Every Anxious Wave Page 4
“I do. But opinions are like assholes.”
“Full of shit?”
We made eye contact, and I saw in Lena’s eyes a kindness that wasn’t there before. She really did have a soft center, like a pillow or a powdery dinner roll. I liked her eyes, big and brown, with clumps of mascara clinging to the tips of her eyelashes. The grumpy girl was smiling. At me.
“Are you sure your little trip back in time to the magic parking lot wasn’t a memory lapse or a dream? Something with you brain’s memory center? Psychotropic drugs?”
“This may surprise you, but I’ve never done any drug beyond pot. And I’m positive I was really there. I saw myself. In the crowd. And it smelled weird. Like burning tires or something. That’s the smell of the accelerator burning.”
“Do you just travel to rock shows you’ve seen?”
“I’ve gone to Altamont. I wasn’t even born yet.”
“You went to Altamont?”
“You sound skeptical.”
“A good scientist is always skeptical. I’m a good scientist.” She stood up and grabbed her bag. “I want to see Thinking Fellers. San Francisco, 1993. Take me to your wormhole.”
* * *
I TOOK HER back to my place, praying it didn’t stink when I opened the door, which it did. A cloud of Karl Bender BO/Ming’s Panda stank wafted into our nostrils, but Lena said nothing. Normally I cleaned up a bit before having strangers come and ride the wormhole. I cringed as Lena stepped over a pair of my worn white briefs, yellowed crotch sunny-side up.
“I like your apartment,” Lena said. “It’s cozy.” Lena pointed at my floor-to-ceiling bookshelf of vinyl records. “Wow.”
“Sorry about the mess.”
“I bet you eat a lot of Ming’s Panda.”
“I avoid it like the plague. Their dumpsters reek and their egg rolls may contain dead people.”
“Does the fireplace work?”
I glanced over at my fireplace, which I often forgot was there. It contained the requisite bouquet of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe candles from the Mexican grocery down the street, only lit on occasions when a lady is present and I endeavor to create a mood. “No. So, where in San Francisco do you want your entry point to be? I have to figure out the coordinates—”
“Corner of Divisadero and Hayes.”
“Sounds like you’ve been there before.”
“Many times, when I went to Stanford. Just not to see the Thinking Fellers. They were a bit before my time. I’d go up to the city a fair bit for arts and culture. It’s called the Independent now. Not the Kennel Club, as it would have been in 1993.”
“Let me see your cell phone.”
“My cell phone? Why do you need my cell phone?”
“You need to have your cell phone for reentry. If you have an iPhone I can install a special app designed by my friend Wayne. You dial my number and I bring you back to the present.”
“I just have this old one.” She held out a flimsy pink flip phone. A dinosaur. The casing was scratched and a plastic Hello Kitty charm dangled from the bottom.
“I don’t know if that’ll work for this. Wayne’s pretty sensitive about technical specs. You can take one of mine.” I handed her my iPhone. “Just send a text to this number when you’re finished. Hold the phone in one hand and press your other hand to an electrically charged object—an amp, a streetlamp, the electric hand dryer in the restroom. Whatever you can find. The wormhole is cold. When you arrive you will experience a pretty shuddering physical drop. Sort of like you fell off the roof of a bus.”
“Okay.”
“It goes away pretty quickly, though.”
“Okay.”
“No interaction with anyone. Even if you find that you can communicate, don’t.”
She made a face. “Why can’t I interact with anyone? What’s the point of time traveling if you can’t talk to people?”
“It’s dangerous. House rules, Lena. Definitely do not go blabbing around to people that you’re from the future. People will just think you’re high.”
“I don’t care what people think.”
“I care, Lena. No souvenirs. No T-shirts. No bringing back an old soda can or magazine for nostalgia value. Nothing can come back with you.”
“What if I get there and I’m naked?”
“You won’t be naked. Did you read The Time Traveler’s Wife? Everyone who’s read that book thinks they’re going to land in the past naked.”
“So my clothes travel, too?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“You tell me, Dr. Science Lady.”
