Counting Up, Counting Down Read online

  It looked like any quarter—till you noticed the date. “It’s from 2012,” his younger self whispered. His eyes got big and round again. “Jesus. You weren’t kidding.”

  “I told you I wasn’t,” Justin said patiently. “Come on. What’s the name of that Korean barbecue place on . . . Reseda?” He thought that was right. It had closed a few years after the turn of the century.

  His younger self didn’t notice the hesitation. “The Pine Tree?”

  “Yeah.” Justin knew the name when he heard it. “Let’s go over there. I’ll buy you dinner, like I said in e-mail, and we can talk about things.”

  “Like what you’re doing here,” his younger self said.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Like what I’m doing here.”

  None of the waitresses at the Pine Tree spoke much English. That was one reason Justin had chosen the place: he didn’t want anybody eavesdropping. But he liked garlic, he liked the odd vegetables, and he enjoyed grilling beef or pork or chicken or fish on the gas barbecue set into the tabletop.

  He ordered for both of them. The waitress scribbled on her pad in the odd characters of hangul, then looked from one of them to the other. “Twins,” she said, pulling out a word she did know.

  “Yeah,” Justin said. Sort of, he thought. The waitress went away.

  His younger self pointed at him. “Tell me one thing,” he said.

  “What?” Justin asked. He expected anything from What are you doing here? to What is the meaning of life?

  But his younger self surprised him: “That the Rolling Stones aren’t still touring by the time you’re—I’m—forty.”

  “Well, no,” Justin said. That was a pretty scary thought, when you got down to it. He and his younger self both laughed. They sounded just alike. We would, he thought.

  The waitress came back with a couple of tall bottles of OB beer. She hadn’t asked either one of them for an ID, for which Justin was duly grateful. His younger self kept quiet while she was around. After she’d gone away, himself-at-twenty-one said, “Okay, I believe you. I didn’t think I would, but I do. You know too much—and you couldn’t have pulled that quarter out of your ear from nowhere.” He sipped at the Korean beer. He looked as if he would sooner have gone out and got drunk.

  “That’s right,” Justin agreed. Stay in control. The more you sound like you know what you’re doing, the more he’ll think you know what you’re doing. And he has to think that, or this won’t fly.

  His younger self drank beer faster than he did, and waved for a second tall one as soon as the first was empty. Justin frowned. He remembered drinking more in his twenties than he did at forty, but didn’t care to have his nose rubbed in it. He wouldn’t have wanted to drive after two big OBs, but his younger self didn’t worry about it.

  With his younger self’s new beer, the waitress brought the meat to be grilled and the plates of vegetables. She used aluminum tongs to put some pork and some marinated beef over the fire. Looking at the strips of meat curling and shrinking, himself-at-twenty-one exclaimed, “Oh my God! They killed Kenny!”

  “Huh?” Justin said, and then, “Oh.” He managed a feeble chuckle. He hadn’t thought about South Park in a long time.

  His younger self eyed him. “If you’d said that to me, I’d have laughed a lot harder. But the show’s not hot for you any more, is it?” He answered his own question before Justin could: “No, it wouldn’t be. 2018? Jesus.” He took another big sip of beer.

  Justin grabbed some beef with the tongs. He used chopsticks to eat, ignoring the fork. So did his younger self. He was better at it than himself-at-twenty-one; he’d had more practice. The food was good. He remembered it had been.

  After a while, his younger self said, “Well, will you tell me what this is all about?”

  “What’s the most important thing in your life right now?” Justin asked in return.

  “You mean, besides trying to figure out why I’d travel back in time to see me?” his younger self returned. He nodded, carefully not smiling. He’d been looser, sillier, at twenty-one than he was now. Of course, he’d had fewer things go wrong then, too. And his younger self went on, “What could it be but Megan?”

  “Okay, we’re on the same page,” Justin said. “That’s why I’m here, to set things right with Megan.”

