Changing the Past

by Thomas Berger

  “I told you I was happily married, and my son is the best,” Kellog said with asperity. “I certainly don’t want to change anything about my family. They’re really my sole accomplishment, if it comes to that, and even there most of the credit should go to my wife.”

  “You’re still thinking like Hunsicker,” the little man said, sneering. “If you don’t believe you’ve done much of consequence, then change your past!”

  But to what? The principle sounded fine; the trouble came with the particulars. “Let’s see, when I was a kid, what did I want to grow up to be? Professional ballplayer, of course…. Soldier of fortune! Foreign correspondent. Counsel for the defense—but only with innocent clients. But that was the stuff of daydreams. In my early teens, believe it or not, I wanted the war to last long enough so that I could get into it, but it ended a month before my eighteenth birthday. My service was over and done with by the time of Korea: I guess I could have been recalled, but for some reason that never happened, and I didn’t regret it, for by that time the moment had passed and I was in college.”

  “But,” derisively asked the little man, “if you had it to do all over again, would you marry a woman who would cuckold you almost immediately after the ceremony? And would you want once again to be the father of a homosexual?”

  For an instant Kellog lowered his head. Then he raised it and said calmly, “That was Hunsicker.”

  “Very good!” The little man spun around in the swivel chair and plucked a piece of paper from one of the cubbyholes of the rolltop desk. He scribbled on it with a pencil stub he found in the middle drawer. He turned back to Kellog.

  “What kind of job do you have?”

  “I inherited quite a bit of money from my father, who took what Grandpa left him and went on with it, not only expanding the laundry-and-cleaning business but also going in a big way into city real estate. Maybe you know the Kellog building? The firm for which Hunsicker worked occupied just one floor of it.”

  The little man was nodding eagerly as he took more notes. “Splendid, you’re getting the idea now. A word of advice: if you change one thing, you’ve altered a lot, usually more than you might think. It’s a chain reaction. If you have different children, then you’ve necessarily had a different wife.”

  Suddenly, Hunsicker had returned. “Look, I have the finest wife in the world. There’s an explanation: he was an old boyfriend, down on his luck. Martha’s the most compassionate person in the world. She simply couldn’t reject him when he was in that situation. I know, it might sound implausible, but that’s really the way she is. It wasn’t easy for me to experience, I’ll admit.” He sighed before he might have to sob. How terrible that he should have to think of this matter again, after all those years. “As to my son, it’s true that I was devastated when I first learned of it, which to his credit was from him, face-to-face. But that was long ago, more than a decade. He’s a marvelous fellow. You know, he was a first-rate athlete in college. He might have realized my old dream to play professional ball. He had offers. His E.R.A. was one point eight. He batted three eighty-four in his senior year.”

  “Nevertheless, you’d never want to go through all that again,” said the little man.

  “Poor Hunsicker,” said Kellog. “He had his limitations. I am myself separated from my third childless wife. It got into the tabloids when Mimi took a shot at me on the penthouse terrace. She came back from Barbados a day early and caught me in the sack with her best friend—female, I should add.”

  “It looks like you’re on your way,” the little man said, folding the piece of paper. He found a cubbyhole into which roughly to insert it. He rose. “If things are going well, there’ll be no need to report in. But if you wish to make more changes of the past, come around and see me. But remember the office hours. I don’t have a home phone.”

  Hunsicker would have wondered whether this odd person even had a home, but Kellog was too self-concerned for that. He was at the moment trying to recall his own address, which obviously would be in one of the better parts of town—but before it came to him, he reflected that if he was estranged from his current wife, he surely lived somewhere else at the moment, perhaps at a posh hotel.

  When he reached the sidewalk, he remembered: of course, he had a suite at the Rudolf. The heavy rain had stopped now, but the air was still saturated and water stood in the gutters. It was a long walk to the hotel. En route there he might well get splashed by the frenzied cars of the rush hour that was just getting its earliest start. He walked towards the corner to look for a cab, although the time of day was not propitious.

