by Unknown
“Just hungry,” he said, looking down at his menu again. “So how much do we get to play with?”
“Pardon?”
“The Timex account.”
“Two million for the first go around. If they like what we deliver, five mill a year for a three-year run.”
“Sounds good.” he said absently. An empty, gurgling sensation had begun to roll in his stomach. Not, surprisingly, out of hunger, as he would have expected—he hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning and last night’s dinner had been nothing more than a couple of bites from a reheated tuna casserole—but from a slight sense of nausea. He slipped a hand below the table and loosened his belt a notch. “When do we start?”
“There’s a meeting this afternoon with Chet and Boswick and the production people.”
“What time?”
“Three,” Bev said.
“Good,” he said. “Look, could you excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be right back.”
In the restroom, he leaned heavily over the sink, both hands braced against the porcelain, head bowed. A light sweat had broken out over his forehead, though the sensation of nausea had passed now. He glanced up at his reflection in the mirror, at the man who was quietly becoming a stranger.
What was happening to him?
5.
By the time Ray arrived home that night, the apartment was draped in thick shadow. He dropped his brief-ease on the entryway tile, next to the door, and thanked sweet Jesus he had made it through the rest of the day without closing his eyes and suddenly finding himself somewhere else. He moved down the hall, pausing a moment to look at the end table next to the La-Z-Boy. It had become an unconscious habit the past several nights, to stop there and reassure himself that the plate and the napkin and the fork had all been put away and everything was in its place now, the way he last remembered it.
On his way past the phone in the kitchen, he slipped the receiver off its cradle, then pulled a chair out from the table, sat down, and began to dial the push-buttons with the thumb of one hand. It rang four times before she answered it.
“Mom?”
“Raymond,” she said delightedly. “What a wonderful surprise.”
“How are you, Morn?”
“I’m fine of course.”
“And Dad?”
“Your father’s watching his football game. He’s in heaven. You want to talk to him?”
“No, that’s all right. I forgot it was Monday night” He had spent much of the afternoon retracing the last few days of his life, and when they had led him nowhere in particular … he had traced the days back even further, all the way back to his childhood, in fact. Thirty-two years of days, all behind him now, and … and they were beginning to pass even faster now, he had decided.
“Mom?”
“What is it, Raymond?”
“I know this is going to sound like a strange question, but … what’s it like … growing old?”
There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. Then, in that soft voice that someone who didn’t know her might mistake for frailty, she said, “It sneaks up on you, Raymond. Like an early winter. One day it’s autumn and you’re picking wild berries and baking pies, the next day it’s snowing and picking berries seems like something you used to do a long, long time ago.”
“Is it true, that old wives’ tale about time going by faster the older you get?”
“It certainly feels like it.”
Yes, he thought unhappily, it certainly does. He ran a hand through his hair, and by the time he hung up the phone, the words on the other end had become distant and unimportant. He had heard what he had called to hear. However distasteful it felt.
It was getting late.
Later than you think, my friend.
He glanced down the hallway again, at the pale-gray light slipping in through the curtains, and thought about trying to reach Sherrie in Florida. He wasn’t even sure where she was staying, but she had given him a number, he thought, and he had written it down somewhere.
But then what was he going to say?
You better hurry back if you ever want to see me again. I’m not sure I’ll be here much longer.
No. Not that. This: stay where you are, Sherrie. You and Robin stay right there in Florida. I won’t be able to see you, but as long as you’re there and not here, I’ll know I haven’t lost anything more than a week. I’ll know that much.
No. Better not to call at all, he decided, burying his head …
(CUT TO)
… in his hands. “A hard night?”
He heard her voice, and knew immediately it was a voice that shouldn’t be there, not in his apartment at this time of night, uninvited. It was almost more than he could do, but he forced his hands away from his face. Bev was sitting across from him on the other side of the … desk. They were sitting in his office at Baylor & Baylor. She smiled cautiously, with a look of mild concern.
“Ray?”
“What time is it?” he asked, though the exact time didn’t matter, did it? There was sunlight pouring in through the window behind him, and that was all he needed to know. It was daylight out.
“A quarter to ten.”
Twelve hours, or nearly that much.
My God.
He stared down at the coat sleeves of his business suit, and realized he had changed clothes since a moment ago—or last night, or a week ago, or however long it had been. And he had shaved and washed up, spent a night alone in bed, and climbed out of that bed early, had breakfast, and hurried into the office, all of that, and maybe not just once, maybe half-a-dozen times by now.
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday.
“Thank God.”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been …”
“What?”
Losing time, he was tempted to say, but it was an easier thing to think than speak. Therefore, instead, he asked a question he thought might lead into something he had been kicking around recently: “Did you ever see the movie Sybil?”
“Sally Field? About the woman with all those different personalities?”
“Yes.”
“It was a good movie.”
