by Hugh Breakey
Maybe not completely useless. The stepping stones weren’t welded down, after all. It was too late at this point to revise the whole structure, but with some tinkering, it could be bent to a different purpose. I had some time to kill anyway. The player was still charging, my shoes still drying.
I fetched my tools from the bedroom and began pulling up the stones. Moving them required resetting a heap of dominoes. It stung a little to disrupt the fall I’d planned and built so carefully, but the new idea would make for a fresh pattern of movement, putting the stepping stones themselves to purpose. No longer were they just for walks around the prison yard.
The drill whirred in my hand, and I threw myself into the work like a man possessed. Or perhaps dispossessed.
The work filled my attention for the best part of an hour. At that point, I went and checked on the music player. The battery was still low, but it would do if I kept it plugged in. In the laundry, my shoes were still damp. I found some thick socks and pulled them on anyway. When I stood in them, my posture changed. It became alert. Sharp.
I left the player lying on the kitchen bench, charging. I could hear the music through its tiny speakers rather than the headphones. The sound was thin, but loud enough for my purposes. I pressed play and strode to the centre of the room. The music swelled, and I moved with it. Around me, the walls were no longer boundaries constraining the space. They were a frame creating it.
I progressed up to the point I’d reached in the park, and then began breaking new ground. The exhilaration of unlocking each new step felt like a revenge on my predecessor for his lies and subterfuge. He’d tried so hard to control me, to make me his clone. The letter. The dominoes. The key. The meaningless bloody mementoes. This very apartment. Yet all those shackles now lay in pieces. With every breath of my life I’d journeyed further and further from the path he’d laid out. Everything I would call a victory in my life must be recorded for him as a failure.
My feet landed wrong from a leap, and I clattered to a halt. Damn. Three times now I’d come unstuck at this same spot, a glorious moment where I launched myself into the air, feet tucked under me. But every time I landed, my feet came down in the wrong spot, nowhere near the stepping stones I’d mentally marked out on the kitchen floor.
Faster, try it faster.
There was a thought. Accelerate the whole thing. Take my stupid forgetful mind out of the equation and let my body work it out for itself. I cut off the music and amped up the speed. But no luck. The leap still felt perfect, the landing anything but. All the rest of my occasional missteps had felt like honest mistakes, but everything about this landing felt wrong. I flexed and unflexed my hands as I searched for a way forward. Frustration gripped me, along with some grumbles from my stomach. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. No wonder I was struggling.
I ate a sandwich while doing some more work on the dominoes. Julie would love this, creating something to a crazy new plan.
Stupid thought. Julie no longer had any love for anything in this place. But once upon a time, in some yesterdays or yesteryears, she would have loved this. That word she had seized on with such rage. Weird.
I was still capable of being weird. There was comfort in that. Even if all the links between Julie and me had been destroyed, some connection remained between me and her Robbie.
Between the dancing and the building, the day grew late. Time no longer passed in seconds but in tiny jobs and cups of coffee. The shadows deepened and I had to switch on the overhead lights. I turned back to doing the dominoes, hoping that a break from the dancing might refresh my mind enough for it to puzzle through the leap and the landing. I completed one more corner section, and then a patch by the wall. Unthinkingly, I pulled up its barrier and turned to the next one.
Except there was no ‘next one’. The floor was done. I’d been so engrossed I’d stopped monitoring my overall progress, and now all of the changes had been made. The small pile of dominoes sitting in what had once been the central pathway were all the remaining tiles. The only space still to be filled was the patch of floor under them, a craggy island in a sea of frozen order.
After all the months of planning, the weeks of building and assembling, and these final hours of rebuilding, bare minutes were left. I assembled the final little batch. No room for any last spurt of creativity. This last group fitted into the larger mosaic like the final puzzle piece into a huge jigsaw, where the moment of triumph requires none of the thought that went before it.
I had done it.
I slowly spun around, taking it all in. The thousands and thousands of tiny standing stones. The strange little spirals. The magnificent platforms and the neat lines spanning the bridges. Without the cardboard grids overlaying the work, it looked naked. Fragile. A single bump of a single tile could now trigger a wave of beautiful destruction, tumbling every one of the eighty-three thousand, seven hundred and ninety dominoes assembled before me.
Afternoon had become evening. I made myself a light dinner and another coffee. Time to tackle the dance, and my mind was strangely relaxed. The threat of the forgetting had never felt so distant. It seemed almost impossible that it would strike tomorrow and all this would come to an end.
My hours of practice had not been in vain. I sailed through the dance’s opening. My body itched for it, emotion and poetry flowing through every moment. Right up to the puzzling landing from that leap. Once again, everything about the leap felt all right, and everything about the landing felt all wrong.
I paced around the room, searching for a solution. Perhaps I could start from the moment of the landing and work forward from there. Maybe then I’d be able to work backwards to see how it all linked together.
The first part of this idea worked fine. Setting the music to begin just before the leap, I puzzled through the next steps using the same process that had unearthed the earlier movements. First placement, then power, then poetry.
