Rollback

  “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t called you, but…”

  “It has been three days.”

  “Yes, I know, I know, and I’m sorry. I really did mean to call. I didn’t want you to think I was one of those guys who…well, you know, one of those guys who doesn’t call.”

  “Could have fooled me,” she said.

  He cringed. “I’m sorry. You deserve way better—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I know. But, look, I—”

  “Didn’t you have a good time?”

  “I had a great time,” he said. And he had—just about the only time he’d been happy for weeks now. Not just the sex, but just being with someone who could keep up with him, and—

  Lenore sounded relieved. “Good. ’Cause, I did too. You…you’re really something.”

  “Um, thanks. So are you. But, um…”

  “Look,” she said, her tone conveying that she was making a special dispensation, “I’m busy at the food bank tomorrow. But I’m free on Sunday. Maybe we could get together then?”

  No, thought Don.

  “What did you have in mind?” he said, astonished to hear himself speak the words.

  “The forecast says it’s going to be gorgeous. Why don’t we go down to Centre Island?”

  I cannot do this, he thought. I will not do this.

  “Don?” said Lenore, into what had become an uncomfortable silence.

  He closed his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, why not?”

  DON HAD ARRIVED at the ferry docks at the foot of Bay Street about ten minutes early, and he kept scanning the crowds, looking for—

  Ah, there she was: the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore. She came running over to him, in white short-shorts and a loose-fitting white top, clutching a giant sun hat. She stretched up and kissed him quickly on the mouth, and then pulled back, smiling, and—

  And he was stunned. In his mind, he’d aged her forward: he’d been picturing her as being in her mid-thirties, which seemed a more appropriate age for someone he might want to talk to, but here she was, freckled and fresh-faced, looking ten years younger than that.

  They boarded the Max Haines, a white, double-decker ferry, and took the kilometer-and-a-half journey to Centre Island, with its boardwalks, beaches, amusement park, and gardens.

  Lenore had wanted to come down here, she said, because she missed the water. But the result was not proving entirely satisfactory: gulls eating garbage were no substitute for Vancouver’s great blue herons, and, besides, there was no salt tang to the air. Once they’d docked, they jogged for about half an hour. Don found that exhilarating, and he loved to feel his hair—yes, hair!—whipping in the breeze.

  After that, they just strolled along a paved walkway, gingerly trying to avoid all the goose droppings. Off to their right was the bay, and across it was Toronto itself, with the skyline that Don had watched grow and spread over the better part of a century. It was still dominated by the CN Tower, once, but certainly no longer, the tallest freestanding structure in the world; as a teenager, he had gone downtown with his friend Ivan to watch a Sikorsky Skycrane assemble its huge components. Blockish skyscrapers, like the elements of a bar chart, trailed off left and right from the Tower. He recalled when Toronto’s downtown had been a tiny cluster of tall buildings, but now it went on and on along the lakeshore, west toward Mississauga, and east until the Scarborough Bluffs forced it to stop.

  More than just the skyline had changed during Don’s lifetime—and yet some things hadn’t changed nearly as much as he’d expected. He remembered seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey with his dad when it had come out, back in 1968. The nice thing about being born in a year that ends in a zero was that it made math simple. Even as a kid, he knew he’d be forty-one in 2001, and his father, sitting next to him at Toronto’s Glendale Theatre, had been forty-three then, meaning Don would be younger than him when the wonders that film portrayed were supposed to come to pass: Pan Am space planes, giant wheel-shaped space stations with Howard Johnson hotels, cities on the moon, humans traveling out to Jupiter, cryogenic suspended animation, and—Open the pod-bay doors, Hal—true artificial intelligence.

  But by the time the actual 2001 had rolled around, none of those things were realities. So perhaps Don shouldn’t have been too surprised that the extravagant wonders predicted in the science fiction of the first decade of the new millennium likewise hadn’t materialized. The technological singularity had never happened; extreme body modification, either through genetic engineering or with artificial parts, never became popular; the nanotech assembler that could turn anything into anything else was still the stuff of dreams.

  Don looked out over the water, back at the city he’d been born in. Nestled at the foot of the CN Tower was the stadium where the Blue Jays played. He pointed at it. “See? The roof’s open on SkyDome.”

  Lenore looked at him as though he were speaking a foreign language, and—

  Oh, shit. He still referred to it as SkyDome; so did lots of people his age. But that hadn’t been its name for over forty years. Christ, the gap between them was everywhere, in everything. “The Rogers Centre, I mean. The, um, the roof is open.” It was such a trivial observation, he was sorry now he’d made it.

  “Well, it is a lovely day,” said Lenore. It buoyed him that she made no further comment on what he’d said.

  They were holding hands as they walked, skateboarders, hoverpadders, rollerbladers, and joggers passing them in both directions. She was wearing her big, floppy hat; with her pale skin, she doubtless burned easily. For his part, he was enjoying being out in the sun without having to wear a hat. After four decades of baldness, it was wonderful to have his own built-in protection.

  They’d talked about this and that: a lively, animated conversation, so unlike—what had one of his friends called it?—the companionable silence of old married people who had, decades ago, run out of points of view to share or jokes to tell or issues to explore.

