Chapter 15
NEW YORK CITY
OCTOBER 3, 2009
AGE: 23
IWAS DRAGGING MY WHEELIE SUITCASE PAST AN AIRPORT NEWSSTAND. The gossip magazines all seemed to be focused on facts about Michael Jackson’s death. The refrigerator at the back of the shop was stocked with Vault, the disgusting energy drink I used to love before it was discontinued. In the distance I spotted a bouquet of balloons featuring the letter J, a heart, and a Mylar slice of pepperoni pizza. The sight of my mini entourage made my heart swell.
Geeta squealed during our hug, and Leigh joined her, our athletic young bodies nearly toppling over each other in baggage claim. Geeta’s hair was slightly longer than I was used to, and she hadn’t yet taken the plunge and gotten the micro-bangs that would later become her trademark. Leigh looked healthy and baby-faced, a little chubbier than she would be in her mid-thirties. I ran my hand through my hair—so long and thick!—and as my friends and I pulled apart I glanced down at my nonexistent gut, which surprised me, given where I had just come from. The Memo version of me had a supermodel metabolism. I jumped up and down, unable to contain my energy.
“I’m so psyched to see you guys!” I cried out. “Let’s call an Uber and get out of here.”
“A what?” My friends said. Whoops. In 2009, Uber was a tiny start-up in San Francisco that nobody had ever heard of, not the colossus providing ride-sharing services in dozens of countries.
“Oh, it’s just Italian slang for a cab,” I ad-libbed.
My crew guided me outside and packed me into a yellow cab, the old-school kind, with stiff fake leather seats and a meter. Geeta and Leigh were so excited, I could hardly get a word in as the car hurtled through traffic.
It was a beautiful fall day. The trees brimmed with reds and yellows and there was a golden cast to the air. This was life as things had been intended, no disastrous fire, no premature return flight, and no need to let feelings of shame and regret get the best of me and make me want to avoid the people I loved most.
“You must be so jet-lagged,” Geeta said.
“Not at all.” I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. Reel it in, I told myself. And do not mention the Memo. They’re going to catch on if you keep acting weird.
This became slightly more challenging when I looked out the window and my eyes fixed on a trio of guys crossing the street. One of them was a dead ringer for Gabe—not the Gabe I knew from the Looney Tunes, but a much younger one, without that world weariness in his eyes. He was wearing a brown fleece jacket with red pockets, the same garment that I recognized from our a cappella sessions. But now it looked brand new. What the hell?
Just as he was about to step up onto the curb, young Gabe paused and turned toward the traffic. I rolled down the window all the way. Our eyes met and time stood still. And then his body slipped out of sight. Down a sewer grate it went, first his Converse-clad feet, then his fleece-clad torso, until everything was wiped out. It was as if he was pulled underground by an invisible force. Strangest of all: his companions kept walking, as if he had never even been there.
Neither of my friends appeared to have registered what I’d just seen. They were busy admiring a gold bracelet on Leigh’s wrist. Maybe I had hallucinated?
Geeta looked up and smiled at me. “You look way too stunning for someone who just flew across the Atlantic,” she said. “Did you rest? I thought you never slept on planes.”
“A little,” I lied, my voice shaky. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What’s up, Jenny?” Leigh asked. “You sound weird.”
I felt a hitch in my chest. I just saw somebody, a real friend I know from the future, get swallowed by a sewer grate in front of my eyes. What would the point be? My mind was playing tricks on me, and I wasn’t going to risk my own ejection from this realm. I glanced out of the window, trying to think fast. We were passing a movie theater. Reading from the marquee to change the topic, I blurted out, “500 Days of Summer. It’s not out in Italy yet. Did you see it?”
“Yeah, it’s your typical heteronormative emo whatever.” Leigh gave a knowing chuckle. “You didn’t miss much.”
“I’ll see it with you, Jenny,” Geeta promised me. We always loved going to the movies together. Even the terrible ones were fun with Geeta at my side.
We finally pulled up to the apartment building where the two of them lived and walked to the elevator. I pressed the button for the fifth floor, proud of myself for remembering.
