Troy’s Possibilities

by Rodney Strong

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘Wasn’t it good?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then come here.’ She pulled me close and we kissed again. The part of me she had already seen naked started to react, and I squirmed a little, then pulled away.

  ‘I can’t,’ I told her with little conviction.

  ‘I knew it. You’re gay, aren’t you?’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’re not in a relationship, so why not? I think you’re cute, the bulge in your jeans says you think I’m cute, so what’s wrong with two single cute people hooking up?’

  ‘I’ve been hurt before.’

  ‘Then I’ll be gentle with you,’ she teased.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ I replied looking away.

  She kissed me again, pushing her whole body against mine. ‘Let me uncomplicate things then. I am not interested in a relationship, I’m not interested in happy ever after, and I don’t want your life story, or to meet your parents. Emily told me enough about you to make you interesting, I’ve had fun today, and now I’m horny. It’s either your cock or my vibrator, and frankly I’d prefer your cock.’

  ‘That is pretty uncomplicated,’ I acknowledged.

  We kissed again, and she reached behind me and grabbed my arse.

  ‘Are you turning me down?’ she whispered when we broke lips.

  I didn’t answer. I was tempted, what could it hurt? But I’d been here before, not exactly in this spot, but in this situation, and there’s only so much meaningless sex you can have before the meaningless becomes more important than the sex.

  Rather than be offended she seemed amused at my reluctance. ‘Do you know your problem?’ she asked, pulling her hair away from her face. ‘You take everything at face value. You don’t have any faith.’

  I looked at her, puzzled. ‘You mean religion?’

  She laughed, ‘No, let’s not ruin a good conversation by bringing God into it. Religions might monopolise the meaning of the word, but they don’t have sole use of it. Faith is just believing in something you can’t see.’

  She saw my blank expression. ‘What we have here is a cute, horny girl standing in front of you, wanting to have sex. Yet you don’t believe it, right? You don’t think it’s real, right?’

  I swallowed and looked out into the rain.

  ‘And I’m saying it is. Because this is real.’ She reached a hand out into the rain, brought it back into our niche and flicked me in the face with water. ‘And this.’ She slapped my chest. ‘And this.’ She grabbed my hand and put it on her breast.

  I squirmed with embarrassment, but not enough to take my hand away.

  ‘But if you’re saying you can’t trust what you see’ – she glanced down – ‘and feel …’

  I snatched my hand away.

  ‘…then you need to start believing in what you can’t see.’ She looked around and spied a broken umbrella lying on top of a pile of boxes next to the doorway. The wire frame was mostly there, but the canopy had been reduced to ragged pieces of dark fabric.

  ‘I bet we can step out of this doorway with this umbrella held above us and not get wet.’

  My laugh trailed off when I saw she was being serious. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Of course it is, but sometimes the only way is crazy. So what do you have to lose? You can stand here until the rain stops and never know if I’m right. Or you can take my hand and we step out under this umbrella, and…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? Who knows what could happen? We could get soaked – well, more soaked – or we could stay dry because we believe the umbrella will protect us from the rain. But for it to work, to really work, you need to believe in the umbrella, and trust me.’

  I looked from her to the umbrella to the pouring rain. ‘That’s a broken piece of trash, and this morning you attacked me and stole my phone. How am I supposed to trust what you say?’

  She held out her hand. ‘That’s why it’s called faith.’

  I peered into night for so long my eyes lost focus. Every raindrop a drop of paint on a canvas – meaningless alone but together creating a startling picture of light and shadow.

  Turning back to face Cat, I said, ‘Okay, but if I get wetter, you’re buying dinner.’ I took her hand and she smiled at me.

  ‘It’ll work, Troy. You simply have to believe.’ She raised the broken umbrella over our heads, we took a deep breath, stepped out of the doorway and…

  …got much wetter.

  Rain streamed down her face and laughing she tossed the umbrella in the rubbish bin. ‘See? Faith,’ she shouted over the hissing rain.

  ‘It didn’t work, though,’ I replied, water flicking off my lips with each word.

  ‘It was never going to work, you idiot. I just wanted you to trust me enough to step out into the rain.’

  ‘You’re hands down the strangest person I’ve ever met,’ I informed her. Which was saying a lot, given the number of people I’ve met.

  ‘Thank you.’ She grinned back.

  One soggy taxi ride later – the driver making us sit on towels he pulled from his boot before we were allowed inside – we were back at my flat. The place was dark and empty. We were barely through the door before soaking T-shirts hit the floor. Her hands felt like fire against my cold skin, and my lips kissing her breasts through the material of her bra elicited a soft moan. The pants were a bit tricky to remove, wet denim proving an unwelcome distraction, but eventually they too were thrown to the floor. Slowly I kissed my way down her body – her neck, nipples, smooth stomach, all shivering under my ceaseless lips. Pausing below her belly button, I looked up to see her staring at me with a grin on her face. I winked and lowered my head. I heard one moan of pleasure, then blinked…

  And I was standing at my front door, Cat in front of me, trying not to peek at the gap in my towel. The sun streamed across her face, filtered through strands of hair that left rippling shadows when she talked.

