Arnesto Modesto: The World's Most Ineffectual Time Traveler

by Darren Johnson

  They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

  When they arrived, exhausted, they went straight to bed. “I’m going to spend a few days at my friend’s house,” she said. “And I’m going to go to my appointment alone. I don’t want you there.” She rolled away from him.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She felt relieved he didn’t turn it into a discussion.

  “Julie? Julie who snores?” Arnesto asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Julie.” She was about to argue but realized she didn’t know if Julie snored or not.

  “I don’t think she has her CPAP yet. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I would humbly suggest you get as much rest as possible. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go?”

  “I’ll be fine. Goodnight,” she said, carefully enunciating each word, her last shreds of patience evaporating.

  “Goodnight,” he whispered, letting her know the conversation had indeed concluded.

  ***

  Julie proved to be a gracious host. She even had a spare bedroom for Rochel. After a fun evening spent drinking wine and bashing men, it was time to retire. Rochel got into her bed and played on her phone for a bit, then turned it off and closed her eyes. It seemed she would get plenty of rest after all.

  Then she heard it.

  It sounded like two jackhammers fighting inside a sawmill. Or two sawmills fighting with jackhammers. She turned on the light and confirmed her door was closed. It was no help. The sound, the most ungodly cacophony ever produced by a living mammal, was coming through their shared wall.

  She got up, opened her door, walked to Julie’s door, and quietly opened it. The sound got even louder. Julie wasn’t much larger than she was. How in the hell could that little woman be making all that noise? How was Julie not deaf from her own labored breathing?

  She quietly closed Julie’s door and went back to her own room. Goddamnit, Arnesto. He always was a lucky guesser.

  After a couple rough nights, it was time to say goodbye. “Thanks so much for putting me up. And putting up with me,” Rochel said, giving Julie a big hug.

  “Anytime! I hope my snoring didn’t bother you too much.”

  “No, must’ve slept right through it.” She turned toward the door. “One question, though. This might sound weird, but did you say you were thinking about getting a CPAP?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Rochel smiled. “Okay, thanks.”

  “I mean, we didn’t talk about it, but I am thinking about getting one. Why do you ask?”

  “Uh, somebody mentioned getting one, but I couldn’t remember who. Thought it might be you. Must’ve had too much wine the other night.”

  She went home and saw Arnesto was still asleep, the well-rested bastard. She took a shower and got dressed. When she went out into the living room, she saw Arnesto had already gotten up and started playing video games.

  They exchanged fake half-smiles, then she got ready to go to her appointment. That’s when she saw the book she was reading on the couch. She wanted to bring it, but she had a problem. He would see her grab it and think she believed him about the long wait time ahead of her. But what if it happened? Long wait times happened in doctors’ offices all the time. It would just be a coincidence. Why did she even care?

  Because he was delusional, and she didn’t want to enable him in any way.

  Feeling flustered, she left the book and walked out.

  As the minutes in the waiting room crawled by, she cursed herself for not bringing her book. It would have been the perfect distraction from everything going wrong in her life right then, which included, besides the cancer and her insane boyfriend, the smell. It wasn’t awful, just… displeasing. It smelled like disinfectant with a hint of latex and a dash of anxiety.

  This was not a lucky guess. Every doctor’s office smelled like that.

  Finally, she was called back. The clock said 11:35. She did the math in her head. Factoring in five minutes for filling out forms, and the extra five minutes she was early, the wait had been forty-five minutes… Okay, this time he got a little lucky.

  The first thing she did upon entering Dr. Hwang’s office was look for the picture Arnesto had mentioned. And there it was on the mantle behind his desk, an image of a young Asian woman. She looked around twenty maybe? Plenty old enough to be his daughter. Arnesto was wrong at last.

  Dr. Hwang entered the room and introduced himself and apologized for being late. He seemed warm and personable. He gently examined her lump and was confident the lumpectomy was what she needed. He had performed thousands of such procedures and assured her it was trivial.

  When their appointment was over, they stood and shook hands. She remembered the picture of his daughter and pointed to it. “Is this your… family?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, grabbing the frame and holding it out for her. “This is Hideko, my wife.”

  Rochel’s jaw dropped partway. “She looks so young!”

  “She’s thirty-eight if you can believe it. People always tell me how lucky I am,” he said, telling one of his canned jokes.

  Rochel could see why. She thought he looked like he was in his fifties, though she didn’t dare ask. He had very little hair left, but it was the bags under his eyes that defined his appearance. They looked like they had become a permanent fixture on his face a long time ago.

  Dr. Hwang put the picture back, then grabbed another that had been on his desk facing away from Rochel. “And this is our daughter, Emily.”

  Rochel’s heart skipped a beat. Emily looked like she was five!

  “Would you believe,” he asked as he put Emily’s picture back on his desk, “people think she’s my granddaughter? That’s when I pretend I don’t speak English.” Another canned joke.

  Rochel couldn’t even feign a smile this time. Instead, she pulled out her phone. After a quick search, she held out a picture of her and Arnesto. “Do you know him? Has he been in here before?”

  Dr. Hwang put on his glasses and looked at her phone. He shook his head. “Who is he?”

