The Future for Curious People

by Gregory Sherl

  Abruptly, the two of us turn left and head straight for the ocean. I find this surprising. I’m in slacks and Mart’s in shorts and socks. Are we going in?

  We can’t be going into the water, can we? I help him take off his shoes and then take off my own.

  My father’s gripping the walker with both hands. Future-me is right by his side—my hand is curled again around my father’s bicep. He pushes the walker awkwardly but with determination through the sand.

  Is future-me taking my father into the ocean to drown him? Is that why we aren’t talking—a quiet understanding that it’s time to go? Is Mart Thigpen sick? Is this a tepid excuse for family to get together? Am I about to shout out, Hey, kids, come to the ocean! We’re drowning Grandpa! The optimism is gone. I could vomit.

  We are definitely going into the ocean. The waves roll up to our knees. My pants are soaked. We have both forgotten how to speak. The camera is in shaky-cam mode now as it follows future-me and my father as he pushes his walker slowly into the tide.

  Can someone this old swim? Their bellies are often bigger than when they’re young, so maybe they float, like citrus. The camera cuts. Now the view is from the ocean shore, with the lens of the camera pointing up. My father and future-me look like giants. Maybe slow giant sloths. Mart Thigpen in his eighties, pushing a walker through bleached sand. Mild grunts. Slowly trudging into the ocean.

  Every few seconds a wave crashes up over the lens. Each time, I want to hit the side of the TV, as if it’s a static issue from the 1960s. But I don’t get out of my chair. The helmet wouldn’t let me if I tried.

  Is this the moment of precipice?

  And then the session is interrupted by a short commercial from Earl Chin, Esquire. “He’ll stand up for you!” Earl smiles with his hands crossed, looking tough but smart and stern.

  Then a jellyfish washes up with the tide. In thirty years, there are still jellyfish. Finally future-me stops. He’s up to his hips in the ocean. My father hands him the walker. Future-me reaches out and grabs it.

  My father says, “What do you think happened?”

  “The girls grew up,” I say. “The house was suddenly too empty.” Am I talking about Evelyn? Did something go wrong with us? “Now that we aren’t parents to the girls, who are we? Do we even need each other?”

  “Now more than ever,” my father says, the waves pushing both of us, relentlessly.

  Future-me says, “Are you going to tell me what to do?”

  “I regret so much in my life,” my father says. “I should’ve fought for you. If I had, I wouldn’t have felt so weighted down.” And then, with a final heave forward, my father is buoyant. He moves slowly like a sea turtle. “Go home and fight for her!” he shouts over the waves. “Fight like hell!”

  And with that, he glides through the water, bobs over a wave, and keeps swimming. He’s got a very smooth breaststroke.

  A wave crests my chest, and I look back to the shore. My father wishes he’d fought for me. I didn’t know it, but it’s what I’ve been waiting to hear. My father, Mart Thigpen, regrets letting me go. I’m not my father. I’ll learn from his mistakes.

  If I marry Evelyn, it won’t always be perfect, but I’ll fight for her. I’ll fight like hell.

  Evelyn

  THE DATE

  “Fuck text messages,” I say.

  “Fuck phones,” Dot says.

  “Fuck learning to swim.”

  “Fuck guys who show up freezing, throwing pebbles at your window. But you should still learn to swim.”

  “Fuck Godfrey Fucking Burkes,” I say too loudly. Two high-school students camped out by the periodicals turn around and look at us. Dot flips them off. Luckily, Gupta isn’t around. Dot’s still working through her “trial basis.” “From now on, we will not speak his name.”

  “Like Voldemort,” Dot says.

  “Which we’re also not supposed to say.”

  What’s strange is that I know I read Godfrey all wrong. All wrong. But really? That wrong? Some part of me doesn’t want to talk about him because I still hold out hope that he’s going to come back to me—the Godfrey of that night. And when I think of that night, I feel like I’m letting myself fall through a hole, spinning in circles, like during the opening credits of The X-Files. Would Godfrey’s rabbits be at the other end of the carpet hole?

  “Fuck Godfrey’s rabbits,” I say, already breaking the rule of silence. “And that kiss on The X-Files was less than inspiring. We waited seven years for Mulder to finally do it, and we got that?”

