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1
YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHY I didn’t just go back in time again once I realized things were still screwy in the time stream. I considered it, of course. When I was wandering through the nearly freezing cold while dripping with water from the lake, I had thought that a return to summer or even spring might be preferable to freezing to death.
So then why didn’t I travel? I was incredibly curious, and that sense that I could always go back whenever I wanted made it seem like a quick look around the alternate present wouldn’t be such a big deal. There was more to it though. As much as I’d hurt Suzy, as scared as I was about what had become of her life, I wasn’t ready yet to let her go. To go back and change things again might mean that she and I never met. I didn’t know enough about all this time travel stuff to be sure that my time with her wouldn’t disappear from my memory. Even if it didn’t, I couldn’t bare the thought that she wouldn’t remember it.
When I look at it now I realize how selfish and foolish that was. I had tried over and over to be an adult and I had repeatedly made emotional, immature decisions, consequences be damned.
“I’m in love with you, whoever you are,” she had said to me. The memory tortured me as I thanked the cab driver and walked up a long driveway toward the large house. There was one more reason I was staying in a present that wasn’t my own. In the previous alternate reality I had tried to fix the broken version of myself, considering the possibility that he might continue to exist even if I went back where I belonged. Since I was in this new time stream...okay, since I had potentially created this time stream, I felt an obligation to check in on this version of myself and make sure he was doing alright. The fancy house seemed to be a good sign.
Unfortunately it was the middle of the night and I didn’t want to ring the doorbell. If it had been warmer I would have stayed outside but it was freezing and I was tired. I walked around to the garage entrance. A small keypad mounted to the wall controlled access. I didn’t hesitate, typing in my birthdate and hitting the button marked “enter.”
The garage door rumbled up and I considered that a sound that loud could easily wake somebody up, but it still seemed the better choice. A small silver Porsche and an enormous black Range Rover were parked in the garage. I opened the door dividing the garage from the rest of the house. The alarm was not set and the house remained silent. No pets.
I walked through a vast mudroom and down a long hallway. In a door to one side I saw a bedroom. I guessed it was a guest room or something. It had no photographs or any other sign of belonging to one particular person. I sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped off my shoes and swung my legs up, hoping that if this timestream’s version of me discovered me here he wouldn’t attack, at least not right away.
I rested my head on the soft pillows and closed my eyes. Visions of Suzy and Helena swirled in front of me. My lost loves from two different eras. I’d left my life with Helena behind and now I’d abandoned Suzy as well. In this new world I didn’t belong with either of them. I was completely alone. The warmth and comfort surrounding me took the edge off my pain. Sleep found me quickly.
––––––––
2
“Where the fuck have you been?” yelled a nasal, female voice.
I snapped awake. Standing over me was a skinny young woman in yoga pants and a sports bra. She was pretty but her features were harsh and angular. She scowled at me.
“I asked you a question, Dan. Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the fucking earth without your car, your phone, anything?”
I truly had no idea what was going on, and I went with that honest approach. “I don’t know what happened to me. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“What’s my name?” she asked. Shit.
“I... I don’t...”
“You don’t even remember who I am?” she screamed. “After the night we had?”
“You’re gonna have to refresh my memory.”
“You and me. A week ago. That bar down in Manayunk. We came back here, you left in the morning for work, or so you said, but you didn’t take your car. Just wandered the fuck off.”
“So you’ve been living in my house for a week?” I asked.
“Don’t try to get all high and mighty on me!” she said. “I was waiting for you to come back.”
I thought about kicking her out, but it wasn’t really my home. “Just....give me some room, okay? I’ve gotta make sense of all of this.”
“Fine. I’m going to the gym anyway. I’m taking the Porsche.”
She seemed to think I’d react to that, and her eyes registered disappointment when I didn’t. She turned and left in a huff.
I was confused. My doppelgänger in this world had vanished a week earlier without a trace and he wasn’t back yet, despite what Ms. Yogapants House Squatter now believed to be true. I left the bedroom and walked down the hall. The next room down was a home office. Shelves of dark wood filled the walls and a cream colored rug took up much of the floor. There was a big ass desk, impressive in its sheer massiveness, and I sat down in the leather chair behind it.
The one wall not covered in shelving was full of photos. I recognized myself and my parents in several. Some other family, too. A couple photos seemed to be with friends, but I didn’t know those people. There were girls in a few of the pictures. No girl appeared in more than one photo, as best I could tell. I guess none had ever been significant enough to make the cut. Little Danny Wells, whom I had last seen beaming with excitement over his new girlfriend in 1993 had apparently become quite the player.
