The Future for Curious People Read online

  “Yeah,” Tina says.

  Sarge finally lets go of my hand. Future-me tries to rub his hand as subtly as possible.

  “Makes sense.” He looks back at future-me. “She looks even better now,” he says. “Yearbooks. She dusted them off when all of this started happening, you know?”

  “What started happening?” future-me manages to ask.

  “You know, all these guys who were once in love with her started showing up to see what their futures would be like if they’d gotten her.” He laughs. “As if.”

  “As if,” future-me says meekly. I want him to say, But wait, this is all a product of my mind. You don’t really exist, do you? But future-me is either too dumbfounded or embarrassed to question their reality. In point of fact, it would be stupid to doubt Sarge’s existence. He could easily prove it by beating future-me’s ass.

  “Third one this week,” Sarge says.

  “Fourth, actually,” Tina says. “You’re forgetting the one who showed up during the movie.” She turns toward future-me. “Scared me so bad I spilled the popcorn all over that couple in front of us.”

  “That’s right!” Sarge says. “Pretty much ruined the movie.”

  “I’m worth it.” She winks, and Sarge’s eyes cover her entire body in one swoop.

  Sarge hands the bag of trash to future-me. “Could you drop this at the end of the driveway on your way out?”

  Future-me takes the bag of trash from Sarge, who may or may not have been on the cover of an Esquire stacked on the back of my toilet. I feel pathetic, bottomed out. I hope future-me feels just as pathetic. I hope future-me hates himself right now. I don’t want to be the only one, even if it’s another version of me feeling this way, just older with a semireceding hairline.

  “Sorry,” future-me says. With his free hand, future-me waves good-bye and lets himself out.

  It’s dusk. The neighborhood is quiet; the houses are spread apart. The community is probably gated. Will I even be able to get out of here? At the end of Tina and Sarge’s driveway, I put the bag of trash in the green trash can.

  Across the street on the sidewalk, in front of a house that looks exactly the same as Tina’s, I see the bike. I see the boots. That bike and those boots. I want the camera to zoom in closer, but it won’t. I lean forward on the examination table, but it doesn’t help.

  Kneeling in front of the bike is the woman in the boots. I can’t make her out. She has her back to future-me as she pumps air into the back tire. She’s wearing a dress. It silks off of her like it’s telling a story: all of the girls who wore dresses before her were just practicing for this moment.

  I am thinking, She is here, and then I’m thinking, She should always be here. But then, why is she here? It seems like a glitch in the system. A fantastic glitch. My favorite glitch in the history of glitches. Her image freezes. The screen starts to skip before it goes black.

  A NURSE COMES IN this time. She’s got this permanently bored expression. I was hoping for Chin. I have a few questions—thank you very much—about someone (in rain boots) photo-bombing session after session. What’s it mean? How can I actually see more of her?

  The nurse looks at my chart. “Who’s next, lover boy?”

  “I once dated these twins . . .”

  “One at a time! We don’t do any of that kinky stuff.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Save it. Pick one.”

  Sandra Ellis is twelve minutes older than Klarissa Ellis, but Klarissa Ellis looked older back then, even though they looked almost exactly the same. I end up saying, “Klarissa Ellis,” because she swirled her tongue like a whirlpool. That was long ago, but I figure, once a whirlpool . . .

  Klarissa Ellis and Godfrey Burkes

  A Chin Production

  The session opens in a windy car, driving fast. Night. My view is shaky, like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, but there’s no gunfire or Tom Hanks before he put on his sincerity weight.

  Klarissa Ellis is driving the car, I’m in the passenger’s seat, and the radio is loud. It’s the Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” Along the road, there are a few unlit strip malls. It must be very late.

  Klarissa isn’t saying anything, but she’s only in a bra and a pair of torn jeans, faded, a wedding band attached to a necklace around her neck.

  Future-me is gripping his seat belt frantically. He’s wearing glasses, a fitted suit, a shadow of an incoming beard. This is the best I’ve looked in the future so far, but I’ve never seen myself so frightened.

