On the Threshold of a New Beginning
Nigel Fox and the coming transformation of time
For the first time in four years, Jim Jacobson was too tired to go to the nearby coffee shop at 9:00 PM. Instead, he decided after work to take a nap in the midst of the debris of months of neglect. He’d been sleeping for nearly 3 hours when a loud knock at the front of his apartment finally roused him from his exhausted sleep. He struggled to wake himself and then stumbled groggily across the clutter till he finally arrived at the front door.
“What do you want? What time is it?” He shouted through the door.
“Open the door,” he could hear his friend Burgess’s familiar voice and he struggled in the darkened apartment to open the locks on the door. When he finally opened the chestnut door, Burgess was standing stoically on the landing.
“Why aren’t you at the coffee shop at your usual perch?” Burgess greeted him.
“What time is it?” Jim repeated his question.
“It’s 9:11.”
“I’m sleepy.”
“You are depressed. You’re in one of the most beautiful little cities in America and you are depressed.”
“I really need to get some sleep.”
“No, I really need to talk to you.”
“Then come inside. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I would have to wear a hazmat suit before I set foot in your apartment. It smells like some stray animal came inside and died.”
“It’s just some old food.”
“Well, throw it out. That’s what you do with old food. Put on some clean clothes and come with me to the diner. I will be waiting here at the door.”
“So I guess things went well in Chicago.”
“That’s a brilliant observation. How can you live like this?”
“I don’t live! I don’t exist! I feel like a phantom!”
“There are places a lot worse where you could end up. There are situations which could be a lot more unbearable.”
“Sometimes I’d rather not exist at all.”
“According to some of the Gnostics, only god exists,” Burgess countered, “And as the Neoplatonists like Plotinus claimed, God is beyond existence, the hyper-existent ground of all being.”
“I’m not really in the mood for one of your philosophical diatribes. Is there any subject you don’t know something about?”
“Finding a way to make you happy. I don’t think anyone could know how to do that.”
“You still seem to know things above your paygrade,” Jim told him.
“Maybe the reason I know more is I’ve just been around a lot longer than you have and I read a lot more. I’ve never seen you read a book.”
“I’m older than you are,” Jim rebutted.
Jim left a few minutes and then came back with different clothes.
“So you do know how to change your clothes,” Burgess mocked him. “Where are your shoes? Put your shoes on and let’s go.”
Jim was reluctant to go anywhere and yet he was sick of the routines which dominated his life. He returned to his bedroom a second time to begin the difficult task of finding his shoes. He couldn’t remember where he had put them just a few hours before. He finally found them in his bathroom, sitting on the countertop next to the sink. He had no memory of even putting them there. It took him eight minutes to circumnavigate all the refuse in his living room. When he finally arrived at the door again, it was obvious that Burgess was annoyed.
“I don’t know why I am even bothering with you, Jim, given your obvious trajectory into self-destruction.”
“It was you who convinced me to come to this town.”
“You ran away from Chicago. You had to get away from the goddess, as I told you, as mere mortals, we should not get entangled with the gods.”
“She was not a goddess.”
“Ms. debutante was more like a gorgon turning anyone who looked at her into stone.”
“You’re not being fair to her.”
“That woman destroyed you. I repeat, she eviscerated you and you still haven’t recovered. She took a heart of flesh and turned it into a heart of stone.”
“She was just confused.”
“She was downright mean. But I didn’t come here to talk about Ms Jamison.”
“What do you want, Burg? I really should be back in bed.”
“I have something important to show you and I brought a gift for you.”
Burgess reached down to the ground and lifted a small package wrapped in brown paper and handed it to him.
“What is it?”
“The whole point of wrapping a gift is so that you open it to find out what it is.”
Jim tore the paper open and it was a miniature Sears Tower. He attempted to hand the tower back to his friend.
“I am not amused,” Jim told him.
“You said if I went to Chicago, you wanted to souvenir.”
Jim tossed the statue into the apartment through the open doorway.
“That’s not nice.”
“I am not in the mood to be nice to anyone right now.”
“Well, I need you to be civil to me long enough so that I can explain what I discovered.”
“I hope you’re not going to restart that time travel game. I’m just not in the mood.”
“No, I’m not talking today about time travel.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“You can wait till we get to the coffee shop. Don’t you have any patience at all?” He paused. “What really unpleasant thing has happened to you in this past four years? Has anyone been cruel to you? These people like you, even with your terrible personality. I don’t know why you can’t see that. That woman really did a number on you.”
“She has a name.”
“Yeah, Julie.”
“I miss her.”
“They say women are the romantic sex. But sometimes I think some men are worse than women. You are pathetic. It’s over. I’m sure she has moved on to one of her own kind.”
“Haven’t you ever cared for someone?”
