The Future for Curious People

by Gregory Sherl

  I prop myself on one elbow. “What did you mean you’re on my side?”

  “Shhh,” Bart says. “Jesus.”

  “Okay, settle down,” I say. “How long have we known each other, Bart?”

  He thinks about this for a minute. “Twelve years,” he finally says.

  “Since eighth grade.”

  “Ms. Maloney’s class.”

  Algebra. Honors, I think, but it’s hard to remember exact logistics from that long ago. What I do remember: the size of Evelyn’s bed. Her ass in her bikini bottoms when she got of her giant bed. “We both sat in the front row because we didn’t want to wear our glasses because we thought the girls wouldn’t like us if they knew we had to wear glasses.”

  “The girls didn’t like us anyway.”

  “Took us a while to figure that out.”

  “Too long,” he says. “We were never the smartest.”

  “Actually I don’t know how we got into Honors Algebra.”

  “Everything works out,” Bart says. “Eventually.”

  “Is this working out, Bart? I mean it, is this part of your definition of working out?”

  “Look, man,” he whispers. “I’m worried. Deeply worried.”

  “About what?”

  “I think seeing my future messed me up.”

  “How?”

  “I’m old.”

  “You don’t look any older.”

  He points to his sternum. “Inside. I aged. I can’t explain, but I think I’m headed for a midlife crisis.” He kneels beside me and grabs my arm. “I’m about to have some kind of fucking crisis.”

  I sit up. I’m a little scared he’s going to start crying or throw up. I’m not sure which scares me more. “It’s okay, Bart. It’s okay. I’m here. You’re going to be okay. Okay?”

  “Am I?”

  “We all are,” I say, though I don’t really believe myself.

  “I’m sorry I told Amy that story about you getting lost and being too embarrassed to call that girl back.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be, you know?”

  “I’m going to be okay,” he says. “Okay.” He stands up and starts to skulk off. But then he stops and says, “You should try to slip out in the morning before we’re up. It’s not going to be pretty.” It’s too dark to watch him walk away, but I can hear his feet plodding against the hardwood floor as he makes his way down the hall.

  Evelyn

  MRS. FUOCO

  I’m sleeping at Dot’s place. She insisted. “What if that effer’s a real psycho? I feel bad about letting you invite him up. I mean, that stuff he texted you about Kristen Stewart and his Twilight paraphernalia was just so wrong. It was some twisted shit.”

  I agreed.

  DOT’S MOTHER’S IN TOWN, so I’m sharing a futon with her and Dot’s bichon frise, Fipps, an adorable dog with labored breathing, currently dressed in a hand-knit Irish fisherman’s sweater. Mrs. Fuoco is wearing a yoga outfit to bed and I’m dressed in an old-fashioned flannel nightgown. I stare up at Dot’s ceiling. Her mother says, “They’re all nut jobs, Evelyn. You just got to ask yourself, would I be better off as a lesbian? Think about it. I think you’re a really good influence on my little girl.”

  “I think we’re just not lesbians, Mrs. Fuoco.”

  “I don’t know why she steals stuff like that, you know?”

  “You’ve done your best, Mrs. Fuoco,” I say, trying to console her. This day has been so shitty. I need someone to tell me everything’s going to be okay and I haven’t just spent the night with a psycho. “I’m for tighter gun control laws. I worry about sociopaths, don’t you?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Mrs. Fuoco shifts on the futon, and I realize I’m no longer making sense.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Never mind.”

  “You should absolutely take this the wrong way,” Mrs. Fuoco says. “You’re a really unusual person, Evelyn. Good heart. Weird head.”

  “It’s just been one of those days, you know?” Mrs. Fuoco doesn’t say anything. I bet she’s had a lot of days like this. I press on. “I had to give a witness account of an emo skateboarder robbing a duck. I don’t know what to think about anything anymore. And, well—”

  “Just spit it out.”

  “I need a hug,” I say. I worry I’m being too forward. I backtrack. “But I’ll settle for a hand through my hair or a pat on the back.”

  “I thought we were talking about me and my daughter issues.”

