Ken Grimwood (24 page)

"What's your name, young man?"

"Jeff Winston, sir."

"I don't remember Pam's mentioning anyone by that name. Do you, Beth?"

"David, don't be so rude to the boy. Would you like some cinnamon toast, Jeff? I just made some, and a fresh pot of coffee, too."

"No, ma'am, thank you very much, but I've had breakfast."

"Where do you know our daughter from?" Pamela's father asked.

From Los Angeles, Jeff thought, giddy with lack of sleep and too many cups of coffee and a thousand miles of highway. I know her from Montgomery Creek, he wanted to say; from New York, and Majorca.

"I said, where did you meet Pam? You look a little old to be one of her classmates."

"We … met through a mutual friend. At the tennis club." That ought to sound plausible; she'd told him she'd played tennis since she was twelve.

"And who might that be? I think we know most of Pam's friends, and—"

"Daddy! Did I leave my Green Stamp book in your car? It was almost full, and now I can't find—"

She stood at the top of the stairs, all gangly teenaged arms and legs in a pair of white Bermuda shorts and a yellow polo shirt, her fine blond hair pulled into two little ponytails, one over each ear.

"Could you come down here, Pam?" her father said. "There's someone here to see you."

Pamela walked slowly down the stairs, looking at Jeff. He wanted to run to her, take her in his arms, and kiss away all the torment that he knew she'd been through; but there'd be time enough for that. He grinned, and she smiled back at him.

"Do you know this young man, Pam?"

Her eyes were full of youth and promise as they met Jeff's loving gaze.

"No," she said. "I don't think so."

"He says he met you at the tennis club."

She shook her head. "I think I'd remember if I had. Do you know Dennis Whitmire?" she asked Jeff innocently.

"Majorca," Jeff said in a voice hoarse with strain. "The painting, the mountain … "

"I'm sorry?"

"I think you'd better be on your way, whoever you are," her father cut in.

"Pamela. Oh, Jesus, Pamela … "

The man took Jeff's arm firmly, ushered him toward the door. "Look, fella," he said in a quiet but commanding tone, "I don't know what your game is, but I don't want to see you around here again. I don't want you bothering my daughter, not here at the house, not at school, not at the tennis club.

Nowhere. Got that?"

"Sir, this has all been a misunderstanding, and I apologize for the trouble. But Pamela does know me; she—"

"Anyone who knows my daughter calls her 'Pam,' not 'Pamela.' And let me remind you that she is fourteen years old, is that clear? Do you get my drift? Because I don't want you claiming there's been any

'misunderstanding' about the fact that you are harassing a minor."

"I don't want to bother anyone. I just—"

"Then get the hell out of my house before I call the police."

"Sir, Pamela will remember who I am soon. If I could just leave a number where she can get in touch with me—"

"You're not leaving anything except this house. Now."

"It's unfortunate we had to meet this way, Mr. Phillips.

I'd really like us to be able to get along in the future, and I hope—"

Pamela's father shoved him roughly onto the outside steps, and the door slammed in his face. Jeff could hear raised voices through the window to the living room: Pamela crying in confusion, her mother pleading for calm, her father's strident tones alternately protective and accusatory.

Jeff walked back to his car, sat in the driver's seat, and rested his weary, jangled head on the steering wheel. After a while he started the engine, and headed south.

Dear Pamela,

I'm sorry if I confused you yesterday, or upset your parents. Someday soon, I hope you'll understand. When that time comes, you can contact me through my family in Orlando, Florida. Their number is 555-9561. They'll know where I can be reached.

Please don't lose this letter; hide it somewhere safe. You'll know when you need it.

With fondest regards, Jeff Winston

July and August were a sinkhole of torpid inertia, the dank heat of Florida's "dog days," broken only by the violent thunderstorms that appeared almost every afternoon. Jeff went fishing with his father, taught his sister how to drive; but most of the time he spent in his room, watching reruns of "The Defenders" and

"The Dick Van Dyke Show." Waiting for the telephone to ring.

