KEN TIMIAN – APT. 12D.
Our mailbox said KEN TIMIAN AND MELISSA ARGENT.
The phone machine said, “Hi, this is Ken.”
Our answering machine said, “Hi, this is Ken and Melissa.”
Oh, my god.
I ran toward the elevator. With a sidestep worthy of an NFL wide receiver, I evaded the maintenance man coming out of the opening doors. He screamed at me in Spanish as I slammed the button for the twelfth floor.
At the seventh floor, the car stopped. Doors rattled open, revealing a curly haired woman in a short skirt. Get in, I willed her. Get in or get out of my way. I need to get to my apartment. I need to know that Melissa is still here.
Two more stops and we were finally on the twelfth floor. A left from the elevator, a right down the next corridor, and I was at Apartment 12D.
The plastic sticker on the door bore my name only. It was getting a little hard to pretend.
Maybe we didn’t move in together yet. Maybe the new Melissa is more independent than the old one was – if that’s humanly possible. Maybe she didn’t want to move in with me until we were married. Maybe we’ve already found that great house that we’re going to live in together.
I didn’t want to go inside. Inside was the answer to the most important question I had ever asked. I rested my forehead against the door for several seconds. My heart beat a Morse code. Finally, I stuck the key into the lock. It had been a while since I last prayed, but I asked for a few things and promised many more.
The lock turned smoothly and the door swung inward, the bottom hinge greeting me with its familiar squawk. I stepped over the threshold very, very tentatively.
This was not the place I shared with Melissa, but I knew it all the same.
I checked the kitchen first. There were the familiar red-and-white boxes stacked in a Leaning Tower of Pizza. Beer cans were piled in the recycling bin while dishes waited patiently in the sink for a trip to the dishwasher. I hadn’t been this sloppy in two years.
I went into the living room and examined the furniture. Everything was where it had once been. The leather-and-chrome sofa lay against the wall, clashing with the brown recliner and the mahogany table. I was once proud of my living room decor, and paid good money for it, too. That was before Melissa came along to point out that the furnishings blended as tastefully as a blue pinstripe jacket with plaid pants.
This was my place and my place only. But it could still be that Melissa and I just didn’t move in together. Maybe she’d just decided this apartment was beyond repair. There had to be a trace of her somewhere in here. Maybe a photograph, or a postcard, or just a yellow sticky note with neat handwriting resembling calligraphy. What about Sierra Club magazines and tourist guides for the Amazon jungle? Tofu and bok choy in the fridge?
But there wasn’t a single indication that she’d ever stepped foot in this apartment. That she’d ever walked into my life.
I collapsed into the recliner, grateful for the support of its plush, narrow arms. Something crunched underneath me. I looked down and saw a crushed Cheese Doodle that left an orange blotch on my pants.
“This can’t be happening,” I shouted to walls that did not answer. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be.”
I heard a sound.
“Melissa?”
Yellow eyes regarded me curiously from the foot of the chair. The cat jumped up into my lap, then just as quickly jumped out again.
“So I lose Melissa but I still have you, Wizard. Tell me life is fair.”
Wizard licked his paws. Then he meowed and rubbed against my leg in the universal feline signal that it was feeding time. Absently, I got up, took a can of cat food from the cupboard, and fed him. At least one of us would have what he wanted. This Wizard was a little chunkier than the cat I’d seen this morning. I used to share my takeout lasagna or Kung Pao chicken with him before Melissa convinced me that it was terribly unhealthy to feed him this kind of food.
I reached down to pet the cat, but he slipped away from my fingers. We were back to uneasy coexistence. I sat on the floor and stared off at this familiar/foreign apartment. Then I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. The digital counter indicated that I had two messages. I hit the play button. First came the sound of traffic. I forgot that I was being recorded when I called from the street.
Next came a woman’s voice. “Hi, Ken,” she said, and my heart skipped a beat. But the voice was higher-pitched and bubblier than Melissa’s, with a Southern accent and the bright and friendly tone of an airline reservation clerk. “This is Lori. Your friend Paul said you might like to get together. Someone I work with has two tickets to the Kennedy Center that he can’t use Wednesday night. Let me know if you want to go. It should be fun.”
I’m a logical man, magical trips to someone else’s past notwithstanding. As an attorney (at least I assumed I was still an attorney), I was trained to assess facts, not speculate. Now the facts assembled themselves in front of me in all their heartless glory:
Fact: There was no sign that Melissa lived with me.
Fact: A woman named Lori left a message asking me out on a date that my friend Paul set up.
Fact: That Paul was setting me up with women meant that he believed I was dating and not getting married next weekend.
Fact: I had managed to make an incomprehensibly huge mess of my life.
Take a deep breath. Get your bearings. Take stock of your resources.
That’s a good drill to follow when you’re in trouble. Of course, if I followed it in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in this temporal trap. I could have questioned Stephon more closely about the potential consequences of my actions. Maybe he would have mentioned that Melissa’s life might not only change, but that she might also vanish from my sight. If I had known that this could happen, I would have brought more information with me.
