1: Lorrie watches a memo
“In honor of the 100th anniversary of his most gracious gift to the city we call home, the American Memory Corporation—in partnership with the San Francisco Historical Society and the Emperor Norton Trust—is proud to present The Prince of the Panhandle, a full-immersion memographic experience charting the legendary year that culminated in the coronation of King Cicero Augustine. From the spires of the Victorian on Central, to the frigid waters of the bay, to the sacred clearing the Prince was first hailed in, we invite you to remember for yourself why loyal San Franciscans continue to insist that Cicero deserves nothing less than the title of royalty.”
Lorrie folded the printed program she was reading from closed. She held it out towards Robert, but he did not take it. She slipped it into the pocket of her big green velvet jacket. She was dressed up, with knee-high black boots and curled hair, for the first time in months, because for the first time in months he had agreed to take her out on a date.
This is going to be great!” she said.
He said nothing.
“It’s been so long since we’ve been to the theater. Memos are such fun!”
“Fun and expensive.”
“Aren’t you excited?”
“Yea, I’m excited.”
“Do you ever wonder what someone going to a play in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, or a big block-buster in the twentieth-century, would’ve thought if they could’ve seen a memo? Would they have been scared? Or amazed?”
“Yea, probably.”
“Probably scared? Or probably amazed? Or probably something else?”
“Probably scared.”
Banners advertising the show were plastered around the theater. “The wonder that is The Prince of the Panhandle can best be described in the words of the great Gabriel himself: what a paradise it was!” read one.
A life-sized poster covering a column showed a gaunt man with windswept brown hair perched triumphantly atop a black mustang, trotting along a wide tree-lined avenue. Intricate gold lettering underneath the horse’s feet read: “The funniest memo of the year… the denizens of Central Avenue are Quixotes incarnate.”
“Should we get some popcorn?” Lorrie offered.
A zealous “No.” was quickly qualified with “or, I don’t need any—you can get some if you want. But we’re running behind.”
What she wanted was for him to want to share some with her. So she said “no”, and they filed into the theater and found their plush seats and sat down. She slipped her wrist into the slot in the chair arm to authenticate herself.
Soon the cavernous screen around them turned dark grey and text faded into view: “The Prince of the Panhandle is rated R for the portrayal of debaucherous, deceitful, misogynistic, lecherous, and evil thoughts & actions. The American Memory Corporation does not endorse the perspective of any characters presented in this production.”
Lorrie glanced excitedly over. Robert looked concerned. Another paragraph replaced the first:
“The memories of Gabriel Galilei can be particularly offensive to the moral sensibilities of modern audiences. Remember that you’re in control! If you get uncomfortable, you can tone down Gabriel at any point, or turn off his perspective entirely. The red button on your seat will put you in contact with an AMC attendant should you have any questions. We are here for your comfort and pleasure.”
The screen went black for a few seconds. Then the memo opened with a wide shot of the Panhandle, with its dog-walkers and its bikers, its sandwich-eaters and its people-watchers. As the camera panned up to show an old Victorian home situated on a corner across the park, with peeling yellow paint and dead plants in the windows, Lorrie felt the familiar cold tingle of external memories blending into her own, and settled in to enjoy the show.
“That was so good!” she said as they exited the theater into the hallways and the excited chatter of the audience fanned out.
“Did you like it?”
She tilted her head.
“Did you not?”
“I thought it was alright. I just didn’t like Gabriel.”
“What? He’s the best! What a paradise—”
“What a paradise it was, before the la la la. Yea, I got it. That stupid phrase was so overdone. Look, I can get behind a bad guy, but he’s got to be compelling, not just… bad! I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but every time it switched to his perspective he dug himself a deeper hole. I can’t believe we’ve got a park named after him! I mean, I turned down his thoughts, and still—”
“You turned him down?” she cried.
“Yes I turned him down! He was pure—” he searched for a moment for the right word—“evil! Oh—let’s campaign to kill all the dogs in San Francisco! Oh—I’ll rip off my friends for thousands of dollars each month. Oh—I’ll sleep with the love of your life hours after you introduce me to her. I mean, give me a break! And there was no remorse, no growth, nothing! Did you really listen to that devil drone on for three hours?”
