John Adams - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

There were certainly good things that came from openness. Like how, after finding my paintings, Katie surprised me with a sketchpad and a set of drawing pencils. Or the nights when I’d come home from a frustrating day of substitute teaching and she’d have accessed my mood long before I saw her. She’d lay me down on the bed and give me a massage without us even winking one another. But all too often it was the things we didn’t need to share that pierced our love: sexual histories that left Katie stewing for weeks; fleeting attractions to waiters and waitresses when we’d go out to dinner; momentary annoyances that would have been best left unshared. Letting someone into every secret gave access to our dark corners, and rather than feeling sympathy for each other’s failings, we blamed each other for nearsightedness, and soon layers of resentment were dredged up. There was a night at the bar when I watched Katie struggling to speak loudly enough for the bartender to hear, and I suddenly realized his face resembled the schoolyard bully of her childhood. “You have to get over that already,” I blinked angrily. Soon after, while watching a film I wasn’t enjoying, she tapped into layers I hadn’t yet registered. “He’s just a fictional character, not your father.”

And then there was the final New Year’s Eve party at her friend’s place out in Bay Ridge. The party was Y2K-themed, and guests were expected to actually speak to one another. A bunch of partygoers were sporting Bluetooth headsets into which they yelled loudly. We listened to Jamiroquai on a boom box and watched Teletubbies on a salvaged flat-screen. Katie was enjoying herself. She danced to the songs and barely winked anyone, happy to be talking again. I tried to be sociable, but I was shut down, giving access to only my most superficial layers as everyone got drunk and sloppy with theirs.

We stood talking to a guy wearing an ironic trucker’s cap as he pretended we were in 1999. “So you think the computers are going to blow up at midnight?” he asked us.

Katie laughed.

“No,” I said.

“Come on,” Katie blinked. “Loosen up.”

“I’m not into the kitsch,” I blinked back.

“Mostly I’m just excited about faxing things,” the guy in the trucker’s cap joked, and Katie laughed again.

“You know faxing was the early nineties, right?” I said, and then blinked to Katie, “Are you flirting with this guy?”

“All I’m saying is check out this Bluetooth. Can you believe folks wore these?”

“I know, that’s crazy,” Katie said. “No, I’m not flirting. I’m talking. How about you try it for a change?”

“I told you, I don’t like talking.”

“Great, so you’re never going to want to talk, then?”

“Did you guys make any New Year’s resolutions?” the guy asked us.

“Yeah,” Katie said, looking at me, “to talk more.” In her annoyance an image from a deeper layer flashed into clear resolution. It was a glimpse of a future she’d imagined for herself, and I saw us canoeing in Maine, singing songs with our kids. Even though we’d discussed how I never wanted children, there they were, and while I hadn’t sung aloud since grade school, there was a projection of me singing. Only then did I see the other incongruities. My eyes were blue not brown, my voice buoyant, my physique way more buff than I ever planned to become. And though I shared similarities with the man in the canoe, as if Katie had tried to fit me into his mold, the differences were clear. There in the canoe was the family Katie wanted, and the man with her wasn’t me.

“What the fuck?” I said aloud.

“It’s just a question,” the guy said. “If it’s personal, you don’t have to share. I’m giving up gluten.”

“Excuse us for a minute,” I said, and I blinked for Katie to follow me. We found a quiet spot by the side of the flat-screen TV.

“Who the hell is that in your future?” I whispered.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, looking at me. “I do love you.”

“But I’m not the guy you want to spend your life with?”

“Ten… nine… eight,” the partiers around us counted as they streamed the feed from Times Square.

“That’s not true,” Katie said. “You’re almost everything I want.”

There was no conscious choice about what happened next, just an instinctive recoiling of our bodies, the goose bumps rising against my skin as our layers closed to each other. I couldn’t access the lake house anymore or the photos of her father; her childhood dog was gone, followed by the first boyfriend and her college years, until all that was left were my own private memories, trapped deep within my layers, and the pale tint of her skin in the television’s light. We were strangers again, and we stood there, looking at each other, while all around us the party counted down the last seconds of the old year.

I logged off for long periods after we broke up. I gave up on trying to convince my students to have real-life experiences. When they complained that reading the “I Have a Dream” speech was too boring, I let them stream a thrash-hop version instead, and I sat looking out the window thinking about Katie. I walked to my station alone every day and sat on the train with my sketchpad, drawing the details I remembered from our trip to Maine: the shoreline with its broken shells and sunlight, the heron before it took flight, Katie’s face in the summer darkness. It’s the intangible details that I remember the clearest, the ones that there’s no way to draw. The taste of the perch as we sat around the table; how a cricket had slipped through the screened windows and jumped around our bed that night; how, after we’d gotten it out, the coolness of the lake made us draw the blankets around us; and how Katie, her father, and I had sat together in the warm light of the living room and played a game, the lettered dice clattering as her father shook the plastic container.

“All right, Andy, you ready?” he’d asked me, holding his hand over the lid.

And I’d thought I was.

The scent of fresh lilacs and the boom of a cannon shot muffled by distance prefaced the arrival of the rabbit hole. Louisa jerked upright in her seat, and her book fell from her lap to slap against the cold pavement of the station floor. Dropping a book would normally cause her to cringe, but instead she allowed herself a spark of excitement as a metal maintenance door creaked open on rusty hinges. Golden light spilled out onto dazed commuters. Was this it? Was this finally it?

The silhouette of a centaur beckoned toward the gathering crowd from within the rabbit hole. In a melodious voice, she called out, “Richard! Come quickly. Without your aid, the Inkies destroy everything that is beautiful and good in our world!”

A middle-aged man in a gray business suit laughed and ran forward, the crowd begrudgingly parting before him. “Never fear,” he shouted, stepped through the hole, and pulled the door shut behind him. The lighting in the station returned to normal. The smell of flowers was replaced with the usual smell of stale urine, newsprint, and body odor. A train rumbled in the distance, perhaps soon to arrive, or perhaps not.

Louisa bent down to pick up her book. The front cover was creased on the corner, but otherwise it was fine. The other commuters returned to those things commuters do to keep their mind off the boredom of travel: phones, newspapers, iPads, crossword puzzles.

Still not her turn. Not this time. To work in the mundane world, then.

The agency had placed Louisa with Dewey, Putnam, and Low, a small but venerable legal office downtown. The interview had been very brief, as temps were harder to find since rabbit holes. In the past six months, the calls had gotten more frequent; Louisa had developed a good reputation for dependability. She had little else to do with her time since the cancer had finished its relentless march through her mother’s bones.