  There’s rattling so loud I can barely hear the music over it. Empty pill bottles are scattered on the floor of the car. Future-me looks back at Klarissa, who is staring at the road. He then looks at the speedometer; it’s nearing 100 miles per hour.

  “Klarissa,” future-me says. I can just hear him over the music, and I know Klarissa didn’t hear him.

  Future-me looks back at the road. He freezes.

  Klarissa laughs. “We’ll try not to wake up this time,” she says, and then the car runs straight into the side of a Walmart.

  I’m back at Chin’s with the helmet strapped on.

  The nurse is standing there, looking concerned, which concerns me because she seemed so good at looking bored. “You okay?”

  “Next twin!” I shout. I’m still bracing for impact.

  “One twin killed you, and you want to try again?” she says.

  “I’m a slow learner. Besides,” I tell her, “that was the best movie I’ve seen in months.”

  Back to bored, she shrugs. “All righty.”

  Sandra Ellis and Godfrey Burkes

  A Chin Production

  Bunk beds. I’m on the top bunk. The bunk below me is empty. I try to think of the last time I was in a bunk bed. Third grade, maybe, a sleepover. I remember being too scared to fall asleep. But I was maybe eight—why would I be in a bunk bed when I’m thirty-nine?

  The shot widens and now I know. Future-me is in jail. I jump down and start getting dressed in my orange suit. I am fucking ripped. There are muscles on top of my muscles, like I have built mountaintops and they didn’t know how to end so they just kept growing more mountaintops. Ripples. When future-me moves, the muscles crash into themselves. I imagine this is how the ocean must feel. I wonder if it’d be worth it to go to prison just to get this physique. Hard call. I look that good. There’s a loud buzz. Someone announcing visitation hours. The clanking noise of unlocking doors.

  A guard walks up and down the cell block. All of the inmates, including future-me, line up single file and follow one of the guards down the stairs, through thick doors and into a large room.

  Future-me sits down at a small metal table, across from whom I assume to be Sandra Ellis. There’s no touching, but she stretches her arms out as far as she can and balls her hands into fists. Future-me does the same. Maybe this is how people hold hands in the future. I doubt it.

  Truth is, Sandra doesn’t look good. She’s tan but kind of homeless tan, not to sound like a judgmental prick, but she looks like she’s been out in the sun, wandering. She’s lived hard and maybe done a little too much meth; her teeth are in bad shape.

  And for the first time I am wondering why I’m in jail. Who the fuck did I kill to end up here? (I kind of hope it was Tina Whooten’s husband. I mean, if that effer could see me now.)

  The visitation room is large, sunken—everything seems to cave toward the middle. Everything is gray, and I don’t think that’s entirely because of the blur.

  Maybe if I close my eyes and open them again, this won’t be happening. I do. But I’m still in an orange jumpsuit, sitting across from a woman I sloppily made out with once because there was more vodka than punch in the hunch punch.

  Future-me is looking at Sandra, but I’m not. I’m scanning the visitation room of the prison, looking looking looking. I don’t know what future-me is looking for—someone with a shiv? But I know what I want to see—those boots, those legs.

  I’m hearing bits
of conversation to the left, then the right, then Sandra, but I do my best to tune her out. She’s saying something about our kids needing new jeans for school. One of their backpacks ripped and he loved that backpack because Spider-Man was on it and he just fucking loves Spider-Man. How is she going to buy a new backpack when they’re cutting down her hours at the diner? Why do I always have kids and why am I always a terrible father to these kids? I should probably start seeing a therapist now so I can figure this shit out. Must be my Thigpen?

  All of a sudden a woman’s voice comes through like radio static: “Dot’s trial starts in two weeks, but the lawyer doesn’t seem optimistic.”

  That voice! I know that voice. Do I know that voice?

  “What do lawyers know?” It’s a man now. I can’t make out any distinct features, but his jumpsuit matches mine. They’re sitting at the metal table directly to the right of me and Sandra.

