The Seven Year Slip

I THOUGHT THAT AFTERNOON I could google Iwan, but I barely had a second to pee because an adult subscription book box decided to feature one of our celebrity memoirs alongside a bar of soap in the shape of an unmentionable, complete with a sucker on the back to stick it to the bathroom wall, and I spent my entire afternoon putting out that fire.

By the time six o’clock rolled around, Fiona had to drag me away from my computer before I sent another heated email to the book box company, absolutely about to sign it with Have the day you deserve. We walked together to the subway, since we were both heading uptown (she had an appointment, and Drew got a migraine halfway through the day, so she’d elected to go home early), and she sat down beside me on a bench as we waited for the subway. A man with an accordion and a drum set at his feet played a jazzy rendition of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” and a few feet away, a rat was nibbling on a crust of pizza.

God, I loved New York. Even the cliché bits.

Fiona said, not looking at me, “Something else happened this weekend, didn’t it? I can tell.”

“What? No. I just . . . I told you.”

“Yeah, you painted and you didn’t check your phone all weekend—two things that you never do.”

She had a point. I chewed on the inside of my lip, debating on whether to tell her. If I knew Fiona, I knew she wouldn’t stop asking until she found out, and she was incredibly perceptive. “Okay, so, don’t freak out,” I began, and took a deep breath, “but I think I met someone this weekend.”

That surprised her. She glanced up from her phone. “At the Monroe?”

“He is living in the building for the summer.” Not quite a lie. “He’s in the city for a job, and we just started talking and . . . he’s nice. Talking to him is nice.”

She blinked a few times. Resetting her brain. “I’m sorry, did you say you met someone? Of your own accord? Has the sky fallen?” she added, perplexed.

I snorted a laugh. “Oh, come on, I can meet people sometimes.”

“Yeah, when Drew and I force you.”

I rolled my eyes. The train pulled into the station, brakes squeaking, and we got up and made our way into the car.

“Have you kissed him? Did you spend the night?” Fiona asked, following me. I made for two empty seats, but a young man in a business suit swooped in before we could take them, and he spread his legs and started playing a game on his phone.

I glared at him.

“Tell me everything. Is he cute?” Fiona went on, oblivious.

I continued glaring at the man until he finally looked up, a snarl on his lips, and then saw the pregnant woman beside me. And the other passengers giving him judgmental looks. He shoved his phone into his pocket and closed his legs, and I guided Fiona down into the seat beside him.

“What does he look like?” she asked. “What’s his name?”

“Iwan,” I replied, holding on to the bar above her, “and we just had dinner together . . . all weekend.”

She fanned herself with her hands, blinking back fake tears. “Oh my god! My little Clementine is finally growing up! You might actually fall in love!”

I didn’t want to think about it. “Okay, that’s enough.”

“What if you two get married? What if he’s your soulmate?” She gasped, leaning toward me. “What’s his last name?”

“It’s—” I froze. The train jostled on. And I realized, then and there, that I didn’t know his last name. “Um . . .”

She stared at me. “You seriously spent the entire weekend with him and didn’t get his last name?”

Mr. Manspreader beside her smirked, and I shot him another glare. “I’ll get it tonight—oh, this is your stop,” I added.

She genuinely looked like she was about to skip her appointment to badger me some more, but then she decided against it and gathered up her purse. “You have to tell me everything tomorrow—including his name,” she said solemnly, but I neither promised nor denied I would as she exited and pointed at me from the platform and mouthed, “I mean it,” as the train pulled away.

I waved her goodbye, knowing there was no way to get out of it, and went to go sit in her spot—but the guy had already spread out again. I scowled and moved toward the door instead, and waited to exit at the Eighty-Sixth Street Station.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t get his last name.

Just a few days ago, if you’d told me that I’d meet a handsome stranger in my aunt’s apartment who’d become a not-so-strange friend (were we friends? or something else?), I wouldn’t have believed you. But now I was wondering what he would cook tonight for dinner, whether he’d gotten the dishwashing job, how his day was. Maybe I could spend weekends at the apartment over the summer learning about the birthmark on his clavicle and the scars on his fingers that kissed one too many knives.

And, maybe by the end of it, I could tell him the secret, that I did live in the future. And maybe he’d believe me.

Or—worse yet—I did end up telling him, and he didn’t believe me, and maybe that’s why he never came looking. Because I couldn’t ignore the seven years between us, the seven years since he’d met me, and where I was now. He never came looking.

At least not that I could remember.

The train pulled into my station, and I climbed out of the subway and got to the Monroe. Earl was at the front desk again, almost done with the James Patterson novel from this morning. He greeted me with a smile, like he always did, and I left for the elevator and rode it up to the fourth floor.

Iwan looked like he had a whimsical last name—something Welsh, maybe? Since Iwan was Welsh. Or was it a family name? And maybe his last name was boring to counteract it?