In the middle of the photographs hung a large diploma. It was written in Latin but I recognized the insignia of the University of Pennsylvania and my own name. School, it seemed, had been a very different experience for this Daniel. He’d stayed local though, both in college and beyond, and that resonated with me. Some things about a person can’t be changed.
Where the hell was he? It seemed the most logical answer was that he’d discovered he could travel in time and was off on an adventure further splintering the time stream, or maybe using good sense that I did not have and just observing from a distance. It seemed reasonable, considering my own abilities had spontaneously manifested in 2013. But this week? That seemed too uncomfortably coincidental.
I had no idea what to do about finding the other Daniel. Even though my influence this time had made him successful, I still felt a responsibility to make sure he was okay. In the meantime, there was another person I wanted to check on. In a creepy Ghost of Christmas Future way, I wanted to see what became of Helena without Daniel Wells in her life.
My Google search didn’t take as long as I had anticipated. Helena was still single, and popped up in several places under her maiden name. I couldn’t see much of her Facebook profile, but she looked happy. Very happy. I didn’t think I had any right to feel the slightest bit upset about anything Helena could do in this world or any other and yet that one picture hurt more than I could have imagined. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her filled with that genuine joy.
It took me another three minutes to locate her address. While I searched I browsed the contents of the big desk. An iPhone was in one of the drawers, plugged into a charger that snaked through the back of the desk. The phone had 27 missed calls. Not all that much considering it had been left unanswered for a week. I grabbed it and put in my pocket, just in case. Next to it was a Visa card in my name. I took that too.
I found out that Helena lived in an apartment on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I left the office and found my way upstairs to the master bedroom. It was enormous. It was also very white, which seemed to me like an open invitation to stains. I entered the cavernous closet and picked out jeans and a sweater. I didn’t even recognize the brands.
I went back to the mudroom and grabbed a heavy jacket and the keys to the SUV. As I slipped behind the wheel it occurred to me how strangely comfortable I felt in a life that wasn’t mine. A guy could get used to the trappings of success. Of course, there was a job that paid money to produce that lavish lifestyle. A job I almost certainly couldn’t hold down without an ivy league education and years of experience. As I left the neighborhood I wiggled out of the jacket. It wasn’t necessary with the car’s heat cranked up.
That made me think— had my other self left on his quest without his jacket? That made sense if he had traveled to the past from inside his house, but that seemed odd to me. It also made me wonder what past he would have traveled into, and how all these timelines connected. It really hurt my head. For everything I’d learned to that point, so much about time travel was still way beyond my understanding.
3
I drove the Range Rover to the turnpike and stepped hard on the gas as I merged onto the highway headed west. I needed to eat but I needed to be in Helena’s general area. I had to know about her life. It was a 25 minute drive to her apartment complex. Once I was there I walked to a McDonalds and grabbed some kind of egg and sausage concoction.
I thought Helena was probably at work, so I walked for hours around the area, strolling up and down the streets. Everything seemed normal. This world’s Daniel’s great success had not changed things any more than that other Daniel’s failures. Really puts your life in perspective.
The day went by slowly. Finally, I spied Helena walking from the parking lot toward the apartment buildings. She looked great. She looked familiar. It was everything in me not to just run up and kiss her. It had been so long. I decided the more prudent approach was to go up to her subtly.
“Hi,” I said as I walked in her direction.
“Hello,” she responded with a friendly wave. She was probably used to meeting guys that way all the time in a place like where she was living. “Do I know you?”
That comment threw me. I knew that she would view me as a stranger, but to have it out in the open...to hear my wife respond to me that way... I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. My name’s Daniel.”
She put out her familiar hand and shook mine. “I’m Helena.”
Did she recognize me on some level? I don’t know. Again, that’s one of those things that I’m not skilled enough to answer. What I do know is we clicked quickly, no doubt aided by my understanding of her mannerisms and thought processes. I had to gloss over questions about my job, because the only evidence I’d seen in my brief tour of the mansion had said I did something with computers. That made sense. I guess I could have talked about my life in the real timeline, but it seemed so foreign when I was meeting my wife for the first time. Otherwise, our conversation was free-flowing and enjoyable. By the time she said she “really had to go” for the fourth time, over an hour had passed. We exchanged numbers—I had to browse the iPhone’s settings and claimed I had just received a new number—and parted ways.
I returned to the Range Rover and sat quietly in the dark. I was completely in love with Helena again as if I had just met her for the first time which, in a way, I had. I saw her as I had once seen her. Vibrant, spirited and fun. It made me sad to think that something about being with me the past few years had made her so negative. Yet for all my renewed feelings for my wife, thoughts of Suzy refused to stay away. To top it all off, I didn’t know where that timeline’s Daniel had gone, and I was no longer completely certain that I knew how to reset the world to its proper order, or if I even wanted to.
