Expiration Date

by Duane Swierczynski

I looked at my grandpop.

  “Like you?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping this whole time. I’ve been walking.”

  “Walking where?”

  “Just walking. Never mind that. You wanted to hear this whole thing, fine. I understand. And you know, it’s probably a good thing someone else knows, in case I’m not able to fix things. But for now, really, Mickey, I want you to shut up and let me tell this the way I want to tell it before I strangle you with my pee tube.

  “Okay, Grandpop.”

  “So I started working there and learned that this little bastard’s kept at the Papiro Center. Nobody was allowed in except DeMeo and his own cleaning staff, twenty-four/seven lockdown. The cleaning staff was allowed on the grounds, you know, to cut the grass and sweep up, but we were never allowed in the building. I spent years trying to get into that building. They had their own cleaning people. Bused in from somewhere else, I don’t know where. So it became a matter of stealing some keys. I figured I’d hang on to the job long enough to steal some keys and get myself into that building and grab a pillow and push it down over his face until he stopped breathing. Or maybe I’d bring a steak knife with me. Stab the bastard, just like he stabbed your father. Watch the hot blood splatter against his face as he looked into mine. Then I wouldn’t care what the cops did to me. They could throw me in a cell, do whatever the hell they wanted. But I never got in. Instead, I was reading the paper one day when I saw that DeMeo had been found, knifed in the back and in the head. I thought maybe that creepy little bastard had gotten loose, killed his own doctor, was ready to go on a rampage. But no. According to the patient logs, Billy was still in lockdown. He hadn’t moved. He’d been strapped to his bed. I couldn’t figure it out. It made no sense. When DeMeo bought it, I dug up his personnel file and found another address—the place on Frankford Avenue. I didn’t think I had much time, so I broke in, figuring I’d get a few hours, maybe a day before they clear out all of this stuff. I start looking through his papers, none of it makes a damn bit of sense. I stay there that one night, just to give me a little time to look around, and then I end up staying the next night. Nobody ever shows. So I end up staying there for good. The mushin running the store downstairs was paying his rent to DeMeo in cash, sticking it in his mailbox, so I took the money and paid the bills with it. I spent my time looking through his papers. And then I started reading about his pills. Crazy horseshit, I know, but there was a ton about them. How he thought they could give people out-of-body experiences. He never had much luck. They didn’t work on very many people. And half of those people didn’t even have real out-of-body experiences. They said they were back in some other time only they were invisible. So I found his stash of pills in the medicine cabinet and took one, just to see what the fuss was about. Only later did I put it all together. Of course DeMeo had no idea. His patients there started describing stuff from twenty, thirty, forty years in the past, and he thought they were making it all up. But I knew. I knew the very first time I took those things. Because I took one and I went into the past. I saw things I never thought I’d see again. The Starr Café, right there on the corner of Margaret and Frankford. It closed when I was a kid, but suddenly there I was looking in the front window. I couldn’t believe it. So I took more pills and started walking around more. I learned quick that I could only walk at night. You discovered the same thing yourself, I see. But the nights were long, and there was so much I wanted to see. I walked down to the river and saw the Delaware River Bridge, almost finished. They opened it the year I was born—1926. They call it the Ben Franklin Bridge now, but it was the Delaware River Bridge then, and it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. I saw my father and my mother down on Second Street. You never met my father, because he died when I was just a kid. I hadn’t laid eyes on him for seventy some years. I was a ghost but I didn’t care. I was seeing everything I’d missed.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You went back to your birth year, too, didn’t you? I don’t know why that is. The pills only do that to very, very few people—I read DeMeo’s reports. But I guess that’s how our brains were built. We take these pills, we go back. And when I saw my father, and myself as a baby, I started thinking of your father. Thinking maybe it wasn’t too late. Thinking maybe I could do something to fix things. I couldn’t do a thing about Billy Derace. He wouldn’t be born for another twenty-four years. But I could find his father. I could find his father and do something about him.”

  “You never found him, though.”

  “Victor Derace didn’t exist back then. It’s like he was a ghost.”

  “Billy’s mom told me he changed his name a lot. But he was born Victor D’Arrazzio.”

  My grandpop stopped and looked at me. Really looked at me. His jaw opened a little, and then he moistened his lips and looked over at his right hand, which was clutching the blanket.

  “D’Arrazzio.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Spell it.”

  I did the best I could, but Erna hadn’t spelled it for me either.

  Grandpop didn’t say anything for a while, and when he spoke, he was mostly muttering to himself.

  “So it’s not too late.”

  The whole time grandpop was speaking—and it was just like the old family holidays, Mickey sit down and shut up, Mickey go get your grandfather another warm beer—I took everything in. But with each new piece, I thought of my father. He’d taken the pills, too.

  And the more I stared at Grandpop, and at his thin, mangled fingers from years of manual labor, taped up with IV tubes, I started to realize what else had happened.

  The story didn’t begin with Billy Allan Derace attacking my father at random in December 1980. The story also began with my father taking those pills in 1972 and being thrown back into his own past. I remembered what my mom had told me, about what my dad had said not long after I was born.

