An Ocean of Minutes Read online

  “No, to here. To this year.”

  “I don’t got time for games! I gotta be in Baytown! All you have to do is go in there”—he pointed out the window to the containers—“and ride an exercise bike.”

  “No, you’ve made a mistake.” She wouldn’t be dismissed like the night before. “I’m not supposed to be here.” But where was here? It was the first Saturday in September, the sun had already begun its climb up the sky, and she didn’t even know where she was. “Where are we?”

  “I can’t make small talk with you! Let go my door!” He pulled the lever to shut the door.

  She threw everything in the door’s gliding track: foot, elbow, palm. The rubber edge crunched down. “I have to get out of here. I have to be somewhere else!” She was shouting. Anyone who knew her would be shocked; she’d been pushed past the point, they’d better heed. But this driver didn’t care. She had to think of something else.

  “I’m O-1,” she claimed. “I have special, important skills. I don’t belong here.” Both yesterday and many years ago, in the great hall with the radiation jackets, she had not been like the others, and everyone accepted that she belonged somewhere else. Why couldn’t he see it? “Look at me. I’m not like them!” She began to cry, out of shame that she had said such a thing, and out of fear that she had to.

  “What do you mean, you’re O-1? How can you be O-1? Bull-shit.”

  “But I am,” she said, though she didn’t have any papers to back it up. What had last night’s driver told her? “You picked me up from O-1 lodging.”

  “No I didn’t,” he said.

  But now he was flicking through his clipboard, folding and unfolding a map.

  “Oh, crud. I went to the wrong goddamn building. Oh, fuck.” His face crumpled. “I can’t lose this job. I’m supposed to deliver eighty. If you don’t ride that bike, I’ll only have seventy-nine. I’ll be out on my ass. We just had a baby and we’ll be kicked out of housing. Oh, fuck.”

  “I can’t. I have to get somewhere. If I’m not there in time—”

  He started the bus. But she wouldn’t let go of the door and he was beginning to drag her. He leaned out of his seat and raised his fist, and she tried to duck, but she was trapped in the door. Then he stopped. He put the bus in park and put his head on the steering wheel.

  “Where do you need to go? If you let go, I promise I’ll come back and take you later.”

  “The Flagship Hotel, on Twenty-Fifth Street, in Galveston.”

  “It’s 0815 now. I’ve got the Baytown run, but I’ll come back for you at 1300 hours. I promise.”

  “I can’t wait,” Polly said. “You have to take me back now.”

  “Please.” He put his hand in his pocket. “I carry her little sock.” He laid a small white thing in his palm and held it out for Polly to see. It was grayed and grubby from use, making it even more forlorn and sweet. Abruptly, even after he had taken her miles away, even after he had tried to strike her, her adversary became like her: parted from. Her perspective toppled, and so did her unyielding. Maybe one p.m. wouldn’t be too late.

  “What did you say the people are doing here?”

  “Pedal power.” He flung out a hand, gesturing to the whole resort compound. “The air-conditioning runs on clean energy from pedal power, powered by people like you. You get exercise and healthy living, the vacationers get lights and A/C.” Polly understood all the words he said, but they didn’t make sense together. “You’re new, right? Long story short, we sold the oil fields. Now we get our energy elsehow.” He looked at his watch. “Go to container one-five-four-six, one-five-four-five, or one-five-four-three and take the empty bike—there’ll only be one. Just work fast, so when I pick you up, it looks like you worked the whole day. Be back at 1300 hours. I promise.”

  There were at least twenty shipping containers, lined up so precisely that at first she saw only one. They were numbered with spray paint, the fourth labeled 1546. Inside, exercise bikes were planted three across and ten deep. Everyone was already hard at work. It smelled like an intestine. No one looked Polly’s way. The floor was intricately webbed with cables that ran from the bikes and up the wall, where they connected to a rack of car batteries the length of the container. Some of the bikes were sleek and new; some were regular street bikes jammed into the network of cabling. The only vacant one, at the back, was an amalgam of salvaged parts glued together. When she climbed on, the bike rocked in its moorings. There were three army-regulation tin bottles slung from the right handlebar and a box cobwebbed to the left. When she pedaled, green numbers appeared on the box’s face.

