The Future for Curious People: A Novel (26 page)

I turn into Chin’s parking lot too fast, and there—lit up in the headlights—is a metal trash can. I swerve, but I’m not fast enough and I clip it, hard, with the corner of Bart’s grill. The garbage can rolls and then spins to a stop. I pull into a spot, crooked, and jump out of the car, but I don’t look at the grill of Bart’s car. I know it’s whacked. I know this will go on my permanent record with Amy: shit Godfrey’s done. And I don’t care.

I see Evelyn’s bike, propped on its kickstand but unlocked.

The building is quiet and dark. An official notice hangs on the door—
CRIME SCENE.

To my right, I catch a light coming from one of the examination room windows. Colors flicker. It’s the envisioning screen. Evelyn. She’s already started.

I run the length of the building to the lit window. I wipe mist from the glass and look inside.

The screen flickers—people I can’t make out, voices talking. Evelyn is lying on the examination table, curled on her side. She’s still wearing the dress and trench coat. The tray is dotted with loose pills. Her water glass is tipped and empty.

Is she asleep?

I bang on the glass. “Evelyn!” I shout.

She’s asleep, my brain tells me, but I’m also jolted with fear. “She’s asleep,” I say aloud. I shout her name and she doesn’t move.

She is asleep. She is.
I tell myself this, but I’m covering my fist with the sleeve of my jacket, and I punch the window, breaking it. Glass shatters and litters the tiles inside the room. I knock loose the jagged edges of glass with my elbow and climb through the window.

“Evelyn!” I grab hold of her arm. “Evelyn. Talk to me.”

She murmurs, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.

I feel like crying. “You’re not dead,” I say. “You’re not at all dead.”

But she’s not fully awake either. She whispers words I can’t understand. A small language of its own passes through her beautiful lips. I say, “I’m not engaged to someone else. I’m in love with you. The first time I saw you I should have taken your license out of your mouth and kissed you. Do you hear me?”

I look at the screen. The camera is following an older Evelyn as she walks the aisles of a grocery store. She’s wearing a nicely tailored suit jacket, a skirt, and modest heels. The fluorescent lights are glaring. Her stockings have a shine to them. Her legs are still beautiful. She’s not dressed like a librarian; this is the outfit of someone who holds court—in a boardroom or something?

She picks out a can of soup and tosses it into the cart.

Why is she in this future alone?

And then it’s as if the Evelyn on the screen hears me. She whips around and glares at the camera. She’s wearing makeup. Her hair is beautifully whipped up on top of her head. She seems to see me—the real me, sitting before the screen—and her expression softens. She says, “I know you. I remember you.”

She’s older, much older, but glamorous in a way that seems foreign to the Evelyn I know though she’s still beautiful.

I look down at Evelyn on the examination table. Her lips tremble. She isn’t here, I think. She simply is not here. She’s there—in the future.

In the grocery store, Evelyn looks directly into the screen. She says, “I know it’s you.”

She’s not supposed to know I’m here. She’s not supposed to be aware at all. The rules are breaking down. I remember what Dr. Chin said about science and the mysteries of true love—they can only exist for so long before weird shit occurs.
In the case of true love, there can be system failures.
This is one hell of a system failure.

“Godfrey,” Evelyn in the grocery store whispers. Her full lips lightly chapped. “Godfrey, Godfrey, Godfrey. It’s me,” she says, and then she tears up. She says, “I want it all back.” She smiles and shakes her head, wiping tears from her cheeks as if she’s not sure whether she’s happy or devastated, or both. Is this what life offers each of us in its own way—moments of happy devastation and devastated happiness? “All of it,” she whispers urgently, her eyes bright with tears.

Evelyn’s lost her grip on the joystick. It’s fallen to the floor. I pick it up, my hands shaking, and press the button. The lights in the grocery store flicker. Evelyn grips the shopping cart’s handle, glances beyond the camera, speaking to someone unseen. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have. I know the rules.” She looks into the camera, fleetingly—at me, I’m sure of it. The real me. Right here. And then she pushes her cart down the aisle and disappears.

The screen is black.

If she’s not here but instead somewhere
in there,
I have to go in!

