Somehow or other all that was ever left over was bread for the next day. Since the fire had been going good and hot all that time, the chimney tank water would be warm, and after doing the dishes, we’d use about half of it to run a hot tub, where we’d get a little drunk and silly, with some jazz record or other from the 1930s playing on the old record player in the place. After a while we’d start kissing, leading up to making love. The bathwater would get drained into the toilet reserve, and we’d towel off, go to bed, and fall asleep at once.
The next morning we would do it all again. Every so often we might, during a long walk, or while doing dishes, or even lying for a moment holding each other in the dark, have a little talk about how strangely alike all the days were, but it was never particularly serious; we could always recall just enough difference not to be alarmed.
Then one day I remembered to ask Jeff, as he was having the second half of his second sandwich, whether he’d like to stay for a glass of wine.
“That’s a very odd idea. I’ll be lucky to make it back to town by dinnertime as it is. I have to ride most of the morning to get out here, and then there’s always some mail to pick up on the road back in.”
“Which way is town?” I asked. “This is going to sound stupid but I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“Oh, well,” he said, “I’m not sure I do, either. It’s sort of as if the bicycle does. Just watch the way I go when I leave—and go the other way if you have to go into town, because the way I come out in the morning is much shorter than the way I go back in the afternoon.”
“I see. Well, then, imagine you’re leaving right now; which way do you turn onto the road?”
“Are you facing me or following me?”
“Following, I suppose.”
“Then the opposite way from the way I turn if you’re facing me.”
“Are you sure you haven’t already been at that wine?”
Conversation lapsed, and once again, as always, he said it was time for him to go. Paula came back out of the kitchen with three glasses of wine and said, “Can’t you just have one for us? It’ll warm you up for the long ride, won’t take but a minute, and you can’t get drunk on one glass of wine.”
He shrugged, laughed, and agreed. He and I went out on the porch to drink our wine, accepting a mock salute from Paula’s raised glass on the way. I was delighted to see that we were getting some sun; for the first time I could remember I was seeing the long line of sand hills to the west of us, and I could tell that it was the west. I wondered why I had such vivid images of the sun setting over the sea, but perhaps I had seen that somewhere else, on some other coast at some other time. I stretched, sipped the wine, thought of something that I couldn’t manage to make myself speak, and said, “I have a thought.”
“That must be what the company pays you for,” Jeff said. “All the company ever sends you is the mail and groceries, and all that ever leaves is mail. So it has to be your thoughts they pay you for.”
“I—” I scratched my head. “I’m not really aware of getting paid.”
“Well, then, maybe the ideas are what the company doesn’t pay you for. Anyway it seems to be your work, whether you’re getting paid for it or not.” He put a strange emphasis on “work” that I didn’t catch the significance of.
“Guess that’s true. But I don’t think most people have all that much trouble identifying what their work is. In fact that seems to be one of the few things that people tend to agree on.” I finished my wine and set it down on the railing.
Jeff was nowhere to be seen. I ran out onto the road and looked for him, both ways, but there was no one there. After a long moment of puzzlement, I went back into the house to tell Paula. On my way through the door, Jeff brushed by me. “See you later,” he said.
Intent on telling Paula, I just said, “Sure, tomorrow,” and had walked right on into the kitchen before I realized; when I did, I said, “I think I just saw Jeff leave the house twice.”
Paula’s grin was full of mischief. “Was that before or after he went to the bathroom?” she asked.
“What?”
“While you were talking outside—just as you started to talk, because I remember you staring off at that little patch of sun—he suddenly turned around and darted into the bathroom. You didn’t notice he was gone. Then when you did notice, you ran out into the road. Just as you were coming back, he came out of the bathroom and the two of you passed in the doorway. Then he went on his way and you came in here to tell me he had left twice.”
I laughed with something that was very nearly relief, and said, “Well, I’m not so crazy as I thought. But—shit!”
I ran out to see which way he went on the road, but of course by now the thick fog was rolling in and the temperature was falling. He was gone once again, and once again I had no idea which direction town was.
“Cheer up, darling,” Paula said, brightly, sitting on the porch. “Remember that either way on the road eventually leads to town. In a crisis you might pick the longer way by accident but you’d still get there.”
“I just wonder what keeps defeating us in trying to learn that simple piece of information. And how Jeff knows to play along with it.”
“It’s not that urgent to know how to get to town,” Paula said, “and if it’s really important you will eventually find a way to find out. But it’s not like anything ever happens, much. Each day is nearly identical to the others, and so far there’s been no emergency in any of them.”
“But it could happen in the future.”
She finished her wine, in a few slow, thoughtful sips. “I suppose. Well, I’ll watch too, next time.” She took the package Jeff had delivered that morning from the armchair by the front door, where we always left it until we were ready to begin work. Paula opened it to read the instructions from ConTech for the day. “Well, let’s see. Today’s been an unusual day; will we get unusual directions to match?”
She looked at it and said, “Nope. Except it’s a noun this time. ‘Report on all synonyms, across as many languages as possible, for FINITY.’ ” We went upstairs to begin work.
As I was pulling down the Russian-English dictionary, a thought struck me. “Maybe there’s a way to find out without watching.”
“What?”
“I said, maybe there’s a way to find out without watching. To find out which way he goes on the road, left or right.”
“Who?”
“Jeff!”
“Are we back to that silly question?”
“I don’t think it’s silly.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be working?”
“Oh, all right.” I went back to what I was doing, and opened the dictionary to “finity.” I copied down the Cyrillic—I couldn’t pronounce it off the top of my head, and would have to figure it out later—when the phone rang.