- - - - [The following excerpt comes from Issue No. 10: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.] - - - - A L B E R T I N E , The first time I got high all I did was make sure these notes came out all right. I mean, I wanted the girl at the magazine to offer me work again, and that was going to happen only if the story sparkled. There wasn't much work then because of the explosion. The girl at the magazine was saying, "Look, you don't have to like the assignment, just do the assignment. If you don't want it there are people lined up behind you." And she wasn't kidding. There really were people lined up. Out in reception. An A.I. receptionist, in a makeshift lobby, in a building on Staten Island, the least-affected precinct of the beleaguered City of New York. Writers spilling into the foyer, shouting at the robot receptionist. All eager to show off their clips. The editor was called Tara. She had turquoise hair. She looked like a girl I knew when I was younger. Where was that girl now? Back in the go-go days you could yell a name at the tv and it would run a search on the identities associated with that name. For a price. Credit card records, toll plaza visits, loan statements, you set the parameters. My particular web video receiver, in fact, had a little pop-up window in the corner of the image that said, Want to see what your wife is doing right now? Was I a likely customer for this kind of snooping based on past purchases? Anyway, recreational detection and character assassination, that was all before Albertine. Street name for the buzz of a lifetime. Bitch goddess of the overwhelming past. Albertine. Rapids in the river of time. Skin pop a little bit, or take up the celebrated Albertine eyedropper, and any memory you've ever had is available to you all over again. That and more. Not a memory like you've experienced it before, not a little tremor in some presque vu register of your helter-skelter consciousness: Oh yeah, I remember when I ate peanut butter and jelly with Serena in Boston Commons and drank rum out of paper cups. No, the actual event itself, completely renewed, playing in front of you as though you were experiencing it for the first time. There's Serena in blue jeans with patches on the knee, the green Dartmouth sweatshirt that goes with her eyes, drinking the rum a little too fast and spitting up some of it, picking her teeth with her deep red nails, shade called "lycanthrope," and there's the taste of super-chunky peanut butter, in the sandwiches, stale pretzel rods. Here you are, the two of you, walking around that part of the Commons with all those willows. She lets slip your hand because your palms are moist. The smell of a city park at the moment when a September shower dampens the pavement, car exhaust, a mist hanging in the air at dusk, the sound of kids fighting over the rules of softball, a homeless dude, scamming you for a sip of your rum. Get the idea? It almost goes without saying that Albertine appeared in a certain socio-economic sector not long after the blast. When you're used to living a comfortable middle-class life, when you're used to going to the organic farmer's market on the weekend, maybe a couple of dinners out at that new Indian place, you're bound to become very uncomfortable when fifty square blocks of your city suddenly looks like a NASA photos of Mars. You're bound to look for some relief when you're camped in a school gymnasium pouring condensed milk over government-issued cornflakes. Under the circumstances, you're going to prize your memories, right? So you'll skin pop some Albertine, or you'll use the eyedropper, hold open your lid, and go searching back through the halcyon days. Afternoons in the stadium, those stadium lights on the turf, the first roar of the crowd. Or how about your first concert? Or your first kiss? Only going to cost you twenty-five bucks.
WE DARE YOU TO TRY AND FORGET THE UNFORGETTABLE CONCLUSION, AVAILABLE ONLY IN McSWEENEY'S MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES. - - - - Rick Moody is the author, most recently, of Demonology and The Black Veil.
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