Replay

by Ken Grimwood

  That had been, what, the summer of '64 or '65? A year or two from now. As of today, he and Martin hadn’t made that trip, hadn’t bought those peaches, hadn’t stained and dented half the speed-limit signs from here to Valdosta with them. So what did that mean now? If Jeff were still in this inexplicably reconstructed past when that June day rolled around again, would he make the same trip, share the same jokes with Martin, throw those same ripe peaches at the same road signs? And if he didn’t, if he chose to stay in Atlanta that week, or if he simply drove past the girl with the legs and the peaches … then what of his memory of that episode? Where had it come from, and what would happen to it?

  In one sense he appeared to be reliving his life, replaying it like a video tape; yet it didn’t seem that he was bound by what had taken place before, not entirely. So far as he could tell, he had arrived back at this point in his life with every circumstance intact—enrolled at Emory, rooming with Martin, taking the same courses that he had a quarter of a century before—but in the twenty-four hours since he’d reawakened here, he’d already begun to subtly veer from the paths he had originally followed.

  Standing up Judy last night—that was the biggest and most obvious change, though it wouldn’t necessarily affect anything one way or the other, in the long run. They’d only dated for another six or eight months, he recalled, until sometime around next Christmas. She’d left him for an "older man," he remembered with a smile, a senior, going on to medical school at Tulane. Jeff had been hurt and depressed for a few weeks, then started going out with a string of other girls: a skinny brunette named Margaret for a while, then another dark-haired girl whose name started with a D or a V, then a blonde who could tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue. He hadn’t met Linda, the woman he would marry, until he was out of college and working at a radio station in West Palm Beach. She’d been a student at Florida Atlantic University. They’d met on the beach at Boca Raton …

  Jesus, where was Linda right now? Two years younger than he, she’d still be in high school, living with her parents. He had a sudden urge to call her, maybe keep on driving south to Boca Raton and see her, meet her … No, that wouldn’t do at all. It would be too strange. Something like that might be dangerously far afield, might create some horrendous paradox.

  Or would it? Did he really have to worry about paradoxes, the old killing-your-own-grandfather idea? That might not be an appropriate concern at all. He wasn’t an outsider wandering around in this time, afraid of encountering himself at an earlier age; he actually was that younger self, part and parcel of the fabric of this world. Only his mind was of the future—and the future existed only in his mind.

  Jeff had to pull off the road and stop for a few minutes, head in hands, as he absorbed the implications of that. He’d wondered before whether he might be hallucinating this past existence. But what if the reverse were true, what if the whole complex pattern of the next two and a half decades—everything from the fall of Saigon to New Wave rock music to personal computers—turned out to be a fiction that had somehow sprung full-blown into his head, overnight, here in the real world of 1963, which he had never left? That made as much sense as, maybe more than, any alternative explanation involving time travel or afterlife or dimensional upheaval.

  Jeff started the Chevy again, got back onto two-lane U.S. 23. Locust Grove, Jenkinsburg, Jackson … the dilapidated, drowsy little towns of backwoods Georgia slid past like scenes from a movie of the depression era. Maybe that was what had drawn him to make this aimless drive, he thought: the timelessness of the countryside beyond Atlanta, the total lack of clues to what year or decade it might be. Weathered barns with "Jesus Saves" painted in massive letters, the staggered highway rhymes of leftover Burma Shave signs, an old black man leading a mule … even the Atlanta of 1963 seemed futuristic compared to this.

  At Pope’s Ferry, just north of Macon, he pulled into a mom-and-pop gas station with a general store attached. No self-service pumps, no unleaded; Gulf premium for thirty-three cents a gallon, regular for twenty-seven. He told the kid outside to fill it with premium and check the oil, add two quarts if it was low.

  He bought a couple of Slim Jims and a can of Pabst in the store, clawed ineffectually at the beer can for a moment or two before he realized there was no pop top.

  "You must be mighty thirsty, hon." The old woman behind the counter chuckled. "Tryin' to tear that thing open with your bare hands!"

