by Shelly Oria
Once time stops, Phil said, waiting as much as possible is key. People grow so desperate that they forget how to hope, he said. They forget how passing time feels, and then there’s so much more we can do for them. He talked about banking all the energy that the world saves, and the ways in which we could capitalize on that energy. Time capsules were one. Selling dreams was another. He was excited. It seemed like I wasn’t getting the whole story, but I didn’t know what part was missing.
An Interval: 1982, a Memory
There is a moment I remember well. I was twelve years old, discovering for the first time that desire made the air thinner. I was running in a field. This was in Israel, a field on the outskirts of the town where I grew up. It was wartime, but the kind of war not too many people cared about. Also in the field: boys and girls I went to school with, a bonfire. My clothes were all stripes: gray and black, a matching skirt and top I had gotten the day before. This is what I heard: a boy I loved, who had broken my heart a few weeks earlier, was now jealous because I had a new boyfriend, a decoy boyfriend, a boy I never wanted. The two of them were trying to figure out who had the moral obligation to step back. Other boys were there to supervise, make sure things didn’t escalate to a fight. This is what I learned: boys think that life is a call they get to make. This is why I started running: overturning this boy’s rejection made me feel too powerful, like life was a call I got to make. The smoke in the air from the bonfire got in my lungs, and I thought I would run forever.
2011, Part 2: Hope
I tried many times and nothing happened, but Phil never worried. He believed that it was only a question of time, that I’d get it eventually. He said rumors in the street had already started, which showed that my brain was releasing some kind of substance, just like in ’91. More than anything, he wanted me to believe in my power.
Every few days I’d try again, and fail again. It was clear what the problem was—there was nothing at stake. I knew that hurt Phil’s feelings, because it showed him his goals were not my goals. But he never complained. He had enough patience and confidence for both of us.
What happens when you don’t complain is that solutions find you. On a Tuesday morning, after we’d made love, Phil lay next to me and said, Bambi, just relax now, can you do that for me? I said nothing, but he knew I meant yes. He did all kinds of things with his fingers then: nothing too sexual, just tapping, touching without touching. He said, Close your eyes, and when I did, it felt like I had a blanket. This went on for a while. Then he said, How about we do this, and when the time-stop is over we make a baby.
I never knew that this was what I wanted. But now I knew, and all of a sudden it was the only thing. My breathing hastened. That’s right, he said. What do you say?
I had to ask now. What about your wife, I said. Long gone, he said, and then again, long gone, and the way he said it answered the question I hadn’t asked. I knew at that moment that our first encounter had not been random; knew that he’d already had intentions back then, the beginning of a plan. Whoever he’d been with before me had probably become unnecessary to his plan, the way I almost had. I knew all that, but I didn’t care. There was no effort left in me, except the kind that makes you get up in the morning to braid a child’s hair, write a note for school.
* * *
The next day, time stopped again. I still experienced it as two entirely disparate events, in two different sites—my brain being one, the world another. But by now I knew better. Phil was the happiest I’d ever seen him. He couldn’t stop talking. In our apartment, enthusiasm was everywhere, and in many ways we weren’t part of the world anymore; outside, people were developing all the regular time-stop symptoms, reenacting patterns of behavior that were long ago declared detrimental, against studies and cold data, against the soft whisper of their own inner voice. At airports, riots were erupting. Airline company reps, and even the pilots themselves, would try to reason with the crowds; there was obviously no way to ensure safe travel, no way to synchronize sky traffic, and you’d think that people would understand that. Instead, they threw stones, broke glass, shouted things like “But I need to get to my convention, asshole.”
On street corners, huge piles of microwaves grew, their frustrated owners unwilling to remember that at some point time would resume, that when others stepped back into their own kitchens and turned on cooking timers—casually, as if they’d always been able to do so—they, the people who were quick to discard, quick to give up hope, would form the famous ten-mile lines outside the various Baking Solutions stores.
This is the truth: there is no objective reason for time-stops to be as devastating as they are. For example: food can be tricky, sure, but no more people die of starvation during time-stops than at any other time (supplies always last until the manufacturing of Synthetic Food is in full force, and generally speaking, people are a lot less hungry). And not being able to travel by plane is limiting, yes, but in fact the difficulty of going anywhere else allows you to more fully be where you are. Really, the worst thing about time-stops is that they make people believe that time is something like oxygen.
* * *
Phil and I were working around the clock, so to speak. I followed every instruction he gave me. Together, we built a big device that looked like a satellite dish, and another one that Phil called the Medusa—a big silver ring with eight arms like hooks. Both fit in what used to be my study, after we took everything else out. The satellite dish, facing the window, was meant to receive much of the energy saved by the time-stop (up to 70 percent of it, Phil said proudly), and the Medusa was to store that energy and later convert it into a greasy blue liquid that Phil would use to make his products—mainly pills (those known today as T. pills) and these oddly shaped metal disks that allow some people to relive scenes from their old lives. (I personally see nothing but gray snow on my screen every time, which has been the subject of quite a few clashes between us—Phil believes that I’m blocking the feed on purpose somehow.)
