Q: A Novel (26 page)
Authors: Evan Mandery
“I asked whether there is hope for making things better.”
“No, you said there is hope for making things better.”
“It was an interrogative statement.”
“I am not familiar with this concept.”
“I meant it as a question.”
“Ah, so you are asking me whether hope exists for making things better.”
“Essentially yes, this is what I am asking.”
“The answer is no.”
“I see.”
“It is comforting for people to believe otherwise, but I highly doubt it is the case. I ask you, in an isolated system, wherever will the energy required to restore order come from?”
“Is time an isolated system?”
“Of course, does one ever have enough of it?”
This confuses the interviewer. Ordinarily it would not be possible to assess the mental state of an interviewer, but in this case it is made evident by the interviewer’s subsequent question, which is in fact another interrogative statement.
He says, “I find this all highly confusing.”
Yvgelnikov responds, “All things considered, it is best not to think about these things too much. I have found it often gives me a headache, which can only be cured by BC Powder.”
“
BC
Powder has been forgotten since Doan’s Pills won the battle in the past for control of the analgesic market.”
“My point exactly.”
“I do not know what point it is you are making.”
“I am sorry. But I have a headache now myself, and many carriage license applications to attend to.”
“I thank you for your time.”
“Think nothing of it.”
But while it may not
be possible
for people to improve their own lots, there is every reason to believe that the lives of people in the past are improved. Somewhere in time a young Warren Buffet is happily playing the ukulele and a doppelganger of Svetlana Yvgelnikov is merrily correcting overbites. Altruism remains a valid reason to travel back in time. It is precisely this noble sentiment which motivates me to spend my life savings to prevent a younger me from ruining his life.
E
ven after the prices come down, time travel is expensive, and they won’t let you pay on credit. In the beginning, they offer a layaway plan, but learn their lesson after several people remain in the past rather than return to the present and pay the bills. Now, years later, it’s cash, cashier’s check, or money order.
These days I don’t keep much money around. It’s a challenge for me to get to the bank, and you can buy pretty much anything you want with a credit card. I do have a jar of pennies, which I have been maintaining since my late thirties. On one of Ellen’s days, I ask her to skip the usual shopping and instead do a more thorough cleanup of the apartment. She finds some more loose change underneath the cushions of the sofa and in the back of the closets. Then she places it in the jar and helps me seal it. After that, she takes me to the bank, where I withdraw most of the balance of my retirement savings. Then, finally, at my request, she helps me into a cab.
“Are you going on a trip?” Ellen asks.
“Yes.”
“Well, be careful.” She is a kind and thoughtful woman.
“I will.”
“When will you be home?”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
The downtown office
of Chrono Technologies is spartanly furnished and spotlessly clean, precisely the right sort of space to house futuristic technology. I am greeted by a receptionist, who asks what I want.
“I would like to go to the past.”
“Fine,” she says. She looks familiar.
“Do people ever want anything else?” I ask.
“Sometimes there are salesmen.”
Soon I am met by a woman dressed in a formfitting, brushed-satin jumpsuit, which again seems precisely the right sort of outfit for counseling people about the use of futuristic technology.
“Hello,” she says, extending her hand. “Barbara Volpe.”
“Hi,” I say, shaking warmly. “Maybe you get this all the time, but you look familiar. She does too,” I say, pointing to the receptionist. In fact, they look almost exactly like one another.
“Erin Grey,” she says. “
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
.”
“Yes!”
“The company hires women who look like her. Then we have to dress up like Colonel Wilma. It makes people feel more comfortable with the technology.”
“Of course.”
Barbara leads me
into a conference room. “Have you seen one of these yet?” she asks, pointing toward what appears to be an open window. It is clear outside. Several stories below the street is crammed with traffic. A cab driver is honking angrily.
“I think I may have seen a window before.”
“I bet you haven’t seen this. Go ahead. Try it.”
I’m not sure what it means to try a window, but I walk over anyway. Upon examination, I see that is not a window at all. It is an ultra-high-definition video screen that has been built into the wall. It is projecting images of a New York day.
“This is a major innovation. Buildings without windows cut down enormously on construction costs.”
“Come to think of it, it was overcast when I arrived.”
“We keep it sunny three hundred sixty-five days a year. It’s good for employee morale.”
