Never Enough Time, page 5
Chapter 13
Although neither the backpack I was hauling about all day yesterday nor the one Raj retrieved from the library is present in this alternate reality—add that to the list: Possibility #12: Alternate reality—my searching, unlike yesterday’s futile enterprise, is rewarded.
Here is a lovely bag, kind of quilted, not really a backpack, but it’s quite nice, like something my mother might pick out for me, though, not like anything I’d get for myself . . . and I hope my mother’s not looking about for me, because I’m not there . . . and, glory be to the adornment of the Great Buddha, there’s a phone in this bag.
I feel like I just scaled Mount Everest by myself, survived twenty avalanches, wore out a crew of Sherpas, and won, I don’t know, like a really huge important award. Or several awards.
A phone. I stare at it for a few moments, just to soak up the wonder of it all. Yesterday I had no such object available to me and I didn’t know where to find one. Today—just like that!—I’ve easily found a phone. Yay me!
Well, it’s not my phone. I should make that clear. This is an alien phone. Not like anything I’ve ever seen or owned or coveted, even. But it’s incredibly pretty.
It’s off, so I turn it on. While I wait, I decide to look around the room some more. I guess it’s not really a room so much as it is an apartment. A small apartment, but an apartment. There’s not just a bathroom but there’s also a small kitchen. Kinda cute really.
Alternate realities can be fun, I chant to myself as I wait for the phone to power up. It blinks for a moment, then goes black again. Are you joking? Alternate realities can be fucking hell, I chant a lot louder than the first chant.
But then I see the charging pad on the room’s only table and see that I’ve been rescued from another phoneless day. I’ll just put the phone there, let it charge for a while, and then, then I’ll have some answers. Any answers! I don’t even need the Answer anymore. Any answer will do just fine.
It’s daylight, but it’s kinda dark. I think it started raining.
I look out the window and let out a kind of a shriek. Okay, a fucking out-and-out shriek.
The cat’s out of its cradle and into the open. Now you know that I shriek on occasion. But only, I mean, like, when I’m in an alternate reality—another alternate reality, I’d like to point out—and I look out the window and I’m not in horrid smothering suburban Westchester or at lovely Raj-filled grad school, but instead I’m in what looks like the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
And there’re a helluva lot of people out on the street, all of them talking to one another, which makes me nervous. People don’t just talk to one another. They have their phones! They have texting! Not human relationships. That’s from the antediluvian period. Way back when.
These people, however, but, although—these people are talking and not on their phones.
And when I go back to the table to see how charged up my phone is, I discover that the phone’s not charging.
I go all around the room, the apartment, and find that in fact there’s no electricity. I mean, there are outlets, but nothing is working. Nothing is working. The lights don’t light, the lamps don’t turn on, the charger doesn’t charge. Nothing is working. At. Fucking. All.
My new, welcome-to-today, alternate reality has no electricity. It has phones and chargers, light switches and outlets, but no electricity. How fucking cruel is that?
These aliens are a diabolical lot. When I finally get my hands on one of them, I’m going to do . . . something. Something. I’ll decide then. But right now, I must go out into the street with the rest of the displaced, alternate realityites and find out what fresh startlement awaits me.
So I go into the bathroom to make sure I look okay. That’s when I start shrieking again. Because not only don’t I look okay, I look even less like me than I did when I got up yesterday.
Well, wait, wait, wait. Wait. Breathe. Wait.
Let’s not fall into a complete total unstoppable plummeting panic here. Let’s not be worried about my hair, for the biggest example, since hair accounts for somewhere around 95 percent of anyone’s appearance.
It’s not like I—or the aliens—chopped my hair off in the middle of the night. It’s just that it’s not what it was yesterday. But I do still have killer hair, even though it’s shoulder-length now instead of mid-back-length.
My face, which I’m not enjoying scrutinizing, is older. I mean, much older than even yesterday’s face. I look like a thirty-year-old or something. An old person.