His mother fretted over his inactivity, his sudden loss of interest in friends and girls and midnight cruising at the local drive-ins. Jeff wanted to leave, to escape the oppressive parental concern and the stultifying boredom of Orlando, but there was no place he could go. The freedom of movement he'd grown so used to was severely limited by his lack of funds: The Derby and the Belmont had already been run, and he had no other immediate source of income.

Summer ended, with no word from Pamela. Jeff went back to Atlanta, ostensibly to begin his sophomore year at Emory. He registered for a full course load, just so he could be assigned space in one of the dormitories, but he never bothered to attend any of the classes. He ignored the threatening letters from the dean's office, bided his time until October.

Frank Maddock had graduated the previous June, and was now at Columbia, beginning law school without ever having met his erstwhile partner. Jeff found another rakish gambler in the senior class who was willing to place the World Series bet for him. Only for a flat fee, though; nobody wanted a percentage, no matter how generous, of such a patently foolish wager. Jeff bet a little under two thousand dollars, won a hundred and eighty-five thousand. At least he wouldn't have to worry about money again for a while.

He moved to Boston, took an apartment on Beacon Hill. History moved through its familiar paces: Diem was overthrown in Saigon; John Kennedy was murdered yet again. The Vatican Council de-Latinized the Catholic Mass, and the Beatles arrived to lighten the hearts of America.

Jeff called the Phillipses' house in March, the week Jack Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald; no one had ever heard of Nelson Bennett. Pamela's mother answered the phone.

"Hello, may I speak with … Pam, please?"

"May I tell her who's calling?"

"This is Alan Cochran, a friend of hers from school."

"Just a minute, let me see if she's busy."

Jeff nervously coiled and uncoiled the telephone cord as he waited for Pamela to come on the line.

He'd dredged the false name out of his memory, as someone Pamela had once mentioned having dated in high school; but had she even met the boy at this point? He had no way of knowing.

"Alan? Hi, what's up?"

"Pam, please don't hang up; this isn't Alan, but I need to talk to you."

"Who is it, then?" There was more intrigue than annoyance in her kittenish voice.

"It's Jeff Winston. I came by your house one morning last summer, and—"

"Yeah, I remember. My dad said I'm not supposed to talk to you, ever."

"I can understand that he might feel that way. You don't have to tell him I called. I just … wondered if you'd started to remember anything yet."

"What do you mean? Like remember what?"

"Oh, maybe about Los Angeles."

"Yeah, sure."

"You do?"

"Sure, my folks and I went to Disneyland when I was twelve. How come I wouldn't remember that?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of something else. A movie, maybe, one called
Starsea?
Does that sound at all familiar?"

"I don't think I ever saw that one. Hey, you're pretty weird, you know that? How come you want to talk to me, anyway?"

"I just like you, Pamela. That's all. Do you mind if I call you that?"

"Everybody else calls me Pam. And besides, I shouldn't even be talking to you. I better hang up now."

"Pamela—"

"What?"

"Do you still have that letter I sent you?"

"I threw it away. If my dad had found it, he'd've had a fit."

"That's O.K. I'm not in Florida anymore; I'm living in Boston now. I know you don't want to write my number down, but I'm listed with information. If you ever feel like getting in touch with me—"

"What makes you think I'd want to do that? Boy, you really
are
weird."

"I guess so. Don't forget, though, you can call me any time, day or night."

"I'm gonna hang up now. I don't think you ought to call me anymore."

"I won't. But I hope I'll hear from you soon."

" 'Bye." She sounded wistful, her youthful curiosity piqued by this persistent young man with his peculiar questions. But curiosity meant nothing, Jeff thought sadly as he told her goodbye; he remained a stranger to her.

The clerk at the Harvard Coop rang up the sale, gave Jeff his change and the copy of
Candy
he'd just bought. Outside, the square teemed with students preparing to begin the new school year. A purposefully scruffy lot, Jeff noted; and as he glanced toward the University Theater, where
A Hard Day's Night
was playing, he saw one bearded young man discreetly hawking five-dollar matchboxes of marijuana. It had already been a year and a half since Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard and had set up their short-lived "International Federation for Internal Freedom" across the river, on Emerson Place. The sixties as they'd be remembered were arriving earlier in Cambridge than they had at Emory. Even so, the transformation of eras wasn't quite complete yet; only one lone protestor stood in Harvard Square, quietly distributing leaflets decrying the growing American presence in Vietnam. At a table set up near the newsstand kiosk, a pair of students offered buttons reading "Stop Goldwater" and "LBJ 64." Their disillusionment wouldn't be long in coming.