  But he had taken only a step or two before a car horn sounded behind him: hardly a novelty in the city, but there was an urgency about this one that demanded his attention. He turned and saw a uniformed chauffeur leave the pearl-gray Rolls-Royce that was parked in front of the medical-supply shop.

  “Jack,” asked this functionary, “do you want me to meet you somewhere? I’ll have to go around the block. This is oneway.”

  So it was, in the wrong direction. “Just back it up, for God’s sake,” said Kellog, annoyed that the man had not done that on his own volition.

  “Quite a bit of traffic,” the chauffeur pointed out, “and there’s a cop up there.”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  “You’re the boss.” The chauffeur opened the rear door of the limo, and Kellog stepped in. The interior was upholstered in a burgundy leather. Kellog sank into the deep seat. He found the remote-control unit and switched on the TV. Next to the television set was the bar. In the refrigerated section, among other bottles, was a demi of Ruinart, but he seldom drank champagne in daylight. A beer would be just right, if a baseball game was being broadcast. He began to roll through the channels.

  Meanwhile, the chauffeur, as ordered, was backing up. When the vehicle reached the intersection the policeman at the corner came to the driver’s window. He smiled and nodded through the glass partition at Kellog. He then said something pleasant to the chauffeur and went out and held back the traffic until the limousine could swing around to go north on the avenue.

  Kellog slid the glass back electrically and asked, “No ball game this afternoon?”

  “No,” said the driver. “It’s March…. Jack, you were sure right about the cop. He couldn’t have been nicer.”

  “Remember that next time.” This fellow was a new man at the job. His predecessor, himself an ex-cop, would not have had to be enlightened. The former policeman had retired to the west coast of Florida, where he bought a bar-and-grill with the handsome mustering-out payment given him by Kellog, always notably generous with employees who gave him personal service. Kellog’s chauffeurs doubled as bodyguards: the current driver had been a professional football player of the third or fourth rank and had to leave the game because of injuries. Seen from behind, his head seemed to be of no greater diameter than his neck.

  Kellog now asked, “Spring training’s still in progress, I take it? Call somebody and find what games are scheduled for tonight. Then tell Ralph we’re on our way to the airport.” Ralph was his pilot.

  “We’re flying to Florida right now?” the chauffeur asked.

  “I hope you took me seriously when I warned you I often act on short notice, Hal. After the game we’ll jump over to St. Croix for the weekend.” Kellog demanded efficiency, but he liked to provide pleasant surprises for those who worked for him.

  “That’s great,” Hal said, though he still seemed dubious. “Are we going back to the hotel first?”

  Now that he was asked, that seemed too banal a destination for Kellog in his current mood. He looked at the thin gold wafer of the watch that had replaced Hunsicker’s mass-market digital. The time was 4:40 P.M.

  “No. Go to the Kellog Building.”

  This was accomplished by two turns and a drive of four blocks. Kellog left the car and entered his building, where he was obsequiously saluted by the gray-suited functionary behind the desk in the lobby. Nowadays everybody
entering at non-rush hours was scrutinized and, if suspicious-looking, detained until his identification could be established. This measure had been taken after a drug addict had murdered an executive in a washroom, and a woman had had a close escape from a would-be rapist. But it obviously was not possible to examine every arrival during the incoming tide of 8:30—9:30. Kellog was not overly concerned about such matters, because the building that bore his name was run by a company that did such things; but he had a way of noticing detail.

  The man came out from behind the curved, chest-high counter and led him to an elevator. He leaned inside the car and was about to punch the button for the top floor when Kellog said, “I’m going to the sixth.”

  “Very good, Mr. Kellog.”

  “Please call me Jack.” He saw that he had thrilled the man, whose name he did not know, nor could he remember whether he had ever seen him before.

  The sixth floor was the home of Rodgers, Wirth & Mad-dox, where poor Hunsicker had worked for so many years. When the elevator’s doors opened, Judy the receptionist was speaking to someone on the telephone. She gave him her brief, indifferent stare, then did the double-take of a comedienne and hung up the phone in midsentence.