“Yes. But remember what happened when another personality had stepped in? She couldn’t remember things. It was as if she had gone to sleep in the middle of making dinner and then suddenly she would wake up again and she would be somewhere else—at work, maybe—and it would be a different day and she would he wearing different clothes.”
“But she thought that’s the way it was for everyone. I remember that. It was creepy.”
Not as creepy as the real thing.
He couldn’t ask his next question while looking at her, so he swung his chair around, and stared out the window at the mirror-glassed high-rise across the avenue from his office. The sun was above the building, shining in his face at an odd angle; otherwise he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had actually been able to see himself on the other side. It had happened before, on a clear winter day, in the early afternoon hours. Not this time, though, and he supposed that was all for the best because it might have been too much, seeing himself where he knew he shouldn’t be.
“Have you ever noticed anything unusual about me, Bev? Times when I wasn’t myself? Not just bad days, but days—or maybe only hours—when I seemed like someone you hardly knew?”
At first, she let loose with a barely audible giggle, no more than that, then followed it with something that sounded vaguely like an attempt to swallow the rest of her laughter. It had occurred to her, no doubt, in that short mini-second of a moment, that the question had been a serious one. “Ray, you’re one of the most consistent men I’ve ever met.”
“Consistent’?”
“I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but yes, I’d say consistent. I know what to expect when we work together. I don’t have to worry about temper tantrums or sudden outbreaks o
f egomania from you. We can differ on things and still respect each other’s opinions—no hurt feelings.”
Wrong straw, he thought. You’re grasping at the wrong straw. No Sybil here. This isn’t about multiple personalities, it’s about one personality. One badly frightened personality quickly losing touch with himself.
“Ray, about the IPMs on Timescape …”
“You were right,” he said in a whisper. “I think I’m beginning to understand that now. The world’s spinning faster than when we were kids, when all you needed to sell breakfast cereal was some animated kid saying, ‘I want my Malt-O-Meal.’ Now … well, things are a little more complicated, aren’t they?”
“They don’t have to be.”
“Don’t they? I wonder how we slow them down, make them …
(CUT TO)
“ … comprehendible?”
Oh Christ.
6.
The room was pitch-black here and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. Out of the shadows came a sound, a clickety-clicking that he recognized as the sound of a projector, and he slowly put it together in’ his mind. He … they were in the projection room now.
“What did you say?” Bev asked.
“Uh … nothing.”
“It works better now, don’t you think?”
“What does?”
She glanced over her shoulder, her expression partially masked by the shadows, but even in the dark he could see the trace of a smile as if she thought he were joking with her. “Hey, I know you didn’t want to do this, at least not initially.”
The Timescape spot. She’s talking about the Timescape spot.
“But you were right,” he said calmly. He sat forward in the chair, feeling an arrhythmic hammering in his chest. He wondered if his heart were beating faster, trying to keep up with the seconds. minutes, hours that were flashing by. And it felt as if just by wondering, his heart skipped another half-beat. “It does work better now.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“Bev?”
“What?”
“I need to tell you something. It’s going to sound insane, absolutely out-of-my-mind insane. But I need you to listen, because I’m not even sure how much of it I’m going to get out.” And he told her about the first time it had happened in his apartment late at night, and the second time in the subway station, and the third time when he had suddenly been at the restaurant with her, and it all seemed to blur together like a grayish-black nightmare that had only just begun. “Five minutes ago,” he said finally, “we were in my office, and I was staring out the window wondering what you meant by consistent.”
Except for a soft intake of air, she was perfectly motionless in the darkness, not saying a word, not giving off a hint of what thoughts were going through her mind at that moment.
“Bev?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No, of course not.” She had draped an arm over the back of her chair as he had shared his story with her, and now she swung the chair all the way around, face-to-face with him, as if she wanted to be able to read his expression in the dull, greenish-white glow of the projector. “Do you know what time it is now?”
“It’s nearly five o’clock. The conversation we had in your office was this morning, almost seven hours ago.”
“Oh sweet Jesus.”
“Ray, we had a quick lunch at Mattie’s, spent two or three hours in a head-banger over what to do to placate the folks at B. M. Myers, did a conference call with Jim Mathews at Timex, and have been hiding out in here for at least a couple of hours now. We’ve been together the whole time.”
“But I don’t remember any of that.”
“Not a minute?”
“Not since this morning when you told me things don’t have to be complicated.” He leaned back to flip on the light switch, because it was her face that was hidden in shadow now and he didn’t like the idea of not knowing what she might be hiding. Instantly, the room went from dark to …
(CUT TO)
… light, and he found himself back at his apartment again, sitting in the kitchen. A slight tremor waffled through his body. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to hold himself together. How long was this going to go on?
“Ray?”
The sound of the woman’s voice swam up from somewhere nearby. He opened his eyes again, feeling the muscles in the back of his neck tighten. The telephone was off the hook and lying in his lap. He raised it to his ear, listened.
It was Sherrie’s voice.
“Are you still there?”
