Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [103]
“Can I help you?” he says finally. I suspect that I’ve woken him. His normally lush, wavy hair is matted on one side of his head, and a well-worn burgundy bathrobe has been cavalierly tied around his waist.
“Yes,” I exhale finally. “I, I . . . don’t know how to explain this . . . but . . . I think you did something to me . . .” I pause to see if he has any recollection. Don’t you know me? Don’t you know what you did to me? I search his face like a lost mountaineer a map, but he is a blank canvas. Because, of course, he doesn’t know. Of course, I admonish myself, it was seven years in the fucking future! How could he?
“I, well, I need your help,” I continue. “That’s the easiest way to put it.”
He tilts his head and reminds me of a cocker spaniel awaiting a treat, but he also seems to take pity on me, so waves me in. A teapot whistle sounds in the background.
“Tea?” he asks.
“No.” I shake my head. He motions to sit in his living room, then wanders off and returns cupping a warm mug that smells like farmed grass.
“So what seems to be the problem, Jillian?”
“You know my name! How do you know my name?” I press myself forward to the edge of the chair. A hot-wire surge flies through me.
“I have no idea,” he answers, and his face contorts into confusion. “I, er, really, I have no idea.” He seems to be searching for a memory that is just on the edge of his brain, yet still unattainable. “Have we met before?”
“Sort of,” I exhale. “Though I don’t really know how to explain it.”
But because I have no other hope, I try. I tell him about my “what-ifs,” and about Jack and Henry and my mother and Katie, and how turned around I got, wishing for things that I didn’t have, lamenting the things I had, not realizing how much of it fell within my hands, within my scope, and how nearly all of it circled back to me and my doing and my strong, capable self, even when I didn’t believe it to be so.
Garland nods his head while I lay out the story, and when I’m done, he says, “But I’m still not sure what you’re doing here. What part I play in all of this.” His brow furrows. “And why I seem to know you and your name, when I’m certain that we’ve never met.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” I say slowly. “You were the one who sent me back.”
Garland looks at me for three beats, like I’ve just told him that the world is flatter than paper and the tooth fairy dances among us and that Santa Claus flies freely come Christmas Eve. And then he lets out a deep, disbelieving chuckle.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s no way that I was the one who did that. I mean . . . how on earth . . .” He shakes his head, then laughs again.
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to contain both the panic and my rising anger. “But you did. You unblocked my chi and you set something off and the next thing I know, I’m seven years in my past in my old apartment with my old boyfriend in my old life.”
He stops laughing and stares at me pointedly, seriously. “I unblocked your chi?”
“Yes.” I nod. “That’s what you told me.”
He stands and starts to pace, mumbling to himself under his breath. Then he halts abruptly and turns toward me.
“I’ve been doing some reading, but . . .” He pauses, then continues. “Well, I’ve been doing some reading on the mind-body-spirit connection, and chis and auras, and all of that . . .” He waves his arms in a circle, as if that’s an explanation for all of that, but I look at him perplexedly, so he keeps talking. “I’ve always long believed that the mind influenced our bodies and souls in powerful ways, ways that humans never quiet grasped, so, I started researching it . . .”
“And? How does this help me?” I stand to bring him back to focus.
“I’ve started tinkering around with clients’ pressure points, you know, to help free their toxins and their minds, and well, I guess their chis . . .”
I run my hands over my face. “I’m sorry,