Geeta opened the door to their enormous loft apartment, the likes of which no twenty-something could afford in present-day Manhattan without serious family help. But this was a previous decade, a time in the not-too-distant past when recent college grads could still occasionally manage to inhabit a two-bedroom in SoHo and didn’t even need magic Memos to win the real-estate lottery. Or maybe I was wrong. Was it possible that their Memos, not just dumb luck, had guided them to this prime address?
“You can stay here until your new place is ready,” Geeta said, ushering me inside.
My new place?
Geeta and Leigh had offered to let me shack up with them before. Back then, I had been too ashamed to take them up on it. I remembered feeling like such a loser for getting kicked out of my prestigious program. I’d hightailed it to my childhood home, not wanting to be a burden on my friends. But now, with the clarity that only time travel affords, I had the confidence to see their offer for what it was: a gesture of friendship, not pity. “Thank you,” I said. “About that new place—”
“The one you sent me to suss out?” Geeta started laughing. “Leave it to you to find a perfect one bedroom overlooking Tompkins Square Park when you’re living your European dream.”
“Don’t forget the roof deck. Or that it’s rent-controlled,” Leigh said in a mock groan. “I don’t know how you pulled that off.”
“I guess I got the... apartment magic,” I said. I so badly wanted to tell them the truth, that I, too, got the Memo, that we were all part of the same club now, following these Consortium-mandated edicts to live our best lives. There was so much else I wanted to tell them, so many questions I wanted to ask. Did they have words of advice about living according to a set of seemingly arbitrary instructions? Had the Memo ever asked them to do something they really didn’t want to do?
Instead, I took a shower and changed into a daisy-print dress that I remembered from my twenties, then found a spot on Geeta and Leigh’s velvet living room sofa, directly beneath a dramatic green chandelier that inhabited the open space like a perfect punctuation mark. The walls were painted a beautiful cream. The parquet floors gleamed with polish.
“Gross, I know,” Leigh said when she caught me staring at the Band-Aids and blisters all over her feet. I now remembered the high heels she used to wear to her front desk job at the art gallery. They were nothing short of instruments of torture. Leigh wiggled her toes and sighed. “You, on the other hand, look amazing from head to toe.”
“It’s true,” Geeta said, coming over with my coffee. “The Italian experience was definitely good for you.”
“The bakery fellowship lifestyle is good and all, but... have you ever had sex with a gorgeous Italian car mechanic?”
“Mercifully, no,” Leigh said with a laugh.
“The Italian stallion you mentioned in your last postcard?” Geeta said. “You’ve said arrivederci, I assume.”
“Yes, but he was just so—” I said.
“He lives with his extended family,” Geeta reminded me.
“Let’s be real,” Leigh interjected. “You’re in a city filled with eligible bank accounts.” She theatrically covered her mouth with her hands. “Oops, did I say that? Eligible bachelors.”
Geeta gave Leigh a playful shove. “It’s not about the money, Jen. It’s about finding an equal. You had your summer fun and now you need a guy whose drive matches your own. Look at you, about to start working at Daniel for that amazing new pastry chef, what’s his name?” She picked a postcard off the coffee table. It had been written by me, I saw. “Oh, Dominique Ansel—”
“The cronut guy?” I asked.
“Cro-huh?” said Geeta.
“Never mind,” I said, realizing that the advent of the hybrid “it” pastry that would cause the entire city to lose its mind was still a few years in the future. “It’s this experimental thing he’s working on. A cross between a croissant and a donut. You’ll see.” I put my index finger to my lips to indicate I was letting them in on a secret.
“A croissant crossed with a donut? That sounds disgusting,” Geeta said.
“Well, tell that to the people who are going to line up around the block just for a taste,” I said with a laugh.
“I can’t believe he’s making you start tomorrow,” said Leigh.
“Neither can I!” I said, earnestly. “I am really working for Dominique Ansel? It’s like, too good to be true!”
“Girl, always remember: he’s the lucky one,” said Geeta.
“Thank you,” I said.
“The really good news is that we have just enough time to have a little fun with each other before we all dive back into the grind,” Geeta said.
They’d planned a welcome-back party for me, Leigh said.
“Tonight?” I said.
Geeta nodded. “We have some people we’d like you to meet.”