  “Arnesto, my boyfriend.”

  “He doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  “Dr. Hwang, what if — what if we were more aggressive? Could you — give me a double mastectomy?”

  He had no idea where this was coming from. “Please, have a seat. Let’s discuss it.”

  Chilling

  LaGuardia Airport

  Queens, New York

  Thursday, January 15, 2009

  3:10 p.m.

  “Remember, I wanted to take the ferry,” Arnesto said.

  “If what you said is true, we’ll be taking the ferry anyway,” Rochel said, smiling.

  “Alright, let’s not talk about it anymore.” He fidgeted with his phone, but Rochel could tell he wasn’t into it. Either he was a nervous flyer, or he was good at acting the part.

  “You know, commercial flying is perfectly safe.”

  He didn’t respond, but she could tell he wasn’t amused. He watched the woman behind the counter make an announcement, “US Airways Flight fifteen-forty-nine to Charlotte is now boarding all passengers.”

  “Here we go,” Arnesto said as he stood up and put away his phone. He grabbed their backpack and slung it over his shoulder. There wasn’t much in it, aside from one day’s worth of clothes and some toiletries. He had bought all of it, including the cheap backpack, in California knowing he would probably never see any of it again. It was all for show so that later nobody would wonder why they hadn’t brought a single bag on board with them. They had no checked luggage.

  These were some of the details he wouldn’t have had to worry about if Rochel had agreed to take the ferry. At least after this, there would be no way she could doubt him any longer.

  “Wow, it’s packed,” he said as they boarded the plane and turned down the aisle. He shouldn’t have been surprised — he couldn’t even get them two seats together. This was a result of buying the tickets late so, as he had put
it, “It would cause the least amount of disruption to these people’s lives.”

  They went most of the way back when Rochel grabbed her seat in the middle on the left. He went a few more rows and took the aisle seat on the right. They didn’t say anything when they separated. It was just one of his conditions that they “play it cool” so that nobody would offer to switch seats so they could sit together. Again, minimizing disruption. He didn’t want to switch with another passenger only to have that person get injured in their new seat and wind up blaming him. In fact, he would prefer it if nobody remembered he was ever there.

  He shoved his backpack under the seat in front of him, put on his seatbelt, and whipped out the safety instruction card.

  “You won’t need that,” said the rotund man seated on Arnesto’s right.

  “That’s good to hear,” Arnesto said, scanning the card and putting it back. Are you kidding me? All these New Yorkers and I have to sit next to the one who wants to be social? Or worse, he’s probably from North Carolina.

  “Business or pleasure?” the man asked.

  “Pleasure. Going to see the Carolinas Aviation Museum.” Arnesto had done his research just in case somebody asked. Without realizing it, he had named exactly where the airplane was headed, eventually, as a display.

  “Huh, taking a plane to see a bunch of planes,” the man said. “If you like vehicles, you should come back next year when they complete the NASCAR Hall of Fame. People are real excited about that one.”

  “Oh, I bet,” Arnesto said, doing his best to appear friendly.

  “You know what you should see if you have time? The Billy Graham Library, it’s wonderful.”

  “I’m Jewish, I’m not sure I’d be too welcome.”

  “Oh, no, they welcome everyone,” the man said.

  Right, that’s why you guys lose the right to host the NBA All-Star Game in 2017. Come on, let’s take off already.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the flight attendants made their safety presentation. Arnesto paid close attention. Soon after, the plane began to pull away from the terminal.

  Oh, god, here we go.

  Arnesto looked over at the top right side of Rochel’s head. Poor Rochel was finally about to enter his world once and for all.

  As the plane taxied to the runway, Arnesto looked for empty seats but couldn’t find any. Hopefully, there was nobody who couldn’t take the flight because of him. More likely, he had saved someone from PTSD at the cost of some financial compensation. Either way, he didn’t like changing someone’s life like that. Saving lives was one thing. Denying them one of the most memorable experiences of their lives was another.

  Maybe this was a mistake. He had always worked so hard to avoid these situations. What the hell was he doing putting himself in the middle of one? He was risking everything to, what, impress a girl?

  Flight 1549 finished taxiing to the runway and was soon about to begin its final takeoff.

  What if something’s changed? What if I’ve done something in the past to change conditions for the worse? What if we’ve altered the distribution of weight enough to turn this would-be miracle into a disaster? I could scream. I could start screaming, get ejected from the flight, and nobody would ever know what would have happened.

  Arnesto couldn’t quite bring himself to scream. Seconds later, the plane was barreling down the runway then lifting into the air, leaving the nice, safe ground behind.

  As the plane turned gently toward the left, he looked out the left side windows at the New York City skyline.

  Wouldn’t it be ironic if I prevented 9/11 but my mere presence caused 1/15?

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing to calm himself down.

  He eyes snapped open when he heard the bang. There were some audible gasps from the passengers. As the plane’s engines shut down, destroyed by the Canadian geese sucked inside, the plane became quiet.

  With everyone else straining to look out the windows, Arnesto’s view was even more obstructed, so he checked his seatbelt for the umpteenth time. He started to reach for the safety card again but realized it would be futile at this point.

