No Time Left (Chapter 2)
As dawn approached I came upon a residential neighborhood, it appeared to be a wealthier neighborhood, with nice looking houses. My initial thought was to knock on doors and see if anyone knew me, but my military training (the one thing I could recall) told me this was a bad idea, as hostiles could be anywhere. I finally glanced down at my apparel, tattered jeans and a navy blue shirt, covered by the worn denim jacket I was wearing. I looked like any old homeless guy wandering around on the streets. I came across a fairly large supermarket, and walked up to the enterance. As I approached a woman was struggling with many bags.She was middle aged with brown curly hair and bright blue eyes, she was dressed in a yellow blouse and skinny jeans.
I offered to help, which she graciously accepted. As we walked back to her car, she began to get a little suspicious. "You aren't from around here are you?" she asked. "What's your name?"
I did the first thing that came to my mind, told the truth, "I have no idea Ma'am, I can't remember a thing."
"Don't remember anything?" she asked as she loaded grocery bags into the trunk of her car. "Did you have an accident?"
"Nope, no injury, I just have no idea who I am or where I am, got no money, no place to go."
She pondered this for a moment, "Well, if you truly have no place to go I have a vacancy."
I was fairly shocked at her outright trust, but I thanked her and got into her car. As we drove she turned to me and introduced herself, "Name's Julie, I've lived here in Chicago, which is where you are by the way, for 18 years. It gets pretty lonely, I'm not in a relationship, no kids, family's out of state. I do government work, military stuff, some of it's classified though, so we can't really discuss that."
I opted against telling her I was a military man, as that might bring up questions I didn't know how to answer. When we reached her house, a brick 2 story building with a wooden front porch and a dog tied to it on a leash, I got out of the car, and got the groceries.
"This is Buster," she said, "finest watchdog in the country, I've always had a thing for training dogs, found this one on the street, he's my little prodigy."
When we walked inside I was greeted by a small foyer flanked by both a living room and a dining room, upstairs I glimpsed a bedroom and bathroom, and around the living room was what seemed to be a family room, with a couch identical to the one in the family room.
As I looked outside I saw that there was a sunset coming, so I asked if I could settle in for the night. She showed me to my room, where I dropped of my stuff and immediatly went to sleep, although I had a secret I kept from her. The way she said she did classified work, she said it in a cautious way, like I was involved, and the way she just automatically trusted me, like the way you'd trust a friend, it was all very peculiar. I was secretly determined to find those files, and see if they had anything to do with me, my family, or my memory loss.
