Jane Has Amnesia
Consumed as she was by her work, she barely registered the figure in her peripheral vision: a dark smudge like the blotch on a camera lens. She snipped off two crossing branches and stepped back to study her handiwork. The only thing she had to go on was pictures on the internet and a YouTube tutorial she'd watched four times. She bit her lip. It didn't look completely ruined.
She didn't notice as the figure drew nearer, smooth and silent, not until –
"May I ask what you're doing?" asked an unfamiliar, cultured voice from her elbow. She jumped, the pruning shears falling from her hand and clattering to the ground.
She looked up at the voice's owner; she had to crane her neck. He was standing with his back to the sun, rendering his features dark and indistinct, but he had long, black hair and he was wearing a suit.
She tucked her hair behind her ear as she bent to retrieve the shears. "Uh, hi?" she offered, holding out her hand – but it was the wrong one. She switched hurriedly to the other. He took it without comment, squeezing gingerly before dropping it.
"I'm Jane."
He nodded in greeting but seemed disinclined to offer anything else.
"Right. Well . . . nice to meet you." She waved the shears at the tree. "Hey, do you think this looks like a bowl?"
He drew closer, turning so she could see his profile. "Beg pardon?"
"It's a peach tree. At least, I think it is. I read you're supposed to prune them so they don't have a single trunk. The canopy is like this big bowl to catch all the sunlight." She gestured at the lines of the tree swooping upward. "So does it look like a bowl to you?"
"Ah. I wouldn't know anything about . . . horticulture." His voice was dry. "But I can say it does look like a tree."
She turned to look at him again. This time the sun was not obscuring him. Every line of him stood out against the surrounding environment: lean, crisp, well-tailored. His eyes were heavily lidded as he looked down at her and his skin was pale. Her gaze fell on her own brown arm. He didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors, if she had to guess.
Beside her he remained still and silent, like a dark shadow hovering over her shoulder. To dispel the impression, Jane tipped up her sunhat and asked, "So what are you doing here? Around here, I mean."
He gestured to the quiet country road. "I was walking."
"Do you always go for walks when it's fifty degrees out in a suit?" The incredulous question slipped out before she thought to rein it in.
But he smiled, and when he spoke he sounded amused. "Not often." Maybe he sensed she was going to keep asking questions, because he nodded toward her little orchard, saying, "Is this your trade?"
"My –" A gust of chilled wind threatened her hat; she had to clamp down on it to keep it from blowing away. "Oh, no. This is more of a hobby. I moved here not too long ago and I needed something to fill the time with. I didn't even plant these," she explained, "they were already here when I moved in." It must have been a labor of love; there were half a dozen trees carefully planted in orderly rows and mulched in the backyard. Their loss, her gain, she supposed.
"And what occasioned your relocation?" Though his words were careless, almost bored, she could see his eyes following her movements as she bent to retrieve some of the pruned branches from the ground.
She summoned a bright smile. "Oh, just work stuff. I work from home. I like to be out in the county, you know."
He murmured like he knew she wasn't telling the whole truth, but didn't press.
"You can see the stars better out here," she added defensively.
There was a little smile at the corner of his lips that she didn't know the meaning of. "You observe the heavens?"
What an odd way of putting it. She pointed to the back porch with the shears. "I have a telescope. See?"
It was the best amateur scope money could buy, not that she remembered buying it, and one of the few possessions she'd brought with her in the move. Picking out clothes and kitchen tools and other furnishings from her former self's apartment had felt like stealing. Everything had been unfamiliar and impersonal, as if she were shopping. Unsettled, she had taken as little as possible.
The telescope was an exception. It was obviously a huge investment and represented such a deep and abiding interest that she'd been compelled to keep it. Secretly she had hoped it would provide a link to her mysterious former life, maybe jog something loose in her memory. It hadn't yet, but she had discovered an unexpected pleasure in using it.
"Turns out there's a lot of exciting stuff out there."