  “Right,” I say, but I’m thinking maybe I should become a lesbian and marry Dot in a gazebo on the edge of a lake. We’ll have a small service—just the extended family. We’ll write our own vows. Creepy Godfrey will stand on the other side of the lake, staring.

  And then I think of Mrs. Fuoco. I mean, we were, in fact, talking about her and her daughter issues. I say, “Well, Mrs. Fuoco, you could play charades in a nicer manner.”

  “Are you saying I don’t play charades nice?”

  “You can be a little aggressive,” I say, “while playing charades.”

  I wonder if Mrs. Fuoco’s going to get vicious and make mean comments about my hair. But I just hear her breathing. Fipps gets up, turns a few circles, scratches at the comforter, and flops down again.

  Mrs. Fuoco says, “See, honesty. That’s what I look for in a person. Just don’t rush the nonlesbian thing. These people can get married now in the state of Maryland, you know? Free Belgian waffle makers. You get my point.”

  “I do.” But I’m in love with Godfrey Burkes, a person I thought I knew, deep down and immediately, like a sudden recognition of someone you know will be with you forever. The ah! of Hey, you finally showed up; I’ve been missing you. How could I be so wrong? “Do you think there are only two options to living, Mrs. Fuoco? Either opening up or shutting down?”

  “I’m Italian. Shutting down isn’t an option. So we’ve got just the one.” And then I feel this little pat-pat on my arm. “You’re going to be okay, Evie,” she says.

  Evie. My parents never nicknamed me. I like Evie. But part of me knows that not so long ago, I’d have read more into it. I’d have tried to allow the nickname of Evie to fill the hole inside of me that Adrian says I can’t fill. It’s not enough—this nickname, this pat-pat. And it shouldn’t be. Still, I appreciate it. “Thank you, Mrs. Fuoco,” I whisper.

  “For what?” she says, the moment having passed.

  Then my phone buzzes and buzzes—more and more deranged texts.

  “Can you turn that thing off ?” Mrs. Fuoco says.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Fuoco. I’ve started to pretend it’s the sound of peepers,” I say. “You know, those little frogs that chirp at night.” As if one of the texts will be the right text and I’ll be able to tell by the quality of its buzz.

  “Well, it’s annoying as shit. Who can sleep with that crap-noise?”

  I turn it off.

  Godfrey

  INTO THE SEA

  The sun wakes me up and I slip out of Bart and Amy’s apartment as quickly as I can. I’m so quiet it’s as if I ghosted through the front door, down the two flights of circular stairs, and into my frost-covered car. I’ve got shit to do.

  I put the key into the ignition and let the car warm up. I turn up the defroster. I count to sixty. Twice. I pull away from the curb. I take a left and head toward the suburban sprawl of the outskirts of Baltimore. I’m going to Chin’s.

  Evelyn was right. I should see my future with my father. Mart Thigpen.

  I wonder if Evelyn has gotten the singing telegram yet. It’s bolder, more romantic, more clever than any text message could ever be. I remind myself to stay positive, to show a little bravado, to hope for the best. I’m making decisions from the heart here. That should count for something.

  Dr. Chin’s is packed. This early? Why? Not a single chair is available. Patients are glued against the two far walls like wallpaper. The office is hot, not from the heating system as much as the amount of skin in such a cramped space. Can all o
f these people have appointments?

  I make my way to the receptionist window. Lisa is behind the glass. She’s always here, behind the glass. Briefly, I feel very sorry for her. Her bangs are damp, clumped against her forehead from sweat. I’m the sixth person in line.

  I think of Evelyn. This is where we first met. I look down at my feet. Maybe this exact spot. No, it was closer. We were at the window because she was talking to Lisa. Evelyn held her driver’s license between her teeth. I should’ve kissed her then, in line. I should’ve taken the driver’s license out of her mouth with my teeth, and followed her home to her giant bed and shelves stacked with Modest Mouse and Cat Power records. I should have known.

