Her first stop in the library was the ladies’ room. No one else was in it, so she had time to take a good look at herself in the mirror. This felt so strange, to be staring into the mirror at a person so different and yet so familiar. She looked like herself, only not.
Ten years. That would make her thirty-six years old. Well, the woman in the mirror looked about thirty-six. She was still in good shape, but a bit curvier than she was used to. There were the beginnings of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Laugh lines—that’s probably a good sign. Means I must laugh a lot, right? Her hair was long—well past her shoulders, but she couldn’t see any gray. Her make-up was more toned-down than she currently favored --used to favor?—her lipstick and blush a subdued rose pink rather than the darker orange-tinted shade she usually wore. And her eyes looked different—no, it was her eyebrows. They were thinner, less prominent. And her eye shadow was more subtle. Her suit was conservative—her skirt knee-length and her blouse higher cut at the neck, and the color was neutral beige with a periwinkle blue blouse. The overall effect was elegant, classic, refined; professional and attractive but not attention-grabbing.
Who was she now? Who had she become in the last ten years and how could she get her memory back? Could she track down this John Doe and force him to restore her memory? Where would she even begin to investigate him? Obviously he had used a pseudonym, and she didn’t have much to go on. He said they had met before, but she wouldn’t remember it. So, they must have met somewhere in those ten years. If she could just remember. How’s that for circular reasoning? Argh! She needed some clues to herself; something to help jog her memory.
She headed for a table in a quiet corner of the reading room and started rifling through her shoulder bag. She pulled out her wallet first. Her driver’s license identified her as Lois Lane (okay, no help there on the who-gave-me-these-rings question) and listed her address as 348 Hyperion Avenue. She knew that neighborhood—she knew every neighborhood in Metropolis. It was in an older part of town, but gentrified, mostly turn-of-the-century brownstones owned by older couples or young professionals. There were four credit cards, a library card, and a medical insurance card, all with the same name and no further clues to her personal life. There was $84 in cash and a half-dozen receipts: one for gas, one for groceries (since when do I spend $130 in groceries on one trip?), one from the drug store, one for parking, one for overdue library book fines, and one from her favorite lunch deli.
An inner pocket of the bag held her press pass. “Lois Lane, The Daily Planet.” So, still the same job. A second held one of those communicator-phones. She flipped it open experimentally. She was greeted with an image of a red rose with the heading “Verizon Wireless” and the date below; “Wed, Oct. 8 9:13 a.m.” Along the bottom of the small screen were the words “Message,” “MENU,” and “Contacts.” She pressed the small button to which the “Contacts” seemed to point. The rose was replaced by a “CONTACT LIST” in alphabetical order:
Amber
Bernie
Bill
Bobby B.
City Desk
Clark
Dad
Dr. Engels
ICE
Home
Jim
Jonathan
Kate
Lucy
Martha
Mike
Mom
Peter
Planet
Stanley School
Vanessa
She pressed the down key until she came to the “Home” entry. Then she tried the green key marked “Send.” The phone rang four times, then her own voice came on the line, saying, “Hi. You’ve reached 555-6869. We can’t come to the phone right now, but we would like to hear from you. So leave us a message after the beep, and we’ll return your call as soon as we can. Thanks!” We…”We can’t come to the phone”. Who is the other one of us that makes up we? She pressed the End key and was about to close the phone when a woman with a library I.D. hanging from her neck approached her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ll have to ask you to turn your phone off in the building. Thanks.” It was probably just as well. She wasn’t planning to scroll her way down that list, calling everyone she knew and asking “Hey, this is Lois Lane, do you know what I’ve been doing for the last ten years?” Nope, that would make for a short trip to that loony bin that she was trying to avoid. There was no “Off” button. But wait, there was “PWR” in small letters on the End key. She held it down for a moment and the phone shut down.
Further investigation of the shoulder bag revealed three lipstick tubes, a compact, three clean tissues and one used one (yuck!), a set of keys, a pair of sunglasses, a stack of business cards, a tin of mints, a small bottle of Tylenol, two pens, and a reporter’s notebook with about 1/3 of the pages filled with her scribbles, none of which gave her any further clues to her life. Except that her current investigation had something to do with something medical, judging from all the references to Met General and various doctors.
Her next stop was to the library’s medical reference section. If she had a whopping case of amnesia, she wanted to find out what she could do about it without ending up in that “loony bin” that Mr. John Doe seemed to think she was destined for.
Two hours later, she had the beginnings of a headache and very few answers. It seemed that cases like hers were extremely rare. Of course, most people weren’t accosted by vindictive villains with memory-erasing machines. She probably needed professional help, but she just couldn’t bring herself to give herself over to a bunch of strangers in white coats who probably wouldn’t know much more that she did after her morning of research. No, before she took that step she would try her own Plan A: fake it till you feel it. If she could just go about her normal life and pretend that she knew what she was doing, maybe it would all come back to her.
Deciding that she’d done enough research for the time being, she felt the need for a trial run. She needed someplace where people might recognize her, but not ask too many questions just yet. And, she was getting hungry. So, time for lunch at Macri’s deli.
