[2014] The Time Traveler's Wife

by C. Sean McGee

  “Why bother?” he said.

  “Mini hotdogs” John’s Nipple replied. “They’re delicious, and better than being alone, or having to take the time to get to know someone else.”

  “And that’s it. Once I’ve heard every story, over and over, so many times that I can tell it myself, then what are they to me?”

  “A friend.”

  “A friend. A story. A lover. A life. Am I to be stuck with this life for an eternity then, once it has been lived?”

  “I have a name you know,” John’s Nipple said. “And a story to tell.”

  “I think it’s best that we remain strangers. And I don’t wanna disappoint, but I don’t think there’s gonna be any hotdogs.” John said.

  John’s Nipple sighed, just as John had. He had expected that answer but even still, he was hoping for something else.

  “And you know what I said?” Stefan asked to the party, keeping them in suspense.

  John entered the room and clamped his eyes for a second as he adjusted to the smoke and light which by all accounts, were fitting for some back alley, dark and grimy, sleazy drug deal or blowjob gone bad. And everyone turned to John, clapping and hooting and whistling and chanting his name. They were in the kind of hysterics that overwhelmed maddened and riled gangs of sports fans and religious zealots, yet they were only three; Tracy, Stefan, his wife Elise, and out in the backyard, harassing his cats and seconds away from tearful willowing, his three children; The Accident, The Apology, and The Happy Ending.

  “Sit down here good buddy,” Stefan said tapping on the empty seat beside that both he and Tracy had no doubt prepared.

  He looked at Tracy who was sitting on the floor with her legs curled and tucked under her buttocks so that it looked like she didn’t have any. John stared at her, imagining that she had flowered from that very patch of Earth where she always sat when they had guests over, between the two yellow armchairs and the front door; close enough to John’s seat so she could reach out and touch his knee whenever the conversation turned to the things he was working on or the plans that they had for the future, and close enough to the door so that she could hint towards it, when it was time for her guests to leave.

  “We’re gonna order pizza,” Stefan said.

  “Fuck” John’s Nipple shouted, though, under the heavy jumper, nobody heard except for John.

  “What flavor do you want” Tracy mouthed though no sound came out.

  “What?” John said, erratic, and a little worried. “What did you say?”

  Tracy looked at him oddly and again she spoke.

  “What flavor do you want?” she mouthed again.

  And again, her lips moved and bent into the shape of those words, and from her mouth, again the light in the air seemed to bend and warp, as if, like a black hole, the sound of those words crept about, silent and conspicuous, through the thick smoke and heavy expectant stares. John stared at her wildly, as if the wider his eyes were and the closer he stretched, the more sense she might start to make.

  “What did she say?” he asked, slithering the words down his vest.

  “Keep your shit together brother,” John’s Nipple said. “She asked what flavor you want.”

  “Of what?”

  “Pizza,” John’s Nipple said; thinking of bite sized hotdogs.

  John stared back at Tracy. She was smiling, but she was asking him something. He didn’t know what exactly, but he could guess. There were after all, only so many words and expressions that they had in their dialogue. They talked about the same things day after day and forever in the same lexical manner, for the things they did never changed, and neither did the bank of their vocabulary. And so when she stopped talking and he was sure it was his time to speak he said, “Whatever you like.”

  “Play it cool,” his nipple said, urging him to sit down.

  “You want a drink good buddy,” Stefan asked, already pushing a glass of whisky into John’s face.

  John took the glass obligingly and smiled at the room as he sat down of the armchair. Already Tracy was squirming on her folded legs, smiling proudly and seconds away from reaching her hand towards his knee, before telling some story from John’s past that she assumed she had told a hundred times before while Elise and Stefan listened politely, pretending that they hadn’t.

  “You’re not gonna believe what I got?” Stefan said, reaching into his jacket pocket.

  John had stopped imaging responses to Stefan’s inquisitions years before. His trained but unfelt instinct was to stretch and contort his face as if a spider had fallen onto his knee. It did the job to sufficing friend like obligation and offered no suspicion to his actual disinterest. From his pocket, Stefan pulled out a long and thin, white joint.

  “Got it from one of the guys in Marketing. They’re always smoking. It’s supposed to be the shit. Later on, we’ll light it up, like old times, and listen to that new Nine Inch Nails song. That will be fucking shit hot. What do you think?”

  John took the spliff from Stefan’s hands and held it under his nose. He hadn’t smoked in such a long time. He ran it back and forth under his nose, smelling the finely pressed weed, until, in a second, his thoughts slipped backwards in time, away from the sleazy lights and engulfing smoke, when, as a young man, as he gingerly rolled a dried mash of tobacco and sweet crystalline weed into a tight joint, his attention was cordoned rapaciously, by the passing of a beautiful girl with a scent like lemon tea. And immediately he stopped what he was doing, not out of will, but out of complete lack of function.

  “You alright there buddy?” Stefan asked, reaching for the joint that had fallen to the floor.

