In Five Years (ARC)

by Rebecca Serle

  I feel like asking him what job?

  “The food came,” he says, sitting back. “I stuck it in the fridge. I’ll get plates.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”

  David looks at me with shock and awe. “How is that possible? You told me you were weak with hunger, like an hour ago.” He stands up and goes into the kitchen, ignoring me. He opens the refrigerator and starts pulling out containers. Pad Thai. Chicken curry. Fried rice. “All your favorites,” he says. “Hot or cold?”

  “Cold,” I say. I pull the blanket closer around me.

  David comes back balancing the containers on plates. He starts taking off tops, and I smell the sweet and sour and tangy spices.

  “I had the craziest dream,” I tell him. Maybe if I talk about it it’ll make sense. Maybe if I lay it all out here, outside of my brain. “I just . . . I can’t shake it. Was I talking in my sleep?”

  David piles some noodles onto a plate and grabs a fork. “Nope. Don’t think so. I showered for a little, so maybe?” He jams a giant bite of Pad Thai into his mouth and chews. Some stray noodles migrate to the floor. “Was it a nightmare?”

  I think about Aaron. “No,” I say. “I mean, not exactly.”

  David swallows. “Good. Your mom called twice. I’m not sure how long we can hold her off.” David puts his fork down and threads his arm around me. “But I had some plans for us alone tonight.”

  My eyes dart to my hand. The ring, the right one, is back on my finger. I exhale.

  My phone starts buzzing.

  “Bella again,” David says, somewhat wearily.

  I’m already off the couch, snatching the phone and taking it with me into the bedroom.

  “I’m gonna flip on the news,” David calls after me.

  I close the door behind me and pick up the call. “Bells.”

  “I waited up!” It’s loud where she is, the sound of people fills the phone—she’s out partying. She laughs, her voice a cascade of music. “You’re engaged! Congratulations! Do you like the ring? Tell me everything!”

  “Are you still in Paris?” I ask her.

  “Yes!” she says.

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “Jacques wants to go to Sardinia for a few days.”

  Ah, Jacques. Jacques is back. If Bella woke up five years in the future in a different apartment, she probably wouldn’t even blink.

  “In December?”

  “It’s supposed to be quiet and romantic.”

  “I thought you were going to the Riviera with Renaldo.”

  “Well he bailed, and then Jacques texted that he was in town and voilà. New plans!”

  I sit down on my bed. I look around. The tufted gray chairs I bought with my first paycheck at Clarknell, the oak dresser that was a hand-me-down from my parents’ place. The Bakelite lamps David brought with him from his Turtle Bay bachelor pad.

  I see the expanse of that loft in Dumbo. The blue velvet chairs.

  “Hey,” I say. “I have to tell you something kind of crazy.”

  “Tell me everything!” she hollers through the phone, and I imagine her spinning out in the middle of a dance floor, on the roof of some Parisian hotel, Jacques tugging at her waist.

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. I fell asleep, and . . . I wasn’t dreaming. I swear I was in this apartment and this guy was there. It was so real. Like I really went there. Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

  “No, darling, we’re going to the Marais!”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, everyone in the crowd is absolutely starving, and it’s practically light out. We’ve been partying for decades. So wait, it was like a dream? Did he do it on the terrace or in the restaurant?” I hear an explosion of sound and then a door shut, a retreat to silence.

  “Oh, the restaurant,” I say. “I’ll tell you everything when you’re back.”

  “I’m here, I’m here!” she says.

  “You’re not,” I say, smiling. “Be safe, okay?”

  I can see her rolling her eyes. “Do you know that the French don’t even have a word for safety?”

  “That is not even remotely true,” I say. “Beaucoup.” It’s pretty much one of the only French words I know.

  “Even so,” she says. “I wish you had more fun.”

  “I have fun,” I say.

  “Let me guess. David is now watching CNN Live and you’re wearing a face mask. You just got engaged!”

  I touch my fingers to my cheek. “Only dry skin here.”

  “How was the job interview?” she asks. “I didn’t forget, I just temporarily forgot.”

  “It was great, honestly. I think I got it.”

  “Of course you got it. You not getting it would require a rip in the universe that I’m not sure is scientifically possible.”

  I feel my stomach tighten.

  “Boozy brunch when I’m back,” she says. The door opens again and sound rushes back in through the phone. I hear her kiss someone twice.

  “You know I hate brunch,” I say.

  “But you love me.”

  She hangs up, in a whirlwind of noise.

  David comes into the bedroom, his hair rumpled. He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose.

  “You tired?” he asks me.

  “Not really,” I say.

  “Yeah, me neither.” He climbs into bed. He reaches for me. But I can’t. Not right now.

  “I’m just going to get some water,” I say. “Too much champagne. Do you want some water, too?”

  “Sure.” He yawns. “Do me a favor and get the light?”

