Unhappenings (33 page)

fled. The pain of losing Helen right on the cusp of being able to have a life with her was more than I could manage, so I abandoned my work in search of solitude. My plan of becoming a time nomad started to look like a real possibility, but I hadn’t worked up the nerve for that yet. So I left town. No fixed destination, just travel. I’d like to say I saw spectacular things, and visited places I had always dreamed of. But I didn’t. I moved from random hotel to random hotel. My only objective was to keep moving, and hope the constant change of scenery would provide me with sufficient distraction.

It didn’t work.

I would also love to say this was the start of a new phase in my life, that it gave me a freedom I had never known, and that I never looked back. The truth is, I left Mary Sue with about a week’s worth of food, and no intention of abandoning her. So, after six days, I returned to my cat and my life. No wiser, no less hurt.

During that span, Helen sent me five messages. I deleted all of them without listening to them. Not out of anger, of course. Helen had not wronged me in any way. With my entire relationship with her now having unhappened, I didn’t even know what kind of friendship we might still have. Or ever have had. Clearly we had some kind of social connection, as she had greeted me in a very friendly manner the day I humiliated myself in front of her. This wasn’t like my previously unhappened relationships, in which my girlfriends wound up not knowing me, at best, or vanished forever at worst. She still knew me, and she still demonstrated some fondness for me. But all that did was make the whole retroactive collapse of what we had even more painful.

In the wake of my day with Wendy, followed by the restoration of what I had with Helen, having it immediately yanked away from me so definitively made it impossible for me not to see this as personal. I wanted to believe that my reversals of fortune had always been some inescapable consequence of time travel. But this last misery was so repugnant, and so surgical, I could no longer pretend it was anything other than a direct attack.

Even with that perspective, slowly resolving itself into a certainty, there was still no recourse. I would never win Helen back, any more than I could resurrect Carrie Wolfe. The safest thing for my peace of mind was to push her away, as far and as permanently as possible. And so, naturally, that was exactly what she refused to let me do.

hree days after I got back from my feeble exile, Helen figured out not only that I had returned to work, but also that I was coming in two hours early every day. It seemed like the easiest way to preempt any chance of her catching me in the morning. She was continuing to leave me messages I wouldn’t listen to, and it seemed reasonable to expect her to strike in person next. What I failed to take into account was her level of perseverance. When I found her waiting for me by the elevator, it was still dark out. There was no telling how long she had been camped out in the corridor.

I considered ignoring her, but the reality was that I held no resentment, and I had no desire to be hurtful. I chose curtness instead.

“Hi,” I said.

“Wow. ‘Hi’? Way to sabotage all my rehearsed responses. You were supposed to say something bitter, or pathetic. Now I’ve got nothing.”

“Go home,” I said. “Is that bitter enough?”

“It’s a start. That’s not going to happen, but at least we’re getting somewhere now.”

I took a deep breath. At that moment, all I truly wanted was for this conversation to last as long as possible, no matter how awful it was. But I also knew that every moment we dragged this out would add one more layer of misery.

“Helen, I misread the situation. I am very sorry, and very embarrassed, and I just want to be left alone.”

She shook her head. “We both know there’s more to this.”

“There really isn’t.”

She stepped closer to me, and said quietly, “Yes there is, but we should probably sort that out somewhere more private. Wouldn’t you agree,
Nigel
?”

Not Nigel-Graham. This was a red flag.

“What are you talking about?”

She pointed to the elevator.

“In,” she said. We stepped inside, and allowed the doors to close. I assumed she just wanted privacy, until she said, “Fourth floor.”

“That won’t—” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence as the elevator ascended.

“You already authorized me,” she said.

None of this made any sense. My friendship with Helen had unhappened, maybe not entirely, but significantly. If she had already been to my lab, on my authority, she must know almost as much as she did before the timeline changed. Without a credible reason to deny her what she had already been granted before, I let her in through the airlock to my lab.

“You think what we had unhappened,” she began bluntly. “Don’t you?”

Yet again, she caught me off guard.

“You know about that?”

She nodded.

“Ask me.”

It took a second for me to grasp what she meant. Then I thought back on the last time I thought we had unhappened.

“How long have we known each other?”

“Almost a year.”

“How did we meet?” I asked.

“I Shanghaied you into running a mock interview for the library job.”

None of this made sense. Events from one year ago and a few days ago were consistent with my memories of them. There should have been some divergence at one extreme or the other. “Ferris wheel?”

“I made you ride The Zipper first.” No hesitation.

“Aquarium?” I asked.

“Stingrays.”

It seemed that her intent was to clear matters up, but the further we went, the more confused I became.

“Mary Sue?”

“Your cat,” she said. “We found her about four months ago, but your first memory of her was only one month ago. Because your life is one long string of inconsistencies. Things happen and then they unhappen, over and over again. Because you’re a time traveler, here from 2092 to help the version of you who lives now with God only knows what. And no one knows but you.” She paused. “And me.”

I sat down, struggling to accept this, against some extremely strong internal resistance.

“I don’t understand. How can all of that still be true?”

She came over to my seat and crouched to meet my eyes. “Because it all happened. And none of what we have has been lost. Nothing important about me has changed.”

I shook my head. “I have no memory of you seeing someone else.”

“You don’t remember it,” she said, “because you never knew.”

I took a moment to reflect on that possibility.

“How long?”

“The whole time,” she said. “And two years before that.”

I started to feel slightly faint. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

She stood, and looked away.

“It’s complicated.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

“Don’t even get me started on complicated.” She flinched at this, and I immediately regretted it. The silence began to stretch. “The part about me being embarrassed is still true,” I said to fill it. “That stands.”

She laughed softly.

“That’s my fault. I honestly thought we were going to have this conversation much sooner. Like a few weeks after we met. You weren’t exactly subtle, you know.”

I groaned. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I just thought you were going to force the issue without realizing it. To be honest, I hoped you would. I thought it would be easier for both of us to put it on the table. But then…” She shrugged. “You never did anything. You never said anything. And I figured you had your reasons for wanting to keep things platonic. As long as that was true, I assumed we would be fine.”

“But why keep it a secret at all?”

“I can’t…” She shook her head. “Let’s just leave it at complicated, okay?” She walked to a window and gazed out. I had no idea what to make of her words. Something about this was a weight around her neck, but it was impossible to know what. I considered the possibilities that she was covering for an abusive boyfriend, or that the person she was seeing was in fact another woman, but neither of those conjectures rang true for the Helen I knew. “Why didn’t you?” she asked suddenly.

“Why didn’t I?”

“Do something. Say something. Force the issue. Lord knows I gave you plenty of opportunities. I like to think I’m a decent hint-dropper, but you never took the bait.” She turned to face me. “Why did you wait a year? You’re outgoing, you’re a risk taker, you don’t strike me as someone who fears rejection, and we were hitting it off. Why didn’t you make a move?”