The day truly was lazy. They'd gotten an early start and, despite the several pitstops they'd made to eat, drink, pee, and stretch their legs, the miles rolled past. By the time they were within striking distance of Lompoc, Kate still hadn't heard from the agent, so they pulled off the road for a break near Santa Ynez. The small restaurant they selected was situated under a stand of trees well off the highway, and they ordered some tea and a few things on which to nibble. For the first time in a long time, there was no sense of urgency running up and down her spine.

"Tell me about the accident," she offered when they sat.

"My accident? What about it?"

"It sounded terrible and seems like such a," she fumbled a moment for a word, "... such a formative part of your life."

"Formative? Yeah, that's not the word I would've used. But I guess it was. What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

"Ummm ...." He began laughing. "Okay, my life began on August 14, 1989, nine weeks after I died ... or, rather, nine-weeks after young master Elijah T. Pitt-Rivers died."

"What are you talking about?" she cackled in a milder version of her crazy woman voice. "Do I need to teach you the laugh, too?"

"I'm trying not to sound too crazy or whimsical, but you did say 'formative.' The accident didn't just form me. It reformed me ... completely. When I say I don't remember much before that day, what I really mean is I don't remember anything at all. At least, I didn't at first." He again looked at her hard and carefully before he continued. "When I woke up after nearly nine-weeks in a coma, I was a blank slate. I didn't really remember anything of my old life."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Your name? Where you lived? ... The primary colors??"

"Hold on. It's been a long time since I've tried to explain this to anyone." He leaned a little closer, and she couldn't help but notice his eyes sort of lost focus, as if he were trying to remember something. "The accident ... I literally stepped out in front of a bus ... screwed me up in a lot of ways. The memory loss was just the most obvious, and, as far as that goes, it's complicated. Umm."

There followed what appeared to be a few more seconds of thought before he resumed speaking. "The more general something was, the more likely it was I might remember it. I woke up after the accident able to speak and understand English just fine. I could umm ... lemme see. I could still read and write. I could still do basic math. I knew up from down, left from right, cold from hot ... the primary colors ... all that kind of stuff. It was when I had to deal with more specific things that I started to have problems. Maybe my doctors could explain why, but I can't ... I mean, memory loss like mine seems common in movies and on TV, but in real life, it's virtually unheard of."

"Stop," she said, with a faint wave of her hands, "let's forget the doctors. What do you mean by 'more specific?'"

"Well ... I understood language, but I couldn't always find words for things. Generic ... less-specific things were hit and miss." He rapped the table several times with his knuckles. "I remember when I first saw one of these, I knew what it was and what it was for. But somehow, the name 'table' escaped me, and someone had to prompt me with the word. Once I heard the name ... I dunno, it triggered something, and suddenly I was like, 'oh, yeah, I remember that.' Those kind of things happened a lot."

"Oh, my God. You had to go through and relearn the words for ...?"

"Just some things," he said. "The first time I saw a tree, I could point to it and say, 'yeah, that's a tree.' I mean, I couldn't tell you what kind of tree, but I may've not known that before the accident. And I knew ... lemme see ... I knew what a house was right off. I knew what one looked like, knew what it was used for, and I could remember the word 'house' straightaway. There were scads of words and things like that, ones I automatically knew. Those words I didn't know immediately, I picked up," he snapped his fingers several times rapidly, "like they were things I'd briefly forgotten or were just at the back of my mind. In fact, a lot of my therapy was just going through these huge decks of picture cards trying to remember which things were which. "Couch,' 'chair,' 'cat,' 'duck,' 'motorcycle,' ... it actually went really quickly."

"And more specific things?"

"Yeah," he said, "like people? Since the, umm ... since the names of general things came back to me so quickly, the doctors thought my finer memories would return, too. Silly rabbits. They never did, not really. When I woke up, I was in a hospital room alone. I sat up and looked around, and a couple minutes later this painfully attractive woman came in. I had no idea who she was, so I just said 'hi, how you doing?'" A guilty grin flitted across his face. "She started screaming."

"Was it your mom?"

"Yeah, it was mom ... or Rachel, which is what I took to calling her."

"She must have been heartbroken you didn't recognize her."

"No," he replied deeply, "not at all ... at least at first. I mean ... absolutely everyone in that hospital ... well, absent one or two ... was telling her I would never wake up, I'd never recover. For her, it was a miracle."

"Oh," Kate found herself sighing. "But she never really got her son back?"

"No," he said, "but good riddance."

Kate broke out in her normal, non-crazy-woman laugh. "What are you talking about?"

"Look, it seemed really important to everyone, especially Rachel, that I remember everything. And, at first, I went along with the program. She was so very good to me, and I didn't want to disappoint her. But the more I learned about this Pitt-Rivers kid, the more I realized, jeez, what a loser. He was a spoiled, toxic, self-absorbed little shitbag, and the world was better off without him. Kate, in a very real sense, I was born in that hospital room on that day. And I'm glad that other guy's dead."

"But you told me you eventually remembered some things."

"I did ... eventually, but just a few bits and slices. And ... shit," he whispered, "my remembering was so important to Rachel that I wasn't always sure what was a true memory and what was ... well, just me wanting to make her happy. A few of them I was certain were real, but even those were just flickers. I never remembered anything about her. I know that's what she wanted."

"You must have loved your mom so much," she said. His tale tugged at her heart in so many ways, but she almost wished she hadn't asked him. His candor was too much.

