Repeat

by Neal Pollack

  Brad opened his eyes. It was midday. What day, he couldn’t tell. But the air smelled fresh and clean and cool. A girl maybe seven years old was standing in front of him, holding a little snack bag of Fritos.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “My daddy said you look hungry.”

  Brad thought about that.

  “I am hungry,” he said.

  “Do you want these?”

  She extended the hand with the Frito bag.

  “I do,” he said.

  He tore open the bag, and the Fritos were down his gullet within seconds. She gave him a plastic bottle of water.

  “Do you want this too?” she said.

  It was gone equally as fast.

  “If you want to come have dinner with us, you can,” she said.

  Brad smiled.

  “Dinner sounds nice,” he said.

  That night Brad Cohen fell asleep outside while staring at the stars.

  The next morning, he woke up in the womb.

  But this time, rather than trying to force anything onto his life, to think too hard, he just lived it as it was meant to be lived, in order. He experienced all the anxieties and bouts of loneliness and pettiness that he’d always been meant to experience, moments of doubt and frustration and stupidity. He made some good choices and made some bad choices and didn’t try to stop any of them. Most of all, he spent his bar mitzvah money on comic books, just like he had the first time, thereby robbing himself of the chance to enjoy a lifetime of wealth. Brad just existed exactly as he had the first time through, without judgment, participating actively but not stopping to fret about results. It was his life, and he lived it the best he could. He met Juliet and allowed the relationship to unfold without comment, judgment, or attachment. Just his life, happening in real time, and it was beautiful.

  Even when he made what he’d previously considered his fatal life decision, to chuck his career and move to Hollywood on a whim, he didn’t try to stop himself. It didn’t occur to him. He needed to let the disaster unfold. Nothing was going to stop him from spending a year as a staff writer on Battlecats.

  Then came the day before his fortieth birthday, and he suffered through the humiliations at Fox, where a massive windstorm had destroyed his pitch. He got too stoned to drive, but he drove anyway. He and Juliet went out to The Sideshow and spent too much on a meal they couldn’t afford. Then he went home and broke down sobbing in front of the girls, and he had such a terrible headache, and Juliet gave him some sort of potion to drink, and he went to bed happy.

  Brad woke up . . .

  AT LAST, THE FINAL CHAPTER

  . . . feeling awful inside and out. He knew that sensation in his head and his stomach: too much wine, too much food, and too much weed. It was familiar, but not. He opened his eyes. There it was—that big, cracked yellow stain on his bedroom ceiling. And the door looked all black and scratched from the dog rubbing against it way too many times. The draft came in from the window, which was never sealed all the way. It was always pretty much the same temperature inside as it was out. He opened his mouth and closed it. The usual thin layer of grit was in the air.

  Wait. The usual thin layer of grit? Where was he?

  He opened his mouth, but his voice felt raspy. There was a glass of water by his nightstand. He took a sip. It felt not too fresh, but not deeply stale either.

  “Juliet!” he called out.

  His wife opened the door five seconds later.

  “Yeeeeeees?” she said.

  “It’s you!” he said.

  “Of course it’s me,” she said. “It’s always me.”

  “How long was I asleep?” he said.

  “Ten hours,” she said. “Maybe eleven. The usual.”

  “But—”

  “How do you feel?” she said, smiling kindly.

  Like shit, he thought, but then he thought again.

  “I feel amazing!” he said. “When is it?”

  “What do you mean, when is it?”

  “What day is it?”

  “It’s Wednesday.”

  “Which Wednesday?”

  “The Wednesday of your fortieth birthday.”

  “My what?”

  “Your fortieth birthday.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’m forty?”

  “Yes.”

  Brad burst out of bed, feeling as fresh and excited as a twelve-year-old on vacation getaway day.

  “I made it!” he said.

  He threw his arms around his wife, who looked at him bemusedly.

  “Ah ha ha!” he said.

  Brad ran out of the room and through the living room, where his daughters were eating bacon and strawberries and watching SpongeBob.

  “Hello, my beautiful ladies!” he said.

  “Happy birthday, Daddy,” said the little one.

  He picked her up and kissed her head twenty times.

  “Stop it, Daddy,” Cori said. “You’re making my hair wet.”

  Then he did it to Claire, though she made him stop after five kisses.

  “I love you guys,” he said. “Love love triple looooooooove.”

  “That’s enough,” said Claire.

  “Wait,” he said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “There’s no school today, Daddy.”

  “Why not?”

  Juliet came in the room.

  “It’s a furlough day.”

  “Goddamn fucking public schools,” Brad said. “Where does the tax money go anyway? How are we supposed to get anything done around the house if . . .”