  There were long, clawed slits in the ceiling, presumably for air, but too narrow for sun. No one talked. Two fans wheezed, far at the front. The man ahead of her was wearing orange sweatpants, pilled and printed with white loops of sweat salt.

  Panic came in waves, like cramps. Why had she agreed to this? That driver was never coming back. How would she find a way back to the Flagship?

  But around her the others cycled in that grim-faced, customary workplace silence. If they had been wailing or protesting, it would have been different. But they weren’t, and so they made this normal. You did not have to cycle fast to make the green numbers change. She didn’t know what they were counting, but the whirring and the pumping began to lull her. The driver would surely return, he couldn’t have made up his baby, people didn’t lie about things like that. The cycle farm seemed inhumane only because she was being forced to take part; otherwise she might think it quite clever. By evening she would be with Frank.

  When Polly took a drink from one of the bottles, she expected the flat taste of water, but the liquid inside was warm and tinny, like blood. She told herself not to be such a princess and gulped it down. By the time the counter reached 200—minutes, miles, or amperes, she didn’t know—she needed a bathroom. But she was afraid to leave in case her ride returned. There were no clocks, and no one appeared to be wearing a wristwatch. Her best guess was that it was noon. Only an hour to go. She’d go to the bathroom when the driver came back.

  She tried every trick she could to keep herself distracted—counting the rotations of her pedals, singing the alphabet backwards under her breath, replaying The Black Stallion in her head—but eventually she could no longer endure the heaviness in her bladder. She leaned as far forward as she could and whispered, “Excuse me,” to the man in orange pants, but he couldn’t hear over the whizz of the bikes. She tried again. A woman in the next aisle frowned at her. Polly was lancing the silence that kept them afloat.

  “Please,” she said to the woman. “Sorry, but do you know the time?”

  The woman pointed over her shoulder. At first Polly thought she was signaling to Polly to keep her eyes to herself, but then she turned and saw a clock right above her head.

  1330. The driver wasn’t coming. She’d been so brainless. She’d have to find a way to the Flagship herself. The bike wobbled as it released her weight.

  When she opened the back door, she stepped straight into shrubbery. The heat rose, viscous and deadly. Her coveralls were stifling, but at last she felt the release of taking action. First she had to find a bathroom. She could hear the sound of children laughing and the shriek of a swing set. Wind chimes tinkled. But as she walked, she found only container after container. She reached the final one before a wall of hedge. A plaque said, 70% of the air-conditioning in Gulf Pearl Vacation Homes comes from pedal power, provided by the independent energy contractors in centers like these! Our eco-mmitment in action!

  The children’s laughter got louder. The playground must be on the other side of the hedge; there’d be a bathroom close by. Polly tugged at the hedge. Her fingers hit plastic, a black box. A speaker playing a recording of children’s laughter, swings, and wind chimes.

  She could think of no healthy reason for the recording. She wanted to leave and never come back, but her bladder was ready to burst. Pale purple stepping-stones led to an enormous gazebo, but no toilet. Instead, a set of
ten deck chairs sat in a circle, each occupied by a naked man or woman wearing a bell jar on their head. The glass distorted their features. They swiveled their Martian heads to gaze at her. Their bodies glistened with oil, like Christmas hams.

  Polly staggered away. In traveling, she’d expected what she was used to, or its opposite. Once, she’d seen a history textbook drawing of what ancient explorers predicted they’d see in uncharted lands: people with eyes in their feet, people who walked on their hands. But this was not an upside-down 1981. It was a totally alien sign system, with no cipher for translation.

  She would just pee in the bushes. But she had to take off her coveralls completely. She tried to cover her body with her arms and, so distracted, she peed on her socks.

