Never Enough Time, page 13
“Well, I like money,” I say. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No,” he says. “Not even close.”
“Raj,” I say. “You’re not really going to marry that arranged girl, are you?”
“Tell you what, Delaney. You finish your thesis, do something that you love, can the MBA, and—”
“Delaney, you have to get up,” says not-Raj.
“Why?” I say, or rather, mumble.
“The maid comes today. She’ll be here in a few minutes. I almost forgot.”
It’s Ezra. I must have fallen asleep. For someone who gets to live only one day out of every seven years, I spend far too fucking much time sleeping.
Although this sleep had Raj in it. But he was bullying me. I prefer Ezra now.
“Ezra,” I say. “Does the maid have to come today?”
“She does. My kid’s coming over for the weekend, and the ex will have a fit if the place looks like it does right now.”
“You mean with me naked on your sofa?”
“Ha ha.” He hands me my awful clothes, and I see that he’s completely dressed, looking just like the pressed and perfect executive I saw on the D train.
As I finish buttoning my horrid blouse, the door opens and the maid comes in. She looks ever so slightly like Lachesis, which makes me want to hide, but she doesn’t show any signs of recognizing me, and Ezra—he didn’t contradict me—and I go downstairs together, “to let her do her job,” per Ezra.
At the front door, he says, “Delaney. It was great seeing you again,” and before I have a chance to say anything, he’s halfway down Lafayette Street.
Chapter 44
That’s it? Maybe the only person in the entire city who knows me, and this is it? Done? Over?
I go back into the subway station. The D train goes all the way to Coney Island—or it used to back when I knew about the subway system even though I was a Westchester girl—and I have an urgent need to see the ocean.
Let me do something I’ll love today, I think as the train pulls out of Broadway-Lafayette and heads toward Brooklyn.
Not that I didn’t love having sex with Ezra Lomax. Well, love may be stretching the point. I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the way he just zoomed away afterward, but really, what did we have to talk about? He’d probably already told me everything he knew about me, and I wasn’t all that fucking interested in him.
That is, I’m not more interested in him than I am in finding out more about the path of the sevens.
At the Bay Parkway stop I have a revelation: While I was only a few blocks away, I should have gone over to Ludlow to see if Min-Jae was still there, as unlikely as that is. But I didn’t. Fuck it.
Possibilities. Oh fucking hell damn fuck. I was supposed to be holding those papers, the ones I made out in Saint Georges Hotel seven years ago. But I wasn’t holding anything when I woke up on the D train. And why did I wake up there and not in my apartment?
Forget that. Forgetting that. Let me look at the ocean. Let me taste the salt air. Let me have some french fries and a root beer.
See, Raj? I don’t always want to drink. Sometimes I like greasy fries and a sweet soda. And if I want to get a fucking MBA, I’ll get one.
Did Raj really marry that arranged girl because I got an MBA? I almost can’t blame him if he did. But that was a dream.
Yet it seemed horribly terribly awfully true.
The train pulls into Coney Island and everyone gets off. All seven of us.
As I walk out of the bright station, I’m getting some funny looks, probably because I’m dressed like a business fucking person instead of like an ocean-looking-at person, so I pick out a few items from a boardwalk shop—I mean I just walk away with them and no one says a word, so I guess they’re paid for by the mysterious payment system of the future, that is, the present—and I go into the public bathroom to change.
I leave the business suit there, draped nicely over a not-nice sink, and put the stylish shoes on the floor. Maybe someone else can use these things. I can’t. I’m happier in this loose, flowery dress and coral-colored flip-flops.
The ocean hasn’t changed. Or maybe it has but I can’t tell. Either way, it seems like a constant in an otherwise all-too-different world.
A world where a day is seven years distant from the next day, where I have sex with the first man who calls out my name, where I know less and less about what’s happening to me, and where french fries and root beer still taste fantastic.
I had another miscarriage. Ezra Lomax wouldn’t’ve lied about that, I don’t think. I mean, I don’t think he lied about anything. There was hardly anything to lie about.
Martin and Val—if Val did marry him—were at least spared the inconvenience of my child. I hope I stuck to my promise and never saw Martin again, but judging by what I just did, perhaps I did see him again. You know, while I was still allowed to, before he and Val got married. But not after. Of course not.
I reposition my garish towel on the sand and lie back. Okay, I guess you’re not supposed to lie down right after you eat, but what the fuck? I’ve got only so much time. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing, not whatever’s good for me.
What is good for me?
I drift off under the afternoon sun. I love the sounds of the ocean, of the kids yelling out to each other, of the couple arguing as they walk by, of the seagulls’ wings and squawks, of the sales pitch of the beer vendor, of the drifting hot dog wrappers.
I love the feel of the sand blowing across my legs and eyelashes and how it’s cool underneath my hands as I dig into it.
I love the aroma of the salt air, of the leftover french fries, of seaweed and sea spray.
There’s still some ice at the bottom of my cup and I half sit up, then gulp the ice, savoring it.
Maybe this is all there is to life—lying here, feeling the sun, hearing the waves and the kids, licking the last bit of mustard off my lips, having the salt and sand blow across me—whether it’s for a moment, a day, seven hours, or seven years.