  “Things with Megan don’t need setting right.” Himself-at-twenty-one sounded disgustingly complacent. “Things with Megan are great. I mean, I’m taking my time and all, but they’re great. And they’ll stay great, too. How many kids do we have now?”

  “None.” Justin’s voice went flat and harsh. A muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped. He touched it to try to calm it down.

  “None?” His younger self wasn’t quick on the uptake. He needed his nose rubbed in things. He looked at Justin’s left hand. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring,” he said. He’d just noticed. Justin’s answering nod was grim. His younger self asked, “Does that mean we don’t get married?”

  Say it ain’t so. Justin did: “We get married, all right. And then we get divorced.”

  His younger self went as pale as he had when he first saw Justin. Even at twenty-one, he knew too much about divorce. Here-and-now, his father was living with a woman not much older than he was. His mother was living with a woman not much older than he was, too. That was why he had his own apartment: paying his rent was easier for his mom and dad than paying him any real attention.

  But, however much himself-at-twenty-one knew about divorce, he didn’t know enough. He’d just been a fairly innocent bystander. He hadn’t gone through one from the inside. He didn’t understand the pain and the emptiness and the endless might-have-beens that kept going through your mind afterwards.

  Justin had had those might-have-beens inside his head since he and Megan fell apart. But he was in a unique position, sitting here in the Pine Tree eating kimchi. He could do something about them.

  He could. If his younger self let him. Said younger self blurted, “That can’t happen.”

  “It can. It did. It will,” Justin said. The muscle started twitching again.

  “But—how?” Himself-at-twenty-one sounded somewhere between bewildered and shocked. “We aren’t like Mom and Dad—we don’t fight all the time, and we don’t look for something on the side wherever we can find it.” Even at twenty-one, he spoke of his parents with casual contempt. Justin thought no better of them in 2018.

  He said, “You can fight about sex, you can fight about money, you can fight about in-laws. We ended up doing all three, and so . . .” He set down his chopsticks and spread his hands wide. “We broke up—will break up—if we don’t change things. That’s why I figured out how to come back: to change things, I mean.”

  His younger self finished the second OB. “You must have wanted to do that a lot,” he remarked.

  “You might say so.” Justin’s voice came harsh and ragged. “Yeah, you just might say so. Since we fell apart, I’ve never come close to finding anybody who makes me feel the way Megan did. If it’s not her, it’s nobody. That’s how it looks from here, anyhow. I want to make things right for the two of us.”

  “Things were going to be right.” But his younger self lacked conviction. Justin sat and waited. He was better at that than he had been half a lifetime earlier. Finally, himself-at-twenty-one asked, “What will you do?”

  He didn’t ask, What do you want to do? He spoke as if Justin were a force of nature. Maybe that was his youth showing. Maybe it was just the beer. Whatever it was, Justin encouraged it by telling his younger self what he would do, not what he’d like to do: “I’m going to take over your life for a couple of months. I’m going to be you. I’m going to take Megan out, I’m going to make sure things are solid—and then the superstring I’ve ridden to get me here will break down. You’ll live happily ever after: I’ll brief you to make sure you don’t screw up what I’ve built. And when I get back to 2018, I will have lived happily ever after. How does that sound?”

  “I don’t
know,” his younger self said. “You’ll be taking Megan out?”

  Justin nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You’ll be . . . taking Megan back to the apartment?”

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “But she’ll think it’s you, remember, and pretty soon it’ll be you, and it’ll keep right on being you till you turn into me, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” his younger self said. “Still . . .” He grimaced. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

  “You have a better idea?” Justin folded his arms across his chest and waited, doing his best to be the picture of inevitability. Inside, his stomach tied itself in knots. He’d always been better at the tech side of things than at sales.

  “It’s not fair,” himself-at-twenty-one said. “You know all this shit, and I’ve gotta guess.”

  Justin shrugged. “If you think I did all this to come back and tell you lies, go ahead. That’s fine.” It was anything but fine. But he couldn’t let his younger self see that. “You’ll see what happens, and we’ll both be sorry.”