We worked together, but it never felt that way; often I would shout out to Phil only to discover he was standing right next to me. I asked as little as possible about it all, afraid of the information as if it were another person lurking around the house. It was clear—this was Phil’s main course, the one he’d been waiting for his entire life. I think he assumed I would come around eventually. I was waiting for him to be full, and trying not to resent him for his undying hunger. Waiting, when time is standing still, is not an experience I wish on anyone with a beating heart.
* * *
I used to be different; I used to find comfort in time-stops. I’d close my eyes and feel like I was in some underground maze; I couldn’t get anywhere, but I wasn’t supposed to. I try to remind myself of that every time I open my eyes to a new gray day. Still, I often forget.
* * *
This all happened a long time ago, though experts would argue that I can’t technically say that. That’s what it feels like, anyway, and I am now part of the Time Language Movement, so using these terms is a cause I spend my days fighting for. We believe in the power of language, and we believe that by using time expressions we can, at the very least, create an illusion of passing time so strong that it functions as the real thing in essentially every way.
Nobody in the movement knows about Phil, or about my involvement in what is now referred to as The Big One. I believe that, since we’re all working for the same cause, none of that should matter. Phil, in turn, believes Language people are no different from Time Counters and other types of lunatics.
These days, he mainly operates from what he calls the Factory—a huge facility just outside of town, where they used to make cribs before everyone stopped needing to buy new ones. I know where it is, but I’ve never been there. If things between us were different, if I woke up one day and believed in his operation and wanted to do my part, I imagine he would take me over, give me the grand tour. I imagine he’d want me to fully understand the mechanics behind the dam that hol
ds time back. I imagine he’d be happy. And some days I think Why not? Why not make him happy? But I know this: we are playing against each other in a staring match; if I look down, I have lost, and Phil will never change. And perhaps that’s true anyway, perhaps I have already lost.
I still practice my profession. I rent a small bath at a Soaping Inc. downtown. They call me every time one of my clients shows up, and I usually drop everything and go. It’s a good arrangement for me, given that I can’t see clients at home anymore; letting strangers into the apartment is exactly the kind of mistake Phil would never make. If anyone ever knew enough to come looking, the files stacked in his study (once mine, then ours, now his) would expose everything. It sometimes seems that when I so much as look at them in passing, he can sense it.
There’s no phone at the Factory, no way to reach Phil when he’s there, and yet every morning before he leaves, he says, I’ll be at the Factory, as if we’re already a family, and maybe our daughter would have an earache and I would need him to come home.
* * *
Yesterday, we were sitting on the balcony, drinking champagne and eating crackers. The dim gray light outside was getting to me, the way it often does. I looked at the color of the champagne in my glass, then at the gray light, and again, and again. I was trying to concentrate so that one would somehow spark the other, but whatever gift I had, it’s gone; I sold it for hope.
Phil said, Bambi, that’s cute, what you’re trying to do. He was mocking me, and it hurt, of course, but I’ve gotten used to this kind of pain. I looked at him. Sometimes he says unkind things but you can still see kindness underneath them. At the end of each evening, before we go to sleep, he goes to the kitchen and checks my vitamin jar, to make sure I’ve taken all my Nutrient Pills for the day. I said, What about what you promised me, Phil? What about the baby? I’d intended never to ask him that, but all of a sudden I forgot why.
He said, We’ll get there, Bamb, we’ll get there. When? I asked. How about next year, he said, 2012? Pretending to set a date was his favorite joke these days.
I decided to try a different approach. Phil, I said, look at us. We have all the money in the world. Isn’t that enough? It’s enough, Phil, don’t you see that?
I assumed that he’d feign agreement, let me relax; we both knew that he wasn’t just making a profit, but also holding on as tight as he could, sitting on top of the whole still world without leaving our balcony. But he just sat there with a smile on his face that I’d never seen before, and seemed immersed in some conversation I couldn’t hear. Finally, he got up, put the champagne glass down, helped a few crumbs slide down his pants. He looked down at me, and sternness took over the smile. I never understood women, he said, so smart and so stupid at the same time. I was waiting for him to explain, and then realized that he wouldn’t, because he wasn’t talking to me, not really. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, Money? Money? For fuck’s sake, Bambi, we’re living here in your crummy little apartment and you still think it’s about the money?
He took a deep breath that said my stupidity caused him great pain. His disappointment hung heavy in the air, and I knew this was the moment when Phil had given up on me for good. I wanted to drink all the champagne until it made me throw up, then drink some more. Money, Bambi, he said like he was the president of a great nation and I was the ignorant masses he was preaching to, is always, always, a means to an end. Remember that if you remember nothing else. And with that he turned his back to me and walked into the living room. I noticed there were crumbs on his ass that he must not have been aware of, remnants of the crackers we ate. This would have bothered him, I thought. Phil is a very tidy man.
MAYBE IN A DIFFERENT TIME
I’d gone thirty-six years without donating blood, had made a name for myself in my community for being the only man who refused to donate even on leap years, when they pay more. Our town boasts the largest bloodbank in North America, and since the war, which started before anyone can remember, most folks around either work at the bank or donate for a living. My father took me to watch him donate when I was four. I didn’t faint or cry like my friend Jordan F, like so many kids on their first viewings. I stood still and silent, narrowing my eyes at the nurse. When she was done, I asked for the tube. It’s my dad’s blood, I said, not yours. The nurse smiled, said, That’s not how it works, honey pie. My father seemed frustrated; he’d explained the whole thing before we left the house. I squinted at them for a few more seconds, turned around and left the room.