  “Gosh,” she said. “Mr. Kellog!”

  He smiled. “You’re Judy, aren’t you?” She was full-figured to the point just before plumpness. She had apple-cheeks and small pouting lips. Hunsicker had never been able to admit to himself that he lusted for her, but sleeping alongside his wife he had had at least one dream in which Judy said to him, “I know you might think this is crazy, but I find you an interesting man.” Kellog himself could not quite see what her charms were. Her eye makeup tended towards the vulgar, and she was wearing huge earrings one of which must be removed for each phone call. But perhaps she’d be inventive in bed, and anyway he had this score to settle for his good old predecessor, who was more than a brother to him.

  “Judy, I’m on my way to the airport, going to fly down to Florida for a spring-practice ball game, then hop over to the Virgins for a couple days or however long it takes for me to get bored. It occurred to me that maybe you might like to come along.”

  Judy leaned down to find an enormous purse somewhere below the desk, a big vinyl sack—large enough, indeed, to hold a week’s essentials. She straightened up and said, expressionlessly, “We’re outa here.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell anybody you’re leaving early?” Kellog disapproved of impulsiveness in others.

  “It’s near enough to closing time,” said Judy, taking his arm. She had proved to be that rare person who addressed him as Jack without being asked. She did not appear to be impressed by the Rolls-Royce and, once inside, turned down champagne in favor of mineral water.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” she said, settling into a leather corner. “I’m only working as a receptionist till I can get an opportunity to spread my wings.”

  It turned out she had ideas on urban planning and would love to get her hands on certain properties, of his ownership, in a transition neighborhood. “What we don’t need is more high-priced housing.”

  When they reached the airport Hal the chauffeur, who had rolled his eyes when Kellog emerged from the office building with Judy, drove through a private gateway and right out to the side of the waiting Learjet.

  “Now, Judy,” Kellog said, patting the back of her near hand, “you go get into the airplane. The pilot’s name is Ralph. I’ll just have a word first with Hal, here.”

  “Okay,” said she. “But if we’re going to be friends, Jack, my name is Jodie, not Judy.”

  Kellog was about to ask her whether she was sure, but then realized that it was the error of Hunsicker, whose profession had been correcting the written mistakes of others.

  When her plump round behind, a little too ample for his taste anyway, had disappeared into the aircraft, Kellog asked Hal to go over and tell Ralph to inform the lady that his boss had just remembered another appointment, but to offer to fly her alone to anywhere in the Caribbean she would like to visit, all expenses of course to be taken care of through the various agents a man of Kellog’s means maintained in all places not under the control of Marxist-Leninist powers and in fact even some that were.

  While Hal went to perform that task, Kellog suddenly had cold feet. Would Martha Hunsicker wait in vain for her husband to return from work this evening? Had she been widowed by this bizarre alteration of reality, which in spite of such phenomena as the Rolls-Royce, the Learjet, and the easy pickup of Judy-Jodie, he hardly believed himself? The simple fact was, he was still dressed in Hunsicker’s clothing, the sensible suit, the stout shoes, the shirt with the inevitable button-down collar. There was a neatly folded handkerchief in the back right trousers pocket: this was never used. The sheaf of Kleenex in the inside breast pocket of the jacket served for all purposes, so that the square of white linen was preserved for emergencies in which someone else, perhaps bleeding, asked for a handkerchief. Hunsicker’s socks and underclothes were changed seven times a week, and he bracketed the day between two showers, one on arising and the second when he returned from work.

  Martha was not now awaiting Hunsicker’s return: there was no Hunsicker as such, and thus no Martha Hunsicker. If the past had been changed, then Martha née Revere had married someone else, or stayed single, or never existed. If the past could be changed, anything was possible.

  It was the absolute freedom of his situation that was so hard to get used to, but perhaps before he yielded to any more impulses he should do some stabilizing things such as acquiring clothes appropriate to Jack Kellog.

  “Hal,” he said when the chauffeur had returned, “do you think you can get back to town before the stores are all closed? I need new clothing.”

