Man in the Empty Suit

by Sean Ferrell

  Copyright © 2013 by Sean Ferrell

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ferrell, Sean.

  Man in the empty suit / Sean Ferrell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-61695-126-9

  1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3606.E756M36 2013

  813′.6—dc23 2012035254

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Interior art by Kerrin Hands

  v3.1

  For Aidan

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Acknowledgments

  S = k. log W

  CONVENTION RULES

  1. Elders know best.

  2. No guests.

  3. If it broke before, let it break again.

  4. Don’t demand more information than an Elder is willing to give.

  5. Nothing comes from nowhere: Don’t expect something if you don’t remember giving it.

  6. No one is younger than the Inventor.

  7. Stay below the third floor.

  8. Try not to ruin the fun for the Youngsters.

  9. Gambling makes no sense in the past tense.

  10. Don’t park in the same place twice.

  11. Never reveal the future.

  12. Act like you’ve been here before.

  13. Don’t expect anyone to be impressed.

  14. Keep your promises.

  15. Don’t come back until you’ve aged a full year.

  IT IS UNFORTUNATE for me that I am, by most any objective measure, a genius.

  I was forced to realize just how unfortunate on my thirty-ninth birthday. As had been my custom for nineteen years, I arrived at the Boltzmann Hotel in Manhattan on April 1, 2071. One hundred years earlier, across town at New York Medical Center, lay my mother, lightning flashing outside the single window in her gray cube of a hospital room as I kicked and refused to come out. Later, in my twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh subjective year, while horribly, inevitably drunk, I paid a visit to the hospital on the night of my birth in 1971. I’d stolen an orderly’s uniform and faked my way through the halls, arms filled with bedpans, until I found the maternity ward. There she’d been, my mother, younger than I could ever remember, screaming and sweating. Inside her was me, preborn me, nascent genius (by objective standards, not mine), stuck on her pelvis and grinding my head into her spine.

  She never saw me. I left after placing a bedpan on the floor—the doctor had to trip on it, fall headfirst against the bathroom doorknob, and spend the rest of the night concussed and vomiting. He had to be replaced by an intern and a near-retirement nurse who knew more than all the rest of us present, who took hold of me and pulled me into the world despite all my objections. I knew this from many tellings of “The Night You Were Born.” So I left the bedpan for the doctor.

  That was the only year of my time-traveling life when I spent my birthday anywhere other than the Boltzmann. It was the year I stopped serving drinks to myself from behind the bar and focused instead on the drinking of them before it.

  As I traveled, I counted my days. When another 365 had passed for me—subjectively, not objectively; objective time and I stopped talking years ago—I would direct the raft back to April 1, 2071. I would dock in the city at easily recalled locations—the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, the mayor’s Gracie Mansion bedroom, beside the Astor Place “cube” statue, atop the Empire State Building’s observation deck—and then walked directly to the Boltzmann. These places would echo with my footsteps, silence sealing in around me as the raft cooled and lost the pop and crackle of heated filaments and nearly burned-out wiring. In parking, my focus was making the raft easy to find. My celebrations were cloudier each year, and by my thirty-ninth subjective birthday, the possibility of entirely forgetting where I was parked and being stuck in the vacant city seemed very real. Sometimes I left chalk arrows on walls, signed with my age, pointing me back to where I’d left the machine. I could also follow my own footprints in the ever-present mud—a mix of the constant rain and the slow demise of the city’s concrete and stone. The city in 2071 is full of good parking places. Just one subjective year earlier, when I was thirty-eight, I had parked inside what was left of Lincoln Center. It resembled a rookery, flocking with parrots, their inane chatter filling the darkness with conversations echoing Playbill notes and intermission critiques of performances ended decades earlier. Manhattan had become a parrot’s island. I’d parked at Lincoln Center with Isadora Duncan in mind, a sentimental ode—I’d just left her in 1927—but upon returning to the raft, I’d found it covered in bird droppings. Lesson learned.

  This time I parked in the dried-out bowl of Central Park’s Pond. My machine winked in about four inches above the brown-clay mud bottom and then slid slightly lower into the septic water. I swore softly, but there was no finding a better spot. Once landed, the raft took nearly a full twenty-four hours to run again, and so parking was always cautious guesswork seasoned with a rush of panic. I powered the raft down, muttering to myself about the stupidity of choosing such a spot in a rainstorm. None of the drug dealers doing business in the bushes around me said anything. People willing to brave the storm to hang out in Central Park weren’t the sort to talk about seeing a shuddering metallic platform appear in midair. I took my time covering the raft with a blue tarp and left the park, guided by familiar lightning flashes, one ear perked for parrot conversations.

  I could take my time, and did, spoke loudly to myself as I walked. No one would mind. No one would hear. I’d seen few people on the streets on my first trip to that date, and I saw fewer with every visit. Buildings lurked, dark and empty. Electricity worked sporadically at best, rising and falling as if with a tidal pull. The hotel I’d made my base was abandoned, rotting and rotted, and I’d never seen a soul other than myself near it.

