The Syndrome

“Je-efff!” she exclaimed, and took him by the arm, dragging him from one knot of friends to another. “You remember Jeff Duran! Well, here he is!” There was a good bit of forceful handshaking, chummy abrazos, a couple of pecks on the cheek.

“Anyone from basketball around?”

“I don’t remember who played basketball, Jeff! My God! Except… well, Adam Bowman, of course. He’s here.” And then her face lit up. “Did you know Adam lost a leg to bone cancer?” She produced the information with the zest of an insider.

Duran shook his head. “No. That’s… terrible.”

She nodded in agreement. “I don’t think he’s coping well, either.” She arched an eyebrow. “Refused an invitation to the Paralympics…”

Outside the cafeteria—site of the banquet—the walls displayed a montage of blowups from the yearbooks of classes in attendance. Duran searched for the ‘86 varsity basketball squad—and there they were, or most of them, anyway. He himself was not in the picture. (As he recalled, he’d had strep throat or something.)

But the rest of the guys were there, standing under the backboard in the New Gym, its ceiling hung with IAC ba

Entering the cafeteria, Duran snagged a glass of red wine. Across the room, he spotted a jet-black giant who had to be Adam Bowman. Slowly, he made his way through the crowd to his old friend.

“Heyyy,” Duran said, sticking out his hand.

Bowman peered at his name tag. “Jeff! Great to see you, man!” A ferocious handshake. “Hey, Ron—say hello to Jeff Duran.”

Another manly handshake, and a brief exchange of pleasantries. Then Ron McRea turned back to the blonde on his arm, and Bowman resumed his conversation with Mr. M. They seemed to be talking about motivational speaking. After a minute or two, Duran drifted away, vaguely disappointed. It wasn’t that they’d been unfriendly. It was just that he’d expected some kind of—what? Camaraderie? Something.

He shrugged it off and sat down next to Judy Bi

Eventually, he found himself in the foyer of Zartman House beside Judy Bi

More than a little drunk, Judy whispered into his ear—maybe he’d like to try a little breast feeding? But then the BMW appeared, and Judy laughed it off, saying she was “only kidding.” Finally, she pecked him on the cheek, and promised to see him in 2005.

Five minutes later, his taxi arrived.

Outside the cab, the city slipped by, shiny in the rain. Taillights bled across the wet asphalt, while overhead, streetlights swarmed with drops of rain. Duran lay back in his seat, feeling out of sorts. The reunion had not been reassuring. Besides that little business with the drum—which was worrisome—his efforts to deepen his recall of the past had been a failure. While everyone had been pleasant and welcoming, he hadn’t been moved by anything he’d seen or anyone he’d met. On the contrary, he’d felt like an out-of-town guest at his host’s garden party. He was there by invitation, but he didn’t belong. And while the people he’d seen were vaguely familiar, his memories of them were fuzzy at best—as diffused and indistinct as the blond coronas around the streetlights.

The truth was: when you got right down to it, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that he didn’t remember a soul. Not really. Not at all.

Chapter 11

Adrie

The Amalgamated case was in the deposition phase—with each side conducting what amounted to pretrial examinations of potential witnesses. She now knew far more than she had ever wanted to know about asphalt, thanks to working fifteen-hour days for ten days ru

Nikki had been cremated more than a week ago, and Adrie

The idea of her sister’s ashes incurring “a storage charge,” as if her funeral urn had been towed for unpaid parking tickets, was unthinkable. She had to get down there and pick up the urn. And she had to do it today—despite the fact that she and Slough were scheduled to prep Ace Johnson, a key witness that the opposition was determined to depose. Slough would expect her to have lunch with the two of them, but they’d just have to do without her.

Mr. Johnson was of interest for having signed off on a memo estimating the costs, in time and materials, of the roadwork that Amalgamated proposed to undertake in the District. Unfortunately, the memo contained a handwritten notation that Mr. Johnson had written in the margin: New mix?

The notation was a problem because, at the time of the bid, Amalgamated was known to have been developing a new asphalt mixture. This “new mix” used a less expensive form of asphalt cement, the black, sticky stuff that held pavement together. Unfortunately, as Amalgamated’s own test documents showed, the new mix tended to crumble at low temperatures. Worse, at the time Amalgamated bid the D.C. job, the new mix was experimental and not approved for use. Thanks to the words scribbled in the memo’s margin, the District of Columbia was suspicious.

His full name was, improbably enough, Adonis Excellence Johnson. He was thirty-seven years old, and one of Amalgamated’s “junior vice presidents.” Adrie

Even so, they practiced his deposition for nearly two hours, with the last thirty minutes spent on the memo with the putative notation.

At about 12:30, her boss suggested they go to lunch at the Occidental Grill.

Adrie

Even though she’d prepared him for the fact that she had to skip lunch, Slough rolled his eyes. “An errand?”

She knew what he meant: he didn’t want to have lunch with Ace Johnson—not alone. What would they talk about? Asphalt?

“It’s just that… I’ve been putting in so many hours, I haven’t had time to—”

“Well, Ace and I are very disappointed.”

She could see her stock falling, but she’d be damned if she’d use her sister as an excuse. And so she shrugged, repeated how sorry she was and left them there, staring at each other. (Johnson looked hungry. Slough was aghast.)

The Albion funeral home was in Anacostia—she’d chosen it alphabetically, not because it was handy—and the cabbie got lost. When she finally got back to the conference room, an hour and a half had gone by, and she was carrying the urn in a little wooden crate at the bottom of a shopping bag.