Except J.J.’s parents, who have no idea their son had no future. When did he lose it? The day he met Lizbet? The day he didn’t listen to me about how crazy she was? A few moments ago, when he didn’t dive for the floor?
I will never know.
But I do something I would never normally do. I grab Lizbet’s envelope, and I open it.
The handwriting is spidery, shaky.
Give it up. J.J. doesn’t love you. He’ll never love you. Just walk away and pretend that he doesn’t exist. Live a better life than I have. Throw the gun away.
Throw the gun away.
She did this before, just like I thought.
And I wonder: was the letter different this time? And if it was, how different? Throw the gun away. Is that line new or old? Has she ignored this sentence before?
My brain hurts. My head hurts.
My heart hurts.
I was angry at J.J. just a few moments ago, and now he’s dead.
He’s dead and I’m not.
Carla isn’t either.
Neither is Esteban.
I touch them both and motion them close. Carla seems calmer, but Esteban is blank – shock, I think. A spray of blood covers the left side of his face and shirt.
I show them the letter, even though I’m not supposed to.
“Maybe this is why we never got our letters,” I say. “Maybe today is different than it was before. We survived, after all.”
I don’t know if they understand. I’m not sure I care if they understand.
I’m not even sure if I understand.
I sit in my office and watch the emergency services people flow in, declare J.J. dead, take Lizbet away, set the rest of us aside for interrogation. I hand someone – one of the police officers – Lizbet’s red envelope, but I don’t tell him we looked.
I have a hunch he knows we did.
The events wash past me, and I think that maybe this is my last Red Letter Day at Barack Obama High School, even if I survive the next two weeks and turn fifty.
And I find myself wondering, as I sit on my desk waiting to make my statement, whether I’ll write my own red letter after all.
What can I say that I’ll listen to? Words are so very easy to misunderstand. Or misread.
I suspect Lizbet only read the first few lines. Her brain shut off long before she got to Walk away and Throw away the gun.
Maybe she didn’t write that the first time. Or maybe she’s been writing it, hopelessly, to herself in a continual loop, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
None of us will know.
That’s what makes Red Letter Day such a joke. Is it the letter that keeps us on the straight and narrow? Or the lack of a letter that gives us our edge?
Do I write a letter, warning myself to make sure Lizbet gets help when I meet her? Or do I tell myself to go to the draft no matter what? Will that prevent this afternoon?
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
Maybe Father Broussard was right; maybe God designed us to be ignorant of the future. Maybe He wants us to move forward in time, unaware of what’s ahead, so that we follow our instincts, make our first, best – and only – choice.
Maybe.
Or maybe the letters mean nothing at all. Maybe all this focus on a single day and a single note from a future self is as meaningless as this year’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Just a day like any other, only we add a ceremony and call it important.
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
Not if I live two more weeks or two more years.
Either way, J.J. will still be dead and Lizbet will be alive, and my future – whatever it is – will be the mystery it always was.
The mystery it should be.
The mystery it will always be.
DOMINE
Rjurik Davidson
Rjurik Davidson has written short stories, essays, reviews, and screenplays, and has been short-listed for and won a number of awards. Davidson’s collection The Library of Forgotten Books was published in 2010 by PS Publishing. His novel Unwrapped Sky will be published in early 2014. His script The Uncertainty Principle (co-written with Ben Chessell) is currently in development with Lailaps films and Neon Park films. “Domine” was first published in Aurealis in 2007.
I’m off the monorail and through streets littered with cigarette packets and strips of last month’s posters, peeled from the yellow and grey chipped walls. The air smells of rubbish and urine. A breeze would only blow the odour away for a moment; I’m in the City.
Genie and I moved into the place temporarily, with the hope of shifting farther out a few months later, where there might be a park for Max to play in, neighbours to help out, a house with a separate dining room and kitchen. Genie remained after I moved out, so every now and then I’m back in the old neighbourhood, with light rain misting through the little inner-city streets, trying not to look past the pavement in front of me in case I see one of the real things that happen here.
A shuttle slashes the sky overhead, taking someone rich to meet other rich people somewhere else. They don’t bother with travelling by land – easier to skip over the city like a stone over water. The deep red of the shuttle’s burners gives the illusion of warmth.
“Hey Mister, hey!”
One of the boys; there are a million around here.
“Hey Mister, bliss, bliss?”
I shake my head and keep my eyes on the stained pavement. No need to encourage them.
“Hey Mister, you come back.”
I’m there, at the old five-storey yellow apartment building. Bars on every window, so people don’t get in and others don’t throw themselves out. It’s a fair balance.
The city is still all stairs and four, five, six-storey buildings. Everything new or important happens out in the Towers, little islands of commerce in the suburbs, where things are clean and fresh and everyone’s teeth are white and gleaming and the girls in all the shops remind you of your hopes when you were young.
I’m into the stairwell and up. Three sets of stairs, four doors along the walkway. I knock.
I hear scrabbling from behind the door and wait for a while, noticing that my hands seem wrinkled. I am only thirty-eight but I’m getting old.