  ‘Can I…?’ she started.

  ‘No.’ I slammed the door shut. My groin ached and I looked down, fully expecting to see a hard penis, but it was just a fresh memory. My head swam with the sudden change in environment. I leaned against the door, could feel the confusion seeping through the wood. Slowly footsteps retreated, back into the world, into my memory.

  I pulled myself upright and went back to bed. Despite everything, despite my internal protests that my heart couldn’t be hurt any more, a small piece of it broke off and crumbled into dust.

  So here’s the deal

  Everything you just read – the whole day – didn’t happen. It was a Possibility, a life that could have been.

  That’s my curse. I get to live out Possibilities. This is the best way I can explain it. Have you ever thought back on a decision you made and wondered how your life might have been if you’d chosen differently? I don’t have to wonder, because I get to live out what the other decision would have been. Yay, you might say, that sounds fun. It’s not. I have no control over it, and it’s not daydreaming about being rich, or marrying a hot super model.

  Sometimes Possibilities can last forty or fifty years. In some of them I’ll fall in love, get married, have children, become famous or die horribly, and then they’ll end and I’m back to where I am now – which in my real life is twenty-five years old, and thoroughly over it all.

  Here’s the other important piece of information: it’s not time travel. If I live out a Possibility and then bounce back to what I call my real life, I don’t have knowledge of what’s going to happen next week, or month, or year. I can’t get rich off the lottery or sports betting. I’ve tried. I went to the races after coming back from one Possibility, and bet most of my savings on a 100–1 shot that had already won the race, expecting to be $100,000 richer. Only the horse didn’t win – it got caught on the barrier like it had during the Possibility, but this time when a gap presented itself a hundred metres from the finish the jockey failed
to take it. You see, everyone makes decisions every day, and every time someone changes a decision – goes left rather than right, takes a risk instead of playing it safe – the world changes. There isn’t one future, there’s a googolplexian (which is a real number, look it up) of them – in fact more than a googolplexian, because things constantly change.

  The first 14 years and 364 days of what I’ve come to call my real life were relatively normal. I was born, learned to walk, talk, go to the toilet and ride a bike, broke a couple of bones, and most importantly discovered girls. Then I turned 15.

  And nothing happened. I woke up, unwrapped my present – a new Walkman from Mum and Dad – ate my eggs on toast with lots of bacon, and went to school like normal. That night I celebrated with three of my closest friends at an all-you-can eat buffet restaurant. It’s gone now but it was teenage heaven back then – you could have dessert before, during and after mains. We bet to see who could eat the most chicken wings. Simon won with fifteen. I only managed twelve, but I got my revenge on the soft-serve challenge – he brain-freezed out after two bowls while I squeezed in three. Of course none of us were winners later when it all came up in the toilet. But it was worth it.

  Life went on. I started dating Heather Morgan, the most beautiful girl in the world, and it was a pure and eternal love. It lasted three months before she dumped me for my best friend, TJ. This caused a rift in our friendship until she dumped him two months later for a girl from another school. TJ and I made up over a cigarette after school. And half an hour later we threw up together. Neither of us had smoked before – he’d pinched them from his mum. While it was the first of many for him, I never took to it – mostly. This was one of many shared vomit experiences.

  I left high school and went to university, doing a degree in marketing because I didn’t want to get a real job. During my second year I ran into Heather and, her experimental lesbian phase having run its course, we started dating again. After I graduated and got a job at an advertising company the first thing I bought was an engagement ring. We got married a year later, against her parents’ wishes, in a ceremony highlighted by TJ, my best man, shagging a bridesmaid, then getting rollicking drunk and streaking through the reception.

  A year later Heather gave birth to our daughter, Rose, named after her maternal grandmother. Heather promptly called her perfect, and although I would eventually share her view, the first time I laid eyes on her Rose was an angry, screaming, red skinned bundle of ugly. The red skin went away, most of the time she didn’t scream, and after a while there was more laughing than anger. I loved to watch her sleep – she seemed so peaceful, so innocent.

  One night, after Heather had gone to bed, I crept into Rose’s bedroom to get one more look before I went to sleep. She lay on her back, one arm above her head and her thumb firmly planted in her mouth. I wanted to kiss her goodnight but was afraid it would wake her. So I kissed my hand, reached it in and gently placed it on her forehead. She stirred a little and I froze. Her skin was warm beneath my fingertips, so smooth and soft. She let out a sigh and stopped moving and I slowly moved my hand away. I remember whispering goodnight to her, then turned toward the door and blinked…

  And was standing in my bedroom, the one at my parents’ house. It was the most vivid dream I’d ever had. Everything was perfect. Not tidy perfect, but perfect as in exactly as I remembered my fifteen-year-old self’s bedroom being. A bed made once a week, when the sheets were changed; a plate encrusted with what used to be pizza poking out from under the mattress; a pile of books currently being read on the bedside table. Even at fifteen I found my tastes in literature changed from night to night so there were always several books on the go. In the corner of the room was a cane washing basket surrounded by dirty clothes, as if the basket hadn’t been able to stand the stench of teenage sweat and thrown them up. The air smelt slightly testosteroney, which isn’t a word and probably isn’t even a smell, but walk into any teenage boy’s room and you’ll know what I mean. A round mirror hung from the back of the door. The face staring back at me was fifteen years old, still a while away from the regular touch of a razor, an inexperienced face.