They began to walk across the street toward the southeast corner of Carver Square.
“Where I came from only the special ones are allowed relationships.”
“And where do you come from? For once give me some information that makes sense. I don’t want to hear about 2169. When you showed up at the newspaper, the editor said you were the best photographer he’d ever seen. You had manual dexterity unprecedented in the darkroom. You won’t tell anyone where you worked before. I vouched for you and said we went to journalism school together.”
“It’s not important where I worked before. It’s the skills that I have now at my disposal.”
“You are not a former Soviet spy, are you?”
Burgess began to chuckle.
“I’ve never been to Russia in my life. Where I come from you are not allowed to travel. I spent the last 10 years before I came to Chicago working in Arizona.”
“What kind of work?” Jim asked as they reached Carver Square.
“I worked in a laboratory.”
“That explains something. What did you do in this laboratory?”
“I talked to the oldest man in the world.”
“Am I ever going to get an honest answer from you?” Jim lamented.
Burgess was the first to enter the coffee shop and Jim followed. They could see two young women were sitting at Jim’s usual table.
“I’m sorry, Mr Jacobson,” Sarah the waitress greeted him. “I thought you weren’t coming. I can seat you somewhere else.”
“That table is fine,” Burgess pointed to the opposite side of the dining room. It was the table where the two old women were usually playing chess.
“What happened to the old women?” Burgess asked.
“One of them is in the hospital,” Sarah responded.
“Is she okay?” Burgess asked her.
“As far as I know,” Sarah responded.
“Which one of them?” Burgess continued.
“I don’t know.”
“The table is a problem,” Jim acknowledged. “I have a clear view of the gazebo at that table.”
“You really need to see someone about all these phobias that you have,” Burgess chided him. “Sarah, please forgive my colleague's insanity. That table is perfect. You can sit with your back to the gazebo.”
Burgess sat down facing the window and Jim reluctantly sat down across from him.
“Now explain to me again why you can’t look at the gazebo. It didn’t make any sense to me the first time you told me.” He paused. “Oh, I remember now. It was about some stupid dream you had. They should send an investigative team of psychiatrists just try to figure you out.”
“Why are you so mean to me?” Jim responded. “I’ve told you everything about my life. You were with me in Chicago. You saw how she treated me. You know my mother died young from cancer. You know my situation with my father, And you still treat me like I’m some moron. Why?”
Burgess could see that Jim was about to start crying again.
“I’m sorry. I have my own set of issues. Let’s just order something to eat.”
Sarah came over to the table and was waiting for them to order.
“I would like some chicken, grilled with a little garlic and vinaigrette, some sliced and fried potatoes and broccoli with a little vinegar,” Burgess told her.
“And you, Mr Jacobson?”
“The usual.”
“No,” Burgess interrupted. “Today you are going to eat something different. Cook him sausage and macaroni and cheese and asparagus. I’ve never seen him eat asparagus. ”
“I’m not sure we have asparagus,” Sarah answered.
“It’s a restaurant, find asparagus.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to like asparagus and I haven’t had macaroni and cheese since I was a child,” Jim told him.
“You must have been a difficult child. Did your mother have to spank you?”
“My mother never laid a hand on me. She read poetry to me to put me to sleep. Sometimes she used to sing me to sleep. She was wonderful. No complaints at all from me.”
“What you need my friend, is a transformation, a change in perspective about how you view the world. You and I are very different people.” He paused. “Don’t be like the Israelites in the times of the prophets who refused to listen to anyone.”
After Sarah left the table, Burgess laid both hands on the table palms down.
“I make one statement before the food comes about what I want to talk about. and it concerns Mr Fox, the travelling psychic.”
“I have absolutely no interest at all in that lunatic and his entourage,” Jim told him.
“You were on that train, Jim, you told me. You also told me about the nightmares almost every night.”
“I’ve had nightmares my whole life. I no more believe that he stopped a train wreck than you came from the year 2169. The world just doesn’t work that way.”
“I just wanted to say that I went to see him briefly when I was in Chicago. I have a photograph.”
Burgess removed a 5 by 8-inch photo out of his pocket and laid it face down on the table. For 15 minutes there was a pregnant silence as they both waited for Sarah to bring them their food and Burgess pondered what his friend was thinking. Jim was the first to speak.
“You know how I feel about the psychic nonsense. Charlatans every one of them. Why would you think I’d have any interest in this Nigel guy?”
“I wouldn’t think you would. But there is something interesting in this photograph.”
Sarah returned from the kitchen with their plates in her hands. She carefully set the plates down in front of them, firstly James’ plate along with everything else Burgess had ordered including the asparagus.
“Anything else?” She asked.
“No, that’s great for now. Thank you, Sarah. You’ve been an angel.”
