Never Enough Time, page 12
There is a minibar, though, and I open a bottle of wine but I decide against it.
Inside the desk drawer is paper and a pen.
Here’s my current idea: I’m going to write out the big list again, come up with some new possibilities and discard the lousy ones, rework the thing, and I’m going to hold on to it while I fall asleep, which I’m threatening to do in about five or what I mean is seven minutes, since I’ve had a kind of, you know, fucking horribly fucking stressful fucking day.
So that—this is the great part of the idea—when I wake up tomorrow, no matter when it is, and I’m hoping that this seven thing will be over with by then although I doubt it will be, I’ll still have the paper in my hand and I’ll be able to prove to myself that I’m not completely out of my mind.
Possibilities. 1. Totally fucking out of my fucking mind. 2. Having a stress reaction to writing either the paper for high school, the thesis for grad school, or some useless analysis of some useless crap financial-ish thing. 3. Abducted by aliens. 4. Amnesia. 4A. Combination of 3 and 4. 5. Dead, and in an afterlife that’s never been described anywhere else, and fucking furious about the whole thing.
6. Alternate reality—the very one I never would have chosen. 7. Reserved for something important, because, you know, 7 is such a fucking significant number, apparently, in this whole fucking scheme.
8. Parallel universe, although does that mean I’m me somewhere else? And, if I am, how come I’m here too? 9. In a coma after a tragic accident and having detailed fantasies about people and places I don’t know in life but in my coma, they’re the only people I know.
10. Cursed by the Fates, particularly by Lachesis, who seems to think jokes are in order and not explanations, like any decent deitylike person would be happy to give me. 11. Living really really fast for most of the time, then slowing down to human speed for one day every seven years. 12. In a hypnotic trance and the hypnotist can’t wake me up, and I don’t know how to do it myself. And, worse: 13. Maybe I don’t want to wake up.
Well, enough of that. I stare out the window, trying hard to keep my drooping eyes open. There must be millions of other possibilities, if only I could think of them.
I get out a new sheet of paper.
Dear Aliens: Please return me to my rightful place in the world. And no!! This right here is not not NOT my rightful place.
Dear Parallel Universe: Fuck you. I want out.
Dear Hypnotist: Wake me the fuck up. Now.
Dear Doctors: Get me out of the coma immediately or pull the fucking plug. I mean it.
Dear 7: If you’re so prime, do something.
Dear Lachesis: Put the jokes aside and tell me what the fuck is going on. Please. I can’t stand it anymore.
I couldn’t really have been having an affair with Martin Griffith, could I have? He’s awful, and, as his soon-to-be wife knows, he’s gutless.
Maybe I’m gutless too, or I’d be out of this situation by now. Wouldn’t I?
If I just put my head on the desk for a few minutes, I’ll be sure to wake up. How could I sleep all night in such an uncomfortable position?
From the next room, on the other side of the wall, I hear, “Yes! Don’t stop! Now! Yes, yes, yes, yes!”
There’s something comforting in those words, but I’m too drowsy to figure out what.
Chapter 41
The surface of the desk is hard, but I’m happy to rest here for a while. It’s been a long day. Although not long enough. None of them are.
Everything’s going so so so fast. Seven years at a clip. It feels like I’m in a moving vehicle, like there’s an engine running below me, humming, grinding, and the brakes are squealing.
A jolt.
“End of the line,” a voice says, as though from some kind of PA system.
This is the first dream I’ve had since the whole cycle of sevens started, and it’s got this nicely prophetic saying in it: end of the line. I sigh, but whether it’s dreaming me sighing or waking-up me, I’m not sure.
Wake up, I tell myself. Maybe, even though I wasn’t able to do it before, I can do it tonight—stay up.
“End of the line,” says a voice that’s inches away from me. Not the PA-sounding voice.
“Ummm,” I say.
“Get up,” says the voice. A rather nice voice.
“Later,” I say. “I have to sleep some more.”
“Not here, you don’t.”
“But it’s my room,” I say.