Jeff went down the steps of the MTA station, entered one of the trolleylike old subway cars. Past Kenmore Square, the train came L aboveground, crossed the Charles on Longfellow Bridge. To his If right, Jeff could see workers on scaffolding putting the final touches on the new Prudential Center; the John Hancock Tower, with its ill-fated, popping windows, was still a long way in the future.

What would he do with that future now, he wondered, with the long and empty years he faced, again alone? It had been over a year since he'd begun this fourth replay of his life, and all the hopefulness with which he had once anticipated sharing this cycle with someone he fully loved, someone whose experience and understanding matched his own, had disappeared. Pamela remained an unfamiliar child, ignorant of who and what she—they—had previously been.

Perhaps some of her notions of eastern religion had been correct, in a manner unfathomable to either of them. Maybe she had attained complete enlightenment in her last existence, and her soul or essence or whatever had gone on to some form of Nirvana. Where, then, did that leave the innocent young girl who now lived in Westport? Was that person merely a shell of a body, now devoid of all spirit; a simulacrum of the real Pamela Phillips, moving through this lifetime without purpose? Maybe her, or its, purpose could be likened to an animated prop in a play or movie, a soulless robot. The unthinkable outside force that had set these replays in motion might be using the false Pamela solely to maintain the illusion that the world continued in its normal, original patterns, with its multibillion-person cast intact.

But for whose benefit? Who was the audience that was supposed to be fooled? Jeff? He had thought he was the first, and, until he met Pamela, the only, person this had ever happened to; perhaps, though, he'd been the last, or at least among the last, to become aware of the endless repetition. Pamela had theorized that these years would continue to reduplicate themselves until everyone on earth recognized what was going on. Could it instead be that the realization was intended to happen on a piecemeal basis, one individual at a time rather than a sudden planetary awareness? And as each person saw the truth, had he or she then begun the climb to escape the infinite recurrence of what had once been thought to be reality?

That meant all of human history, past and future, might be nothing but a sham: false implanted memories and records, deceptive hopes for a world to come. The creation of the human species, its cultures and technology and annals prechosen and already set in place by some unseen power, may have occurred in 1963 … and mankind's total span on this earth might stretch no more forward in subjective time than 1988, or soon thereafter. This rhythmic loop might encompass the totality of the human experience, and recognition of that fact could be the hallmark of an individual's having reached the zenith of awareness.

Which would mean that Jeff, and everyone else, had been unknowingly replaying for eons, literally since the beginning of time; and this might be his final cycle, as the previous one had been Pamela's. The rest of the population, then, existed either in a state of preconsciousness or as rote, mechanical figures whose real souls and minds had outgrown those bodies, as had Pamela. And there was no way to tell which of the people he encountered were still "sleeping," as it were, and which had already gone on to another level of being, leaving their living, breathing likenesses behind as part of the vast stage set that was earth.

It was too much to absorb at once. Even assuming it was true, he still had at least the twenty-five remaining years of this replay in which to grapple with the idea. For now he had to begin deciding how he was going to deal with those years on a day-today basis, having lost the only consummate companion he had ever known.

Jeff got off the train at the next stop, walked down Charles Street past the flower shops and coffeehouses. The nasal whine of a folk singer drifted from the open door of the Turk's Head, and a sign outside the Loft promised jug-band music on weekends. Up Chestnut Street the staid old homes, many of them now converted to apartments, presented a facade of urbane serenity.

What should he do? Go back to Montgomery Creek, spend the rest of this life—perhaps his final one—contemplating the incomprehensibility of the universe? Maybe he should make one last, albeit ultimately futile, attempt at improving humanity's lot: reestablish Future, Inc. as a philanthropic foundation, pour all those hundreds of millions into Ethiopia, or India.