I grab the quilty bag, the kind of bag a thirty-year-old might be carrying, I think, turn the light switch on and off a few more times to convince myself that there really is no electricity, open the fridge, which is dead, of course, and head out the door.
At least I have a set of keys, and one of them fits in the door to my, to the apartment. This is definitely not mine. I’m surprised that there isn’t a gathering of alien researchers in the hallway, waiting to see what my next move will be.
Instead, the hallway’s empty—and dark. Because there’s not just no electricity in my apartment, as I find out after I descend five extra-long flights of steps—there’s no electricity in the entire city.
Chapter 14
That’s why everyone’s out on the street talking with people instead of with their electronic devices. There’s no cell service, there’s no wifi, there’s no nothing. The city is dead.
I walk through the crowd, stupidly thinking that I’ll run into my best friend, Sara Perry, since she was so helpful yesterday. But this isn’t tomorrow, I don’t think. Maybe. I mean, fuck, I have no fucking goddamned clue what the fuck day it is.
So I ask someone, and when they tell me, I start crying a little.
Because it’s not just that I look thirty years old, I guess I am thirty years old. Nearly thirty-one. If this person is correct. But she floats away so quickly I don’t have a chance to ask her, and she might be afraid of me, because when people ask you what day it is today, they usually don’t need to have the year told to them as well. Not like I did. And made her repeat. Three times.
“Del!” says a stranger. But by now I’m used to being accosted by strangers. That was how all day yesterday went. So I’m quite relaxed about it, especially compared to how unrelaxed I am about being a motherfucking old person.
“Hi!” I say back to the stranger.
“This is awesome!” they say. She does look a little familiar, I think.
“Del,” says the stranger, putting her hands on her hips.
Oh my bloody tampon, it is Sara Perry! She looks as old as I do! And completely totally different, but with an awesome mass of braids. And is that lipstick? Really?
“Bestie!” I say and hug her so tight that I’m probably breaking her ribs.
“Good grief, Del, you haven’t called me that in years,” she says, hugging me back.
“Well, you’re still my bestie, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “No one talks like that anymore.”
“Well,” I say. “I do.”
“I kinda thought you’d go to work, even with the blackout, but I had to come over anyway. You’re not good with this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing is this?” I say.
“Natural disaster,” she says.
“Like that volcano you almost fell into?” I say.
I’m feeling positively gleeful. I don’t know what the fuck is happening, how it is I’m not in high school or grad school anymore, but I’m so so so happy to see Sara that I can’t stop my happiness from spilling over into wild imaginings.
“Exactly like that volcano,” Sara says. “Did you eat yet?”
“Eat?” I say. “What’s that? I tried to charge my phone. And I took a shower.”
“The place around the corner is giving away food,” Sara says. “Because their refrigeration is dying and it’s all going to rot anyway. Whaddya say?”
“I say Onward!” I say, and follow Sara across Ludlow, a street I’ve only ever dreamed about living on, yet now I seem to be living here.
Possibility #8—Dream I can’t wake up from—is starting to look like it might be true.
Chapter 15
Unlike Sara, who it’s still taking me some effort to identify as Sara, when Ryan shows up there’s no doubt in my mind that this is Ryan. Gorgeous, hunky, sexy, ideal Ryan.
He meets up with us at the restaurant, or, rather, outside the restaurant, since the place itself, Joe’s Something, isn’t open per se, just handing out food to all of us happy blackout enthusiasts.
I’m having a cheese sandwich, and it’s delish. Sara’s eating a piece of chocolate cake, and Ryan’s eating Sara’s earlobe. There are many things that aren’t the same as yesterday—if I can rightly call that yesterday—well, it was my yesterday—but one thing is the same: Ryan and Sara don’t give a toss if anyone sees them having sex in public.
Maybe they like it that way, I think, trying to distract myself. Ryan is the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. Hotter than any movie star, hotter than any picture of a hunky guy in an ad or on the Internet, hotter than the twelfth level of hell. Or however many levels hell’s got.