  John said nothing. His thoughts were still with Tracy, as she had been before time had soured her complexion and before age had bruised and withered their lust and passion. His every sense felt as clear and as transparent now as they did back then, as if there was no way that he could hide how he felt, regardless of how deeply he furrowed his brow or how mean and ill-spirited he bargained his face to become.

  He followed her then, in his thoughts.

  He followed her onto a bus that was going in the other direction and then he followed her down the aisle and he sat two seats behind; seeing and listening through the color of her aroma. Then, when the bus stopped and she got off, he followed her through a maze of corridors and winding stairs; up until the top of an incredible tower and then back down again. He followed her into a score of boutiques and into a handful of stores, then followed her into every queue and then out of every door.

  He followed her through a busy arcade and into the bustling thoroughfare, drawn by the scent of lemon tea, briskly walking and defiantly pushing through a collage of spruikers and buskers and beggars galore, desperate not to lose her; but not so much himself.

  He followed her.

  He followed her until she disappeared behind a flock of tourists, all dizzy with delight and historical parallax. Still wet on her scent, he followed her blindly into the square of performers and preachers and the homeless with placards. He followed her further and further until her trail weakened and he fought to push through the slurry of people to again catch her scent once more. He followed and he followed until, desperate and delirious, he tripped on a child that was being chased by its mother, through the pleated legs of buggered and bothered business attire. He hopped onto one foot and the other, and then when he lifted his head again to the busy sidewalk, she was gone.

  In his thoughts, he stood in the doorway of a small store that sifted a blend of strange soul charming instruments with an endless trail of incense that coursed over his head and into the afternoon air. And as he looked into the expansive crowd, he watched as the impossibility of finding the girl, swarmed about him like high heeled, pin striped locusts.

  There was nothing but lemon tea; the sting of her scent tickling his senses.

  But now, as his eyes drew upon the woman he loved, his senses were awash with that very same fragrance, the perfume that she wore every day; like
sweet lemon tea. Only now, the scent was soiled with a musky air of stagnancy that hanged around his thoughts like the smell of decade old sex; in the carpets, bed sheets and in the cracks of the poorly plastered walls of any old dank and windowless brothel.

  It was no longer sweet and enamored. It was the scent that greeted him every day when he arrived home from the job that he reviled, to the squalor of a house that he had barely the income to acquire or the time, energy or the basic want to improve. It was the scent the grounded him; that earthed him from his fanciful thoughts; that never let him escape for long enough to imagine a better way to live or another way out. It was the scent that greeted him every morning with tired scorn, as moping heads narrowly missed one another, shuffling about and banging cupboards unnecessarily. It was the scent that wafted by as he struggled to piss, staring in the mirror and practicing how to smile, wink and nod; and seeing what it looked like when he said things like 'I love you', 'I don't have the time' and 'No it's ok, I don't mind coming back'. It was the scent of age and confusion, looking at himself in the mirror, still expecting to see a young man but finding only the deep set lines of remorse chiseled into his sunken face, as if, in the times between struggling to piss in the morning, and in the evening, feigning to fall asleep, his soul were being hollowed out and his body, caving in on itself.

  John stumbled out of the store, knocking over a stand of exotic spices and lemon flavored teas; the boxes bursting open and glazing his senses. And an old man screamed.

  “Hey you. You dumb fuck. You fuck my store. I fuck you.”

  John turned and saw an angry and loosely versed old man with thin hair and a crooked eye, shaking his left fist and shouting obtusely as he scoured through his change drawer, desperately looking for a knife or a gun or the handle of a broom.

  The desire to follow was now the need to run away.

  The smell of lemon tea had him gagging, reflecting upon all of the compromises he had made; every stone that he had left unturned on his own unbeaten path, so that he could spend not nearly half a lifetime, in understanding her. He no longer remembered the reason he was in that store that day, but instead, the reason that he ran out and with it, the thousands of times in his life he had neither the focus nor the patience to finish what he had started. He remembered the cursing Chinese man, throwing clouds of colored salts and lemon tea in his eyes as he kicked his knees and threatened to call the police. He remembered the passersby all laughing and pointing and shaking their heads in disapproval. And from that memory, he remembered all the times his mother and his father had done the same; all the times he had let them and the people that mattered and depended on him, down.

  Lemon tea; it was the contrary to curious lust; it was the scent of disappointment.

  “You know what I love?” Stefan asked.

  “Pizza” shouted the room in merry astonishment, like a nursery of infants, discovering their own feet.

  “Pizza,” Stefan said in concordance, gnashing his teeth and making a horrible slurping sound as he nodded and chewed, pushing the extremity of all that he could encompass at one time. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Yes,” John thought, staring at Stefan as he extracted thick wedges of pizza dough and pepperoni from the gaps in his teeth, knowing too well that at any second, the conversation would coil back to work, his kids or something from last night’s news.

  “I don’t know why we bother,” John’s Nipple said as both stared at Stefan hoeing down on slice after slice, drenching the clumps of sauced, cheesy dough with luke warm beer and spoonsful of strawberry ice-cream. As he chewed, his mouth convulsed - both as a grating and shoveling object and as a device of audible projection.

  He bit and he chewed and he slurped and he gulped and….

