“Has it stopped?”
“Thank the Lord.”
“It’s residual pain. You were severely injured when your head went through that windshield.”
There was a splash of wine left. Ken drank it and put the empty glass out of reach. He felt hungry; he should have eaten an hour ago.
Now a strange thing happened. Zora was suddenly at the front door of the apartment. She opened it and took one step outside. Then she came back in and closed the door, saying, “The weatherman is crazy. It isn’t going to rain.”
Ken blinked. Zora was where she had been, tucked up on the sofa with her knees beneath her, printing letters in empty squares. But a few moments later, his wife broke her concentration. She got up and went to the door, opened it, and took one step outside. Then she came back in and closed the door. “The weatherman is crazy,” she said. “It isn’t going to rain.”
Ken said, “That’s incredible. A minute ago, I saw you do exactly that.”
“What?”
“While you were still sitting on the sofa. I saw you at the door, saying what you just said about rain. Then you got up and did it.”
“It happens.”
“I saw the future.”
“You had an episode of déjà vu. It’s not unusual. Like a crossed wire in your brain. What you’re seeing or hearing gets fed through a memory circuit, so it feels like a memory.”
“This was different,” Ken insisted. “I saw it happen. Then there was a pause. Then it happened.”
Zora observed her husband’s once-handsome face. It was not that the accident had left him looking horrible. But his eyelids now hung heavy. And one comer of his mouth drooped. The face that had caught her attention six years ago across the mall now looked stupid. Ken Rose still had all his marbles. But he looked as if he needed his address pinned to his jacket.
“Are you cracking up?” Zora asked.
“I’m all right.”
“That would be all I need. For you to go batty on me.”
Weeks went by before there was another episode. This time, Ken was alone. Zora was around the corner at the Alpha Beta market, working a shift at the checkout aisles. Her job five days a week brought in all the money. Before the accident, Ken earned his share driving a taxi for Beverly Hills Cab. He could no longer drive, his reflexes were slow. He had been speeding on wet pavement when he hit a light pole.
The Roses were now managing an apartment building. They paid zero rent, and the duties keeping the area tidy and handling minor maintenance jobs were within Ken’s capabilities.
Zora knew the owner, Al McGee, from the market. He lived in a big new building halfway up the Hollywood Hills. McGee always checked out at Zora’s machine. They had a low-key flirtation going. When his previous building manager quit, he offered the job to the sharp young cashier with the calculating eyes. He accepted the husband sight unseen.
“Give it a chance,” Zora had said when Ken was expressing negative feelings on first hearing about the apartment job. Then she added, “What else can you do?”
He had no choice. The taxi career was over. On interviews for minimum-wage jobs, his damaged face made a poor impression. Zora’s advice to him was, “Thank your lucky stars for Al McGee. I don’t know where we’d be without Al.”
There was one other source of money in an emergency. Ken could go and see his parents in Arcadia. But he hated to do that. His mother annoyed him by tucking a folded twenty-dollar bill into his shirt pocket even when he didn’t ask for anything. His father was retired from his job behind a betting window at Santa Anita racetrack.
Unlike many other track employees, Ken’s father never gambled. He referred to the people lined up at his window as “the fools and their money.”
Ken had no real quarrel with his parents. They were harmless, though boring. He could not admit to Zora what he really wanted. This was for the old folks to pass on so that he could inherit the property. Then he would be secure.
It was a Tuesday morning, the sky was clear. Ken spent a couple of hours sweeping leaves, picking up papers, policing the property. He liked this part of the job. You could see the results of your work.
At noon, he stowed rake and broom in the closet at the end of the garage beneath the building. Then he went inside, showered, and changed into fresh clothes. There was an individual chicken pie in the freezer. He popped it into the oven, then poured a tumbler of red wine and sat down to read the morning paper. He was hungry. It was nice to sip wine and smell the pie getting hot.
The pain between the eyes came rolling in. He waited for the spasm to pass. It did, and he experienced a focusing of his awareness. He opened his eyes and saw through the front window a cat emerging from beneath shrubbery by the steps. It launched itself into the air, going for a sparrow that had been pecking seeds.
The bird was gone in a flutter, leaving the cat to strut off its anger. Ken recognized the cat as an orange cowboy who lived in a house across the street. It sometimes came around and moaned in the night.
But now the animal was gone, the pavement clear. Ken’s heart began to pound. He peered at the shrubbery and saw the tips of the cat’s paws, in hiding. A sparrow fluttered down onto the pavement and began to peck. The cat crept forward, then pounced. The bird took off, the cat lashed its tail and walked away.
Zora came in at the end of her shift. Ken described the episode with cat and bird. Then he said, “This is not déjà vu. I am observing an event a short while before it happens. Time is like a river. Everything that happens is bound to happen. We aren’t able to see upstream before things get to us. But now I can. I have this glimpse of the river a minute or so before it arrives here. It’s the future, Zora! Then it comes by me a second time, as the present.”
“Well good for you, Ken.” She kicked off her work shoes and fell onto the couch. “It’s the immediate past that has me beat. I could use a beer.”
He went to the kitchen and brought back bottle and glass. She waited as he poured the beer, then took it from him. He knelt on the carpet beside her. “I’ve figured out how to use this,” Ken said. “Suppose we were in Vegas, watching a roulette wheel. I’d see the wheel spin and the ball drop into the winning number. Then we’re back to the present. I place a big bet on that number. The wheel spins, the number comes up, we take it to the bank!”
The beer tasted good. Her husband, for a change, was not boring. Zora smoothed his hair across his forehead so it covered most of the scar. He would never again look like the guy who approached her as she was leaving the candy shop at the mall. Her friend Nellie saw what was happening that day and tactfully withdrew. What would Nellie say now if she saw Ken? “Who’s that sleepy guy?”
“Even if you can do this,” Zora conceded, “how can you control it? It only happens once in a while, right? And you can’t predict when.”
“Yes I can. Both times I’ve been drinking red wine on an empty stomach. A few minutes later, it happens.” He drew her closer for a kiss. She turned her head and took it on the cheek. “Let’s go to Vegas. I know I can make this work.”
“Okay, let’s take a couple of days off.” Zora reached for the telephone. “I’ll call and clear it with Al.”
Al McGee drove them to the airport so they could leave Zora’s car at the building and not pay for parking at LAX. “Not many owners would do this for their manager,” he teased as they took their bags from the trunk.
“Not many owners have managers as nice as we are,” Zora said.
“You don’t have to walk us to our flight.” Ken took hold of both bags.
Al McGee was a tall, rangy, suntanned millionaire with pale eyes and shiny teeth. He hugged Zora and swung her in a circle, as if the action would justify their touching bodies. When they tottered to a standstill, the landlord said, “Why don’t you dump this loser and come live with me?” Then he put on an expression of mock-disappointment and let her slip from his grasp. This went to show that it was all a game.