Buying Time

The small three line ad read: "Need more time in your life? We can help! Send $25.00 to: 125 Darklend Court, Hermitage, AK 99---."

Marie had felt pressed from all sides the day she mailed off her check. (She had told herself that she really should have paid her phone bill with the money.) But here she was when she really needed to be in three places at once. Her mother was lying unconscious in Memorial Hospital, her dog badly needed a bath and brush, her sister's ENTIRE family was coming to visit for the ENTIRETY of next week. On top of it all, she was late with her short story installment - her writing career was on the line. So she had leapt off in a completely new direction, as usual, and answered what was probably a dubious ad.

Now at the Post Office she examined the small package she had received from the nether regions of Alaska. She hurried home. Her still blank computer screen beamed grayly at her and the phone machine was blinking. (No doubt her sister.)

Hastily she opened the box. The small object was black metal. It looked like a lumpy phone jack hookup. There was also a single half sheet of paper.

"Congratulations! You have finally taken hold of your life! Simply plug the black box into your phone jack and plug your phone into the box. Then call our confidential 800 number. That's all! Good luck in the future! (Or past, or present...)"

Marie got down on all fours and crawled under her coffee table, bumping it as she did so. The pile of magazines slid fluidly onto the floor. In moments she had the box in the jack and the phone cord in the box. She crawled out and looked at the number and dialed.

It rang six times before: "If you would like to go to the future, press one. If you would like to go to the past, press two. If you would like to make time stand still, press three."

Marie held her breath a moment then extended a shakey finger toward the keypad on her phone.

She pulled hand back to her chest and thought a moment. Then, without much hesitation, Marie directed her pointer finger to the key labeled "3." She figured it would be best to stay in today as a first timer. She pushed in the key and the typical tone rang out in her ear. She looked around the small cluttered room. Everything seemed to be the same. The computer was still blank, the sun was still shining, and the clock was still tick--- the clock! The skinny second hand wasn’t moving as it was moments ago. The time was 1:37 p.m. and was going to stay that way. She had so many things to do, and for once, so much time to do it in!

She opened the large windows of her living room to the afternoon sun and expected a smooth breeze to roll in. No air filtered itself through her open windows; a fan would have to do the job. She waltzed over to her stereo and put in her "Reggae on the River" CD. Frankie Paul blared out of the speakers as she danced around the room, picking things up and restoring them to their correct home. What seemed to be 6 or 7 hours passed by, yet the sun remained high in the sky, shining light upon Marie’s endless day. She leaned out an open window and took in the clean summer air, then turned to look at her spotless home. It smelled of pine-sol and the air tasted fresh.

Marie crossed the room to her clean desk and pulled out her notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil. She wrote fluently with more freedom then she’d ever experienced. Suddenly, Marie realized something incredible. With her new investment she could travel through time and write about everything she saw. That would certainly entertain her writing circle! Where to go first... she picked up the receiver, dialed the number, heard the same recording, and extended her arm toward the keypad on her phone.

"Wait a minute." Marie reviewed the words of the recording in her head. "They changed the 3rd option this time."

She hung up and redialed the "800" number. Sure enough, now if option 3 were selected again, time would return to normal and presumably the second hand on her clock would start moving again. But she was ready to go directly to option 1, to the future.

Marie pressed the 1 firmly. She looked about the room as she had done before when she had pressed 3. The phone was still making sounds. "Please enter how many hours into the future you wish to travel, followed by the pound key." the automated voice requested. At this Marie paused. She hadn't thought out the whole future thing very well. She sat down on the couch holding the phone in her lap but paying no attention to it.

Her mind was racing through the possibilities. "What time in the future would provide me with the background for an interesting story?" She mused. "If I choose just a short time into the future, I may find out about events that my readers could relate to and perhaps apply to their immediate lives." Marie mulled that over for a moment. "But then, the relevance for the longer term would be lossed shortly. And my story might sound dated in short order. Boy this is going to be tougher than I thought."

Suddenly Marie became aware of a loud interrupted buzz coming from the phone. "If you want to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator."

"Woops" She said out loud. "The system must have timed out." She put the phone on the hook. She definitely needed to spend some time thinking through the significance of the future option.

As she sat there staring in the direction of the front window. Marie noticed that Mrs. Langtree was standing mid step on the sidewalk across the street. Hadn't she seen her there just before she pressed option 3? Then she saw Mr. Abernathie's little black terrier with his hind leg held high at the fire hydrant near the corner. The small canine appeared to be taking the world's longest pee. "Omigod!" She realized that she had forgotten to disable option 3. Marie grabbed the phone and quickly dialed the "800" number. As she pressed the 3 key, Mrs. Langtree completed her step and continued on her stroll. The little terrier dropped his leg and ran toward Mrs. Langtree barking a fierce volley at her. This gave Marie an idea.

She once again pressed the "3" on the keypad and time once again stood still. Knowing Mrs. Langtree's terror of dogs, she thought she'd do her a favor. She ran outside and lifted the time-frozen woman - she felt like she was made of styrofoam - and carried her across the street. She then went back inside and pressed "3" again. Mrs. Langtree took a step or two and then paused and looked around with a puzzled look on her face.

But the little black terrier was not to be robbed of his quarry. He came bounding across the street just as a blue Festiva came zipping by, hitting the dog broadside. The merciless driver thump-thumped over the hapless canine's carcass and drove on. Marie shrieked and stabbed the "3" key yet again. Calculating feverishly, she pressed "2" and then "*3", hoping this would convert the time unit to minutes. Saturn be praised, it did. Without even looking out the window she immediately pressed "3" and ran outside.

