Every Anxious Wave Read online

  “What? There’s a man there?” the woman asked.

  “He’s having a bit of an invisibility problem today.” Lena laughed and pointed at me while the couple looked through me, confused.

  “Good luck with that,” the guy holding on to the dog leash said.

  “Thank you,” she yelled at the couple as they crossed Mass Ave. “And please vote for Al Gore in 2000.”

  “Lena.”

  Lena reached out and ran her hand across the top of my head. “I don’t get this. I can see and touch you. Why not anyone else?”

  “It’s starting to really piss me off.”

  She bit her lip in that thinky way. “You know what it is? Why you can’t interact? I think you, like, freak out midway through the portal and it puts you physically outside this dimension. Like there’s a plastic bubble around the past and you’re peeking inside instead of experiencing it. You’re so hung up on treating the past like a jigsaw puzzle you can’t bear to take apart and put away that you, like, psych yourself out of arriving in the past completely.”

  I considered what she said. As I pass through the icy-cold tunnel, I am admittedly a little fearful, the same way I am on a roller coaster or in a taxi piloted by a driver obviously flying high on crank. I do not love the past. I fear it, now that it has been returned to me.

  “Are you afraid of anything when you pass through the tunnel?” I asked.

  “I’m so busy running numbers through my head, trying to figure out how the time-space slip is happening, I’m not thinking of anything but science.”

  Lucky science girl, blessed with a brain unencumbered with matters of the human heart. Her travel was pure: just for the music, or for the science, not for the baggage. “I want to go for a walk,” I said, charging forward so as to not give Lena the chance to protest.

  “We are not missing Elliott,” she yelled from behind me.

  I was three strides ahead of her and I was not going to slow down. “There are two opening acts.”

  “Don’t I need a ticket? If people can see me? You can just mosey right on in, but I can’t. I have an Illinois ID card that expires in 2016. How am I going to explain that?”

  On a very familiar street corner, I began to notice how faulty my memory had grown. There were the old cars, sure, and I relished seeing old landmarks I held dear—the J.P. Licks, where Meredith would order Oreo ice cream with Oreo topping, turning her tongue a plaguelike Oreo black. The white-walled Ethiopian restaurant with the spongy bread and shocking audacity with marrowbones. The rainbow-colored flyers stuck like feathers to posts and bulletin boards. But my eyes weren’t the same and I wanted to spray them with Windex and wipe away what I’d seen that made everything so different and sad.

  “Did you bring cash?” Lena asked. “For the door? I don’t have any cash.”

  I mumbled something affirmative.

  Lena dug through her wallet, a purple sparkly number decorated with a white skull and crossbones. “What if they look at the serial numbers on the cash? What year is your cash from? Does your cash even exist here? I have some quarters in my wallet, but they’re the kind with the states. Those didn’t come out until ’99. Look, Utah.” Lena held out a handful of coins. “That’s a later state. And California.”

  “Don’t worry about the quarters.”

  “Karl,” she said. “They haven’t even announced the state quarter program yet. It started in 1999. You’re not even listening to me.”

  Lena yelled from behind for me to slow down, as I bounded even further ahead of her. I knew I was being an asshole, ignoring her, but I had to see something that was just a few blocks ahead. Lena continued her tirade about the state quarter program and about how she was wearing a bra made of some space-age bra material that didn’t exist in 1997. I did not slow down. I turned the corner on Pearl Street, not telling Lena what I was doing, where I was going, admitting I had an agenda, not caring if she could catch up with me or not, not caring if I saw Lena Geduldig ever again. It was with the intent of a bullet that I sped toward Berkman House, Meredith’s old anarchist squat. In 1997, she was living in Washington, DC, with Shower Lady, but the house as I remembered it—the old wooden porch bending from neglect, the smell of yellow curried lentils and unwashed bodies—would still be as I remembered.

  “Karl, would you please slow down? You’re scaring me.”

  Lena. Who was this chick? She didn’t know me and I didn’t know her and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know her. Don’t lose Lena. I wanted to see Berkman House. But what would I see when I got there, on this day in the past, after I’d quit Boston in a haze of anger and sorrow over getting dumped? Meredith’s squat friends all cold-shouldered me after that. Then the Axis got famous. For years I looked for her in the crowd, even though, under all those lights, the audience is nothing but a sea of black.

