“No way,” Tommy said, and took a drag. “I’m not going to do just what my parents want me to do. No way.” Something buzzed, and Tommy unclipped his pager from his belt. “It’s Sam, at the pay phone at school.”
“I’ll go back in a second. What’s up?”
“Is Lizzie coming? To your party?” Lizzie was a senior and not remotely Alice’s friend except for the one time she had gone with Alice and Sam to buy weed at a bodega that wasn’t really a bodega. Tommy and Lizzie would have sex at Alice’s birthday party, right in her bed, and after that, Tommy and Alice would never speak again, not until he walked into his office with his wife and his child.
“I have no idea,” Alice said. She stood up and dusted off her pants. “Let’s go back.”
25
Sam was standing in the phone booth at Belvedere, biting her fingernails. The phone booth was on the first floor, next to the teacher’s lounge at the back of the building, its wood well carved with decades of students’ initials and various profane messages. The little door was shut, but when Sam saw Alice through the scratched glass, she slid it open, and Alice squeezed in.
“What did pretty boy want? Just to have you admire him for a little while?”
“To know if Lizzie was coming to the party.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “He asked you that on your birthday? That is so irritating. I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I have other things to worry about right now.” Alice picked the phone up off the hook and stared at it. “How do I call information again?”
Sam showed her, and handed Alice the phone.
“Hi,” Alice said. “Can I have the number for Matryoshka Bar, please? In the subway station?” After she made the call and set the receiver back in its cradle, Alice turned to look at Sam, whose face was pale.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.” Alice felt her eyes starting to well up with tears.
“Fuck,” Sam said. “So you’re, like, old?”
“I’m not old,” Alice said. “I’m forty.”
Sam laughed. “I respect the fact that you think there’s a difference.”
“It’s just all relative. Like, my dad . . .” Alice wasn’t sure how to explain how young Leonard was, today, in 1996. But she had to admit that Sam was right—forty did suddenly sound ancient. Twenty-five sounded old, and forty was too much to comprehend. Twenty-five was a guy who might hit on you at a bar, and you’d be both flattered and creeped out. Forty was strictly parental. Authority figure. The president.
“Did he, like, Time Brothers you here?” Sam made a hand motion like a car zooming through space. In the credits, which were ridiculous, Barry and Tony drove in front of a background of asteroids, their rust-colored sedan bouncing over the stars.
“No,” Alice said. She pictured Leonard in his hospital bed. “Definitely not. But let’s go, I have an idea.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Just tell me something, okay? Just tell me one thing so I know you’re not making this up. You know I fucking hate pranks.”
Alice thought about it. Sam wouldn’t care about sports statistics or which famous person was actually gay. She would care too much about her own wedding, and that seemed dangerous, in terms of Back to the Future–ing things.
“The thing with your dad,” Alice finally said. They hadn’t talked about it until they were in college, miles away from each other, relying on the phone to stay in touch. Walt had always traveled a lot for his job, to DC and back, DC and back, and he’d often stay for a few nights. Lorraine had finally divorced him when Sam went to college, which was when they told her that he had another woman. A whole other life. Sam had been suspicious for years, but she’d never said a word to Alice. “It’s true. I’m really sorry. But it is what you think.”
Sam swallowed a mouthful of air. “Damn, man. I thought you were going to say, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger is president or something.”
Alice pulled Sam in for a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Sam cried into her shirt, but when she took a step back, she smiled.
“I fucking knew it,” she said. “Okay, let’s go.”
* * *
? ? ?
Matryoshka didn’t open until 5 p.m., but the guy on the phone said that if she was just looking for something she lost, she could come by whenever. Alice was sure that it had happened at the bar—dark, subterranean, and always a little bit sticky underfoot. If there was any secret pathway to the past and the future, it made sense that it would be underground, running alongside the 2/3 train tunnels, places where no one ever went if they didn’t want, in one way or another, to disappear.