I barely even hear him. All I can focus on is the car, seeing such a significant piece of my history right in front of me after I had been living a lie for so long.
“Wait, didn’t you say I was hit by a stray bullet?” I ask, examining the car more closely as we approach it slowly.
“Yeah, why?” he asks.
“None of the windows are blown out. If I had died from a stray bullet, wouldn’t there be a shattered window or two?” I ask. “What kind of gun were you using?”
He pauses, observing the car as closely as I am now that he’s out of his head a little bit. “I didn’t notice that before. The door was already open when I saw what was happening. I guess I had just assumed it had already been open.”
“That doesn’t make any sense unless you think a young woman would just hang out in a parking lot by herself with her doors unlocked, much less open,” I reply, feeling the gears turning in my head.
What could have caused the gunshot if not for Adas?
It makes perfect sense that he would blame himself given the circumstances. But should he?
Even though I’m looking right at the car, I only get brief glimmers of memory as they flutter through my brain like a smokescreen or a mirage. I can feel the memories trying to come through, but something is keeping them behind some kind of a dam in my brain.
“Can we go into my apartment?” I ask, breaking the silence suddenly enough to startle Adas.
“I’ve never actually been inside your apartment, but I suppose you already know where it is. Might be hard to get inside without a key, though,” he replies, shrugging a little in defeat.
“We can afford to have the lock fixed if we have to break in. It’s only a few blocks this way. Let’s just see what we can find,” I say, feeling resolute in my choice to continue onward in my quest to find my former self.
As we leave the parking lot, I feel a pit forming in my stomach at the idea of going into a place that could reveal the kind of person I really was. Even Adas doesn’t know who that person is. How do I know that she wasn’t some kind of insane freak? I’d be so embarrassed for him to learn that I was some kind of hoarder with eleven cats who kept a bag of ice in the toilet tank as a refrigerator.
Approaching the apartment complex doesn’t give me any hope either. The building has a faded red sign with peeling white letters that says “Golden Valley Apartments.” I suppose that one thing I’ve learned from my limited exposure to apartments in shows and movies is that the more expensive and luxurious a place is named, the less likely it is that it’s anything other than a shithole.
“It says I’m in apartment 306. How do we know they haven’t moved someone else in here already?” I ask, my stomach twisting itself into knots at the thought of breaking down the door on some poor old woman or a family with a bunch of kids.
“I don’t know a lot about shitty apartments, but it’s more likely that they’ll just have an eviction notice on your door that’s been there since the first of the month. Maybe they’d even let you go another month if they were really desperate to keep people. It definitely doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would keep close tabs on its tenants,” Adas replies as we both get out of the car.
The air smells mildly putrid, like a combination of dog food and broccoli. “What the fuck is that smell?” I ask, covering my nose with my shirt.
“That’s what poverty smells like. We’re in the industrial side of town, so the only people who are willing to move here are the ones who will endure the smell of the factories nearby. The rent is dirt cheap, but I’ve heard of people having to throw out all their furniture when they move away,” Adas replies, following my lead and covering his nose.
The front door is an off-white color with shitty bronze trim, likely just another cheap gimmick to make the place seem like less of a roach den than it clearly is.“We charge a fee for maintenance, which means that we’ll take a third of your income to keep the property from becoming condemned.”
The steps are crumbling, and a few little pieces of concrete fall as my foot makes contact with them. “Jesus, I can’t believe I ever paid anything to live here. Did I at least not have to work a lot?” I ask, not expecting a response but curious all the same.
“Even the projects in Russia were better maintained than this,” Adas says under his breath as he opens the door for me.
The front hallway is lit by one dim, flickering bulb, illuminating the pathway of puke-green carpeting that lines the floor and lower walls. It smells like fish and bacteria in here, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to keep my lunch down at this rate. What kinds of horrid smells haunt my apartment?
We walk up a few flights of stairs, finally reaching the third and final floor where I had, allegedly, lived a significant portion of my adult life.
When we approach the door reading306,I freeze.
“I can’t do it,” I stammer.
“We came all this way so you can learn who you really are,” Adas insists, trying to coax me gently into opening the door.
I balk at his encouragement, and I feel like I might burst into tears.
“This is something you need to do anyway. You might never get the chance. Sooner or later, someone will figure out that you’re not here, and they’ll sell all your stuff and rent your place out. This is your last opportunity,” he continues, rubbing my back.
His touch feels entirely foreign, but in this moment of such vulnerability, I appreciate it more than anything.
“Come on, just trust me. You’re going to be okay.”