The Professional Rememberer
I can’t remember when I decided to become a Professional Rememberer.
Probably, though I think I can say I have an above-average memory, that’s because there wasn’t a single aha! moment. The job being the last refuge of a scoundrel, I believe I always knew I would end up doing it—like Amway or telephone sales or sperm donation—and just fell into it by default.
I could make a list of all the things I’ve tried to do, but that’s called a resumé, and I don’t believe that document needs to exist. There are, however, two skills that I’m sure elevate me above the lowest of the low, and that made me highly qualified for the job: one, the aforementioned good memory, and the other a unique gift, even if not one, like selling heating and air systems, that they pay you for: I am an astute observer of the human creature.
This is not boasting. For all the years I was the nobody going about my loser jobs, I had a hobby. I tried to predict what someone would say. You no doubt think I mean “generally.” I don’t. I mean exactly.
I would select the mark intuitively, and though there were traits I looked for, there was no “profile,” as they say. Young, old, female, male, black, white, introverted, extroverted—all were represented in my sport.
Like an author, which I was, searching for the perfect opening line, I would wait until the exact words sounded in my head, then write out the script. After that, it was a matter of waiting for the perfect opportunity. When it came, I would utter the line, perhaps something like “I hear it’s snowing in Ohio”—and if the response was a match—“Is it?” or “Who cares?” or “I’m glad I’m not there” or “Yeah, I heard that,” we’d be off. Naturally I had a digital recorder hidden in my pocket, and that night I would go home and with great delectation compare the recording to my script. I will admit I never enjoyed a word for word match, but sometimes got uncannily close, and though I did endure the occasional total bust, I averaged in the 80% range.
Ah, what delight— seeing my words brought to life like hooking a fish.
Excellent preparation, I think you will agree, for my job of last resort.
Professional Rememberer.
It took three interviews before I signed a contract. It’s important to be comfortable with each other. He was middle-aged and pretty well-off. Of course they’re all well-off because only people with some disposable income can afford Rememberers. I spent three months researching his life, then shadowed him for another month, during which time, and indeed from then on, he never acknowledged my presence personally. I was so there, I was simply not there. An extension of him, you might say. One of the definitive traits of a good Rememberer is the ability to be invisible, and there again, in this skill, having been invisible all my life, I excelled. You know, you’ve got your Oprahs and your Trumps and all the rest, who are always out there like cold sores, but it’s the invisible who hold the world together. You have to be invisible to know that.
As you might guess, I soon became so useful to my employer he left off even trying to keep up with the logistical details of life. I was always at his ear—walking in a building, for example: “Go left at the next corridor”—“Your destination is the third door on the right”—“You prefer the third urinal from the left”—that sort of thing. And it got where he didn’t even have to finish his questions. “Where did I leave—” “Your glasses?”—“Your keys?”—“The Benson file?—second folder from the top in the stack on the far right side of your desk.”
I was particularly good at business gatherings, and got to know the ways of most of his associates so well I often found myself slipping into the gratification of my old hobby. So sometimes instead of, say, whispering “You’re opposed to it” when someone would ask him what he thought of the new zoning proposal, I would claim the opening shot and say “Ask him what he thinks of the terrible new zoning proposal,” and although I provided his lines, stand back and watch my script unfold.
Things were a bit more complicated in his family. His son and daughter, and especially his wife, were constantly trying to get something out of him by exploiting his good nature—and he was, luckily for me, on the whole, a congenial man—but I had to confine myself to simple facts: what he said, when he said it, how much he paid last time, how many times he had paid, whose fault his wife had said something was, if it was indeed true that Courtney never got what she wanted. Naturally I wasn’t a favorite of the missus and the brats, but I’m nothing if not loyal. To the person writing the checks.
They don’t warn you about this in Rememberer school, mainly because it’s rare for a Rememberer to last more than a few months in a given job, but as I approached my first anniversary I began to find it difficult to distinguish his opinions from my own. Not because he had his opinions and I had mine, and I needed to keep mine separate from his—no. But because the very nature of the situation had in some way fused our minds.
If you think exactly like somebody, at some point you have to ask, are two people really needed?
I remember once at a party a woman approached him, and I felt the same revulsion that I know he did, so when he asked “Why do I hate her?” not only did I not know if I was answering for him or for myself, I realized that it didn’t matter.
“She’s not really a woman but a snake disguised as a woman. She is cold-blooded and has never laughed in her life. Also you ripped her off once.”
“Did I get caught?”
“Sort of. But it was three years, four months, and seventeen days ago. Ignore it and it will go away.”
Then, at my suggestion, he did the only thing he could: hooked his fingers at her like fangs and hissed—and we turned and walked away.
Time went on, I set endurance records in this job, and did what any shrewd court fool must do: became indispensable.
I wrote a script where at his death they didn’t notice he was gone and I was still there, and so I became him.
Which worked out well since by then I had long since ceased to remember who I was anyway.
November 14, 2019