!Click Song by John A. Williams

Author:John A. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504033046
Publisher: Open Road Media

7

Glenn was leaving.

We stood on the corner trying to hail a cab to La Guardia. His leather coattails flapped in the stiff December wind. Glenn seemed very tall and strong, standing there. And he was certainly far older in many ways than I had been at eighteen. For a moment I envied him that.

“Standing here,” he said without preface, “just standing here, Dad, you know we might be just a couple of rocks at the bottom of an ocean in someone else’s universe.” He smiled.

“What?”

“Or we might be some cacti in a desert through which some guy’s walking right now, this second.”

I studied him carefully. “Oh. Is that Planck with some stretching? Quantum theory, multiple worlds?”

“Yeah. I read about it.” He took a deep breath. We were still looking up and down the street for a cab that was unoccupied. “I thought about us,” he said. “You and your world—”

“Which includes you.”

“—Allis’, the baby’s, mine, Mom’s—”

I moved directly in front of him. “But according to Planck, isn’t it possible that each world has entirely different properties?”

He said, “Exactly.”

“Not exactly. We share the same properties—”

“Say, what?”

I laughed, remembering that when he was younger he’d mimicked Cosby. “We share the same properties, kiddo, what we have of the world, such as it is, mistakes, little angers. We’re in the same world, okay? You’re not abandoned. Okay?”

The cab was shooting south on Central Park West, a yellow blur. The driver saw us, hit the brakes and banked into a U-turn. We ran across the street to the car. “I hear you,” Glenn said, getting in. “But Yellow Springs really is another world.”

“If you say so. Take care.”

“S’long,” he said.

Other worlds, another world. The kid. How was she? He? Was Monica still out there? How many guys has she had in nine years? Say five a day for nine years: 14,600 guys. How’s she / he taking that? Is she still out there? Even if you’ve got your kid relatively close, look what happens. Crap. No, shit. What’s Barcelona like now? Franco’s middle class he’s building? That must be some world.

(“Fine-looking boy you got there, Mr. Douglass.”)

Forget it. Let him / her go. Tough, like Monica. Will survive. Another world. Another language. Another culture. What’s her / his name? God. Did he / she even live? Have I created a world which he / she in fact doesn’t inhabit, having been flushed down a toilet or buried under a rock in some park? No. Must be alive. Know there’s life a full nine years grown.

Julio was holding open the elevator door. He regarded me with something like concern on his face.

“Your floor, Mr. Douglass. I was sayin’, you’ve got a fine boy there. The big one.”

“Uh, yeah.” I started to add “Thanks,” but Glenn and the way he was was mostly accident, perhaps even an illusion. Should I say thanks for something I didn’t do?

I said “Thanks” as I got off.

Two weeks later I was still thinking about other worlds from the fiftieth floor of the Passages building.

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