Forty Leap

by Turner, Ivan

“He doesn’t like you,” Livvie told me.

  “I know,” I said without knowing why I said it.

  “Oh. Well I never knew. But I think he’s a lot like you.”

  That came as a surprise, but I was too tired to show it.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “The reason I’m calling is because I think Mom has Dad on the ropes, you know?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, she’s almost got Dad convinced that you’re nuts. She’s talking about forcing you to get ‘help’.”

  That last bit made me angry, very angry. Even though she had very little chance of being able to accomplish something like that, I was overwhelmed by just how much animosity she had toward me. What I wouldn’t tell Livvie was that Martie had absolutely no concern for my well being. She simply hated me and wanted to make me pay for saddling them with the responsibility of my mother. Livvie probably knew it anyway.

  What I said was, “Don’t worry, Livvie. It takes a lot to have someone committed.”

  “Oh,” she answered, a bit bewildered, as if the comment was a non-sequitor. “Well, I just felt you should know where they stand.”

  The conversation hung silent for a few moments.

  “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, Uncle Mathew,” she said at last.

  “Thank you,” I choked.

  “Okay then. Well… bye.”

  “Bye, Livvie,” I whispered, and waited for the click to sound before I hung up the phone.

  “You okay, Mathew?” Morty asked after a few seconds.

  “Yeah,” I said, but it was a lie. In me there was anger and sadness and a little bit of joy at a reconciliation with my niece. The conflicting emotions were dragging on me, making it impossible for me to think about anything else.

  I stood.

  “Mathew? Where are you going?”

  “What?” Going? I hadn’t thought about going anywhere. “The bathroom, I guess.”

  And to the bathroom I went.

  My office shared a bathroom with three other offices on that floor. In order to get there, I had to make my way out of the cubicle area into the outer reception area. Estelle glared at me as I emerged. She always did that lately, as if she expected me to disappear before her very eyes. I suppose that could have happened, but it didn’t and that was the very last time I saw Estelle anyway, so what does it all matter? There was a short corridor that housed a corner office to my left and the other office to my right. The bathroom was at the far end of the hall, just opposite the staircase. I went in to find it deserted, which was a pleasant surprise.

  I wasn’t inside long. I let myself into a stall only to realize that going there was just an excuse for not working. What I really needed was some time and some air. I had about an hour until the end of the work week and most of everything was pretty wrapped up. Maybe I could get Morty to go out again. Even though I didn’t even unzip my trousers, I washed my hands and stepped out into the corridor. A police officer just entering the staircase turned at the sound of my exit and looked startled upon seeing me.

  “What are you still doing up here?” he cried out.

  “What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there anyone else in there?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  He didn’t take my word for it, opening the door and yelling into the room. He then turned back to me. “Didn’t you hear the alarm? Dammit I checked that bathroom!”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a bomb in the building,” he explained. “We’ve been clearing it for the past half hour.”

  “But I was only in there for a minute,” I told him. “Just…” I checked my watch in terror, but it read Friday, November 23rd, 3:58pm. It was quite obviously wrong.

  He led me out of the building, not interested in any explanations. Why should he be? As we moved down the stairs, he radioed his superiors. Based on what I could decipher from the garbled radio talk, I was suddenly being considered a suspect. Two other police officers rendezvoused with us in the staircase. I said nothing to them, realizing the futility of trying to explain my condition. My medical records would back up my story, although I didn’t know how many days I had missed this time and how truly thin the concept of “blackouts” had become.

  The street outside was empty of pedestrian traffic. There were police cars and bomb squad vans. I was rushed away from the building, but the police were keeping a close eye on me. Then I caught sight of my boss at the corner and I called out to her. I couldn’t believe the look on her face once she recognized me, which she didn’t do immediately. She spoke to a policeman by the barricade and he let her through.

  “Please,” I said, suddenly a little bit frantic. “Tell them I work here.”

  “Worked here,” she corrected.

  “It’s happened again,” I explained to her. “Look at my watch.”

  She could plainly see the time and date, but did not lose her cold demeanor.

  “I just went to the bathroom. Morty will tell you.”

  Here expression went blank. Even the police officers saw it. It’s amazing how the change in one person can butterfly out to affect all of the surrounding people. Just the mention of Morty’s name had triggered something in her to which her psyche was not prepared to react.

  “What?” I asked, even though I already knew. “What is it?”

  So she told me and that made it true. Morty was dead.

  Upon hearing that news, the oddest thing happened. I blacked out. The news of Morty’s death shocked me something awful. Less than ten minutes before, I had answered his concerns with absentmindedness. But he had experienced some unknown amount of time in those ten minutes and died as a result of it. What’s more, I was suddenly beginning to understand that the effects of these time jumps, which were still increasing in length, were broadening at an exponential rate. In the time I was gone, the life of someone I knew had ended. A shock from which others had recovered was now new to me. The pain was intense, like a great squeezing of the fabric of my own consciousness. I must have fallen because I came to as I hit the curb.

  “Are you okay?” one of the policemen was asking me.

