Lost Friday
Page 33
“Johnny?” Roy said, seeing my consternation.
Bleary eyed, I looked up. “Yeah?”
“If it makes it any easier, just remember you only have eight-and-a-half months left here.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Remington blurted.
I knew exactly what Roy was referring to. I was still scheduled to go off a bridge with her and Romano in December. Could I change that? Probably not, according to what David was saying. Remington had no clue about her upcoming demise, but Remington aside, I quickly calculated that my mom would be better off dealing with the phenomenon of my sudden aging by eighteen years than with the phenomenon of my suddenly being dead. Well, that certainly put it in perspective, and I determined that if I was going to go through with this, I was going to make myself one rich dude in the process.
Chapter 43… The Original
David was a Christmas baby, I’d found out. If his time in the oven was exactly nine months, nine months back from that was March 25th. David had no clue as to whether he’d popped out early, but I figured in order to make a brain that big he had to cook for the full term. Hoping I wouldn’t rematerialize on top of a roller coaster, I teleported back exactly seventeen years and one day, which put me in Sea Beach as I knew it when I was fifteen. From the entrance to the boardwalk, I could see Gil’s Bait and Tackle shop, which looked as if a flake of paint hadn’t changed on it during that entire stretch of time. I could see the sign to the diner glowing up the street—it was Tootie’s Diner back then—and the arched metal scrollwork under which I was standing looked freshly painted. Everything was where it should have been, except for my ’Vette. I had no car, and no cell phone, not that it would have done me any good back then, and I had no idea of how to find Chuck and Jenna Robelle, let alone how to stop them from conceiving David. Hell, I didn’t even know if they lived in Sea Beach when they did the deed. And what was I supposed to do if and when I found them, convince Jenna to give old Chuck a hummer instead of playing hide-the-salami? Maybe I was already too late.
Okay, I decided my mental whining wasn’t doing me any good, but I knew I was dead in the water unless I had a car. Where was I going to get that? The only thing I could think of was that we got a second car when the family moved to Sea Beach from North Jersey; it was my mom’s car, a big, honkin’ 1981 Buick Electra station wagon that was already several years old when we got it. Dad said it was a cream puff. Mom said it was a tank. I remembered she had a habit of putting the keys up on the visor when it was parked in the driveway. I mean, cars didn’t get stolen in Sea Beach, although I think she secretly wished it would happen with this huge bucket of bolts. Maybe I was going to fulfill that wish.
The house I grew up in—and where my mom still lived—was a fifteen-minute walk from the boardwalk. I was there in thirteen by way of the beach, at the spot where my street, Ocean View Terrace, dead-ended into the beach road that ran along the ocean all the way to Island Beach State Park. I waited. The teleportation was definitely off by a couple of hours, as I knew it could be, because it was earlier in the day than before I’d teleported, just before dusk as opposed to into the evening hours. I sat on the dunes, taking in the cool breeze as I waited for the sun to go down. The last thing I wanted was for someone to see me.
I thought about some weird things sitting there on that sand, one of them being how I’d explain my sudden aging by almost eighteen years when this was all over. I mean, I wasn’t going anywhere if I was successful in my mission. What would my mom think? And my dad? He was alive in this time period, churning out special assignments for the Daily News by the ton. I remembered that he wasn’t home much during this time, but it was the special assignment duties that enabled us to move down from Jersey City, which had turned into a rat’s nest. Would he ever believe that I was on an assignment of my own? How would I prove it? And if I could, would I ever get to write about it?
