John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

But you shouldn’t suppose that I’d given up hope. I assembled a kind of throne out of back issues of Otherkin and Omni and The Official World of Warcraft Game Guide —which Menügayan had whole crates of, for some reason — so that I could work on my history and keep lookout for you simultaneously. I’d settled in for what card players call “the long con”: I was prepared to do whatever it took to tip the scales in my favor, even if that meant, for the moment, doing nothing. I’m fairly sure that I’m the only person on earth who’s read The Official World of Warcraft Game Guide three times, in its entirety, appendices and all, without ever having played World of Warcraft.

As the days passed, I began to take note of passages in that venerable text, many of them in the “Guidelines for Ethical Play” (GEP), that seemed to relate, directly or indirectly, to the text I was writing myself. (What were the Accidents, from a certain point of view, but a jewel-encrusted chalice tucked away inside some sleeping monster’s bowels?) I found one guideline, in particular, that ought to be inscribed across the Toula coat of arms:

6 (B)—

If you notice a person is about to attack a dragon, let them have it.

Find another dragon elsewhere to attack.

Such was my life in hiding, Mrs. Haven. Menügayan would stick her head through the hatch every so often — to pass along that morning’s Daily News , for example, or a lukewarm-at-best TV dinner — but she rarely spoke to me or met my eye. Her silence had taken on a spiritual quality: something beyond words, possibly beyond all human understanding.

This was a clear indication, looking back on it now, that I’d been in the attic too long. It took me most of the next week to figure that out, but as soon as it hit me I packed up my clothes and my notes and my manuscript and decided to rejoin the human race. I couldn’t wait any longer for the message she insisted you’d send; not in that haunted castle of hers. Things were going to take a dark turn if I stayed.

I’d just finished explaining this to Menügayan — whose only response was a grunt — when the sign we’d both been waiting for arrived.

It presented itself in the form of a personal ad in the Sublets Wanted section of the Post . I have an explanation for this coincidence now — two or three explanations, in fact — but at the time it seemed the wildest quirk of C*F*P. Running my finger down the leftmost column while Menügayan made me a sandwich (“Don’t look at me that way, Tolliver — I’d do the same thing for a dog”), I encountered the following entry, which had no business in the Sublets Wanted listings:

WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. Experience necessary. Box 334, New York, NY 10001. Length of voyage: 33 minutes and a half. Euphasia a distinct possibility. No lying, no biting. I have only done this once before.

“Find anything?” Menügayan asked, plunking the sandwich down in front of me. It was tidily wrapped and smelled faintly of curry.

“Probably not,” I said, closing the paper. “More than I can afford. But it can’t hurt to look.”

“That depends,” said Menügayan.

I nodded. “On what?”

“On what you’re looking at.”

“Which zip code is one-zero-zero-zero-one?” I asked nonchalantly. “Which P.O. would that be?”

“One-zero-zero-zero-one,” Menügayan echoed. “I guess that would be Penn Station. The main post office up there.”

“The one with the columns, across from the Garden?”

“That’s right.” She flashed me one of her most unfathomable smiles. “The only one that’s open all night long.”

* * *

Sunset found me in the Italianate lobby of the James A. Farley Post Office, gazing up at the ceiling with my hands in my pockets and my back against the buzzing stamp dispenser. Philatelically minded citizens elbowed me aside now and then, shooting me dirty looks, but I stared through them as if they were ghosts. The James A. Farley is to the grimy, crowded pressure cookers that pass for P.O.s in the rest of the city as an aircraft carrier is to an inflatable duck. Its monumentality would have tilted toward fascism, at least for me, if not for the potty-mouthed irreverence of the clerks. The J.A.F. may be a secular temple, a twenty-four-hour shrine to the power of discourse, but to the middle-aged ladies behind the art deco grilles in its lobby, it’s just another badly lit P.O.

I’m still not sure why I chose to keep Menügayan in the dark about the message you’d sent, but at the time I felt relieved to have escaped. She might have claimed that it was too risky, or that the timing was wrong, or that I was walking into a trap — none of which I wanted to be told. I cased the J.A.F.’s lobby as discreetly as I could, struggling to keep a lid on my excitement. Box 334 turned out to be a modest fourteen-dollar-a-month unit along the south wall; as far as I could make out, it was empty. I returned to my position at the aforementioned postage dispenser — an optimal location, from a surveillance point of view — and stayed there, with four brief but necessary interruptions, for the next sixteen hours.

You swept through the revolving doors the following afternoon. I should have guessed you’d come then, at the most nondescript time of day: 14:00 EST, the adulterer’s hour. You had on a blue tartan cape and a silver beret, like a prep school kid playing at being a spy, but also vaguely like an otherkin. A pair of Hasids were emptying a jumbo-sized unit a few columns down, shouting into each other’s ears as if communicating by transatlantic cable; you waited until they’d walked away, then snuck a furtive glance into the box.

“Nothing’s in there, Mrs. Haven. I’ve checked.”

“He’s keeping his eye on me,” you said without turning. “For my own protection. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m going to guess you shouldn’t be here, either.”

You kept your face toward the box, one hand against its tarock-card-sized window. “You’re right about that.”

“But you came anyway.” I took a half step closer. “And so did I.”

You straightened your shoulders and took in a breath: you were steeling yourself. In a moment you’d explain to me, in a cordial, room-temperature voice, that you saw no way for us to continue our friendship. I’d turned out to be a liar, and far worse than that, a coward: my fear of the Husband — your husband — had compelled me to lie. You could not excuse that. It embarrassed you to admit it, but you’d made a mistake. If I’d been honest from the start, perhaps, there might have been—

“Come to Vienna with me,” I said, laying my hands on your shoulders. “There’s a mystery there that I’m trying to solve. It involves the Gestapo, and the war, and the speed of light, and a card game no one plays anymore. It involves the Husband— your husband — and the whole United Church of Synchronology. I’ll tell you everything, the whole sleazy story, if you’ll only say yes. Come to Vienna with me, Mrs. Haven. Without you I don’t stand a chance in hell.”

I said more than that — much more — and you kept still and listened. I stood closer to you than anyone but a lover had the right to stand, and you made no move, either toward me or away. Your hair smelled of smoke, I remember — of clove cigarettes, or possibly pot. The down on your nape stirred in time to my breath. As long as I kept talking, things would remain as they were, in a state of suspension; but I couldn’t keep talking. When it was clear that I’d finally run out of breath, you nodded to yourself and turned to me.

“I can’t come to Vienna with you, Walter. You know that.”