  Soon enough I’m standing directly in front of Lisa. Only the glass is between us. I never noticed how thick the glass was. It looks bulletproof, which wouldn’t surprise me. Desperate patients who haven’t been able to get appointments are bound to raise hell. And for the first time I notice that the chairs have mismatched upholstery and some of the legs are chipped and the walls are pocked with small dents. Is this the result of patients losing it, throwing chairs and chucking them into the walls? If so, I get it. I look at Lisa. “I need an appointment today,” I say. “Yesterday would’ve been better, but today will have to do.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Lisa actually guffaws. “You’ve seen the waiting room, right?” She points to a group of hopeful patients in the far corner. Some of them are holding white cone paper cups in their hands, sipping slowly, while others just sway back and forth. If I strain my ears, I can hear teeth chatter.

  I turn back around. I nod. “They’re the Desperates,” Lisa says. She leans forward in her swivel chair. It creaks. Her voice drops to a hush. I have to strain to hear her. She shakes her head. “Poor bastards.” She leans back in the swivel chair.

  The teeth chattering. The swaying. Those white cone cups that aren’t thick enough for the cold water so they melt in your hands. Aren’t I better than they are? I press my hands against the bulletproof glass that separates her from the rest of us. “I need this,” I say. It comes out as a hiss.

  Lisa wags her finger before reaching for something under her desk. She pulls out a sign, handwritten on orange construction paper: DO NOT TOUCH GLASS. I drop my hands to my sides. I can feel my voice start to rise, which is awkward, because my hands are still at my sides. I want to be animated, but I’m not allowed. “Can you smell me?” I say. “I’m probably the only thing that can cut through the shitty scent of egg rolls and dirty woks. Go ahead, ask me the last time I brushed my teeth. Things are not going well—at all!”

  “Twenty bucks,” Lisa whispers.

  “What?” I have to blink to focus on her.

  “Idiot, I’m asking for a bribe.”

  I reach into my back pocket and pull out my wallet. I don’t expect there to be any money when I open it, but there’s one bill. I don’t know how it got there. Maybe Bart slipped it in when I wasn’t looking. God bless that poor bastard. It’s a twenty. I pinch Andrew Jackson’s face between my index finger and thumb.

  “Now slide it to me,” she says. “Slowly and carefully.”

  I do.

  Lisa folds it up into four tiny squares and sticks it in her bra. Her hands find the keyboard on her desk and she starts typing. “Have a seat, Mr. Burkes,” she says, not looking at me. Her fingers are still moving. “A nurse will be with you shortly.”

  I turn away from the glass window and look around the waiting room. I lean against a wall with the rest of the patients until my name is called. I follow a nurse all the way to the end of the hallway. There’s a back door, which is a fire exit. EMERGENCY USE ONLY, the sign says. I didn’t know that Chin’s office went this far back. The nurse stops. I stop with her. I look at the number above the room: 19. Maybe this is where the deep fryer was when this was a Chinese restaurant. She sets a paper gown on the chair before leaving. Even though it’s stuffy in Chin’s, I’m cold. I change quickly.

  Moments later, two knocks on the door before Dr. Chin lets himself in. “An emergency envisioning,” he says, and he looks like his night was hellish, too. He’s bleary-eyed, rushed, distracted.

  “I’m on a mission,” I tell him. “I’m broke, I smell, and my fiancée might be telling my girlfriend that I have a fiancée. I don’t have time for idle conversation.”

  Dr. Chin says, “It’s bad all around, Godfrey. No one is spared their personal grief.” My hands are folded in my lap. My face is staring straight at the blank screen.

  “I’m here for my father,” I say. “I know it’s not a romantic request, but I’ve heard that maybe you can find a loophole, and love is love and—”

  Chin cuts me off. “Do you know what I sell?”

  “Um, the future?”

  “I sell a comfort. There’s one fear that most people want allayed. It comes from a simple question: ‘Is it always going to be like this?’ ”

  “Like what?”

  “Like whatever fearful, anxious, vulnerable, specific lives they find themselves in. And it doesn’t matter what future I show them because all they really want to hear is, ‘No, it’s not always going to be like this.’ Anyone who’s the least bit unhappy wants to hear this, Godfrey. And that’s what I sell. Not futures and surely not better futures. I just sell an answer: ‘No, it’s not always going to be like this.’ ” Chin squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his big head. “Is that so wrong?”

  “No?” I say.