“Why are you projecting images of traffic?”
“This is New York. There is always traffic.”
“Of course.”
Barbara gets down
to business. “I need to review a few things with you before we can send you back. I have to ask you a few questions and then go over several risk disclosures. After that you need to review a waiver and sign it.”
“Fine with me.”
“First, do you have any medical restrictions?”
“No. I have a bad knee, but nothing more serious that I know of.”
“Have you ever had any epileptic seizures?”
“No.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“No.”
“These days, you have to ask.”
“Of course.”
“Some medical risks are associated with the procedure. Five percent of chronoambulators report headaches, three percent report nausea, two percent experience constipation.”
“That’s odd.”
“Not really. No one eats enough fiber when they travel.”
“True.”
“In a few cases, people claim that their souls have not been properly returned to their bodies. Of course, such a claim can be neither verified nor disproved. The waiver releases us from liability for any existential claims.”
“Of course.”
“For all of the spectacular advances in quantum physics, which have made time travel a reality, teleportation remains impossible. This means that chronoambulators are deposited in the same physical space where they start out. If you leave from here, you will emerge here, just in a different time.”
“I understand.”
“If you’re interested in traveling to any time in the past two hundred years, this office is a very safe location to depart from.”
“What was this building used for previously?”
“For most of the twentieth century, it was a shoe factory. In the late 1960s it was converted to a law firm. You come out in their bathroom.”
“What if someone is in the middle of going?”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“But if it did?”
“I suppose you would say ‘Excuse me.’ ”
“Of course.”
“We have several locations around the world. All things being equal, it is better to travel where you want to go in our time. A lot of people forget this. One guy wanted to see Angkor Wat. All he told us, though, was that he wanted to go back to the twelfth century. He forgot that America hadn’t been discovered yet.”
“What happened?”
“He spent a month in twelfth-century Manhattan. He couldn’t get off the island. It was very boring apparently, though he said he enjoyed the improved traffic situation. Anyway, I’m sure you get the point. If you want to see ancient Greece, fly there now and leave from our office in Athens. If you want to see Sydney when it was still a penal colony, fly to Australia and depart from our center in Sydney. If you don’t, in the best case you’ll be stuck on a boat for two months.”
“The leg room would be better though.”
“Don’t be so sure. In any time, coach is no bargain.”
“Right.”
“Finally and most importantly, do you understand that there can be no guarantees as to results?” She furls her eyebrows to demonstrate her earnestness. “Generally speaking, any effort to improve your own current existence through time travel is almost certain to fail. If you want, you can go back and give a younger version of yourself or your parents the winning lottery numbers for a particular day. You may make their lives better. But you will almost certainly not make your own life any better. You may very well make it worse. Do you understand this?”
“Yes. My best friend went back in time and told himself who was going to win the 1992 Kentucky Derby but he never bet to win. He only bet exactas, so he lost everything.”
“We get a lot of that.” She places a massive document in front of me. “I’ll just leave this with you then. If you just initial in the one hundred thirty-seven places I have marked and sign on the last page, we can go ahead and get started.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Then there’s the matter of the money. The fee will be five hundred thousand dollars. How would you like to pay?”
“Six hundred seventy-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents in pennies,” I say, “and the balance in cashier’s check.”
“Of course,” she says.
When I have finished
initialing and signing, I am led into the room housing the chronoambulator. It is manned by a geekish gentleman in his twenties with thick glasses and acne scars. He is wearing the formfitting brushed-satin jumpsuit, but somehow on him it doesn’t look right.
“You don’t look like Erin Grey,” I say.
He ignores this. “When do you want to go to?”
“Wednesday, November 23, 2011.”
He pushes a button, and I am gone.
Needless to say,
when I arrive someone is in the bathroom. It is bad luck. But it is not the worst possible scenario. He is at the urinal and not the stall into which I emerge. It could have been much worse. I make a note to say something about the situation to Barbara. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
I flush the toilet before I emerge so that the gentleman taking a pee doesn’t have a heart attack. Even still, he is seriously startled.
“Funny,” he says, as I emerge. “I didn’t think anyone was in there.”
“I try to keep it quiet,” I say.