  “Holy shit,” I said as I stopped in front of that dilapidated house. My stomach lurched as I looked up past the busted wooden railing of the porch.

  Meredith was there, on the porch, sitting on the louse-ridden couch that mildewed to a shiny, living green every summer, engaged in some intense and personal lady chatter with her friend and fellow squatter Kate, who I am certain was responsible for infecting Meredith and, by extension, me with crabs the summer of 1993, since that bitch had no boundaries with regards to bath towels, or anything else. The two women sat facing each other, gesticulating wildly, lit cigarettes between their fingers, engaging in that alienating lady-on-lady conversational practice, which to my ears meant they were talking about me.

  “That’s my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend,” I whispered to Lena. “Meredith.”

  “The redhead in the tank top?” she said.

  “Shh. Yeah.”

  “Not cool, Karl. Not cool.”

  I knew that, of course. But in the moment I just didn’t care. I was pretty sure I was going to lose it, though. Not because Meredith was right in front of me, a jewel of beauty in a dirty white men’s undershirt that showed off her upper arms, lean and strong from boxing. Because here’s the horrible truth: If I really wanted to see Meredith again, in the present, I could. There is no reason in this world why I couldn’t find a reason to go to California, call her, and catch up over tacos and beer. But I couldn’t. And it’s not just because she’s married and has her own life, which is normal and natural, and if she’s happy now, then I’m happy for her. It’s just that the Meredith of today isn’t the young and vibrant goddess of beauty and virility that I idolize and hold fast to my heart. The Meredith of today is another man’s wife. She’s a little girl’s mother. She has more to her name than a sleeping bag and a jar of broken jewelry.

  “Wow. You’re still in love with her. Your face is turning a hundred shades of red.”

  Was it the crying? Or could Lena smell the musky shame of undead love emanating from my body?

  “You’re shaking.”

  “Damn right I’m shaking.”

  She put her hand on my invisible-to-everyone-but-Lena shoulder. “Want me to talk to her?”

  I flinched. “No. Don’t you dare!” I glanced up at Meredith chatting away, her hands flying around, the smoke from her cigarette making gauzy trails around her face. I remembered every single ring on her fingers. Seven total. The onyx one, which she wore on her right middle finger, I’d bought from a street vendor in Harvard Square, with the intent of proposing, but I ended up giving it to her as a birthday present instead because in 1994 I was a bigger coward than I am now. She was still wearing it. What did that mean? Did she still have the ring? Why did I still care?

  “Sorry. I just…” I had no excuses. This was a dick move, taking Lena to Berkman. I hadn’t thought Meredith would be sitting on the porch. I’d only gone to Berkman House to be with her essence, the way normal people visit cemeteries.

  I’d made a mistake, though, dragging Lena along.

  Lena looked up at the Berkman porch and said, “Let’s just end this right now. Let’s rip off the Band-Aid, shall we?” Lena walked toward the front steps of the house. Nine steps total, and each one sounded the cry of ailing wood and nails. There was no way they wouldn’t notice Lena.

  I reached out to restrain Lena. I tried to grab at one of the magenta pigtails jutting out from the back of her head. My hand slipped through her hair like it was air.

  “Lena. Don’t,” I said, but she had already bounded up to the top of the steps to the Berkman House porch.

  Meredith and Kate looked up at my smiling, pigtailed physicist.

  “Are you Meredith?” She pointed at my redheaded spark plug, so beautiful, sitting cross-legged on that slimy sofa.

  “Who’s asking?” Kate said, rude as I remembered.

  “My name is Lena Geduldig. I have some terrible news about Karl Bender. You know Karl, right?”

  “Who are you?” Meredith’s face betrayed no sign of, say, being worried about my health or safety.

  She looked down at me and then said, as if she were reciting lines, “I’m Lena Geduldig. I was dating Karl for a while, but we broke up because he had this really bad habit of calling me Meredith.”

  Meredith laughed, snorting cigarette smoke out of her nose.