“That’s what they all say,” says the voice, and I open my eyes.
It won’t surprise you to learn that I’m no longer at the Saint Georges Hotel, and, even worse, I’m not in a castle where Saint George himself might reside. Or the dragon. I’d take a dragon right about now.
I’m in a train car, and, let me tell you, the light in here is harsh.
“Off,” says the woman who woke me up. But she has such a nice voice, I nod and get off the train.
I cross the tracks and get on the outbound train. I need a drink is my first thought. Not Where the fucking hell am I? which would be the first thought of a sane, ordinary person.
But I’m neither sane nor ordinary. I’m someone who ages seven years every night, and I’m guessing it’s daytime now, even though I’m underground and can’t tell, and this is seven years after that delish dinner at Gaylord and whatever else happened yesterday. Or seven years ago. Whichever.
And, yeah, my hands are empty. So much for the idea of clutching those papers. Fuck me.
Am I a homeless person? I look down at myself. What a fucking relief. If I am a homeless person, I’m the best-dressed homeless person in history.
My body keeps telling me I need a drink, though, which sounds more like something a homeless person’s body would say to them. In a way, I am homeless, because—and this won’t surprise you and, frankly, it doesn’t surprise me either—I’m no longer in London.
I’m on the D train, in New York City, heading downtown. The train’s nearly empty here at its origin station at 205th Street in the Bronx. What am I doing here?
Oh yes. I was asleep on the train, dressed in these fine duds, like something a fucking financial analyst would wear. Very very gray, neat, and super incredibly expensive. I feel the fabric of my skirt, just to make sure I’m not actually dreaming, and it’s kind of like silk shantung. Maybe that’s exactly what it is.
Here I am, all dressed up for a day on Wall Street, and I’m on the D train, wishing I had a drink, and heading back into Manhattan.
I feel very exposed, sitting here without a phone, without a bag, without a book. Nothing. Although no one else has anything with them either, yet people seem to be in a kind of a trance, their attention turned to some unseen-by-me focal point.
People’s heads are bobbing as though they’re listening to music—without headphones?—and their eyes are closed but it’s clear they’re intent on . . . something. What?
The ride’s soothing somehow. I feel more at home here in the D train than I did in that sterile apartment in London, married to Ryan . . . and, fuck me, pregnant.
I look down at myself again, as though I’d still be pregnant, these no doubt seven years later, then I turn around and look at my reflection in the window behind me. I’m definitely seven years older than I was yesterday. Maybe a hundred and seven years older.
I have gray streaks in my hair, for fuck’s sake, and it’s cut short, like the hair of a wicked, uncaring, coldhearted businessperson. Goes with the getup, I think. And of course I’m no longer pregnant.
But, you know, what about the baby? Do I have a kid now? Do I leave the kid at home—wherever the holy searing inferno that is?—and take the D train in to work? Or something?
I reach into the pocket of the suit jacket, hoping, praying, I’ll find something there. Something that will tell me where I live, who my kid is, what my job is. The pocket’s empty, of course.
People no longer need objects. They’ve evolved beyond that in the twenty-eight years since I entered the fucking path of the fucking sevens.
Chapter 42
The train pulls into Columbus Circle and about three hundred thousand people get on. I guess I’m officially in the thickest of rush hours.
Someone who’s standing with his back plastered to the door waves at me and I wave back. What the fuck. For all I know, he’s my husband or my boss or my best friend or my therapist.
By 34th Street, the train’s empty enough that the waver comes over and sits down next to me. He looks like he’s about fifty years old, which, you know, a few days ago would’ve seemed fucking old as fuck to me, but now that I’m forty-four or something, he looks like a contemporary.
And, like a contemporary, he’s wearing a fine tailored business suit, maybe even more expensive than the one I’ve got on. I feel like I’m playing a part in a costume drama.
“Here on a business trip?” the man says.
“What?” say I. Maybe he’ll just think I didn’t hear him instead of the truth, which is that I have no fucking idea what the answer to that question is.