  “Do you play tennis?” Lenore asked, as they passed a couple of people carrying racquets.

  “I haven’t since…” Since before you were born.

  “We should play sometime. I can get you a guest pass to Hart House.”

  “That’d be great,” Don said. And he meant it. He’d been sedentary the first time he’d been this age; now, he was loving the sheer physicality of being alive. “You realize I’m going to beat your pants, off, though. I mean, I’m medically enhanced.”

  She grinned. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Sure. Just call me Bjorn Borg.”

  She looked at him, totally baffled, and his heart fell a bit. Sarah would have gotten the joke.

  “Um,” he said, painfully aware of Johnny Carson’s dictum that it isn’t funny if you have to explain it, “Bjorn Borg was a famous tennis player; won Wimbledon five times in a row. And the Borg, well, they’re this alien race on an old TV show called Star Trek. The Borg augment their bodies with technology, so, um…”

  “You are a supremely silly man,” Lenore said, smiling warmly at him.

  He stopped dead in his tracks, and looked—really looked, for the first time—at Lenore.

  She was a grad student studying SETI.

  She liked to eat in restaurants, to talk about philosophy and politics.

  She was confident and funny and a joy to be with.

  And now she was even talking like—

  But he’d missed putting it together until just now. She reminded him of—

  Of course. Of course.

  She reminded him of Sarah as she’d been back in her twenties, back when Don had fallen in love with her.

  Oh, true, they looked nothing alike physically, and perhaps that’s why he’d failed to notice all the other similarities when they’d been together before. Lenore was shorter than Sarah, or, at least, shorter than Sarah had been in her prime. And Sarah had originally had brown hair, and still had blue-gray eyes, while Lenore was redheaded, freckled, and green-eyed.

&
nbsp; But in spirit, in attitude, in the joy they took in life, they were kindred spirits.

  Coming toward them was a young couple: an Asian woman and a white man, the man pushing a stroller. Don was wearing sunglasses—as was Lenore—so he felt no compunction about looking at the beautiful young woman, with long black hair, wearing pink shorts and a red tank top.

  “Cute kid,” said Lenore.

  “Um, yeah,” said Don. He hadn’t even noticed.

  “Do you—do you like kids?” Lenore asked, a tentative note in her voice.

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  There was a park bench on the grass a short distance from the walkway, facing back across the water toward the city. Don pointed at it with his chin, and they went over and sat. He put his arm around her shoulders, and they stared out at the water, watching a ferry coming toward them.

  “Do you want to have kids of your own?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

  “How soon?”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair was blowing a bit in the breeze, occasionally gently slapping his cheek. “Oh, I don’t know. By the time I’m thirty, I suppose. I know that’s a long time from now, but…”

  She trailed off, but he found himself shaking his head. Five years would go by like that; it seemed only yesterday he’d been in his seventies. Hell, it hardly seemed that long ago that he’d been in his sixties. The years just fly by, and—

  And he wondered if that would still be true. He’d certainly experienced the phenomenon of time seeming to pass more quickly as he’d gotten older, and he’d read the pop-psychology explanation for it: that, when you’re a kid of ten, each year is a whopping ten percent of your life to date, and so seems ponderously long, but by the time you’re fifty, each year is just two percent of your life, and so passes in the wink of an eye. He wondered what would happen to his time sense now that he was young again. He’d be one of the first people ever to get to test the validity of the standard explanation.

  Lenore said nothing more; she just looked out at the lake. Still, it was ironic, he realized. She was thinking farther into the future than he was. But he’d thought he was done with the future, and, although he knew that poem, too, he hadn’t planned on raging against the dying of the light…

  In five years, Lenore would likely have a Ph.D., and be well on her way in her career.

  And in five years, Sarah would probably be…

  He hated to think about it, but it was all but inevitable. By 2053, Sarah would almost certainly be gone, and he’d—

  He’d be alone. Unless—

  Unless he…

  Unless he found somebody else.

  But he’d seen at the grad students’ wing night just how vapid most twenty-five-year-olds were. People who shared his apparent physical age would never appeal to him intellectually, emotionally. Lenore, somehow, was different, and—

  And it was way too soon to go further with this conversation, but the reality was clear: his future with Lenore, or, he imagined, with just about any woman who was as young as he looked, would depend on his being willing to be a father again.

  But, God, to have more kids! Could he face late-night feedings, and changing diapers, and being a disciplinarian?

  And yet…

  And yet perhaps people would forgive him his transgressions if someday he did start a second family. He knew that no matter how logical it might be for him to want the company of someone so much younger than Sarah, in the eyes of his friends and family that would be seen as tawdry, thinking with his dick instead of his brain. But if they thought his desire was to be a father again, well, then maybe that wasn’t quite so bad.

  In this age of open sexuality online and off, it was probably no longer true, but in Don’s day, many men he knew had had a favorite Playboy Playmate, and his had been Vicki Smith, or, at least, that had been the name he’d first encountered the five-foot-eleven, Rubenesque Texan under, when she was Miss May 1992. But by the time she’d been named Playmate of the Year in 1993, she’d changed her stage name to Anna Nicole Smith. And she became even more famous when, at twenty-six, she married a billionaire who was almost ninety.

