Ken Grimwood - Replay

Jeff pondered that for a moment. "I’ve often wondered about that, of course. I was just always too wrapped up in my own experiences to do anything about it—until I saw Starsea and then found you."

"Maybe it’s time we did do something about it. Something more simple, and more direct, than I was trying to accomplish when you first met me. If there are others out there, we could all learn a lot. We’d have a great deal to share among us."

"True," Jeff said, smiling. "But right now the only person I want to share anything with is you. We’ve waited a long time to be together like this again."

"Long enough." She smiled back, undoing the blue terry-cloth towel and letting it drop to the sun-drenched wooden deck.

They placed the small display ad in the New York Times, Post, and Daily News; the Los Angeles Times and Herald-Examiner; Le Monde, L’Express, and Paris-Match; Asahi Shimbun and Yomiyuri Shimbun; the London Times, Evening Standard, and Sun; O Estado de Sâo Paulo and Jornal do Brasil. Taking into account their own specialized areas of interest during various replays, the ad also began appearing regularly in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and Le Concours Médical; the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Le Nouvel Economiste; Daily Variety and Cahiers du Cinéma; Playboy, Penthouse, Mayfair, and Lui.

In all, more than two hundred newspapers and magazines worldwide carried the superficially innocuous announcement, which would be utterly meaningless except to those unknown, and possibly nonexistent, few for whom it was intended:

Do you remember Watergate? Lady Di? The shuttle disaster? The Ayatollah? Rocky? Flashdance?

If so, you’re not alone. Contact P.O. Box 1988, New York, N.Y. 10001

"Here’s another one with a dollar bill enclosed," Jeff said, tossing the envelope aside. "Why the hell do so many of them think we’re selling something?"

Pamela shrugged. "Most people are."

"What’s even worse are the ones who think we’re running some sort of contest. This could get to be a problem, you know."

"How so?"

"With the postal authorities, unless we’re careful. We’re going to have to come up with a form letter explaining that the ad isn’t any sort of come-on, and send it to all these people. Especially the ones who’ve mailed us money. We have to make sure it’s all returned. We don’t need any complaints."

"But we haven’t offered anyone anything," Pamela protested.

"Even so," Jeff said, "how would you like to try explaining to a postal inspector in 1967 what Watergate means?"

"I suppose you’re right." She opened another envelope, scanned the letter, and laughed. "Listen to this one," she said. " Please send me more information on your memory-training course. I don’t remember any of the things you mentioned in your ad. "

Jeff chuckled along with her, glad she could still keep a sense of humor about all this. He knew how much the search meant to her: The time skew of her replay starting dates was obviously much more advanced than his, and if it was proceeding along a curve that had taken it from four or five days' delay all the way to eighteen months in one jump, the duration of her next repeated life might be severely truncated. They’d never discussed it but were both aware of the possibility that she might even not come back at all.

In the past four months, they’d received hundreds of replies to the ad, most of which assumed it was a contest or a sales pitch for anything from magazine subscriptions to the Rosicrucians. A few were tantalizingly ambiguous, but on follow-up investigation had proven worthless. The most promising, yet maddening, of them all had been a one-line message postmarked Sydney, Australia, with no signature or return address:

"Not this time," it read. "Wait."

Jeff had begun to despair of the whole endeavor. It had made sense to try, and he felt they’d done it in the best way possible, but it hadn’t produced the results they’d hoped. Maybe there really weren’t any other replayers out there, or if they did exist, they had elected not to respond. More than ever before, though, Jeff now believed he and Pamela were alone in this, and would remain so.

He opened another envelope from the day’s stack, ready to dump it with the other worthless, confused replies; but the first line stopped him, and he read the rest of the brief letter in stunned amazement.

Dear Whoever,

You forgot to mention Chappaquiddick. That’s coming up again pretty soon now. And what about the Tylenol scare, or the Soviets shooting down the Korean 747? Everybody remembers those.

Any time you want to talk, head on out this way. We can reminisce about the good old days to come.

Stuart McCowan

382 Strathmore Drive

Crossfield, Wisconsin

Jeff stared at the signature, checked the address against the postmark. They matched. "Pamela…" he said quietly.

"Hmm?" She glanced up from the envelope she was about to tear open. "Another funny one?"

Jeff looked at the pretty, smiling face that he had known and loved so strangely out of sequence: first in maturity, and now in youth. He felt a vague foreboding, as if the closeness they had shared were about to be invaded, their mutual uniqueness shattered by a stranger. They had found what they’d been seeking, but now he wasn’t at all certain they ever should have begun the quest.

"Read this," he said, and handed her the letter.

A light snow began to fall from the iron-drab sky as they drove into Crossfield, about thirty-five miles south of Madison. In the passenger seat of the big Plymouth Fury Pamela tensely ripped a Kleenex into thin strips of tissue, wadding them one by one and depositing them in the dashboard ashtray. Jeff hadn’t seen her display that nervous habit since the night at the restaurant in Malibu when they’d first met, nineteen years ago and five years in the future.

"Do you still think there’ll be just the one man?" she asked, looking out at the barren winter skeletons of the birch trees that lined the streets of the little town.

"Probably," Jeff said, peering through the snow at the black-and-gray street signs. "I don’t think that reference to everybody remembering the Tylenol killings and the Korean plane meant anything. I’m sure he was referring to people in general, after the incidents have happened, not some group of replayers he’s gathered together."

Pamela finished shredding the Kleenex, reached for another. "I don’t know whether I hope that’s true or the other way around," she said in a perplexed tone. "In a way, it would be such an incredible relief to find a whole network of people who understand what we’ve been through. Yet I’m not sure if I’m ready to deal with … that much accumulated pain of such a familiar sort. Or to hear all the things they may have learned about replaying." "I thought that was the whole point."

"It’s just a little frightening, that’s all, now that we’re so close to it. I wish this Stuart McCowan had been listed with information; I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we’d been able to call him, get a better idea of who he is than from just that note. I hate showing up cold like this."

"I’m sure he’s expecting us. Obviously, we weren’t about to turn down his invitation, not after the effort we went through to find him."

"There’s Strathmore," Pamela said, pointing to a street that wound up a hill to the left. Jeff had already passed the intersection; he made a U, turned onto the broad, deserted street.

Number 382 was an isolated three-story Victorian home on the other side of the hill. An estate, actually, with spacious, well-kept grounds behind the roughhewn flagstone walls. Pamela began to tear at another Kleenex as they drove through the imposing gate, but Jeff stopped her fitful hand with his and gave her a warm smile of encouragement.