* * *
In my twenties I had fire in my bones, something pushing me to teach this town some lessons. I can safely say the only people around who liked me were my sister and Jordan F. Everyone else thought I was a hippie or a bum, because why else would I not work in blood? But I never considered leaving. In my dreams, I was running for council and everyone was calling it a slam dunk.
* * *
Making a fortune seemed a good first step, so I tried my best. It’s the money that wins the war at the end, not the blood, but no one around me seemed to know it. I made some good investments, learned to spot the investments that would later invest on their own. I can’t say that I made a fortune, but for a while I was doing okay. Several times, I invited Jordan F to join in when I had a good lead, but he always coughed and said Thanks, I’m good. The truth was, my minor success made no difference; the town still looked down on me. Jordan F always stood by my side, but he managed to do that without risking his reputation. His job made it easy—people here respect the bloodtruck drivers, because at the end of the day everyone’s hard work is in their hands, and because they are privy to more classified information than most. As Jordan F says, You can’t drive with your eyes closed. But if Jordan F started investing with me, people’s perception of him would change. And I guess I wasn’t making enough money to make that worthwhile.
* * *
When times got rough, they got rough fast. I made some mistakes, then made things worse trying to correct them. It was a crisis of speed and faith, you could say—I was always a slow investor, always took hours staring at stats, and now that there was no time to do that, I found myself giving up and leaving, again and again, when all I had to do was believe that tomorrow’s numbers would look better than today’s. In short, I failed.
* * *
I needed cash, but for obvious reasons I tried to downplay my decision to donate. I didn’t want everyone in town talking about it, speculating on the reasons. I went during the night shift, to one of the small stations on the outskirts of town, on a day when Jordan F was away delivering. I expected word would get out if I kept at it, of course; I just wanted to slow things down. What I didn’t expect—couldn’t have expected—was the rush that it gave me. No one had ever mentioned this lightness, all your worries losing their weight and the air getting thin like you’re at the top of a mountain, close to the sky. Take more, take everything, I told the nurse, a woman whose braids I used to tug on years ago. Lie down, stop jumping, she kept saying, you’ve always been so restless.
* * *
I stayed up the whole night after that, awake with excitement. Suddenly I couldn’t wait for Jordan F to come back, so I could share the news. The next day in the afternoon, I was walking down Benevolence Ave., which gets the worst of the town’s traffic on weekdays. Through the sequence of moving-trucks and buses, a wounded man cried in an attempt to get my attention: Sir, sir, would you please lend me a hand? He was bleeding so bad it was hard to know which part of him was missing. The man was an out-of-towner, or at least I didn’t know him. Our town always attracted that sort of thing—people assumed if we were donating blood, we’d be open to donating organs, too. Jordan F, anyone else in town, would have kept on walking. I crossed the street to get to him. He was begging—Please, man, please, please. His body contorted as if he were trying to draw something in the air with his knees. I looked at him and felt a tickle of the lightness from the previous night. I thought, He did say lend. And if he doesn’t ac
tually give it back, well, I’ll still have the other one.
* * *
A few hours later I walked over to Boon’s Bar a one-armed man, to meet Jordan F. My left pocket felt empty—I had the habit of twirling my fingers in there—but it was the kind of emptiness that didn’t seek to be filled. When I stepped in, Jordan F noticed the change right away. And right away he was being judgmental. I said, Let me point out that I’m perfectly functional with one arm; most days I forget I used to have two. Jordan F snorted. Most days? he said; it’s only been a few hours. It was one of those truths whose falseness you couldn’t prove. I don’t care to discuss this further, I said. The conversation I wanted to have felt out of reach.
All right, Jordan F said, but what’s going on with you? There’s a rumor going around that you started donating. He said this with half a chuckle and all of a sudden I wished he’d go on a very long delivery. I did, I said and flipped him my donor stamp. Jordan F’s eyes opened wide, and his mouth angled toward his chin. Why? he said, stunned. I needed the money, I said, my words quiet. I knew I’d been happy a couple minutes ago, but couldn’t remember why. I thought that’s what you always wanted, I said. Yeah, no, Jordan F said, I don’t know. We sat there like that for some time, ignoring our beers. When we were younger, before Jordan F started driving blood, people used to tease us, call us faggots. Real friendship between two men is not something you see in this town. I never minded it much, but it used to bug the hell out of Jordan F. It’s been so many years, but I found myself thinking about it now, sitting at Boon’s with him.
I thought for a while that he would never speak again, or at least not to me. And even though I walked in thinking we would toast and laugh, a part of me knew it would go exactly as it did. Jordan F was always giving me grief for not donating, separating myself from the town, but he didn’t really want anything to change. He liked that I knew nothing about bloodwork. When you’ve known someone your whole life, all it means when you feel surprised is that you’re fooling yourself.