All the Time in the World

By

Chris A. Jackson

Monday, October 17^th, 2005.

My birthday, and what was to be the last day of a life-long career.

Fifty years of work…  Who would have thought it?

If someone had told me fifty years ago that I was going to be a logistical support manager of a major multinational corporation, I would have laughed in their face.  Of course, nobody was laughing now.  Nobody had laughed when I was transferred from the engineering department to mid-level management.  Engineers are transferred to management all the time, but they usually burn out in five years, transfer to product development, and take a pay cut.  I had had too much at stake; too many bills to pay.

Not me.

The train came into Harrison station, forty minutes to Grand Central.

I went back to my work and all the reasons I was were I was on this last day. Three daughters in school – two looking at ivy-league educations and one at a career as a classical musician – and a son with a penchant for the medical sciences.  Could he have chosen a more expensive student loan program?  Not likely!  None of their futures would be cheap.  And Mary and I wanted a decent retirement someplace where we could spend a little time together, enjoying each other and the peace and quiet we deserved.

Time.

That was something I always seemed to be running short of. 

Another station:  Pelham, thirty more minutes.

Even today, the last day of my career, I was on the Fairfield train at exactly 6:09 AM, lap-top computer on, diagnosing all the mayhem that had happened overnight and designing solutions to everyone’s personal crises.  This was my life.  This had been my life for the past 40 years, and I was damn good at it.  I had gone as far in the company as I wanted, having set my own limits with the realization that work will take as much from you as you allow it to take.  Upper management was only for those power-hungry few willing to devote their lives to the exclusive pursuit of the dominion over others.  Yeah… Like my boss, Tony.  Likable enough chap, but totally driven to ruling his own little world.

Not me.

Woodlawn station, twenty-five more minutes.

I was content with what I had, if not exactly happy.

I said I was damn good at my job, not that I particularly enjoyed it.

And with this ridiculous retirement party looming over my head, and too many details to be tied up before my last and final day, I didn’t have time for all this nonsense.

Time…

And Mary…  That was another thing I regretted, if anything.  We didn’t have enough time left to us.  I mean, hell, I’m seventy-two, right?  Mary’s younger than me, but not by much.  We’ve done the math a million times, and we’ve finally got enough socked away to do it right.  With all the kids’ educations paid off and our dream condo paid for, we’ll have enough to live out the rest of our lives in comfort.  Social Security be damned!

So here I am, earning my final dime.  Sitting in the same seat on the same train I’ve sat in for the past thirty years, ignoring the same old scenery rolling past at sixty miles an hour while working on the problems that had metastasized overnight.

For the last time.

And my last project was a doozy:  Recommend my own replacement.

Not like there weren’t five or six perfectly good candidates for the job; that was only part of the problem.  I’d spent more than three decades at this job.  I had more contacts than anyone else in the whole section!  If there’s one thing you never want to do, it’s to put a moron in touch with all of those hard-won contacts.

But I didn’t have enough time to do it right.

Fordham station, four more stops.

There were too many minutia to consider, too many personal idiosyncrasies to work into a network that had taken me years to develop, all the details of which I didn’t understand myself.  You don’t just look back at forty years of work, figure out what it would take to keep it going, and hand it over to the “right guy”.

I was the right guy.  But I didn’t have any more time

Mandatory retirement… 

Just another term for “you earn too much”.  An excuse for getting rid of you.

Admittedly, I’d gotten a little cynical over the last few years.  That didn’t make it any easier.

I rubbed my eyes in frustration and looked up from the screen for a moment.  My gaze locked with two orbs of blue-white, just long enough to break the time limit that exists between humans that tells you “You’re staring!” before I snapped my eyes back to the screen.  Then my brain caught up with what I’d seen, not just the fact that I’d been staring.

What the hell?

I looked again, just to make sure.

What the hell is a little girl doing on the 6:00 AM commuter train?

She was just sitting there, staring at me.  She couldn’t have been more than twelve, dressed in a smart little outfit that made her look older at a glance, but there was no hiding that youthful face.  Then I realized I was staring again, and forced my eyes back to the screen.

Don’t look! I told myself, but of course my eyes weren’t listening and I glanced up.  Still there, and still staring at me.  And she was smiling.  I flashed a weak smile and purposefully locked my eyes to my screen.  I had too much work to do to be freaked out by some little delinquent staring at me on the train.

I cross referenced a few more details and managed to cross one more name off the list.  I was now down to four possible replacements, and felt reasonably good about it.  I took a few more minutes to list their advantages and disadvantages, and decided to let Tony make the final decision.