  Rochel looked back at him. He wasn’t positive, but he thought he saw a fleck of terror in her eyes. He gave her a tiny nod in a weak attempt to reassure her, and she turned back around.

  The plane had already begun descending, but it didn’t look like they were over the water. Those buildings were starting to look awfully close…

  In the excitement, he almost missed the captain’s announcement to brace for impact, but there was no missing the flight attendants chanting, “Brace brace brace! Heads down, stay down!” After a few repetitions, Arnesto’s mind translated their chant into, “Fuck fuck fuck! Fuck this, fuck you!” Clearly, they were much more skillful at their jobs than he would have been under such circumstances.

  With people putting their heads down, Arnesto caught a quick peek and saw the plane had indeed moved over the water. He put his own head down and waited.

  As the plane slammed into the Hudson River, Arnesto remembered the grainy video taken from a distance that showed the plane very quickly coming to a halt. At least, that’s how he remembered it. In reality, it took much longer. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the plane refusing to stop, the sound of the plane creaking under the pressure, or the smell of smoke now permeating the cabin.

  Finally, the plane skidded to a stop with a little swerve at the end, another detail he didn’t remember from the video. It didn’t matter. They were alive.

  Arnesto reached for his life preserver — one of the few passengers to do so — and noticed a sharp pain in his right shoulder. This bothered him, both because of the pain and also the fact that he didn’t remember any injuries. He had only remembered that everyone lived. People made such a big deal about that detail, which was understandable, but they downplayed the fact there were a number of injuries onboard.

  With so much forgotten information, Arnesto vowed to himself he would never get this close to an incident ever again.

  The air that came in from the open doors was bitter cold — the water pouring over his feet, much more so. Arnesto had brought a hat and gloves but didn’t put them on for fear of standing out from the crowd. He followed the other passengers out the emergency exit and joined Rochel on the right wing of the aircraft.

  Four long minutes after the forced landing, the first ferry arrived. Fifteen minutes after that, Arnesto and Rochel boarded a ferry. Only five minutes later, everyone was rescued.

  Rochel buried herself in Arnesto’s chest. They both started to warm up again. They still hadn’t spoken.

  Arnesto finally broke the long silence. “Well, that was fun. Want to get back in line and do it again?”

  Rochel said nothing. Normally, she had a wonderful sense of humor, but this time, she was not amused. Arnesto was fine with that. At least if she wasn’t talking, she wasn’t calling him out in front of others. He started to rub his hand up and down her back to help warm her up.

  “Careful,” she said, “I banged my elbow pretty hard.”

  It wasn’t until they were checked out at the hospital that he saw the nasty bruise forming on her elbow. Thankfully, nothing was broken and both of them were released.

  After they checked into a hotel room, he asked if she was ready to talk about it.

  “The flight or… the other thing?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  He sat down in a chair. “All of it. Whatever you want.”

  “I believe you now,” she admitted. “I guess I have for a while. I was just in denial. But the moment we hit those birds, I could no longer doubt you. I had to believe you, to know that you knew we weren’t going to die. I keep thinking — you couldn’t have warned them, could you. I mean, what would you even say?”

  “That’s right, I couldn’t, not without exposing myself.” He was proud of her. She seemed to get it.

  “It’s just that people were terrified. I was terrified, a
nd I knew what was going to happen. And all those injuries, including mine…”

  Arnesto sighed. “I’m sorry about that. I honestly didn’t remember that part.”

  “So you can never warn people?”

  “Sometimes I can. Remember on the ferry, when I pointed out the World Trade Center towers?” He told her briefly about the horrific events of 9/11.

  She was incredulous. “So how did you stop them? Infiltrate their terrorist cell and take them out one-by-one?”

  “No, I… sent an email.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You still saved their lives. You’re a hero.”

  “No, I’m not. Some years from now, a teenager from Pakistan named Aitzaz Hasan is going to sacrifice his life in order to stop a suicide bomber from blowing up his school. I only know because people repost his picture on Imgur all the time, whoring for upvotes. But the fact remains, this kid, who will only be fifteen years old, is far braver than I could ever be.”

  “Until you’re in that exact situation, you can’t know what you would be capable of.” She got up from the bed. “The drugs haven’t kicked in yet and my elbow is killing me. Will you help me get undressed?” As he stood up to help her, she asked, “Who else knows about this?”

  “Nobody,” he said. There were still some things he couldn’t tell her. The last thing he needed was for Rochel and Pete to find out they shared the same huge secret. What if they couldn’t resist talking about it with each other one day and a third party overheard? It was just safer this way.

  “Thanks, I can do my bra,” she said. She started to reach behind her with her good arm, then hesitated. She looked down at her breasts. “If your memory is fallible, maybe you remember wrong about my cancer?” He gently shook his head. “Okay, had to check,” she said. “Guess I’ll make that appointment with the surgeon.” She removed her bra and he helped her put a t-shirt on. “Oh, I know. Does China take over the world?”

  “This is your question? You can ask me anything and you want to know about China.”

  “There was an article in the in-flight magazine.” She gritted her teeth. “I didn’t get to finish it.”