Pines

moment, as if appraising his candor, trying to determine if this guy with a battered face was crazy or messing with her.
    She finally said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
    “You’re sure about that.”
    “Well, it’s not like this is New York City.”
    “Fair enough. Have you worked here long?”
    “Little over a year.”
    “And I’m not a regular or anything?”
    “You’re definitely not a regular.”
    “Can I ask you something else?”
    “Sure.”
    “Where is this?”
    “You don’t know where you are?”
    He hesitated, a part of him not wanting to admit such complete and total helplessness. When he finally shook his head, the barista furrowed her brow like she couldn’t believe the question.
    “I’m not messing with you,” he said.
    “This is Wayward Pines, Idaho. Your face...what happened to you?”
    “I—I don’t really know yet. Is there a hospital in town?” As he asked the question, he felt an ominous current slide through him.
    A low-voltage premonition?
    Or the fingers of some deep-buried memory drawing a cold finger down his spine?
    “Yeah, seven blocks south of here. You should go to the emergency room right now. I could call an ambulance for you.”
    “That’s not necessary.” He backed away from the counter. “Thanks...what’s your name?”
    “Miranda.”
    “Thanks, Miranda.”
    The reemergence into sunlight made his balance falter and cranked his budding headache up a few degrees into the lower range of excruciating. There was no traffic, so he jaywalked to the other side of Main and headed up the block toward Fifth Street, passing a young mother and her little boy who whispered something that sounded like, “Mommy, is that him?”
    The woman hushed her son and caught the man’s eye with an apologetic frown, said, “I’m sorry about that. He didn’t mean to be rude.”
    He arrived at the corner of Fifth and Main in front of a two-story brownstone with FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF WAYWARD PINES stenciled across the glass double doors. Around the side of the building, he spotted a phone booth standing near the alleyway.
    He limped toward it as fast as he could and closed himself inside the booth.
    The phonebook was the slimmest he’d ever seen, and he stood there thumbing through it, hoping for some revelatory breakthrough, but it was just eight pages of several hundred names that, like everything else in this town, held no meaning for him.
    He dropped the phonebook, let it dangle from its metal cord, his forehead resting against the cool glass.
    The keypad caught his eye.
    He smiled at the sweet realization.
    I know my home phone number.
    Before lifting the receiver, he punched in the number several times just to be sure, and it seemed to flow off his fingertips with the ease of rote knowledge and muscle memory.
    He’d call collect, hope to God someone was home—assuming he had a someone. Of course, he wouldn’t have aname to give them, not a real one at least, but maybe they’d recognize his voice and accept the call.
    He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.
    Reached for the zero.
    No dial tone.
    He tapped the hook several times, but nothing happened.
    It surprised him how fast the rage came. He slammed the phone down, an upwelling of fear and anger expanding like a rushed ignition sequence, in search of some out. Cocked his right arm back fully intending to put his fist through the glass, knuckles be damned, but the pain in his busted ribs blazed through everything and doubled him over onto the floor of the phone booth.
    Now the throbbing at the base of his skull was surging.
    His vision went double, then blurry, then to black...
    * * *
    The booth was in shade when he opened his eyes again. He grabbed onto the metal cord attached to the phone book and hoisted himself onto his feet. Through the dirty glass, he saw the upper curve of the sun sliding behind that ridge of cliffs that boxed in the western edge of town.
    The moment it vanished, the temperature dropped ten degrees.
    He still remembered his phone number, practiced it a few times on the keypad just to be safe, and checked the receiver once more for a dial tone—silence save for the faintest crackling of white noise bleeding through the line that he didn’t recall hearing before.
    “Hello? Hello?”
    He hung up and lifted the phonebook again. The first time, he’d searched the last names, groping for any word that jogged loose a memory or incited an emotion. Nowhe scanned first