  “That’s right!” Chin says. “That’s not wrong at all!” It seems like I’ve said the right thing because Chin walks to the computer. “I can try to swing it. It’ll be a moment that still has to do with your romantic future, though. That’s locked in, but I’ll have it circle around your father.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “I need Mr. Burkes’s first name.”

  “No, my real father. Mart Thigpen. Ten years into the future. I don’t want him to be dead, you know?” I think of my mother—the rabbits, the pool. Evelyn. It’s easy to think of Evelyn.

  “Thigpen,” Chin says. “Thigpen, the animal.” He’s leaning over the keyboard, typing Mart Thigpen’s name into the computer. I watch each letter of my father’s name fill the screen.

  “I’m surprised you remembered.” I put on the helmet. I pretend to be in a spaceship. I pretend this is all a game—it’s easier that way, nothing to let you down.

  “A doctor never forgets,” Chin says, and then he types in thirty years even though I told him only ten, which casts doubt on Chin’s theory on the steel-trap memories of doctors. He slides the tray of pills over to where I’m sitting. I think about correcting him. Thirty years is a long time. The world could be dead in thirty years. I haven’t seen the Al Gore documentary, but I think that’s what he says in it. He hands me the pills. “You know I was training on the better equipment. I wanted to make it more surgical. When to enter the future to give you the answer to an exact question . . . Oh well.”

  “You’d have to know the right question, though, right?” I pop the pills.

  “The right question is always more important than the answer.”

  “Then why even get the new technology?”

  “I’ll miss you, Godfrey,” he says.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I know,” Chin says, and with a sad mysterious smile, he walks out.

  As the medication rolls the fog in over my eyes, I think of the Pixies’ song: If man is five . . . the devil is six. Out loud I finish the line, “Then God is seven.”

  I stare at the screen. The camera opens on future-me. I’m sitting on a bench. In thirty years, my hands still aren’t pruned. My face isn’t too sagged. I’m quite handsome. I take this as a good sign—I’m taking care of myself, which means I’m probably happy. The camera slowly pans out. An old man is sitting next to future-me on the bench. A walker rests in front of him. The old man is Mart Thigpen. His face is smeared, but his body is the shape of a retired mobster. Or maybe a l
inebacker from a Division III college team. The years have hunched his shoulders. Gravity’s constant pull has shortened him. Baldness found him. I find his lack of hair disconcerting. I wonder when it started. I instinctively start to reach up to touch my hair, but it hits the helmet. I always forget the helmet. I focus back on the screen. The bench is outside, but it’s not at a park. I can’t pinpoint the location until I hear waves crash into themselves. I look at the bottom of the screen. There’s sand around our shoes. It’s caked onto the rusted legs of the bench, years of salty air eroding the metal.

  I study my father. Mart Thigpen rubs his thinned out ankles. He’s wearing thin white tube socks with black loafers, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with a small rectangular pocket. The camera pans out and I can see the coastline, the roughness of the waves. I think it’s the Atlantic.

  My father uses the walker for support as he slowly pushes himself off the bench. But even with the walker, he still wobbles. Future-me grabs his right elbow to steady him. When future-me curls his hand around my father’s thin bicep, I catch a glimpse of a silver wedding band on my left ring finger.

  In thirty years, I’m married. Does this mean things work out with Evelyn? Do I get to her before Madge does? Or maybe I’ve been freaking out about nothing, and Madge doesn’t even have my phone. Maybe I lucked out and a bondagey woman stole it but left my wallet out of kindness. Right now she could be prank-calling parts of Canada and Argentina and Sweden, running up my phone bill before selling the phone for scraps on eBay. I can live with that. I mean, I’m married! And my father is still alive in thirty years! I am feeling optimistically petrified.

  Still, nothing has been said. I wonder where we’re going. Is my father deaf ? If so, why wouldn’t I learn sign language to talk with him?

  The way the two of us walk down the paved path horizontal to the ocean looks rehearsed, like this is a normal thing. Maybe a Sunday morning ritual, before or after bagels and the New York Times—if newspapers somehow still exist—at the corner deli, sitting in the same booth—the one in the corner closest to the bathroom because Mart has to pee all the time.