With you. With you. With you.
—
The band were tuning up. People had started arriving, getting drinks; there was laughter, happiness, old friends.
Shep had showered and changed into his Sunday suit and he was walking through the bar. This is my life, he thought. Here, all around me, and it is good.
The banjo started a tune.
Shep came over to the table. HollyPollyMolly said, “What did you get for your birthday, Shep?”
Shep leaned forward, pressing his hands on the table. “I got a fine son and a fine daughter. That’s all I want—well, and maybe a song…Perdita—you gonna go up there and sing that favourite of mine? The boys are ready for some music.”
Perdita got up and stood on tiptoe and kissed her father. Then she zigzagged through the people towards the stage. The boys nodded and smiled at her. Tom on banjo. Bill on tall bass. Steve on horn. Ron on guitar. Joey on the snares and harmonica.
They were doing a cover of an old Bette Midler cover of an old Tom Waits song. The banjo came in with Perdita’s voice like a far-off story.
“I’m leaving my family, I’m leaving all my friends/My body’s at home, but my heart’s in the wind…”
Shep was sitting at the table beside Clo, drinking a slim bourbon, listening to her, watching her.
Suppose he had made a different choice that night? Would he have walked away and forgotten about her?
What would his life have been back then, now? And her life?
That night, storm and rain and the moon like a mandala when the clouds parted, it was the moon that made him know. The baby had lain like the visible corner of a folded map. Traced inside her, faded now, were parents she would never know and a life that had vanished. Alternative routes she wouldn’t take. People she would never meet. The would-be-that-wouldn’t-be.
Because her mother or her father, or both, had left the map of her folded on the table and left the room.
It was a map of discovery. There were no more North Poles or Atlantic Oceans or Americas. The moon had been visited. And the bottom of the sea.
But she was setting out with the blank sheet and compass of herself.
Unpathed waters. Undreamed shores.
—
The song ended. Then Perdita took the microphone and asked for quiet.
“My father, Shep—you all know him” (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE). “We’re here to celebrate his birthday” (MORE CHEERS) “and in a minute we’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. But first I want to say thank you to him myself—for being the best dad in the world.”
Shep stood up. The band started playing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.
Then they heard it.
Was it thunder?
Was it a roar?
Was it an invasion?
Was it the Apocalypse?
Everyone stood watching as the big delivery doors onto the garden were pulled open by something or someone on or from the other side.
Full-flood headbeams. Low-slung growl. Clutch-controlled presidential slow speed of light.
It was the DeLorean.
ZEL: Oh no!
CLO: Satan’s ass!
SHEP: What the…?
The up-stroke gull-wings of the DeLorean lifted. Autolycus appeared by the side of the car as if he had always been there. He was wearing tapered black trousers, a black fine-knit polo neck and a red vest.
He looks like the Devil come for his money, thought Zel.
Did I say I’d pay him? thought Clo.
Autolycus jumped up on a chair and held up his hands. “I am just the delivery boy. Clo! Clo! Where are you?”
Clo got up from the table. Where was the cartoon blade sawing round his cartoon chair to drop his cartoon self into oblivion?
“Here’s the son!” said Autolycus. “Where is the father?”
Shep came through the crowd. Autolycus shook his hand over and over like a wind-up toy.
“What is this?” said Shep. “You some kind of cabaret act?”
“I am some kind of angel. Bringing good news. Clo! Clo!”
Clo pulled Autolycus to one side. “Did I sign—you sayin’ I signed?”
Autolycus unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket—Clo thought the piece of paper was really and truly and actually smoking.
“Yeah, yeah, you signed—see these flames and hoofprints here? Just kidding. I take the Silverado and you take the DeLorean—great deal, kid!”
Clo straightened up, turned to his father and cleared his throat. “Dad, yeah, Dad—happy birthday; this is your car.”
“My car?”
Autolycus jumped like a circus dog onto his chair. “Ladies and gentlemen! Attention, please! Introducing…THE DELOREAN!”
Already some of the men were nodding and cheering. Autolycus smiled modestly as if he had just won Miss America. There were tears in his eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you. I can hear some of you remembering it now. Back to the Future—the movie. 1985. That’s right!
“The DeLorean is NOT just a car—it’s a Time Machine.
“What did the great writer William Faulkner say?
“ ‘The past is not dead. It’s not even past.’ ”
(APPLAUSE)
Autolycus jumped down. “Shep! Shep—get in the car! Guy who designed these—John DeLorean—he was six foot four. It’s a big-guy car—that’s why I had to sell it—trouble reaching the pedals—your son is truly a good son.”
VOICE IN THE CROWD: GO, GO, SHEP! GO BACK TO 1984 AND SAVE MARVIN GAYE!
Shep eased himself into the car and fired the engine.
Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Autolycus looked a bit less easy—he pulled Clo aside. “You got that hammer?”
Zel stopped running all of his hands through all of his hair and instead ran to the back of the DeLorean and opened it up.
“Zel! What are you doing here?”
“I TOLD you, I had a date—not that I will have a date now that you have fleeced the son and hijacked the dad’s birthday.”