  His family was looking at him. Brad caught himself. No. He was not going to let this bother him. Not today. Not anymore.

  He ran to the front door, flung it open, tore down the driveway, and stood in the street.

  “I am alive!” he shouted.

  Linda, the babysitter, was walking a dog, not hers, right past as he said that.

  “You’re also not wearing any pants,” she said.

  Brad looked down.

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK,” she said. “I’ve done it many times. Sometimes on purpose.”

  “I’m alive, Linda!” he said.

  “I can see that.”

  From the doorway, Juliet said, “Brad. Come inside.”

  Brad turned around.

  “Alison is on the phone,” said Juliet.

  “Alison who?” he said.

  “Your manager.”

  My manager. Brad hadn’t thought about her for thousands of years.

  He took a look at the outside of their rental house, at the rotting wood around the eaves and the foundation, at the shabby little weed trees in the front yard, at the uneven, cracked driveway. He walked up the sidewalk, nearly breaking his toes as usual on the concrete steps, which had been poured on the cheap, probably by a drunk or a team of drunks.

  “This place is a shithole,” Brad said.

  “I know,” Juliet said.

  “But I love it!” he said. “And I love you!”

  “Well, that’s nice to hear, honey,” she said as she kissed him on the cheek.

  Brad went inside. His cell phone was sitting on the kitchen table.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Happy birthday!” said Alison.

  “You remembered,” said Brad.

  “No, your wife told me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d really love to meet her sometime, Brad.”

  “You have met her. Many times.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I apologize. I take a lot of pills. So, listen, we need to meet. Are you free today?”


  “I don’t remember,” Brad said.

  “Can you check?”

  “Sure.”

  Brad looked around the room, trying to orient himself. He had a work space somewhere in the house. Where was it? Oh yeah. It was in the garage. Basically a hole. A man-hole full of pot and Dodgers memorabilia. It could have been worse. Brad wondered how the Dodgers were going to do this season. Then he realized he didn’t know. What a relief not to know something.

  “Brad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Right.”

  Brad went into what passed for his office, checked his date book, and found it wanting for commitments. All he had written down, for the next six weeks, was “write,” and then not every day. Also, he had a dentist appointment in about three weeks.

  “I think I can fit you in,” he said.

  “OK,” she said. “Meet me at the Starbucks in Burbank, the one next to Bob’s Big Boy, in an hour and a half. Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” Brad said.

  “Don’t be stoned.”

  “I won’t. Am I in trouble?”

  “I wouldn’t be meeting with you in person if you were in trouble,” she said.

  Brad got off the phone. Juliet was waiting for him.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “I have a meeting,” he said. “With my manager.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. I have to take a shower.”

  He looked at his wife.

  “I am very much in love with you right now,” he said.

  “Ewwwww,” said the girls.

  “Go take a shower, weirdo,” said Juliet.

  The shower was as disgusting as always, cracked and slimy and misshapen. The water tasted hard and metallic, almost dirty. Brad could see twenty feet down into the earth through the drain. It felt so good.

  He shaved, looking at himself in the cracked, spotty mirror, put on a clean shirt, kissed his family more than they wanted to be kissed, and headed out in the Prius he couldn’t afford. It still had four blips of gas. He could drive back and forth to Burbank all day and still have enough in the tank for the weekend. Life was glorious.

  Alison was waiting for him at the Starbucks when he arrived. At least he thought it was Alison. He had a hard time remembering what she looked like. But she waved at him, so it must have been her.

  They hugged.

  “How are you?” he said sincerely.

  “Ugh,” she said. “I fucked my ex-husband last night. The morning was not pretty when the pool boy showed up.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “And I had to give my poodle Klonopin because she was having a panic attack.”

  “Right.”

  “Plus Ventura was a mob scene getting over here.”

  “OK.”

  “But how are you?” she asked.

  “Man, I am great,” he said. “So glad to be forty. You have no idea.”

  “When I turned forty, Chris O’Donnell flew me to the Bahamas,” she said. “That did not go well.”

  “I can imagine,” Brad said.

  “In any case, I have good news for you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. After our meeting yesterday—which you fucked royally, I might add—Fox fired Trey Peters.”

  “Who?”

  “The executive. The one who treated you like shit.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Brad noted to himself that he needed to try to remember things, even if he didn’t. That was how it worked here anyway.

  “Yeah, they didn’t like his attitude at the meeting. Apparently, one of the other executives, the one who wasn’t talking much, thought your idea was great.”

  “Really?”

  “And they want to hear more on Monday.”

  “Wait,” Brad said. “What was the idea again?”

  Alison looked frustrated. “Do you want to succeed or not?”