  “Nobody likes to be called the wrong name during sex,” Lena said. “After the fifth time it happened, I had to break up with him, because his obsession with you was so off-putting. And he wasn’t even sorry. He just kept doing it.”

  “I didn’t know Karl was dating anyone.”

  “He’s not anymore. He’s single. Extremely single. I guess he’s on tour with the Axis, but when he was in Boston he was calling me Meredith all day long. ‘Meredith, I mean, Lena, give me a hand job. Meredith, er, Lena, tie my shoes. Meredith, I mean, Lena, don’t break up with me, Meredith. Why don’t you just change your name to Mer
edith? It would make things easier.’”

  “Are you serious?” Kate asked.

  Lena nodded. “I tried to get him to go to therapy but he refused. Anyway, he had all these pictures of you in his apartment, so I recognized you. I just wanted to say no hard feelings, and if you’ve still got any affection left for the guy, I’m sure he’d take you back in a second.”

  “She’s not interested,” Kate said.

  If I weren’t a time travel ghost with no discernible arms, legs, free will, or body mass, I would have dragged Lena from that creaky porch.

  “He’d give his left nut for you,” Lena said, and then snorted one of those loud laugh-snorts. “And the right one.”

  Meredith’s eyebrows started doing that arch thing, that one that foretold that she was about to let you have it. “Who are you, you weird girl? You’re acting really weird. Is this a prank?”

  “No.” Lena was clutching her midsection, trying not to double over. “I swear this is all true.”

  Meredith arched her eyebrows. “Karl called you Meredith? How did you meet him?”

  Lena was a hundred shades of purple and appeared to be on the verge of cardiac arrest. If I didn’t hate her so much at that moment, I would have suggested a trip to the emergency room. “Okay, I’m from the future. He’s my friend. In 2010, you should call him. Or you can call me. Here’s my number. In 2010, you’ll keep your telephone in your pocket.”

  Lena scribbled something on the back of a flyer she’d plucked from a 1997 lamppost and handed it to Meredith, who took it as if Lena were handing her a dead puppy.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” Meredith asked. “Do you need help?”

  “I’m telling the truth,” Lena said, but Meredith had already shut her out, and Lena could see that pleading with her would get her nothing. Meredith, I recalled, didn’t think about the future much. She was all about what was happening in the moment. My heart hurt watching her like this, not being able to touch her. I could only Internet stalk her and wonder, late at night, if at the age of forty-three she still rolled joints with her toes.

  “We’re going to see Elliott Smith play at T.T.’s now. You should go too. He’ll be dead in six years.”

  Meredith stood up and put her hand on Lena’s shoulder. I’d forgotten how tiny Meredith was. “I hope you get the help you need. You kind of hurt my feelings, you know. It felt like you were making fun of me. Not cool.”

  Kate yelled, “Karl is such a dick it’s not even funny, babe. Steer clear.”

  Lena skipped down the steps, actually making them creak beneath her feet, as I followed her. I found enough resolve deep within me not to smack the back of her head. Which I couldn’t do anyway.

  “You’re permanently on my shit list, Geduldig. You know that?”

  “Ooh, nobody ever calls me Geduldig.” Lena skipped ahead of me like a schoolgirl. “No one can pronounce it, even though it’s really easy if you just spend a minute looking at it.”

  “Please turn around and listen while I am yelling at you. I hired you for a job. To get Wayne back. Not to fuck with my past and make fun of me.”

  Lena kept walking in front of me, backwards, nearly running into an upturned trash can lying in the sidewalk. “You’re the one who called this a date, and then you took me to see your ex-girlfriend, you rude, disrespectful ass-munch.”

  “You do not—do not—go around telling people you’re from the future. You do not interact with people in the past. I explained this to you. Why do you insist on ignoring me?”

  “If you wake up tomorrow morning and realize that you got back together with Meredith back in ’97, then what? Or what if she calls you tomorrow and says, ‘Hey Karl! I’ve spent the last decade dreaming about you, I still love you—’”

  “She won’t, and it’s not up to you.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “You’re being a nosy bitch and you’re overstepping—way, way, way overstepping—your bounds.”