  “Excuse me, Jack,” said Hal, “but didn’t your tailor just yesterday deliver that whole new spring wardrobe?”

  “Now, how could I have forgotten that? I’m getting old, Hal.”

  “I don’t think the ladies would agree. The one I took home this morning looked like you wore her out.”

  Kellog smiled. That was certainly the kind of thing that made Hunsicker’s memories fade and his own reality more credible. With such encouragement he forced himself to remember events that were germane to his new identity. The girl had leonine hair and green eyes that were much enlarged by means of liner and skillful shadowing. Her breasts were small as limes, and she had a pelvic girdle no wider than a boy’s. She seemed to be semiprofessional: that is, asked for no money but was quite petulant in the morning until Kellog tucked bills into the slash pocket of her distressed-leather jacket.

  She immediately pulled them out, counted them, and squealed. “God, are you serious? A thousand bucks? When can I move in?”

  He wanted to make sure he was not chided for making her feel like a whore, which might have been the result had the sum been less: it had happened.

  “What are you in the market for tonight?” Hal asked now.

  Hal served as pimp, pulling to the curb when he sighted a female he liked the looks of, getting out, and propositioning her. The approach was fitted to the prey’s attire, stride, and demeanor, and Hal could employ some finesse when warranted. There were relatively respectable young women who would at least accept a ride in a Rolls-Royce, and, once inside, a glass of champagne. But there was great variation. By no means did everyone acquiesce even in the idea of the limousine. What, one in twenty? And, to be sure, invitations were generally not extended to women who appeared excessively self-possessed—Jodie had been the exception, and of course the reason for her had been merely that fixation of Hunsicker’s. Kellog himself avoided the type. His interest was solely in the flesh. When he wanted spirit, he quarreled with whichever woman he was currently married to.

  When Hal pulled up under the tinted-glass marquee of the Hotel Rudolf, Kellog saw the pickets: a dozen of them, one or two of whom were aged persons who limped in the slow march around an imaginary oval. Another was a wan little girl of six
or seven, carrying too large a sign, which was being steadied by the two persons she walked between.

  “What’s this?” Kellog asked, instinctively out of sympathy with any cause of public display.

  Hal flexed his shoulder muscles. “Sorry, boss, I guess it’s the people from the Dickerson.”

  Now Kellog remembered that he owned a big old apartment building of that name, which because of local laws concerning rent-limitation was not as profitable as it had once been. The people he paid to advise him on such matters urged that the building be pulled down and a luxury high-rise be erected in its place. To realize this plan it was necessary that the tenants of the Dickerson be bought out. Some accepted the proffered terms, but most did not, despite the harassment of the rough types installed to pretend they were legitimately employed as service personnel. Kellog did not enjoy thinking of the people who went without heat in the winter and hot water at any time, nor of those who might be assaulted if they complained to the super and his assistants, though none of this would have happened but for their stubbornness.

  He now asked Hal, “Would they recognize me?”

  Hal had stopped the car. He said, “I don’t think there’s any question since that court hearing yesterday. God knows, you were all over the news.”

  That was true: the wretched tenants’ association had started legal action against him. Of course this was grist to the mills of the local TV channels, and in fact he had even made at least one of the networks, owing to his having some years earlier given a large contribution to a presidential campaign and allegedly been promised the ambassadorship to a little Latin American country in which, on a visit once, an investigative reporter had charged, he had run afoul of the law against sexual knowledge of girls below the age of sixteen. Whether any of this could be proved, the candidate had lost the election, thus nullifying further public reference till now.

  “Get me out of here,” Kellog told Hal. “I’m not to blame for their troubles. I have people who dream up these projects. Hell, you know me, I just want to enjoy life. It’s not my fault if my father built this empire and then died, foisting it onto me. Who needs it?” He was bitterly aware that Hal would feel no sympathy for him. No one ever did. The only emotion he evoked from the rest of the human race was envy. “God’s sake,” he repeated, “get out of here. Take me back to that medical-equipment shop, and hurry! It closes at six.” He did not dare look at his watch.