48.

“Back already?” Luca asks me, sitting against the table’s edge as he folds his arms across his chest. “Fuckface.”

“That …” I say, like that one word will encompass the entire experience. That. And it does, but it also represents every stream of thought I have. I go with what’s strongest in my mind: Autumn. “Is  that like punishment?” I ask. “You kill Autumn because I took my own life?”

“You’re not that important, dickweed. A least not in some celestial sense.”

“Autumn died—”

“Shit happens.”

“Shit happens? Who the fuck are you? Forrest Gump?”

“Life is like a box of cuntings,” Luca says. “You never know when or where you’ll get cunted out. Like with your partner. Or your publisher. Or that young author—”

“So you know all that stuff?”

“It’s filed. Somewhere.”

“Filed?”

“You write it. It is.”

“Is what?”

“Your existence, you multifaceted moron.”

“Is this real?”

“What? This? Or down there?”

“All of it,” I say. “Or is it like some alternate existence, or life lesson, or multiverse—”

“It’s reality, dickhead. Reality ain’t that hard.”

“The only thing that changed of any note from last time was Autumn died.”

“Maybe you want to go cry that to your mummy next time you visit her,” Luca says.

“Why are you so hostile?”

“Because you’re so entitled It’s hard, it’s fucked, it’s unpredictable, and you come back like, what? We’re screwing you over? Things aren’t working out the way you want them to work out? What? This ain’t Fantasy Island, fuckhead.”

Luca was unpleasant first time around, but now he’s antagonistic. I feel the unrestrained anger. If I was in a bar and I was having this exchange, then I’d anticipate that this could become physical. But I don’t know the rules here.

“Who are you exactly?” I say.

“Luca—”

“What? You like a disgruntled angel? Or a demon?”

“I’m a fucking bureaucrat appointed to oversee dickheads like you. So what’s the call this time? Choose a door? Door one: the afterlife. Door two: have your soul retired. Door three: go back.”

“Will Autumn be in the afterlife?”

“Don’t know. Likely.”

“Would I see her?”

“Don’t know. I imagine it’s a big place. Like I told you the first time around, McNothing, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know how it works. I hear it’s layered depending on your spiritual development. I’d put you on the ground floor, or maybe the basement, or maybe some underground car parks – you know, one of those deep, deep, deep ones that you’re always scared to turn into in case you get lost and can’t—”

“I get it.”

“I imagine Autumn’s at least on the fourth or fifth floor.”

“If I go back, is she alive?”

Luca shrugs. “Don’t know when you arrive.”

“You said—”

“Look,” Luca says, “this isn’t Twenty Questions. You have your choices. You know what you risk—”

“On that, something changed – I was meant to have dinner with one mentee, only I show up and find it’s another. I arranged that and I don’t have any recollection doing it. I got an acceptance from a publisher, when the first time around it was a rejection.”

“Thought defines reality. I explained this last time. When we reinserted you, you arrived with foreknowledge. Things reshape around you as a result. Here’s something I’ll tell you free: time’s not this straight line everybody thinks. It exists,” Luca clicks his fingers, “in a speck so small you’d never see it. You going back not only begins to reshape your future, but elements of your past. It’s like throwing a rock in a pond. The ripple doesn’t just go one way.”

“How far back?” I ask. “How much of my past can be reshaped?”

“Not a lot. Think of throwing that rock into the water just by the shore. The ripple hits the bank. Stops. We can’t have the past so impermeable. It’d undo all this – life and shit. Enough talk. Your decision?”

“If I go back, will the same thing happen to Autumn?” I ask. “Like if me going back saves her from the car accident, does she just die elsewhere?”

“I. Don’t. Know. Future’s unwritten. When things change in the present, new possibilities open up. There’s no plan, no redraft that just replots the same shit to happen over.”

I look at the first door, at that rectangle of misty gray. Autumn is on the other side of that. I could go through there and see her – well, possibly. Even Luca’s unsure what’d happen. But then I think about her husband and kids being deprived of her, her workplace deprived of her, and the world in general.