Harlem station, only one more stop.

I glanced up…

Right into those same two smiling blue-white eyes.

This just isn’t right, I thought, shutting down my computer.  I broke my stare long enough to stuff the computer into its satchel and slip the strap over my shoulder.  Then I looked back.  She was one row forward of mine and across the aisle, so only about four feet away.  There was the usual noise of a train arriving in a station, but I knew she could hear me if I asked her something.

“Are your parents on the train with you?”  The question seemed reasonable enough, but it didn’t get the answer I wanted.  She just continued staring at me and slowly shook her head once.  “You’re alone?”  Another shake of the head, her eyes, her smile never changing; it wasn’t the look you get from a twelve-year-old girl.  There was too much there, too much behind those eyes...

Okay, I was mildly freaked out, but I’d been dealing with people far too long to let what I really felt show on my face.

“Who are you with?” I asked, making sure my voice was as grand-fatherly as I could make it.  It was all I needed for some over-protective aunt or uncle to show up and accuse me of being a perv.

That was when she said, “Be careful.”

“What?  Be careful of what?”  I thought for a second that she was warning me of whomever she was with, but there was more to those two words than the fear of an over-eager chaperone.  There was true foreboding in her tone, not dread or fear, but a heartfelt warning.  And her smile never faded, like she knew a secret that lurked behind that warning, something that made her want to laugh out loud.

“Just be careful, Jack.”

“How do you know --”

Then the train was screeching to a halt at Grand Central, and people were standing and filling the aisle.  Someone walked between us, blocking my view.  I stood and shoved into the throng filling the aisle, determined to get in another word.  One step brought me to her seat, but there was no one there.  She was gone!

“How the hell?”  Where had she gone?  Nobody could move that fast.  And how had she known my name?

I scanned the aisle, but looking for a little girl in a forest of adults is impossible, even on a train.  On top of that, I was blocking the flow of bodies.  This was the end of the line, everyone was getting off.

I got off the train and looked around the landing, but the usual morning crush was in progress, and finding anyone in that press was impossible.  Maybe I could find her if I watched the exits, but that would take time.  I couldn’t be late my last day, though the thought of what Tony would do if I walked in half an hour past my usual caught me as hilarious.  He couldn’t exactly fire me.  I headed for the escalator to the street, and wondered if I was finally losing it.  Seventy-two years old and having hallucinations…  Yes, telling everyone at the office about this would go over swell.

But she had said my name…

I thought about the strange little girl all the way to my office, but by the time I was there, I hadn’t even gotten a good picture of what she looked like in my head.  Did she have dark hair or blonde?  What was she wearing?  Did she have pale skin?  Freckles?  I couldn’t put a tight fit onto any of the descriptions I came up with.  The only thing I remembered was that ice-blue stare.  The blue you see in glacier ice; that was the color.  Unusual, but hardly worth mentioning and getting everyone thinking “The old man’s lost it”.

As often happens, what I was thinking flew right out of my brain the moment I stepped off the elevator and into my office.  There were a dozen voice messages, twenty e-mails and a pile of sticky-notes stuck to my desk, all screaming for my attention.  There was also a steaming cup of coffee with a sticky on it that said “Last Time!”, which made me smile.

“You’ll miss me, and you know it, Flo!” I yelled out the door.  Florence had been my assistant for twelve years and knew more about my job than anyone else on the planet, and she often told me emphatically that she was a highly paid professional, not a waitress.  But she still made the best damn coffee in the free world.

“Like I’ll miss the damn plague, you slave driver!”

I laughed and started working.  She’d be handling a good load of my work until my replacement got settled in, which would probably be a month.  Yeah…, she’d miss me…

“Jack!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said for the third time, saving my updated contact list and loading it onto the secure file on the server.

“Now, Jack!  Everyone’s waiting.”

“Okay, Tony.  Okay.”  I put my computer into standby and left my office, tolerating for the last time Tony’s meaty arm across my shoulders.  He was the type of guy who had the same gesture whether he was in a good mood or about to rip you a new one, but I was fairly confident that this was the former, and tried to relax.

I really wasn’t looking forward to this.

I’d been to dozens of retirement send-offs over the years, and the poor sap whose party it was never looked like they were really enjoying the event.  Now I knew why: the attention levied at gatherings like this is something between envy, sincere camaraderie and resentment at being dragged away from work for someone else’s celebration.

It didn’t make it any better that this was a birthday party as well as a retirement party.