  “No,” I replied, still woozy. I looked up to see my boss’ icy gaze and found, much to my surprise, that I was angry. My anger was clearly directed at her, but I couldn’t say why. As I stood from the curb, though, there was a hard edge to my tone that I had never heard before. “When? How?”

  There was no sympathy to be found. “He was hit by a bus more than two weeks ago. You’re supposed to be his friend.”

  It was an indictment and I didn’t like it one bit. “How would I know about it?!” I spat back at her. And I mean spat. Globs of spittle and mucus flew from my rabid mouth and washed over her. This, finally, drew a reaction. Whatever meekness I had displayed throughout the course of my life fled in the face of this tragedy and this insolent bitch that dared to make light of its impact. I did not back down nor did I apologize for spitting on her. I met her gaze full on and dared her to challenge me.

  And she did not.

  But it was a limp victory at best. Morty was dead. I couldn’t believe it. Literally, I couldn’t believe it. The police had no evidence on which they could base a charge so I was released without ever being formally arrested. I did not bother to stand around and see the drama through to its conclusion. My job was someone else’s and my friend was gone. There was no longer any need for me to be there. Marching through the crowd, I met the gazes of my former co-workers and found, much to my surprise, that they looked away in embarrassment. I did not understand this, nor do I ever expect to find an answer. It’s actually one of those great matters of irrelevance that sparks curiosity and then quickly degrades into fleeting memory.

  Finally, I moved past the lot of them, out of the throng of onlookers, and into the open streets. I had to walk several blocks before I could find a train station that was open and running, but the walk did me good. It helped me to b
elieve that I was leaving my troubles behind as I left that place and those people behind.

  I could not have been more wrong.

  Chapter II

  I had left reality on November 23rd. It was now January 3rd, a Thursday. I had missed the New Year, not that that meant much to me. I’m not the party type. I usually spent New Years with the family or at home. So I had lost almost six weeks.

  And a good friend.

  And my mother.

  In the intervening weeks she had also passed, the news given to me by an irate message left by Jeremy on the first of December. My brothers, who had had to deal with all of the arrangements and the estate by themselves, were extremely sore with me.

  Even Wyatt would not take my calls. As the afternoon turned into evening, I felt myself entirely alone. My life had spun completely out of control. I was at the whim of these lost bits of time. While I had been in limbo, two lives had ended. It got me to thinking about the changing world. What else had I missed?

  Well I had missed more lives. Apparently, the bomb threat called into my former office building was not an isolated event. And many of them were more than threats. Just before Christmas, the man who was uniting the Middle East, Abdelaziz, had been assassinated. No one claimed responsibility. Everyone blamed the United States. Though Abdelaziz’s successors openly condemned terrorist activity and denied any suspicion of the United States, every two-bit Jyhaddist in the world was out for blood. It was a sorry state of affairs and it dominated the news channels, of course. People were frightened and angry. There were new laws in place and new strength to the Patriot Act. There was talk of martial law. I hadn’t just stepped from November into January. I had stepped into a totally different world, one that I did not like. Imagine the effects of culture shock and jet lag rolled into one catastrophic ball and dropped on your head. Add to that the fact that everything looked the same and felt the same. It all just wasn’t the same.

  I had to call my landlord and thank him for not locking me out. He explained that he was on the verge of doing so and it was a good thing I called. When was he getting paid? I immediately wrote out two rent checks for December 1st and January 1st. I would send them in the morning. A couple of paychecks had gone into my account during my “absence”, but it was pretty clear where they had stopped. If I minimized my spending, I would be okay for a couple of months, but I had to get a job. I did not live an extravagant lifestyle, so money tended to accumulate for me. But it would not be enough.

  On the 4th of January, I got up early, dressed against the cold, and took the train and the bus out to the cemetery where Jeremy and Wyatt had buried my mother. I didn’t quite know how to feel, the whole of it being still so unreal to me. There was a bitter wind and flurries in the air as I approached the grave with the apprehension of the unknown.

  The stone was new, having only been placed the week before. Below the engraving of her name and dates of life, my brothers had requested an epitaph. A good woman who gave better than her best. It wasn’t a terrible way to sum up her life. As I stood before it, though, I marveled that I did not feel any guilt for not having been there. Truthfully, I could take no blame for my absence. Given the choice, I would certainly have held her hand through those final moments, giving her my love and encouragement (how do you encourage the dying?). What I felt was cheated. Denied those final moments, I had been robbed of any reconciliation with the past and the opportunity to say the very important things that needed to be said. It was ridiculous, really. People die suddenly all the time and their loved ones are robbed of those same opportunities. It is a fact of life that death is the perfect sniper. In truth, what was stolen was, in fact, priceless, but it was not stolen from me. Imagine my mother on her death bed, her two eldest sons and grandchildren standing around her. The air is heavy with the moisture of tears. Wyatt is whispering to my mother that it will all be ok, but she knows that she is dying. She may have hours or she may have minutes. It doesn’t matter. All that she can ask is, “Where is Mathew? Where is my son?”

