Rebecca Serle - In Five Years

“Indeed,” Aaron says.

“I thought architects didn’t really exist,” I say. I’m keeping my eyes on the menu.

Aaron laughs. I glance up at him. He points to his chest. “Real. Pretty sure.”

“She’s talking about this article Mindy Kaling wrote like a million years ago. She says that architects only exist in romantic comedies.” Bella rolls her eyes at me.

“She does?” Aaron points to me.

“No, Mindy,” Bella says. “Mindy says that.”

I think it was in the Times. Titled something like: “Types of Women In Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real.” The architect thing was anecdotal. Incidentally, Mindy also said that a workaholic and an ethereal dream girl were not believable stereotypes, either, yet here we are.

“No handsome architects,” I say. “To clarify.”

Bella laughs. She leans across the table and touches Aaron’s hand. “That’s about as close to a compliment as you’re going to get, so enjoy it.”

“Well then, thank you.”

“My dad is an architect,” David says, but no one responds. We’re now busying ourselves with the menu.

“Do you guys want red or white?” Bella asks.

“Red,” David and I say at the same time. We never drink white. Rose, occasionally, in the summer, which it isn’t yet.

When the waiter comes over, Bella orders a Barolo. When we were in high school, we all took shots of Smirnoff while Bella poured Cabernet into a decanter.

I’ve never been a big drinker. In school it affected my ability to get up early and study or run before class, and now it does the same for work — only worse. Since I turned thirty, even a glass of wine makes me groggy. And after the accident no one was allowed a drink in our house, not even a thimbleful of wine. Completely dry. My parents still are, to this day.

“I’m in the mood for some meat,” David says. We’ve never ordered anything other than the arugula or classic pizza here. Meat?

“I’d split a sausage with you,” Aaron says.

David smiles and looks at me. “I never get sausage. I like this guy.”

I’ve been preoccupied, possessed, since I saw him on the sidewalk. For the first time, I consider the reality that this man is Bella’s boyfriend. Not the guy from the premonition — but the one sitting across from her now. For one thing, he seems good and solid. Funny and accommodating. It’s usually like pulling teeth to get one of her boyfriend’s to make eye contact.

If he were anyone else, I might be thrilled for her. But he isn’t.

“Where do you live?” I ask Aaron.

I see flashes of the apartment. Those big, open walls. The bed that overlooked the city skyline.

“Midtown,” he says.

“Midtown?”

He shrugs. “It’s close to my office.”

“Excuse me,” I say.

I get up from the table and wind my way to the bathroom, which exits off a little hallway.

“What’s going on?” It’s David on my heels. “That was weird. Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “I don’t feel well.”

“What happened?”

I look at him. His face is studying me with concern and… something else. Surprise? It’s close cousins with annoyance. But this is unusual behavior for me, and so I’m not sure.

“Yeah, it just hit me. Can we go?”

He glances back into the restaurant, as if his gaze will reach the table where Bella and Aaron sit, no doubt just as baffled.

“Are you going to throw up?”

“Maybe.”

This does it. He springs into action, placing a hand on my lower back. “I’ll let them know. Meet me outside; I’ll call a car.”

I nod. I head outside. The temperature has dropped markedly since we arrived. I should have brought a jacket.

David comes out with my bag, and Bella.

“You hate him,” she says. She crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“What? No. I don’t feel well.”

“It was pretty spontaneous. I know you. You once muscled through the full-blown flu to fly to Tokyo.”

“That was work,” I say. I’m clutching my stomach. I’m actually going to vomit. It’s all going to come out on her green suede shoes.

“I like him,” David says. He looks to me. “Dannie does, too. She had a fever earlier. We just didn’t want to cancel.”

I feel a wave of affection for him, for this lie.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I tell her. “Go enjoy your dinner.”

Bella doesn’t budge from her place on the sidewalk, but our car comes and David holds the door open for me. I dive inside. He walks around and then we’re off down Mulberry, Bella disappearing behind us.

“Do you think it’s food poisoning? What did you eat?” David asks.

“Yeah, maybe.” I lean my head against the window, and David squeezes my shoulder before taking out his phone. When we get home, I change into sweats and crawl into bed.

He comes and perches on the edge. “Can I do anything?” he asks me. He smoothes down the comforter, and I grab his hand before he lifts it off.

“Lay down with me,” I say.

“You’re probably contagious,” he says. He puts the back of his hand on my cheek. “I’m going to make you some tea.”

I look at him. His brown eyes. The slight tufts of his hair. He never uses product, no matter how many times I tell him everyone needs it.

“Go to sleep,” he says. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

He’s wrong, I think. I won’t. But I fall asleep anyway. When I dream, I’m back in that apartment. The one with the windows and the blue chairs. Aaron isn’t there. Instead, it’s Bella. She finds his sweatpants in the top drawer of the dresser. She holds them up and shakes them at me. What are these doing here? she wants to know. I don’t have an answer. But she keeps demanding one. She walks closer and closer to me. What are these doing here? Tell me, Dannie. Tell me the truth. When I go to speak, I realize the entire apartment is filled with water and I’m choking on everything I cannot say.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Dr. Christine says.

The plant is still there. I assume, now, that it’s fake. Too much time has passed.

“Yes, well,” I say. “I don’t really know who else to tell.”

“Tell what?”

The truth of what I have learned. That what I saw in that apartment is from the future. It will occur in exactly five months and nineteen days, on December 15. I graduated as valedictorian of Harriton High, magna cum laude from Yale, and top of my law class at Columbia. I’m not gullible, nor am I a fool. What happened wasn’t a dream; it was a premonition — a prophecy sketched to life— and now I need to know how and why it happened, so I can make sure it never does.

“I met the man,” I tell her. “From the dream.”

She swallows. It could be my imagination, but it seems like it’s taking some effort. I want to skip this part, the part where we have to determine what it is and how it happened, the process. The part where she thinks I’m maybe a little bit crazy. Hallucinating, possibly. Working out past trauma, etc. I’m only interested in prevention, now.

“How do you know it was him?”

I give her a look. “I didn’t tell you we slept together.”

“Oh.” She leans forward in her brown leather chair. Unlike the plant, it’s new. “That seems an important part. Why do you think you left it out?”

“Because I’m engaged,” I tell her. “Obviously.”

She leans forward. “Not to me.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just didn’t. But I know it’s him, and he’s now dating my best friend.”

Dr. Christine looks at her notes. “Bella.”

I nod, although I don’t remember talking about her. I must have.

“She’s very important to you.”

“Yes.”

“And you feel guilty now.”

“Well, technically, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

She squints at me. I put a fist to my forehead and hold it there.

“You mentioned you’re engaged,” she says. “To the same man you were with when we last spoke?”

“Yes.”

“It has been over four years since I saw you. Do you have plans to get married?”

“Some couples decide not to.”

She nods. “Is that what you and David have decided?”

“Look,” I say. “I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen again, or happen at all. That’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Christine sits back as if creating more space between us. A pathway to the door, maybe.

“Dannie,” she says. “I think something is going on that you don’t understand, and that is frightening to you, as someone whose actual job it is to discover and prove causality.”

“Causality,” I repeat.

“If I do this, I’ll get this result.” She holds out her hands like a weighted Grecian scale. “This experience does not fit in your life, you have not taken any steps to have it, and yet here it is.”

“Well, right,” I say. “That’s why I need it to not be.”

“And how do you propose you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s kind of why I’m here.”

Predictably, our time is up.

I decide I need to go in search of the apartment. I need something concrete, some form of evidence.