Never Enough Time, page 11
“Why is anyone?” she says, and I want to fucking scream and keep screaming.
“Because they’re forced to be?” I say in a not-scream.
“That could be one way of thinking of it. But no one is ever forced. Not in the sense you’re implying.”
“I wake up every morning and seven years are just fucking gone,” I say, although I’m not saying anything Lachesis doesn’t already know. Finally I’ve got someone who believes me and understands, yet her answers are useless to me.
“I wake up every day and a whole lifetime is gone,” she says. “I wouldn’t let it bother you.”
“Why is my fate my fortune?” I say, thinking I’ll take a different tack and maybe get a better, a more useful, response.
“That? Oh, that’s just a slogan,” she says, laughing now. “Catchy, isn’t it?”
“No!” I say, one and a half decibels away from a scream. “It’s not catchy at fucking all! No one—absolutely no one—can tell me anything useful. And you—the one person I had some hope for—you’re making jokes!”
“Life is very short,” she says, “as you well know. Better than most, right? I think jokes are the order of the day.”
“Lachesis,” I say, “how did I end up married to Ryan?”
“Oh, that? He and Sara had a fight, and he went to your place for the night. Then you found out you were pregnant, and the two of you got married.”
“Pregnant? We have a child? Where the hell is this child? Who are they? How old are they?”
“Oh no. That didn’t work out. When things are not meant to be . . .” She shrugs, and I shiver, thinking of the baby I have inside me.
“Is this not meant to be either?” I say, sure she’ll know just what I’m referring to.
“Only what is yours by divine right,” she says, sounding like a Swedenborgian or maybe what I mean is she sounds just like the real Lachesis might sound.
“Who decides?” I say.
“Weren’t you just across the way?”
“At the Swedenborg place?”
“So, you were. I thought so. I knew it would be irresistible to you.”
“Tell me what else you know,” I say, hoping this will prompt her to finally give me something I can use to get out of this hell of sevens. The seven of spades stares up at me from the table as I think this.
“You have free will,” Lachesis says. “Everyone does.”
“But—”
“I must see my next client,” she says. “It’s his time, and, unlike you, he comes regularly.”
“But—” I have a thousand questions to ask her. And—it’s his time? When’s my time? It’s being pulled out from under me seven years at a tug.
Lachesis goes to the door, her fortune-teller getup swishing and kind of shimmering in the mood lighting. She unlocks the door, says, “Martin,” and gestures for the waiting man to come inside. He’s tall, has broad shoulders and a big chest, and a head of graying hair, cut close on the sides.
“Delaney?” he says when Lachesis moves aside and he sees me.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” says Lachesis as she disappears behind a curtain of beads.
Chapter 37
“Delaney,” says Martin, who I suspect must be the Martin, the solicitor, the one I’m supposed to know, although I don’t know this man at all. He looks old enough to be my father. Or, what I mean is, three days ago he would’ve been that old. Today he’s probably only maybe five or perhaps seven years older than me, if that.
“Martin,” I say, acting like I know this stranger.
“I wasn’t aware you knew about this place,” he says, looking about as uncomfortable as I must look most of the fucking time. Lately, I mean. If I was ever comfortable-looking in the past, which I may not’ve been.
“I didn’t,” I say. “But I got this card.” I hold it up to show him.
“Funny, isn’t it?” he says. Why does everyone think everything is so damned hilarious? It isn’t. “I got one too. Years ago. I still have it.”
“What’s going on between us?” I say. Even though I’d better get to the divorce right away if I have a hope of at least letting Ryan and Sara have a shred of happiness, I need to find out if what Sara implied is true.
“Delaney,” he says, and sighs. Then he sits down in what I’ve come to think of as Lachesis’s chair, and I kind of gasp at the gall of this solicitor, thinking he can occupy the same space as one of the Fates.
“Look, Delaney, we’ve been through this a hundred times. Three hundred times.”