  Jeff smiled sheepishly. The woman pointed to a church-key hanging on a string by the cash register, and he punched two V-shaped holes in the top of the can. The boy from the gas pumps shouted through the ratty screen door of the store: "Looks like you need about three quarts of oil, mister!"

  "Fine, put in whatever it takes. And check the fan belts, too, will you?"

  Jeff took a long sip of the beer, picked a magazine from the rack. There was an article about the new pop-art craze: Lichtenstein’s blowups of comic-strip panels, Oldenburg’s big, floppy vinyl hamburgers. Funny, he’d thought all that happened later, '65 or '66. Had he found a discrepancy? Was this world already slightly different from the one he thought he knew?

  He needed to talk to somebody. Martin would just make a big joke of it all, and his parents would worry for his sanity. Maybe that was it; maybe he should see a shrink. A doctor would at least listen, and keep the talk confidential; but an encounter like that would carry the unspoken presupposition of a mental problem, a desire to be "cured" of something.

  No, there was really no one he could discuss this with, not openly. But he couldn’t just keep avoiding everyone for fear it might come out; that would probably seem stranger than any anachronistic slip of the tongue he might make. And he was getting lonely, damn it. Even if he couldn’t tell the truth, or whatever he knew of the truth, he needed the comfort of company, after all he’d been through.

  "Could I have some change for the phone?" Jeff asked the woman at the cash register, handing her a five.

  "Dollar’s worth O.K.?"

  "I want to call Atlanta."

  She nodded, hit the no-sale key, and scooped some coins from the drawer. "Dollar’s worth’ll be plenty, hon."

  THREE

  The girl at the front desk at Harris Hall was obviously annoyed that she’d drawn Saturday-night reception duty, but was taking her weekend entertainment where she could find it, observing the rituals of her peers. She gave Jeff a coolly appraising stare when he walked in, and her voice carried a tinge of sarcastic amusement when she called upstairs to tell Judy Gordon her date was here. Maybe she knew Judy’d been stood up the night before; maybe she’d even listened in on the conversation when Jeff had called from the gas station near Macon this afternoon.

  The girl’s enigmatic half-smile was a little unnerving, so he took a seat on one of the uncomfortable sofas in the adjoining lounge, where a pony-tailed brunette and her date were playing "Heart and Soul" on an old Steinway near the fireplace. The girl smiled and waved at Jeff when he came into the room. He had no idea who she was, probably some friend of Judy’s whom he’d long since forgotten about, but he nodded and returned her smile. Eight or nine other young men sat scattered around the airy lounge, each a respectful distance from the others. Two of them carried bunches of cut flowers, and one held a heart-shaped box of Whitman’s candies. All wore stoic expressions that did little to mask their eager but nervous anticipation: suitors at the gate of Aphrodite’s temple, untested claimants to the favors of the nymphs within this fortress. Date Night, 1963.

  Jeff remembered the sensation all too well. In fact, he noted wryly, his own palms were damp with tension even now.

  Soprano laughter came from the stairwell, floated into the lobby. The young men straightened their ties, checked their watches, patted tufts of hair into place. Two girls found their escorts and led them through the door into the mysterious night.

  It was twenty minutes before Judy emerged, her face set in what was clearly intended to be a look of frosty determination. All Jeff could see,
though, was her incredible youthfulness, a vernal tenderness that went beyond the fact that she was still in her teens. Girls—women—her age in the eighties didn’t look like this, he realized. They simply weren’t this young, this innocent; hadn’t been since the days of Janis Joplin, and certainly weren’t in the aftermath of Madonna.

  "So," Judy said. "I’m glad to see you could make it tonight."

  Jeff pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, gave her an apologetic smile. "I’m really sorry about last night," he said. "I—wasn’t feeling very well; I was in a strange mood. You wouldn’t have wanted to be with me."

  "You could have called," she said petulantly. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, highlighting those demure swells beneath the Peter Pan blouse. A beige cashmere sweater was slung over one arm, and she wore a Madras skirt, with low-heeled ankle-strap shoes. Jeff caught the mixed aromas of Lanvin perfume and a floral-scented shampoo, found himself entranced by the blond bangs that danced above her wide blue eyes.

