by John Maclay
I looked around, tried for reality. Had I been working too hard? Did I daydream, maybe go all the way around the beltway and wind up absentmindedly back at our place? Was that what she meant in her friendly way? Or…
But then she went on. “After all, if you’d read the bulletin, you’d have known I changed jobs,” Jean smiled scoldingly. “Didn’t you miss me this morning?”
“No, I—”
“Well, you bad boy,” she concluded, really looking offended…then resigned. “But I guess we old receptionists are sort of…interchangeable.”
I got hold of myself, apologized. Wished her luck, even patted her on the shoulder, made a few jokes. Went on inside to my appointment.
And felt, above all, a great sense of relief. Because the other thing I’d been thinking, as I stood there frozen…
I had been working too hard, I decided as I drove back to the office. Ought to take that vacation I’d been putting off. Should at least relax more when I went home at night—maybe see more of my buddies, meet more women. Well, there was that home Redskins game next Sunday. I’d let myself go, have a great time. Yes…
That was when I passed the other Volvo…and the second thing happened.
I’d always hated it when I saw one exactly like mine. Down to the same paint job, same options—it was like all the money I’d spent to get better than a Honda or a Nissan had been wasted. So as I did on such occasions, I glanced sharply over at the driver. If my car wasn’t better, I thought, at least maybe I was…
It was only a flash. But it was enough to make me blink, almost swerve out of lane on the big highway. And enough to tell me, as I got back in control…that I was in worse shape than I’d thought.
Because for a moment there, I’d seen the guy I’d just spent an hour with at Velcron. Same gray suit, same everything. Just like Jean-had-been-Joan-had-been-Jean, it couldn’t be him—but it was. And it really couldn’t, I knew—since the guy’d just had to leave me for a big meeting with his president.
All I could do was keep on driving. Try to get my nerves unscrambled, fingers looser on the wheel. Look up in the center mirror, for me, for reassurance…
And have to whip the car over on the shoulder, even skid onto the gravel beyond, to stop from killing somebody.
…The third thing…
Because for another moment, that made my blood run cold:
The face in the mirror had been his, too.
It seemed like hours later when I finally got back to the plant. Walked in like a zombie—past her, whoever she was.
“Hello, Jean,” I said.
The best thing to do when you’re confused, I’ve found, is to stay in and switch on the old TV. Takes you out of yourself. Puts you in the hands of news anchors or talk show hosts, who are sort of like you, but know what they’re doing, So when I got home that night, I did that. Showered, put on a soft robe, had a frozen entree, then settled back with a beer in the recliner. Laid the remote on my knee, and started in.
First the news. (I got another beer.) Then game show one, and game show two. (One more—and of course, the john.) Then sitcoms one and two. (Another.) Then a miniseries. (I got one at the newsbreak.) Then the news again. (I brought two in with me.) Then the late rerun…
And that was when—like everything else—it started to blend.
I tried to blink it away, thinking it was tired eyes. Then when that didn’t work, to will it away, as I had that afternoon. Then discount it because of the beers—but at a six-pack in as many hours, I knew I wasn’t drunk.
Still the faces came at me—the girl who was the same as the game show hostess, the guy who was like the news anchor, the old fart like the one on the miniseries…
And the guy…like me…
The rest of the week was literally a blur. I was able to get to the office, do my work as best I could…and rejoice whenever I saw, uh, any differences. A tree, maybe, that hadn’t grown like the other ones. An antique car limping along the beltway. A ma-and-pa store, in a frame house spared by the industrial park. And the old janitor, with his clear eyes, who emptied my wastebasket.
The past, I guess, was reassuring. More variety, maybe. And my past had sure as hell been different. But it wasn’t enough—not nearly.
I thought of telling one of my buddies what had happened—even trying the company shrink in Personnel. But like anything you think that only you see…
So that Sunday I did go to the Redskins game. Hoping against hope it could be what I needed, as it had many times before. Letting myself go. Screaming my lungs out—the primal scream. Becoming one with the crowd—oh, no…
I didn’t even make it to halftime…before the thousands of faces around me were the same, or almost. And it was in the third quarter—when I left, stumbling like a drunk up the concrete steps of the stadium, then throwing up in the men’s room—that not only were there eleven men on the field in ’Skins colors…
But twenty-two.
There was only one thing left, I decided that night, that could fix it. Something that, however many times you experience it, is always different. That’s deeper than offices, apartments, cars, TV, games—anything. And that’s always real.
In other words—wondering how I could have been so keyed up I didn’t do it before—I called up my latest date, Cheryl.
She was a woman I liked a lot. Medium height, light blond feathery hair, cute face. Not a great body—but younger than me, only twenty, with a soft whiteness of flesh that, the first time we made it, took me off to a special kind of peace. And not a dumb blonde, either—good to be with, in and out of the sack.
“Well, stranger,” she laughed into the phone when she heard it was me and why I’d called. “You’re in luck. Big party tomorrow night; I was gonna go alone.” Her voice got soft. “Pick me up at eight, huh?”
