of the phone number anyway.
    I don’t have to write it down, because in the L.A. of Numbers I am Memory Central, just as in the L.A. of Names I am Memory Void. I seem not to be able to remember any thing or any one anymore, and I guess I’ve insulted a few people in the process; I run into somebody here or there and he starts jabbering at me and pretty soon I realize I’m supposed to know this person, I’ve met him before, maybe ten or twenty times, maybe a hundred. And after he goes on awhile I can finally only look him straight in the eye and say, “Excuse me, but who are you?” and then he’s not too happy about it. But at the same time that I’ve cut myself loose of memories of people and events, the memories of dates and times and phone numbers attach themselves to my brain like gnats to fly paper. At the same time that I’m the deep well into which one can drop a bad love affair, a death, a childhood trauma and never see it again, never even hearing it hit bottom, assuming there is a bottom, I remember not only my own dates and times and phone numbers, but yours too. I’m a walking Filofax for everyone’s appointments and vital statistics. I remind Viv of her lunch date at this gallery or that studio, I let my friend Ventura know when it’s time to pick up his laundry. I’m the man of deadlines and itineraries and bank account codes; even Carl in New York calls in to check his schedule for the afternoon. So remembering Justine’s phone number, written so inconspicuously at the bottom of the billboard that I have to figure she would really rather not hear from me at all, is a snap. I don’t even have to repeat it to myself out loud. Instead, with the woman in the next car looking aghast that the man in the car next to her is having an unduly animated dialogue with no apparent passenger, I figure maybe I should put a lid on it again, no more talking to myself. I’m beyond the point anyway where, even to myself, I really have all that much to say. …
    Over the two days I spent moving into my new suite, I panicked. Not about the extra rent but because, situated in this apartment, in the big wide open front room with all the windows, I might be generally expected by others to become more productive, even inspired. I have no intention of becoming either inspired or productive; to the contrary I intend to sit in the dark at night in my big black leather chair staring out at the Hollywood Hills like a man gazing on an approaching tsunami. Here comes the present . On my monitor I run the same movies over and over with the sound off: The Bad and the Beautiful , Out of the Past , Pandora’s Box , I Walked with a Zombie . Studying the films on my shelf, Ventura remarks that I don’t own any funny ones. “What the hell are you talking about?” I answer in outrage. “You don’t think Scarlet Empress is a funny movie? You don’t think Detour is a funny movie?” Last time I was up the hall in Ventura’s apartment I took a look at his film shelf, and there’s a guy who doesn’t own a single funny movie—except Charlie Chaplin, and he and I both know he doesn’t watch City Lights because he thinks it’s funny, he watches it because he thinks it’s profound . The truth is I don’t own anything but funny movies. Every one of them is hysterical.
    On the walls of his apartment Ventura tacks little sayings written on paper, maxims he’s scribbled from his readings, words of wisdom. He even has