  Exiting the park, I slipped in some mud, landing hard. I didn’t mind. My coveralls were always filthy. I’d recently been on the raft for twenty-three days straight during a cool September, docked in a fir tree in the Teutoburg Forest in the first century, waiting to see Germanic tribes battle Roman soldiers. I had grown sticky with sap, camouflaged with dirt and needles. I’d nearly given up after two weeks, when a small group of Romans, sick with dysentery, filthy as rats and rank as shit, finally staggered into view and built a camp. They were slaughtered a week later, in the middle of the night by some hunters while I slept, their skulls left nailed to the nearby trees, including one directly below me. History books yet again proved how far off the mark they could be.

  I found a subway entrance near Times Square and descended to the train platform. The station, lit somewhat strobingly, echoed with my steps. I was alone and cold in my nudity as I peeled away the filthy coveralls. In one pocket I found my two flasks, one for business and one for pleasure. This was time for business, and I opened it and poured water onto a rag. I cleaned my body as best I c
ould. The water lasted only a little while, the rag slightly longer before it ended up tossed onto the tracks. I didn’t feel clean, but I could pretend I looked it. Thoroughly frozen now, I rubbed my skin dry with my palms and then pulled my new clothes out of my travel bag: a suit, the Suit. At last my turn to wallow in the shit of self-adoration.

  Nineteen years felt like a long time to wait to finally become yourself. Since my first visit to the hotel, my wardrobe had been a means of understanding events, framing them, and of differentiating. I recognized versions of myself based on what they wore. This me was Turtleneck, that one Ugly Tie. Yellow Sweater. Spats. Hanfu. Toga. No matter when I came from, I tried to look my best. Most impressive of all was the Suit. Simple, black, foreboding. I had longed to wear the Suit since the first time I’d seen myself in it, longed to be the type of person who had such confidence and focus, someone above the fray. Every year the entire party—all my selves—paused in respect when the Suit made the Entrance into the ballroom. All my other visits to the party were tainted. I always tried too hard to be the center of attention, even with myself. Especially with myself. But the Suit was beyond that; everyone paid attention to him without any effort on his part at all. A few times I tried to get close to him, to get a sense of when I might be him, but I had never been able to get his attention. It was as if he were attending a party to which no one else was invited.

  In the meantime I’d browsed shop windows in many eras. I would know the suit when I saw it, I told myself. Patience—overrated, useless, relative—was not something I enjoyed. But the Suit was older than me, so I’d be him eventually. He’d been far older at one point, but I was gaining. As the subjective years passed and I realized that the gray in my hair began to match his, I grew to be more of a fatalist in my shopping. I would find the suit, I assumed. I didn’t need to put effort into the search.

  Drinking helped. During a bender through the 1960s, I woke in Chicago near Soldier Field. I found a note pinned to my sleeve reminding me that the raft was on a docked barge on Lake Michigan, due to leave at noon. In my hurry to the docks, I nearly rushed past a men’s clothing store. In the window, on a headless mannequin, stood the suit. I hadn’t even needed to alter it; it fit as though it had been made for me. My turn had come. This year I would be the Suit, and I would make the Entrance. I mulled over a dozen memories of watching myself make the Entrance from my earlier perspectives—sitting around small tables in the Boltzmann ballroom drinking scotch, tequila, even—God help me, just that once—a wine spritzer, when the Suit walked in, powerful, impervious. I think the Suit may be one of the only reasons I kept returning. He promised, in a way so smart and casually expensive, that I would “make it.”

  Now, on the night of the Entrance, I stood on the subway platform and wondered when to arrive. I checked my watch—my own design, eight hands spinning at various speeds to show both objective and subjective time, from years to seconds, laid upon a face that would never be the same twice. I was actually early for the gathering, which seemed strange. In my memories the Suit arrived late, made a dramatic entrance.

  I wondered how I was going to kill time, at least a few hours. Despite the suit, I was exhausted and too long drinkless. I felt no different than I had prior to putting it on. Disappointing. I hesitated but went for my flask anyway. A toast to the suit. Two. I stopped there, since I remembered the Suit had not been drunk when he arrived. I would look sharp, polished, and focused on my way to the ballroom bar. I walked slow; the liquor had made me feel better, more relaxed. I knew how these things worked; I trusted fate would deliver me at the right moment by presenting some unexpected obstacle to delay me.

  Port Authority Terminal—redundant stairs, inexplicable turns, and filthy dead ends—had a tunnel entrance to the Boltzmann. Rainwater leaked through the ceiling and ran down walls, pooled at the bottoms of stairs where so much runoff had collected over the years that stalagmite stone grew black-gray on lower steps. I broke the first rule of feeling secure in the subway: Don’t look at the ceiling. I walked faster.