“Don’t get mad at me.”
“Get out of the way!”
“You need a hammer?”
Zel took out his pocket Leatherman.
“That boy can fix anything—anything! Let me tell you how it is—cars like these are like racehorses.
“You want a car that GOES? Anybody can buy a car that GOES—it’s almost vulgar. The DeLorean is not always a car that GOES but it is always a CAR. You know, let me tell you, when a car like this doesn’t GO—it’s really offering you a moment of Zen in a world obsessed with forward motion. Did you get your cortisol tested recently? America is running on cortisol. It’s bad for your heart, bad for your cholesterol, bad for your marriage—snappy and yappy all the time. Now, when you jump into your car—this car—and you find you can’t GO anywhere, that is a moment to ask yourself—where am I GOING?
“It’s philosophy at your fingertips.
“This is a substantial car. Once you’ve driven—and also not driven—this car—a little bit Schrödinger’s Cat, isn’t it? Alive and dead at the same time—once you have had the DeLorean experience, the rest is just unconsidered trifles.”
Shep had his arms folded and was looking down at Autolycus—he was about a foot and a half taller than the persuasive trafficker of trifles.
“How much did my son pay for this philosophical car?”
“I pretty much gave it away. In honour of the occasion.”
“How much? Clo? Clo!”
At that second the DeLorean fired. Zel stood back from the engine, his white shirt oil-stained. His hands greased-up. The crowd cheered. Autolycus bowed.
“That’s why we call cars ‘she.’ You never know. Remember that Billy Joel song? ‘She is frequently kind and she’s suddenly cruel. She can do as she pleases, she’s nobody’s fool.’ ”
“Does the mechanic come with the car?” said Shep.
Autolycus’s pointy face brightened up. “He’s dating your daughter. So…�
�
“He’s what?”
“ ‘She’s always a woman to me.’ ”
Shep looked from Zel to Autolycus and from Autolycus to Zel. “Can you stop singing and can somebody tell me what any of this is about?”
“I am not dating your daughter.”
“Let’s get a drink!” said Autolycus. “A bourbon is halfway towards the truth any night of the week. Nice place you got here, Shep. You play poker?”
—
It was Perdita who found Zel, standing by the fence, angry and alone. She touched his back. He twitched like she’d poured water down his neck. He didn’t turn round.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s funny,” said Perdita.
Zel turned round. She was laughing. She was so pretty. Beyond her, the party was going on. People were playing with the DeLorean. The hum was easy, happy.
Zel so often put himself outside of where he wanted to be and then looked in dumbly through the window of his longing, hurt and beaten and knowing that he had hurt and beaten himself but still he did it, over and over.
Why was she comforting him? He should be the one comforting her. She had rowed out to reach him on his lonely island. She wanted to row him back with her to the lights and the warmth.
“Would you like to dance?”
He wanted to say “I can’t dance,” but already she had taken his hand and was leading him towards the warm lights.
HollyPollyMolly, singing their close harmonies into the microphone, saw Perdita leading Zel through the crowded room towards the raised stage, where there was some space. Right then they were doing a Buddy Holly number that Shep liked, but Zel was never going to manage a jive—and besides, the triplets knew that Perdita needed to manage something else.
Holly pulled out of the sound for a second and said something to Bill on tall bass. He passed it on to the guys.
The music stopped, and before anyone could clap or pause the girls had started again with their own version of James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).”
Perdita took hold of Zel and guided him into something like dancing with her. He realised he was enjoying it.
“Do you ever walk in the rain just for the pleasure of getting wet?”
Zel smiled his slow, awkward, full-face smile like the sun coming through the clouds. He didn’t reply. Instead he asked her a question.
“Do you get up sometimes or not go to bed sometimes, so that you can go for a walk without meeting anyone else at all?”
She said: Do you talk to yourself?
He said: Would you rather die well than live badly?
She said: Do you like stars?
He said: Do you like the ocean?
She said: Is this our own set of thirty-six questions?
He said: To fall in love?
No, she thought, that’s already happened, hasn’t it?
She said: To get to know each other?
He said: My dad spent a lot of time talking to psychologists about human behaviour—he needed the pre-sets.
Are there pre-sets?
Oh, yeah—most people will behave exactly as they are predicted to behave in any given situation.
What does he do, your dad?
He designs computer games. Not shoot-outs and trolls—sophisticated stuff.
Do you live with your mom and dad?
No. My mom and he never lived together—it’s a long story, he’s basically gay—him and my mom made an arrangement. He wanted a son. I was a vanity project.
Zel said this with such fierceness that Perdita wished she hadn’t asked. She rubbed his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice her concern or her touch. He had left the present tense.
Dad was around a lot until I was about eight years old. Then he had some kind of a breakdown and after that we never saw him much. He paid all the bills. He paid for me to go to college.
As a mechanic?
No. I’m a Philosophy major. Does that surprise you?
Maybe…I don’t know you.
But you do, he thought, coming back into the present. You know me.
“Are you in touch with your dad?”
