Q: A Love Story. Evan Mandery

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      The room is nice enough. A free copy of the Times is waiting for me. The coffee maker is serviceable and the mattress is not horrible. But it is nothing compared to I-60’s room at the W, which has a state-of-the-art coffee maker and Egyptian cotton sheets on the bed. Using my binoculars, I can see his luxurious accommodations across the street quite clearly. I again wonder how he has afforded the room.

      As he wakes up, however, my suspicions notwithstanding, what I see is unmistakably me. He is up early himself; it is still not yet seven. Again he goes for a run. The stiff knee that bothers me when I wake up has deteriorated. It takes ten minutes of stretching for him to get himself out of bed. He cannot lift his knees to put on his running shorts. Instead he sits on a chair and reaches forward to pull the shorts up over his feet. It is an ordeal.

      When he goes downstairs, I do the same, and trail him from a safe distance. He walks from the hotel to Central Park and then jogs my favorite route—once around the pond, up past the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, across Seventy-second Street, over Bow Bridge into the ramble, a loop around the lake, then south past the sheep meadow and the Heckscher Ballfields, and finally back home. I feel pangs of sadness as I jog behind him. His gait—my gait—which was once effective, perhaps even graceful, has become a lurching series of stumbles. He is slow, gets winded, stops to watch some teenagers play softball. He is in no hurry. He is an old man.

      After the run, he walks back to the hotel and retreats to his room, as I do to mine. Through the binoculars, I see him shower and dress for the day. He is not meeting anyone as far as I can tell, but still he takes extra care with his appearance. He shaves and irons his shirt. The baggage limit on travel from the future is apparently generous enough to allow him to pack a nose-hair trimmer, which I failed to notice while rummaging through his things. I-60 spends a few minutes grooming his nose, then a few more tending to his ear. When he leaves his room, he looks better than when I met him. Travel can be brutal on appearances or, perhaps, he is feeling more optimistic.

      On the street he buys a bagel, checks out the toys in the window at FAO Schwartz, walks to the Metropolitan Museum, where he spends a while with the impressionists. He takes another long, slow walk home, back through the park, where he buys a pretzel, wistfully watches a pair of young lovers paddle a rowboat, lingers by some frolicking dogs, and reads the descriptions of the trees.

      He is killing time. I suspect I am to blame for this. I have made this necessary by telling him, at Bouley, that I cannot meet again for several days. I have papers to grade, I say, and a reading in Greenwich, Connecticut. In truth I have neither papers to grade nor a reading to attend. I want to buy time to scrutinize him. He sees through the lie, I am sure. How could I ever deceive him? I bet he even remembers the true date of the Greenwich reading, which was several months ago. But he does not call me on it. This would be awkward. Instead he spends the time wandering the streets of the city. Perhaps he does not mind. Perhaps it is a pleasure to spend a few days in the New York of his youth. Or perhaps he is past the point of feeling much of anything.

      In the evening, when he has exercised himself to the point that he knows he will be able to sleep, he returns to his hotel and I return to mine. In his room, he takes off the clothes of the day and dons the brown corduroys. A little after six o’clock, he leafs through the room service menu and places an order. Twenty minutes later it arrives. Through the binoculars, I can see that the meal is a veggie burger with tomato and onion and a side of sweet potato fries. This is more to my own taste.

      I-60 sits in a lounge chair and eats the supper in front of the television set. At seven o’clock he watches Seinfeld, at seven thirty The Simpsons. I wonder how many times he has seen each of these episodes. Perhaps hundreds; I have seen them each dozens of times myself. I can see him anticipating the laugh lines, as am I. It is the monorail episode of The Simpsons, a classic. As Lyle Lanley sings to the town meeting, we mouth the words with him in unison. At eight o’clock, I-60 tunes in for the Mets game. I turn on the set in my own room and listen. Pelfrey is pitching, which is always dicey, and Davis is sitting out with a wrenched knee. Sure enough the Mets fall behind. When Reyes fails to run out a pop-up, which is dropped, I-60 waves his hand in disgust. Around ten, he walks to the vending machines and buys himself a package of Oreos and a small container of skim milk. I-60 eats his dessert while watching the end of the game. When the cookies and the Mets are finished off, he licks his teeth clean for a few minutes, then brushes them.

      In bed, he begins to doze while watching a rerun of The Office. Before he nods off, though, he kisses two framed photographs, which he has placed on the bedside table. One he sets back down. The other he clutches while he finally falls asleep, having either forgotten to change out of his corduroy pants or chosen not to.

      As I run home to meet Q, it occurs to me, happily, that these pants from different time lines have come into contact with one another without any apparent disruption to the fabric of existence.

      It occurs to me then, too, less happily, that the man wearing these pants, this sad, tired man who likes veggie burgers and soft pretzels and cookies, who wanders the city watching lovers and puppies and falls asleep dreaming of his family, is unequivocally, unambiguously, and unmistakably, me.

      Chapter SEVEN

      You have been following me.” I-60 says this directly, matter-of-factly, across our table at La Grenouille, on Fifty-third and Park, where we have gathered for Meal Number Three, a late lunch. I understand from his tone that it is pointless to deny the claim.

      “It is nothing personal, I assure you.”

      “What, then?”

      “These are major life decisions I am facing. I need to be confident of your authenticity.”

      “And you doubt this?”

      “I suppose not,” I answer sheepishly. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything at this point.”

      “Would you like me to relate to you the details of your first romantic experience with Becky Goldstein? Would you like me to describe the comic book you wrote in first grade in which the Muppets of Sesame Street had secret lives as superheroes, and Ernie and Bert possessed the special power to clean at faster-than-light speed? Would you like me to discuss the state of your bunions?”

      “None of that will be necessary,” I say. These are all embarrassing matters, none more so than the Becky Goldstein incident.

      “Well, then,” I-60 says. “I think you owe me something of an apology.”

      This gets my dander up. “I owe you an apology?”

      “I take it you think otherwise.”

      “You ask for meals to be arranged at the finest restaurants in the city, order seven-dollar soft drinks, and don’t so much as lift a finger to pay the check.”

      “How ungrateful is this?” I-60 asks no one in particular. “Do you seriously think that I have come from thirty years in the future to mooch a few good meals off you? I am here for the gravest of reasons, to change the course of your life, so that you can be spared the pain that I have endured. Money is irrelevant. I would very much like to treat you to dinner, but it is simply not possible.”

      “Why is this again?”

      “I explained to you already. We are not allowed to carry much cash.”

      “And that is because?”

      “There were incidents, abuses. People traveled back in time to take advantage of sales or shop at outlet stores.”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