“Seven hundred times?” I can’t resist saying.
“Possibly even seven hundred times,” he says. “You won’t get a divorce, and I—”
“But you’re wrong there,” I say, cutting in. “I will get a divorce. Today, if possible. I gave the ring back to Sara. See?” I hold up my non-ring-burdened finger, which is on the same hand that’s holding up the your fate is your fortune card.
“For God’s sake—”
“They still have God?”
“Delaney,” Martin says, heaving an impressive exhale after he says my name. “You can’t get a divorce today.”
“Well, you can start it today, can’t you?”
“Yes, of course. Yes. Are you serious?” You’d think Martin would look happy—or happier—at this point, but he looks unhappier.
“I’m deadly fucking serious,” I say. “And pregnant.”
“Oh my fucking God,” he says. “You can’t expect me to . . . and Val. I mean. For God’s sake. Val . . .”
“Val?” I say. “I’m supposed to be concerned about Val?” Who the bloody fuck is Val?
“No, no. I didn’t mean . . . It’s just that . . . Good God, Delaney. The wedding is in two weeks. Couldn’t you have? What I mean is—why did you wait until now to tell me all this?”
“About that,” I say. Might as well tell him everything. Although so far he’s failing the reliable-guardian-for-the-baby-while-I-disappear-for-seven-years test.
Just as I’m about to mention that I’ve been “away” for the last seven years up until this morning, Lachesis makes an untimely reentrance.
“Are you two almost finished?” she says, then, without waiting for an answer, turns to Martin. “We have much to talk about today, and the clock’s ticking.”
“Isn’t it fucking just,” I say. “And you”—I get up and point at Lachesis—“you’re the one who wound it.”
“I’m afraid I have nothing whatsoever to do with time,” says Lachesis.
“Delaney, let’s talk over dinner. Meet me at the usual place,” says Martin.
“Where’s that?” I say, since I have no idea where my usual anything is, much less someplace I usually go with this stranger I’m having an affair with and whose baby I’m probably carrying.
“Gaylord,” he says, exasperated, “on Mortimer, for God’s sake,” he says when I look at him like I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about—because I don’t.
“At seven?” I say, and I’m not surprised when he nods.
Chapter 38
“What did Lachesis say to you?” I say the moment Martin shows up at Gaylord, which is a classy Indian restaurant. I’m a bit underdressed, but they were very kind to me at the door and let me in anyway.
I waited for Martin only about seven minutes or so. Well, to me it was seven minutes. Maybe to the rest of the world that was seven years. Or seven Plancks.
“Delaney,” Martin says, “don’t you think we have more important things to discuss?”
“Like your marrying Val? Like my pregnancy?” The server shows up, interrupting my accusatory tirade of impossible questions, and we order.
“If I’d married Raj, I could be having Indian food every day,” I say.
“I hate it when you talk about Raj,” Martin says.
“You prefer it when I talk about Ryan?”
“You never talk about Ryan. You only married him because you thought you had to.”
“Well, I did,” I say, hoping that I did, that Lachesis wasn’t just saying anything at all in order to keep from answering far more important questions—the questions I never had a chance to ask. Although maybe she would’ve just told more jokes.
“Does she joke with you too?”
“Who? Sara? I don’t know her.” Martin orders a bottle of wine, then says, “Wait. I do know her. She was at that party. You remember?”
“Yeah,” I say as though I remember some party that occurred during the seven-year drought of memories—or of existence. I mean, I don’t fucking know which.
Help me, you bastard abducting aliens! But no help is forthcoming. So much for extraterrestrial life. Fuck extraterrestrial life. This is all their fault.
“She’s very attractive,” Martin says, as though this will make me feel better. “So’s Ryan, for that matter.”
“You can have them both,” I say. I’d leave the restaurant in a huff or something but the food looks amazing, and who knows if I’ll ever get another meal this good? I mean, I’ve got only a few meals left, by my quick calculations.