He looks me over, and I can see that it doesn’t quite add up in his book. First of all, I am out of uniform. He is wearing the requisite pin-striped suit. I am in a cardigan and corduroy pants. Second, the narrow-neck cardigan will not come into style again for another thirty years or so. Third, I am almost certainly past the firm’s mandatory retirement age. Fourth, he has never seen me before.
“Do you work here?” he asks.
“No,” I say, “definitely not.”
“Can I help you find someone then?”
“Yes,” I say. “I am looking for myself.” So intoxicated with the experience am I that I do not even take the time to wash my hands. I glide out the bathroom door and bypass the elevator for the stairs. I ignore my aching right knee, bound down the steps, across the lobby, and into the New York City of my youth.
For the first time in years, I feel alive.
T
he bus to Rhinebeck wends its way up the Taconic State Parkway. Ordinarily buses are not permitted on the Taconic, but Route 9 is under extensive renovation, so buses are given special dispensation. It is a rare treat. The bus is not crowded, and I am able to make myself comfortable. I take a pair of seats, park myself by the window, and absorb the view. It is a beautiful day, clear and bracing, and once we escape the city we are rewarded with a pageant of color. The leaves have fallen from the trees and soaked the ground in orange and red and yellow. Winter will be arriving anon, but this pastiche is still iridescent and vibrant.
Steadily, we make our way north. Familiar signs begin to roll by: Baldwin Road, Wiccopee Lane, Pudding Street. Near Lake Taghkanic we pass a family of deer feeding by the side of the road. The fawns are young, no more than four or five months old. They instinctively know how to graze, but they are learning too. The mother shows them where to find the choicest grass, and when one of the baby deer wanders too close to the road, the doe gently nuzzles it back. I wish the bus driver would slow down, but he is on a schedule.
Near Lafayetteville, the driver turns off the parkway and makes his way west via Route 199. The road is nearly empty and my mind is racing. I am outside myself. When I become aware again, we are already in Milan. In Rock City, we turn south onto Route 308. In what seems like a second, we are into Eighmyville. Then, before I know it, we are passing Beech Street and Parsonage and turning right on Mulberry. A moment later we are in the town square and the driver announces, “Rhinebeck.” We, I, have arrived.
I step off the bus and check my watch. I am more than an hour early. I could have taken the next bus, but I didn’t want to risk cutting it close. Better early than late, I figured. Besides, it is a beautiful day for a walk. I amble across the town square and make my way into Irregular’s. Oscar is at the door and greets me warmly.
“Hello, sir,” he says. “Welcome to Irregular’s. Can I interest you in a sample of our almond-caramel toffee?”
I accept the toffee. It isn’t the thing for my teeth, but this is a vacation after all.
Oscar continues. “As you make your way around the store you will find that we have hidden little puzzles for our customers. Here is a sample conundrum.” He points behind him. “What do these four albums have in common?”
“White lines,” I say.
“Very good,” Oscar says, flipping me another piece of almond-caramel toffee. “They won’t all be that easy, though.” He steps out from behind the desk and walks me to
We’re an American Band
. “Why don’t you try this one on for size?”
“Funky railroads,” I say immediately.
“Right again.” I can see he’s impressed. Oscar walks over to
Signals
and
Sgt. Pepper’s
. “Try this one.”
“Bands who enjoyed their greatest success after their original drummer left.”
“That’s amazing. We’ve had that one up for a year. You’re the first person to get it.”
“Piece of cake,” I say.
“Most people don’t remember that Rush had a drummer before Neil Peart.”
“John Rutsey.”
“That’s pretty impressive for an old-timer.”
“Age is just a state of mind.”
“Well, you sure do know your stuff.”
I take a bite of toffee.
“Yes,” I say. “And this toffee is genuinely delicious!”
I browse through
the compact discs. I see a few I would like to buy, but what would be the point? I order a cup of coffee to go and meander toward the center of town. As I sip the warm joe, I congratulate myself again on having remembered to bring money. Just as airplane crashes are almost always attributable to human error, so it is with time travel. People occasionally become trapped in paradoxes or recursions, but the overwhelming majority of problems stem from old-fashioned stupidity. The worst stories are about people who forget to carry cash.