“He didn’t want to kill the dogs, he wanted to exile them,” she corrected. “And only the ugly ones. It was all laid out in a very logical manner.…”
“Oh, my mistake. And besides, Gabriel wasn’t the only problem. The whole plot got so convoluted in the middle! What was the point of that whole subplot with the Magpie guy? He just hated technology? Was that the joke? And then they were just tromping around the east bay forever. I know it’s based on real memories, but seriously, they could’ve abridged it or something. I felt like we bought tickets to the extended edition!”
“Mr Magpie! You can’t hate Mr. Magpie! He was the best roommate of them all! Even the folks they didn’t contribute much to the story made the whole neighborhood come alive. You got such a sense for what it was like back then… it all felt so real, so rustic.”
“Rustic? Give me a break. It’s an adventure flick, not a stew. And they didn’t even succeed at the adventure part. They kept trying to build up the suspense with the treasure and the escape and the march and all that, but obviously we all know how it ends, so it was just boring.”
“What? Just because you know the ending, doesn’t mean there’s no suspense! If anything it’s more exciting when you know what happens. You get to see how everything fits together!”
“But nothing fit together! It was just Gabriel being horrible, and Cicero falling over himself trying to get women far too good for him, and the both of them ruining their own lives and the lives of everybody they met, over and over again! Then magically—poof!—Cicero’s a king and everybody loves him!”
Lorrie took a deep breath. She had many things to say. She settled on, “Did we watch the same memo?”
“Well, they say everyone experiences it differently.”
“Maybe we just agree to disagree.”
“Sure.”
They continued walking in silence. Lorrie considered the frequency with which she agreed to disagree with her boyfriend. Then she opened up the program again to take her mind off the unwelcome terminus of that train of thought.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing at a paragraph hidden in the corner. “For those old souls in the audience, a written-word version of the narrative written by the Historical Society’s esteemed editor is available in the gift shop!”
“I didn’t know they still made books!” Robert said with a laugh.
“Well, let’s at least go check it out.”
“Briefly—it’s already eleven.”
Near the entrance to the theater, Lorrie found an ancient man in a thin cardigan curled up in a fold-out chair set behind a wooden table, with six or seven copies of a thick book on it. She picked one up. The cover was maroon and thick and adorned in the center by a small rectangular painting of a man standing on an overturned bench in a park, addressing a crowd. The Prince of the Panhandle was embossed in an ornate font over the top of the image, and smaller silver lettering underneath the image read A true account of the events leading to the coronation of Cicero Augustine.
“Do you read books often?” asked the man, in a thin, humble voice.
“Oh, no,” replied Lorrie, blushing. “I’m just browsing.”
“It’s so rare that I see young people interested in these things anymore.”
“We just watched the memo.”
He smiled. “When people say memo, I still think of the old one-pagers.”
“One-pagers?”
“Memo used to mean a document they would send out in a corporate job. Usually one page; usually bad news. It’s funny how words change like that.”
“Yea,” said Lorrie. “Do you like our modern ones?”she asked with a smile and a gesture towards the theater.
“Oh, I usually tend to just read books. Though they’re getting harder to find these days.”
“Why do you like them?”
“Oh, I’m probably just an old man stuck in my ways.” He paused, then added, “Have you ever kept a journal, dear?”
“A journal? No.”
“I’ve kept a journal for many years. Each day I write what I did, or what happened to me, or what I thought. Every so often I write a lot more. And then when I’m caught in a contemplative mood, I go back and read it. You want to know what I think, when I read it?”
“Who does this guy think he is?”
The man smiled.
“My most frequent thought is—really? That’s what I thought? That’s not how I remember feeling! Wasn’t I more angry about that? Or more excited? I find myself having written of the most momentous occasions with such vanity that I want to scream!”—he grabbed a stiff Robert by the shoulders and shook him with each syllable—“don’t you know what you’ve just got?”—then turned back to Lorrie. “On other pages I discover that I have written with the greatest reverence about the most fleeting of feelings. When I was young it was usually love. I was in love with her? That trivial girl? That trivial boy?”
Lorrie smiled.
“We should be going,” Robert whispered with a tug at Lorrie’s arm.
“I always find myself, in my writing, not quite as I remembered. I don’t like the memos because memories always say exactly the same thing, and it is never the truth. Words are just the opposite: read them a hundred times and you will have a hundred different thoughts, and all of them will be true.”
“We really should be on our way.” He grabbed Lorrie’s arm, but she tugged it free and picked up a copy from the table.
“I’d like to buy one.”
Robert waited impatiently as the delighted old man figured out how to ring up the purchase. As they drove home in silence, Lorrie opened the book and began to read…