Forty, Counting Down

He nodded, carefully not smiling. He'd been looser, sillier, at twenty-one than he was now. Of course, he'd had fewer things go wrong then, too. And his younger self went on, "What could it be but Megan?"

"Okay, we're on the same page," Justin said. "That's why I'm here, to set things right with Megan."

"Things with Megan don't need setting right." Himself-at-twenty-one sounded disgustingly complacent.

"Things with Megan are great. I mean, I'm taking my time and all, but they're great. And they'll stay great, too. How many kids do we have now?"

"None." Justin's voice went flat and harsh. A muscle at the corner of his jaw jumped. He touched it to try to calm it down.

"None?" His younger self wasn't quick on the uptake. He needed his nose rubbed in things. He looked at Justin's left hand. "You're not wearing a wedding ring," he said.

He'd just noticed. Justin's answering nod was grim. His younger self asked, "Does that mean we don't get married?"

Say it ain't so. Justin did: "We get married, all right. And then we get divorced."

His younger self went as pale as he had when he first saw Justin. Even at twenty-one, he knew too much about divorce. Here-and-now, his father was living with a woman not much older than he was. His mother was living with a woman not much older than he was, too. That was why he had his own apartment: paying his rent was easier for his mom and dad than paying him any real attention.

But, however much himself-at-twenty-one knew about divorce, he didn't know enough. He'd just been a fairly i

Justin had had those might-have-beens inside his head since he and Megan had fallen apart. But he was in a unique position, sitting here in the Pine Tree eating kimchi.

He could do something about them.

He could. If his younger self let him.

Said younger self blurted, "That can't happen."

"It can. It did. It will," Justin said.

The muscle started twitching again.

"But-how?" Himself-at-twenty-one sounded somewhere between bewildered and shocked. "We aren't like Mom and Dad-we don't fight all the time, and we don't look for something on the side wherever we can find it." Even at twenty-one, he spoke of his parents with casual contempt. Justin thought no better of them in 2018.

He said, "You can fight about sex, you can fight about money, you can fight about in-laws. We ended up doing all three, and so…" He set down his chopsticks and spread his hands wide. "We broke up-will break up-if we don't change things. That's why I figured out how to come back: to change things, I mean."

His younger self finished the second OB.

"You must have wanted to do that a lot," he remarked.

"You might say so." Justin's voice came harsh and ragged. "Yeah, you just might say so. Since we fell apart, I've never come close to finding anybody who makes me feel the way Megan did. If it's not her, it's nobody. That's how it looks from here, anyhow. I want to make things right for the two of us."

"Things were going to be right."

But his younger self lacked conviction. Justin sat and waited. He was better at that than he had been half a lifetime earlier.

Finally, himself-at-twenty-one asked, "What will you do?"

He didn't ask, What do you want to do? He spoke as if Justin were a force of nature. Maybe that was his youth showing. Maybe it was just the beer. Whatever it was, Justin encouraged it by telling his younger self what he would do, not what he'd like to do: "I'm going to take over your life for a couple of months. I'm going to be you. I'm going to take Megan out, I'm going to make sure things are solid-and then the superstring I've ridden to get me here will break down. You'll live happily ever after: I'll brief you to make sure you don't screw up what I've built. And when I get back to 2018, I will have lived happily ever after. How does that sound?"

"I don't know," his younger self said.

"You'll be taking Megan out?"

Justin nodded. "That's right."

"You'll be… taking Megan back to the apartment?"

"Yeah," Justin said. "But she'll think it's you, remember, and pretty soon it'll be you, and it'll keep right on being you till you turn into me, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," his younger self said. "Still…" He grimaced. "I don't know. I don't like it."

"You have a better idea?" Justin folded his arms across his chest and waited, doing his best to be the picture of inevitability. Inside, his stomach tied itself in knots.

He'd always been better at the tech side of things than at sales.

"It's not fair," himself-at-twenty-one said. "You know all this shit, and I've gotta guess."

Justin shrugged. "If you think I did all this to come back and tell you lies, go ahead. That's fine." It was anything but fine. But he couldn't let his younger self see that.

"You'll see what happens, and we'll both be sorry."

"I don't know." His younger self shook his head, again and again. His eyes had a trapped-animal look. "I just don't know. Everything sounds like it hangs together, but you could be bullshitting, too, just as easy."

"Yeah, right." Justin couldn't remember the last time he'd said that, but it fit here.

Then his younger self got up. "I won't say yes and I won't say no, not now I won't. I've got your e-mail address. I'll use it." Out he went, not quite steady on his feet.

Justin stared after him. He paid for both di

Seeing it and liking it were two different things. And every minute himself-at-twenty one dithered was a minute he couldn't get back. He stewed. He fumed. He waited. What other choice did he have?

You could whack him and take over for him. But he rejected the thought with a shudder. He was no murderer. All he wanted was some happiness. Was that too much to ask? He didn't think so, not after all he'd missed since Megan made him move out. He checked his e-mail every hour on the hour.