But there was a problem. None of the new steps used the previously existing stepping stones. Every foot-placing after the leap seemed to require a brand-new stepping stone. It struck me that maybe the leap’s landing was the moment I smashed the dominoes, which would explain why my steps could now take me off the stepping stones.
But no—that couldn’t be right. None of the choreography of the dominoes’ fall could survive me stomping and crashing around everywhere.
Frustration built within me with every step, clutching at my gut. The more my confidence grew in the dance’s later sections, the more the clash with the earlier sections grew more inexplicable.
Julie would know the answer. Another useless thought. Gritting my teeth against it, I pushed further through the dance. But soon enough, two more minutes into the routine, the exact same problem reappeared. Another step landed me in the wrong spot. Everything felt fine until halfway through the move—a slow spin with one outstretched leg. But as soon as I set off, I found myself totally wrong-footed.
I killed the music and took a deep breath. The clock said eight. Only a matter of hours before all of this unravelled. Surely it wasn’t asking too much to just get this one thing right. In his final days, my past self had been building towards one ultimate performance, in the spotlights and before an enraptured crowd. My ambitions were much smaller—to nail it just once. Here, alone, in my kitchen.
My forehead began to ache from the frown I’d worn over the last half-hour. I took a few slow steady breaths and tried to rub away the sore muscles.
Was it possible I’d got this all wrong, and this wasn’t the same dance Julie had told me about? That made no sense. For one thing, all the footfalls fell on specific parts of the floor. For another, the movements always placed my feet directly down into position, never sliding them to their mark, or grazing the floor. Both clearly marked the dance as made for stepping stones. Made for the dominoes.
I squared my shoulders. I retraced my steps through the opening stages from memory, marking the stepping stones out on the floor
with a pencil. This gave me a permanent map of how they would be arranged on the stage and it was just as I’d thought: from the moment I landed from the leap, the subsequent footfalls were all wrong, crisscrossing and landing outside my pencilled circles.
Fine. Time to get strategic. If it was important, it was worth being smart about. I retrieved all the flattened cartons and covered the kitchen floor with them, like so many pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle. I joined the pieces together with some screws from my toolbox.
This time I worked through the second stage, after the leap. Once again I marked all the places where my feet landed on the cardboard. But every time I landed or spun, the cardboard shifted. So I cut holes in the cardboard to mark the foot-placings. Now when I danced I didn’t have to actually stand on the cardboard.
Yes: the foot-placings were different. The holes in the cardboard didn’t match up with the pencil markings on the floor. I plonked myself down in a corner of the room. How to unpick this puzzle? It just didn’t make sense.
Unless.
I slid the mat across the floor until the nearest hole lined up with the nearest pencil-mark on the floor. The other holes didn’t match up. No surprise there. Still, some of the nearer ones were not far off: I’d just have to swivel things a little. Gripping two edges of the cardboard mat, I rotated it clockwise.
The breath drained from my lungs. Everything lined up. A dozen round holes perfectly eclipsed a dozen pencilled suns.
What did that mean?
A simple solution sprang to mind. As I suspended myself in mid-air during the dance, the entire floor—dominoes, stepping stones and all—simply spun and shifted under me, ensuring I landed perfectly on the newly positioned stepping stones.
Except that was stupid.
I rotated the cardboard map back and forth, watching the circles line up in clockwork perfection. It really looked as if some force pushed the whole thing around and made it rotate by the same—
No! The force didn’t move the floor under me. The force moved me.
The dance was a duet. At the critical moment, I would jump into the air, catastrophically wrong-placed, about to crash down on the fragile sea of dominoes. And then the other dancer would impact me in mid-air somehow, spinning me round to land safe on the stepping stones after all.
No prizes for guessing my partner: it had to be her. It was always her.
Earlier I’d wondered if Julie might know the answer. But she was the answer. And that meant the dance would never be completed.
Despair washed over me. After all the revelations of the last twelve hours, what was I left with? Nothing. The dominoes were complete. But the dance would never be.
It was late. I prepared for bed and switched out the lights, all except for the little lamp by the kitchen table. In its small pool of light, I sat down to write the day’s journal entry. My last ever. Unless maybe I found a moment tomorrow to say a few words about how it felt to wait for impending doom. Perhaps that was a bad idea. It might be kinder to my future not to record such things.
As I sat, the cool of the air conditioning wore away at my earlier exertion. My muscles tightened and ached, and my skin prickled into goosebumps. I wrote and wrote, and the more I did, the stranger it all seemed. Everything had changed. The mementoes were gone, replaced with rings and shoes. And what had I been doing? Walking the streets. Dancing outside in the rain. Fuming at the letter. Leaving my door open to the world.
What had I become?
Something new. Something unplanned. Bit by bit, step by step, I’d left behind the man the letter-writer had hoped to create. I looked back at his designs with anger, with sadness. The two of us seemed to scowl at one another across time, each disappointed in our expectations for the other. Earlier in the day I’d felt proud about freeing myself from his cage. Yet what was I doing? Wasn’t I trying the very same strategy?
The very same failed strategy.