  "I know," he said. "I wish I had."

  Her expression eased, the confrontation over before it had begun. She’d never been able to stay angry for long, Jeff recalled.

  "You missed a really good movie last night," she said without a trace of sullenness. "It starts off where this girl is buying these birds in a pet shop, and then Rod Taylor pretends like he works there, and…"

  She went on to recount most of the plot as they walked outside and got into Jeff s Chevy. He feigned unfamiliarity with the twists and turns of the story, even though he’d recently seen the movie on one of HBO’s periodic Hitchcock retrospectives. And, of course, he’d seen it when it first came out, seen it with Judy. Seen it twenty-five years ago last night, in that other version of his life.

  "… and then this guy goes to light a cigar at this gas station, but—well, I don’t want to tell you anything that happens after that; it’d spoil it for you. It’s a really spooky movie. I wouldn’t mind going to see it again, if you want to. Or we could go see Bye Bye Birdie. What do you feel like?"

  "I think I’d rather just sit and talk," he said. "Get a beer someplace, maybe a bite to eat?"

  "Sure." She smiled. "Moe’s and Joe’s?"

  "O.K. That’s … on Ponce De Leon, right?"

  Judy wrinkled her brow. "No, that’s Manuel’s. Don’t tell me you forgot—take a left, right here!" She turned in her seat, gave him an odd look. "Hey, you really are acting kind of weird. Is something wrong?"

  "Nothing serious. Like I told you, I’ve been feeling a little off kilter." He recognized the entrance of the old college hangout, parked around the corner.

  Inside, it didn’t look quite the way Jeff remembered it. He’d thought the bar was on the left as you went in the door, not the right; and the booths seemed different somehow, too, higher or darker or something. He led Judy toward a booth in the back, and as they approached it a man about his own age—no, he corrected himself, a man in his early forties, an older man—slapped Jeff’s shoulder in an amiable manner.

  "Jeff, how goes it? Who’s your lovely young friend?"

  Jeff looked blankly at the man’s face: glasses, salt-and-pepper beard, wide grin. He looked vaguely familiar, but no more.

  "This is Judy Gordon. Judy, ah, I’d like you to meet…"

  "Professor Samuels," she said. "My roommate has you for Medieval Lit."

  "And her name is—?"

  "Paula Hawkins."

  The man’s grin widened further, and he nodded twice. "Excellent student. Very bright young lady, Paula. I trust my class comes recommended?"

  "Oh, yes, sir," Judy said. "Paula’s told me all about you."

  "Then perhaps we’ll be blessed with your own delightful presence in the fall."

  "I can’t rightly say just yet, Professor Samuels. I haven’t really decided on my schedule for next year."

  "Drop by my office. We’ll discuss it. And you, Jeff: good job on that Chaucer paper, but I had to give you a B for incomplete citations. Watch that next time, will you?"

  "Yes, sir. I’ll remember."

  "Good, good. See you in class." He waved them off, went back to his beer.

  When they got to the booth, Judy slid in next to Jeff and started giggling.

  "What’s so funny?"

  "Don’t you know about him? Dr. Samuels?"

  Jeff hadn’t even been able to recall the professor’s name.

  "No, what about him?"

  "He’s a dirty old man, that’s what. He chases after all the girls in his classes—the cute ones, anyway. Paula said he put his hand on her thigh one time after class—like this."

  She put her girlish fingers on Jeff’s leg, rubbed it, and squeezed.

  "Can you imagine?" she asked in a conspiratorial tone. "He’s, older than my father, even. 'Drop by my office'—huh! I know what he’d want to discuss. Isn’t that just the most disgusting thing you ever heard, a man his age acting like that?"

  Her hand still rested on Jeff’s thigh, an inch or so away from his growing erection. He looked at her innocent round eyes, her sweet red mouth, and had a sudden fantasy of Judy going down on him right there in the booth. Dirty old man, he thought, and laughed.

  "What’s so funny?" she asked.

  "Nothing."