  “No kidding,” Dot says, no segue necessary.

  I check my phone again. The texts have stopped. Mercifully. Still, I keep checking it.

  “Stop looking at that,” Dot says.

  “It’s like a drug,” I say, “that my parents pay for every month.”

  “Your parents still pay for your phone?”

  “I’m on their plan. It’s a small thing that they’ve forgotten they give me. I take it.”

  With her free hand, Dot grabs the phone from me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Saving you,” she says, shutting the phone off and putting it in her back pocket.

  And I let her. Is this opening up or shutting down?

  A flyer at the edge of the desk catches the corner of my eye. There’s always a new flyer at the corner of the desk—WEEKEND BLOOD DRIVE: SAVE A LIFE AND GET A FREE MOVIE TICKET!, CHLAMYDIA IS NOT A FLOWER, CAR WASH FOR FOOTBALL JERSEYS, CAR WASH FOR JESUS—but nothing that’s ever looked like this.

  This being an old printing press in the center of the flyer and next to it is a hand—God’s hand?—on the lever, cranking the machine. Pages of babies fall from the printing press and litter the floor. You can’t see the floor. Above the printing press and maybe God’s hand, typed in all caps and bolded: THE BABYMAKERS LIVE AT CLUB Q. FRIDAY. 7 P.M.

  “Have you seen this?” I say. I’m a little impressed. They’ve upgraded to a full sheet this time. And it’s the best looking artwork that’s ever graced the front of a Babymakers flyer. It’s apparent that life can easily go on without me.

  Dot clears her throat. I look up from the stack of flyers. She’s not looking at me. I follow her eyes to Adam Greenberg. He just came out of one of the fiction aisles and has made a beeline for us.

  “Shit,” Dot says. Then, after a balloon deflates from her chest: “It’s not even Friday.” There’s a book cart in front of her, and she’s started packing books from the return bin onto it.

  “Spoiler alert: it is Friday. If you didn’t take my phone, I’d show you.”

  Dot glances at me for a second. She raises her eyebrows.

  “Friday.” I nod.

  “Well, he’s early.”

  I look at the clock on the wall. Dot’s right, Adam is early. Exactly four minutes early.

  “You really, really should stay,” I say.

  Dot stops.

  Adam is closer. He’s picked up his casual pace of sweater vest ambivalence. His legs have built a purpose. I look back at Dot. She still hasn’t said anything. It’s like a split-screen movie scene: Adam holding the book for—presumably—his mother against his chest like it’s the only thing keeping his insides inside him. Dot not doing anything. Adam getting closer, the argyle pattern on his sweater vest becoming visible, how the striped colors curl and fold into themselves like a magical act. Dot still not doing anything. And then both screens blend into one with Adam standing in front of the check-out desk.

  “Hi!” I say.

  “Hi,” Adam says, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are focused on Dot. I’m too nervous to look over at her. It’s Dot’s turn to talk. I pinch her leg behind the desk, out of view of Adam Greenberg.

  “It’s Friday,” Dot says finally.

  “Yes,” Adam says. He’s still smiling. “It’s been that way since I woke up.”

  “I thought it was Thursday,” she says. “But then Evelyn said it was Friday . . . I didn’t know.”

  I cut in. �
�Is that the next one?”

  Adam looks at me, confused. He starts to open his mouth, but I save him by pointing to the book cemented to his chest. He looks down at it and blushes a little.

  “Yes.” He sets the book on the desk and slides it over. “My mother loved the last one.”

  “That Oprah sure knows how to pick ’em. Am I right, Dot?”

  Adam and I both look at Dot. She’s looking between us. And for a few moments we stay this way, an awkward tripod not holding anything up.

  I shift first, taking The Reader out of his hands and putting its barcode under the scanner. I could light the book on fire, and neither Adam nor Dot would notice the library burning down around them. It would be a pretty great music video for a Babymakers single. I reach for my phone in my back pocket. My pocket is empty. I forgot that Dot took it. I slide The Reader back across the counter to Adam.

  “So,” I say. “Any big plans for the weekend?”

  “I’m volunteering with The Boys & Girls Club this Saturday,” he says. “The Lyric Opera Baltimore is doing a children’s benefit concert this Saturday at the Lyric.”