  Everything looks like space gas, but there they are—the boots with the flowers. I try to make out what kind of flowers they are. Daisies? Lilies? Chrysanthemums? I don’t know anything about flowers so I don’t know why I’m even trying to guess.

  The guard makes an announcement over the intercom that it’s time to go and then adds, “Evelyn Shriner, your driver’s license has been found. Please report to the front desk. Evelyn Shriner?”

  It’s her. The girl from that first envisioning session, the girl from the dream of the pool. She’s the girl on the bike, the beautiful pumping legs.

  She’s blonder and older this time—she’s aged the same amount of years as future-me, but it’s obviously her. There’s no mistake. But what rain boots last fifteen years? The boots still look brand new. This is the closest I’ve been to her—five, six, seven feet at the most. Future-me could almost reach out and touch her. Future-me is looking at Sandra Ellis as Evelyn calls to a guard, “Oh, that’s me! I lose my stuff all the time! I think I have identity issues!”

  THE MEDS ARE ALMOST completely out of my system now, but I still feel foggy. Chin’s there and could be saying anything to me right now, but I’m not paying attention. Evelyn Shriner from the waiting room on the first day, with the driver’s license in her mouth! How long ago was it?

  “You have one more session. You want to do it today still? You look a little wobbly.”

  It has to be Evelyn. Surely I could think of someone else I could waste it on, but it’s always been Evelyn. Those boots! Everything above those boots! Hell, everything inside those boots. I mean, she has to take them off in bed, right?

  I say to Chin, “I read in the materials, at the beginning . . .”

  “The release of liability forms.”

  “Yeah, those. I think it said that people could recur in your envisioning and maybe in your dreams. And . . .”

  “Are you having a situation like that?” He sounds suspicious.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s rare, but it’s some serious shit when that happens.”

  “Serious how?”

  “Serious as a heart attack.”

  “What?”

  “That’s just an expression.”

  “Not when it’s coming from a doctor!”

  “Listen, it means that you’ve met someone who’s important to you—even though you’re not consciously aware of it—and they’re so important that your mind is causing them to barge into your dreams and envisionings. Those times when your rational mind and your fears and desires aren’t playing interference. You know, when you’re actually pure, running on your own fuel.”

  “And there’s that one line in the rules about true love.”

  “I don’t like to talk about true love.”

  “But you wrote it.”

  Chin nods. “Well, yes, I did with the help of my brother, Earl, who practices law on the side.”

  “It said something about system failures . . .”

  “I’ve only seen it a few times myself.”

  “What happens?”

  “Anything and everything. It just means our systems no longer work. Weird shit occurs. That weird shit varies. And that’s about all I can say.”

  “Weird shit occurs? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Look, science and the mysteries of true love can only coexist for so long before weird shit occurs.”

  And then I realize that using my last envisioning session on Evelyn is nothing but a lose-lose situation. If it goes badly, then it goes badly, and all of these feelings are more cloudy weather in an already shitty Baltimore winter. And if the session with Evelyn is a knockout? I’d feel like a complete asshole. I would’ve cheated on Madge—not physically, but isn’t emotionally cheating in some future scenario the same thing? Maybe it’s even worse.

  Madge might not be the best girlfriend—how can I say fiancée when she refuses to wear the ring?—but no one deserves to be cheated on. Even if it’s fake or at best, alternatively real. The emotions are there; those can’t be faked. We always shed our skin but our hearts stay the same.

  I can be loyal and true.

  I am no Thigpen. I am no Thigpen.

  “I wish I had rain boots,” I mutter.

  “Would be good. The weather warmed up some. Expecting a light rain, they say. So,” Chin says, “number five? Yes or no?”

  And, regardless of everything I’ve just worked out in my head, I say, “Evelyn Shriner.”

  “Huh,” Chin says.

  “Why huh?”