On the way to her place the next night—last night—I had second thoughts. Would it show? I wondered. What I’d been going through, for some awful reason? Would she think I was strange—the worst thing, I knew, for a woman as young and fresh as her?
But when Cheryl slid her soft body onto the seat of the Volvo beside me and I pulled out, running through the gears and trading small talk, everything seemed like it was before. If it did show, at least she wasn’t saying anything. So I was suddenly almost happy. The night seemed warm, enclosing—and so did the thought of what I’d have with her at the end of it.
Until.
“Where to?” I asked as I swung onto the beltway.
“Oh, Field and Forest. The new one, you know.”
I may have swerved like I had once before; I’m not sure. But whatever I did…it showed.
“What’s wrong?” Cheryl asked.
“N-Nothing,” I must have sighed.
“Yes there is.”
“Chain apartments.”
“What?”
“Chain apartments. ‘Live with your friends, at Field and Forest.’” I was losing it as surely as they all whizzed by. “Chain companies chain restaurants chain cars…like mine like yours…chain—”
In the dark Cheryl looked over at me, blue eyes wide. Knew I was weird—I knew it. And suddenly, after ail I’d suffered, I just didn’t care anymore. Was ready to be crazy, if that’s what I was. Even if what I’d seen—thought I’d seen—lost me all I had, and her.
“All…the same?” I finished up.
But when she kept looking, reached over and patted my leg with her soft hand:
“You’ll be all right,” she smiled mysteriously.
So when we got to the new Field and Forest, the party, I no longer knew what to think. Of course the apartment was like the other F. and F.’s—like mine, like a million others. And the people—once we’d passed through the fresh night air, gone inside to the soft lights, pulsing rock music, drinks, wall-to-wall bodies—were the same types, even down to the Jeans-
or-Joans, the guy from Velcron who’d looked like me.
Should I just be all right, like Cheryl had said? I wondered as I danced with her, held her warm young body close. Not hope for this to fix me, make me the way I was before? Not care that I was seeing—and I was—double, triple, multiple again? That one song sounded like the other? And should I not even worry—that was what really got to me, despite the drinks I’d had—that others apparently didn’t care either?
I had to end it—had to find the truth.
So when the number ended I led Cheryl to an unused bedroom, closed the door.
“…Want to?” she sighed, still moving to the music—then almost absentmindedly slipping out of her top, her bra. She reached out, put my hands on her small firm breasts.
“Yes…”
It was fine at first. I responded normally…her smooth white body moved under me…we began to build…it was special. But then…
She changed.
“Ahh…” And suddenly she was my first woman, back in college…
“Ahh…” Then the hot, dark-haired one I’d almost married…
“Ahh…” Then the redhead from Personnel…
“Ahh…” Then last year’s steady…
“Ahh…” And what was worse, they started to blend.
And worse yet, for a moment there at the end:
I saw that her face…was mine.
In the end, probably, downhill is the best way. So I just lay there beside her—whoever she was, or I—like I was dead. Longing for another time, maybe—a time of variety. But—in that post-sex peace that was different now, because I was “all right” in a way I’d never imagined—not really longing for much.
Because I’d found the truth.
And her words—though I welcomed their final blessing, or was resigned to their curse—only confirmed it.
“Well, now you know,” Cheryl said—superior yet generous, rising to stroke my forehead, my chest. “Sometimes it takes a while.”
She smiled. “Me, I’m lucky—learned it right away. But don’t feel too bad—gosh, there are people twice your age, that still don’t see it.”
I questioned her then, like a wondering Captain Kirk beamed down to an alien planet.
“Will it…all be the same, someday?” I asked with an insane calm.
“Yes.” She smiled again, gently. “The…material things were only the beginning. And even they’re not finished—there are still some different styles. But that can’t wait for the start of the next part, the—
“People,” I finished.
“Yes. Chain…people,” like you almost said. That’s when I knew you were really…one of us. But you were so worried—still doubting, trying to think your old life was real. Maybe going the other way. So I decided to take the chance.
“Show you. With ‘my’ body. And of course, ‘yours.’
“…We try to be kind about it,” she continued a while later; I must have slept. I thought of Jean-Joan—knew now what the old receptionist had been trying to tell me. “Shouldn’t shock you,” that woman had said. “Interchangeable.” And the experience in the car, on the beltway—soon they’d all be Volvos. And the Redskins game. And the TV.
“You are that,” I finally replied. “Kind…
“I mean…we are.”
I don’t know when I left her, or how. I do remember her telling me more—about how if everybody were identical, there’d be no more worry, no more wars. Seemed nice somehow. And about how it wasn’t the Chinese or the big corporations, but some interplanetary visitors—reassuring, at least.
But when I woke up the next morning—this morning—back in “my” apartment…
There’s still a grain of reverse insanity, I guess. That though I know I’m okay now—wasn’t dreaming—still makes me want…to…
“No more suicides,” she’d also said…
I’m looking out the window now…at the tree that didn’t grow like the others. Taking the pistol in my hand…
And if it’s all the same to you…
“A good, all-American life”…
I think I’ll kill ourselves.
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