Just to let it all happen, let myself happen, and be with it. Just be.
Chapter 45
“Plasma!” says a kid’s voice, and I wonder if plasma is the new awesome or whatever the other several excellent terms are that I’ve missed in the Lost Years.
Or maybe he said ectoplasm, and he meant me, the ghost, the wraith in the flowery dress, alone on a garish towel on the Coney Island beach.
I stay on the beach and watch the sunset. But even I, the adventurer of the impossible sevens, can’t stay on a dark beach alone at night, and it’s getting chilly. So I “buy” a sweatshirt—black with the face of the crazy kid who’s the symbol of Coney on the front—and walk the boardwalk into Brighton.
There’re more people than I would imagine there would be also walking on the boardwalk, and I wonder if any of them might also be having a seven-esque experience, but I don’t ask.
I’d like someone to talk with, but who is there among the passersby who I could speak my heart to? Tell what I’m yearning for? Explain today’s calm or yesterday’s fears?
I’ve seen the past and the future, and every seven years get suspended in that delicate space in between, where I am now, in the fleeting eternal.
Tell me, I want to say to the young couple sitting on the bench. Tell me what it’s like to sit there knowing that tomorrow you’ll have a life you recognize, a person to share your thoughts with, that you’ll still be, essentially, yourself?
I see an old woman and think, I’ll be you soon, in a couple of days. Are you happy? Does your life seem as short to you as mine does to me?
Tomorrow I’ll be fifty-one. When I was sixteen just a few days ago, that would’ve seemed impossibly quite old but now it seems not too bad, really, when I think that in a week I’ll be ninety-three.
I want to savor more of today. I want to go back to Ezra Lomax’s comforting apartment and lie naked on his couch with him, but maybe his kid is there now, or his regular girlfriend, or he wouldn’t be happy to see me even though I’d be happy to see him.
I want to have another dream where Raj scolds me and we argue. Where I get to be furious and passionate and in love with the most wonderful boy I’ve ever met. Even just to see his scowl and hear his angry judgments.
Wouldn’t it be great if Min-Jae walked by right now? If he could tell me the secrets he kept locked up that night on Ludlow Street in the wavering light of the Our Lady of Guadalupe candles?
Or even just to say hi to him, to ask him how Marie is, to thank him for that crazy evening. To find out who’s living in my old apartment now. To find out what he thinks of me. Now.
A woman strolls by, her tall, elegant dog leading the way.
“What kind is he?” I say.
“Russian wolfhound,” says the woman, who speaks with a Russian accent herself. “Borzoi.”
I am in Brighton, I remind myself, and the Russian population seems to still be here, even these many years later.
“Can I pet?” I say.
“Dimitri loves everyone,” says the woman.
I reach over to pet the dog’s silky fur and get a dog smile in return.
“So do I,” I say. Today, at least, it’s true. I do love everyone. Maybe even myself.
The woman smiles at me, I smile at her, and she and Dimitri continue on their walk.
I want to go home, to a home I understand. If I take the subway back into Manhattan, I can get to Grand Central and take the train to Westchester. Yes. I’ll do that.
Q to Times Square. Shuttle to Grand Central. Metro-North to Westchester.
I walk up the stairs and wait on the platform. Westchesterites have a strange relationship with the city—or they did when I lived in Westchester. They feel they’re both superior to Manhattan and also far far far fucking below it.
I mean, they all work in Manhattan—both my parents do—but live there? Which was probably one of the reasons I always wanted to. Live there. And I did, on Ludlow. And maybe do again right now, although I don’t know where that would be. Where I am.
Right now I’m determined to go home, to Westchester. I want to talk with my mother. She’ll have answers that only she could have. My father probably doesn’t know anything at all about my life now, since he didn’t then either.
Chapter 46
“Dear me, you have got quite the burn, missy,” says a beautiful dark-skinned man with a Jamaican accent. He could be ten years younger or a hundred years older than me. It’s impossible to tell.
I’m so enamored of the cadence of his words that it takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me.
“I was lying out in the sun all day,” I say. Well, not all day, but I don’t say that to this man—who’s carrying a bag! The only person I’ve seen with a bag! I want to hug him just for that. My shoulder is burning, which I’ve been trying to ignore.
“You have a bag,” I say, not hugging him.
“Tools of the trade,” he says.
“Are you Jamaican?” I say.
“I’m from the Bronx,” he says as he walks across the car, sits down next to me, and opens his miraculous bag, which I’m staring at. Imagine—a person with a bag. It’s mesmerizing.
“I was just there. This morning,” I say. “On the D train.”
“I ride the 2,” he says, “after we get into Manhattan.”
“I’m not usually there. In the Bronx,” I say.
“Where are you? Usually?” he says as he continues to look through his bag. I want to look inside too, but it’d be too awkward, and even the new—what I mean is old—I-don’t-give-a-fuck version of me isn’t in a hurry to engage in awkward.
“Suspended,” I say, “between time, space, and the distance of understanding.”
“Be happy for this moment,” he says as he produces a small pot from the bag. “This moment is your life.”
“You’re a poet,” I say.
