Year's Best SF 17

Judy roams Bleecker and St. Mark’s Place, until she claims a small victory: She realizes that if she goes into this one little subterranean bar, she’ll run into a cute guy she hasn’t seen since high school, and they’ll have a conversation in which he confesses that he always had a crush on her back then. Because Doug’s not there, he’s not able to tell her whether she goes into that bar or not. She does, and she’s late getting back to their hotel, even though she and cute high-school guy don’t do anything but talk.

Doug makes an effort to be nice the rest of the weekend, even though he knows it won’t do him any good, except that Judy holds hands with him on the train back to Providence and Boston.

And then Doug mentions, in passing, that he’ll see Judy around, after they break up—including two meetings a decade from now, and one time a full 15 years hence, and he knows some stuff. He starts to say more, but Judy runs to the dining car, covering her ears.

When the train reaches Doug’s stop and he’s gathering up his stuff, Judy touches his shoulder. “Listen, I don’t know if you and I actually do meet up in a decade, it’s a blur to me right now. But I don’t want to hear whatever you think you know. Okay?” Doug nods.

When the fight over whether Doug should meet Judy’s parents arrives, it’s sort of a meta-fight. Judy doesn’t see why Doug should do the big parental visit, since Judy and Doug are scheduled to break up in ten weeks. Doug just wants to meet them because he wants to meet them—maybe because his own parents are dead. And he’s curious about these people who are aware that their daughter can see the future(s). They compromise, as expected: Doug meets Judy’s parents over lunch when they visit, and he’s on his best behavior.

They take a ferry out to sea, toward Block Island. The air is too cold and they feel seasick and the sun blinds them, and it’s one of the greatest days of their lives. They huddle together on deck and when they can see past the glare and the sea spray and they’re not almost hurling, they see the glimmer of the ocean, streaks of white and blue and yellow in different places, as the light and wind affect it. The ocean feels utterly forgiving, like you can dump almost anything into the ocean’s body and it will still love us, and Judy and Doug cling to each other like children in a storm cellar and watch the waves. Then they go to Newport and eat amazing lobster. For a few days before and a few days after this trip, they are all aglow and neither of them can do any wrong.

A week or so after the boat thing, they hold hands in bed, nestling like they could almost start having sex at any moment. Judy looks in Doug’s naked eyes (his glasses are on the nightstand) and says, “Let’s just jump off the train now, okay? Let’s not do any of the rest of it, let’s just be good to each other forever. Why not? We could.”

“Why would you want that?” Doug drawls like he’s half asleep. “You’re the one who’s going to get the life she wants. I’m the one who’ll be left like wreckage.” Judy rolls over and pretends to sleep.

The Conversation achieves mythical status long before it arrives. Certain aspects of the Conversation are hazy in advance, for both Doug and Judy, because of that thing where you can’t understand something until you understand it.

The day of the Conversation, Judy wakes from a nightmare, shivering with the covers cast aside, and Doug’s already out of bed. “It’s today,” he says, and then he leaves without saying anything else to Judy, or anything at all to Marva, who’s still pissed at him. Judy keeps almost going back to bed, but somehow she winds up dressed, with a toaster pop in her hand, marching towards the door. Marva starts to say something, then shrugs.

Doug and Judy meet up for dinner at Punjabi Dhaba in Inman Square, scooping red-hot eggplant and bright chutney off of metal prison trays while Bollywood movies blare overhead and just outside of their line of vision.

The Conversation starts with them talking past each other. Judy says, “Lately I can’t remember anything past the next month.” Doug says, “I keep trying to see what happens after I die.” Judy says, “Normally I can remember years in advance, even decades. But I’m blocked.” She shudders. Doug says, “If I could just have an impression, an afterimage, of what happens when I’m gone. It would help a lot.”

Judy finally hears what Doug’s been saying. “Oh Jesus, not this. Nobody can see past death. It’s impossible.”

“So’s seeing the future.” Doug cracks his somosa in half with a fork, and offers the chunky side to Judy.

“You can’t remember anything past when your brain ceases to exist. Because there are no physical memories to access. Your brain is a storage medium.”

“But who knows what we’re accessing? It could be something outside our own brains.”