I scoured my apartment for clues about who I was. The good news was that most of my life seemed to be the same. Sifting through the jungle of my home office, I found that I was still an attorney with Warwick and Gray. My credit card bills were higher than before, and my checking account lower, but that was no surprise. Until Melissa took over the finances, I earned a lot and spent almost as much.
A glance through the Washington Post revealed that the world was the same one I left. The night before my journey, when I lay awake watching Melissa’s chest undulate in the rhythm of restless sleep, I wondered briefly if what I did could make a difference. If I gave the world a happier Melissa, wouldn’t the entire world be a better place? Yet the Middle East still smoldered, Democrats accused Republicans, and Republicans accused Democrats while Congress remained deadlocked over the federal budget.
I drummed my fingers on the dining room table and recalled a man who no longer existed. My life before Melissa seemed a blur of ambition, hard work, and frantic fun. It was as if someone else had rented my life and then handed back the keys. Yet if my apartment now looked as if it belonged to that man...
When I was four, I was afraid to open the closet door in my parents’ bedroom for fear a monster would sprout arms and legs in my father’s suit and then eat me. That dread came over me as I gazed at the bottom door of the stereo cabinet. My old nemeses were there, I had no doubt. I opened the door and confronted the enemy.
I could take comfort that in this life I was doing somewhat better; in the old world, there had once been fifteen or sixteen bottles lined up in perfect formation. This cabinet contained three bottles of good Russian vodka, two of tequila, two of scotch, and one of gin. Their ranks were joined by bottles of grappa and ouzo. Grappa and ouzo? Evidently I had expanded my alcoholic horizons.
One by one, I poured the contents of the liquor bottles down the drain, tossing each into the recycling bin. I had no idea what life I was leading now, but I certainly wasn’t going to lead a party life again. Som
ething told me that under the circumstances, one stiff drink would lead very quickly to several dozen others. That wasn’t an option. It wasn’t what Melissa would want me to do. It was not what the man I became with Melissa wanted either.
In this world, I never met Melissa Argent. I knew that, because if we ever met, we would be together now. But she was out there. And I would find her.
There was nothing – not the boundaries of space or time or circumstance – that could keep me from this mission. Not when I knew how desperately I needed her.
Chapter 10
A Life I Would Have Easily Wished for Her
I tried calling Melissa’s old apartment and got a dry cleaner. I tried her office number and got the voice box of a guy named Chad. I tried her parents’ house and the phone just rang endlessly. This approach wasn’t proving useful at all.
I felt the desperate need to be in motion, to physically do something, even if I had no clear plan. I grabbed my car keys and headed for the front door. The cat looked up at me disinterestedly as I passed. I always made a habit of letting Melissa know my itinerary whenever I went out. But the cat could not have cared less.
It was only when I started driving that I realized I was headed for McLean. Melissa’s parents loved that house; there was an excellent chance they still lived there, even if they hadn’t bothered to get an answering machine. It should have taken twenty minutes to get to their place on Mockingbird Lane, but I was rippling with energy now, spurred on by the belief that I was taking an important first step to bringing Melissa back into my life. I made it in fifteen.
The houses looked the same as they had during all of those roast beef dinners in what seemed like an eternity ago. Even the tree stump in front of the Argent house was there.
The house was not the same, though. The only way Mr. Argent’s house could have been red was if he’d set it afire. And whatever color he painted it, he would have done so long before the siding peeled like whiskers.
The garden was the second clue. Where roses and tulips had bloomed, gardenias now spread blue and purple pom-poms over a lawn where the formerly crewcut grass sprouted ankle-high. I paused for a moment to read the walking billboard that was the rear fender of the old Volvo resting in the driveway. A Volvo? Bumper stickers urging the world to “Save the Dolphins” and “Abolish Nuclear Weapons Now?” Unless Melissa had used her replenished store of karmic energy to turn her father into a member of Greenpeace, there was little to no chance that the Argents still lived here.
A high-pitched yip greeted me as I walked up the front steps, nearly hitting my head on the turtle-shaped wind chimes. The doorbell didn’t work, so I rapped loudly on the door. It opened a minute later, revealing the curly white paws of an overeager poodle and the curly brown hair of the woman I assumed to be the dog’s owner.
“Get down, Francine,” the woman said, trying in vain to prevent the animal from jumping against the screen while issuing a sound that was only barely audible to the human ear.
I smiled at Francine nervously. Small dogs made me jittery, and I was pretty damned jittery already. I looked up at the woman.
“I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for the Argent family. They used to live in this house.”
Francine yipped again, banging her narrow snout against the door.
“It’s okay, darling,” the woman said, bending to the dog and resting her cheek against the top of Francine’s head. She turned to me. “She doesn’t like strangers. The Argents, you said? I don’t remember the name.”
“It was a family of four. The father was a Marine colonel. They had a daughter named Melissa.”
