“Christ,” Al said, in a husky, barely audible whisper. “Jesus Christ, Phil.—It’s okay if I call you Phil, right?”
“Phil, yes.”
“Look, Phil—” That same thin ghostly whisper, the voice of a man in shock. Rackman had never, in the old days, seen Al this badly shaken up. “The bookstore’s about to open. I’ve got to get to work. You come in, wait here, make yourself at home.” Then a little manic laugh: “You are at home, aren’t you? In a manner of speaking. So wait here. Rest. Relax. Smoke some of my dope, if you want. You probably know where I keep it. Meet me at Cody’s at one, and we can go out to lunch and talk about all this, okay? I want to know all about it. What year did you say you came from? 2011?”
“2008.”
“2008. Christ, this is so wild!—You’ll stay here, then?”
“And if my younger self walks in on me?”
“Don’t worry. You’re safe. He’s in Los Angeles this week.”
“Groovy,” Rackman said, wondering if anyone still said things like that. “Go on, then. Go to work. I’ll see you later.”
The two rooms, Al’s and his own just across the hall, were like museum exhibits: the posters for Fillmore West concerts, the antique stereo set and the stack of LP records, the tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottom pants scattered in the corner, the bong on the dresser, the macramé wall hangings, the musty aroma of last night’s incense. Rackman poked around, lost in dreamy nostalgia and at times close to tears as he looked at this artifact of that ancient era and that one, The Teachings of Don Juan, The White Album, The Whole Earth Catalog. His own copies. He still had the Castaneda book somewhere; he remembered the beer stain on the cover. He peered into the dresser drawer where Al kept his stash, scooped up a pinch of it in his fingers and sniffed it, smiled, put it back. It was years since he had smoked. Decades.
He ran his hand over his cheek. His stubble was starting to bother him. He hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning on Rackman body time. He knew there’d be a shaver in the bathroom, though—he didn’t like beards, had never worn one even in the Seventies—and, yes, there was his old Norelco three-headed job. He felt better with clean cheeks. Rackman stuffed the shaver into his inside jacket pocket, knowing he’d want it in the days ahead.
Then he found himself wondering whether he had parked in a tow-away zone. They had always been very tough about illegally parked cars in Berkeley. You could try to assassinate the president and get off with a six-month sentence, but God help you if you parked in a tow-away zone. And if they took his car away, he’d be in an even worse pickle than he already was. The car was his one link to the world he had left behind, his time capsule, his home, now, actually.
The car was still where he had left it. But he was afraid to leave it for long. It might slip away from him in the next time-shift. He got in, thinking to wait in it until it was time to meet Al for lunch. But although it was still just midmorning he felt drowsiness overcoming him, and almost instantly he dozed off. When he awakened he saw that it was dark outside. He must have slept the day away. The dashboard clock told him it was 1:15 p.m., but that was useless, meaningless. Probably it was early evening, too late for lunch with Al. Maybe they could have dinner instead.
On the way over to the bookstore, marveling every step of the way at the utter weirdness of everybody he passed in the streets, the strange beards, the flamboyant globes of hair, the gaudy clothing. Rackman began to see that it would be very embarrassing to tell Al that he had grown up to own a suburban automobile dealership. He had planned to become a legal advocate for important social causes, or perhaps a public defender, or an investigator of corporate malfeasance. Everybody had noble plans like that, back then. Going into the car business hadn’t been on anyone’s screen.
Then he saw that he didn’t have to tell Al anything about what he had come to do for a living. It was a long story and not one that Al was likely to find interesting. Al wouldn’t care that he had become a car dealer. Al was sufficiently blown away by the mere fact that his former roommate Phil Rackman had dropped in on him out of the future that morning.
He entered the bookstore and spotted Al over near the cash register. But when he waved he got only a blank stare in return.
“I’m sorry I missed our lunch date, Al. I guess I just nodded off. It’s been a pretty tiring day for me, you know.”
There was no trace of recognition on Al’s face.
“Sir? There must be some mistake.”
“Al Mortenson? Who lives on Dana Street?”
“I’m Al Mortenson, yes. I live in Bowles Hall, though.”
Bowles Hall was a campus dormitory. Undergraduates lived there. This Al hadn’t graduated yet.
This Al’s hair was different too, Rackman saw now. A tighter cut, more disciplined, more forehead showing. And his beard was much longer, cascading down over his chest, hiding the peace symbol. He might have had a haircut during the day but he couldn’t have grown four inches more of beard.
There was a stack of newspapers on the counter next to the register, the New York Times. Rackman flicked a glance at the top one. November 10, 1971.
I haven’t just slept away the afternoon, Rackman thought. I’ve slept away all of 1972. He and Al hadn’t rented the Dana Street place until after graduation, in June of ‘72.
Fumbling, trying to recover, always the nice helpful guy, Al said, “You aren’t Mr. Chesley, are you? Bud Chesley’s father?”
Bud Chesley had been a classmate of theirs, a jock, big, broad-shouldered. The main thing that Rackman remembered about him was that he had been one of about six men on campus who were in favor of the war in Vietnam. Rackman seemed to recall that in his senior year Al had roomed with Chesley in Bowles, before he and Al had known each other. “No,” Rackman said leadenly. “I’m not Mr. Chesley. I’m really sorry to have bothered you.”
So it was hopeless, then. He had suspected it all along, but now, feeling the past tugging at him as he hurried back to his car, it was certain. The slippage made any sort of human interaction lasting more than half an hour or so impossible to sustain. He struggled with it, trying to tug back, to hold fast against the sliding, hoping that perhaps he could root himself somehow in the present and then begin the climb forward again until he reached the place where he belonged. But he could feel the slippage continuing, not at any consistent rate but in sudden unpredictable bursts, and there was nothing he could do about it. There were times when he was completely unaware of it until it had happened and other times when he could see the seasons rocketing right by in front of his eyes.
Without any particular destination in mind Rackman returned to his car, wandered around Berkeley until he found himself heading down Ashby Avenue to the freeway, and drove back into San Francisco. The toll was only a quarter. Astonishing. The cars around him on the bridge all seemed like collector’s items, with yellow-and-black license plates, three digits, three letters. He wondered what a highway patrolman would say about his own plates, if he recognized them as California plates at all.
Halfway across the bridge Rackman turned the radio on, hoping the car might be able to pick up a news broadcast out of 2008, but no, no, when he got KCBS he heard the announcer talking about President Johnson, Secretary of State Rusk, Vietnam, Israel refusing to give back Jerusalem after the recent war with the Arab countries, Dr. Martin Luther King calling for calm following a night of racial strife in Hartford, Connecticut. It was hard to remember some of the history exactly, but Rackman knew that Dr. King had been assassinated in 1968, so he figured that just in the course of crossing the bridge he probably had slid back into 1967 or even 1966. He had been in high school then. All the sweaty anguish of that whole lunatic era came swimming back into his mind, the Robert Kennedy assassination too, the body counts on the nightly news, Malcolm X, peace marches, the strident 1968 political convention in Chicago, the race riots, Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Mao Tse-tung, spacemen in orbit around the moon, Lady Bird Johnson, Cassius Clay. Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? The noise, the hard-edged excitement, the daily anxiety. It felt like the Pleistocene to him now. But he had driven right into the thick of it.