The cake was huge; it had to be to support seventy-two candles.  I don’t know how they got them all lit at the same time, but some were burning rather low to the frosting by the time I walked through the door.  There were more candles than people in the room by double, but most of the office was there.

As a consequence to the proximity of flames and frosting, I was rushed to the table and immediately ordered to blow out the candles.

“Hurry Jack!”  Flo said, grinning evilly and patting me on the back to propel me forward.  “There’s enough rum in that cake to catch fire if the flames get too low.”

“Great,” I said, approaching the inferno dubiously.  “Good god!  How do you expect me to blow all these out?  Someone better get a fire extinguisher before the sprinkler system goes off.”

That got a lot of laughs, but I really hadn’t been joking.  I knew they would all help me extinguish the blaze when I made the attempt, so there was no real hurry.  But the conflagration was impressive nonetheless, which did nothing for my flagging ego.

“Make a wish!” several people cried in a staccato command.

“Right, a wish.”  I had no idea what to wish for, other than to be the hell away from this party.  Then a thought surfaced: what had I always wanted?

Time

Fine, that was it, then…

I closed my eyes for a moment and thought, I wish for all the time in the world.

I smiled and opened my eyes.  Yes, that would be nice…

Be careful, Jack.

“What?” I asked Flo, but she just stared at me askance.

“What do you mean, what?  Just blow the damn things out so we can all have a drink!”

I laughed and shrugged it off, wondering who had spoken so close to my ear.  Then, amid many jokes and jibes as to the number of candles, I took a deep breath, thanking myself that I’d never picked up smoking, and gave it a try.

As the first flame started to flicker, it happened.

The room around me swirled with motion, condensing into an all-encompassing fish-eye lens.  Reality waned to a pinpoint behind my mind’s eye, and the history of my life played out in reverse before me with every flame that died in the wake of my exhaled breath.

A thousand memories flashed by as the flames flickered and died: births and deaths, first words and last words, joys and horrors, loves and hatreds, accomplishments and follies.  The whole of my existence unwound as candle after candle flickered and was extinguished.  And I couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop until I saw it all, until every moment of my life was replayed before my eyes.  My mind swirled with the images, the experiences, the feelings, a thousand thousand hours of everything I had known from my first breath until this moment.

And the last candle flame wavered and died.

It is done!

The words rang in my mind like a klaxon of what was and what would be, but it meant nothing to my waking mind.  What was done?  What was it?  What had just happened?

Reality snapped back into focus with the jarring finality of a gunshot.  The vision was gone, memories now, once again, only memories…

The room was full of shouts and cheers with my next indrawn breath, and I didn’t have time to analyze the cacophony of what I had just experienced.  Someone pushed a knife into my hand, and I vaguely remember cutting cake, pouring drinks and opening presents.  I have evidence that this was indeed reality, not a part of that bizarre hallucination, for some of those presents I still treasure today.  Still…

I didn’t know, and wouldn’t know for years, what had transpired in that instant of time, in that moment of forever when seventy-two flames had flickered and vanished from existence at the rush of my breath.

Had I known, what would I have done?

What could I have done?

Nothing.

A year after my retirement party life had gone on without a hitch.  Mary and I had sold our house in Fairfield and moved to our dream condo.  I forgot the strange incident, kept in touch with Flo by e-mail, and did some unofficial consulting for the company, just to make sure things didn’t take a dive with my departure.  Inside six months my replacement was doing the job well enough, and I started to forget all the details that had been my life for the last forty years.

I’d done more fishing and walking and swimming in the last year than I’d done in the last ten, and enjoyed every moment of it.  This was our time, and the time we would hold precious for the rest of our lives.

And I still do.

Still…

Five years, and Mary had undergone two surgeries.  At the time my only thoughts were to get through this rough patch and begin enjoying ourselves again.  Mary was a tough girl, my only girl, and she always will be.

Seven years after my retirement, I was attending her funeral, thinking how unfair it was that we’d had so little time after I’d stopped working.  I remember wondering how long it would be until we were together again.  And I remembered what she said during those last days.  “Jack, you take care.  Have fun.  You deserve it.  You worked so hard…”

I resolved to do as she said.  There was a lot to see in the world, and I had the money to see it.

I sold everything, simply because everything I saw reminded me of Mary.  I dropped out of touch and did some traveling; about four years, I think.  I didn’t ever get her out of my head.  I miss her to this day.

When I got back to the states, I found out that my son Jim had died.  I missed his funeral by a year.  I think I gave myself more hell about not being there for him than anyone else did.