“Sherrie?” He felt his throat narrow ever so slightly, and fought back a sob that was trying to force its way out. “Don’t hang up! Please, for God’s sake, don’t hang up on me.”
“I’m not hanging up; I just got on. Are you all right?”
“Yes. No … not really. Hell, I don’t know anymore.” He sank back in the chair until his body felt as if it had melted into the soft, padded leather. “Where are you?”
“At home. We got in about an hour ago. There was a delay taking off from Orlando, almost three hours. I thought if you didn’t mind … I’d keep Robin until tomorrow.”
“What day is it?” he asked.
“Saturday.”
He stared down the hallway toward the living room. The curtains were drawn, but he could tell it was dark out. If the sun were up there would be a soft, golden-yellow glow washing in around the edges. Instead, he could barely make out the dark lines of the La-Z-Boy and the couch.
“What time is it?”
“A little after ten. Ray, did I wake you?”
“No, no, you didn’t wake me. But I want you to …”
(CUT TO)
“… come over as soon as you—”
Too late.
The receiver was gone. He stared numbly at his empty hand, first curling it into a fist, then prying it open again, grateful that he could feel the mechanics of the motion. But the phone … it was gone now. So was the table, where he had been sitting. And the refrigerator, the stove, the plastic simulated wood-grained canister set on the counter. All of it was gone. Across the room from him, in its place, he found the familiar face of a newscaster on the television screen, and the couch up against the wall, and the ceiling-to-floor curtains open. He was in the living room now.
Through the window, he could see where an orange-brown haze had settled over the cityscape. It was evening he decided. City colors were always muddier in the evening.
That was something he had never noticed before his separation from Sherrie two short months ago. But the day he had moved his last box of clothes out of the house, he had come here, and standing in the entryway he had looked out this same window. The world had been a dirty place that day. Dirtier than he had ever imagined it could be. It hadn’t gotten any cleaner since then.
Sherrie, he thought. I was on the telephone, talking to Sherrie.
And what he had to do now was get her back on the phone again, get her to come over so she could stand right next to him, maybe even hold on to his hand when he closed his eyes and woke up somewhere else, sometime else. Maybe then she could tell him what had happened, if he were crazy, or if (as he had come to fear) the world had suddenly begun to spin a little faster while he was busy looking back at their marriage—hoping, praying, needing things to be the way they used to be. There is no going back. There’s only going forward.
He pulled himself out of the La-Z-Boy, all his weight on the arms, and before he had fully balanced himself, there was a knock at the front door.
“Ray, are you in there?”
It was Bev.
He felt his way along the hallway, his legs inexplicably weary. It was not an easy task to keep himself balanced. That’s because your gravity’s changing, he thought crazily. He pulled open the door and leaned heavily against its edge.
Bev stared at him in silence, her eyes bright wi
th surprise. “Jesus, Ray, what’s the matter with you? You look awful.”
He glanced down and was madly amused to find himself dressed in a bathrobe and socks. The robe was open. He had an old pair of boxer shorts on underneath and a T-shirt with a stain that looked like dried egg. “I’m sorry,” he said as he closed the robe and tightened the sash around his waist.
“Are you okay?”
“I … I … don’t know.”
“You haven’t been in all week. I’ve been trying to get you on the phone. Don’t you ever answer the damn thing?”
“I do … I was …” He turned, and pointed weakly toward the kitchen. “I was just talking to Sherrie a minute ago.”
“Has she been to see you lately?”
Lately? He realized he wanted to ask her what time it was, but hours didn’t matter anymore. It was days and weeks and maybe even months that concerned him now. Lately? When was that? “I’m … not sure. What day is it?”
“You keep asking me that. Every time I talk to you, you ask me what day it is.”
“Well?”
“Thursday, Ray. It’s Thursday.”
His body slumped heavily against the door …
(CUT TO)
… and he heard the phone ringing.
Wherever he was, it was dark now. There was the luminescent glow of a clock face nearby—9:56 P.M.— and a sliver of light coming from somewhere behind him. It divided the darkness into two uneven sections: one on his right, which seemed to exist only a foot or two beyond him: the other, which seemed to stretch across an open area, through a doorway and beyond. He pulled himself up to one elbow, realizing suddenly that this was his bedroom and he had been sleeping.
The phone rang again.
He found the receiver and brought it to his ear without a word.
“Ray?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Sherrie.”
He closed his eyes, and in the complete darkness could feel his hands trembling, as if they belonged to a boy about to pin his first corsage to the bosom of a girl’s dress. The last time he had seen her had been just before she had left for Florida with Robin. They had met for lunch in a little cafe off Market Street called Demercurio’s, and talked about how things were going, her in her life, him in his. They had always been on good speaking terms, even as the strain of their two careers had sometimes raised their voices. It had been a pleasant conversation that time out, and yes—though he hadn’t said so at the time—he had allowed himself the vague hope that sometime down the road he would be able to move his things back home again. It was a hope he wanted to share with her even now, but he couldn’t seem to get it clear in his head just how he should go about saying so.