“By people she means a person,” Leigh clarified. “There’s this guy, Alex, who is perfect for you.” My ears perked up at the name that Desiree had mentioned. He was the hunk I was hooking up with in my little preview. “He’s up to here”—Leigh raised her hand a couple of inches above her own towering body, which indicated that this man was quite possibly a Sasquatch. “And he’s a big shot biotech patent lawyer. Plus he has excellent taste. He just bought a Hockney from my boss.”
I suppressed the impulse to tell Leigh that she didn’t need to meddle with my love life to climb to the top of the art world. Soon she would have no boss, and she would do just fine on her own. Instead, I laughed. “He bought a Hockney? How old is this person?”
“He’s twenty-eight or twenty-nine, super successful,” said Leigh. “He’s a character. He told me he sleeps with his laptop open next to his pillow so he can write down all the messages that come to him in his dreams. When his subconscious is properly inspired, he says he stays up all night long ideating.”
“Sounds like a super chill guy,” I said.
“Seriously, Jenny,” Geeta said. “Have you ever even hooked up with a real man with a real job?”
I shrugged. I thought I had but I guessed, according to their definition of what a real man was, I hadn’t. Even thirty-five-year-old me still hadn’t. Now Leigh was the one who shook her head and smiled. “Alex is going to love you. I bet he’s never met a genius college dropout.”
I felt my shoulders tighten. So I had dropped out of school after all. And, evidently, I’d still managed to get the fellowship of my dreams. I supposed that Desiree had been right. A Coleman diploma was not necessary to get me where I needed to be.
“I really think it’s meant to be,” Leigh said.
“The world has a plan for you, Jenny,” Geeta said, “and you need to follow the signs.”
I cocked my head at her. Was she alluding to the Memo? Did she know I had one?
“You okay?” Geeta asked.
“Yeah, I’m just going to call my parents and let them know I arrived safe.”
“You better not be calling that Italian guy,” Geeta said, rolling her eyes.
I went to Geeta’s room and located my phone. I didn’t want to call anyone though. Instead, I scrolled for today’s date to see what the Memo told me to do.
Wear something red.
Plain and simple. So I took off the daisy-print dress and threw on a crimson number with spaghetti straps—the only red item of clothing in my suitcase—while my friends chatted in the living room. When I emerged, Geeta whistled at me like a construction worker, poured us each a few inches of sparkling rosé, and raised her glass.
“Love you, Jenny!” Geeta and Leigh said in unison.
“Love you more,” I shot back.
I was halfway through my glass when I noticed something across the apartment. A woman was walking out of the bathroom in a towel. It took me a second to place her face. Leigh’s former flame, Karenna Michaelson, an established artist who had a major cocaine problem, and who, I now realized, must have passed that charming hobby onto Leigh.
“Hi, Karenna!” I called out.
Her face flooded with confusion, and I realized we probably hadn’t yet met in this realm.
“I’m Jenny!” I clarified. “I’ve heard all about you.” I hoped that Leigh had at least told me about her.
“Right. Hi.” She raised her hand in a wave. “I’m just going to finish getting ready.”
“Take your time, babe!” Leigh called out. “We’ll be here all night.”
I always thought Karenna seemed so old. But now she looked much younger than I remembered, and I suddenly realized she was younger than my true, thirty-five-year-old self.
As Geeta topped off my glass, I rubbed my trusty cameo earrings and thought about how bizarrely easy it had been with the help of the Consortium. Much as I tried to keep cool, I couldn’t stop smiling, particularly when I looked at Geeta, so young and adorable. Where would we go from here now that we were both Player As? In this world, Hal was a complete nonentity, and Gabe had been banished to the underworld. Massimo was likely pining for me, but I’d forget about him soon enough. This time I was going to make the right choices.
“Why so quiet?” Geeta asked.
“Just thinking,” I said, crossing my legs and taking another sip. “This is all so amazing. I missed you.”
“I’m proud of you,” she said softly. I didn’t know how to respond. As the bubbles went to my head, I felt my commitment to the Consortium’s NDA slipping away. I wanted to share my good news with her, the “covenants pertaining thereto” be damned. I looked into Geeta’s loving brown eyes. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Geeta, we’ve never had any secrets, right?” I asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“I should tell you something,” I said. My hands and feet started to feel numb. “I’m here today because I got the—”
Before I could finish what I was saying, there was a crunch of metal from above. In a split second, the chandelier detached from the ceiling and sliced through the air, coming straight for my head.