“Hmmm.” She scratched her head with a hand laden with rings on every finger. “Let’s see. Francine, how long have we been in this house?” The poodle yipped twice. “I think you’re right. It has to be ten years. The family I bought it from was named Lorenzo, if I remember correctly.”
They’d left more than ten years ago? I wondered why. The woman stood up again, which got the dog barking animatedly. For some reason, I felt like Francine was taunting me. I took a deep breath, looked around the property for a moment. Then I turned back to the woman. “Thanks for your help. I’ll try to find them some other way.”
“Sorry I don’t have more information for you. I might have the contact information for the previous owners somewhere, if you’d like.”
That seemed like the longest of long shots, but I wasn’t in the position to reject any details. Even though the poodle was now yipping manically, the sound cutting sharply into my addled brain. “If you have that, it could be a big help.”
“Come on in for a few minutes while I look,” she said. “You seem safe enough, and Francine seems to have taken a liking to you.”
I smiled as politely as I could and said, “I think I’ll just wait out here, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest. I’m pretty sure I know where the file is.”
She went off to find the information and fortunately the dog followed her. I sat on the stoop and looked out toward the street. Melissa and I had sat here the day of our engagement party, taking a break from the revelry of friends and relatives. I felt her head on my shoulder and heard the soft music of her chuckle as a kid from down the block stood on his bike and proclaimed that he was “King of the World.” I remember kissing her hair and the expression on her face when she looked over at me – the one that said she believed we were taking a glimpse into our own futures.
The woman returned a short while later. For whatever reason, Francine wasn’t with her. I stood up and she stepped out onto the porch with me. “I remembered correctly. Their name was Lorenzo. Their forwarding address was a D.C. post office box, but I have the number of their real estate lawyer as well. I don’t know if this will do you any good. Maybe the lawyer handled their closing when they bought the house as well.”
She handed me a piece of paper with the details, though I was certain there was nothing I could do with them. “Thanks.”
“I remembered this as well. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf since I found it in the attic about a year after I moved in.” She handed me a notebook with the words “My Dream Book” written on the cover. The handwriting was unmistakably Melissa’s. I felt tears come to my eyes. This was the first hard evidence I had that she even existed.
“Maybe it’s from one of the children?” she said.
“I think it is.” I ran my fingers over the cover and opened a page. There was a short essay entitled, “101 pets.” I flipped to another page and found one titled, “When I Come Back Here to Teach,” and then another called, “My Opening Night at Carnegie Hall.” I read the first paragraph. It spoke in grandiose terms about Melissa’s debut on the biggest of musical stages. There was no Miss Hoffman here to sully this dream. Reluctantly, I closed the book and handed it back to the woman.
“Thanks.”
She waved it away. “Why don’t you keep it? For some reason I’ve thought of it as a good luck charm for me, but I always thought the girl who wrote these ‘dreams’ might like to have it back some day. Maybe if you find her, you can give it to her.”
I smiled and felt myself getting choked up again. “I’d really like to do that.”
She patted me on the hand. “Take it. Maybe it’ll be your good luck charm now too.”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said, “you take care of yourself. You’ll have to excuse me, but it’s time for Francine to take me for another walk.”
I didn’t go home right away. I stopped the car at a nearby park and read some more of Melissa’s dreams. There were stories about friends and boys and ambitions. There was so much optimism here, so much unfettered joy for life. I’d seen this Melissa, got to know her for all too brief a period on my first journey from Stephon’s store. Here Melissa talked about being a junior in high school, which meant that she’d managed to maintain her wide-
eyed view of the world beyond the point when I intervened.
When I got back to the apartment – I was still having trouble considering it only my apartment – the first thing I checked was the answering machine. The light glowed a steady red. No messages. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t expecting any, but I knew I was waiting for Melissa to call, to tell me that things weren’t anywhere near as dire as they seemed to me.
I stood in the middle of the living room for several seconds, maybe even several minutes. I wanted desperately to find Melissa, to bring her back into my life, but every move I made seem to take me further and further away from her. Finally I pulled myself out of neutral and went into my office to boot up the computer.
I checked my e-mail first, though I’m not sure why. Maybe my new ISP allowed access to parallel universes and I could reach Melissa that way. All I got for that effort was spam and a message saying that my order for hot sauce had shipped. When did I start buying hot sauce on the Internet?
I went to an online telephone directory whose database supposedly contained the most phone numbers in the United States. It was a handy tool for locating someone whose city or state you didn’t know. I typed MELISSA ARGENT in the search box and clicked the GO button. Melissa’s name appeared, with her address and phone number underneath. There was even a button I could click to send her flowers using my credit card. The only problem was that my credit card would have maxed out, because there were ninety-eight Melissa Argents, living everywhere from Alabama to Wyoming, though not a single one anywhere near Washington, D.C. I could call each of these women, but what would I say? Hi, I’ve just arrived from another timeline, and I’m looking for my fiancée. I’d like to take you out to dinner, but first, can you tell whether you play the piano? Even better, I could butter them up by sending flowers before I called. It would be weeks before the police arrested me.
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