I turned a mental page and thought about having to relive eighteen years of my life. Like everyone, there were things I would have liked to change, but I had to admit that, for the most part, I was really pretty happy with my life. I mean, the Press wasn’t the Daily News, and romantically I was nowhere, but I made enough money to drive a ’Vette, and people thought being a reporter was a cool job. I figured: ya’ know, I was doing all right. Maybe that was a little shallow, but it wasn’t like I was going relive the same life again; I wasn’t. I was at a completely different stage than when I was fifteen, and although I’d be living over the same time span on the continuum, the events would be different for me. I didn’t want to lose whatever sense of accomplishment I’d developed, regardless of how others may have viewed it, so I wondered: would I be able to predict historical events because I’d know what was coming, or would the events be different and would I make a complete fool of myself? Would I turn into a circus freak? Would I even continue to be a reporter? Who knew? Now, one thing was for sure, however. Kelli Remington was not going to go to bed with me.
* * * * *
It was finally getting dark, and I needed a jacket. Thinking about where I was going to find that, I ultimately concluded that I needed someone to help me out. Only one person came to mind, the only person who I felt had a chance in hell of believing me, and that was my cousin Demetrius. Demetrius’s mom was my father’s sister, and it was one of the reasons we moved to Sea Beach: family. I was an only child, and Demetrius was the only son in his family, and he and I were always told that it was up to us to carry on the family traditions as if we were the only Greek families left on the planet. We were only a year apart, and I could always get Demetrius to do anything I wanted. I guess that’s why he was always in trouble. Demetrius lived in the part of Sea Beach that was called The Fishes because all the streets were named after fish; he lived on Dolphin Street.
The lights were on downstairs, but not in Demetrius’s room, and I wondered if he was home. Demetrius’s dad owned a diner—a Greek, owning a diner, in New Jersey; go figure—out on Route 9 toward Tuckerton, and Demetrius spent a lot of time there, it being the family business and all. He could have been at either place, so I figured maybe I should call. Amazingly, I remembered the number, but that didn’t do me any good because I didn’t have a phone. I actually had to find a phone booth—how prehistoric—and I backtracked toward the beach road and Mooney’s gas station. I picked up the phone—it was disgusting—and shoved a quarter into the slot, keeping my back turned so no one would recognize me. Breathing in the aromatic bouquet inside the booth, I punched in Demetrius’s number, and his mom answered on the first ring. I was almost speechless.
“Ah… hi Aunt Trina, this is Johnny. Is Demetrius there?”
“Does your mother know you’re calling here again? I thought we were clear on this, Johnny.”
I thought: oh shit. What did I do now? “Sorry Aunt Trina, but I need to talk to Demetrius. It’s important. Is he there?”
“And what’s so important? Did you run out of toilets to blow up?”
Fuckin’ A. I remembered that. Demetrius and I—well, I actually; Demetrius just happened to be there—shoved a couple of M-80s under a Port-A-Potty once, just to see if we could launch it. What a mess that was.
“C’mon, Aunt Trina, I already said I was sorry. Can I talk to Demetrius, please?”
Pause. “You can talk to him, but that’s it. He’s not leaving this house, Johnny. He has homework to do and he hasn’t opened a book the whole weekend. And I’m going to tell your mother that you’ve already violated the agreement.”
“Okay,” I said. I had no idea about any agreement. It couldn’t have been one I wanted to make. Homework, weekend: sounded like it was a Sunday night. Demetrius came on the line.
“Do you have, like, a death wish or something?” he asked tersely. “You know the agreement.”
Again with the agreement. “Demetrius, forget that. I have to see you.” I could hear him cupping the phone.
“I’m at the phone booth at Mooney’s gas station.”
“How did you get out of the house?”
Once again I thought: what the hell did I do? “Never mind that. Can you get out?”
“No way. If I leave now, I may never see daylight again.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring me a jacket, will you?”
* * * * *
He looked at me funny. “Johnny?”
“Demetrius, it’s me.”
I stood there while he walked around me and checked me out. Putting his nose an inch from my face, eyeing the thick black stubble on my chin, he said, “What is that?”
“It’s a beard.”
He put his finger near my chin. “May I?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
He ran his finger down my jawbone, yanking it away quickly. “It’s real,” he said.
“Of course it’s real, Demetrius. It’s me, Johnny.”