I’d sell my killer hair to the lowest bidder if I thought Ryan would do some of those things to me instead of to Sara. When he puts his hand down the back of her drawstring pants, I feel like I’m going to die of envy, jealousy, and dire need.
But. Wait. What about Raj? That’s what you want to know. So do I. What about Raj? Is he not part of my new alternate reality? And, while I’m thinking about it, am I sure it’s an alternate reality? How can I test for something like this?
I need Raj to help me come up with a plan. He’s a lot more scientific and logical than I am. Or could be.
When the two porn stars let up for a moment—how they can manage this standing on the street in the daylight with tons of people milling about is hard to appreciate if you’re not looking at them yourself, but, trust me, it was masterful—I decide to just ask.
Asking gets you answers, right? Ask and it is given sort of thing.
Then they go back into heat, I’ve lost my chance, but I start thinking about the asking thing.
What would I ask for if I could ask for anything? Would I ask to be back in Westchester, in my parents’ house, in a life so regimented and scheduled that I don’t have time to even figure out how to get a boyfriend, much less get one? In a life where I’m still in high school and having to fake-account for all my time away from home? Fuck no.
I’m going to ask to be back in grad school. I liked it there. I liked Raj. He was a great distraction from Ryan and, anyway, I just liked him.
Universe, I’m asking. Let me be back there, back in yesterday. Thank you.
That should do it.
“Del, are you off in fantasyland again?” says Sara, snapping me out of my self-induced trance.
“Are we back in graduate school?” I ask before I open my eyes.
“Delaney Archer,” says the rich baritone of the world’s most desirable man, “you say the most unusual, unexpected things.”
“Sure you don’t want some chocolate cake? They’ve got more. I asked,” says Sara, and I realize that I’m not back in graduate school. I’m here, on the street, in the blackout, thirty fucking years old.
“Where’s Raj?” I say.
“Del,” Sara says. “Don’t go there.”
“Don’t go where?” I say. As far as I can tell, I’m still standing here on Broome. I mean, it’s not like I can teleport myself. Is it? Can I?
“You know exactly where,” Sara says.
“Enlighten me,” I say, because isn’t that the kind of thing a thirty-year-old philosopher would say?
“To Rajland,” says Sara.
“Let it go, Delaney,” says Ryan while I stare at his delectable lips and think how much I’d like them on me . . . even while I’m wondering where Raj is.
“What do you mean: Rajland?” I say. What does she mean?
“Let’s go back to my place,” says Sara. “I’ve got board games my brother laid on me the last time I was home. We could play Monopoly or something.”
“Can I buy the deed to Rajland?” I say as we head across Allen.
I’m just following along, like I know where Sara lives. Like I know where I live, for that matter. But I guess that place on Ludlow is my apartment. This one I’m going to own as mine. Not like the dorm room. That was definitely just the room.
Sara stops in the middle of Allen, right next to a Manhattan Bridge sign, and says, “I’m so sick of this! Shut up about Raj already! It’s been years!”
“It has?” I say. “It feels like yesterday.”
“That’s what you always say, Del,” says Ryan. He puts his arm around me in a more-than-brotherly way and gives me a more-than-friendly hug.
“I have things I always say?” I say. I do?
“Just fucking humor me,” I say as we cross the rest of Allen and work our way over to Eldridge.
Damn, but my bestie and I live in the coolest neighborhood. And it’s so fucking quiet since there’s no power, no streetlights, no one rushing about to do anything. Just a lot of people walking around, smiling, talking to one another.
Eerie, but beautiful.
Chapter 16
Unlike me—or whoever that fifth-floor apartment belongs to, the one where I woke up this morning, but judging by the purple towel, I’m guessing it’s me—Sara lives on only the third floor of her walk-up building.
I stay behind Sara and Ryan, following them up the stairs. They’ve started up again, and I wonder if I’m going to have to play Monopoly by myself while they play an entirely different game with each other.