  “That is so sweet of you,” Dot says. “Children are good. I mean, they’re like the future.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Children. Are. Good.” This is painful. I wish I weren’t a witness to it.

  “I’m free tonight, though.” Adam’s eyes are back at Dot. Dot’s eyes are back at Adam, if they ever left.

  I pinch Dot again. She shifts violently. Her upper lip is gleaming. “Well, Evelyn and I are going to a show tonight.”

  “Really?” Adam and I say simultaneously.

  Dot looks at me in mock surprise. “You remember, Evelyn.” She picks up one of Adrian’s flyers. “We’ve been planning on going for weeks.” She turns back to Adam and hands him the flyer. “The Babymakers. You should come; they’re pretty great.”

  My heart gets on a treadmill. Dot can’t be serious. I place my palms on the counter.

  “I’d love to go,” Adam says. “If it’s okay with Evelyn.”

  I can feel them both looking at me. In a twisted way, this is all my fault. I prodded Dot to stay, basically forced her to ask Adam out. I haven’t seen Adrian since he went through his box of shit in the middle of my living room. I was actually hoping to never see him again.

  “Evelyn would love if you came,” Dot says, this time pinching my leg behind the information desk. “Isn’t that right, Ev?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. It’d be perfect.”

  Adam folds up the flyer and puts it in his back pocket. “This is great,” he says, still smiling.

  What I wouldn’t give to be Charlie from Firestarter. Watch Adam’s sweater vest light up in flames. Watch him flail around the library. I wouldn’t let him die, obviously—Dot would be crushed, hopelessly chained to a life of stolen forks and an impending prison sentence—but he’d have to spend the night in the hospital. And that would mean no concert. No Adrian.

  “I’ll see you two tonight.” He’s still smiling, backing away from the information desk slowly, as if we might disappear, before finally turning around and walking out of the library with The Reader tucked under his arm.

  It’s been years since I’ve taken drugs, but that’s how I feel right now, stoned on my old friend Jared’s green shag rug, an orange soda stain the shape of a moon in the center of it, and Jared trying to count how many Aderall can fit in a Pez dispenser.

  I still feel dazed. “Really? I mean, really? Adrian’s band’s concert?”

  “I freaked out!” Dot throws her hands up like the Feds just busted a three-year deal she was planning with the Columbian cartel. “I think one-half of my brain stole the other half of my brain! You have to come with me. I can’t do this alone. I can’t. Please, God. You have to come, too. This means everything to me. You know I hate begging. You know that!”

  I look at the stack of flyers. I pick one up. Beneath the printing press churning out baby pages is the tiny line, YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND WILL NOT LIKE THIS. I want to crawl back to my empty apartment with its single wineglass in the sink and a Cat Power record just below the needle. I feel safest there.

  “Your ex-girlfriend will not like this,” I mutter.

  “At least you won’t be going in with any expectations.”

  Godfrey

  LIVE AT CLUB Q

  Hunched behind one of the two green Dumpsters in the alley between Club Q and a Western Union, I wonder if maybe this is all a setup. That these last two months of my life—the whole idea of an envisioning session—never actually existed. That someone like Evelyn could breathe outside of a television set. Do beds that big even exist? When was the last time a woman wore a bikini to bed and didn’t wake up still drunk off Jäger? It’s not spring break. This isn’t Panama City. Did Madge hire a call girl to get in bed with me just to get out of an engagement she never seemed to want in the first place? If so, did Evelyn—if that’s even her real name—at least enjoy it? Even a little? Is Bart in on the plan? Amy would be, for sure. She’s always hated me. But Bart? He could be like a brother I’m sometimes embarrassed of. Is he just a pawn? Jesus, I can see him right now at the end of the alley, standing guard, pacing with his hands in his pockets. No, Bart’s innocent; his only sin is being oblivious.

  I’m going bat shit. I’m seeing the wrong kind of doctor. Nobody could think up anything this crazy. This is my reality: I’m half naked behind a Dumpster in the tail end of a Baltimore winter, changing into a fresh set of Bart’s clothes.

