Anamnesis: A Novel by Eloise J. Knapp Page A

screeched
against the tile floor when they moved. Olivia took a spot in the corner. Since
I was there, I went ahead and ordered the biggest size coffee they had.
    I decided to get fancy with the coffee—and
force Olivia to sit by herself in a dreadful Starbucks—by adding cream, six
sugars, and a dash of cinnamon. I watched her across the room as I stirred the
drink. She didn’t pay attention to anyone around her. At one point she checked
her phone, saw me looking at her, and glared.
    My passive aggressive fun over, I returned
and sat down.
    “What made you change your mind?” Olivia
asked as she watched me gulp down the scalding liquid. “About seeing me?”
    “Nothing a lady of your nature would
understand.”
    Her face remained neutral. She pushed
stray grounds of sugar on the table. “Fair enough.”
    “Tell me what you know, Olivia.”
    “Right. Did you read the notes I gave
you?”
    “Yeah.” I dredged through the coherent
times I read through them. It was hard to separate it from the drunken times. “It’s
good you wrote up all the dates and times. Does that help you narrow down who
might be doing this to you?”
    She clenched her jaw. “I suppose it does.
I couldn’t be certain. Many of the same people attend the kinds of events I put
on. However, there are lots of people attending who I’ve never met or will ever
see again. That wouldn’t be a conclusive thing to say.”
    Her hesitance was understandable. It was
hard for anyone to admit someone they knew had tricked them. Or in her case,
something much worse. “But it seems more likely it’s someone you see
frequently.”
    Olivia nodded. I moved on.
    “And you have no memory at all of anything
that happened while you were out?”
    “Nothing. Not a flash of an image, no
smells, no voices. It’s like my brain stopped recording until whatever it was
they slipped me passed out of my system. But I get that metallic taste. I think
it’s the same one you mentioned in your blog.”
    “It does sound the same. From what you
wrote, you’re back in your apartment every time you wake up?”
    “Yes. I always wake up in my bed, like I’ve
been sleeping. I feel groggy. All but one time in the same outfit I had on the
night before. At first I thought I was drugged. I woke up and was confused, but
I was in my apartment in the same clothes as before, so I blamed it on too much
to drink.” Olivia formed a circle with the sugar granules. “Then when I started
waking up with marks on my body, I began suspecting something else.”
    The other time she was naked. I remembered
it from her notes. The franticness in her tone as she described how her body
felt and other details. Scratches on her inner thighs. A bruised feeling all
over.
    “The other night I ran into a woman at
Westlake,” I said. “She was beat up and scared, asking for somewhere to hide,
then she freaked out. Didn’t know where she was or how she got there. Then a
few days ago the same thing happened with someone under the overpass. I think
where you are when you come to might make a difference. If you’re somewhere
familiar, or maybe if the drug wears off while you’re sleeping, you don’t lose
it quite the same. Obviously it’s just a theory. We wouldn’t know for sure
without talking to other people.”
    Now Olivia’s face brightened. “That’s what
I wanted to talk to you about when I came to your apartment. Other people. I
think we need to figure out who’s making the drug to track down who could be
using it on me. I’m sure you want answers to your own past and that could help
us find them.”
    I gulped down more coffee, wishing for
something stronger. I was terrified I was going down this path of discovery,
but it already felt good. There were other people; I wasn’t alone. What I was
doing would make Skid proud. Others had suffered, maybe not as much as me or in
the same way, but they had. Olivia wanted answers and she’d already found more
than I had since I woke up from my