  “I do,” Brad said. “Really, I do.”

  “It was about the infinite time loop. I had no idea what you were talking about. Did you?”

  “I do now,” Brad said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I have a lot of material suddenly.”

  “Good,” Alison said. “Don’t blow it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Stay sober.”

  “I will stay relatively sober.”

  “I have more news for you too.”

  Alison went months without ever having anything for Brad. This really was a Golden Grahams day.

  “What?” he said.

  “They’re rebooting Battlecats.”

  “Again?”

  “I’m as surprised as you are. I always hated that show.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, learn to like it. I got a call from the showrunner. They need people on staff who are familiar with the material.”

  Brad had seen enough Battlecats for twenty lifetimes. When you have a hundred childhoods, there are a lot of dead hours. Plus, in his most recent run-through, he’d actually worked on the show again.

  “I’m supremely qualified,” he said.

  “It’s an initial twelve-episode run,” she said. “They’ll pay you fifteen thousand dollars up front, plus some residual and back-end stuff that we’ll negotiate.”

  “Wow,” Brad said. “I’m actually going to be able to pay my rent for the rest of the year.”

  “If you sell that pilot, you’ll be able to do more than that,” she said.

  Alison’s phone made a noise. She looked down.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My Pilates instructor got his hand caught in a blender.”

  “That sucks.”

  “He was making a smoothie.”

  “Right.”

  “And he needs me to drive him to the emergency room.”

  “Of course.”

  “So I’m going to go.”

  “Sure.”

  “This is the part where you thank me.”

  “Of course. Thank you. For everything. I will not blow this.”

  “You might,” she said.

  And then she walked out.

  Alison was right, of course. Brad might blow this. He might blow everything. There was no guarantee anything would go well or that he would make all the right decisions. Circumstances rarely tilted in anyone’s favor. Why would they necessarily tilt in his?

  On his way home he stopped at a florist to buy something nice for Juliet and the girls. They’d been without him for a very long time, whether they knew it or not. Flowers were just the beginning. He also stopped at a different store and bought something floral for himself. Living four thousand years had taught him a lot of lessons, but giving up marijuana wasn’t one of them.

  But from now on, being a stoner wouldn’t be his primary commitment. Brad would be there for his family. Not that he’d been absent or neglectful before, but now he would really be with them, in the moment, whatever they needed, whenever they needed. It would be his duty, his obligation, and his pleasure.

  His youth was over now for good. There were plenty of decent years left, but the body would shortly begin its wind down. At a certain point the announcers in the erectile-dysfunction ads would be speaking directly to him. He would experience the middle-aged hassles of achy knees and bum hips. There would also still be afternoons spent waiting on hold with Time Warner so that he could yell at someone in person. He was going to have car trouble. Some dude in a big blue pickup would cut him off in traffic. At some point someone would serve him a
sandwich with mayo on it, even though he’d specifically told them not to. People would be greedy and selfish and rude and cruel. There would be so much Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Foursquare and Tumblr and Pinterest and LinkedIn and Snapchat and all the social media bullshit that was getting ready to wash over the culture. He had no real way to avoid hearing about Justin Bieber or about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Also, the global climactic apocalypse was coming. No one was going to stop it, and everyone was going to suffer. Even worse, and he didn’t know it, the Giants were about to win two of the next three World Series. That would be the ultimate indignity.

  But Brad wanted something new so badly that he would take all of that in excellent stride, other than the Giants winning—the only thing that would leave him begging for a return to his infinite time loop. But other than that ultimate disaster, he was finally, mercifully, going to get to see 2011, 2012, 2013, and onward. The future would be a mystery to him. Whatever happened, he was ready to watch it unfold.

  His career might blossom or he might flop yet again. Maybe he’d live in his crappy house forever, or maybe he’d end up in a nice house full of nice-house problems. Either way, his wife would witch on, and his daughters would blossom. He’d go to Florida and see his parents again, appreciate the hundred times they’d raised him, and find them annoying as always. They were going to get sick. They were going to get old. They were going to die. So was he. It would all end badly, in poverty, madness, incontinence, and desperate pain, like it does for almost everyone. Brad welcomed it all. He was desperate to experience life’s back nine.

  He pulled up to the house. Juliet was waiting for him.

  “How’s it going?” she said.

  “Good!” he said. “I got a gig. They’re remaking Battlecats.”

  “Again?”

  “I said the same thing. But it’s a paycheck. Plus I have a pitch meeting on Monday.”

  “For what?”

  “That infinite time loop thing,” he said.

  “You and your infinite time loops,” said Juliet.

  “It’s a potent formula,” Brad said.