* * *
I MADE VERY sure I typed in 1993 and not 993 before sending Lena through the wormhole. Then I gave the floor a quick sweep, changed my sheets, and Googled the living hell out of Lena Geduldig.
Lena R. Geduldig, BS, Physics, University of Montana, 2002.
Lena R. Geduldig, Butte High School Class of 1996 ten-year reunion. (She did not attend).
Lena Geduldig, Capo, Evanston Knitting Mafia.
Attended Steve McCormick and Mariah Wilkes’s wedding on April 11, 2009, in Berkeley.
Non-Northwestern e-mail: l.diggy@hmail.com.
Her father appeared to be Dr. David Geduldig, professor of geology at Montana Tech. A grizzled hippie with manic eyes and huge, disfiguring glasses, Dr. David Geduldig possessed the kind of long, shaggy, salt-and-pepper beard that a family of voles could use as a condominium.
Her middle name: Rose.
Date of birth: December 13, 1978.
The control panel beeped. Back came Lena.
She crawled out of the closet. “Can I lie on your bed? I have to rest.”
“Sure.”
Lena flopped onto my clean bed, took off her glasses, and rubbed her face with her hands. Her breathing was labored, and her head was damp with sweat.
“That was exhausting.”
“Yes.”
“And exhilarating.” Her bottom teeth were crooked. “Oh my god.”
“Take your time. When you’re ready we can talk about my problem and how you can help.”
“Oh my god. That was amazing!” Lena yelled. Because I am a filthy old man, I felt like I was getting the soundtrack of what it must be like to have sex with her. I looked away politely, allowing her to feel what she felt, without my invasive eyes tracking the movement of her breasts as she rolled back and forth on a surface where I often masturbate.
“Yep.”
“It was really 1993. The hair. And the band. Well, the band was sloppy. I’m not going to lie to you. They totally tripped up on ‘Narlus Spectre.’ But being back in 1993. Oh my god, wormholes do exist.”
“Please don’t tell anyone at your school,” I said.
“What?”
“I need you to keep this a secret.”
She looked at me like I had twelve heads. “A secret? Are you insane? Proving the existence and functionality of the Einstein–Rosen Bridge? I’m already on my PI’s shit list. Bringing in some huge breakthrough like a portal to the past would save my career and make me—us, obviously—a ton of money.”
“Lena, please. Please keep it to yourself. At least for a little while longer. I need you to keep it quiet until we complete the mission I’m about to hire you for.”
She sat up and looked at me. Looked through me, really.
“I’m paying you for your services and to keep your yap shut about this to your science people.”
“This is insane,” was all she said. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation.”
“Want a drink? I’ve got Coke, and water and bourbon, too, if you want.”
“Water would be great. Not as awesome as the existence of time travel. But for now, water sounds really nice.”
It appeared that Lena wasn’t going to leave my bed anytime soon. I got her a glass of water, which she drank in one gulp.
She handed me back the glass.
“Can I trust you not to blab
about this to your department?”
“Give me a minute to regroup,” she said. Sweat collected around her eyebrows. Lena sat on the edge of the bed and used her fingernail to pick at her already-chipped black nail polish. “So what do you need from me? With regards to your wormhole? I should warn you that I’m not the shiniest star in the Northwestern physics galaxy. I’m kind of screwed with the department, actually.”
“I need you for a lifesaving mission.”
“What does that mean?”
“My friend Wayne. He’s the one that rigged up all the software and wires and programs in order to send people to where they want to go. We set it up as a business. We sell time travel trips to rock concerts. We were exploring other types of entertainment until Wayne went missing. I have one guy who loves Dorothy Hamill. So rock shows and the occasional sports event. Anyway, something bad happened.”
She sat up. “Yeah?”
“I sent him to 980. He wanted to stop John Lennon from being assassinated, and when I typed in all the information on the computer I left off the one in 1980. So he’s in 980. And there’s no electricity there, so we’re having trouble getting him back to the present.”
