“Do you have a device?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“A phone? A wristlet?
“I have a credit card.”
He nodded at this quaint, but apparently still functional, technology and pushed a button on the rear hatch, exposing a luggage compartment. I stowed my bag and climbed into the vehicle where, following the man’s instructions, I swiped my credit card and told the car where I wanted to go. The autocab signalled and rolled into traffic. At first, I was unnerved by the absence of a driver, but the vehicle inspired confidence, moving more smoothly than any human driver I’d ever encountered. I sat back and looked out the window. Other than this one futuristic change, the city was much as I remembered it. A few new housing developments had sprung up, and most of the larger franchises had been refaced, but the people on the streets were familiar: wealthy retirees and students, tourists and the homeless, all drawn to the coast by the temperate climate. Halfway through the ride, I felt like I’d been using an autocab my whole life, nearly drifting off in the quiet, climate-controlled cab.
At the hotel, I reluctantly stepped back into the world, feeling a bite in the air as I dodged a panhandler and carried my bag into the building. The autocab carried on without me. The lobby was empty. I followed the prominent self-check-in instructions at the front desk, taking my keycard from a slot and pausing at a kiosk beside the elevator to purchase the most basic-looking smartphone on display. It seemed important to have a device in this new world. I toyed with the phone in the elevator, well on my way to making it functional by the time I’d reached my room on the twenty-second floor. I let myself in and flopped onto one of the room’s two beds, waking the huge wall-embedded screen before spotting the mini-bar across the room. All the rules I’d been living by for the past decade were tumbling away. Soon a row of small empty bottles stood on the nightstand beside me and I’d immersed myself in a frenetic news cycle dominated by proxy wars and mass killings. Noting a mysterious steel box beside the mini-bar, I pivoted off the bed and pushed to my feet, swaying a little as I opened the box with the help of my new smartphone. Inside, I found a handful of sex toys available for purchase, notably a flashlight-shaped object with a rubberized vagina on one end. Attached to the device were clear instructions for how to synchronize it with the hotel television. With six ounces of hard alcohol in my system, it seemed like the thing to do. Ten minutes later, I was lying on the bed with two pillows under my head, staring at the huge screen in front of me. The device made a low humming noise as it stimulated me in time with the action. It didn’t take much imagination to erase the borders around the screen and immerse myself in the experience, with myself as the protagonist and a limber co-ed as my eager partner, but just when my pleasure began to intensify, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror across the room—old and exhausted, my cock (which felt slightly bruised) encased in a hard plastic shell. I quickly removed the device and threw it into the garbage, then, reconsidering, wrapped it in a towel and tucked it into my bag. After a long sobering shower, I turned out the lights and went over to the window in my cheap hotel robe. Large, distinct flakes drifted down from the overcast sky. Snow never stayed long on the coast, but on the rare occasions that it came, it fell thick and heavy. I doubted that I would be able to see Meredith’s house from there, but looked for it anyway, peering out at the sprawl of the city, isolating one small quadrant, one narrow band, one individual speck of light, which—I became increasingly certain—had been left on just for me. A lantern in a window.
The next morning, I found myself in an idling cab, staring out the window at Meredith’s house, her roof covered in two inches of new snow. The driver, a real person who’d briefly tried to make conversation before retreating into offended silence, twisted around to look at me with his elbow on the seat. “Thirty-two fifty,” he said flatly.
If I’d been in the autocab, I might have changed my mind and gone straight back to the hotel, but with him staring at me, I felt that I had no choice but to pay and get out of the car. Once he’d gone, I stood in the empty street, looking at the newish SUV in Meredith’s driveway. I approached the house slowly, making distinct footsteps in the snow. A pigeon nesting under the gable of a neighbour’s roof took to the air with a jackhammer beating of wings, and I came to a brief stop, waiting for someone to shout at me, to demand that I explain my presence. I grabbed the porch railing and climbed, my footfalls on the steps deafening. I touched the doorbell and heard a familiar chime inside. After a few seconds, the deadbolt clunked, and a dangerous swell of emotion rose up in me as the door swung open.
“Oh,” Meredith said, in a soft breathless voice.
She was wearing a style of shirt I’d never seen on her before, with a wide collar that flared in the opposite direction that you’d expect. This, more than any physical change, made me aware of the amount of time that had passed since I’d last seen her. “Hello, Meredith,” I said, barely holding back the tears. The surprise in her face gave way to concern.
“What are you doing here, Felix?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted.
She looked up and down the street. “Well, you’d better come in. It’s freezing.”
I followed her into the house, carefully wiping my shoes on the front mat and standing in the entry with my arms at my sides.
“You should have worn a coat,” she scolded. Her hands looked different, smaller somehow. She’d repainted in my absence and the furniture was mostly new, but I recognized my old easy chair against the far wall, piled high with papers. I brought my eyes back around in her direction, unable to keep them on her face for long. “Just make yourself at home,” she said, a hint of a tremor in her voice. “I’ll get some coffee. Do you still drink coffee?”
I nodded.
“Black?”
I nodded again, pleased that she remembered. She disappeared into the kitchen and I walked gingerly through the living room, as if the floor were on fire. An abstract painting hung on the wall opposite the couch—violent sweeps of colour slashing the canvas, like hard-angled rain. I glanced around for Christine’s ghost. A low rumble sounded in the kitchen and Meredith stepped back into the living room with two steaming cups. She handed one to me.
“This is quite the surprise,” she said, appearing calmer.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It’s just… unexpected. You’ve been getting my letters, then?”
“No,” I said. “Well, yes, but I haven’t read them.”
“I see.”
“It was… I just couldn’t.”
She waved a dismissive hand and sat on a chair a short distance from the couch. A silence fell between us.
“You look good,” I finally offered.
She received the compliment with a neutral smile. “How have you been, Felix?”
I couldn’t answer, bursting into a half-laugh, half-sob. She waited for me to compose myself, sympathetic but distant.
“Are you on medication?”
I shook my head.
“Do you mind if I ask why not?”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “As long as I’m alone, I find I can manage.”
“So, you live alone.”
“Yes.”
She nodded, seeming to approve. “I married a few years ago.”
“I see,” I said weakly.
“I mentioned him in my letters. He’s a good man. Not a deep thinker. But he has a big heart.”
“Is he…” I said, my voice rising in pitch, “here now?”
“Actually, he’s out of town on business. He’ll be back tonight.”
My eyes drifted around the room, finding no signs of a male presence. “What does he do? Your husband.”