Shit, I need a helmet. I try to open the door but then see that there’s a broken chair propped under the doorknob. I kick it out of the way and race down the hall to the next examination room, unplug the helmet, shove it on my head, run back into our examination room, and plug it into the back of machine.

I pluck a pill and swallow it. I type in my name and Evelyn’s. I pick a date that’s only a year from now. Start small. I’ll take what I can get. I climb onto the examination table and pull her up. She’s groggy. Her eyes flutter. I say, “Evelyn, I’m here.”

She says, “Mmmm,” but nothing more. She reaches around my neck but doesn’t open her eyes. She rests her helmet on my shoulder and I cradle her.

And then the screen flickers. A new image rises as if from colored ink stains. We’re in a kitchen. The windows are sunstruck. But then they go dark as if it’s suddenly dusk, then night. I grab Evelyn’s hand, and I can feel her hand in mine. I’ve broken through in some way. I’m not here looking in. I’m in that future with her; we’re together.

We move to a patio door and the yard is sunny, the grass a brilliant green. The trees then burn to a bright orange as if it’s instantly autumn. I yank open the sliding door. And we walk out into the yard as it starts to flurry. The air is suddenly gusting and the snow covers our shoes.

“Evelyn!” I say. “What is this?”

She looks at me, wide-eyed. “It’s moving too fast,” she says.

And then the snow melts. Grass muscles up from the ground. There’s rain. I feel it on my skin. There’s sun. I feel the sudden warmth on my skin.

Evelyn’s stomach broadens through another season and another.

And then there’s a baby in my arms—beautiful and fat-cheeked. My God! A baby! Evelyn and I stare at the baby, mesmerized, and then the baby is gone. She’s tottering around us—a little girl.

The seasons roll, one to the next—the sun, the chill, the snow, the sun . . . And the girl grows and then Evelyn’s stomach broadens again. Another baby! She holds the baby for the length of one deep breath. And then there are two girls.

In a heartbeat or two, they’re chasing each other until they’re older. They seem distracted and grown up and beautiful and then they wander from the yard, as a garden of flowers sprout, flare into blooms, then die, flare and die, flare and die and flare.

“Wait!” Evelyn says—her face older now—beautiful and weathered. “Make it slow down, Godfrey!”

I look around in a panic. “I can’t.”

And then with no children we both wander the yard. We touch the leaves that wither and fall to nothingness. I’m scared and we’re quiet. I walk away and away. There are rolling hills. I crest a dune. There’s an ocean.

Evelyn isn’t with me. I miss her. Is this how it ends?

The sea is calm and then roiling, beaten with sun then cold and gray. I remember my father, Mart Thigpen, before he pushed his old, heavy body into the waves, telling me to fight for Evelyn. I run back and she’s in the yard still. I walk up to her and she touches my face. “There’s too much between us to let go.” I’m old now but still strong enough to lift her up off her feet, and I hold her as the seasons come and go.

One of my knees gives. I kneel. Evelyn kneels, too. She’s crying and I am, too. We hug each other tightly. Our daughters, now older themselves, hover and circle and cry.

Evelyn looks at me. Her breath is rattled. My head is shaking, ever so slightly. We’re scared. I grab my chest. I can tell that it aches, deep inside of me. I say, “It goes too fast. How can anyone accept this?” I shake my head. “I can’t take it.”

But Evelyn says, “I’ll take it.” Winter melts around us. Spring shoots up. “Because I’m with you.”

“And I’m with you,” I say.

Summer gives to fall.

Winter is back.

Evelyn presses her ear to my chest, her grip tightens—snowflakes collect on her lashes then melt—and her hold goes slack. Her eyes stare blankly, and I know she’s gone. I rock her as the snow and sun whip around us and then the dusk turns to night. And the night lasts.

The screen is blank.

I’m sitting in the examination room, cradling Evelyn.

She draws in a breath so quick I feel her ribs expand against my chest. “Godfrey!” she says, staring up at me.

“It’s that quick,” I say. “Our lives. That fucking quick and then it’s over.”

“It’s that quick,” she says. “But we never stop yearning. We don’t give that up.”