“How do you know he’s in 980?” Lena asked, curling into a fetal position.
“I forgot to type in the one. Manhattan was just a big forest. He can text. The satellites are still in the sky and the towers still function. Don’t ask me how that works. I get texts from his number. He describes what it’s like in 980. Just trees and snow..”
“You can’t know for sure that he’s in 980.”
“Hey, I got you to San Francisco in 1993, didn’t I? Right on time for the Thinking Fellers.”
She stood up and smoothed her skirt down. “I’m just going to go ahead and suspend my disbelief and, I guess, believe you, even though I’m a scientist and we’re not really into believing stuff without proof.”
“Good.”
“I can’t ask anyone in my department about this?”
“Right.”
She bit her lip. “If it’s just a matter of his having access to an electrical power source, you could throw a generator down the wormhole down to 980 and jolt him back that way. The problem is, the end of the wormhole in 980 won’t be in the exact spot where your friend was expelled.”
“Okay.”
“There is no way a wormhole is static. It can move inches or feet or miles. It could disappear. You can’t go backwards. Forwards is possible only based on a theoretical model. String theory is just a theory, after all. Also, are you actually sure he’s in 980? I mean, within the space-time continuum, the calendar is pretty arbitrary.”
I nodded.
She flopped back on the bed. “I never got to see Elliott Smith,” she said.
“He was great.”
“No shit he was great.”
“Are you asking for something, Dr. Lena?”
She smiled at me. “I’m not a doctor, and yes. I want to see Elliott.”
“It takes two hours for all the computer stuff to reset.”
“Will you come with me? It would be more fun to go with someone, I think.”
“Yeah, I could do that. I mean, I’m a little nervous traveling without someone back home at the controls, but we can do it.”
Lena looked at me with expectant eyes. I couldn’t tell if these were eyes of interest of a sexual nature, hoping that I’d give her a proper shag, or if she was lonely and I was the first person she’d talked to in a while who wasn’t a jerk. She seemed to need something from me.
I was sweating—that funky stress sweat that smells like old cheese.
She pointed at my left arm and yelled, “Oh hey! Your tattoo.”
“Which one?”
“‘The moon is a lightbulb breaking.’” She touched her finger above my elbow, where the words snaked around an image of a broken lightbulb. She turned her back and lifted up her shirt. Across the small of her back was the same line from the same song by Elliott Smith, the same dead singer/songwriter, who we both obviously cherished enough to have his words seared into our bodies.
“We’re the same.”
“I suppose we are.”
“Not every day you find someone with the same tattoo. I mean, not like they’re identical designs or anything. And a song lyric, not some dumb tattoo that everyone has and thinks is edgy”
“It just means we’re both really cool.”
Lena blushed, lifting her hand to her cheek. I found myself liking this girl, if not in a sexy, romantic way, then at least in an ally-in-this-cruel-world way. I moved to place my big, clumsy hand on her shoulder and cure her hurts with the twin blessings of time travel and rock and roll.
“So, just to be clear. You’re going to work on a plan to retrieve Wayne?”
“Yeah, I’ll add that to the top of my list of stuff to do. Right now, school is kind of … It’s uh…” Lena stuck her tongue out. “I have to turn in my dissertation by the end of August, right? So, not to get into the blah-blah of a bunch of stuff you don’t understand, but one of my so-called colleagues stole a bunch of my research and is about to publish it, and they believe him because he went to Caltech and has a penis, and I’m just the punk rock bitch who graduated from a state school, so, like, the last seven years of grad school are pretty much down the crapper for me. I can’t turn in my thesis because it got stolen and I can’t do another one in three months, so I’m hosed.”
“Hey, if you get Wayne back by the end of the week, I’ve got two thousand bucks for you.”
She sat down on the bed again. “I’ll figure out something. I might fail a few times along the way. That’s what we scientists do. Fail.”
“Do me a favor and don’t fail.”
She looked away and said, “I fail a lot, Karl. Just warning you.”
