Authors: Irving Belateche
“What do you mean?” I was sticking to the script, though I knew exactly what she meant.
“You’re Alex’s friend from college.”
“Jacob Morgan.”
“I’m Laura,” she said.
“How do you know Alex?” I asked.
“I was in the Ph.D. program with him.” She stood up and started toward the back of the store. “I’ll get your stuff.”
So she wasn’t going to bring up my villainous act of stealing her job. Unfortunately, there was a downside to that. Our little confrontation had forced us to open up. It had laid the groundwork for our first date.
She returned with the box of handouts and began to ring me up. “Did Alex tell you we have something in common?”
She
was
going to bring it up.
“No,” I said.
“I’m a new adjunct, too.”
“Really?” I blurted out, and as soon as I did, I knew I’d just summoned the missing hostility.
“You’re shocked that UVA would hire a mere store clerk?”
“I’m sure you’re no mere store clerk.”
“Not anymore.”
I smiled. “Congratulations.”
“And congratulations to you. Cash or credit?”
I handed her my credit card. She slid it through the card reader and waited for the receipt to print out. Neither of us said anything. The silence was awkward, but not uncomfortable.
The receipt printed, and she handed it to me, along with a pen.
I signed it and gave it back to her. “Thanks.”
“The department is a stickler for receipts,” she said, then opened the box of handouts and put a copy inside.
I picked up the box, ready to head out and call her later, like I had in our previous meet and greet, but then decided that in this history, the right history, I didn’t just walk out.
“How about dinner when your shift is done? I mean unless there’s a policy against instructors—” That was ridiculous. Why was I bringing up University policy? We were going to have dinner, not a relationship. At least, not yet.
She laughed. “I’ll have to consult the instructor handbook. Meanwhile, why don’t you come by around six-thirty?”
“Great.” I picked up the box and headed out. “See you then.”
*
Five weeks later, there was no doubt that we were a couple. And that made it hard for me to hide anything from her. Not that there was anything to hide except for my one secret. But it was a whopper. I wanted to tell her about Einstein, and I no longer feared the trails of the other history. I’d talked to Alex a few times, and he’d thought it was all over, too, though he was vigilant. “You never know,” he said.
My opportunity to bring it up to Laura came in late November, on Jackson Hill. If there was a more appropriate place, I couldn’t think of one. Laura and I had hiked up for what she thought would be my first introduction to Gray’s Cabin.
Inside, she told me the story of Corbin Gray, while I lingered over the
Life
magazine in the display case. It was the original magazine, the one with Dwight D. Eisenhower on the cover. There was no hint of any other history on the cover or anywhere else in the cabin. Still, this place would forever bring me back to the day when I’d nearly gotten Laura killed.
We continued our hike to the peak, where dusk was falling and a few stars were starting to shine. “I have to tell you something,” Laura said. “And I know it’s going to sound weird.”
Not as weird as what I could tell you
, I thought.
“Remember when you first came into the Iliad and I asked if we knew each other?” she said.
“Yeah, and I reminded you that we’d met in one of those multi-universes.”
This time she didn’t smile. She went right on with what she was planning to tell me. “It wasn’t some vague feeling. It was strong. Like I’d known you before. A long time ago. And then somehow forgotten about you until you walked into the store. Like we’d been best friends in junior high and then one of us moved away.”
She looked at me, and I was close enough to her to see the pleading in her eyes cutting through the dusk. She wanted me to acknowledge that what she was saying, and feeling, was true. That I’d forgotten, too, and that together we’d be able to solve the mystery.
“I guess we’re going to have to go back through our junior high school days with a fine-toothed comb,” I said.
“It could be even further back than that. Like elementary school.”
Over the previous weeks, we’d already talked a little about our past. We’d grown up in different parts of the country, but her family had moved a few times. She was hanging her hope on the possibility that she’d lived near me for a short while.
At the summit of Jackson, she spread out a blanket, and I opened a bottle of wine. The night soon engulfed us, blending its darkness with the timeless glow from the stars above. That made it easy to slip into a conversation about our childhoods.
We weren’t able to find a time and place where our paths had crossed, but hearing more about her life brought me closer to her. Sadly, for her the conversation was a grand disappointment. She was having a hard time accepting the fact that her instincts could be so wrong. She badly wanted to solve the mystery.
So badly that I felt compelled to tell her she was right. That we
had
met before. That her instincts were spot-on.
I wanted to say those things, but I didn’t.
Someday, if we stayed together, which I thought we would, I’d have to tell her. But even if she grew to trust me completely, how could she ever believe such a far-fetched story?
“Maybe it’s a kind of reverse déjà vu?” she said, toward the end of the night.
“What’s that?”
“I’m creating memories that didn’t happen based on what’s happening now. That sounds ridiculous, right?”
“It sounds just like reverse déjà vu,” I said.
And it sounds like reconstructed memories.
She kissed me. “Well, it’s a messy theory right now, but I’ll work on it.”
She had the messy part right, and I wondered if she’d eventually get the time-travel part right, too. But that wasn’t a comforting thought. Maybe her use of the word “messy” was another trail, a subtle one. And maybe her memory of meeting me long ago was also a trail.
If they were, I hoped they wouldn’t grow. But if they did, I’d know why. Another wormhole, another bridge, had opened up.
THE END
If you’d like to read more by Irving Belateche, please try:
“
H
2
O
,” a Science Fiction Thriller
“
The Disappeared
,” a short story, a Supernatural Thriller
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