“You’re really going to divorce Ryan?”
“You mean you didn’t start the paperwork?” This statement sends Martin into a fit of laughter.
“Paperwork?! I haven’t heard that word in years. You’re such a sketch sometimes, Delaney.”
“Well, did you start it?” I want to make sure I do something right with this day, since so far I’ve managed to get zero accomplished during my brief visits to my life.
“Yeah, actually, I did,” he says as he lifts his wineglass and nods for me to do the same.
I pick up the glass. He moves his toward mine and we clink.
“To us,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, and we both drink. “But what about Val?” I might as well ask. What’s the worst he can say? That us includes Val? Fuck. That’d be fucking fucked.
“Delaney, do you have to know everything right away? Always?”
“Yes,” I say. “My time here is limited.”
“I called it off,” he says. “For Christ’s sake, Delaney, you’re pregnant. You’re finally—finally—divorcing Ryan. This is our chance to be together. I’m not going to ignore it.”
“You’re not?”
I drink some more wine and wonder if I’m drinking too much again as the thirty-seven-year-old version of myself. By the third glass, I don’t have to wonder anymore—I am drinking too much, especially for a pregnant person.
“Go easy on the stuff,” Martin says, reinforcing my half-drunk self-assessment. “I think it’s not good for the baby.”
“The baby likes it,” I say. “At least today. Tomorrow it’s all over and neither of us will have another drink.”
“Good,” says Martin. “For once you’re being somewhat sensible.”
“I’m always sensible,” I say. I mean, I’m a motherfucking financial analyst, I’m about to get married for the second time, I’m pregnant, and I’m part owner of London’s most perfect apartment. How much more sensible could I get?
I listen to the sitar and tabla in the background and think of Raj and I want to cry.
“Don’t cry, Delaney,” says Martin. I guess I more than want to cry. Maybe I’m just a bit teary-eyed. But I keep thinking that this should be Raj’s baby, not Martin’s.
I don’t even know Martin and frankly, I’m not attracted to him at all. I hope he doesn’t intend to touch me. What I mean is, touch me again, if it’s true that he’s the baby’s father and he more than touched me at least once.
“Did you really call off the wedding?” I say, because this all seems to be going too smoothly, like it’s a fantasy version of what would really happen in a circumstance like this.
But, as it turns out, I don’t have to ask, because a tall, model-looking woman runway-walks into the restaurant, comes up behind Martin, puts her arms around his chest and her cleavage in his neck, and says, “Sorry I’m late, dear. You know how it is.”
Chapter 39
“Delaney,” the model says to me.
“Val,” I say, trying out the most likely name.
“I’ll let you two discuss it,” Martin says, getting up from the table before he’s been served his dinner, and leaving me alone with his fiancée, or ex-fiancée.
“Martin told me you’re pregnant,” she says.
“Because I am,” I say. “Wanna see the proof?”
“No, I believe you,” Val says. You’d think we were discussing whether to get the malai kofta or the wild mushrooms, not that I’m pregnant with her fiancé’s child.
“I told Martin and now I’m telling you. I’m not canceling this wedding unless I’m dead.” Val gestures to a nearby server.
“But—”
“Never mind what he might’ve said to you. He and I discussed it and decided I should be the one to tell you. After all, he’s gutless, as we both know.”
“We do?”
“Well, I do,” she says. “You might be too stupid to have noticed.”
“Yet you want to marry him anyway?” Although I guess the gutless get married every day by the hundreds of thousands. Maybe those are the very people who get married the most often. And maybe I am too stupid to have noticed.
“My dear Delaney,” she says, “anyone would. He’s got all that wealth. It’s very very appealing.”
“I’ll say,” I say. “Would you like the baby too?” Hell, maybe she’ll take the baby—instant child without ruining your modeling career—and I won’t have to worry for the next seven years, that is, overnight, about who’s taking care of him or her.
“Don’t be a complete idiot!” she says. “You and the baby can go to India or something. You know, to that guy you’re always comparing Martin to.”