  I can’t say whether or not my brothers had bothered to try and explain my situation to her. I don’t know what they said or how they said it. The truth would have sounded a hollow excuse. Had I taken the time to talk to her beforehand, she may have understood. She may have decided the timing too convenient and died with hate for me in her heart. But she would have had that choice. The way it was, all she could have had was bewilderment, a bewilderment that I forced upon her. In recent years, our conversations had fallen to the trivial and I had not even thought to try and explain my situation to her. This woman who had comforted me as a child, held my hand while I lay sick out of fear or illness throughout my adolescent years, I had deemed incapable of processing the circumstances. And, as a result, she had been robbed of a basic comfort at the time of her death. And it was I who had robbed it from her.

  So I did not feel guilty, but I did feel angry. I felt ashamed. It was a mistake I could never take back. And a mistake I could never forget.

  Standing there in the cold wind and snow, tears freezing on my cheeks, I wept openly because I knew that the wounds inflicted during life scarred badly.

  The trip back to my apartment in Manhattan was long and lonely. I had brought a paperback with me, but couldn’t find the reserves with which I might concentrate on it. Once back home, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my apartment, rather than use the elevator, and found I had two visitors.

  Both were men and both were police officers, but both were dressed in suits and long coats. Both were already inside the apartment.

  The senior of the two men was a squat black man with graying hair crowning the back of his head. He presented me with a smile and a badge and introduced himself as Detective Remy Winslow. I placed him in his upper forties. He was probably eligible to retire, but seemed to very much like his work.

  The younger man was more reserved, regarding me with instant suspicion. His expression remained passive as he showed me his badge. Though he said nothing by way of introduction, he held the badge out long enough for me to read his name. Warren Li. Detective Li was much taller than his companion with an unusually large frame for an Asian. His face was square without the hint of five o’clock shadow. I disliked him immediately without, oddly enough, the sense of being intimidated.

  I was annoyed at their appearance and even moreso by the fact that they had chosen to enter my apartment uninvited. This anger, which seemed more and more to be taking hold of me, prompted a challenge. “Do you have a warrant?”

  Winslow’s expression was one of confusion while his partner seemed to grow irritated by the question. It was Winslow who responded. “We’re not here to arrest you, Mr. Cristian.”

  “You haven’t the right be in my apartment either.”

  Winslow looked around as if only just noticing his surroundings, but Li was unwilling to put on a show. He responded this time. “The law grants certain latitude in cases of terrorist activities.” I noticed that he did not use the word latitude as a way of sugar coating another meaning. It was the word he had chosen for his explanation. He was telling me in a way that suited him that he could do whatever he wanted. I identified him as pompous.

  Closing the door behind me, I began to shrug out of my coat. The two gentlemen had originally made themselves comfortable on the couch. When I had walked in, Winslow was reading a novel, which he had quickly stashed inside his coat, and Li had been staring at the door.

  The good host in me demanded that I offer them a drink. The angry and depressed individual that was on the outside squashed that impulse. Even the threat implied by Li’s statement had had no effect on me.

  “I thought that had all been cleared up,” I told them.

  It was Li who said, “At that time, we were unaware that you had been fired from your job recently.”

  And that, of course, would be my motive. “I didn’t find that out until the day of the threat.”

  “About that…” This time it was Winslow who s
poke. His entire tone and demeanor were different. It was clear that each of them was meant to ask certain types of questions. Their styles could keep a person off guard, while each different question could be posed in a correct way as determined by the two detectives. “Your replacement had actually been on the job for almost three weeks on January 3rd. What’s unclear is that you say you didn’t know you were…let go…and yet someone else was doing your job.”

  “I hadn’t been to work in a while.”

  “Any particular reason?” This, from Li.

  I hesitated, unwittingly giving them the impression that they had caught me in a lie. The trouble was that they had caught me in the truth. “I have been experiencing episodes of lost time.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Winslow said.

  “One minute it’s six o’clock on Friday. The next minute it’s 3 o’clock on the following Wednesday.”

  Winslow looked like he was trying to understand. Li looked skeptical.

  “When did this happen to you last?” Li asked.

  “November 23rd. Around four o’clock.”

  “And the ‘next minute’ was the morning of January 3rd?”

  I nodded. I didn’t expect them to believe me. My own brothers didn’t believe me.

  Winslow took over again. “So, where were you for all of that time?”

  I shrugged very matter of factly. This was becoming old hat to me. “Nowhere.”

  “You don’t sound sure,” Li accused.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied.

  “Does anyone else know about this?” Winslow asked.

  “No one who believes me,” I answered. “Except maybe Morty.”

  Winslow suddenly produced a pad and flipped through it. “That would be…Morris Yovanovicz?”

  If I was supposed to be surprised about the fact that the detectives had Morty’s name on hand, I wasn’t. I just nodded.

  There was this uncomfortable silence between us. I stood there, looking from detective to detective, each one looking at me. I suppose they were looking for some facial expression that might give away some vital piece of hidden information. But I was hiding nothing. If they wanted to know something, they would simply have to ask.