“One last question—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Luca says. “It’s like being on a phone with a telemarketer.”

“I was just wondering is there some greater design to everything? To some grand plan?”

Luca gapes at me, but I think of the world being fucked, and the amount of people Autumn’s helped. All the clichés here: but the world’s a better place having her in it.

“Is there a point to life?” Luca asks. “You happy just to party, to have a good time, and to fuckery with the consequences? Or do you think you need to accrue material gain? Or maybe better yourself? Who the fucks knows? I certainly don’t, buttface. But I’ll give you my opinion: is life better now than it was one-hundred years ago?”

“I’m sure some would argue—”

“Don’t give me some wanky answer about how life was simpler in the past, for fuck’s sake. Insulin was first given to diabetics in 1922. Now they wear little devices that keeps track of blood sugar and pumps in insulin as needed. You go tell them how life was simpler back then.”

“Okay, so your point is things are better – medical technology has moved forward. Quality of life is better—”

“I don’t need an essay. But if the natural progression of life is improvement, then why wouldn’t the spiritual improvement be the same? You’d do well to remember that. Dick.”

“Let’s do this, then,” I say. “Let’s go—”

49.

Back.

At my computer, too. Despite Luca’s claim that I might rebound anywhere, I’ve come back to this moment.

That should mean Autumn’s alive. Should. But I don’t feel relief. For all I know, this might be something that’s changed.

I scramble for my phone, check my messages with her (as far as I’m aware, they remain the same), and text her, You okay? Then I leap onto social media, check her Facebook and other social media profiles but thankfully, there’s nothing there.

It would seem everything’s reset.

I hear Lana’s car in the drive. Now here’s another issue. This has to end now, but it’s going to be hard on account of five reasons:

 

1. I’m a wimp.
2. There’s no lead-up. She’s coming over bringing pizza to spend what’s meant to be an enjoyable night together – well, a night together, at least. If we were arguing, it’d be easier. Motivated. In fact, if this was a workshop I was running, and somebody turned in a story where one person broke up with another with no motivation behind it, I’d say that’s something they needed to insert.
3. Is this it? Is this the final and definitive surrender that this relationship just doesn’t work? I don’t even know if I’m prepared for that.
4. There’ll be backlash.
5. I’m a wimp.

 

Bizarrely, this is something I’d like to Autumn’s advice on, but I hear Lana’s car door open and close, and her swing open the screen door, then the front door.

“I’m here!” she says.

Rising from my chair, I trudge into the living room, trying to work out what the best timing is. Do I just say it now? It seems so weird, as she sets the pizzas on the coffee table, all bright and optimistic and looking forward to what’s meant to be a nice night together.

“Do you want something to drink?” I ask.

So I chicken out, setting myself up with a beer and her with a glass of wine, laying them out on the coffee table with plates and my phone. It’s quite the spread. I should light candles to complete the façade.

We eat and watch music videos as I motor around in my head how to finagle this outcome. I could manufacture an argument, although that makes me the ultimate coward.

“You’re quiet,” she says.

“Just a lot on my mind,” I say.

“Like?”

“I can’t seem to get my life right,” I say.

“Like what? Your job?”

Straight to the job! She bypassed herself as a possible issue (which I guess is fair enough), and she didn’t consider my writing career, because that isn’t much of a career. This is how she defines existence: through work and how that personifies her (and what it pays her), and then everything else is a byproduct: the capacity to buy nice things, to live comfortably, and all that.

“Everything,” I say. “Everything.”

This is how wimpy I am, talking obliquely – she won’t consider herself part of the every.

“You’re acting weird,” Lana says. “Well, weirder than normal.”

Then she giggles, like she’s managed to combine a putdown and a pun in a way that nobody ever has. It does succeed in irking me, although THE IRK’s not enough for a premeditated breakup.

“You, me,” I say, “my job, my writing career, and every part of my world. I come home, and I think when I was young, this isn’t where I saw myself at fifty.”