She'd been just a little off. She ran past the time-frozen figure of herself hefting Mrs. Langtree midstreet and went right over to the terrier who was still in mid-pee. She grabbed him gingerly and lifted. The pee-stream snapped off at the hydrant and remained attached to the dog as Marie carried him to the door of Mr. Abernathie's house (she liked the dog but she didn't like Mr. Abernathie). She left him there, then ran back to Mrs. Langtree and herself in the middle of the street. She lifted them both and carried them to the other side, then ran back inside to the phone. Hoping some chronostabilizing effect would ensue, and not a black hole that would swallow the universe, she poked the "3" one more time.

Marie watched from the window as her doppelganger now buckled at the knees under the newly restored weight of Mrs Langtree. The two pitched forward in a heap, Marie's double sprawling onto the, happily, not unsofa-like Langtree, whose facial expression at this moment was that of one who has entered the hairdresser's to encounter a freight train exiting. Her yelp of dismay alerted the dog, Pipecleaner, who jerked his head around, cut short his process of elimination, and exploded, yapping furiously, off of Abernathie's stoop in their direction. Marie's former self, teetering atop Mrs. Langtree, fumbled about in a panic trying to find somewhere to press her palms that wasn't Langtree's personal property.

Just then, a blue Festiva came out of nowhere, and, veering to avoid the struggling mass that was Marie-2 and Mrs Langtree, caught Pipecleaner squarely mid-pounce, punching his small furry form back to its point of origin and beyond, causing it to carom first off the front door of Abernathie's brownstone, then off a lamppost and finally once again off the bumper of the Festiva, the course of whose progress had brought it by then into a second conjunction with Pipecleaner's luckless trajectory. Pipecleaner sailed up the block in a clean, low parabola, descending to earth at the next intersection, where, arriving at headphone level, he took out a singing pedestrian.

From her place at the window, Marie pressed "3".

A kind of Prime Directive was formulating itself in her mind as she surveyed the quick-frozen calamity out the window. Pipecleaner was undoubtedly sniffing hindquarters in heaven by now. The poor man felled in the crosswalk would soon be sharing that space with the careening Festiva. And speaking of sharing space, where was the doppelganger going to sleep?

Must get back into the past. Way back, when things were good: thirty, maybe forty-five seconds ago. When dogs peed apolitically on publicly-owned hydrants, when plump matrons plied the sidewalks unhefted by well-meaning young neighbors, when there was no one out the window with a potential claim on your plush toys. Wasn't that a time?

Marie pressed the 2, then entered "*45". It seemed to her that 45 seconds back would be enough rewind to remove the effects of her own meddling from local history. She placed her index finger on the three and looked out the window as she pressed the key.

A tiny, nagging question -- did the phone's star button toggle the time units or cycle through them? -- came to Marie as she...

... picked up a box of Raisin Bran and continued on into the ketchup and peanut butter aisle at Ralph's. Her weekly shopping trip was almost done, and she was looking forward to an afternoon of ice cream and TV when she got home.

Ten minutes later, "Looks like Bruce and Demi are getting back together," Marie mused, gazing with mild interest at this week's National Enquirer. She let her eyes pause briefly on People and then Reader's Digest as she waited, only slightly impatient, in the check-out line. She looked at her watch: a little after 1:00. "I can still make the post office, and be home in plenty of time for the afternoon re-runs," she thought, pleased that the day was going so smoothly.

As she loaded grocery bags into her car, Marie pondered the words of '50's singer Dinah Washington: what a difference a day (or a week) makes. Just last Wednesday life had been crazy, hectic, well-nigh unbearable. But now here she was, chugging along through a pleasantly busy afternoon. Mom was much better, and would probably be able to go home from the hospital tomorrow. Marie's dog, Elrond, was off spending a couple weeks at a friend's farm. And she was actually looking forward to the impending week-long visit from her sister, Laura, and Laura's two hyperallergic kids; they'd be a good source of material for her writing group.

Marie swung the little red VW into a parking space right in front of the post office, and trotted in to pick up her mail. At first she was surprised to find a small package from Alaska tucked in amidst the junk mail, seed catalogs and bills. Then she recalled Wednesday's impulse to send away for a gadget that promised to give her more time. "$25.00! Laura, you twit," she said to herself now. "You really should have paid the phone bill with that money." But her curiosity was piqued, and she hurried home to try out whatever was in the mysterious box.

Not wanting her Breyers Natural Vanilla to melt, Marie grabbed one of the bags of groceries and hastened into the house, where she tossed the ice cream into the freezer and tore open the little box from Alaska. She began reading the directions that came wrapped around the small metal object she found inside. Across the street, Mr. Abernathie's Pipecleaner began to bark. The sound disturbed her strangely, and she walked into the front room with the box still in her hands to look out the window. The sight of the little black terrier poking around near the corner fire hydrant disturbed her strangely too, though she couldn't see why. Just an overwhelming sensation of deja vu, and it didn't feel good.

Peering out with a goose-pimply sort of feeling at Mrs. Langtree coming down the sidewalk, Marie suddenly remembered the rest of her groceries waiting in the car. She shook her head and turned with a decided shrug from the front room window. Tucking its contents back into the little box, she plunked it into the trash as she headed for the door.

"I really think I've got just about all the time I can handle right now, thank you very much," she said with a quick nod to the wastebasket. Then Marie smiled a puzzled little smile. "Well," she sighed, "I'd better get those groceries put away, or I'm going to miss Star Trek."

THE END