“Raj? I wouldn’t compare anyone to him, much less Martin. There is no one to compare to Raj.” I’m defending Raj? The guy who left me for an arranged marriage? I must be drunk on the Indian food and music. Oh yeah. And the wine.
Although my hand is at the center of my chest, the very place where Raj seems to reside.
“Val?” says Martin, who’s come back to the table. He leans over and kisses her, then sits down. “All worked out?”
“You must be a shit solicitor,” I say. “Or do you just sit in an office and let others do all the dirty work after you put forth a few choice lies?”
“You are pretty funny, Delaney,” Martin says.
“Hilarious,” Val says.
“Did you know your husband-to-be consults a fucking fortune-teller?” I say. “Regularly?”
“Martin?” Val says. “What’s she talking about? And can I order something? I haven’t eaten today.”
Val looks like she could say that phrase nearly every day—unless she’s got the world’s most amazing metabolism.
Or I guess it’s possible that here in the twenty-one-years-hence future, a future with no bags or satchels or visible means of paying for anything, the problem of eating and gaining weight from doing too much of it has been finally solved. If so, the inventor of this system is a bazillionaire.
“Why would I see a fortune-teller?” says Martin, looking and sounding like he really means it. I should take lying lessons from him, if nothing else. Maybe he can give me a few pointers before I tell him to fuck off. But, really, he’s a solicitor. What did I expect?
“Delaney,” Martin says as he swallows a large swig of wine, “Val’s asked me if I’ll stop seeing you after the wedding.” Wow. Not now? Not before the wedding?
“That’s fine,” I say, wondering when my malai kofta is going to show up, and just then it does. I dig in.
Delicious. Fantastic. Food of the gods. Ganesha, overseeing the proceedings, agrees with me. But, you know, he’s a very agreeable god, as gods go.
“See? I told you she wouldn’t mind,” Val says with a triumphal smirk. “He said you’d argue,” Val says to me in a whisper, as though she and I are best pals and Martin is some subsidiary character whose presence we’re merely tolerating. In that she might be correct.
“She argues about everything,” says Martin, who’s now digging into his chicken. I wonder if Ryan is also not a vegetarian, and wonder how I could’ve considered marrying either one of these men.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” says Val, who gets up and leaves us alone.
“You fucking liar,” I say to Martin, loud enough for everyone in our part of the restaurant to overhear me. It’s the wine, I’m sure. I mean, usually when I wake up in the morning, am seven years older, pregnant, and I’m married to the wrong guy, I’m so very fucking courteous.
“I didn’t know how to tell you, Delaney,” he says. “We’re still on for tomorrow night, though. Right?”
“Wrong,” I say. “We’re fucking off. For fucking ever.”
Chapter 40
I don’t even bother going home. I hate it there. I hate Ryan, I hate the sterile atmosphere, I hate how clean the place is.
I hate that I might go home and find Ryan and Sara doing even more than they were doing in the British Museum, in front of a possibly huge audience, except now I’d be the only member of the audience. And they’d be doing it in my bed. Or the bed of the version of Delaney Archer that I became due to the post-alien-abduction psychotic enchanted serial amnesia I’ve got.
I check into Saint Georges Hotel. It’s very easy when they just nod at you and tell you a room number and you get there and the door opens without a key or a card or anything.
The hotel room is just fine, although there’s enough bed here for me, Ryan, Sara, Val, and Martin. We could have a fucking orgy if only I fancied any of them enough to consider such a thing.
I’m going to watch television. I don’t like television—all that constant selling and the hyped-out drama—but television will catch me up on everything I’ve missed over the last seven years.
Except for one thing—there’s no television in the room. Or if there is, I can’t locate it. There’s also no phone, no clock, no radio, no nothing. Maybe I’m just supposed to entertain myself, or perhaps most of the patrons of this place have plenty to entertain them without needing external assistance.