Zel shook his head. “He travels a lot. Also, he’s a recluse—if you can be a recluse who travels a lot. Also, he’s an alcoholic. So when I do see him I don’t know if he will be drunk or sober. Usually he’s so drunk he seems sober. That’s the worst.”
“Is that why you don’t drink? You always ask for water.”
Zel stood blank like metal. “Can we talk about something else?”
Perdita moved her body against Zel, guiding his body with her body. He felt the warm softness of her right through him.
“I think I’m getting oil on your dress.”
They both looked down. GOD! HER BREASTS! Zel’s body doing the thinking for him. He tried to focus his mind on disasters and drowning. Sick kittens. Laboratory chimps. Why had he worn tight jeans?
“Will you excuse me? I need the rest-room.”
—
HollyPollyMolly saw Zel dodge off as they came to the end of their set. Holly sat on the edge of the stage and grabbed Perdita.
“So? So SO SO SO SO???”
“So what?”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“He’s so serious and sweet.”
“And LOOK what he did to that car! Good with his hands.”
“Can you leave me alone? I love you but can you leave me alone? I’m getting some food.”
Perdita went over to the laden trestle. The chef was turning spring onions and prawns in a wok.
She took two servings and found a table. A little way off she could see her father playing cards with Autolycus and a man she didn’t recognise.
Zel came back to the table. He had no bulges. Perdita pushed a plate of food over to him and grinned. He liked that: a girl who eats and a girl who grins. Nothing about her was self-conscious.
“Do you think you have any control over your life?” she said.
Zel thought this was a difficult question judging from his trip to the rest-room. He had been about to tell her that he liked her dress. Perdita was eating gracefully and messily—he wasn’t sure how this combined but even the noodles she dropped she dropped elegantly.
Just do it forever, he thought, do what you do forever. And let me be there.
He said, “Depends on whether you believe in free will or destiny. Let me see your hands—both of them; I’ll come sit beside you.”
It was a good excuse to feel the strong length of her thigh against the strong length of his thigh.
“Can you read palms?”
“My mom can—her ancestors were slaves on the plantations; the knowledge was passed down the female line generation to generation. She’s a little bit voodoo.”
Perdita gave him her left hand. Zel ran his finger around her palm. “This is a map made of skin. You see this track, running down to your wrist—that’s your life-line. And that’s strange.”
“What? What’s strange?”
“At the start of the line—here—there’s a break, do you see? A complete break—like you were dead, but obviously you’re not dead. And here, there’s another line, like another life, shadowing the real one—and it joins your main-line here, like a disused railtrack.”
“That is my other life,” said Perdita. “I’m adopted.”
“Oh…I’m sorry—forgive me, I didn’t…”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m adopted. So what?”
“Would you ever want to find your real parents?”
“In what sense would they be my parents? I mean, is a parent the person who provides you with the raw materials of life or the person who raises you? I love Shep. He’s the one who’s my father.”
Zel nodded. “My dad’s my dad, but I don’t know him. He could be anybody’s dad. I could be anybody’s son.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s fine. She did her best.”
“My b
irth mother is dead. That’s why I had to be adopted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Can you stop saying sorry?”
She put her finger on his lips. Then she leaned forward and kissed Zel. He wasn’t the first boy she had kissed but he felt like it. He tasted of prawns and lime. He touched her hair gently as if she slept and he didn’t want to wake her. He didn’t want this dream to end.
—
Sometimes it doesn’t matter that there was any time before this time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter that it’s night or day or now or then. Sometimes where you are is enough. It’s not that time stops or that it hasn’t started. This is time. You are here. This caught moment opening into a lifetime.
—
“I’m glad to see you young folks having such a good time,” said Autolycus, arriving at their table and sitting himself down.
Perdita looked across to Shep, who was still playing cards. Autolycus shook his head ruefully. “That pop of yours is a sharp player. I’m out.”
“What did you lose this time?” said Zel.
“You sound like my mother. Don’t worry about it. Life’s a game of chance. Are you going to introduce me?”
“I’m Perdita.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Perdita. I’m Autolycus. Zel’s told me all about you.”
“No, I haven’t! I told you nothing about her.”
“That’s how I knew you were serious.”
“We were talking about free will,” said Perdita. “Do you believe in free will?”
“In theory I do, but they invented that idea before they invented the idea that makes free will an impossibility—like sex.”
“What’s impossible about sex?”
“You’re too young to know—let’s stick with the topic.”
“You’re the one who started talking about sex.”
“That’s what happens when an old man sits next to a pretty young girl—but don’t worry about it.”
“She won’t,” said Zel.
“Thanks, I can speak for myself,” said Perdita.
Autolycus was nodding his head like a Chinese cat. “That’s right! I like a woman who speaks for herself! To get back to the topic—I can tell you that in my opinion the free market makes free will impossible.
“If I have to trade with you—Perdita—at a discount disadvantageous to me, where’s my free will? And if I have to buy from you—Zel—because you’re a monopoly pretending to be private enterprise, then where’s my free will?”
The Gap of Time Page 12