Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [149]
“Thanks,” I snarled. “Now everyone in that fucking bar knows my name.” I swung a kick at it, but it dodged easily, feinting to one side and then scuttling back to face me.
“But that’s nice,” the clock said. “Maybe you’ll make some new friends. Not only am I a useful timepiece, but I can help you achieve your socialising goals by bridging the gulf between souls in this topsy-turvy world of ours. Please stop throwing me away. I can help you!”
“No you can’t,” I said, grinding to a halt. The night was dark, the street lit only by stuttering yellow lamps outside Ensenada’s bars, food rooms and rat-hole motels, and I felt suddenly homesick and alone. I was in the wrong part of the wrong town, and I didn’t even know why I was there. Someone else’s guilt, my own paranoia, or just because it was where I always used to run. Maybe all three—and it didn’t really matter. I had to find Laura Reynolds, who might not even be here, before I got shafted for something I hadn’t done, but remembered doing. Try explaining that to a clock.
“You’ve barely explored my organiser functions,” the clock chimed, oblivious.
“I’ve already got an organiser.”
“But I’m better! Just tell me your appointments, and I’ll remind you with any one of twenty-five charming alarm sounds. Never forget an anniversary! Never be late for that important meeting! Never—”
This time the kick connected. With a fading yelp the clock sailed clean over a line of stores selling identical rows of cheap rugs and plaster busts of ET. By the time I was fifty yards down the street the mariachi band was at full tilt again behind me, the businessman’s voice soaring clear and true above it, the voice of a man who knew who he was and where he lived and what he was going home to.
I’d arrived in Mexico late the previous evening. That, at least, was when I’d woken to find myself in a car I didn’t recognise, stationary but with the engine still running, by the side of a patchy road. I switched the ignition off and got out gingerly, my head feeling as if someone had hammered a number of very cold nails into my left temple in an intriguing pattern. Then I peered around into the darkness, trying to work out where I was.
The answer soon presented itself, in the shape of the sharply defined geography surrounding me. A steep rock face rose behind the car, and on the other side of the road the hill disappeared abruptly—the only vegetation was bushes and gnarled grey trees that seemed to be making a big point of just what a hard time they were having. The warm air smelt of dust, and with no city glow the stars were bright in the blackness above.
I was on the old interior road that leads down the Baja from Tijuana to Ensenada, twisting through the dark country up along the hills. There was a time when it was the only road in those parts, but now it’s not lit, in bad repair, and nobody with any sense drives this way any more.
Now that I was out of the car I was able to recognise it as mine, and to dimly remember climbing into it in LA much earlier in the day. But this realisation faded in and out like a signal from a television station where the power is unreliable. Other memories were trying to shoulder it aside, clamouring for their time in the sun. They were artificially sharp and distinct, and trying to hide this by melding with my own recollections; but they couldn’t because the memories weren’t mine and they had no real home to go to. All they could do was overlay what was already there, like a double exposure, sometimes at the front, sometimes merely tickling like a word on the tip of your tongue.
I walked back to the car and fumbled in the glove compartment, hoping to find something else I could recognise as mine. I immediately discovered a lot of cigarettes, including an opened pack, but they weren’t my brand. I smoke Camel Lights, always have: these were Kim. Nonetheless it was likely that I’d bought them, because the opened pack still had the cellophane round the bottom half. It’s a habit of mine to leave