by Anthology
“I don’t believe this,” he muttered. Refusing to believe it remained easier than blaming himself. “What about the sex?”
“It was great,” Megan said at once. “I won’t tell you any lies. If you make other girls feel the way you make—made—me feel, you won’t have any trouble finding somebody else. I hope you do.”
Christ, Justin thought. She’s letting me down easy. She’s trying to, anyhow, but she’s only twenty and she’s not very good at it. He didn’t want to be let down easy, or at all. He said, “What about you?”
“I’ll keep looking. If you can do it for me, probably other fellows can, too,” Megan answered with devastating pragmatism. Half to herself, she added, “Maybe I need to date older guys, or something, if I can find some who aren’t too bossy.”
That would have been funny, if only it were funny. Justin whispered, “But I love you. I’ve always loved you.” He’d loved her for about as long as she’d been alive here in 1999. What did he have to show for it? Getting shot down in flames not once but twice.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Please?” Megan said. “And don’t call here any more, okay? You’re not going to change my mind. If I decide I was wrong, I’ll call your place, all right? Goodbye, Justin.” She hung up without giving him a chance to answer.
Don’t call us. We’ll call you. Everybody knew what that meant. It meant what she’d been telling him anyhow: so long. He didn’t want to hang up. Finally, after more than a minute of dial tone, he did.
“What do I do now?” he asked himself, or possibly God. God might have known. Justin had no clue.
He thought about calling his younger self and letting him know things had gone wrong: he thought about it for maybe three seconds, then dropped the idea like a live grenade. Himself-at-twenty-one would want to slaughter him. He metaphorically felt like dying, but not for real.
Why not? he wondered. What will it be like when you head back to your own time? You wanted to change the past. Well, you’ve done that. You’ve screwed it up big-time. What kind of memories will you have when you come back to that men’s room in 2018? Not memories of being married to Megan for a while and then having things go sour, that’s for sure. You don’t even get those. It’ll be nineteen years of nothing —a long, lonely, empty stretch.
He lay down on the bed and wept. He hadn’t done that since Megan told him she was leaving him. Since the last time Megan told me she was leaving me, he thought. Hardly noticing he’d done it, he fell asleep.
When the phone rang a couple of hours later, Justin had trouble remembering when he was and how old he was supposed to be. The old-fashioned computer on the desk told him everything he needed to know. Grimacing, he picked up the telephone. “Hello?”
“You son of a bitch.” His younger self didn’t bellow the words. Instead, they were deadly cold. “You goddamn stupid, stinking, know-it-all son of a bitch.”
Since Justin was calling himself the same things, he had trouble getting angry when his younger self cursed him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to—”
He might as well have kept quiet. His younger self rode over him, saying, “I just tried calling Megan. She said she didn’t want to talk to me. She said she never wanted to talk to me again. She said she’d told me she never wanted to talk to me again, so what was I doing on the phone right after she told me that? Then she hung up on me.”
“I’m sorry,” Justin repeated. “I—”
“Sorry?” This time, his younger self did bellow. “You think you’re sorry now? You don’t know what sorry is, but you will. I’m gonna beat the living shit out of you, dude. Fuck up my life, will you? You think you can get away with that, you’re full of—” He slammed down the phone.
Justin had never been much for fisticuffs, not at twenty-one and not at forty, either. But his younger self was so furious now, who could guess what he’d do? What with rage and what had to be a severe case of testosterone poisoning, he was liable to mean what he’d said. Justin knew to the day how many years he was giving away.
He also knew his younger self had keys to this apartment. If himself-at-twenty-one showed up here in fifteen minutes, did he want to meet him?
That led to a different question: did he want to be here in 1999 at all any more? All he’d done was the opposite of what he’d wanted. Why hang around, then? Instead of waiting to slide back along the superstring into 2018 in a few more weeks, wasn’t it better to cut the string and go back to his own time, to try to pick up the pieces of whatever life would be left to him after he’d botched things here?