  She followed the blacktop until she reached the main road. She fell back, to the side, whenever anyone passed, in golf carts, in trishaws, or dragging wagons of equipment on foot. She could make no peace with any of her choices. Every step, she felt sure she’d made the wrong decision. It was too far; she’d never make it in time. But she could not turn around and go back to that indifference. The horizon was flat and endless, brown like teeth. A trishaw passed, carrying an old man in a straw hat who was scanning the horizon as if on safari.

  It was long past four when she reached the checkpoint. She’d done nothing wrong, but when a patrolman looked her way, she hid in the roadside growth. Exhaustion, thick and gluey, overcame her. Insects made a constant, high-pitched whine, like an incessant request never granted. She patted her pockets for the tomato from the morning bus ride. Maybe vitamins would help. But it was gone; she’d lost it at some point without knowing. She rooted around in her pockets, but her fingers only captured bits of thread. The tomato had been an act of kindness that she’d returned with disdain. She blinked and exhaled and blinked, trying to disperse her remorse.

  But there was nothing to stop her from going on through the brushland and emerging way down the road, where the patrolmen couldn’t see. Hope that she might yet make it before the end of Saturday shimmered. She still had a couple of hours.

  She wriggled forward, watching for bent grasses like tripwires. Then the ground gave way, turning into a puddle. She could smell rotting food. Her feet sunk into a muck of plant and animal liquefied by the Texas sun. She could not get her feet free. They were pinned under by roots or monsters. Terror struck. She was not going to make it by nightfall. She might not even make it back to her lodging. There was nothing to hang on to, to yank herself free, but leaves that tore like tissue. She sat down so her seat was in the wet too, but this was the only way to get enough leverage to finally pull herself clear. Gulping and sobbing, she crashed back to the road, almost getting run over by a trishaw.

  Someone said her name. The dream of finding Frank in less than one day became actual. He was calling her from the trishaw, holding out his hand.

  But it wasn’t Frank. It was the old man in the straw hat.

  “Polly Nader? Are you Polly Nader? You must come with me.”

  The old man was tall and skinny, with tufty silver hair like moss. He had a pile of papers in his lap, including a photo of her.

  “Thank God! I thought they’d botched it and sent you to 2010 or something and I was going to have to start all over again. I’m Henry Baird. I’m your boss.”

  She was slow to respond, and his smile dissolved.

  “I thought I specified English-speaking.” He frowned. “English? ¿Inglés?”

  But when she answered nervously, his smile repaired itself.

  “I thought we were going to have a communication problem. My God, I’ve been calling around all day and then I finally got in touch with your superintendent. Two buses arrived at the same time and you must have got on the wrong one. I went all the way to that, whatever-it-is place, calling your name in all those cycle rooms, giving you up for a runaway, and then you’re here, in the bushes. Did you get lost?”

  “Yes.” She was overcome by her disappointment that he was not Frank, and unable to say more.

  “Well, don’t get lost again or I’ll have to dock your hours. You’ve already missed all of today. What happened? Why are you all wet?”

  Mist by mist, her dream dissolved. She would not see Frank today. She put her hand on her waist and squeezed her side to hold herself together. There were many more Saturdays to go.

  “When I realized I was in the wrong place,” she said to the old man, “I thought I’d walk back, to see if I could still catch the orientation. I misjudged the distance.”

  “Well, I’ll take you back to your lodging. Don’t want you getting lost again.”

  Polly had never traveled by trishaw. It looked safe enough, everything welded together, but it was a grisly thing to be traveling by human. Baird appeared unbothered, because he had an expansive, lordly way of speaking that obscured how tense he was, until he stopped talking. Then he vibrated with nerves, the vibrations moving him through the world a half second faster than everyone else. He convinced the trishaw driver not to charge for waiting time; he insisted no energy was expended while the driver was waiting, in fact he’d received the chance to recharge, as if Baird had supplied him with an extra can of oil. Baird had the might of someone who couldn’t manage not getting his way. Like so many before, the heat-scoured driver gave in, because it was easier.

  After this was accomplished, Polly said, “Excuse me, sir. What sort of work am I doing for you?”