"Do you imagine yourself exploring the cosmos?"
In the cold, foggy light of the morning, Jane felt herself flush. It sounded so silly and childish when he said it in that amused, condescending tone.
"Someone's going to have to," she pointed out.
"Yes, you're quite right. Forgive me." But he was still wearing that small, weird smile. "What do you predict will be found?"
"Besides super-strong, hammer-wielding heroes and giant bug armies?" She almost laughed, but it died in her throat when she saw he was no longer smiling. It occurred to her he might have been there. She fumbled for something to say. "Um, I don't know. Answers to a lot of questions. At least that's what I hope – I'm an astrophysicist."
"So you seek knowledge."
Again, that archaic turn of phrase. But out here in a chilly, misty grove, early in the morning, it had a mythological weight she didn't expect. It made her uneasy. "I guess that's one way of putting it. Hey, I'm about finished up here. I'm probably going to go inside soon."
"Are you inviting me in?"
She wasn't, but he seemed pleased by the prospect, throwing Jane for a loop. She gave an embarrassed laugh. "Um, no, sorry."
"I see."
"I'm not really in the habit of inviting strange men into my home, sorry."
"How wise of you. You never know who someone really is." He paused, and his next words were more conciliatory, though still oddly formal. "Perhaps if we meet again, we'll no longer be strangers."
He turned to go. When he reached the road, Jane realized that despite what he'd said, she didn't know a single thing about him.
"Hey!" she called after him, trudging forward a few paces. "I didn't get your name!"
She could see the hint of that smile again when he looked over his shoulder, but he didn't respond.
By the time she got to the road, he had vanished. It was the fog, she thought, or he was a very fast walker. There was a bend in the road up ahead. Still, she waited there for a minute, scanning the street. He didn't reappear. But by early afternoon, the sun had burned up all the fog and dew, and with them Jane's unease.
* * *
For the next few weeks Jane didn't think about her mysterious passerby at all. Other, more important things had her attention; she was sent a new project and got to work on it right away. Classified, again.
The days were still dreary and wet, but it was getting warmer and some green had begun to peek through in the world outside. Not that Jane saw much of it in between long Skype sessions with the other scientists assigned to the same project.
She should consider herself lucky. She didn't remember going to Culver or Oxford or any of the fellowships she'd had, even though she had the diplomas as proof. But soon after the accident she'd found out that all of her knowledge and expertise remained, even if she couldn't remember acquiring it. At least she wasn't stuck working a fast food counter.
Total loss of narrative memory, the SHIELD agent had said. As well as we're so sorry and you're one of our top scientists and compensation for a workplace injury. For supposedly being one of their top scientists, he hadn't seemed very disconcerted by what happened to her. Maybe that kind of thing was all in a day's work for SHIELD. Or maybe he was just being nice about the "top scientist" part, though the projects she was sent certainly seemed high-level enough.
In the middle of a digression on quantum tunneling, Jane glanced out the window and lost her train of thought at the sight of someone in her backyard. She squinted at the distant figure.
"Hey, Bruce?"
On the screen he glanced up mid-yawn, looking guilty. "Yeah?"
"I'm going to call you back, okay? Take a nap while I'm gone."
"Is something wrong?"
"Maybe. Someone's here. I know you didn't get much sleep last night," she added. "You were barely listening to that."
"Sorry," he said sheepishly.
She smiled. "You're lucky I'm an insomniac too. We have to stick together. Get some sleep, okay? If I don't call back this afternoon, let someone know I've been killed by an axe murderer."
"Sure thing. Gotta love hillbillies," said Bruce with another ill-disguised yawn, and he signed off.
Jane stood up to get a better angle on her visitor-slash-trespasser and pulled back the curtain. At that exact moment he turned and looked up at the window. Even though he didn't raise a hand or greet her at all, somehow she knew he was looking right at her. After several long seconds he turned back to the garden. She tore herself away from the window and flew to the back door.