  "You don’t believe me about Dr. Samuels, do you?"

  "I believe you. No, it’s just—you, me, everything. I had to laugh, that’s all. What do you want to drink?"

  "The regular."

  "A triple zombie, right?"

  The worried look left her face, and she laughed along with him. "Silly; I want a glass of red wine, just like always. Can’t you remember anything tonight?"

  Judy’s lips against his were as soft as he had imagined, had remembered. The fresh scent of her hair, the youthful smoothness of her skin excited him to a degree he hadn’t felt since the early days with Linda, before their marriage. The car windows were down, and Judy rested the back of her head on the cushioned doorframe as Jeff kissed her. Andy Williams was singing "The Days of Wine and Roses" on the radio, and the fragrance of dogwood blossoms mingled with the scent of Judy’s soft, clean skin. They were parked on a wooded street a mile or so away from the campus; Judy had directed him there after they’d left the bar.

  The conversation tonight had gone better than Jeff had expected. Basically, he’d followed Judy’s lead as they talked, let her be the one to mention names and places and events. He’d reacted from memory or the cues he took from her expression and tone of voice. He’d made only one anachronistic slip: They’d been talking about students they knew who were planning to move off campus next year, and Jeff had said he might sublet a condo. She’d never heard the word, but he quickly explained it away as something new from California that he’d read about and thought maybe they’d build in Atlanta soon.

  As the evening had gone on, he’d relaxed and begun to enjoy himself. The beers had helped, but mainly it was just being close to Judy that had set his mind at rest for the first time since this whole thing had started. At moments, he’d found himself not even thinking of his future/past. He was alive; that was what mattered. Very much alive.

  He brushed Judy’s long blond hair back from her face, kissed her cheeks and nose and lips again. She gave a low moan of pleasure, and his fingers slid from her breast to the top buttons of her blouse. She moved his hand away, back to her covered breast. They kissed for several moments more and then her hand was on his thigh, as it had been in the booth at the bar, but moving purposefully higher, until her delicate fingers caressed and kneaded his firm penis. He stroked her nyloned calves, reached beneath her skirt to feel the soft skin above the tops of her stockings.

  Judy disengaged herself from his embrace, sat up abruptly. "Give me your handkerchief," she whispered.

  "What? I don’t—"

  She plucked the white handkerchief from his jacket pocket, where he’d tucked it automatically as he dressed in the outmoded clothes earlier tonight. Jeff reached for her again, tried to pull her toward him, but
she resisted.

  "Ssshh," she whispered, then smiled sweetly. "Just sit back and close your eyes."

  He frowned, but did as she asked. Suddenly she was unzipping his pants and pulling his erection free with a sure, practiced move. Jeff opened his eyes in surprise, saw her staring out the window as her fingers moved on him in a constant rhythm. He stopped her hand, held it still.

  "Judy—no."

  She looked back at him with concern. "You don’t want to tonight?"

  "Not like this." He gently took her hand away, adjusted himself, and closed his pants. "I want you; I want to be with you. But not this way. We could go somewhere, find a hotel or—"

  She drew back against the car door, gave him an indignant glare. "What do you mean? You know I’m not like that!"

  "All I mean to say is that I want us to be together, in a loving way. I want to give you—"

  "You don’t have to give me a thing!" She wrinkled her face, and Jeff was afraid she would start to cry. "I was trying to relieve you, just like we’ve done before, and all of a sudden you take it the wrong way, want to drag me off to some cheap hotel, treat me like a—a—prostitute!"

  "Judy, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like that at all. Don’t you understand, I want to make you happy, too?"

  She took a lipstick from her purse, twisted the rearview mirror angrily so she could apply it. "I’m perfectly happy just the way we’ve been, thank you very much. Or at least I was, until tonight." "Look, I’m sorry I said anything, O.K.? I just thought—"

  "You can keep your thoughts to yourself, and your hands, too." She flicked on the overhead light, glanced at her thin gold watch.

  "I didn’t mean to upset you. We can talk about it tomorrow."

  "I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to go back to the dorm, right now. That is, if you can remember how to get there."