  Lena stopped cold on the sidewalk. A dude on a bike swerved to avoid hitting her. She raised her finger to my face, an arrow of hostility aimed directly at the dumb part of my brain. “Fuck you, Karl. Fuck. You. Don’t you ever, ever call me a bitch.”

  The weight of my error pressed on me like a cinder block to the head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Or ‘lady.’ I hate that. So condescending,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “I honestly don’t need any more men in my life wanting something from me and then treating me like shit when they don’t get what they think they deserve. Good luck finding yourself another physicist. I promise you, exactly zero of my colleagues will give you the time of day.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. You upset me and I reacted. I’m just … Let’s just go to the show.”

  She stopped me dead on the sidewalk, planted herself, and told me what was what. “See, there’s this pattern in my life, Karl, and I’m feeling pretty confident that what it’s going to take for me to eradicate it is to become a nun, except that I’m Jewish and I’ve got more important things to do than sit in a cloister just so insecure men like you don’t have the chance to use me as some sort of emotional cum rag.”

  “I said I’m sorry.” Tears pressed at my eyelids. I really was sorry, but saying so repeatedly felt fake and weird.

  “Sorry is just a word that reminds me how little respect I get in this life.” Lena turned her back to me. “Maybe you feel bad, but I’m not here to console you or anyone else.”

  Lena walked back toward Mass Ave. We didn’t speak, except for when Lena pointed to a glass-topped coffee table on the curb and asked if she thought we could bring it back to 2010. When we got to T.T.’s, Lena, chronologically age eighteen, ducked and pushed past the doorman without paying or flashing an ID, and I followed behind her, her ghost. A group of women in denim skirts, holding plastic cups of beer, passed right through my body and I didn’t feel a thing.

  For the first time in my life, T.T.’s in 1997 was about the last place I wanted to be. I wanted to go home to my bar, but Lena was hell-bent on seeing Elliott, and who could blame her? Who back home in the year 2010 wouldn’t open a vein to sit in this holy cavern and watch a man create so much beauty out of nothing?

  Lena leaned and pushed her way to the front of the stage as Elliott sat down on a wooden chair, his gaze downward. I admired the softness of Elliott’s face, the quiet sincerity with which he placed his heart into his music. Men didn’t sing like Elliott, all soft and open. I didn’t play like that. Milo didn’t either. Just Elliott. My mind fluttered with recognition when I saw that tattoo of Ferdinand the Bull he had on his right bicep. I looked down at my own breaking lightbulb tattoo and tried not to cry for the man while he was in front of me, still alive. He opened with “Needle in the Hay.” His lips hid behind the silvery bulb of his microphone as he sang, eyes focused downward.

  I watched Lena, too. Mostly the back of her head, the stillness of her pigtails. How hard Lena fought to stand dead center in front of Elliott. How hard Lena fought to be a woman in the sciences, to just get through her day. I tried to think of ways to convey how sorry I was for blowing up at her, to tell her how much I admired her.

  I walked through the bodies of the crowd, up to where Lena stood.

  “Can I hold your hand? I really want to hold someone’s hand right now. This is a date, right?” I said.

  I held out the hologram of my hand. She looked at my hand like it was garbage and turned her back. “Lena?” I said, my voice small. But once Elliott took another swipe at his guitar, Lena became unreachable. Her back was to me and I stood and waited for her to see me, stupidly competing with Elliott Smith for her attention. I watched her face melt into a mixture of happiness—the unusual privilege of coming back to this—and sadness, because she knows how all of this ended. Because she understood the value we assigned to things once they are gone forever.

  Lena didn’t want me. I was just a ghost who didn’t pay the cover, so I wandered to the back of the club, where all the douche bags who didn’t know how lucky they were to be in this place at this moment were talking over Elliott, like anything they had to say meant more than the man and his music. The two men beside me were engaged in a heated discussion about whether one of the guys should get rid of his Bowflex exercise machine. (“It takes up a lot of space,” he said, and I was like, “Elliott Smith is playing twenty feet in front of your stupid face.”) I waited for a calm to settle over me, the calm that I imagined would be felt by a king whose every whim and wish is granted without question, but it never came. I only felt the emptiness of a man long in mourning, waking from the trance of sorrow only to wonder what it was he missed so badly.