I pulled my keys out of my purse, trying to rein in my excitement.

I unlocked the door to B4 and opened the door quickly.

“How about let’s try my aunt’s fettuccine tonight?” I called into the apartment, kicking off my shoes by the door.

I stopped a few feet into the apartment. It was dark and silent.

The kind of silence that made my heart twist painfully. The kind I knew all too well in this place.

“Iwan?” I called, and fear mounted in my chest. Because it was the kind of silence that I remembered from just after Analea died. The kind of soulless, unlivable silence that made me want to run away as quickly as I could. The kind of silence that sat with me as I unpacked my boxes. As I put her things away in the closet. I took another step into the apartment. Then another. “. . . Iwan?” My voice was softer now. Mostly eaten by my own panic.

This was the kind of silence that was so loud it screamed.

When I rounded into the kitchen, the lights were out and the kitchen was clean, my box of dinnerware from my old apartment set beside the sink, open and halfway unpacked. There were coffee cups still on the drying rack, having never made it to their spots in the cabinets, the napkins in the peacock holder empty. In the living room, everything was orange-yellow with evening light—like a still life portrait, framing the space where a robin’s-egg blue chair no longer sat, its impressions still in the oriental rug.

No. No, no, no—

I took a step back, then another, hoping that maybe the apartment would realize its mistake and quickly correct it. But it didn’t. And then suddenly, I was running out the door.

I slammed it closed.

My hands were shaking as I unlocked it again and stepped inside.

Dark and silent—and present.

I closed it, and opened it again—and again.

On the fifth try, I just stood in the open doorway, and looked into the empty apartment where golden evening light streamed down into an apartment that was no longer lived in, and I knew that was it.

This—whatever this had been—was over.

No more conversations over cardboard pizzas or dancing to a dead woman’s violin song in the kitchen or kisses that tasted like lemon pies or—or—

The neighbor across the hall peeked out of her apartment. She was an older woman with thick black hair and glasses. She gave me a worried look. “Clementine, is everything okay?”

No, no, it wasn’t, but she wouldn’t understand. So I reeled myself in. Cobbled myself back together. I’d taught myself how to do it over the last few months, and I was very good at it. A mason excelling in the art of walled-off emotions. “Fine, thank you, Miss Avery,” I replied, surprised at how even my voice was. “Just coming home.”

She nodded, and ambled back inside.

I pressed my back against the door to B4 and breathed in, deep, and then breathed out again. My knees felt weak, my chest tight, as I sank down to the carpeted floor. I tried to tell myself that I knew this was going to happen, tucking all of the what-ifs in my head into a small box—all of the impossible weekends I’d made up, learning about the birthmark on his clavicle and the scars on his fingers that kissed one too many knives.

“It was a perfect weekend,” I whispered, keeping my doubt at bay. “Any longer and it would turn out bad. You’d find out that he listened to Nickelback or—or worse.”

One weekend was enough.

One memory was plenty.

It was.

A wave of grief rose in my chest. I wasn’t just going to accept that. I took out my phone and opened my browser, and there on the ancient, carpeted floor of the Monroe, I tried to find Iwan, where he was, where he could be. I searched every keyword I could think of—Culinary Institute of America + dishwasher + line cook, North Carolina, lemon pies, Iwan . . .

I scoured every link, every strange Facebook page, and I came up with . . .

Nothing.

It was as if he were a ghost, and I could only think that the worst had happened. That he was gone. That maybe, in fact, he was a ghost now, a memory on the far side of some graveyard. And even if he wasn’t, even if he was still alive, I was more certain than ever that I’d never see him again.

My aunt had warned me. Rule number one, always take your shoes off by the door. Rule number two, never fall in love.

I bit the inside of my cheek and concentrated on it, and told myself if I cried, then that would be it—I would know what love felt like, and this would be it. And I tried—I wanted to cry. I waited for the stinging in my eyes to turn into salty tears, but it never did. Because I didn’t cry over someone I barely knew. That would be silly, and Clementine West was not that.

She did not fall in love.

And she wouldn’t start now.

I sucked in a deep breath, steeled my bones, and forced myself back to my feet. It would be okay. It’d be fine. Keep moving forward, keep my eyes straight ahead. I formulated a plan. Made a mental to-do list. Nothing stayed—that was something I should have expected, something I should have remembered.

I was fine.

So I turned back to face the door to B4, unlocked it, and went inside the quiet, lonely apartment. I dropped my purse on the counter, changed clothes, and turned on the TV in the living room as I unpacked the rest of the kitchen box and stored it all away in its proper place.

And then I went to sleep in my bed in my aunt’s room, my bed frame creakier than hers, the curtains parted just enough to beam in a sliver of silver light from a moon 238,900 miles away. I shut the curtain and ignored it, like I should have from the beginning.