  I get up and flip the light switch. I walk back into the living room. But instead of pouring a glass of water, I go to the windows. The TV is off and it’s dark, but the streets are flooded with light. I look down. Third Avenue is busy even now, well past midnight. There are people out—laughing and screaming. Heading to the bars of our youth: Joshua Tree, Mercury Bar. They’ll dance to nineties music they’re too young to really know, well into the morning. I stand there for a long time. Hours seem to pass. The streets quiet down to a New York whisper. By the time I go back into the bedroom, David is fast asleep.

  Chapter Five

  I get the job; of course I do. They call me a week later and offer it, a fraction below my current salary. I argue them up, and by January 8 I’m giving my two weeks’ notice. David and I move to Gramercy. It happens a year later, almost down to the day. We find a great unfurnished sublet in the building we’ve always admired. “We’ll stay until something opens to buy,” David tells me. A year later something opens to buy, and we buy it.

  David begins working at a hedge fund started by his ex-boss at Tishman. I get promoted to senior associate.

  Four and a half years pass. Winters and falls and summers. Everything goes according to plan. Everything. Except that David and I don’t get married. We never set a date. We say we’re busy, which we are. We say we don’t need to until we want kids. We say we want to travel. We say we’ll do it when the time is right—and it never is. His dad has heart trouble one year, we move the next. There are always reasons, and good ones, too, but none of them are why. The truth is that every time we get close, I think about that night, that hour, that dream, that man. And the memory of it stops me before I’ve started.

  After that night, I went to therapy. I couldn’t stop thinking about that hour. The memory was real, like I had, in fact, lived it. I felt like I was going crazy and because of that, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even Bella. What would I say? I woke up in the future? Where I had sex with a stranger? The worst thing is, Bella would probably believe me.

  I know that therapists are supposed to help you figure out whatever insanity is lingering in your brain, and then help you get rid of it.
So the following week I went to someone on the Upper West Side. Highly recommended. In New York, all the best shrinks are on the Upper West Side.

  Her office was bright and friendly, if not a little sterile. There was one giant plant. I couldn’t figure out if it was fake or not. I never touched it. It was on the other side of the sofa, behind her chair, and it would have been impossible to get to.

  Dr. Christine. One of those professionals who uses their first name with their title to seem more relatable. She didn’t. She wore swaths of Eileen Fisher—linens and silks and cottons spun so excessively I had no idea what her shape even was. She was sixty, maybe.

  “What brings you in today?” she asked me.

  I had been in therapy once, after my brother died. A fatal drunk driving accident fifteen years ago that had the police show up at our house at 1:37 in the morning. He wasn’t the one at the wheel. He was in the passenger seat. What I heard first were my mother’s screams.

  My therapist had me talk about him, our relationship, and then draw what I thought the accident might have looked like, which seemed condescending for a twelve year old. I went for a month, maybe more. I don’t remember much, except that afterward my mom and I would stop for ice cream, like I was seven and not nearly thirteen. I often didn’t want any, but I always got two scoops of mint chocolate chip. It felt important to play along then, and for a long time after.

  “I had a strange dream,” I said. “I mean, something strange happened to me.”

  She nodded. Some of the silk slipped. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

  I did. I expressed to her that David and I had gotten engaged, that I’d had too much champagne, that I’d fallen asleep, and that I’d woken up in 2025 in a strange apartment with a man I’d never met before. I left out that I slept with him.

  She looked at me for a long time once I stopped talking. It made me uncomfortable.

  “Tell me more about your fiancé.”

  I was immediately relieved. I knew where she was headed with this. I was unsure about David, and therefore my subconscious was projecting a kind of alternative reality where I was not subject to the burdens of what I had just committed to in getting engaged.

  “He’s great,” I said. “We’ve been together for over two years. He’s very driven and kind. He’s a good match.”

  She smiled then, Dr. Christine. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “What do you think he’d say about this experience you’re ­describing?”

  I didn’t tell David. I couldn’t, obviously. What would I possibly say? He’d think I was crazy, and he’d be right.

  “He’d probably say it was a dream and that I’m stressed out about work?”

  “Would that be true?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “It seems to me,” she said. “That you’re unwilling to say this was just a dream, but you’re not sure what it would mean if it wasn’t.”

  “What else could it possibly be?” I genuinely wanted to know where she was going with this.

  She sat back in her chair. “A premonition, maybe. A psychosomatic trip.”

  “Those are just other words for dreams.”

  She laughed. She had a nice one. The silk slipped again. “Sometimes unexplainable things happen.”

  “Like what?”

  She looked at me. Our time was up.

  After our session, I felt strangely better. Like in going in there I could see the whole thing for what it was: crazy. I could give the whole weird dream to her. It was her problem now. Not mine. She could file it with all her divorces, sexual incompatibilities, and mother issues. And for four and a half years, I left it there.

  Chapter Six

  It’s a Saturday in June, and I’m going to meet Bella for brunch. We haven’t seen each other in almost two months, which is the longest we’ve ever gone, including her London sojourn of 2015, when she “moved” to Notting Hill for six weeks to paint. I’ve been buried in work. The job is great, and impossible. Not hard, impossible. There is a week’s worth of work in every day. I’m always behind. I see David for five minutes, maybe, every day when one of us wakes up sleepily to great the other. At least we’re on the same schedule. We’re both working toward a life we want, and will have. Thank god we understand each other.

