Shatterday

hoping by exiling himself to break the links.

But there he sat, by the fireplace at The Round Hearth, in Stowe, Vermont… and the next one in line, Sonja, whom he had not seen in years, Sonja came in off the slopes and saw him, and she went a good deal whiter than the wind chill factor outside accounted for.

They spent the night together and she buried her face in the pillow so her sounds would not carry. She lied to her husband about her absence and the next morning, before Kirxby came out of his room, they were gone.

But Sonja had come back. And that meant the next one before her had been Gretchen. He waited in fear, but she did not appear in Vermont, and he felt if he stayed there he was a sitting target and he called the office and told them he was going down to the Bahamas for a few days, that his partners should parcel out his caseload among them, for just a few more days, don’t ask questions.

And Gretchen was working in a tourist shop specializing in wicker goods; and she looked at him as he came through the door, and she said, “Oh, my God, Michael! I’ve had you on my mind almost constantly for the past week. I was going to call you —”

And she gave a small sharp scream as he fainted, collapsing face-forward into a pyramid of woven wicker clothing hampers.

The apartment was dark. He sat there in silence, and refused to answer the phone. The gourmet delicatessen had been given specific instructions. The delivery boy with the food had to knock in a specific, certain cadence, or the apartment door would not be opened.

Kirxby had locked himself away. The terror was very real now. It was impossible to ignore what was happening to him. All the birds were coming home to roost.

Back across nineteen years, from his twentieth birthday to the present, in reverse order of having known them, every woman he had ever loved or fucked or had an encounter of substance with… was homing in on him. Martha the latest, from which point the forward momentum of his relationships had been arrested, like a pendulum swung as far as it would go, and back again, back, back, swinging back past Jerri and Anita, back to Corinne and Hannah, back, and Nancy, back, and Robin and all of them, straight back to Gretchen, who was just three women before…

He wouldn’t think about it.

He couldn’t. It was too frightening.

The special, specific, certain cadence of a knock on his apartment door. In the darkness he found his way to the door and removed the chain. He opened the door to take the box of groceries, and saw the teenaged Puerto Rican boy sent by the deli. And standing behind him was Kate. She was twelve years older, a lot less the gamin, classy and self-possessed now, but it was Kate nonetheless.

He began to cry.

He slumped against the open door and wept, hiding his face in his hands partially because he was ashamed, but more because he was frightened.

She gave the boy a tip, took the box, and edged inside the apartment, moving Kirxby with her, gently. She closed the door, turned on a light, and helped him to the sofa.

When she came back from putting away the groceries, she slipped out of her shoes and sat as far away from him as the length of the sofa would permit. The light was behind her and she could see his swollen, terrified face clearly. His eyes were very bright. There was a trapped expression on his face. For a long time she said nothing.

Finally, when his breathing became regular, she said, “Michael, what the hell is it? Tell me.”

But he could not speak of it. He was too frightened to name it. As long as he kept it to himself, it was just barely possible it was a figment of delusion, a ravening beast of the mind that would vanish as soon as he was able to draw a deep breath. He knew he was lying to himself. It was real. It was happening to him, inexorably.

She kept at him, speaking softly, cajoling him, prising the story from him. And so he told her. Of the reversal of his life. Of the film running backward. Of the river flowing upstream. Carrying him back and back and back into a dark land from which there could never be escape.

“And I ran away. I went to St. Kitts. And I walked into a shop, some dumb shop, just some dumb kind of tourist goods shop…”

“And what was her name… Greta… ?”

“Gretchen.”

“… Gretchen. And Gretchen was there.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my God, Michael. You’re making yourself crazy. This is lunatic. You’ve got to stop it.”

“Stop it!?! Jesus, I wish I could stop it. But I can’t. Don’t you see, you’re part of it. It’s unstoppable, it’s crazy but it’s hellish. I haven’t slept in days. I’m afraid to go to sleep. God knows what might happen.”

“You’re building all this in your mind, Michael. It isn’t real. Lack of sleep is making you paranoid.”

“No… no… listen… here, listen to this… I remembered it from years ago… I read it… I found it when I went looking for it…” He lurched off the sofa, found the book on the wet bar and brought it back under the light. It was The Plague by Camus, in a Modern Library edition. He thumbed through the book and could not find the place. Then she took it from him and laid it on her palm and it fell open to the page, because he had read and reread the section. She read it aloud, where he had underlined it:

“‘Had he been less tired, his senses more alert, that all-pervading odor of death might have made him sentimental. But when a man has had only four hours’ sleep, he isn’t sentimental. He sees things as they are; that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice—hideous, witless justice.’” She closed the book and stared at him. “You really believe this, don’t you?”

“Don’t I? Of course I do! I’d be what you think I am, crazy… not to believe it. Kate, listen to me. Look, here you are. It’s twelve years. Twelve years and another life. But here you are, back with me again, just in sequence. You were my lover before I met Gretchen. I knew it would be you!”

“Michael, don’t let this make you stop thinking. There’s no way you could have known. Bill and I have been divorced for two years. I just moved back to the city last week. Of course I’d look you up. We had a very good thing together. If I hadn’t met Bill we might still be together.”

“Jesus, Kate, you’re not listening to me. I’m trying to tell you this is some kind of terrible justice. I’m rolling back through time with the women I’ve known. There’s you, and if there’s you, then the next one before you was Marcie. And if I go back to her, then that means that after Marcie… after Marcie… before Marcie there was…”

He couldn’t speak the name.

She said the name. His face went white again. It was the speaking of the unspeakable.

“Oh God, Kate, oh dear God, I’m screwed, I’m screwed…”

“Cindy can’t get you, Mike. She’s still in the Home, isn’t she?”

He nodded, unable to answer.

Kate slid across and held him. He was shaking. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”

She tried to rock him, like a child in pain, but his terror was an electric current surging through him. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. “Till you’re better. There won’t be any Marcie, and there certainly won’t be any Cindy.”

“No!” he screamed, pulling away from her. “No!”

He stumbled toward the door. “I’ve got to get out of here. They can find me here. I’ve got to go somewhere out away from here, fast, fast, where they can’t find me ever.”

He yanked open the door and ran into the hall. The elevator was not there. It was never there when he needed it, needed it badly, needed it desperately.

He ran down the stairs and into the vestibule of the building. The doorman was standing looking out into the street, the glass doors tightly shut against the wind and the cold.