by Sean Ferrell
I could fix it, I decided. I moved the plates back from the doorway with my foot. They left a trail of grease, and I once again questioned my menu choices. I waited. Just as I wondered why I never used the ladies’ room—there weren’t any other guests, after all—my thirty-seven-year-old self stepped from the men’s room and walked past the plates. His left foot tapped one, tipping cold rice pilaf onto the threadbare Persian carpet.
The accident avoided, I reached up to touch my nose.
Behind me the braying laugh began again and a voice shouted out, “I told you I could barely remember it.” We all turned toward the voice. An Elder, past forty and very drunk, stood near a turn in the hallway, a wild look in his eye. The Drunk. His clothes—wet, black, filthy—clung to him. Another Elder with a shaved head and a white shirt held him up. The Drunk pulled at the other’s hand, for support or in an effort to get away. Perhaps even he wasn’t sure which.
For a moment I couldn’t understand his comment. Then I remembered the same mocking shout when my nose had been broken. I’d just stopped my accident from occurring, and the Drunk had responded to his own joke. How could he refer to something that had no longer happened? I thought of the incident, of my moving of the plates.
“How can you know that?” I called to him. He pulled himself free of the other Elder and rounded the corner. I caught up with him in the ballroom as he tried to disappear into the crowd. I grabbed his shoulder. “How can you know?”
He looked at me with watering eyes and tapped his filthy temple. “It’s as clear as day.”
I thought again of the accident and remembered the fall, the striking of the table, the blinding pain, and suddenly choking on my blood. I felt my nose, the now-familiar bump that the break had left behind. I’d changed nothing for me. I’d changed it for my younger self, who would now remember only striking something with his foot, turning to see rice on the floor, and wondering why I stood beside the plates with a silly grin on my face.
The Drunk laughed. “Not so easy, is it? Marrying two things that both can’t be.”
I nodded. “How’s this possible?”
“You’ll figure it out.” His smile faded. “Or not.” He stood before me like a post in the ground, steady and solid. He wasn’t as drunk as I’d first thought. I, however, could use a drink. He said, “If you try to ‘fix’ anything in your past, you’ll be like the guy who tries to fuck himself in the ass. It would feel great if it didn’t hurt like a son of a bitch. You want to be sure of what happens; don’t monkey around.” He laughed at this and turned away. I remember I watched him disappear into the crowd.
HOW MANY BATTLES can you watch before the men rushing across the field remind you more of the grass that will grow there than of the men who will die there? How many important documents can you witness the signature of before all you see is the dust the paper becomes, the fate of faded ink, the ignorance of their forebears’ suffering that future generations hold on to? My interests turned inward.
THE BODY’S RUIN haunted me. I walked the halls of the hotel with only one thing in mind: The main bar had a supply of twelve-year-old scotch. I checked my watch. Most of the scotch would be gone in about an hour. I hurried my pace. I pocketed the watch, then realized that it wasn’t mine. Mine was on my lapel. This other had to be Sober’s. A shudder ran through me. I couldn’t take it out again to examine.
I turned a corner and found the hallway crowded beyond passage with myself. The congestion was a source of irritation in every convention memory. The hall felt as if it were shrinking. Against the tide I struggled toward the door no more than thirty feet away. Complaints from Youngsters rose out of the crowd as I knocked plates from hands, stepped on toes, and generally pissed everyone off. I swore to myself that I would never come this way again, and looking around me at the young faces, I realized I would keep that promise. So much youth. Why so many? I wondered. When had I returned so often? I tried to think back to last year but couldn’t remember clearly whether there had been this many Youngsters. Party memories were a tinkling of ice in glasses, spilled liquor, fighting over the last scoop of pilaf. But I was almost certain I hadn’t come to the convention that often. Something was off. Had I crossed myself too many times? Had I done something during a blackout? What had changed? Along the back of my mind snuck images of the Body, crumpled at the bottom of the elevator car. Could what had happened in the elevator be related to why no one in this hallway was older than me? Impossible. A coincidence of geography. Elsewhere in the building were Seventy, Screwdriver, and Yellow, all older than me. Others would be here, had to be—I’d only not seen them yet. Right then I needed to see some Elders, even though I hated what they told me of myself. The flab, the laziness, the lack of upkeep—the proof of life. I needed to see them, and I needed to collect my thoughts, find a place to breathe and figure out my next step. That meant the ballroom bar.
At the ballroom entrance, I found a wall of Youngsters fixated on the details of one’s trip through Roman orgies—lies, I knew, not that knowing the truth made the telling of tales any less titillating. I fought through the mass, managed one final boost by launching myself from someone’s calf. This brought back memories of the mysterious charley horse I had carried for the rest of the night during my twenty-third year. Though the apology wouldn’t be remembered, I offered one over my shoulder and opened the ballroom doors.
In the ballroom half the chandeliers were burned out. The uneven power supply turned the remaining bulbs orange and cast an ill light over the room. No one had switched on the music yet. On the dance floor, Youngsters ran in sloppy circles, throwing pretzels and ice cubes at one another. I avoided them and walked across the carpeted area in purposeful strides. No one here younger than me knew about the elevator. Even now Yellow and Screwdriver were putting OUT OF ORDER signs on the subway level. Latecomers would be making rain-soaked entrances from this moment on.