  “Furniture restoration! Correct? Don’t tell me . . .” He started to mutter.

  “Correct, furniture restoration,” she said, and he relaxed.

  It was the first positive proof she’d received, one thing going according to plan, and she took it as a sign that eventually everything else would too. The numbness of battle left her body, and sensation returned: shoelaces cinched around her ankles, wind rustle, an earth that held her.

  “I’ve been waiting months. Lucky you volunteered for travel, or it would have been me teaching someone the trade from scratch. What a headache that would be. But the process of requisitioning you—a nightmare! First, all the paperwork, then they have to send it to the relay point—”

  “Relay point?”

  “The machine can only go a max of twelve years in one jump. You don’t recall your layover? Ha. Really a very stupid system, so vulnerable to error, because they have to send it back twelve years and then the people there send it the rest of the way and some numbskull at the relay was spaced out when my order came through, and the request changed from September 1998 to September 1993. Can you imagine?”

  “What?” she said, but softly, really to herself, and he kept going.

  “You can picture my face when I saw the figures, the dates, shimmer and change in the catalogue—that eight turning into a three. I had a fit! I bitched and I moaned and they fixed it, with something like only seconds to spare, in the buffer time. What if I hadn’t been there? I said, ‘No, it has to be 1998.’ ”

  Bile shot up her throat like someone had stepped on her stomach. She launched herself to the edge of the bench and evacuated her insides over the side. Sick splattered on the wheel.

  “Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” Baird banged on the coupling between the bicycle and the carriage, but the driver turned only long enough to say, “Sorry, can’t stop.” Baird squeezed himself into the farthest corner of the bench, and once there, tossed a handkerchief at her.

  She wiped her face. “I was expecting to land in 1993, I was meant to meet someone.”

  “The hard truth is that whomever you made arrangements with is probably dead.” He crossed his arms. “Sorry.”

  He went silent, but not for long. They reached a string of construction sites, and he burst out, “I bet you don’t even know what we’re doing here,” as if they were in the middle of a discussion. “We’re creating a vacation belt. The buckle is here, in Galveston. We’re already attracting hundreds of vacationers from Japan, Norway, the United States.”

  “But I heard last night the pandem
ic wiped out ninety-three percent of America.”

  “So?”

  “How are there vacationers from the United States?”

  “They’re from the United States. We’re in America.”

  She started to think he was a bit crazy.

  “Their economy is thriving. How could we get some for us? We have the time machine, a stream of cheap and willing workers spewing forth. We sell rebuilding services to any country that needs it—Germany, Venezuela. But also: Galveston as the new Acapulco. We have workers to build resorts, and workers to work in them. Things have restabilized in the countries able to maintain quarantine. They’re stabilizing elsewhere too, in places that are now rebirthing. If everyone is back to work, then everyone needs a place to vacation.”

  “Which countries kept quarantine?”

  “I hate that question. It makes me think of where I should have been.” He sighed. “England, Iceland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Hawaii. Islands. Our friends in the North.”

  Did he mean Canada? “How long did the pandemic last?” Where was Frank in all of this?

  “Forever.”

  “Where do the building materials come from? For the resorts.”

  “The workers manufacture them.”

  Polly stored all these details for review at some later date, when she’d have time to make sense of this vicious world.

  “Health tourism,” Baird was saying. “All-natural everything. Very big. Therapeutics are the biggest fad since the pandemic.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Connecticut.”

  “No, I mean, when are you from? When did you leave from?”

  “When?” He laughed. “I’m not a Journeyman. My word. Why? Do I look like a Journeyman?” His face puckered with offense.

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  “I’m an American. I’m not a Journeyman. I don’t look like a Journeyman.”

  “You don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Well.” He tugged at the bib of his overalls like it was a waistcoat. Silence crackled between them. She had exposed her ignorance. She vowed to never again speak before screening her words first, until she cracked the etiquette of this place. She was so flustered she didn’t think to wonder why Americans and Journeymen were opposites, instead of counterparts.