“I didn’t know you came to New York anymore,” he says, turning and looking at the side of my face, so I turn too, sliding around on the slick seat, and now we’re facing each other.
“I don’t,” I say. “I live here, so I don’t have to come here.” The words just kind of spew out of me, and I have no idea if there’s any truth to them.
“That’s not what I heard,” he says.
The man has a square jaw, broad shoulders, long fingers, and a sexy mouth. Something in my solar plexus is turning over. Have I already had sex with this guy only I don’t remember it—or him?
I haven’t felt a sexual pull like this in, literally, I don’t know how long. For all I know, I haven’t felt like this since grad school. Because neither Martin nor Ryan, when I was married to him, inspired such lust in me.
“What did you hear?” I say. Here’s my chance to find out everything that’s missing from the last seven years, so I’d better take it before he gets off the train.
“That you moved to Italy after you lost the baby,” he says, and I’m blinded by a blur of tears. No wonder my solar plexus hurts.
“I moved back here,” I say. I wish I could remember Italy, since I’d like to live there. Right now, in fact. And not in one of the Missing Years.
The man puts his arms around me—because I’m crying, I guess. Now I really need a drink. Or perhaps sex. Either will do. Both would be better.
“What do you say we ditch work and go do something?” he says.
“Like what?” I say, but I already know what, because his mouth is on mine, mine is on his, his left hand is working its way under my jacket, and if I don’t get into bed with him soon, we’re going to do it right here on the D train. We’re already engaged in a tremendously accurate impersonation of the Ryan-and-Sara act.
Me and this man whose name I don’t know. And don’t ask.
At Broadway-Lafayette we get off the train.
“You live near here?” I say.
“Delaney. You’re the one who moved. I haven’t moved in years.”
“Ah,” I say, as though I understand.
We walk, arm in arm, down Jersey Street, and he opens a bright blue door. Inside the building, we start kissing again, only this time, since there’s no one around, the fondling is reaching epic states.
Silk blouse pulled out from silk skirt. Tie pulled down, me unbuttoning his shirt, him tugging my jacket off. And we’re still in the entryway.
His mouth is all over me and my hands are all over him. Yeah, I mean there too.
He disengages for a moment and says, “I’ve had a fantasy for years about doing this with you.”
I say nothing. I haven’t had anything for years. Only for days.
“Let’s get upstairs,” he says.
“Lead the way,” I say in between panting breaths.
We walk up five flights of stairs, stopping on every landing to unbutton and unhook other things, and stroll into his incredible apartment.
I mean, from the outside of the building, you couldn’t tell if this were going to be just another kind of three-room railroad or maybe even a studio, but it’s a fucking loft, with views of everything and, unlike the apartment I lived in with Ryan in London, this place is homey and lived-in, and not so much decorated as arranged brilliantly.
We throw ourselves down on the lovely dark red sofa in the middle of the wide-open living room and mood-killer me has to go to the bathroom.
“You always have to go to the bathroom,” says my soon-to-be sex partner. “Well, you know where it is.”
I don’t, but I overcome that small fact and find it anyway. I figure it’ll be near the kitchen—you know, take advantage of the plumbing and all—and I’m right.
This nice bathroom, unlike the overdesigned minimalist marble spa in the apartment I half owned in London, has old-fashioned black-and-white tiles on the floor, a pedestal sink, a regular toilet—I guess some things don’t change even after nearly three motherfucking decades—and a medicine cabinet that I open up after I pee.
Unlike the medicine cabinet in London, which contained all but nothing, this one is loaded to the gills with stuff. Among this stuff are a couple of pill bottles—that hasn’t changed either—and one of them, for a drug I’ve never heard of that’s got enough K’s and X’s in the name to start its own stand-up routine, says ezra lomax on it.
Assuming the man I’m about to get naked with is the person this bottle belongs to, I know his name. If not, I know the name of someone, although maybe not my trysting partner.