“I’m a shaman,” he says, unscrewing the pot’s lid. “The poet was Omar Khayyam. A long long time ago.”
“The moving finger,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “A loaf of bread.”
He puts his fingers into the pot, then rubs his hand over my burnt shoulder. “It’d be easier if you’d use sunscreen,” he says.
“I wasn’t thinking,” I say. “I was just being.”
I squirm under his touch. My flesh is broiling.
“Stay still,” he says. His hand’s still on my shoulder, covering the ointment he’s rubbed into it. “It has to get absorbed. Be patient.”
“I don’t usually have time to be patient,” I say.
“There’s that usual again.”
“But maybe today I do.”
The lotion and his cool touch soothe the fire throughout my skin.
“How do you become a shaman?” I say. Maybe this would be something I could study if my path of sevens ever ends. Shaman seems like a good profession. He seems so sure of himself—and so relaxed and happy.
“You can’t become a shaman,” he says. He takes his hand from my shoulder. “Better?”
I look at my shoulder, making sure it’s the same one from a moment ago, when it was about to blister. I mean, this could be fifty years from that moment. But it isn’t. It’s the ordinary next moment. I’m still wearing the flowery dress and flip-flops. The sweatshirt’s folded up in my lap.
“Yes,” I say. “Then—how?”
“You either are a shaman or you’re not. There’s no becoming,” he says, as though this explains things.
“But—didn’t you have to learn about things?”
“Oh yes, oh yes. I’m still learning about things. Every day. Every second, really. But the shaman part? That’s different.”
“Oh,” I say, grasping at wisps of what he’s getting at.
“Like right now, this instant,” he says in that beautiful Jamaican lilt. He may be from the Bronx, but I’m betting both his parents and everyone he knew as a baby were from Jamaica.
“You’re learning something right now?” I say. I’m dead fucking curious and want to learn it too. I’ve had no time to learn a fucking thing since the sevens started up. I’ve been too busy trying to figure out, you know, life.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “I’m learning that you are struggling.”
“I am,” I say. “I’m on the path of the sevens.” Why not just tell him? We’re the only two people in this bright, shiny, new, glowing subway car, and I think maybe he’s been sent to me to help me out on my path. Although, Lachesis. But . . .
“Ah! I thought as much,” he says.
“Why?” I say.
“I’ve never met anyone on that path,” he says, “but you have the look.”
“What look is that?”
“You’re confused but you’re also thrilled,” he says. “And the sex is wonderful.”
“How can you tell that?”
“I am a shaman,” he says. “We can see things. I’ve always seen them, even before I knew I was a shaman.”
“It’s hard to deal with,” I say. “Every day I wake up and I’m seven years older.”
“I’ve heard worse stories,” he says.
“Tell me,” I say.
“Well, I ran into a man just a couple of months ago. Right here on the Q train. I gave him my special formulation for curing the anxieties.”
“Wait,” I say, interrupting his story. “Do you have a cure for the cycle of sevens?”
“Oh no, missy,” he says. “It’s very rare, so the cure, if there is one, isn’t revealed to me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I look at his bag anyway, hoping that maybe he’s just saying that and he’ll open the bag and take out the cure and I’ll be saved from having this happen again tomorrow. And the day after that.
“The anxieties are much easier to cure,” he says, “because they’re so common. This man, right here on the Q train, the one with the anxieties, he told me that he’d been having them since he was five years old. Five years old. Such a shame.”
“Did your cure work?”
“Of course it works,” he says, “but the man has to accept that it works, and I’m not sure that he did. Some people are like that.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m one of them.”
“Look around you,” says the shaman. “The world is an amazing place. All you have to do is believe that it is. Look at us! When’s the last time you met a shaman and had your sunburn cured?”
“Never,” I say.
“See? A miracle.” He picks up his bag. “This is my stop.”
“Oh! Mine too,” I say. We’re at Times Square. Time to change trains.
Chapter 47
My shaman trots down the stairs to the 2 train. I take the shuttle to Grand Central.
It’s so nice in the subways without the turnstiles, everything open and free. I still don’t understand how the payment system works, although maybe the subway’s free these days. Everything moves fluidly and it seems less crowded.
Although it’s not rush hour, so maybe it is less crowded.
At Grand Central I find out that there’s track work being done on the Westchester line—unexpected delays. And, not unexpected, there’s no place to buy tickets—no people at ticket-selling windows, no broken-down ticketing machines. Zero.
The woman on duty at the information booth—the selfsame booth that’s been at Grand Central for maybe a hundred years—tells me that they’ll announce my train when it’s ready. But despite this being the information booth, she has no other information. Like when it’ll be ready, for example.
I pick up a box of cookies and a bottle of water and sit down on a big wooden bench, maybe the very bench I sat in when I was a teenager and came into the city to visit the Cooper-Hewitt and saw all those extraordinary Art Deco objects.
That was only a couple of weeks ago, yet it was also about three decades ago. I wonder if anyone still likes Art Deco or would go to such an exhibit. Or if those people are all gone, dead, vanished. Or in some weird limbo or abducted by aliens or suffering from serial-seven-year amnesia, like me.