“Don’t you ever call?” I can see one side of Genie’s face through the partly opened door, her lank, colourless hair falling across her forehead. She has that look of exhaustion as usual, as if the world has worn her out and everything now is an effort.
“Hi Genie.”
“Look, it’s not a good time.”
“I brought something for Max.”
The door opens and I’m inside. The place is tiny: one bedroom, a one-room lounge and kitchen, a bathroom and toilet.
“He doesn’t even know who you are.” Genie starts picking up odd bits and pieces of junk from the lounge room floor: some socks, a fluffy toy bird, opened envelopes with their contents still inside. She always starts cleaning when I arrive. Max is playing by a water-filled bucket in the corner. The smell of something rotten floats from the bin in the kitchen.
“Hey, Maxy,” I say, and my one-year-old son looks up at me, his face round with splotchy, rosy cheeks, and his mouth open. A line of dribble runs from his mouth to his chest.
I walk over to him and squat next to him. “Hey Maxy.” Should I reach out to him? I’m not sure. It’s hard with children: they’re strange things. He looks at me and I’m scared he’ll start crying. At the moment he’s just frowning.
“So what did you bring him?”
I have no present so I change the subject. “Dany’s coming back you know.” I say. “Really soon. August thirtieth.”
“I know the date, Marek, but I don’t care. It’s too late for me to care,” Genie says. “You should concentrate on your own stuff. Think about Max for once.”
“But what am I going to do?” I reach forward and touch Ma
x on the arm. But he senses my tension and tries to pull away, still frowning at me as if I’m an impostor.
A key rattles in the door and a big brawny man, his body too big for his legs, wanders in. He wears baggy khaki work-shorts and a blue singlet over a too-tanned body.
“I told you this was a bad time,” Genie says to me. “Oh well, this is Rick. Rick, this is Marek.”
“Oh, hi,” Rick says and walks over to Genie, gives her a kiss, walks over to Max, ruffles his thin blonde hair.
I’m out of the door and on the landing, but Genie follows me. “I love him,” she says, “and he treats me well. Better than you ever did.”
“Yeah,” I say, still walking, my teeth clenched like a vice.
“What did you come back for?” Her voice is suddenly shrill. “Did you come back to fuck me?”
Another shuttle burns overhead, and I wonder where it’s going. The Towers no doubt.
“Come back and visit Max, though,” she says suddenly, hopefully, “He needs his father. You of all people should know that.”
*
Later that evening I’m in the small unit I can afford, out in the vast expanse of houses and apartments that encircle the Towers. The suburbs are like a sea surrounding a chain of islands, running all the way to the City. It’s a nothing space, each section interchangeable with another. The view from a shuttle would be of one infinitely repeating series of buildings and roads. It’s how I like it. You can get lost here; you can feel hidden and safe. It allows me to write my music in peace, away from all the demands of the world: partners and children and work. Still, I don’t compose much. All my creativity gets drained by the soundscapes I’m forced to design for the Towers. All my originality is sucked away into those.
Tonight, for some reason, I’m agitated, disturbed even. It’s August twenty-eighth.
The phone buzzes. I press the button and my older sister Leila appears on the screen. Though she doesn’t really like me, we keep in touch. Even now her hair is sculpted, like a blonde helmet. Not a hair out of place.
“I can’t sleep,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to see Dany.”
“Right.”
“I don’t want anything to do with him.” Leila clenches her jaw (we both inherited that from mum) and crosses her arms emphatically.
“Do you think that Mum was happy in her last years?”
“Christ, Marek, you’ve always been introspective. That’s your problem.”
“I think she was. I think finally, after everything, she found some happiness.”
Leila brushes her hair back with her hand, but it bounces back to its perfect shape. “So if you talk to him, tell him I don’t want to see him.”
“Someone’s got to be there when he comes back.”
“Well it’s not going to be me. And Marek, what good is it going to do if you show up? Huh?”
“She wanted to hold on, didn’t she? Just another year, just one more year. But she couldn’t.”
Someone is crying behind Leila. Must be her kid, whose name I can’t, for the life of me, remember. Leila turns from the phone to look over her shoulder, then back. “Look Marek, I gotta go.”
“It’s been all over the news,” I say, but she’s gone.
August thirtieth arrives and I’m in McArthur Tower: the procession has finished, the speeches are over; there have been medals and descriptions and hologram footage and everything else. I saw him on stage with the others, in their uniforms, but I could barely make it out from up the back. Now I’m sitting at the exit to the conference centre and people in suits are milling about being official and I wonder if I should go in and look around for him, but no, I stay put. Secretly I don’t want to see him. I think of leaving, eyeing the lifts far away down the corridor, but something makes me stay. It must have been a hell of a thing, after all, out there in space. The government made a fuss of Dany and the rest of the crew, that’s for sure.
A soundscape full of triumphant brass and rolling drums plays in the background.
I notice the captain walk out, officials surrounding him, talking in hushed, respectful tones.
To my right, windows open out to the evening. The vast bulk of another Tower stands opposite, its own windows appearing tiny in the gigantic structure. I struggle to see if I can make out figures, but all I can see is flickering, and that’s probably just my eyes playing up.