“I’m not on parole. I don’t smoke bath salts. I love my mother but not too much. I really haven’t followed
Twilight.
I’m not any of those things you thought. And I’m not engaged to someone else. I’m not perfect. But love’s rare,” I tell her. “The true lifetime kind. Someone told me that once. And we can endure.
You’re
the one who said that—or you will one day, I hope.”

“I have a hole inside of me that’s never going to be completely filled. It’s not possible. I felt it even when I was holding the children. I felt it even in the end when you were holding me.”

“I love that about you,” I say. “It draws me to you.”

“We could really build a family,” she says. “And it’s not perfect and even though we saw it, that’s not how it’s going to happen. It can’t.”

“We can’t know,” I say. “Whether you think you know the future or not, it’s all a leap of faith. You’ve got to be willing.”

“I’d like to try some
now
with you,” she says. “One
now
after the next.”

“Let’s make it so they add up after a while,” I say.

“I think that’s the way it is with good
nows.
”

“Like this one,” I tell her.

“And this one.”

Author’s Note

The original idea for
The Future for Curious People
came from Julianna Baggott. I was sleeping on an air mattress in my childhood bedroom when Julianna approached me to write this book with her. At the time I was thinking about my own future—not in any curious way, mind you, but more of a
I’m twenty-seven sleeping on an air mattress in my childhood bedroom, this will probably be me at forty with a widow’s peak and a penchant for microwavable Salisbury steak, holy shit
kind of way. But then I looked at the world Julianna had begun to create, and was immediately consumed. I saw pieces of myself in all of the characters—Godfrey and Evelyn and Bart and Madge and Adrian—and I grew curious. I groped over past romances. What if the one who got away didn’t? What if she just stayed? What if I was cooler in high school and girls actually noticed me, and instead of eating lunch in Ms. McNeely’s classroom I was outside by the bike rack, making out with Carey Henderson? These were characters to love, to dream about, and eventually, to learn from. I had to be a part of it.

It would be an understatement to say that this book you are holding wouldn’t exist without Julianna. For those who don’t know Julianna, she’s a bestselling, critically acclaimed author who’s published twenty books under her own name—most notably The Pure Trilogy—as well as two pen names, Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. (You can find out more about her at
www.juliannabaggott.com
.) A mentor of mine for eight years now, Julianna has not only cultivated my voice, but she has also become a friend and someone whom I love dearly. Creating this book was a ride that I didn’t want to end. From the moment I agreed to take on this project, we shared the same vision of what this book should, could, and eventually did become. I can’t tell you how excited I am to share
The Future for Curious People
with you. Thank you for picking it up. Take it home with you. This book is ready for a good home.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my agent, Nat Sobel, as well as Judith Weber, Julie Stevenson, and Kirsten Carleton. I am in constant awe of your brilliance.

Thank you to my editor, Andra Miller. You fell in love with the novel before you even finished it, and if that’s not foreshadowing, then I don’t know what is. You’re kind of amazing.

Thank you to Justin Manask for being the novel’s West Coast lifeline. You were one of the earliest champions of the book, and your constant persistence has meant so much.

Thank you to Gregory Greenberg and Megan Laurel for your promotional help before the novel even went to auction. Your likeness is not just in the art and music you put together, but it’s on every page. Your friendship has made me a better person.

Thank you to David Scott for typing in edits and keeping all of the paperwork in order. Also, for loving Julianna (which is way more important than typing in edits).

Thank you to my early readers Dario Sulzman, Abigail Cory, Lorin Drinkard, Ashley Harris Paul, Alise Hamilton, Ariell Cacciola, and Mindy Friddle.

Thank you to Julianna Baggott, for everything I’ve already said. There are not enough words to thank you, so I will make up some of my own. Look for that email soon.

And never the last, thank you to my parents for keeping me going these last eight years. I know it hasn’t been easy; I’m sorry for all of the premature wrinkles and gray hairs I’ve given you.

MIKE STANTON

Gregory Sherl is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Oregon Trail Is the Oregon Trail, shortlisted for the Believer magazine’s 2012 Poetry Award. He currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi. His website is
www.gregorysherl.net
.