“I didn’t see myself as a divorcee and single mother,” Lana says. “I didn’t see myself working where I am. You make do the best you can.”

Philosophically, she’s correct, but there’s nothing sympathetic about her voice. There’s an edge, like she’s offended that I might be dissatisfied with life. I know that she’d be thinking if she can bravely and nobly soldier on, then how could I possibly have any cause for complaint, and maybe she’s right.

My phone buzzes – Autumn, answering my query: Yeah, why? she asks.

Relief. And it doesn’t need much more explanation than that. But it’s short-lived.

Lana sees the message – naturally she sees it. Naturally, she frowns. “Why’s she messaging you?” she asks.

I could lie here – it’d be easy to do. And I could make up something instantaneously. I texted her before to see if Cameron’s edit had gone to layout. There, a work question. And one that fits her answer. It’d satisfy Lana. Well, mostly. But she wouldn’t query it any further. I don’t want to lie, though. This has been one of the cruxes in mine and Lana’s relationship – navigating this innocent friendship – and it epitomises all my frustration.

“Just wanted to check she was all right,” I say.

“Why? Didn’t you see her at work?”

“That was a while ago, and I heard something happened.”

“What?”

“Somebody told me she was in a car accident.”

Lana’s frown’s back, and it deepens. “Who?”

“Somebody on social media.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“How does it not make sense?”

“Somebody on social media said something had happened to her?”

“Look at my messages if you think it’s anything more than that.”

“So between you finishing work, and you coming home, somebody messaged you to tell you something had happened to Autumn, so you texted her to see if she was okay?”

I grab my phone. Open it. Show her my message to Autumn just to prove there’s nothing more insidious.

“Why do you have to go all Columbo on me?” I say. “What do you think I texted her?”

Lana doesn’t look at the phone, as if making a point to say that’s not the point of this discussion. There’s something else at stake – a principle or something. And she might be right about that, too, and I could (and could’ve) handled all this much better, but when these discussions explode the way they do, I have no patience left.

“It’s not about what you texted her,” Lana says, as if to prove she also has no patience left either, “but WHY you feel this constant need to communicate.”

Constant. It’s an underestimation to call that an exaggeration.

“You see her at work five days a week,” Lana goes on. “We’re meant to be spending time together, and you’re messaging back and forth with her.”

“One message,” I say. “I sent her one message. She sent back one mess—”

“And you would’ve responded to that, and then it’d be back and forth all night.”

That has never happened.

“It’s like you two just can’t help it,” Lana says. “And forget about me. Forget about what I need. Forget about being in a relationship. This is like a threesome. I keep waiting for it to change—”

“This has just gotten way too hard,” I say. “I think we’re done.”

Lana rises. Snatches up her purse. And most people would storm out. Lana makes a good show of that, heading toward the door. But then she turns. And she resumes her argument about waiting for it to change, how she’s been patient and tolerant, how she’s tried to be resilient, like she’s been sitting on the frontline of some armed conflict weathering barrage after barrage, how all her friends agree with her how inappropriate I am, how all those friends tell her how saintly she is, how because of my problems when I was younger I really don’t understand the responsibilities, dos, and don’ts, in relationships because I have limited firsthand experience, and a whole stream of other stuff that it’s not worth doing any more justice than in this summary.

I sit there mutely, my ears raw from the condemnation, and when she sees there’ll be no engagement she throws her arms up, like this is all too much for her. Then storms out. Slams her car door. Starts the car. Pulls out of the drive. Speeds off.

For the next fifteen minutes, I don’t move, thinking none of that was intended, but they’re the sort of blow-ups that I’ve always feared – not just the blowup itself, but the way she tears me down along the way and makes me doubt myself.

My phone buzzes – Lana. By the sight of it, it’s a long message. I delete it unread, then drag up the response from Autumn. It wasn’t intended, but her text prompted a course of events I was too cowardly to initiative myself. I wonder if there’s something karmic in that.

All good, I text her.