  “Did I say huh?” Chin asks.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Evelyn Shriner and Godfrey Burkes

  A Chin Production

  This Godfrey is on his hands and knees crawling in what seems to be a large hard-plastic tube, like the Habitrail I once had for my hamster, Elminster. Future-me stops and looks down through the orange-tinted plastic and sees that the floor is far away. My God, this contraption is suspended from the ceiling. There are children far below, running everywhere. This future-me spots a woman below. She’s scanning the tubing frantically, and then she gives up on scanning; she’s taking matters into her own hands and is heading into the tube, too. Future-me doesn’t like this at all. I start pounding on the plastic. I shout, “Evelyn! No!” but my voice is trapped in the tube. She can’t hear me at all. And in she goes.

  The ruckus of children screaming is mostly muted by the plastic, though it’s clear that some are squealing joyfully and others are crying their heads off. Inside the tubing, there are shouts and cries, too—sharper and more piercing.

  I start crawling again, faster now. I shout, “Dotty! Dotty!” And then under my breath, I mutter, “Jesus H. Christ, Dotty.” And it’s clear that Dotty is the product of me and Evelyn Shriner, and she’s the kind of jackass kid to get lost up in hamster Habitrails connected to a ceiling (as if this is a good idea for any child whatsoever at all). What kind of psycho Skinner protégé thought this shit up?

  I’m obviously not enjoying myself. In fact, I look a little pale. Is it possible that instead of getting a good clear look at Evelyn Shriner—who’s now up here crawling around somewhere, too—I’m going to have the opportunity of watching myself spray-barf ? I have a very sensitive stomach. I sometimes get nauseated in elevators, to be honest. I haven’t done any kind of amusement park ride more robust than a merry-go-round since I was seven.

  I start to alternate now between shouting, “Dotty!” and shouting “Evelyn!” while padding along as quickly as I can.

  And then I get shoved in the butt. I spin around. “Hey, watch it!”

  There’s some chubby, sweaty, cheeky kid face saying, “Mister, you’re not supposed to be up here! There’s a weight limit!”

  “I lost my kid!” I shout back. “One day, when you’re a father, you’ll understand that you don’t abandon your own child just because of a weight limit!”

  But there’s a sharp nervous twitchy glance that I give the tube all around me like—shit, I’m going to die in this tube and I’m going to take my whole family and all thes
e kids with me.

  I’m perspiring all down my shirt; even my pants are soaked.

  But I persist and, God bless it, I kind of love me for pressing on. I mean, I have no real choice, but still I keep shouting, “Dotty! Evelyn! Dotty!”

  And then just when I think things can’t get much worse, the lights go out. Kids scream. Music blares. And there’s some kind of laser light show—the kind they do at bowling alleys nowadays for no rational reason. What does bowling have to do with laser light shows? What does anything have go do with laser light shows, really?

  And then there’s a fucking fog machine that sprays—inside the tubes!—as if kids today aren’t already, by and large, asthmatic!

  I’m pissed about this. I know my pissed face and, holy shit, this is it, dear God.

  And that’s when I lose it.

  I stop moving altogether; I lock it up like an angry camel. And I start screaming. Just a high-pitched hysterical scream.

  And the screen goes blank because Dr. Chin Productions is, one assumes, trying to show this from inside of my very own point of view; and, with my eyes closed, I can see nothing.

  But then there’s this slap. It’s a loud ringing snap, and it cuts through all the noise. My own cheek goes warm in an instant as if my cheek knows it’s been slapped before the screen even pops back into focus.

  Of course focus isn’t the right word because there’s pretty much only fog lit up by laser lights playing in rhythm to some screaming guitar rock-opera bullshit.

  But I hear a voice and the voice is Evelyn.

  “Quiet!” Evelyn says. “Godfrey, I’ve got Dotty. She’s right here. We’re fine.”

  “I’m so sorry,” future-me says back to her. “I looked away for one second and she just shot right up. I’m a terrible father. Jesus, I’m the worst father.”

  “I love you, Godfrey Burkes. You’re a fucking superhero. You’ve got a good soul, and this isn’t your shining moment, but I will always love you. No matter what. In fact,” she goes on because her heart must be pumping pretty hard with adrenaline right now, too, “I will always remember you in this stupid tube. I will always remember how you went after her. It’s proof. You hear me? It’s proof that no matter what we will endure.”