If the other Daniel didn’t come back, if my little buddy Danny was maybe stuck in another reality just like me, then I could potentially assume his identity and some semblance of his life. I was certainly him down to the DNA. But was that right? What if my world still existed out there and my version of Helena was crying herself to sleep every night wondering in what ditch my dead body would eventually be found? Too many complications. As interesting as the prospect of dating this world’s Helena might be, I had to go home. But first...
4
I drove to the gas station I had visited my first time traveling to 1993. It was now an Exxon Mobil, and probably had been for many years. I can’t remember when that merger took place. I parked alongside the building and went in to the shop. It hadn’t changed much. A guy about my age worked at the counter. He didn’t appear to be one of the mechanics. He was tall and wiry and looked far more at home with a smartphone than a lugnut or whatever the hell those things are.
“What’s up, man?” he said, smiling.
“Hey, I was wondering about a couple of old guys who worked here back in the day. Not sure if they’re still around here. Nate and Will? Ring any bells?”
He laughed. “I don’t know any Nate but you’ve gotta be talking about Will Essex, am I right?”
I hadn’t expected him to respond in the affirmative. “Yeah, sure that’s who I meant. You know him?”
“He worked here still when I came to this place about...what was it? Four years ago, give or take. He retired a year after I started. Real ball buster but a good guy, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do. Any idea what he does these days?”
He shook his head. “Sure, he comes in every once in a while. Still lives local. Spends a lot of his time at the diner, or visiting family.”
“He got married?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said. “But he’s got siblings and they’ve all got kids. He used to show pictures and stuff. Real sentimental old fart, though he wouldn’t want you to know that. How is it you know him anyway?”
I thought it over. “My...dad came in and talked with him and Nate once, many years ago. He told me about the conversation and for some reason it occurred to me tonight and I wanted to see if he turned out okay.”
“Hmm. Yeah, well, he’s okay. He’s happy, I think, which is, you know, great. I heard people say that he used to not be so thrilled with life.“
“Yeah that’s what I...what my dad thought. I’m glad he’s doing well. Thanks.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem, man. You want to buy anything?”
I purchased a soda and a small pack of barbecue chips, paying with the credit card I’d removed from the big desk. I imagine Visa’s fraud prevention department would have a tough time proving wrongdoing in this particular situation. I was starting to get sleepy and knew I shouldn’t push the night much later. I didn’t want to get pulled over for swerving around. The fewer the complications, the better.
I returned to the car and pulled out the iPhone. I wanted to know about Suzy. No. More than that. I had to know about Suzy. I sat in the parking lot of the gas station researching anything I could find about her. I learned she became a girls’ lacrosse coach at the high school. That much was easy to find since her name was linked to at least thirty articles about sports results. What troubled me was that she seemed to have remained single, just like Helena. I have a good friend with the unusual name of Deacon who once told me, “when you see a girl and she’s beautiful and she’s awesome to hang with and she’s alone, there’s one word you need to remember: issues.”
Deke’s pearl of wisdom occurred to me as I sat in “my” car and used the Internet to unravel my mysteries. Was I responsible for what had caused Suzy’s issues, if they existed, or Helena’s? Impossible to say. Though I knew what Helena’s life should have been, she still seemed happier alone than she was with me. When it came to Suzy, there was no control group for the experiment. I didn’t know what Suzy had become in the proper universe. I also didn’t know to what extent whatever it was keeping her single stemmed from our brief relationship and its fallout.
I switched to a new browser page and filled the screen with the white pages search engine. I was typing in my query when the other Daniel’s smartphone rang. It was Helena. I answered quickly, putting the phone on speaker so I could keep up my web search.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Daniel?” she questioned, her voice sounding slightly shaky. “It’s Helena. We met earlier?”
“Yes, hi! What’s up?”
A pause. “Are you free to come hang out?”
I felt a pang of excitement but then I got the sense that something was wrong. It was very late at night and this wasn’t Helena’s personality, at least not the Helena I knew. “Sure...are you okay?”
Another strange pause. Suzy’s address popped up on the screen and I copied it into a note on the phone. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Helena said. “I just really want to see you.”
“Okay, I’ll leave right now.”
We said goodbye and I put the phone back in my pocket. Something wasn’t sitting well with me. As I left the gas station behind, the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” said a voice. “Sorry about earlier today.” Yoga girl.
“Yeah, that’s okay. Listen, I—”
“Hey, can we talk?”
“Later,” I said. “I really gotta go. Go make yourself at home.”
There was a silence, before she agreed and we hung up. I turned my attention back to the road and my thoughts of this new Helena and what she could possibly want with me in the middle of the night. With little traffic at that late hour, the drive back down to her apartment didn’t take long.