  His chinos sag around my waist—I didn’t realize he’d put on the chubby midsection weight. He forgot to bring an extra belt, which means I have to use my belt, which is frozen stiff like a riding crop. My two-day-old pants are on the ground next to my shirt and coat. My cock is shriveled from the frozen wind. I feel like I haven’t hit puberty yet. The chinos are four inches too short, exposing my bare ankles. Bart forgot socks.

  He did bring Speed Stick and his cologne, Obsession by Calvin Klein. I go liberal with it on my neck. It runs down my chest. At least the club will be smoky, and I doubt most of the patrons showered today. Or yesterday, for that matter.

  I get Bart’s pink linen Oxford buttoned up when two girls slide out of the back entrance of the club. The light is bright, and I think, Deer. But they’re already drunk, loud, holding hands and giggling—both wearing boots up past their knees and black tights that do nothing but cover what their skirts don’t. And they pass on by. I’m thankful for my ability to be overlooked by women.

  I toss my clothes into the Dumpster—screw it—and make my way to Bart. We stand and stare at Club Q.

  “This stress is making me swirl,” Bart says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a package of Tums. He takes two and offers them to me. My stomach feels deflated, but I take one anyway. It’s the closest I’ve come to brushing my teeth in two days.

  We both chew the Tums slowly, trying to put off what we’re about to do for as long as possible. The new clothes feel like a half shower.

  I’m glad Bart’s with me. I need the support, not to mention the clothes.

  And this is why we’re here.

  First off, Amy told him to “get his face away from her face for a while,” and she’s never said anything like that before. That was four hours ago. At the time, I was in a diner, panic-stricken that my time was running out. The quick breakup with Madge wasn’t going to happen and I was trying to devise a new plan to track down Evelyn again and ease her into the truth—without scaring her off. The waitress, a motherly type I’d confessed my problems to, cut me off from coffee I’d been downing like shots and lent me her cell phone. “Call someone to come pick you up, hon. Trust me on this.” I called Bart. His voice was shaky. He said he’d be there as soon as possible. When I got in the car, he spilled it.

  “Madge knows about the other woman,” he said dramatically. “She’s had your phone the entire time and has been texting with Evelyn, pretending to be you. Madge hates you, but she doesn’t care that much
because she had sex last night with this guy in a band called the Babymakers.”

  I was plenty pissed—I’ve yet to see the asshole, but I can imagine their future children—half Madge, half Sid Vicious. It’s not attractive. I can’t really be that mad at Madge for cheating on me—I don’t have much of a leg to stand on there—but I’m fucking pissed I was subjected to that music for an entire afternoon.

  The most important intel that Bart got was that Madge would be at Club Q tonight. I will finally be able to end this.

  And now, standing outside the club, the chalky remnants of Tums on my tongue, I ask Bart, “Does Madge know I’m going to be here?”

  “Sometimes I think Amy’s a genius. I mean, who knows whether she let it slip in front of me that Madge was coming here tonight just so you would come here tonight. Honestly . . .” He rubs his wrist. “I can feel the strings being pulled by the puppeteer.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We are where we have to be.”

  THE INSIDE OF CLUB Q smells like an Urban Outfitters fitting room. Three guys walk by in tank tops. You can tell they’re cold—their nipples poke through the cotton. We stand in the least populated corner. Everyone is white, skinny, and chain-smoking. They all look like they’d rather be somewhere else. A skinny girl in leopard-print tights is pressed against a skinny guy. I hear moans coming from their direction, but I’m not sure which one is doing the moaning. I feel self-conscious.

  “You couldn’t have brought jeans?” I say.

  “Amy threw out all of my jeans while I was at work the day after our envisioning session.” Bart pauses. “I miss them.”

  “I need a drink,” I say. “How much money do you have?”

  Bart takes out his wallet out and flips it open. “None,” he says, “but I have a credit card, which is like money but better. Amy figures one day we’ll pay it all off—lump sum.”

  The inside of the club is no bigger than an oversized Starbucks. But as small as the club is, it’s efficient. There are two bars, one on each end, maybe twenty-five feet apart. Both bars are about half full, but the club isn’t near capacity yet. It’s about thirty minutes until the first band goes on. Bart follows me to the bar on the east end.