  Why he wouldn’t speak to my grandfather.

  Why he hated him.

  And quite possibly why he’d been so distant with me.

  He didn’t know how to be with me.

  All he knew was what his father had taught him.

  I touched grandpop’s hand. It was cold and dry. He snapped out of his reverie and looked up at me.

  “What?”

  “Did my dad ever talk to you about those experiments when he was alive?”

  “No. We didn’t talk much then. I didn’t know how to talk to him. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me either.”

  “Did you ever wonder why?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You went back to 1926—the year you were born. I went back to 1972—the year I was born. So when my dad went back to 1949, what did he see?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You would know because you were there. You were there in 1949, not long after my dad was born, and you were smacking Grandmom around with a belt.”

  His eyes bulged—I caught him by surprise. Then they narrowed into hot angry slits.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, I do, and you’re going to listen to me now. Don’t you realize that dad took those pills, too? He probably went back and did the same things you and I did. He went home. But what did he see? Well, I guess he saw how you really were. Smacking Grandmom around.”

  “You don’t understand a goddammed thing. You don’t have any kids.”

  “Yeah, and with shining examples like you and my dad, why the hell would I? Raise them, hold them, cuddle them, just so I can turn around and start beating them on the ass with a leather belt? Beat them until the backs of their legs are black and blue, and thank God it’s still long pants weather so no one at school will see?”

  My grandpop said nothing for a while, staring up at the ceiling.

  Finally, after a while, he spoke again.

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

/>   “I mean, I’m going to go back and fix things.”

  “Right. With those magic pills. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to fix things, because no matter how hard you push, life has a way of pushing back even harder.”

  “I can fix things.”

  “No, you actually can’t. The pills are gone. Someone stole them.”

  “Yeah, I know. I stole them.”

  “What? That was you? How?”

  “I hired some kid I know to break into the place, which technically isn’t breaking in, since it’s my place.”

  “No it’s not. It belongs to the government.”

  “Yeah and the government owes me for what it did to my family. They couldn’t kill my boy in Vietnam, so they had to get him with a bunch of loony pills. Well, I’m going to use those pills against the sons of bitches. I’m going to set things right.”

  My grandpop had them in his hand. He forced the pills into his mouth and chewed on them like hard candy.

  I lunged for him, forgetting that I was down to three good fingers, and they weren’t enough. He was eighty-four yet still strong as an ox. A lifetime of manual labor will do that for you.

  He smiled at me as he chewed, pale eyes boring into mine.

  “Don’t worry. You’re not going to remember any of this.”

  Even now, he couldn’t bear to call me by my name. Mickey. He’d never liked it. Never liked that my dad had named me after a faggy fat-lipped singer in a rock and roll band.

  “It doesn’t work that way! You can’t change the past. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work!”

  “You just didn’t try hard enough.”

  “What do you mean, I didn’t try hard enough? What did you want me to do, go back in time and kill a twelve-year-old kid? Is that what I should have done? Is that what you’re trying to do? Grandpop, you can’t just do that! You can’t!”

  But I was talking to his unconscious body. His eyes were already closed; his other self had already left his body behind.

  XII

  How It Ends

  The summer sun burned at the back of my neck and the top of my head as I walked home from the hospital. Where was my fedora now? At home, in the apartment.

  I wanted to blow the last of my money drowning myself in beer, but I wanted it to be good beer. After all, it was time to celebrate, right? My grandpop just O.D.-ed on a bottle of time-traveling pills and was going to fix everything. So I stepped into the bodega and went straight to the counter.

  “Do you sell Sierra Nevada?”

  The guy behind the counter looked at me.

  “Eh, no. Bud, Coors Light, Yuengling, Old English.”

  “No microbrews? Really?”

  “Hey, I like the stuff, too. But it’d never sell in this neighborhood. Aren’t you the guy who’s been buying up all of the Golden Anniversary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you live upstairs, don’t you.”

  “Yeah.”

  He held out his hand.

  “Willie Shahid.”

  “Mickey Wade.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business, but where’s the cranky guy who used to live upstairs?”

  “That would be my grandpop. You two didn’t get along?”

  “Well, being called a mushin kind of puts a strain on the relationship. And I don’t even know what a mushin is.”

  “It’s probably what you think it is.”

  “Yeah, I figured. Look, this is also none of my business, but do you have any friends staying over? I thought I heard some noises upstairs earlier.”

  “I don’t think so. Could be my friend Meghan—the attractive young lady you may have seen me here with a while back. Or it could be one of the other residents.”

  “Other residents? You’re the only one who lives upstairs.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t your grandfather tell you?”

  “The rest of the apartments are vacant?”

  “Have been ever since I opened this place five years ago.”

  I keyed my way into the front door and was preparing to bound up the stairs when I heard a moaning noise. A woman’s voice. At first I thought it was Erna. Then I remembered no, it couldn’t be. This was 2009, not 1972.