"Yeah ... I did." He looked over to her as if begging for understanding. It was just a few moments, but she'd never seen such vulnerability in him. "I know it's fucked-up, but from the first moment I saw her, I was never able to think of her as 'mom.' She was this lovely, wonderful, gentle person who treated me better than I ever deserved. Sometimes I say she was like a sister to me, but she was really the best friend I ever had."

"Is that why you called her Rachel?"

"Yeah," he said with a sheepish grin. "It vexed her at first, but she got used to it. After she died, it took ages, but I conditioned myself to start referring to her as 'mom.' She deserved that."

"Having lost what? fourteen, almost fifteen years of your life doesn't seem to have bothered you much."

"Me, personally? Not really. But I didn't just forget about Eli and his family. I forgot everything ... everything. I didn't go back to school that fall while I recuperated, so beside therapy, my life consisted of sitting and catching up. It went quickly, mostly because Rachel dropped a dime and bought a new set of Britannica. I must have spent a thousand hours sitting on the couch in my pajamas reading about everything under the sun."

He cast another charming grin.

"It was actually pretty nice ... in a way. There were a lot of other things about the accident that screwed me up worse. Head trauma affects people in unpredictable ways. For the first couple of months after I came back around, I was prone to some pretty intense and erratic emotional outbursts. It got better after, I dunno, six months or so, but it took me a lot of years to get it completely under control. I had to learn to be a lot more disciplined than everybody else."

"That's a silver lining," she said.

"Yeah ... it is, but you know, even silver linings can have a downside. I've dated a lot of woman who just couldn't deal with the fact I never let my emotions show. Lord knows why, but some women think that if you're not screaming and arguing, you're not passionate, and if you're not passionate, you can't possibly love them."

"You just need to find a better class of women."

"See now, Kate, that's where you come in."

"Smoothie," she muttered with the first good and proper skunk-eye she'd given him.

"Believe it or not," he went on, unperturbed, "it was even worse on combat deployments. Being tough is venerated in the military, but every once in a while, we'd take casualties, and a lot of the men, and some of my fellow officers, well ... thought it was unnerving that it didn't seem to bother me."

"But it did ... didn't it?"

"Of course, it did," he said with one of his friendly touches on the arm. "I have the same feelings as everyone else. I've just had a lifetime of managing them. Deep down, there's always that dread I might snap and lose it again."

"Would it be that bad?" she asked. "You don't seem to have any problem cracking a joke?"

"Humor was never a problem. It was other things. My emotional volatility of old included some massive anger management issues."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, it got better when I was older, but I was in a lot of fights in high school."

"Define 'a lot.'"

"For a while, three and four a week."

"Get out," she whispered. "How did I never hear of that?"

"I learned early on to wait until no one was around."

"Damn," she said. "What other superpowers do you have?"

"Not a one," he swore, "which is bullshit. But I changed a lot. Apparently, the new Elijah's personality was completely different. I developed all manner of interests and aptitudes I'd never had before."

"Name me one," she whispered excitedly.

"I was a better student. My math skills went through the roof."

"How high was this roof?"

"I maxed the SAT in math."

"Fuck you," she whispered.

"I could push you in front of a bus," he suggested.

"Oh, better, maybe the cook here has a cast iron skillet," she cackled, looking around. "What else?"

"About me ...?" he whispered. "Umm ... I became a tinkerer. According to mom, I was never like that before. But suddenly, I started taking things apart and putting them back together. That's where the whole car thing came from. An old retired guy down the alley let me use his garage and tools and I bought and rebuilt ... oh, one, two, three ... I think, eleven or twelve junk cars over the next few years."

"Oh, shit, Eli, where did you find time?"

"I cut back on sports and gave up every other activity not directly related to the classroom. And there was the whole personality change. For what reason I don't know, I stopped watching TV and spent my time really doing things. There were some rocky parts, but that time in my life was great ... and unbelievably productive."

"Jesus, Eli," she said, not trying to hide her wonder, "that is tragic and cool all at the same time."

"That's my life," he said as he stood. "We need to get going, or we're never going to make it back to LA."

She followed him as he paid the check and couldn't help the idle thought, not make it back to LA.? Would that be so bad?

"You know, I was bitching about memories the other day," he said on their way back to the truck. "It isn't just how we remember things, I think. It's the eyes through which we see the world that matters, too."

"You are getting mystical, now."

"Nope. You were a year behind us, weren't you?"

She nodded.

"Tanya Roembke posted some pictures online from the reunion ... you know, before and after photos. I checked 'em out a few days ago and realized there were a few shots of a seventeen-year-old you in the background. I never realized it in high school, but you were beautiful ... nearly as beautiful then as you are now." He glanced over. "Shame," he continued quietly, "we could've been friends all these years if I'd had the sense to see that back in the day."

There was teasing in there somewhere, she could smell it ... but just couldn't ferret out what. After a couple of failed attempts to reply, she found herself grabbing his thick arm and pulling him close as they walked. Before long, they were at the truck. There was still a sulky, disgruntled look on her face, she was certain, but she made no attempt to hide it.

"I was never all that pretty," said the sulky face as she settled in and buckled up. "You just saw a tall blond with lots of leg."

"Nobody but me knows what I saw, woman."

"You're just ...." She stopped herself. Shut up, came that voice in her head, this time so clear that for a moment she had to resist the urge to look around to see from where it had come. He just paid you a compliment, dipshit.

She gave it a moment before continuing. When she spoke again, it was placidly. "Let's stop here again on the way back," she said.