The Key to Happiness #3
“Fair enough. You went to Sarah Lawrence and majored in politics,” he said, “though you should’ve probably majored in literature, since you’re a voracious reader, mostly historical fiction and mysteries, though when no one’s looking you pull out one of the romances you keep hidden under your bed.
There’s some tiresome character named Jamie in one of them you wish all men would emulate.
You drive a shiny new Subaru; you made the down payment on it with your first pay cheque, which is one of the things that first made us friends, because I drive one, too.
You love to rollerblade, and you always wear a helmet, but a knee injury from ninth-grade tennis tends to make you look like a penguin on wheels, and you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life. ”
Kate exhaled, her mind racing in every conceivable direction. Was this a trick? These things weren’t impossible to know, and yet, why would anyone bother? “I … I … don’t believe you.”
“About the mistake?”
“About any of it.”
“Kate, your mother had a lump removed from her breast. You feel guilty because it happened while you were doing your finals senior year and you think you should have been there, and your worry for her is something that’s always in the back of your head.”
“What do you want?” He’d gone too far. Her shock had boiled into anger. “This is rude.”
“But she’s going to be OK,” he said quickly. “All right? She’s going to be OK. I promise.”
She froze, the thin layer of defence that keeps our emotions at bay torn away, and against her will a tear striped her cheek.
“It doesn’t come back, Kate. She’s cancer free at five years and, at ten, the cancer is something you hardly think about any more – either of you.
She’s there for you, Kate. She’s always there.
And I know this because I lived through it with you.
Not the college stuff – I didn’t meet you until later – but all the rest.”
Her heart ached, so badly did she yearn to believe what he said. “I haven’t told this stuff to my best friend.”
“But you told it to me. I’m not your best friend, but I’m close.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Her words were hot. She hated feeling exposed.
“I … I …” He stole a glance at her, evidently considering the limits to which he might go. “I come from the future and –”
“Bullshit.” She nearly yanked her hand away, but the temptation to hear more was too strong.
“I understand why you’d not believe, Kate. I do. What I’m doing is something almost no one ever gets to do.”
“So you’re special.”
“Lucky,” he corrected. “I guess.” He gazed at his shoes.
“Lucky” was not the emotion he was radiating.
“So what is this mistake?”
“Are you sure? I mean, do you believe me?” He worked the key ring in his palm like Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.
“‘Believe’ is a strong word. Let’s say I’m willing to prolong the, well, whatever this is. Go on. You have my attention.”
He chewed his lip. At last he leaned forwards. “The man you were just speaking to—”
“Mark?”
He flushed deeply. “After him.”
Kate frowned, thinking. “Mark’s friend? One of the ones you said you came with?”
“What I said was I came for them.”
Then it hit her, and her heart kicked like a rabbit in her chest. “You look like him.” Medium height, medium build, same grey eyes.
“There’s a reason for that,” Patrick said softly. “And what I said was a lie. I came for you.” The keys stopped moving, and he gazed at the place her thumb met his palm.
“What’s your name? Your whole name?”
“Patrick McCann. Patrick John McCann.”
P.J.! He had to be P.J.’s father. There couldn’t be any other explanation, or rather, there could be, but her mind simply wouldn’t process it.
“I don’t have kids,” he said, answering the look in her eye. “I also don’t have brothers or a nephew – well, except one, but he’s half Filipino and lives in Singapore. I come from the future, our future, where I’m the best friend of your husband.”
Kate’s eyes bulged. “I marry Mark?!”
The key ring began to rattle. “Yes.”
She sat up to put her hand on his arm, and he caught it. “You can’t let go, Kate. The things I can tell you, I can only tell you with your hand in mine.”
“Why?” Her head was reeling from what he’d already told her.
“Because,” he said carefully, “telling you about the future is very dangerous, or so I’ve been told. I can tell you what I tell you for one simple reason: so long as our hands are clasped, you’ll remember what I’m saying, but as soon as you let go, it will all be gone.”
“Gone?” She thought of her mother.
“Gone.”
She was dizzy with questions, though the sceptic in her, whose voice was fading fast, kept a low “uh uh,” rumbling in her ear.
“Mark, then? Where do we live? Is he a politician? Am I a strategist? Am I successful? Are we happy?”
He gave her a weak smile. “That’s a lot of questions.