  That’s the comparison people of his generation would make, he knew. Except that he wasn’t a billionaire, although he’d gotten what that crazed old coot doubtless would have traded his entire fortune for. And it was he, not the woman, who was fake. Anna Nicole Smith had had an A-cup before breast implants pushed her three letters down the alphabet. But Lenore was natural—well, as natural as anyone these days. It was Don who’d had himself remade, although somehow, at least to him, gene therapy and the lengthening of telomeres seemed less creepy than having your chest carved open and bags of silicone shoved inside.

  Still, an eighty-seven-year-old man and a twenty-five-year-old woman! The things people would say! But if he eventually had more kids, became a dad to little ones again, well, then, that was good and normal and right, and maybe everyone would understand, everyone would forgive.

  Of course, that was no reason to become a father, but, hell, he hadn’t given it any thought the first time; it hadn’t taken any justification. It had just seemed the most natural thing in the world when he and Sarah had gotten married.

  Three ducks landed on the lake, small wakes appearing behind them. Lenore snuggled closer to Don. “It’s such a beautiful day,” she said.

  He nodded, and stroked her shoulder gently, wondering what the future might hold.

  –-- Chapter 27 --–

  DON HAD HAD a truly wonderful time both down at the Island and afterwards, back at Lenore’s. But she had a lot of reading to do for a seminar tomorrow, so extricating himself at the end of the day had not been an issue. Sarah, meanwhile, had said she was going to stay in all day—she was still sorting through the mountain of paper records about the first message—and as Don headed toward the subway, he was startled that the answering machine picked up when he tried to call his house. Of course, Sarah’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be; she might simply have not heard the phone ringing, or she might be out, or—

  “Where is Sarah’s datacom?” he said to his own unit.

  “At home,” the device replied, after connecting with its twin. “On her nightstand.”

  Don felt himself frowning; she wouldn’t have gone out without it, and he’d tried now calling both her datacom and their landline household phone. Something was wrong; he just knew it.

  He started jogging toward St. George subway station; the parts between here and that station, and between his home station of North York Centre and his front door, were the only segments of the journey he could speed up. The rest would happen at what he was sure would seem the snail’s pace of the Toronto Transit Commission’s trains—taking a taxi all the way up to North York would cost a fortune and would be no faster.

  As luck would have it, he got through the turnstile and down the escalator just in time to see the doors close on the eastbound train, and he had to wait an interminable time—this being Sunday evening—for the next one to pull into the station.

  His datacom worked just fine down in tunnels, but each time he called, his household phone rang and rang until his own voice—his own previous voice, the thin, weary version of it that sounded so different from the way he currently did—came on, saying, “Hello. Neither Sarah nor I can come to the phone right now…”

  Don sat, looking down at the gray, dirty floor, holding his face up with his hands.

  Finally, after an eternity, the subway arrived at North York Centre, and he bounded out of the car. He ran up the escalator, through a turnstile, and exited onto Park Home Avenue, which was dark and deserted. He jogged the three blocks to his house, trying once more to call along the way, but to no avail. At last, he opened his front door, and—

  She was lying facedown on the scuffed hardwood floor in front of the mirrored closet. “Sarah!”

  Her limbs were splayed, and the lightweigh
t summer dress she was wearing had billowed about her like a shroud. It seemed clear that she’d taken a tumble coming down the stairs to the entryway. “Sarah, are you all right?”

  She stirred, lifting her head a little.

  “No,” said Don. “No, no. Don’t move!”

  “My leg,” she said softly. “My God, you should have heard the snap…”

  He’d learned some first aid years ago. “This one?” he said, touching her right leg.

  “No. The other one.”

  He shifted the dress so that he could see her leg, and the bruising and swelling were obvious. He touched it gingerly, and he saw Sarah wince. There was no phone in the entryway; Sarah would have had to have pulled herself up the six stairs to the living room to call him; she had neither the sense of balance nor the strength in her other leg to hop. He got out his datacom, and said to it, “Nine-one-one,” a term now used as a name in this post-phone-number age.

  “Fire, police, or ambulance?” asked the operator.

  “Ambulance,” Don said. “Please hurry!”

  “You’re calling from a mobile device,” the operator said, “but we have the GPS coordinates. You’re at—” and she read the address to him. “Correct?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “What’s happened?”

  He gulped for air. “My wife—she’s eighty-seven, and she’s fallen down some stairs.”

  “I’ve dispatched the ambulance,” said the operator. “The datacom you’re calling from is registered to Donald R. Halifax; is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your wife conscious, Mr. Halifax?”

  “Yes. But her leg is broken. I’m sure of it.”

  “Don’t move her, then. Don’t try to move her.”

  “I won’t. I haven’t.”

  “Is the door to your house unlocked?”

  He looked up. The door was still wide open. “Yes.”

  “All right. Don’t leave her.”

  Don took his wife’s hand. “No, no, I won’t.” God, why hadn’t he been here? He looked into her pale blue eyes, which were bloodshot and half-closed. “I won’t leave her. I swear I won’t ever leave her.”