As Luck Would Have It (39 page)

After my first day back at work, my head was left reeling with apprehension about what had actually occurred while I was away, but as we will see, on my second day the emphasis was to shift to what in actua
lity
had
not
occurred.  It was disconcerting to say the least that the details of my former life seemed so blurred and distorted, but had my mind either totally misread or made up events that never happened?

One can only hope that this was not the case; it’s one thing for my memory to have been thrown out of sync a bit, and if it turned out that things were just a little bit different than I remembered them, fine.  But what if I walked into the office to discover that I had been demoted again and wasn’t even aware of it, or if they were waiting for me to complete some month-long assignment that I had never received?  I
t
was mind-numbing when I stopped to consider all the possibilities and repercussions that might be waiting for me in this new life of mine on the job.

Once I was comfortably settled at my desk with a large Starbucks coffee and my
Wall Street Journal
, it was
immediately clear that there would be no time to dwell on these perplexing matters; there were three new reports on my desk to review that had not been there when I left the prior evening.  I took a quick glance at them and was relieved to see that they looked to be thorough and conforming to the latest protocols, formatted correctly, and with the necessary forms properly filled out.  But they would still need careful editing and re-drafting; these were big, important accounts.  Quite puzzling though, I observed that one of the reports was authored by Christine Robinson, who as you may recall had
terminated her employment quite abru
ptly a
number of weeks
back.

It was early yet, not even 8:00 when I had started in on the first
report
and had made a few notations in the margins before sending an email to Tommy V
egas
to see if he was available later that morning to go over it.  I never got to the office before 9:00 or even 9:30, and rarely did anything productive for at least an hour after that.  I was hoping to finish my preliminary review of the
reports
by 12:30, since Tim had mentioned going to lunch with me to talk further about the reorganization proposal, and my calendar was filling up quickly with afternoon meetings, the subject of which I was unfamiliar with, and all of which would require some time to prepare for.  I picked up the ringing phone and it was Joseph; how was I feeling, were the headaches gone?  OK, thanks, but really busy right now; can I meet you for dinner
next week?  Things are crazy here and I’ll probably have to work late the next few nights.

If you are thinking, wow, this is a different experience, not like the job I left before my ill-fated vacation
to the Caribbean that was literally washed out, then you are completely correct.  But then something even more astounding happened, something which perhaps you can come up with a reasonable explanation for, because I certainly cannot.

Christine was standing outside my office; how are you feeling Mr. Andrews, sorry I did not make it by yesterday; we’ve been swamped ever since you left.  Please come in Christine;
I
’m feeling better now, thank you for asking.  I stared at her across my desk; yes this was Christine alright, much like I remembered her, bright and enthusiastic, attractive and well groomed, quite pretty actually, confident and proficient, with a detailed report in front of me that would require some work, but should be quite impressive to our managers once we polished it up a bit.

It turns out she had not been fired and had not quit either, and certainly she had not left to go back to Ohio as I remembered
.  When I asked her about that day, she said that she and Iris had a bit of a disagreement when one of her accounts had some questions about a letter they ha
d
received.  Hadn’t she been crying that morning?  Yes, a little bit; she had been feeling somewhat overwhelmed because she was so busy and her mother had been ill, and the guy that sat next to her, Gary, was leaving and
moving
to Ohio, Columbus the thought, something about an MBA program at Ohio State, and two of his big accounts had been reassigned to her.  Was it possible that I had heard it wrong, that Gary told me that it was he and not Christine that was leaving?  How could that possibly be?

But wait until you hear what she said next.  Isn’t that just awful what happened to Iris; had I heard about it?  She was such a nice person; I miss working with her.  Tim told us she had a long battle with depression; who could have known she would do something like that?  She seemed fine to us that day, planning
her
Super Bowl party, laughing when I last saw her.  Laughing; was she serious or maybe it was Christine who had been knocked over the head
from a suitcase or something that had fallen from the overhead compartment,
and had forgotten which universe she left off in.  Iris was shrieking, not laughing
,
come on
; I’m
not crazy, am I?

Your report is excellent Christine, thanks for the hard work.  It didn’t need many revisions at all; we spent about 15 minutes
,
mostly just chit-chat and catching up on what she had been doing the past couple of months, and how her mother had been feeling,
before I asked her to make the minor editorial changes I’d suggested and
send it off to Tim for his comments.

Now that two of the three reports were essentially complete, perhaps we can take a breather from work for a moment and return to the question that I have just posed; am I crazy?  There was nothing in my medical history to support the notion; no hallucinations, no tantrums, no violence, no mania, no obsessive-compulsive behavior, no paranoia, no anxiety disorder; shit, I hardly ever get mad.  Did I even have the argument with Iris, or did that take place in my mind or in some pre
v
ious life?  My head was pounding
once again
and I was holding my throbbing temples with my hands on either side: my
I
buprofen
carelessly left at home in the bathroom vanity.  Brent stuck his head in
the office
when he saw me; are you OK Cliff?  What?
Who the hell was Cliff; nobody called me that, it was never anything but Clifford, even my father never called me Cliff, not once in fourteen years to the day exactly.

He sat down uninvited; he never came into my office just like that, so why now?  We’re glad you’re back Cliff; you sure gave us a scare, that must have been terrible, do you remember much?  Unfortunately yes, but what other tricks was my memory playing on me and how could I put any faith in it now?  I guess you heard about Iris, my God it’s so hard to believe everything that’s been happening
;
first Iris, then the plane crash.  My cousin’s wife
w
as on the plane
;
he’s not doing well
,
maybe he’d like to talk to you at some point
.  If
you don’t feel like it, no problem at all
;
I didn’t say a word to him about working with you, believe me.