Let’s see …” He lowered his gaze to her hand, as if reading her fortune in the topography of knuckles and minute lines.
“You live here, in Pittsburgh, in an immense condo overlooking the river, where you host a lot of parties. Mark is a partner at a law firm, though he’s a power broker in politics here and in the state. ”
Kate frowned. A power broker was hardly the idealist she’d visualized in that flash of imagining. Nonetheless, they were still in the thick of it. “And me?”
“You run a not-for-profit – disadvantaged kids, that sort of thing. You’ve made a huge impact in the city,” he said with an obvious pride, “and it keeps you very busy.”
This was like going to your high-school guidance counsellor to find out what job the vocation test says you’re suited for and discovering it’s some vaguely improbable position at the top of a corporate food chain. Admirable, maybe, but for someone else.
“Really?”
“You do a great job, Kate.”
“But why not politics?”
The odd distracted reflection washed over him again. “I could speculate, but … but I think I should stick to what I know.”
“You’re supposedly one of my closest friends.” The voice in her head was growing louder. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“What you told me was that politics was a place for the coldblooded.”
“I said that?” She’d never been a cynic. Not about politics.
“Yes. And I can see you’re disappointed,” he added quickly, “but I can tell you, you never look back. Your work brings you immense joy. Immense.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to convince me.”
“No,” he said, agitated. “What I’m trying to do is be fair.”
“Fair?”
“Kate, I’m about to ask you to give it all up, and I don’t ever want it to be said that I didn’t present the case fairly.”
It was almost too much, she thought, to have pictures of her life laid out before her and then immediately snatched away. “Give it up? What are you asking me to give up? And why?”
Before he could answer, Mark appeared in her peripheral vision, and instinctually she withdrew her hand.
Patrick felt the cool air on his palm. All for naught, he thought with a philosophical chuckle, looking at that gorgeous, strong profile as she turned her gaze towards Mark.
He stood at the centre of the remaining wedding guests, riveting them with a story.
But it wasn’t Mark to whom Patrick’s eyes went when he’d finished feasting his gaze on the full, knowing lips he’d never know and the long, pale neck, fringed with dark blonde hairs that fell from her effortless French knot; his eyes went to himself, albeit a much younger version, standing to the side of the circle, eyes fixed on Kate.
Ah, my friend, if only you’d find the courage to approach her now, before that fated foosball game, he thought, and ached with the memory of how that longing felt.
But though the decades had given him the confidence he lacked then, even now, at fifty-six, after years of being there for her whenever she called, of sharing every step of her personal and business life, of being the recipient of all but her most precious secrets, he knew he’d never have the confidence – ever – to believe he could possess her.
And yet, here he was, certain that what he was about to do, an act that would not only ensure he didn’t possess her, but almost certainly tear her from him for ever, was the only choice he had.
He’d been given one hour. How it worked, he didn’t know, but the woman in the souk with the coal eyes and the hookah pipe did, and in exchange for a thousand Egyptian pounds and his silence on the matter of the stolen cartouche, she told him the rules: Yo u may tell the girl what you wish about her future so long as her hand is in yours, though nothing you say will be remembered.
After an hour you will awake as if from the worst sort of drunken indulgence.
Under no circumstances are you to make contact with your younger self.
When he asked if it was possible to change what would happen – his past, her future – the woman pulled a long drag from the pipe, grinned a horrible, black-toothed grin and said, “Changing the world is an effort of the heart, Yankee Doodle, not the mouth.”
Then she’d mixed him his own hookah cocktail and handed him the pipe. That was the last thing he remembered.
He returned Kate’s keys and other items to her purse surreptitiously. An instant after he closed it, Kate turned back to him. He gave her a polite smile. She’d forgotten everything he’d told her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said with a start. “You were saying something about the … White Stripes?”
“The guitar player, I said. He gives it a sort of White Stripes sound.” Of course, at this point, the band had finished with Billy Joel and was a few bars into “In Your Eyes”, so the comparison made considerably less sense than it had before.
Nonetheless, she pursed her lips again in that way she had, and he knew she was thinking of Robin, the miserable freshman room-mate he’d heard her mention over the years.
He’d always been able to make her laugh with a White Stripes reference. He’d miss that.
He looked at her hand, considering.
“Kate, could I interest you in a dance?”