Once again, his eyes were an inch from my chin. “Drop your pants,” he said. I eyeballed him back. “Drop your pants,” he repeated. “You know.”
I did know. He wanted to see the scar, the one I got when I was nine and we were doing some ramp jumping on the causeway over Barnegat Sound. We made a bike ramp out of some scrap lumber that had washed up on shore after a storm, but it wasn’t a very good ramp. It collapsed on my first try, and I landed on a two-by-four with three nails sticking out of it, putting an three-inch gash in my ass that took thirty—that’s right, thirty—stitches to close up. I’d lost enough blood to make me pass out. If I was the real thing, Demetrius knew I’d have that scar on my ass and he wanted to see it—the scar, that is, not my ass. I dropped trou right there in front of Mooney’s garage, which luckily was closed with it being a Sunday night, and Demetrius checked out my butt.
He looked up, not knowing what to make of it. “Johnny?”
“I told you, it’s me.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
It took me close to an hour to explain the whole thing, during which Demetrius maintained a steady hit-between-the-eyes-with-a-tire-iron look.
“So you’re… how old?” he asked when I was done.
“Thirty-three,” I answered, and Demetrius said, “Fuckin’ A, Johnny. Here’s your jacket.”
* * * * *
“But I just saw you yesterday.”
It didn’t make sense to me either, and despite my mission, I just had to know. It wasn’t like we were going out of the way, or anything. It took us almost half-an-hour to hike it to Ocean View Terrace, and we were looking at my mom’s banana boat of a car sitting in our driveway. I could see through the living room windows, and noted the flicker of the TV in the muted light. I choked up as I pictured my father sitting there half asleep in his recliner, newspapers spread out all over the coffee table beside him, reading and watching TV at the same time. Sunday night: I figured Sixty Minutes was over and he was watching one of the Sunday night movies through his eyelids. Suddenly, I saw the light to my room come on, upper left corner of the house, two windows over the roof on the screened-in deck. I elbowed Demetrius in the ribs.
“I saw it,” he whispered back. “I thought—”
“Ssshhh,” I said. We were in the trees only about twenty yards from the Sweeneys’ house. The Sweeneys were our neighbors, and they had a chocolate beagle dog that would howl at the slightest disturbance in the neighborhood. “C’mon,” I said, and I slithered down.
We made it to the deck, and I asked Demetrius for a boost. I got a foothold on top of the railing, next step was the outside sill on the bathroom window, shift my grip, step onto support cross beam, and, badda-bing, I was on the roof over the deck. It was a maneuver I’d used regularly to sneak in and out of the house whenever I was grounded, which was often, so I was practiced at it. I didn’t make a sound, and it only took seconds.
I felt my heart beat faster. I was only a few feet from myself, and I knew then and there that David’s theory about not being able to visit oneself needed some work. David said the original ceased to exist at the point the replica is created, but this was before my replica—meaning me—was created. Maybe David meant…. Well, whatever. All I knew is that I was about to meet myself eighteen years earlier, and I hoped that I wasn’t about to scare myself to death, or interrupt myself while I was spanking my kielbasa, or something. I think I did that a lot when I was fifteen. Anyway, I crawled toward that window, and, sure enough, halfway there the Sweeney’s beagle started howling. Fucking dog. It didn’t last long, however. Demetrius scooted over to the fence and soon the dog was wagging its tail and licking Demetrius’s fingers, which I figured smelled permanently like salami from him working at the diner every day. I resumed my crawl, but froze immediately as the window popped open and I suddenly faced myself in the window light.
Johnny looked at me, and said, “Demetrius, what the hell are you doing out there?” Then he looked closer. “Wait a minute. You’re not Demetrius. Who the fuck are you?”
Fucking little wise-ass. “Look closer, kid. It’ll come to you.”