  “I don’t know.” His younger self shook his head, again and again. His eyes had a trapped-animal look. “I just don’t know. Everything sounds like it hangs together, but you could be bullshitting, too, just as easy.”

  “Yeah, right.” Justin couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that, but it fit here.

  Then his younger self got up. “I won’t say yes and I won’t say no, not now I won’t. I’ve got your e-mail address. I’ll use it.” Out he went, not quite steady on his feet.

  Justin stared after him. He paid for both dinners—it seemed like peanuts to him—and went home himself. His younger self needed time to think things through. He saw that. Seeing it and liking it were two different things. And every minute himself-at-twenty-one dithered was a minute he couldn’t get back. He stewed. He fumed. He waited. What other choice did he have?

  You could whack him and take over for him. But he rejected the thought with a shudder. He was no murderer. All he wanted was some happiness. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t think so, not after all he’d missed since Megan made him move out. He checked his e-mail every hour on the hour.

  Two and a half mortal days. Justin thought he’d go nuts. He’d never dreamt his younger self would make him wait so long. At last, the computer told him, “You’ve got mail!”

  All right, dammit, himself-at-twenty-one wrote. I still don’t know about this, but I don’t think I have any choice. If me and Megan are going to break up, that can’t happen. You better make sure it doesn’t.

  “Oh, thank God,” Justin breathed. He wrote back, You won’t be sorry.

  Whatever, his younger self replied. Half of me is sorry already. More than half.

  Don’t be, Justin told him. Everything will be fine.

  It had better be, his younger self wrote darkly. How do you want to make the switch?

  Meet me in front of the B. Dalton’s again, Justin answered. Park by the Sears. I will, too. Bring whatever you want in your car. You can move it to the one I’m driving. I’ll do the same here. See you in two hours?

  Whatever, his younger self repeated. Justin remembered saying that a lot. He hoped it meant yes here. The only things he didn’t want his younger self getting his hands on here were his laptop (though it would distract himself-at-twenty-one from worrying about Megan if anything would) and some of his cash. He left behind the TV and the stereo and the period clothes—and, below the underwear and socks, the cash he wasn’t taking along. His younger self could eat and have some fun, too, provided he did it at places where Megan wouldn’t run into him.

  This time, his younger self got to the mall before him. Thoroughly grim, himself-at-twenty-one said, “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Come on. It’s not a root canal,” Justin said. Now his younger self looked blank—he didn’t know about root canals. Justin wished he didn’t; that was a bit of the future less pleasant to contemplate than life with Megan. He went on, “Let’s go do it. We’ll need to swap keys, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Himself-at-twenty-one nodded. “I had spares made. How about you?”

  “Me, too.” Justin’s grin twisted up one corner of his mouth. “We think alike. Amazing, huh?”

  “Amazing. Right.” His younger self started back toward Sears. “This better work.”

  “It will,” Justin said. It has to, goddammit.

  They’d parked only a couple of rows apart. His younger self had a couple of good-sized bundles. He put them in Justin’s car while Justin moved his stuff to the machine himself-at-twenty-one had been driving. “You know where I live,” his younger self said after they’d swapped keys. “What’s my new address?”

  “Oh.” Justin told him. “The car’s insured, and you’ll find plenty of money in the underwear drawer.” He put a hand on his younger self’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Honest. You’re on vacation for a couple of months, that’s all.”

  “On vacation from my life.” Himself-at-twenty-one looked grim again. At twenty-one, everything was urgent. “Don’t fuck up, that’s all.”

  “It’s my life, too, remember.” Justin got into the car his younger self had driven to the mall. He fumbled a little, finding the right key. When he fired up the engine, the radio started playing KROQ. He laughed. Green Day was the bomb now, even if not quite to his taste. It wasn’t music for people approaching middle age and regretting it. He cranked the radio and drove back to his younger self’s apartment.

  The Acapulco. He nodded as he drove up to it. It looked familiar. That made him laugh again. It hadn’t changed. He had.