One man went back to 1951 to see Bobby Thomson of the Giants hit his pennant-winning, shot-heard-round-the-world home run off Ralph Branca of the Dodgers. When he emerged in the men’s room of Glickerstein Shoe and Sandal, he realized immediately that he had forgotten to bring cash. He didn’t have money for a ticket. He didn’t even have ten cents for the subway. He tried panhandling, but he just didn’t look the part. So he went back. Since he had not purchased travel insurance, when all was said and done he had spent a half million dollars to see the bathroom of a shoe factory.
Even more dramatic is the story of Otto Heidelinger, the notorious pickle magnate, who went back to 1963 to observe JFK’s assassination. After arriving in the newly minted offices of Shrub, Lewis & Weinehofer, Heidelinger made his way to JFK Airport—then Idlewild—to purchase an airline ticket to Dallas. At the ticket counter, he realized that he didn’t have enough cash and got himself into trouble when he went to pay by credit card. First he handed the agent his Visa.
“I’m sorry,” the agent said, “We only take BankAmericard, Diners Club, and American Express.”
Of course he didn’t have Diners Club, so he handed over his American Express card. The agent noted the suspicious fourteen-digit identification number—they were using six digits back then—and several minutes later, Heidelinger was taken into custody and ultimately charged with credit card fraud and given a lengthy prison sentence.
One of the glitches with time travel is that if something goes wrong, no one really notices. That’s because the chronoambulator arrives back at the precise moment when he leaves. Whether one spends twenty years in the past or an hour, from the standpoint of the operator in the brushed-satin jumpsuit everything is exactly the same. Thus no one noticed when Heidelinger was ten years late getting back.
These days, as a matter of policy, Chrono Technologies issues ten dollars in coin to each of its clients. This is the same incentive offered by many Atlantic City casino bus services. The promotion has proven almost as popular with time travelers as it is with gamblers, which is to say, quite popular. The quarters are less useful for people traveling back into prehistory, but that is not to say they are not useful. To wit, consider the curious case of Selma Gotbaum, a concert glockenspielist, who traveled back to the Cretaceous period to witness the K-T extinction event, the massive asteroid collision that marked the end of dinosaurs’ time on Earth. Gotbaum was safely perched on a hilltop on the Portuguese coast, waiting for the meteorite to strike, when she was confronted by a ceratosaurus, a bipedal carnivore with blades for teeth and a razor on the top of its head. Panicked, Gotbaum grabbed the only thing within reach, a fistful of quarters, and flung them at the dinosaur. Gotbaum did not have the best arm. She could not throw very far and her aim was not particularly good, but this was her lucky day. One of the quarters lodged itself in the ceratosaur’s gums. The dinosaur ran away screaming, with a toothache for the ages, leaving Selma Gotbaum to witness Armageddon in peace.
Along the way
to the town square, I pass through the farmer’s market and take a moment to survey the wares. The offerings are varied and appealing. The fruit stand has an assortment of apples, juicy plums, and no fewer than seven kinds of pears. It is the last harvest of the year and the vendors are doing their level best to ensure nothing goes to waste. A creative baker has turned all her fruits into bread—apple bread, plum bread, pear bread, all freshly baked. I have never thought of plum bread before, but the smell is rapturous. The fruit is everywhere in the market—in ciders, in candles, in a rich assortment of jams, jellies, and preserves. I ask the difference, and a kindly lady from Kingston wearing a hemp skirt explains that jams contain more fruit than jellies, and preserves more fruit than jams. “Conserve is really where it’s at, though,” she says, and offers me a taste of the gooseberry special.
“I wish I had known about this before,” I say, as I lick the spoon clean. “This is exquisite.”
“Isn’t it, now.”
“I wish I could buy some, but I have to travel light, and where I am going today, they don’t let you carry anything.”
“Well, how about a piece of fruit then?”
“That would be just fine.”
“What’s your pleasure?”
“A pear,” I say.
“What kind?”
“An Anjou, of course.”
“Excellent choice,” she says, handing me a particularly robust exemplar of the stock.
“How much?” I ask.
“Seventy-five cents.”
I hand her three quarters.
She smiles. “Exact change. I so much appreciate that.”
“I endeavor to always be prepared.”
We bid each other good day. I walk the remaining few steps into the square, take a seat on a bench, next to an old lady, and bite into the pear. Its succulence takes me back.
Fruit just isn’t what it used to be.