Johnny squinted at me, and he—was it he, or I? I guess it was he because I was a replica—made a move that I knew exactly what it was. “You don’t need the bat,” I said, referring to the autographed Cal Ripken baseball bat my dad had brought back for me from one of his trips. “And you won’t need to call Demetrius. He’s here.” I jagged my head downward, and he spotted Demetrius who was having a grand old time with the Sweeney’s hound. I scooted forward about a foot so that the window light washed over my face.
Johnny’s eyes went from slits to saucers. “Wait!” I croaked as he jumped back from the window, holding the aforementioned bat. “Please, don’t call Dad. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Johnny edged back to the window, and said, “How did you know I was going to call Dad?”
“I know everything about you, kid. I’m you. I’ll explain everything if you let me through this window.”
“You must have me confused with Demetrius,” Johnny shot back. “I don’t swallow bullshit. Now fuck off before I really do call my dad and have him come up here and kick your ass.”
What a fucking trash mouth I was. “Listen up, dipshit. You have a scar on the left side of your ass that you got trying to be Evel Knievel on your bike, you have a crush on your math teacher but, duh, you just found out she’s married, and you have a Playboy under your dresser that you look at under a flashlight at night. How am I doing so far?”
“How… do you know all this?”
“I told you, kid. I’m you. I have the exact same scar on my butt, and I had a crush on the same math teacher. I don’t need the Playboy, though. I get plenty of the real thing.” I didn’t know if it was right to talk to a fifteen-year-old like that, but hey, this was me I was talking to, and I knew what I was like. I smiled, and Johnny smiled back. I figured he was amused at the last comment, which was exactly my intention. I was getting there.
“Come closer,” he said, gripping the bat with both hands.
The roof didn’t have much pitch to it, and I slid up right to the window so that I was almost inside. I recognized the posters of R.E.M. and U2, two of my favorite bands during that time. I sat there, hardly making a move. Still gripping that bat, Johnny came closer and unexpectedly handed me the phone. “Make a call,” he said.
This kid was sharp. “Who do you want me to call?”
“I want you to call Mom.”
“Isn’t she downstairs?”
“She’s over at Aunt Trina’s house.”
“Okay. Why am I calling her?”
“Any reason you want. Just call.”
“Just call?”
“Just call. If it’s not me, she’ll know in two seconds.”
Chapter 44… Visiting Johnny
I
passed the test, although Mom did say my voice sounded gravely and I must be coming down with a cold. She also said she’d be home in an hour, which didn’t give me much time to lay out the situation with Johnny. I’d already decided to use him—or use myself, depending on how you wanted to look at it—to help me track down Chuck and Jenna and prevent them from doing the doo-wop-diddy that made David. I actually felt much better about things now that I knew an original and a replica were somehow different. It seemed that my feelings and sensations were different than Johnny’s, the original me, so, knowing that the David Robelle of Lost Friday time was already a replica, I figured he could go on doing his thing even if the original David was altered, or, in this case, prevented.
This is what I took some time to explain to Johnny, who looked at me the whole time as if I’d come from Pluto. There was one thing, however, that finally convinced him I was telling the truth. Like I did with Demetrius, I asked him if there was anything so private that he’d never, ever, told anyone about it, not even Demetrius.
Johnny took a left turn on me. “Maybe you can predict something for me,” he said slyly.
“And what might that be?” I asked just as slyly.
“Well, ah, there’s this girl. Her name is Tiffany.”
I knew instantly. It was Tiffany Luster. What a great byline name, I suddenly thought, much like Kelli Remington. “Go on,” I urged tactfully.
“Well, I kind of have this date with her….”
Ah, young love. I remembered that date. Tiffany had great squeezies, and I’d always wanted to touch them in the worst way.
“I was wondering if you could tell me, if, ah, well, you know, I mean, do she and I ever, ah…. How do I say this?”
“Get to suck face with each other?”
“Yeah, okay, I guess.”
“Sorry kid. You crash and burn. She’ll be the first of many that will never give you the time of day.”