“Are you taking pills now?” I say in the most I-don’t-care kind of a way when I emerge from the bathroom, holding the pill bottle. I don’t know why, but while I was in the bathroom, I zipped my skirt back up and rebuttoned my blouse.
“Yeah,” he says. “Why not? It’s all the rage.”
“I prefer alcohol,” I say.
Didn’t Raj want me to stop drinking so much? The hell with him. Where is he now? Off with his arranged bride, probably with three or four kids, and having forgotten about me, since for him, twenty-one fucking years have elapsed.
“I’ve got some wine,” he says.
I guess the mood died when I went to the bathroom. Well, really, it died for me too. He looked better in the subway and in the stairwell. Here, in his apartment, he looks just like any other fiftyish guy in a too-expensive suit.
And, judging from what I saw of myself in the bathroom mirror before I cringed in horror, I’m just as ordinary. More, maybe. How did he even recognize me when I can barely recognize myself?
Chapter 43
I wait for Ezra—if it is Ezra, and if it isn’t, I’ll still always think of him as Ezra—on the sofa while he goes into the kitchen and reemerges with a bottle of wine and two crystal goblets. Well, okay, crystal and goblet might be overdoing the description, but they’re very nice wineglasses anyway.
He opens the bottle, pours the wine, and then, well, the mood returns before either of us has a chance to take a sip of the stuff.
Buttons undone. Shoes kicked away. Clothing off. Panting breaths. Desperate need. Right there on the sofa. Repositioning ourselves for better angles. Everything about him is sex.
“Delaney,” he says between gasps.
“Don’t stop,” I say during gasps.
“Move,” he says. I move. “There,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “Oh. Yes.”
Changing now. Me on top. His head arched back. Those long fingers. My hands can’t find enough.
By the time he shouts his release, I’ve matched him twice over.
We’re side by side on the sofa, him on the outside. Me falling asleep.
“Delaney,” he says.
“Not yet,” I say. Not yet could be the slogan of my last five days.
“You’re wild,” he says.
When you haven’t had sex for over two decades—even if it only seems like three days to you—it tends one toward wildness, I think, but I say, “That was great.”
“Are you sure you’re the Delaney Archer I’ve known for twenty years?”
The thing is, I’m not sure. So I say as much.
“You’ve always been pretty funny,” he says. “Are you back with the old firm?”
“Which one?” I say—clever me. Don’t most people jump around from job to job?
“Roark and Bender. Who else would I mean?”
“I forgot where I was working when . . .” I rub my hand down the center of his chest. “You know.”
“Well, it was never like this,” he says, mirroring my moves.
“There’s only today,” I say, because in my case, it’s true.
“And tomorrow,” he says.
“Maybe not,” I say. I’m feeling kinda drowsy. Probably from the sex. We still haven’t touched the wine.
“Are you all right, Delaney?” Ezra, if he is Ezra, says as I drift off.
“Mmmm,” I say.
“You are going to finish your thesis,” Raj says to me. He can be so fucking demanding.
“Why the fuck should I?” I say. “Stop bothering me about it.”
“Stop bothering you about it? What did you come to university for? What are you doing here? Wasting your time?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Isn’t that what time’s for?” I reach past Raj for the wine bottle on the floor.
“Time doesn’t have a purpose. But you need one,” Raj says. He looks like he’s the headmaster at a very very strict school, the kind of school where I wouldn’t last for ten seconds, and I hate it when he’s like this.
Then he takes the wine bottle out of my reach, and I hate it—and him—even more.
“Sara told me that you’re going to stay an extra year and get your MBA,” Raj says. He’s sitting on the bed next to me. All our clothes are on. The wine bottle has disappeared.
“Who the fuck told her she could tell you that?” I say.
“Aren’t you a philosophy major?” Raj said. “You’re getting an MBA?”
“Listen, Mr. Tech Wizard. Don’t judge.”
“But I love the tech world, Del. You don’t even like the business world.” Raj is giving me that look he gives me—the one that makes me feel guilty for being alive. The one that makes me feel like I have to defend myself to the only person I’ve ever loved.