  After he drove through the security gate, he found his old parking space more by letting his hands and eyes guide his brain than the other way round. He couldn’t remember his apartment number at all, and had to go to the lobby to see which box had kloster Dymo-taped onto it. He walked around the pool and past the rec room hardly anybody used, and there it was—his old place. But it wasn’t old now. This was where his younger self had lived and would live, and where he was living now.

  As soon as he opened the door, he winced. He hadn’t remembered the bile-colored carpet, either, but it came back in a hurry. He looked around. Here it was—all his old stuff, a lot of it things he hadn’t seen in half a lifetime. Paperbacks, CDs, that tiny statuette of a buglike humanoid standing on its hind legs and giving a speech . . . During which move had that disappeared? He shrugged. He’d been through a lot of them. He fondly touched an antenna as he went past the bookcase, along a narrow hall, and into the bedroom.

  “My old iMac!” he exclaimed. But it wasn’t old; the model had been out for less than a year. Bondi blue and ice case—to a taste formed in 2018, it looked not just outmoded but tacky as hell, but he’d thought it was great when it came out.

  His younger self had left a note by the keyboard. In case you don’t remember, here’s Megan’s phone number and e-mail. Don’t screw it up, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.

  He had remembered her e-mail address, but not her phone number. “Thanks, kid,” he said to himself-at-twenty-one. There by the phone on the nightstand lay his younger self’s address book, but having things out in the open made it easier.

  Instead of calling her, he walked into the bathroom. His hand shook as he flipped on the light. He stared at the mirror. Can I do this? He ran a palm over his cheek. Yeah, I look young. Do I look that young? What will Megan think when I come to the door? What will her folks think? I’m only a couple of years younger than they are, for Christ’s sake.

  If I come to the door wearing his—my—clothes, though, and talking like me, and knowing things only I could know, who else would I be but Justin Kloster? She’ll think I’m me, because I can’t possibly be anybody else. And I’m not anybody else—except I am.

  He was still frowning and looking for incipient wrinkles when the telephone rang. As he hurried back to the bedroom, he hoped it would be a telemarketer. I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I�
�m not . . . “Hello?”

  “Hiya! How the hell are you?” It was Megan, all right. He hadn’t heard her in more than ten years, but he knew her voice. He hadn’t heard her sound bouncy and bubbly and glad to be talking to him in a lot more than ten years. Before he could get a word in, she went on, “You mad at me? You haven’t called in two days.”

  By the way she said it, it might have been two years. “I’m not mad,” Justin answered automatically. “Just—busy.”

  “Too busy for me?” Now she sounded as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing. Justin’s younger self must have been too caught up in everything else to have time for her. At least he hadn’t blabbed about Justin’s return to 1999. “What were you doing? Who were you doing it with—or to?”

  She giggled. Justin remembered her asking him questions like that later on, in an altogether different tone of voice. Not now. She didn’t know she would do that. If he changed things here, she wouldn’t. “Nothing,” he said. “Nobody. Things have been hairy at work, that’s all.”

  “A likely story.” But Megan was still laughing. He remembered her doing things like that. He remembered her stopping, too. She said, “Well, you’re not working now, right? Suppose I come over?”

  “Okay,” he said, thinking about baptism by total immersion. Either this would work, or it would blow up in his face. What do I do if it blows up? Run back to 2018 with my tail between my legs, that’s what.

  But Megan didn’t even give him time to panic. “Okay?” she said, mock-fierce. “Okay? I’ll okay you, mister, you see if I don’t. Ten minutes.” She hung up.

  Justin ran around like a madman, to remind himself where things were and to clean up a little. He hadn’t remembered his younger self as such a slob. He checked the refrigerator. Frozen dinners, beer, Cokes—about what he’d expected.

  He waited for the buzz that would mean Megan was at the security door. But he’d forgotten he’d given her a key. The first he knew she was there was the knock on the door. He opened it. “Hi,” he said, his voice breaking as if he really were twenty-one, or maybe sixteen.