I reached the bar, an ugly scene. When I was a Youngster, the idea of tending bar had held some romantic appeal. For the three years before I turned twenty-four, I worked behind the bar, each of me pouring one for the customers, one for ourselves. Over the years, as I grew to appreciate the customer’s perspective more, I realized what an annoyance the three brats behind the bar were, always snookered well before midnight. Those three years led to the evening’s early lack of twelve-year-old scotch. Those three years also set a pretty heavy pattern in place, which is why so many of the Youngsters were beyond intolerable. Alcohol is a wonderful way to make a repeated evening seem fresh—details get lost in the fuzz, and the anticipated becomes a surprise. As a result I was less than clear on events from most Youngsters’ perspectives, especially as the evening wore on.
I found a clear spot along the bar well away from anyone else. The Bar Brats were arguing about women from earlier epochs, and I knocked on the bar to get their attention. They all wore the same tuxedo, one obtained by the eldest of them and passed backward so that the youngest was the filthiest. He made his way down to me, his hand feeling along the inner edge of the bar, already with a good head start to a blistering hangover. I gave him my order.
His head tipped like that of a bird looking for worms. “Didn’t I just give you one?”
Of course he had. He’d given me all sorts of drinks hours, minutes, moments ago.
I said, “No. You must have me confused with me. Get me something old.”
“Something old?”
“Something aged.” I studied the grain of the bar, thinking only of the elevator’s rushing plunge. “I want to get drunk and enjoy it.”
He shuffled off. “Really. I can’t believe how all you old guys sound so much alike.”
I couldn’t recall how much of this was a joke and how much genuine inebriated confusion. The black haze in my memory was thick. Normally I would have tried to make a joke of it, reminded him that we were all “relatives,” which I would have found doubly funny, from both his and my perspective, but at the moment I couldn’t think of anything
other than my drink. Before he returned with it, someone joined me at the bar.
“Nice suit, by the way.”
Yellow sat beside me, chewing on his lips like he wanted to keep them from speaking. Before I could think to ask what he wanted, he pointed behind me. Over my shoulder at least a dozen younger selves sat around two tables, heads together, eyes on me. I recalled some particulars I’d whispered about the Suit around those tables. I’d made an impression like a superspy or a private eye on his way to meet a femme fatale. Distracted, I’d made the Entrance and hadn’t even enjoyed it.
The Bar Brats gave Yellow ingratiating, professional smiles. Yellow shooed them off. “Remember, whatever you do, don’t talk in front of Youngsters. They’ve got ears like bats and lips that wouldn’t stay sealed even if you welded them shut.”
“I remember.”
He curled toward me, his voice hissed and hurried. Anyone paying attention would see he was bent low with secrets. “This is difficult for you, for us.”
“You think?” I ran my finger around the rim of my glass until it sang. I didn’t much care for Yellow. He was a bit too good at conspiring.
He said, “How can we still be here? It’s very disturbing.”
“You would know,” I said curtly.
“Ah, yes. In other words, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ ”
Yellow was agitated. I thought it seemed like he didn’t want to be there, as if he were waiting for the next event, which he knew was more interesting or important.
I said, “Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”
He was staring past me, lost in thought. After a moment his eyes floated back toward mine. “What?”
I finished my drink too quickly and called the Brats for another. The three Youngsters tripped over one another to reach me, as if I had ever, or would ever, tip them for their services. One held the glass, another threw the ice, and the last poured. Some of the whiskey even reached the glass. I thanked them, and they chased one another to the other end of the bar, where they made a show of wiping glasses with a rag. I remembered that they would be whispering to one another about future sexual exploits they had misoverheard.
Yellow leaned in again. “I know some things don’t need to be said, but I’ll say them anyway. All right? First, yes, he’s dead.” His eyes, locked on mine, didn’t move or blink. “Second, yes, everyone older than you knows.”
I sat upright and looked over my shoulder again. Beside two tables filled with chattering-bird youth were four other tables surrounded by ten chairs each, many filled with older selves either eating or talking. A low rumble of conversation echoed from the ceiling. I spotted faces turned toward me. I was being watched. Everyone older than me had recalled that I was having this conversation and had looked up to see how it was going or to relive the moment. Some deeply lined faces nodded at me. One nearly white-haired old man in a Pilgrim doublet and felt hat raised a hand with a thumbs-up for encouragement.
I turned back to Yellow and my drink, suddenly chilled. “What are they expecting me to do?”
Yellow ignored the question. He said, “How’s your nose?”
“What?”
It must have been a line of thought I’d formed in my head years later. “Your nose. Broke it two years ago. Or did you?”
I rubbed the side of my nose, which had not but yet had been broken. I’d stopped the event, but the bump said otherwise.
I said, “Another paradox.”
“Yes. You will die. In … what was he? Six months older than you? A year? Yet you obviously don’t die, as you continue to come to this little wingding for years and years.”
