Rollback

Sarah said, the usual quaver in her voice.

"Hi," he said.

Gunter put the chair down, and helped Sarah to her feet. "Any interesting email?" she asked.

Don quickly turned off the datacom. "No," he said. "None at all."

Don and Lenore’s first day back together had gone well, right up until the evening.

They were just finishing a meal of take-out Chinese food in her basement apartment on Euclid, after an afternoon of walking around downtown, looking in shops.

"Anyway," Lenore said, continuing an account of what she’d been up to since Don had last seen her, "the university ripped me off. They say I didn’t pay my tuition on time, but I did. I made the electronic transfer just before midnight on the due date.

But they charged me a day’s worth of interest."

Don never ate fortune cookies, but he still liked cracking them open. His said, "Prospects for change are favorable." "How much?" Don said, referring to the interest.

"Eight dollars," she replied. "I’m going to go by the registrar’s office tomorrow and complain."

Don motioned for her to show him her fortune. It said, "An endeavor will be successful." He nodded, acknowledging that he’d read it. "You could do that," he said, going back to their conversation, "but you’ll end up spending half your day dealing with it."

She sounded frustrated with him. "But they shouldn’t be able to do that."

"It’s not worth it over eight bucks," said Don. He got up from his chair and started clearing the table. "You’ve got to learn to pick your battles. Take it from me. I know. When I was your age, I—"

"Don’t say that."

He turned and looked at her. "What?"

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Don’t say shit like, ‘When I was your age.’ I don’t need to hear that."

"I’m just trying to save you from going through—"

"From going through what? Going through life? Spare me from having my own experiences, from learning for myself? I want to learn for myself."

"Yes, but—"

"But what? I don’t want a father, Don. I want a boyfriend. I want a peer, an equal."

He felt his heart sink. "I can’t just erase my past."

"No, of course not," she said, noisily wadding up the paper bag the take-out had come in. "They don’t make erasers that big."

"Come on, Sarah, I—"

Don froze, realizing his mistake at once. He felt himself turning red. Lenore nodded, as if a vast conspiracy had been confirmed. "You just called me Sarah."

"Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t—"

"She’s always there, isn’t she? Hanging between us. And she always will be. Even when she’s—"

Lenore stopped herself, perhaps realizing that she was about to go too far. But Don picked up on the thought. "Yes, she will be, even after… even after she’s gone.

That’s a reality we’ll have to face." He paused. "Anyway, I can’t help the fact that I’ve been alive longer than—"

"Than ninety-nine percent of all the people in the world," said Lenore, which stopped him cold for a moment while he thought about whether that was true. He felt his stomach clench as he realized it must be.

"But you can’t ask me to deny that reality, or what I’ve learned," he said. "You can’t ask me to forget my past."

"I’m not asking that. I’m just asking that you—"

"What? Keep it to myself?"

"No, no. But just don’t, you know, always bring it up. It’s hard for me. I mean, God, what was the world like when you were born? No home computers, no nanotech, no robots, no television, no—"

"We had television," Don said. Just not in color.

"Fine. Fine. But, God, you lived through — through the Iraq War. There was a Soviet Union when you were alive. You saw people walk on the moon. You saw Apartheid end, in South Africa and in the US. You lived through the Month of Terror. You were alive when the first extraterrestrial signal was detected." She shook her head.

"Your life is my history book."

He was about to say, "Then you should listen to me when I tell you what I’ve learned." But he stopped himself before the words got free. "It’s not my fault that I’m old," he said.

"I know that!" she snapped. And then, the same words again, but more softly: "I know that. But, well, do you have to rub it in my face?"

Don was leaning against the sink now. "I don’t mean to. But you think stuff like a few bucks in interest is a disaster, and—"

"It’s not a disaster," Lenore said, sounding exasperated. "But it does make my life hard, and—" She must have seen him move his head a bit. "What?" she demanded.

"Nothing."

"No, tell me."

"You don’t know hard," he said. "Burying a parent, that’s hard. Having a spouse go through cancer is hard. Getting screwed out of a promotion you deserve because of office politics is hard. Suddenly having to spend $20,000 you don’t have on a new roof is hard."

"Actually," she said, rather stiffly, "I do know what some of those things are like.

My mother died in a car crash when I was eighteen."

Don felt his jaw dropping. He’d avoided asking her about her parents, doubtless because he felt way too in loco parentis when he was with her.

"I never knew my dad," she continued, "so it fell to me to look after my brother Cole. He was thirteen then. That’s why I work now, you know. I’ve got enough graduate support to cover my current expenses, but I’m still trying to dig out from the debt I ran up taking care of Cole and me."

"I’m, um…"

"You’re sorry. Everybody is."

"Was… wasn’t there any life insurance?"

"My mom couldn’t afford that."

"Oh. Um, how did you manage?"

She lifted her shoulders. "Let’s just say there’s a reason I have a soft spot in my heart for food banks."

He was embarrassed and contrite, and didn’t know what to say. Still, it explained why she seemed so much more mature to him than her contemporaries did. When he had been her age, he was still living cozily with his parents, but Lenore had been out in the world for seven years, and had spent part of that time raising a teenager.

"Where’s Cole now?" he said.

"Back in Vancouver. He moved in with his girlfriend just before I came out here to do my master’s."

"Ah."

"I do let most things go," she said. "You know that. But when it comes to someone taking my money — when you’ve had so little, you…" She shrugged slightly.

Don looked at her. "I — I haven’t been conscious of being condescending because of my age," he said slowly, "but now that you’ve alerted me to it, I’ll try to be more…" He trailed off, he knew that when he was under emotional stress his vocabulary tended to the highfalutin. But he couldn’t think of a better term just then, and so he said it: "Vigilant."

"Thanks," she said, nodding slightly.

"I don’t say I’ll always get it right. But I really will be trying."

"You certainly will be," she said, with the sort of long-suffering smile he was more used to seeing from Sarah. Don found himself smiling back at her, and he opened his arms, inviting her to stand up and step into them. She did so, and he squeezed her tight.