What should I believe; that people now call me Cliff and that Iris was well liked?  That Tim is a good manager and that Brent is sensitive to my feelings?  You tell me, please, what should I believe?  Was it good luck or bad luck that brought me to this point?  Was I lucky to have survived the crash, or would I have been better off at the bottom of the freezing lake with the others, left in peace finally.  I stared across the desk at this guy I hardly recognized.  Give me your cousin’s number, Brent; I’ll call him later.  Where does he live; maybe I’ll go and see him.  I might remember his wife, though to tell you the truth, my memory seems to be a little out of whack lately.

I was never able to understand or figure out what went wrong, or possibly, what went right with regards to the metamorphosis I’d experienced with my memory.  I hoped that given enough time, the two worlds I remembered would
eventually
fuse into one, and that normal for me would be the same as it is for you or anyone else.  But the answer to the question of what exactly happened
after the plane crash would never be found; like a lost keepsake, gone somewhere but never discovered again.

I knew that I would need to relearn and
adjust to this new world; a world with an interesting job and decent people who didn’t necessarily hate each other.  A world where my friend
s
were aging, but still looked good to me.  A world where my back hurts and my nightmares persist.  A world where my luck is no different than yours or anyone else’s; where I might win a lottery with a lucky number, or lose a limb in an unlucky accident.  This was my life
, this was my world now;
I better just accept it and stop asking the same questions over and over
, questions that
were making me crazy.

I did call Brent’s cousin and we talked for an hour on the phone.  I didn’t remember his wife; I tried but could not picture her from what he told me or from the photographs he
brought out
when
I went to visit him that weekend.  I told him things would be better eventually, I was sure of it; I knew all about death and grief.  But I was wrong this time; I didn’t know what it was like for him any more than I did for Iris.  Brent told me later that he had died; shot himself right there in the very bedroom he had shared for 16 years with his wife, who was on her way to visit her aunt in Tampa when our plane decided for whatever reasons, that it
just
wasn’t up for the trip
.
  That was his life,
that was his world, and his questions apparently could not be answered either.  I hoped he was at peace with the others who had died; who knew how many others there were now, suffering or worse, not just the ones
who had been
in the water with me.

As luck would have it, I didn’t get to have dinner that
next week
with Joseph as we had planned.  His boyfriend had come down with the flu and Joseph didn’t want to leave him alone.  In the past, I would have gone to their house without a thought, with a pot of my chicken stew or perhaps some barley soup that they liked, but now it was clear enough that my immunity to flu bugs and the other dreaded common illnesses that inflict humanity could no longer be counted on, so I took a rain check.  Michelle wasn’t feeling well either and had worked from home
the past two days
, so I wound up alone working in the kitchen with the chicken le
g
s, potatoes and peas that were essential to the stew that I would make anyway and have sent over to Joseph’s
boyfriend tomorrow with some flowers, or at least a get-well card, and still have enough left over to take to Michelle’s condo, hoping of course that her illness was just a cold or something minor.  I braised the chicken in wine and garlic, then added the fresh herbs I found in the refrigerator, left over from the pasta primavera we had made a few nights before.  While the stew was simmering, I sat on the sofa with a glass of my favor
ite Scotch and turned on
the
TV.

As I watched CNN, I savored the smoothness of the whisky and continued to ponder
the events from earlier that day.  As we have already seen, I was determined to deal with the reality of my situation and get on with the process of adjusting to this dissimilar but parallel world, recognizing that
the
transformation that now defined much of my life
would need to be further explored, this new universe examined closely in order to better function within it.

Stop and consider if you will what this must have been like, with nearly every aspect of living potentially skewed off its normal axis; everything needing to be viewed again from a fresh perspective to see if it had been changed, turned, twisted, torn, or just moved from one place to the other, as if coming home and fin
d
ing all of your furniture, clothes, dishes, tools, everything you
owned
, mysteriously rearranged, though you knew for certain that no one had been inside to do the rearranging.  Once you stopped asking yourself how your home was turned upside down in such a manner, you would then have to get on with the task of putting everything back in its place, or in the alternative, learning again how and where to find everything you needed, from a cup to a towel to a hammer to the toothpaste to the Scotch, assuming that you drink Scotch, which of course I do, and I think I mentioned that Joseph's boyfriend does occasionally as well.  I might have a bottle sent over to him tomorrow with the stew, but
wait,
he has the flu and that might not be a good idea, what with the possible nausea, the vertigo and the rest of those awful viral symptoms.  Michelle does not like Scotch, but maybe she will share a bottle of the Merlot she picked out at the wine festival we went to while I was home from work recovering.

Now, imagine the scenario in your home that I have just described and extend it beyond your ho
use
to the rest of your world.  Everything would have to be checked out, tested and possibly learned again; we
r
e the roads where you remembered them, had your bank balance been depleted, did the menu change at your favorite restaurant
,
assuming that it was still open, were your clothes waiting at the same dry cleaner
or had you started using a different one, would your accountant have your tax records, would he even recognize you?  Think of the multitude of virtually endless variables in your life that might have changed given what we have already learned from just what I had experienced already.  And keep in mind from the example that we considered with the furnishings in your home that the first alternative of putting things back where they belong was not available to me and that I had no option here but to go for the second alternative, which certainly seems less desirable than the first.