Justin booted up the PowerBook from his own time. The suitcases he’d brought to 1999 were at the other apartment. So was a lot of the cash. His mouth twisted. He didn’t think he could ask his younger self to return it.
As he slipped the VR mask onto his head, he hoped he’d done his homework right, and that he would return to the men’s room from which he’d left 2018. That was what his calculations showed, but how good were they? Only real experience would tell. If this building still stood then and he materialized in somebody’s bedroom, he’d have more explaining to do than he really wanted.
He also wondered what memories he’d have when he got back to his former point on the timeline. The old ones, as if he hadn’t made the trip? The old ones, plus his memories of seeing 1999 while forty? New ones, stemming from the changes he’d made back here? Some of each? He’d find out.
From its initial perfect blankness, the VR mask view shifted to show the room in which he now sat, PowerBook on his lap. “Run program superstrings-slash-virtual reality-slash-not so virtual-slash-reverse,” he said. The view began to shift. Part of that was good old-fashioned morphing software, so what he saw in the helmet looked less and less like this bedroom and more and more like the restroom that was his destination. And part was the superstring program, pulling him from one point on the string to the other. He hoped part of it was the superstring software, anyhow. If the program didn’t run backwards, he’d have to deal with his angry younger self, and he wasn’t up to that physically or mentally.
On the VR screen, the men’s room at the Superstrings building had completely replaced the bedroom of his younger self’s apartment. “Program superstrings-slash-virtual reality-slash-not so virtual reality-slash-reverse is done,” the PowerBook said. Justin kept waiting. If he took off the helmet and found himself still in that bedroom . . .
When he nerved himself to shed the mask, he let out a long, loud sigh of relief: what he saw without it matched what he’d seen with it. His next worry—his mind coughed them up in carload lots—was that he’d gone to the right building, but in 1999, not 2018.
His first step out of the men’s room reassured him. The carpeting was its old familiar color, not the jarring one from 1999. He looked at the VR mask and PowerBook he was carrying. He wouldn’t need them any more today, and he didn’t feel like explaining to Sean and Garth and everybody else why he’d brought them. He headed downstairs again, to stow them in the trunk of his car.
As he walked through the lobby toward the front door, the security guard opened it for him. “Forget something, sir?” the aging Boomer asked.
“Just want to put this stuff back, Bill.” Justin held up the laptop and mask. Nodding, the guard stepped aside.
Justin was halfway across the lot before he realized the car toward which he’d aimed himself wasn’t the one he’d parked there before going back to 1999. It was in the same space, but it wasn’t the same car. He’d driven here in an aging Ford, not a top-of-the-line Volvo.
He looked around the lot. No Ford. No cars but the Volvo and Bill’s ancient, wheezing Hyundai. If he hadn’t got here in the Volvo, how had he come? Of itself, his hand slipped into his trouser pocket and came out with a key ring. The old iron ring and the worn leather fob on it were familiar; he’d had that key ring a long time. The keys . . .
One was a Volvo key. He tried it in the trunk. It turned in the lock. Smoothly, almost silently, the
lid opened. Justin put the computer and the VR mask in the trunk, closed it, and slid the keys back into his pants pocket.
They weren’t the pants he’d worn when he left his apartment that morning: instead of 1990s-style baggy jeans, they were slacks, a lightweight wool blend. His shoes had changed, too, and he was wearing a nice polo shirt, not a Dilbert T-shirt.
He ran his left hand over the top of his head. His hair was longer, the buzz cut gone. He started to wonder if he was really himself. His memories of what he’d been before he went back and changed his own past warred with the ones that had sprung from the change. He shook his head; his brain felt overcrowded.
He started back toward the Superstrings building, but wasn’t ready to go in there again quite yet. He needed to sit down somewhere quiet for a while and straighten things out inside his own mind.
When he looked down the street, he grinned. There was the Denny’s where he’d had breakfast right after going back to 1999. It hadn’t changed much in the years since. He sauntered over. He was still on his own time.
“Toast and coffee,” he told the middle-aged, bored-looking Hispanic waitress.
“White, rye, or whole wheat?”
“Wheat,” he answered.