  Then it hits me, who else it could be.

  No no no…

  I don’t remember climbing the two flights. I just remember fumbling with my keys before remembering the lock was broken. I kicked open the door to the apartment. It was empty. No one on the couch, or in the bathroom, or under the desk or in the closet. I ran back out into the hallway. Hearing another moan.

  I tried 3-B, which was locked. Now I did kick in the door, which opened a lot easier than I would have thought. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but more likely this building was outfitted with shitty doors back when Dr. DeMeo turned it into his little science lab.

  Inside, 3-B was a frozen apartment setting, like a page out of a 1970s Sears catalog. Spare. Table, chairs, cheesy tablecloth with an awful paisley pattern. Three candlesticks. A plastic apple, a plastic set of grapes, and two plastic pears, arranged not in a bowl but at random on the table. The dust in here was unreal. I think I was the first person to set foot in this room in about thirty years.

  At least, a physical foot.

  By the time I kicked open 3-C and yelled for Meghan, pleaded with her to keep moaning, I could hear her, I realized what this was. His test control rooms. That’s why he needed an empty apartment building. His OBE subjects would lie on that psychiatrist’s couch of his and try to astrally project themselves into other rooms. If they made it, he or she would be asked to describe the contents of the room. One apple, doctor. Two pears. And the ugliest tablecloth I’ve ever seen.

  “MEGHAN!”

  Another moan—down on the second floor.

  But now I knew where she’d be. She’d be in Erna and Billy’s old apartment—2-C.

  Because Billy would have dragged her there.

  She was on the floor of the empty apartment, trembling. She was covered in too much blood for me to see her wounds. Some of the blood had dried on the floor. She’d been here for a long time.

  “Meghan stay with me, it’s going to be okay, the hospital’s just a few blocks away, I’m calling now, Meghan come on, look at me, I’m here, it’ll be okay.”

  She mumbled.

  I could barely make out the words.

  Waiting for me.

  Hallway.

  He’d been waiting for her in the hallway, just before sunrise.

  I fumbled with the phone. I don’t remember what I said to the 911 dispatcher, other than a woman’s been stabbed, please hurry, get here right now, please, God, PLEASE, followed by the address and the apartment number. I gave them Willie Shahid’s name downstairs.

  I didn’t know first aid, other than to try to apply direct pressure and try to stop the flow of blood. But where was I supposed to start? Horrible gashes and scars covered Meghan’s face and arms, her pretty, elegant hands. The knife had slashed through her blouse, too, a number of times.

  All I could do was watch her neck as it still trembled slightly—faint proof of life. All I could do was lie to her.

  “Meghan you’re going to be okay,” I said. “The ambulance is on its way. The hospital is only a few blocks away. You’re going to be fine. Just a few scratches.”

  It was all I could do.

  No.

  That wasn’t all I could do.

  I reached into my pocket. I still had one half of a pill from last night—when I was parked outside the Adams Institute and tried to wake up Billy Derace.

  I swallowed it, closed my eyes, feeling the burn in my blood.

  Billy was playing with a G.I. Joe doll when I kicked in his front door. I held a steak knife with the three fingers of my good hand. All I had to do was stick it in his chest to the hilt and hold it there with my left hand until he stopped moving. Then I would leave. I wouldn’t have to worry about wiping the blade clean, or removing fing
erprints from the handle. No forensics team was going to track me down. I wouldn’t have to burn my clothes.

  I would just have to kill Billy.

  Kill little Billy Derace, and life resets itself.

  Meghan lives.

  It was daylight, but I was being smart about it—wearing Grandpop’s overcoat, shoes and gloves. I also pulled a wool ski cap over my face. It was hard to breathe, and it partially blinded me, but I could still see through the loose gaps in the weave. I put the fedora on my head for extra protection. I didn’t care if the sun found me and nuked me to pieces. I just needed to kill Billy first.

  Billy knew it, too.

  “Mom!”

  He screamed, and I couldn’t blame him. I would be terrified out of my mind, too, if a ghost wearing a face mask and a fedora kicked in my front door. But I didn’t give a shit. I whipped my three-fingered fist across his face. His little head snapped back, banging against the doors of a small hutch. Is this what it felt like to hit a kid, Erna? Was it a thrill to know that you were older, stronger and more vicious, and no matter what, this little boy had to take it?

  The hutch doors popped loose from their magnetic locks and swung open slightly. Billy recovered quickly, though—kids often do—and scrambled across the dirty carpet, heading for the apartment door.

  But I was older. Smarter. And I had the advantage of not being terrified. I made three quick leaps across the room and beat him there, kicking the door shut with my knee. The slam was like a rifle shot echoing throughout the stairwell.

  “Mom!” he screamed again.

  I placed my foot against his small chest and pushed hard. Not hard enough to break ribs, but enough to knock the air out of him. It’s funny, you calling for your mother now, little Billy. Think she’s going to come and save you, or join in? Maybe I’m doing her a favor. Maybe you did ruin her life.

  You’ve ruined mine.