Shortly after sitting down,
I see myself walk past. It is the sixty-year-old version of myself, the man I once called I-60. He is sixty years old, but from my perspective he is slender and supple, and I wonder to myself, how did I ever think
that
was old? I-60 takes a seat on the opposite side of the square. He does not notice me. His attention is alternatingly focused on Irregular’s and Mulberry Street. He has a stern look about him and appears to be quite determined.
I am not surprised.
From my vantage point on the bench, I see a familiar red Toyota Camry drive up the street and park. I remember how much I loved that car, and that I always tried to get it from the rental agency. They were happy to oblige. In the rental market, there was not much demand for the Camry. As the younger me parks, I admire his parallel parking skills. It was always one of my strengths. Though I have not driven in years, I believe I could get into a car today and wiggle into even the tightest of spots.
Q and I emerge from the Toyota. From their body language it is clear, at least to me, that they are having a tense day. But things are hardly beyond repair. The young me waits for Q to alight from the car, takes her hand, and together they cross the street arm in arm. Even though it is not the best moment of their relationship, it would be obvious to anybody that these two people are in love.
From his own vantage point on a bench on the opposite side from where I am sitting, I-60 is watching their interactions intently, rapt. The parking of the car, the taking of the hand, the crossing of the street arm in arm, are all of the greatest interest to him. Celebrities have crossed red carpets to less attention. His actions, his manner, have an air of desperation to them. I did not perceive this fifty years ago. He is on a mission and focused like a laser on Q.
It occurs to me that from his perspective this may be the first time he has seen Q in years. It is possible that he went to visit or observe her during some of his free time, but thinking back, I have a hunch that this is not the case. His behavior confirms my intuition. He would not be looking at her this way if he had seen her recently. He is watching her relentlessly. This unflinching stare would be problematic if he were a younger man, but he is old enough to get the pass which elderly men are given on this.
She is closer now. His eyes remain glued to her. I turn myself for a look and see what he sees. In my memory, she is beautiful. And I have thought of her often. On thousands upon thousands of lonely nights, staring at the ceiling of my ancient apartment, reliving past moments, dreaming about what might have been if only. In my dotage she is a constant presence because there is so little else to occupy my mind. I have only Ellen and the occasional bird to distract me, yet there is so much time—endless, hopeless time that can only be filled by memories of her.
These do not do her justice. She is glorious, radiant. She is wearing a sundress of a gentle earthen tone, perhaps ecru, and a black cardigan draped over her shoulders and the pair of jute-soled espadrilles that were always her favorites, and mine. Her auburn hair is overflowing and wild, embellished with a pink daffodil, which I do not remember. She is completely at ease in her skin, with herself. This enhances her. Her beauty is all the more captivating because she wears it so carefreely.
She is the center of the universe. People from all across the square, from the market and the record store, look at her and are buoyed by her beauty. I cannot help but stare at her myself as she walks by. The sixty-year-old me’s mouth is agape, and next to me on the bench, the old lady asks, “Did I really look like
that
?”
I am startled,
but my heart leaps.
“It’s you,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But how?”
“Same way as you.”
“I mean how did you know to find me here?”
“I suppose you could call it a woman’s intuition.”
“I suppose it would have been much better for us to have arranged it all beforehand.”
“It’s more romantic this way,” says Q. I smile.
In the near distance, the young Q and I are parting ways with a kiss. Young me walks into Irregular’s. Young Q disappears briefly into the public restroom, then makes her way to the farmer’s market. The lady in the hemp skirt who sold me the juicy pear welcomes Q warmly. They embrace, survey each other with entwined arms, and begin an energized conversation about the season’s crop. I cannot hear the dialogue, of course, but fruit is exchanged and admired, and that the produce is the subject of the conversation is the obvious and logical conclusion. After a few minutes, Q takes her leave. She moves from one stand to another. At each she is received by her admiring public like royalty. Q does not notice, but as she walks from place to place, heads surreptitiously turn in her direction. Men and women alike are compelled to look. Radiance such as hers demands to be attended.
“I can’t believe I used to be that thin.”
“Believe it.”
“Do you know what I would give to slip into a twenty-four-inch pair of jeans again?”
“I think I have some idea.”
“It is entirely wasted on the young. What twenty-five-year-old appreciates putting on her pants in the morning?”