“Yes, sir,” she said. She brought them back with amazing speed. He smeared the toast with grape jelly, let her refill his cup two or three times, and then, still bemused but caffeinated, headed back to Superstrings, Ltd.
More cars in the lot now, and still more pulling in as he walked up. There was Garth O’Connell’s garish green Chevy. Justin waved. “Morning, Garth. How you doing?”
O’Connell smiled. “Not too bad. How are you, Mr. Kloster?”
“Could be worse,” Justin allowed. Part of him remembered Garth being on a first-name basis with him. The other part, the increasingly dominant part, insisted that had never happened.
They went inside and upstairs together, talking business. Garth headed off into the maze of cubicles that made up most of the second floor. Justin started to follow him, but his feet didn’t want to go that way. He let them take him where they would. They had a better idea of where exactly he worked than his conscious mind did right now.
His secretary was already busy at the computer in the anteroom in front of his office. She nodded. “Good morning, Mr. Kloster.”
“Good morning, Brittany,” he said. Had he ever seen her in all his life? If he hadn’t, how did he know her name? How did he know she’d worked for him the past three years?
He went into the office—his office—and closed the door. Again, he had that momentary disorientation, as if he’d never been here before. But of course he had. If the founder and president of Superstrings, Ltd., didn’t deserve the fanciest office in the building, who did?
The part of him that had traveled back through time still felt confused. Not the rest, the part that had been influenced by his trip back to 1999. Knowing such things were possible—and having the seed money his time-traveling self left behind—wouldn’t he naturally have started getting involved in this area as soon as he could? Sure he would have—he damn well had. On the wall of the office, framed, hung, not the first dollar he’d ever made, but a quarter dated 2012. He’d had it for nineteen years.
He sat down at his desk. The view out the window wasn’t much, but it beat the fuzzy, grayish-tan wall of a cubicle. On the desk stood a framed picture of a smiling blond woman and two boys he’d never seen before—his sons, Saul and Lije. When he stopped and thought, it all came back to him, just as if he’d really lived it. As a matter of fact, he had. He’dnever got over Megan. His younger self, who’d never married her, was a different story—from the way things looked, a better story.
Why, he even knew how the image had been ever so slightly edited. She could be vain about the silliest things. His phone buzzed. He picked it up. “Yes, Brittany?”
“Your wife’s on the line, Mr. Kloster,” his secretary said. “Something she wants you to get on the way home.”
“Sure, put her through.” Justin was still chuckling when his wife came on the line. “Okay, what do you need at the store, Lindsey?”
FULL CHICKEN RICHNESS
Avram Davidson
LA Bunne Burger was said to have the best hamburger on The Street; the only trouble with that was that Fred Hopkins didn’t care much for hamburger. However there were other factors to consider, such as these: other items on La Bunne’s menu were probably just a bit better than comparable items composed elsewhere on The Street, they sold for just a bit less than, etc. etc., and also Fred Hopkins found the company just a bit more interesting than elsewhere, etc. What else? It was nearer to his studio loft than any eating-place else. Any place else save for a small place called The Old Moulmein Pagoda, the proprietor of which appeared to speak very fluent Cantonese for a Burman, and the Old Moulmein Pagoda was not open until late afternoon. Late afternoon.
Late morning was more Fred’s style.
He was likely to find there, at any given time of late morning, a number of regulars, such as: well, there was Tilly, formerly Ottilie, with red cheeks, her white hair looking windblown even on windless days; Tilly had her own little routine, which consisted of ordering coffee and toast; with the toast came a small plastic container of jelly, and this she spread on one of the slices of toast. That eaten, she would hesitantly ask Rudolfo if she might have more jelly . . . adding, that she would pay for it. Rudolfo would hand her one or two or three more, she would tentatively offer him a palm of pennies and nickels and he would politely decline them. Fred was much moved by this little drama, but after the twelfth and succedant repetitions it left him motionless. (Once he was to encounter Tillie in a disused doorway downtown standing next to a hat with money while she played—and played beautifully—endless Strauss waltzes on that rather un-Strauss-like-instrument, the harmonica.)