Jim looked down at his plate and everything Burgess requested was carefully laid out and displayed that none of the three items touched the other. On Burgess’s plate, everything was overlapping.
“She remembered your fetish for separation. You wouldn’t want the sausage contaminating the macaroni or vice versa.”
“I’ve been here enough for them to know my preferences.”
“You know there are other restaurants in this town. You don’t have to eat here every day.”
“You’re talking to me like I am a child. I come here because it’s 15 minutes from my apartment and it’s reasonable. You know what they pay me at the paper.”
“Well, Eat. I’m almost certain we will have an intense discussion afterwards.”
“So what did you really do in Chicago? Aside from seeing Mr Fox and buying me a souvenir.”
“I will answer you after we eat.”
Burgess took his knife and fork and began to carefully slice the chicken into three seemingly equal portions.
“How did you do that? Know exactly where to cut them?”
“Practice, paying attention to how my hands move.”
Jim was reluctant to eat. But finally sliced the sausage into 11 pieces of various sizes.
“It’s a large piece of sausage, more than I’m accustomed to eating.”
“Eat. Then we can talk.”
“I haven’t had sausage since I was a kid,” Jim commented.
Burgess ate slowly and methodically as though a surgeon, while Jim struggled to eat a sausage as though he was a young child forced to eat his vegetables. It took him nearly 30 minutes to finish just the sausage. Then he began to eat the macaroni which after a couple of bites he began to consume with more enthusiasm.
“You like it, don’t you? You can make changes in your life. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns, jump on his back and let him take you wherever he wants to go.”
“I am not so sure I’ll like asparagus.”
“You’ll like it.”
“Of all the people in the newsroom in Chicago, why was I the first one you spoke to after you got the job?” Jim asked him.
“Bad question. You were the first person I saw after the senior editor gave me the job. You sat right across from his office.”
“Yeah, but you sat down across from me and asked me a strange question. You asked if I had ever been to Hadleyburg Virginia. It was a very odd question. I never heard of Hadleyburg Virginia, And now I am here with you in this godforsaken town. Why would you ask me such an odd question?”
“That’s the first intelligent question you have asked me in the five years I’ve known you. what if I told you the reason I came to Chicago and came to the paper was for you?”
“You had no idea at that point who I even was. You just like to mess with my mind. You have been doing it since the day I met you.”
Jim began to eat the asparagus he was surprised that it tasted better than he anticipated.
“This is not so bad,” he commented.
“Bravo, you’ve eaten asparagus. The angels in heaven are rejoicing. The day of preparation has arrived.” He paused. “Now that we finished our feast, comes the presentation. It’s really not important all the permutations, but somehow I ended up in the theatre where Nigel Fox was giving a presentation. I went inside to see what the hullabaloo was all about and who should be giving the introduction to Nigel, your hero, Michael Wilson.”
“I have no heroes.”
“You talked about him for nearly an hour, that first week I was on the job. You sang his glories ahout what a great president he was going to be, how you had volunteered in his first gubernatorial campaign.”
“I was a fool when I was a younger man. I believed you could change the world with just the power of an idea.”
“That was before the Jamison freight train hit you. Well, He gave this beautiful introduction about how we all are united with one another by these invisible connections that transcend space and time and he introduced Nigel Fox. I was surprised by the enthusiasm the audience had for Mr Fox.”
“So did you hear the crazy man with his train wreck story?”
“No, I had to leave to catch a train back here. But I did take a photograph, And there is something on the photograph I want to show you.”
Burgess flipped over the photograph on the tabletop and it showed Nigel sitting on one small table with a microphone and James Jamison and Michael Wilson at another table behind him. In the photograph standing near the back of the stage was a young woman modestly dressed, with her hair pulled back behind her head. She looked radiant, with her face exuding warmth and serene humility. Burgess handed the photograph to him.
“Look at the woman,” Burgess told him. “Look at her closely. That young woman, My Friend, is your Ms Debutante, Julie Jamison.”
“No, it can’t be,” Jim responded. “It looks nothing like her.”
“Look closer.”
Jim lifted the photograph closer to his eyes. Then came a moment of recognition and he realised it was Julie, but an extraordinarily transformed version of her.
“Of course, the others are with her, Michael Wilson, her father James Jamison.”
“So what, I’m not in interested in Mr Fox or his acolytes. We are not there. We are in strawberry festival land. There is no reason for Mr Fox to ever come to this town and I am never going to be able to leave this town, And I’m never going to go anywhere to see this Nigel Fox. Case closed.”
Jim laid down the photograph.
“What time is it?” Jim asked him.
“It’s almost 10:15,” Burgess answered after looking at his watch.
“I’m going back to bed.” Jim yawned. “I still want to know the real reason why you went to Chicago.”
“I still have an apartment there.”