  I reached the final turn before the entrance and paused, lurked behind girders. Shadows moved around me. Behind a garbage can. Beside a maintenance-closet door. Someone held the tattered remains of a Radio City Music Hall advertisement in front of his face as he skulked along the wall. These were other versions of myself, obviously older, as I had no memory of having hidden in those places. I made a mental note to remember to use those hideouts in my future, when I would be those paranoid, shadowy figures. Despite never seeing another soul near the hotel, I was annually embarrassed to be seen coming in, as if someone might notice the same man in an array of outmoded outfits—what amounted to a tacky historical fashion show—and wonder why his lapels were so wide or when the cape had come back in. None of me would be able to explain that.

  My poster-carrying self made a break for it and charged the hotel’s entrance, shedding flecks of old glue. I took this as my opportunity and stepped out from behind the girder, hands in pockets. I was the Suit, trying to be casual. I passed through the revolving door. The poster bearer, only slightly older than me, stood on the other side, brushing glue from his hands. On the dark granite floor lay his discarded Rockettes poster, beautiful legs kicking in a wrinkled heap. We nodded amiably at each other.

  I gestured over my shoulder at the shadows behind girders and garbage cans. “Should we wait for a few more of them and enter together?”

  “No, I don’t think so. We get a little more scared every year, don’t we? A little more cautious? They might be out there an hour.”

  I nodded. He was dressed in a simple white shirt and a knitted sweater-vest. Unimpressive, I thought, compared to my suit. He wore a short, carefully maintained beard, one some Elders wore at various lengths, and his hair was neat and recently trimmed. I regretted not getting a trim myself, though I hadn’t yet made up my mind on growing the beard. I was still unsure of what it did for me, but apparently someday I would decide it was a good idea.

  He looked me up and down. “I did love that suit.”

  “Thanks. What happens to it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. That was against the rules, too.

  He half smiled. “You’d really rather not know.” He climbed the stairs into the hotel’s basement entrance. “Let’s go.”

  I took one last look at the figures hiding in the shadows outside the revolving door’s thick glass, then followed his clicking soles up the stairs.

  The elevator was waiting for us; it would break later in the evening. It was an old, wood-paneled box with a metal cage pull door, and it looked more like a kitchen entrance than an elevator. In a couple hours, there would hang a sign on the door that read, in my handwriting, Out of Order. It was this sign that made the subway entrance so crowded. To be late meant a rain-soaked arrival through the lobby entrance.

  We climbed in. He pressed the button and watched me take my flask from my pocket.

  I tilted the top toward him and said, “Cheers.” He smiled and nodded. He produced no flask of his own. “Did you forget this?” I asked, shaking the suddenly-too-empty flask to hear its contents slosh. It had been a gift to myself, liberated off the body of a Union soldier at Gettysburg.

  “No, I didn’t forget it. Just didn’t bring it.”

  “Have a hit off mine, then.” Mine was his. Sharing it was no different from taking two drinks. I didn’t even mind the backwash. Just spit that my mouth hadn’t made yet.

  “No thanks. Believe it or not, I’m trying to quit.”

  I laughed and took a swig. “Good luck with that.” He knew as well as I what some of our older selves were like. The one that was the worst—the Drunk—made such a spectacle of himself that he drew attention away from the simpler drunks, the ones who merely spilled and swore as they struggled with their zippers in the bathroom. Without the Drunk around, any of them might have looked up at the barrel’s bottom. A chill ran through me as I realized that after my evening as the Suit, all I had to look forward to was thras
hing about as the Drunk.

  The elevator rattled as it rose. We passed the lobby, then the second floor. “Damn, what’s happened?” I reached out and pressed the L button hard. “Did you hit the right button?”

  He stood at the back of the elevator, behind me. His voice was quiet as he said, “I thought I did.”

  The hand of the dial over the door crawled clockwise past floor after decrepit floor. The Boltzmann had been old when people still walked the streets of the city, and after its abandonment it had suffered a slow degradation. The elevator buttons didn’t illuminate, and to my left was a pale section of paneling where a conductor’s coat had brushed for so many years that it left the wood polished and faded.

  I said, “Wonder where we’re headed.”

  “Only so many choices.”

  The uneven ride was pierced by irregular cable twangs and metal clangs. The sound was exciting, unnerving. My hours and days were usually filled with nothing but the hum and throb of the raft’s quiet engine. Even the raucous music of a possible plummet was a nice change. As we reached the twenty-third and last floor, there were several violent shudders. I looked at my companion. He wore the calm smile of foreknowledge.

  I pointed a finger at him, uncapped my flask again, and took a drink. “You could have warned me that we’d miss our floor.”

  “Would it have changed anything if I had? We still needed to get into the elevator. The fact that I know how the ride turns out, and the fact that you’re frightened, doesn’t remove that need.”

  “Awful self-centered of you.”

  “And you.” He gave me the smug grin that I knew so well. It was a gift I hated to receive but gave so often.

  At last the elevator shook to a stop. On the other side of the door’s dark window, a few flashes of lightning streaked across a bare wall. I looked up at the dial. “We’re at the penthouse.”

  “Let’s have our look.”

  Thunder shook the building. “We get out?” One convention rule I never broke was number seven: Stay below the third floor.