Also unusually present in La Bunne Burger in the 40 minutes before the noon rush were Volodya and Carl. They were a sort of twosome there; that is, they were certainly not a twosome elsewhere. Carl was tall and had long blond hair and a long blond beard and was already at his place along the counter when Volodya walked in. Carl never said anything to Volodya, Volodya always said anything to Carl. Volodya was wide and gnarly and had small pale eyes like those of a malevolent pig. Among the things he called Carl were Popa! Moskuey! Smaravatchnik!—meaning (Fred Hopkins found out by and by) Priest! Inhabitant of Moscow! and One Who, For Immoral Purposes, Pretends to be a Chimney Sweep! Fred by and by tried to dissuade Volodya of this curious delusion; “He’s a Minnesota Swede,” Fred explained. But Volodya would have none of it. “He’s A Rahshian Artoducks priest!” was his explosive comeback—and he went on to denounce the last Czar of Russia as having been in the pay of the freemasons. Carl always said nothing, munched away on droplets of egg congealed on his beard.
And there was, in La Bunne Burger, often, breaking fast on a single sausage and a cup of tea, a little old oriental man, dressed as though for the winters of Manchuria; once Fred had, speaking slowly and clearly, asked him please to pass the ketchup: “Say, I ain’t deef,” said the l.o.o.m., in tones the purest American Gothic.
Fred himself was not in the least eccentric, he was an artist, not even starving, though . . . being unfashionably representational . . . not really prospering, either. His agent said that this last was his, Fred’s, own fault. “Paint doctors’ wives!” his agent insisted. “If you would only paint portraits for doctors’ wives, I could get you lots of commissions. Old buildings,” the agent said, disdainfully. “Old buildings, old buildings.” But the muse kisseth where she listeth and if anything is not on the list, too bad: Fred had nothing against doctor’s wives; merely, he preferred to paint pictures of old buildings. Now and then he drove around looking for old buildings he hadn’t painted pictures of and he photographed them and put the photos up by his canvas to help when he painted at home: this of course caused him to be regarded with scorn by purists who painted only from the model or the imaginatio
n; why either should be less or more scomable, they disdained to say.
Whom else was F. Hopkins likely to see in La Bunne Burger over his late breakfast or his brunch? Proprietors of nearby businesses, for example, he was likely to see there; mamma no longer brought pappa’s dinner wrapped in a towel to keep hot. Abelardo was sometimes there. Also Fred might see tourists or new émigrés or visiting entrepreneurs of alien status, come to taste the exotic tuna fish sandwich on toast, the picturesque macaroni and cheese, the curious cold turkey, and, of course, often, often, often the native La Bunne De Luxe Special . . . said to be the best hamburger on The Street. Abelardo had long looked familiar; Abelardo had in fact looked familiar from the first. Abelardo always came in from the kitchen and Abelardo always went back out through the kitchen, and yet Abelardo did not work in the kitchen. Evidently Abelardo delivered. Something.
Once, carrying a plate of . . . something . . . odd and fragrant, Rudolfo rested it a moment on the counter near Fred while he gathered cutlery; in response to Fred’s look of curiosity and approbation, at once said, “Not on the menu. Only I give some to Abelardo, because our family come from the same country;” off he went.
Later: “You’re not from Mexico, Rudolfo.”
“No. South America.” Rudolfo departs with glasses.
Later: “Which country in South America you from, Rudolfo?”
“Depend who you ask.” Exit, Rudolfo, for napkins.
Fred Hopkins, idly observing paint on two of his own fingers, idly wondered that—a disputed boundary being clearly involved—Rudolfo was not out leading marches and demonstrations, or (at least!) with drippy brushes slapping up graffiti exhorting the reader to Remember the 12th of January . . . the 3rd of April . . . the 24th of October . . . and so on through the existing political calendar of Ibero-America . . . Clearly, Rudolfo was a anachronism. Perhaps he secretly served some fallen sovereign; a pseudo-crypto-Emperor of Brazil. Perhaps.