The knowledge knotted my gut. What was I doing except trying to shackle my future self, to bend him to my will? And what could I expect in response? I might hold him for a while, then something beautiful would turn his head. A dance. A woman. At that moment, all my words would be bars on a paper cage. He would push them aside and turn into something new.
As I had.
I was the living proof that my own plan would not work. And if it wouldn’t work, if there was no way of hurling my self past tomorrow, then tomorrow I would die. Despite the exercises, the dominoes, the journal—everything. My throat tightened, my breath grew short. But I picked up the pen, determined to write it down and at least pass on this one final lesson.
I’d failed.
There was no way forward. Nothing I could do would matter. Nothing would change even if I stopped writing right
Day Zero
Now it hit me. I had the whole thing backwards.
I HAD to call her: Julie.
The room was still dark as I pulled myself out of bed. On the balcony the air felt thick and heavy, the humidity trapped in by the storm clouds above. Red light stained a corner of the dark sky away to the east. My final dawn. I sipped coffee and thought about the foolishness, the futility of sending her away.
Despite myself, I’d turned away from the path my past self had planned. So too my future self would be drawn by the same loves and lures as me. The same loves and lures. That was the thing. There, and only there, lay any hope of survival.
Julie was the future. The lifeline.
It was impossible, of course. I hadn’t just sent her away, I’d made her realise the man she loved was lost to history. Except now I wondered about that. I’d changed. I’d become something new. Or perhaps something old—maybe something Julie would recognise.
Would she care? Things had been said that could not be unsaid. Still, if I could convince her to come over I could show her the dance. Perhaps, between the dance and the new design for the dominoes, she’d see something of her old Robbie still alive in me. She deserved to have the choice anyway, and to make it with full knowledge.
It was too early to call, so I threw myself into practising. If there was any hope of Julie seeing the old Robbie in me, the dance had to be as perfect as possible. Not actually perfect, of course. There was the not-so-small matter of the sharp changes in direction triggered by the absent dance partner. I’d have to simply ignore those, and continue on from wherever my leaps landed.
I worked my way through the dance as best I could. But despite my exertions, the clock slowed to a crawl. Every time I looked up and saw that mere minutes had passed, my impatience to phone Julie ratcheted up another notch.
Screw it.
It was still only six-thirty, but I couldn’t wait another second. The forgetting could strike at any moment and if I left it much longer there might not be anything to see. Either way, Julie would understand why I’d called so early on this of all days. I didn’t plan my words. I punched the numbers and bit my lip as the phone rang.
And rang.
It was ringing too long. A frenzy of what-ifs buzzed at my mind. I took a deep, shuddering breath and waited. Give the lady time to wake up, at least.
Nothing.
And nothing. The phone rang and rang with no answer. Surely she would have had time to wake up. Even if she’d gone out, she always had the thing on her. Perhaps she’d decided not to take my call. I couldn’t really blame her for that.
I hit redial and waited while it rang. I flexed my free arm, reaching down behind the back of my head. A dancer’s habit, she’d said, to stretch when you’re nervous.
The phone rang until it rang out.
Wait. Julie had written her landline number on the back of her card. Fumbling, I punched the wrong numbers, hung up and tried again, pressing the numbers deliberately one by one. The number rang. And rang. And rang out.
No need to panic. She might be in the shower or… something. I tried her again. Both phones. Nothing. Perhaps she’d gone out and left her mobile at home on the charge.
Gone out
at six-thirty in the morning into a city dark with storm clouds? Please. She just didn’t want to pick up.
That was the best of the two possible explanations. The other didn’t bear thinking about. But try as I might, my mind kept returning to fingers gripped hard around the green neck of a champagne bottle. That single bottle might have been the start of an unravelling. For all I knew, she could have been drinking nonstop since she walked out my door.
I put down the phone and wiped my hands on my shirt. They felt slimy. Despite the cool, sweat prickled at my shoulders and chest as I paced the room. Julie might be passed out in a drunken stupor on her bathroom floor. Driven to despair by what I’d said.
I’d try again in half an hour. That was all I could think to do. If she still didn’t answer at that point then, well, more drastic action would be needed.
Sticking to that plan almost killed me. I ate breakfast and washed up and the clock barely moved. A few other chores and at last the moment came. I tried both her numbers twice, with no luck.
I would have to go to her apartment. Maybe she wouldn’t be there. Maybe she wasn’t even in the state anymore, but there was no other alternative. I didn’t know if I could help her, or if she’d let me help her. But at least I could show her she had been right about me. If she turned me away, it would be her choice. I owed her that much.
Having made the decision, I prepared as best I could. The forgetting could happen at any moment and going outside was certifiably crazy. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be smart about it. I changed clothes: pulled on my purple shirt and laced up the black shoes. Not the time for half measures. Given the threat of the thunderstorm, I wrapped the journal, the phone and the letter in a plastic bag, along with the map home. It didn’t feel right to just stuff the two rings in with them. My finger itched to at least try on my wedding band—to feel it slip into the niche it had worn into my flesh. Just to see how it felt. But I had no right to it. I pulled a piece of string from the kitchen drawer, looped the two rings on to it and slipped it around my neck.
