Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [150]
I screwed up my eyes tightly for a moment, and when I opened them again, I felt a little better.
The passenger seat was strewn with twists of foil and a number of cracked vials, and it didn’t take me long to work out why. A long time ago, in a past life, I used to deal a drug called Fresh. Fresh removes the ennui which comes from custom and acquaintance, and presents everything to you—every sight, emotion and experience—as if it’s happening for the first time. Part of how Fresh does this is by masking your memories, to stop them grabbing new experience and turning it into just the same old thing. Evidently I’d been trying to replicate this effect with a cocktail of other recreational pharmaceuticals, and had ended up blacking out. On an unlit mountain road, in Mexico, at night.
Great going.
But it had evidently worked, because for the time being I was back. I started the car and pulled carefully back onto the road, after a quick mental check to make sure I was pointing in the right direction. Then I tore the filter off a Kim, lit her up, and headed South.
I only passed one other car along the way, which was good, because it meant I could drive down the middle of the road and stay as far as possible from the precipitous drops which line half the route. This left me free to do a kind of internal inventory, and to start panicking about that instead. Most of the last six hours were missing, along with a number of words and facts. I could recall where I lived, for example—on the tenth floor of The Falkland, one of Griffith’s livelier apartment blocks—but not the room number. It simply wasn’t available to me. Presumably I’d remember by sight: I hoped so, because all my stuff was in there and otherwise I’d have nothing to wear.
I could remember Laura Reynolds’ name, and what she’d done to me. She’d evidently been with me for some of the journey down, in spirit at least: it must have been her who bought the cigarettes, though me who opened the pack. I didn’t really know what Laura Reynolds looked like, only how she appeared to herself, and I had no idea where she was. I’d probably had a good reason for heading for Ensenada, or at least a reason of some kind—assuming, of course, that it had been me who made the decision. Either way, now that I was here it seemed I might as well go on.
I made good time, only having to stop once, while a herd of coffee machines crossed the road in front of me. I read somewhere that they often make their way down to Mexico. I can’t see why that would be so, but there was certainly a hell of a lot of them. They came down off the hill-in silence, trooped across the road in a protective huddle, and then waddled off down the slope in an orderly line, searching for a home, or food, or maybe even some coffee beans, for all I knew.
I reached Ensenada just after midnight, and slept in the car on the outskirts of town. I dreamed of a silver sedan and men with lights behind their heads, but the message was confused and frantic, fear dancing through an internal landscape lined with doors that wouldn’t open.
When I woke up, more of my head was back in place, and I got it together to contact Stratten, patching the call through my hacker’s network so it looked like it came from LA. I said I had a migraine and wouldn’t be able to work for a couple of days. I don’t think Stratten believed me, but he didn’t call me on it. I spent the rest of the day fruitlessly searching taco stands and crumbling hotels, or driving aimlessly down rotting streets. By the evening this had led me to an inescapable conclusion.
She wasn’t here.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
SPARES
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Published in Great Britain by HarperCollins