  I left the room and went into the kitchen. Mum stood at the counter making biscuits, nodding her head in time with a song on the radio, clouds of flour exploding off the counter as she vigorously kneaded dough. It was a scene I’d seen plenty of times – my mum was a big baker, one of the reasons all my friends loved coming to my house. It’s also how I subsidised my allowance through the first two years of high school. Every time Mum made a big batch of cookies I’d sneak three quarters of them into my schoolbag and sell them off to my mates. Whenever she made a comment about how fast they went I blamed Dad. The poor guy took a while to figure it out, and by then Mum had forced him into two diets and daily brisk walks around the block. To give him credit, instead of turning me in he simply asked for a ten-percent cut. I think he was secretly happy with the exercise and the money was his way of letting me know how things could have gone if he’d wanted it. As far as I know Mum never found out. Or maybe she did and didn’t care.

  Mum looked up from her work and smiled at me. ‘Morning, dear. You’d better hurry if you expect to get to school on time. And for goodness’ sake, Troy, put on some clean pants.’

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked in confusion.

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear, it’s Wednesday – now go.’

  ‘What’s the date?’

  Every night I cried myself to sleep. Because the longer this went on, the more it seemed real, which meant my other life wasn’t. Which meant I would never see my daughter again. Which meant she’d never existed. And at that point of realisation my mind cracked a little. I sank into a deep depression and stayed in bed for two weeks.

  My parents went through the full range of emotions – worried, supportive, angry, finally ending with helplessness. They brought in doctors who ruled out physical ailments. They brought in shrinks who told them I suffered from adolescent depression and would work through it given time, and until then here were some drugs to take. The drugs made me worse, but I took them anyway. Partly because I didn’t want them to think I was crazy, partly because I was worried I might be, and partly – a tiny part I clung to with all my strength – because I still hoped this was a dream and I would wake up next to Heather, with Rose sleeping in her cot next door.

  Eventually I got over it. Okay, that’s not true. Eventually I swallowed a bottle of pills. It seemed like the only way back to Heather and our life together. I remember lying on my bed and drifting away, my body turning to dust, a light breeze flicking me into the air. Then I felt nothing.

  Then I woke up. For a single elated second I thought my plan had worked, but looking around quickly took away that hope. I was still in my old bedroom. The newspaper I later found on the kitchen table confirmed it was two days after the first time I’d come back to my fifteen-year-old self. Note I say come back, because having ruled out dreaming I was leaning towards time travel as a working theory. In fact, given my age and that I loved comics and science fiction movies, it was puzzling why that hadn’t been my first theory. It wasn’t my last attempt to end it all, but they never seemed to stick.

  I never talked to Heather again.

  And so it went on, and on, and between then and now I’ve lived a thousand different lives. Give or take. I stopped counting after a while, because frankly after the first couple it didn’t matter how many there’d been. Somewhere along the way I started calling them Possibilities, because it seemed like that’s what they were – possible futures, possible lives. I had to call them something, and My Fucked Up Other Lives was too long.

  Here’s what I know. I’ve been killed 200 times, died in accidents 350 times, and died of natural causes 280 times. I’ve been married 60 times, never to the same woman, had 55 children, 40 grandchildren, 30 great grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, and even one great-great-grandchild. And none of them exist, except in my memories.

  Which bri
ngs you up to date, more or less. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t let Cat in the second time. I mean, apart from the pepper spray it was a pretty good day. But here’s the problem. What happens to me isn’t a Groundhog Day situation. It’s way worse. If I’d let Cat in the door, everything would be different, every fifty-fifty decision might have changed, even one different decision would alter everything, which means Cat wouldn’t be Cat.

  Going down the same road twice leads to heartache. Going down the same road a hundred times is masochism. I’d learnt that the hard way, over and over. I haven’t given up on life, but when you can’t figure out what’s real and what’s not, you either try hard or you don’t try at all.

  Home life

  When she came home the evening after Cat came to the door for the second time – or the first time for her, it gets a little foggy sometimes – I caught Emily giving me some strange looks.

  She was in her travelling gym gear; Thursday night is spin class straight after work. Emily worked hard to maintain her body, and even though I’m her friend, and nothing sexual would ever happen between us, damn she was smoking hot. She would have put a hundred percent into her workout, then showered, reapplied light make up, and put on her travelling gear. There wasn’t a lot of difference between her actual workout clothes and those she travelled home in, except one was sweaty and smelly while the other could have been pulled straight off a shop shelf. I’d asked her about it once and she’d replied there was no sense working on the chassis if the paintwork was rubbish – we’d been watching a car show at the time.