  “Ahhh yeah baby, Ummm, oh yeah” he moaned, licking his fat lips. “That hits the spot. “Now,” he said, rightly, “you know, the real problem with terrorism is…”

  And before he could highlight his point or even introduce a subject, he was shoveling more food into that swill bucket of a mouth, swallowing whole chunks of steaming pizza as his tongue fought through the gooey residue to form words and to decipher the flavor of whatever the hell he was piling into it.

  “God just look at him,” John’s Nipple said with a certain air of disgust, revile and wondrous appreciation.

  Stefan was discoursing and chewing and biting and swallowing; doing many things at once, and whilst leaning to his left to appear to validate a point, he farted, low, deep and wet; tormenting his wife who rolled her eyes subtly and didn’t miss a beat as she hammered onto Tracy about the rigors of afternoon spin classes, that terrific meme she saw about being a mother of three that you’d have to have three kids to really understand, but that was still hilarious and great fun regardless, and in noticing Tracy’s fledging attention, a list of facts she had learned about Coca Cola, AIDS and koala bears.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” John’s Nipple said. “His mouth or his arse. Does he always talk this much shit?”

  John stared at his friend whom he had known his whole life. He tipped his head sideways like an attentious but confused puppy and he nodded. “Always,” he said. “Everyone, always.”

  “There is absolutely no content in what this guy is saying. I mean nothing” John’s Nipple said, looking up at John. “Your opinions stink” he shouted, in the direction of Stefan.

  I didn’t matter, though, just as Stefan couldn’t hear the quarrelling springs beneath his flatulent buttocks, he too couldn’t hear the pleas of ‘Oh God’ and ‘Shoot me now’ from beneath the cloud of both John and his nipple’s heavy set squall.

  “Nobody knows this fact, just me” Stefan said, almost choking on a pointed edge of thick crust. “Not the news, not the university ones, not even the…”

  He went on and on and on.

  “I hate you,” John’s Nipple said. “But I hate myself for expecting any different. Look at him John, how he eats that spoiled garbage. Look how he shovels into his gullet. He doesn’t even chew. What is that?” John’s Nipple asked, watching Stefan picking crumbs, crème, soot, ash and the corners of magazines from under his tongue and the crevice-like gaps in his teeth. “Is that? Pizza, beer, peanuts, jelly donuts, Time, The fucking Economist, Newsweek, BB fucking C, and oh god, look at that, oh no he isn’t, yep he is, he’s washing that tripe down with Rolling Stone. Jesus. What’s wrong with you man?” John’s Nipple shouted. “Don’t you know what you’re doing to your insides? That shit will give you hemorrhoids.”

  John turned to Tracy. He stared at her. He couldn’t hear a word she was saying, but he didn’t have to, for whatever it was, she would have said a thousand times already, and before the end of the night, she will have said it a thousand times more.

  The other two he could hear; Stefan and his wife. It was hard to ignore them. It wasn’t their low take on morality, race or gender indifference that was obnoxious and lamenting; it wasn’t so much the kind of words they used, it was how they used them. Their words were like the panting of a stranger’s warm and musky breath, against the back of his neck on a cramped and crowded train. Their ideas reeked like that stranger’s blistered and bunioned feet, having dredged through the stale and malodorous footprint of popular opinion. Their mouths were instruments of educated belching.

  Tracy was talking about the movie they watched last week. He could tell by the way she dipped her head when she spoke and in how she squinted her eyes. It was her philosopher's face. Whenever she talked about movies she had watched, books she had read or political messages she had seen, scrawled along the sides of freeway overpasses, Tracy tensed her face and her words became rigid little rounded opinions. He knew exactly what she was going to say next. He always did. He watched her mouth flapping like a broken wing and when the timing was right, he said the word ‘blue’.

  The whole room erupted in laughter. Stefan and his wife cheered and gave each other high fives while Tracy leaned forwards proudly, her ghostlike touch, passing inv
isibly through John’s knee as she mutely declared her love for him with the other two both dolefully agreeing, how darling and dear that it was, how they finished one another’s sentences.

  “I love you” she mouthed.

  “I love you” John mouthed back, matching her silence, and feeling nothing. “I love you” he mouthed again, trying to string some feeling to the end of his words. “I love you, I love you, I live you, I laugh at you, elephant shoes.”

  Nothing.

  His words were like deflated balloons, strung from a ceiling. And though she seemed to understand what they meant, the look in Tracy’s eye was no different to how she greeted other innocuous truths without wonder; like in how the number three was both the succession and the accumulation of its predecessors or in how the presence of the moon alone proved that she was fact, a space alien, hurtling through dark expanding omniverse.

  “I’m starving,” John’s Nipple said. “You gonna stare at what’s her face all night long or you gonna help me out here?”

  “Shit,” John said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. What flavor do you want?”

  “What is there?”

  “Ham and pineapple, Supreme, and Stroganoff.”

  “Stroganoff? What the fuck man?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had it before. It’s Tracy’s thing you know? She orders it every time, to be different. You don’t wanna try it?”

  “I didn’t say that” John’s Nipple exclaimed.