"Hey!" she shouted, flinging the door open. "Who are –"
At the sight of his face she faltered. She recognized him, but she didn't know from where. She tried to chase the memory. From before? No, she realized, and the familiar disappointment tugged at the pit of her stomach. He was the guy who'd stopped by while she was in the orchard.
What was he doing here again?
Seeming to anticipate her question, he inclined his head toward the trees. "I came to see how your little garden was doing."
Jane regarded him with suspicion. "Oh yeah?"
Amusement pulled at the corners of his lips. "I was wondering whether you'd managed to kill them after all."
The back door swung shut behind her. "They're not dead." Even though her voice was defensive, there was also a note of pride in it. She walked across the lawn to where he was standing and pointed to the closest tree. "See?"
"Educate me." He sounded so assured of her obedience, like he told people to do things all the time.
Jane crossed her arms. "What's your name?"
"Verrou. Felix Verrou."
"All right, Mr. Verrou. See these?" She pointed at one of the swelling nodes on a nearby branch. "That's a flower bud." (She was pretty sure, anyway.) "You can see it's alive. It's going to bloom soon." (She hoped.)
He ran a finger down the slender branch. She moved quickly so her hand didn’t get caught in the way.
"Did you really just come here to check on my trees?" demanded Jane.
His eyes met hers, in them a depthless blue. He let go of the branch. "I confess I am prone to boredom. I often go on long walks. You might have seen me on the road before." His voice rose at the end in a slight question.
She hadn't, but of course she wasn't constantly surveilling the street. "And you decided not to knock on the front door like a regular person because?"
He smiled, looking chagrined. "I apologize. There was no fence and I thought I would just take a peek." His smooth, clear baritone, with a hint of embarrassment, chased away her suspicions and made her feel ridiculous for having them in the first place.
"Right. Well . . . just knock next time, okay?"
His expression was contrite. "You have my word."
That was overselling it a little, in Jane's opinion, but she didn't say anything. "They're all going to flower, I checked. It should only be a few more days. As long as it doesn't freeze again –" She was cut off by her own yawn, her hand rising automatically to cover it. The perils of not getting enough sleep.
She studied him. There weren't a lot of interesting things in Jane's life. And he seemed – interesting.
"I'm going to make some coffee," she decided aloud. "Do you want some?"
His eyebrows arched. "Are you inviting me in this time?"
Jane flushed. "Just to the back porch. Don't get any ideas."
"I would never." He laid a hand over his heart. It was the most insincere promise she'd ever heard in her life, at least the short part she remembered, but somehow she didn't mind.
Along with the coffee cups she brought out her bag of sugar from the pantry and a half-full carton of cream. She cast a sideways glance at him – it wasn't exactly a tea service – but he did not react. He took his coffee the same way she did, with lots of sugar and a dash of cream; in fact, from how closely he watched her she thought he might have copied her.
"So what is it you do, Mr. Verrou?" Jane caught the silly, Seussian rhyme only after it slipped out, and her face warmed.
For a second his expression threatened laughter; then it smoothed over. "Please, call me Felix. I'm a businessman." He said the name of a company that Jane didn't recognize, but which sounded vaguely Germanic.
"What kind of business lets its employees run around in the middle of a business day?"
"The kind that's looking to expand its boundaries. I'm scouting ahead, you might say. I could ask," he continued before she could respond, "the very same thing of you, Jane."
He'd remembered her name. "I already told you the last time we met, remember? I'm an astrophysicist."
"Yes, yes, of course. But I have to wonder – there are no local observatories, no nearby universities for you to be attached to."
She tucked her knees up against her chest, her coffee cup turning in her hands. "Technically, my work is in experimental particle physics. But I consult long-distance on confidential projects." She put a slight stress on the penultimate word.
The look he gave her over the rim of his mug was amused. "And you live out in the countryside where you like to gaze at the stars at night."