“Why keep coming? My God. How do I survive?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why the hell not?”
The Brats were polishing the bar suspiciously close to us. A reflective spot shone in the low light where one rubbed a rag in a lazy circle. The other two hovered over his shoulder, tried and failed to look interested in the cleaning. Both Yellow and I stopped talking and watched the Brats. When they realized we were onto them, all three coughed into fists and retreated.
I lowered my voice and repeated my question. “If I’m supposed to die but you know how to survive, why the hell not tell me?”
“Because I don’t know. None of us do.” He looked at my drink, almost reverent. “There’s a large black spot, like a cloud, in our heads. I don’t remember much of this party from the next few years.”
“Why?”
Yellow stared past me, no pity in his eyes now, only disgust and judgment. “It’s sitting beside me.”
The answer sat on the stool on Yellow’s other side. The Drunk. His odor was immense, a mix of alcohol and urine. He was one you didn’t look at or talk to. He was given wide berth in the halls. The Drunk was avoided, misremembered, blamed. I looked at him closely for the first time in years and drew in a sharp breath, which I instantly regretted for the vapors rising from him. Several things I noticed surprised me. His clothes were the same suit I was wearing, redesigned by filth. Under his beard and grime, he wasn’t as old as I’d always thought. He was young, barely older than me. Perhaps only a year or two older.
“God.” I realized what Yellow was leading me to.
“Yes.”
“He’s the survivor?”
“And he doesn’t remember a fucking thing. He’s useless.”
“So what happened? What creates the paradox?”
“Believe me, that’s the major topic of discussion among everyone older than you. That and sex, the fucking perverts.”
No stranger to self-judgment—especially regarding sex, particularly when engaged in the act, coupled or solo—I couldn’t recall such strong admonition. I chanced a glance at Yellow’s downturned mouth. “Does that lovely sweater come with a vow of celibacy?”
I’m sure he wanted to protest, but instead he waited for me to hold up a hand and mutter an apology. I offered it without feeling any genuine remorse, and both of us knew it.
Around the room the age clusters were very pronounced, as if a form of segregation were taking place. Everyone older than me drifted toward one side of the room, away from the door, near the empty stage where a single turntable played music—The Fifth Dimension, mostly. Elders took turns flipping the albums over when they reached the end. When I was in my twenties, the Elders had seemed decrepit, barely there and reeking of their inability to digest the food or drink properly, their clothes more and more worn, more repetitive. I’d avoided them, uncertain at what point I would cross that line into not caring how I presented myself, at what point not combing my hair or arriving in slept-in clothes became preferable to making even the smallest effort. Now, as I sat with Yellow, I was struck by how familiar—how comfortable—they had become.
At the other end clustered younger selves, who as of this moment all struck me as childish, even those in their thirties. Every table was covered with too many glasses of alcohol. My life’s drinking phases were plainly visible: There was my beer table, my fruity-mixed-drink stage. The table nearest me, around which some mid-thirty-year-olds sat, illustrated my current crutch. Straight liquor on the rocks. Glasses of diluted alcohol in shades of golden brown.
Yellow leaned closer to me. “Notice anything?”
It was easy to see now. Impossible to miss, really, and I wondered how it hadn’t occurred to me before. Most everyone older than me was sober. There were a few drinks on a few tables here and there, but they could just as easily have been soda as anything hard. “There’s very little conversation.”
“Actually, there’s quite a lot. But it’s all the same. Constant speculation. Constant attempts to put the pieces together.”
That there were so many Elders hinted at my potential success, but the tired, watery eyes, the skin patched with age spots, the bent backs and dry coughs that echoed my memories of my grandfather—these delivered a sense of inevitable failure. Regardless of outcome, my future was the chatter of birds in a graveyard, the worry of m
en mourning themselves, a conversation about their pursuits and failures, the sad and sadly sober discussion of my mortality. If there hadn’t been one in my hand, I would have needed a drink. “What have we got so far?”
“Nothing other than that it’s up to you.”
“How many dozens of us, and that’s all we’ve figured out?”
“You’re the last one before it happens. When you come back next year, that’s it. You’re on one side of the event. We’re on the other. We can speculate, but other than that.…”
“But surely you can tell me—”
“We’ve all discussed this quite a bit. I’m afraid we’re going to have to follow our memories’ lead and not let you know what we discussed. It might tip things.”
My fingers tapped the bar. His, too, in the same impatient rhythm.
I said, “That fucking stinks.” What a time for me to suddenly gain some backbone about my own rules. “So when it really matters, when death is on the line, you decide to stick your thumb in your mouth and suck?” A pack of teens howled past, one bumping into me. I reached behind me and pulled a sign off my back. Crude letters spelled LOSER. I crumpled it and tossed it on the bar. “Is it just me?” I asked. “Or were they younger than the Inventor?” It worried me.
Yellow looked after the group with the same concern I felt. “I don’t know.” I could tell he would be following up. “When it matters most is when rules need to be enforced most.” Yellow looked at me with a straight face for a second and then laughed. “I know. Sounds trite.”