Since neither Sara nor Ryan has humored me, I ask again. I mean, Sara already seems pissed at me about the subject of Raj, Ryan doesn’t give a shit, and I have to know. What’s the worst that could happen?
Oh hell no. No no no no. No. Not.
“Raj isn’t dead, is he?” I say. That would be just the kind of thing my dreaming-and-can’t-wake-up self would forget. That my alien-abducted self would have missed out on. That vegetarian zombie me would’ve ignored.
“Dead?” Sara says, throws her head back, and howls with laughter. “Dead?” She pushes against Ryan in that can-you-believe-what-a-ridiculous-thing-I-just-heard? way people have and says “Dead?!?!?” yet again.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I say, hoping I’ll be able to find the bathroom without any assistance, but the apartment is so small, the bathroom’s easy to locate. Impossible to miss, really.
Sara’s apartment is much nicer than mine. Than the one I woke up in, I mean. She’s got it all decorated and arranged and styled up. Mine just has some Ikea pieces scattered about in the room. Although my towels are prettier and thicker than Sara’s—I check hers out after I use the toilet.
“Okay,” I say when I emerge back into the living room.
Yeah, so what if I go to the bathroom? Just because people in thrillers and suspense stories never have to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom, doesn’t mean I’m exempt.
Dear Aliens, The next time you abduct me, give me amnesia, and relocate me in an alternate reality, while you’re at it, please see what you can do about bodily functions, okay?
“Now,” Sara says, “you want the iron or the shoe?” She’s keeping the top hat for herself.
“I want to know where Raj is. If he’s dead, just tell me. I can take it,” I say, although I can’t take it. I’ve been noticing that since the cheese sandwich and bite of chocolate cake, I’m kind of trembling a little.
Being in a time warp will do that to you.
Possibility #13: Time warp. I must remember to write that down if I can ever locate the paisley notebook. It was pretty. I liked it. Thank you for giving me a lovely paisley notebook while you were busy taking my life away, you fucking bastard aliens.
“Just this one last time,” Sara says, all serious-like. “I’m not going to ever ever ever talk to you about this subject again. Ever.”
“Not ever?” I say, my trembling so bad I have to hold on to my hands, not daring to let anyone see them in their current shaky state.
“Not ever,” says Sara. Ryan puts his hand into her gorgeous tumble of braids. The two of them are sitting on the sofa, next to each other. I’m sitting on the floor, across from them. The Monopoly board is laid out on the table between us.
“Now would be a good time. You know, before never starts,” I say. Just fucking tell me.
“Look, Delaney, you have to face the truth sooner or later. Now is later, actually,” Sara says, getting all philosophical on me. Maybe she was a philosophy major too. But I don’t ask.
“Just tell me,” I say, holding back tears. She’s about to tell me something so so so dreadful. I can tell. The atmosphere in her apartment goes straight from Blackout Party to Eternal Death and Misery.
“Your true love, Raj, got married,” Ryan says with a lot of sarcasm and also kind of a lot of pleasure in his tone.
“You mean, he didn’t marry me,” I say, looking down at my very shaky left hand, which is devoid of any wedding paraphernalia.
“He means,” says Sara, “that his parents arranged a marriage for him, and no matter how many arguments and screaming matches the two of you had, he agreed to it.”
“Raj would never do that,” I say. This guy who I knew for only a few hours, yet I know he never would have done that. “Raj isn’t like that.” Raj is more like Shah Rukh was in DDLJ. I’m sure. True to his love.
“Delaney, I’ve heard you say that about a hundred trillion times since you two broke up,” says Sara. “Believe it. He is like that. He did do that. No matter what you wish. No matter what you want.”
“He’s not like that,” I say. I’m crying now, because Raj loved me and I loved him. I feel it somewhere inside my alien-fucked-with, alt-realityed, time-warped soul.
“I miss him so much, Sara,” I say as I cry. “Are you sure he did this? Maybe he backed out. Please tell me he backed out.”