  Today it’s raining. It’s been a wet spring, this one of 2025, so this is not out of the ordinary, but I ordered some new dresses and I was hoping to wear one. Bella is always calling my style “conservative,” because ninety percent of the time I’m in a suit, and I thought I’d surprise her with something unexpected today. No luck. Instead, I tug on jeans, a white Madewell T-shirt, and my Burberry trench and ankle rain boots. Temperature says sixty-five degrees. Enough to sweat with a top layer but be freezing without one.

  We’re meeting at Buvette, a tiny French café in the West Village we’ve been going to for years. They have the best eggs and croque monsieur on the planet—and their coffee is strong and rich. Right now, I need a quart.

  Also, it’s one of Bella’s favorite spots. She knows all the waiters. When we were in our twenties, she’d go there to sketch.

  I end up taking a cab because I don’t want to be late, even though I know Bella will be running fifteen minutes behind. Bella is chronically fifteen to twenty minutes late everywhere she goes.

  But when I arrive she’s already there, seated in the window at the two-top.

  She’s dressed in a long, flowing floral dress that’s wet at the edges—at five-foot-three she’s not tall enough for it—and a crimson velvet blazer. Her hair is down and falls around her in tufts, like spools of wool. She’s beautiful. Every time I see her I’m reminded just how much.

  “This cannot possibly be happening,” I say. “You beat me here?”

  She shrugs, her gold hoops bouncing against her neck. “I couldn’t wait to see you.” She gets out of her chair and pulls me into a tight hug. She smells like her. Tea tree and lavender, a hint of cinnamon.

  “I’m wet,” I yelp, but I don’t let go. It feels good. “I missed you, too.”

  I tuck my umbrella under my chair and loop my raincoat over the back. Inside it’s chillier than I thought it would be. I rub my hands together.

  “You look older,” she says.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Coffee?”

  I nod.

  She holds her cup up to the waiter. She comes here far more often than I do. Her place is three blocks away on the corner of Bleecker and Charles, a floor-through level of a brownstone her dad bought for her two years ago. It’s three bedrooms, impeccably decorated in her colorful, bohemian, I-didn’t-even-think-about-this-but-it-looks-gorgeous perfect style.

  “What’s darling Dave up to this morning?” she asks.

  “He went to the gym,” I say, opening my napkin.

  “The gym?”

  I shrug. “That’s what he said.”

  Bella opens her mouth to say something, but closes it again. She likes David. Or at least, I think she does. I suspect she’d like me to be with someone more adventurous, someone who maybe pushed me outside my comfort zone a little bit more. But what she doesn’t realize, or what she conveniently forgets, is that she and I are not the same person. David is right for me, and the things I want for my life.

  “So,” I say. “Tell me everything. How is work coming at the gallery? How was Europe?”

  Five years ago, Bella did a show of her artwork at a small gallery in Chelsea named Oliander. The show sold out, and she did another. Then two years ago, Oliander, the owner, wanted to sell the place and came to her. She used her trust fund to buy it. She paints less than she used to, but I like that she has some stability in her life. The gallery has meant that she can’t disappear ­anymore—­at least not for weeks at a time.

  “We nearly sold out the
Depreche show,” she says. “I’m so bummed you missed it. It was spectacular. My favorite by far.” Bella says that about every single artist she shows. It’s always the best, the greatest, the most fun she’s ever had. Life is an upward escalator. “Business is so good I’m thinking about hiring another Chloe.”

  Chloe has been her assistant for the last three years, and runs the logistics at Oliander. She’s kissed Bella twice, which has not seemed to complicate their business relationship.

  “You should do it.”

  “Might give me time to actually sculpt or paint again. It has been months.”

  “Sometimes you have to sacrifice to achieve your dreams.”

  She smiles sideways at me. The coffee comes. I pour some creamer into it, and take a slow, heady sip.

  When I look up, she’s still smiling at me. “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing. You’re just so . . . ‘sacrifice to achieve your dreams.’ Who talks like that?”

  “Business leaders. Heads of companies. CEOs.”

  Bella rolls her eyes. “When did you get like this?”

  “Do you ever remember my being any different?”

  Bella puts her hand to her chin. She looks straight at me. “I don’t know,” she says.

  I know what she means, what I never really want to talk about it. Was I different as a child? Before my brother died? Was I spontaneous, carefree? Did I begin to plan my life so that no one would ever show up at my door and throw the whole thing off a cliff? Probably. But there isn’t much to be done about it now. I am who I am.

  The waiter circles back to us, and Bella raises her eyebrows at me as if to ask you ready?

  “You order,” I say.

  She speaks to him entirely in French, pointing out items on the menu and discussing. I love watching her speak French. She’s so natural, so vibrant. She tried to teach me once in our early twenties, but it just didn’t stick. They say that languages come better to people who are right-brained, but I’m not so sure. I think you need a certain looseness, a certain fluidity, to speak another language. To take all the words in your brain and turn them over, one by one, like stones—and find something else scrolled on the underside.