Lena sighed and I sighed and we sat in each other’s presence without talking. I negotiated the inherent risk of trust—handing this stranger the keys to my wormhole. At the age of forty, I would honor the Latin phrase I had tattooed on my knuckles when I was a hopeful man of twenty-three, AMOR FATI, and love my fate. I would trust that Lena was here to help.
She seemed hesitant to leave.
“Do you need money for the train or anything?”
Lena shook her head and headed toward the door. “No, I’ve got a monthly card.”
“Sorry. Not trying to—”
“The moon is a lightbulb breaking,” said Lena with childlike excitement over Elliott Smith, moons, and lightbulbs, and for that, I was grateful. “We’re the same.”
3
THE NEXT MORNING I rose early from my slumbers, hoping to find in my in-box a lengthy, instructive missive on Wayne retrieval from my fellow lightbulb breaker, Lena Geduldig. Instead, I found an e-mail from my landlord. I do not claim to be psychic, but believe me when I say I felt this notice slithering down from the gilded pedestal on which its sender had situated himself.
Dear Mr. Bender,
It has been brought to my attention that your apartment has been overloading the circuit breakers in the building that envelops your apartment. Complaints have been lodged by your upstairs neighbor who shall not be named due to privacy. There have also been complaints of noise, spefically a loud noise that hurts the ears, described by this tenant as like a motorcycle. Please call my office immediately. You should be conscious of good neighborliness. Also stop the noise. You’ve been warned. Do not escalate this situation or you will face eviction.
Your friend,
Sahlil Gupta
Your landlord
Gupta Properties
Serving Chicago with class since 2006
Sahlil Gupta thought that because he collected a rent check from me once a month and occasionally sent over his cousin/incompetent plumber to look at my toilet when it didn’t flush, that we were friends and therefore he could drink all night for free at my bar. One night, a year ago, he had draped his lank body over one of my barstools like an old, filthy sweatshirt, leered at the w
omen, inserted himself into the conversations of others, and complained loudly that my bar is too far from his large two-story high-rise condo on Lake Shore, for which he paid two point five million dollars, and that he is only thirty, which is young to own so much expensive property. He signed all of his professional e-mails with “Your friend,” like a third grader with a box of supermarket Valentines.
The second e-mail, opened during the morning nod to responsibility called breakfast, caused me to spill a full mug of OJ on my lap.
At first I couldn’t open it. It had arrived via an e-mail protocol that I’d never heard of—.vpx-post-a. It took a few tries before the e-mail popped open on my screen. Embedded in the e-mail was a photo of me. I was wearing square-framed glasses of an unfamiliar design, holding up a picture of what looked like a bride and groom posing, each with a lighter in their hand. The man’s arms were a blue-green blob of faded tattoos, and the half smile/half scowl on his face was my own.
The e-mail read:
Hello from the post-a world, asshole. You like water? You’ll love 2031. Congrats on meeting lena geduldig. You like her? She’s the best thing that will ever happen to your sad, sorry life. Don’t lose lena. That is my advice to my younger self. You will avoid a lot of loneliness and wasted time if you stay with her. Do what you have to do. Signed, yourself at 61. March 22, 2031. P.S. Meat is over post-a. Go eat 100 burgers right now.
I got up and ran to the bathroom and rested my face on the cold toilet seat, expecting to heave. I admired the brown barnacles of filth clinging to the underside of the toilet rim for a spell, realizing that I would neither throw up nor have another peaceful moment in my life, ever again. Me at sixty-one was the last person I wanted to hear from, and that included my dirty old man of a dad.
“She’s the best thing that will ever happen to your life”? In 2031, I would still think of my life as sad and sorry? Well, that was disappointing.
I rang my girl in Evanston.
“Figured anything out yet?”
“Karl?” she asked.
“Working hard, I hope? Lena? It’s been another whole day. Wayne could be dead, for all I know.”
“Hold on. I’m in the library. Give me a minute.” I heard a muffled airy noise, like she’d held her phone up to the blowing wind. Then she came back on the line. “Have you heard from Wayne?”