I look away and suddenly Dany’s there, with another of the crew, and they’re coming past me. It hits me like a physical blow: he looks in his early twenties. His light hair is short and jagged, his eyes slightly too close together, spoiling his otherwise beautiful looks. It hits me again: he looks just like I once did.
“See you soon then, Dan,” the other one says.
He nods and grins like a little boy, runs his hands through his hair and then says, “Yep.”
He walks towards the lift as the other one turns back.
“Hey,” I say weakly, and then stronger, embarrassed by the strain in my voice, “Dany.”
He turns and looks at me and my breath is suddenly taken away. He cocks his head and frowns for a minute. Then says, “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” I say, and am struck by the banality of it, “Marek.”
He grins uncomfortably, cocks his head to the other side and raises his hands as if to say: well, imagine that.
I stand up from my chair, take a few steps and say again, “It’s me, Marek.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She died.”
A look of confusion crosses his face and then passes. “Well, come on then,” he says.
I follow him. Neither of us speak as we make our way to the elevator and then wind through one of the prospects: a wide boulevard with ground cars and unicycles zipping along in a chaotic frenzy, the stall holders at the side of the road, with their designer tattoos, calling to us as we pass. Another elevator, spiralling through the Tower in odd directions, takes us up to the Hotel Sector in the fifteen hundreds where Dany has been given a room.
He has an amazing sense of direction amid the massive structure of the Tower, with its thousands of winding corridors. He finds his penthouse calmly and easily. When he arrives he says to me, the first words in some time, “I’m going to get ready. I have to see some of this.”
He retreats to the bathroom while I sit and wait.
The view from the giant windows is magnificent. Two Towers, one at an oblique angle, and then the lights of the suburbs, flickering like a thousand shining insects. The clarity of it strikes me.
“We don’t wear makeup much anymore,” I say.
“Oh... What do you wear?”
“I don’t really know. I mean, I’m not really up with it. But there’s a fashion channel.”
Dany comes out, fully shaven. He looks even younger, though the dark makeup around the eyes makes him look like a thirty-year throwback. “Should I take it off?” He looks suddenly anxious.
“No, don’t worry. Some people still wear it.”
“I’ve got this card.” He says, “They gave me this card. It’ll get me clothes, all sorts of things.”
“Leila called me a couple of days ago.”
He walks across the room, presses a button and the fridge door slides up.
“Drink?” he asks, ignoring me.
“She’s doing well. All settled down: husband, kids, you know.”
Dany takes a big swig of something, throws back his head, and lets out a roar. Turns around, passes me a glass. “C’mon boy, this’ll put a glint back in your eye.” He grins his distinctive grin.
I sip the drink and try to stifle a cough. My throat is on fire, my eyes blurred. I hear a laugh off in the distance. “God,” I say.
Nightville, up in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds, is a complex of Middle-Eastern and African restaurants, hanging gardens filled with the scent of stone-fruit and dotted with indoor lakes, labyrinthine clubs climbing up through the Tower like ant-colonies so
that after a few hours you don’t know what level you’re on. Nightville is a carefully planned planlessness, designed to give the sense of spontaneity, of a vast and sprawling confusion, imitating the red-light districts in the old cities. But nothing in the Towers is unplanned. So there’s always the element of irreality to it, a sense of the manufactured. Shambling through a club one might, lo and behold, stumble upon an Armenian restaurant run by the club’s owners, aimed at the very same patrons, in an expression of monopoly apparent only to those not doped up on rapture or blurred by alcohol. Nightville is one big franchise.
We’re in Arabian Nights, one of the popular clubs in the sector, a ramshackle series of levels where patrons surround hookahs in dark tent-like chambers, where everything is in the deep colours and intricate patterns of the Middle East, where belly dancers and pipe-players, tootling in exotic quarter-tones, make their way through the passageways, where camel-trains ridden by adventurers head for the mini-desert on the western side of the club.
Dany, dressed ridiculously in his space-suit and dark makeup (all blue shadow and grey undertones), is entertaining a small crowd in a side room. I’ve been edged out of the circle and have to crane my neck over a couple of skip-girls.
“Of course,” he says, “you’re unconscious during close-to-light-speed. A deep dark sleep filled with magnificent dreams. And then, suddenly, consciousness hits you like a blow, and you’re throwing up all over yourself, and you’re wondering who you are and what you’re doing there. And me, I’m thinking I could have bought this feeling for a hundred bucks at Arabian Nights.”
He pauses for the laughter and then continues in slightly more hushed tones.
“But then you look out and you see Centauri and everything is in a strange new light, filled with blues and greens that you’ve never seen before, as if you’ve been reborn into a world just slightly different from this one, and you know nothing will ever be the same again.”
Around him there is hushed silence, only the bass from dance music in the main rooms, audible behind his voice.
One of the skip-girls puts her hand on his thigh.
“Hey,” he says to me, “Come here.” He pulls me toward him and wraps an arm around my shoulder. “I want you to meet Marek. You have to look after him.”
The Time Traveller's Almanac Page 138
