Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [26]
Part of this is amusing: I can catch up on old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and can render Jackson speechless when I insist that we place bets, which I subsequently win, on who will get the boot each week on Survivor.
“What the hell?” he says with his hands in the air, just after that button-cute Colleen gets her torch extinguished. “What freaky voodoo signs did you pick up on to figure it out this time?”
I grin and bite into the gooey cheese pizza that we order every Thursday night for our Survivor viewings.
“Just good perception,” I say. “Either you can read people or you can’t.”
“Uh-uh,” he answers, unconvinced. “Have you been reading spoilers again?”
“Hand to God, I haven’t.” I laugh.
“Fine. I owe you a twenty-minute back massage before bed.” He gets up to grab me some more Diet Coke (we have an endless supply thanks to work) and pecks my lips as he goes. “But I swear, I better win one of these days or else I’m searching your computer for incriminating evidence of rule-breaking!”
“Search all you want,” I practically sing. “Some things are just a gift, and you either have it or you don’t.”
But these moments of bemusement aside, there are other things about revisiting the life you’ve already trodden that are so disconcerting that you feel as if you’re being tailed, watched by someone hidden in the shadows who might leap out at any moment, until, of course, you realize that this person is you. There is a constant sense that I am playing a dangerous game of tug-of-war with fate, and I find myself continually wondering if everything I do throughout my day is predestined. If, as I stop into Starbucks for my morning coffee, I did this exact same thing at the exact same time half a decade earlier or, as I stop by Gene’s desk to gossip, if I’m rehashing information that’s already been filtered through my sensorial landscape. I’ve discovered that I can’t remember all the mundane details of my day-to-day life, so while there’s a vague sense of familiarity, little of it seems nailed down or tangible. Which leaves me feeling like I’m swimming in quicksand, at once wanting it to suck me in and do with me what it might, and alternatively, grasping and clawing my way out because the thought of going under, of essentially leaving fate to have its way with me, is too spine-chillingly terrifying to allow.
I also live in continual fear of giving myself away.
Never once do I consider blurting out my secrets, even to Megan, who has entrusted me with hers, or even to Jackson, who has proven a kinder boyfriend than I remembered.
So I catch myself from spilling the endings of movies or snapping at Jack that he’s already told me the story about discovering that his boss was sleeping with a coeditor or lacking patience with my team at work because I’d long ago memorized the steps to creating a masterful Coke campaign, whereas this is their first time at this circus.
I am contemplating fate, and the role that I might play in it, one Tuesday morning on the bus on the way into work. It is an oppressively muggy day in late August, one in which the swampy air clings to your sticky skin and a bolt of air-conditioning from a store that you pass by feels like salvation. A water main has broken in the bowels of the subway line, and thus, swarms of New Yorkers are huddled on the corners at bus stops and are fanning themselves with their newspapers while waiting for their rides.
My CD player hums in my ear (no iPods! I’ve made a mental note to invest in Apple), and I’m reconnecting with music that ties me to memories of former days, only those days are now. When I was thirty-four, in my future life, “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox Twenty would occasionally filter over the airwaves of my Range Rover, and I’d stare out the window, watching the graying buildings coast by, haunted by the reminder of Jack, and how I played the song over and over and over again when we split. But now, it’s nothing more than a song that jolts a memory of something yet to happen, something that might not even happen if I can grab the gears and shift them away