I dropped out for a while and did some serious drinking.

I don’t know, but I think I was trying to end it – the first real endeavor at which I actually failed.  I wound up in Marathon, Florida, wondering why I hadn’t died and what year it was.  I remember standing at a urinal, asking the guy next to me what the date was.  When he told me, I laughed so hard I pissed on my shoes.

It was my birthday. 

I was eighty-five years old, and I felt great.  Of course I was pretty drunk, but when I managed to stop laughing and was standing at the sink staring at my face in the mirror, I sobered up in the span of a dozen heartbeats. 

The man in the mirror was not eighty-five years old!

Even with a two-day beard and a three-day drunk, I looked younger than I had in years.  I must have stared at myself there for twenty minutes, looking at my wrinkles, the lines in the corners of my eyes, the veins in my hands and the spots on my skin.  I had a pretty good tan, having spent a lot of days passed out on the beach, but I had fewer dark spots than I remembered, that much was sure.

“What the hell…” I remember saying, making sure my lips moved with the words I was saying, making sure this wasn’t some sick joke.

Nope.  No joke.

I spent the next few days getting over the shakes and teaching my stomach what it was like not to have scotch for breakfast.  I made quite a few phone calls and spent a lot of time online, checked on my accounts, and downloaded a lot of pictures of myself.  There were plenty.  Every single one I could find less than ten years old looked older than that guy in the mirror.

I almost started drinking again.

As an alternative, I chose the next most likely thing to kill me:  I went to the doctor.  I didn’t go to my doctor.  He was dead.  It was just as well, because what my new doctor found would have killed the old one.  He told me I was in phenomenal health for someone my age.

My age…

That was the last time I told the truth on a medical information form.

I spent the next year trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me, and getting back in touch with my family.  I stuck to e-mail, and left out any pictures.  I told my daughters where I was, and that I had gotten over my self-punishment.  I found out I had a great granddaughter and told everyone I’d make plans to come see her.  I never did, of course.

That was the hardest part.

While I was trying to figure out my situation, I also started having memories and dreams of that retirement party.  Seventy-two candles flickering and dying… and all the time in the world.

Be careful.

Those words came back to me one morning while I was drinking coffee on the beach and talking to the seagulls.  They didn’t know what it might have meant any more than I did.  I did, however, come up with a plan.

The first thing I had to do was die.

And before you say “that’s easy”, it’s harder than you think.

After about two years of planning and creating a false identity, I pulled it off.  Setting myself up as my own financial advisor and the executor of my own will was the easy part.  Getting an actor to play the part for the recorded reading of the will, dividing up enough of my money so that all my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would believe I was really dead, and keeping enough for myself was the really hard part.

The last thing I wanted to have to do at this stage of the game was get another job.

Luckily, Mary’s and my investments had done well, and I had spent far less over the last few years than I had made.  I faked some very expensive “specialized treatments” before my death, and paid a doctor an embarrassing amount of money to hide the fraud.  When it was all done, I had a nice funeral and even got to watch my kids crying at the gravesite.  I was cremated, of course.  I did feel bad about putting an urn full of fireplace ashes into a crematorium next to Mary’s.

Well, under the circumstances, I think she would understand.

I moved to Manhattan about twenty years ago.  It’s amazing what you can get a rent-controlled apartment for if you shop around.  I also started writing this down.  I’ve had a lot of time on my hands lately, no pun intended.  Things got a lot more difficult when I started looking really young.  There aren’t many things you can do when you look like a kid.  I can’t even use a damn credit card any more.

I started riding the subway a lot.  I watch people, wondering about why I am what I am and why this… what?  This boon?  This curse?  This wish, was given to me.

And I wonder when, and if, it will end.

I remember the girl with the ice-blue eyes, and I wonder if she’s still out there.  Has she gotten old again, just to become young again?  Is she still alive?

There have been other changes in me in the last few years, as well.  I don’t know if it’s just in my head or if there’s really something to it, but I can see more in people than I ever saw before.  I see their futures, their wants and desires; at least, I think I can.  I see something…  Maybe I am finally going senile.

Or, maybe…

Maybe I can see their wishes.

Maybe someday I’ll see someone like that girl saw me, on my way to make the one wish that I never thought could come true.  The one wish I still don’t know if I would make again if I had the choice.  Maybe I’ll see someone on their birthday, on their way to their own retirement party.  Who knows.

If I ever do, I know exactly what I’ll say:

Be careful…