Catching Tomorrow

“Catching Tomorrow”

           A narrow beam of early spring sunlight found its way through a gap in the window blinds and when Matt rolled over in bed it hit him in the face. He put his hand over his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Well,” he thought, “daylight savings time or not, if I have to lose an hour of sleep I’m glad it’s on a Sunday.” He laid there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes and finally got out of bed.

           He’d been divorced for only a few weeks but already had his new morning routine down pat. It was a small pot of coffee, reading the morning paper on his tablet and half an hour to shower and dress. He’d been trying to learn some simple cooking for the dinner hour but breakfast was usually found at a drive-through window on the way to work.

           His coffee in hand, he stood for a moment looking out the window at his freshly mowed lawn. He took a lot of pride in his yard and gardens especially in the spring. Then he sat down at the counter and opened the paper on his pad. Before he even saw the headline he read the date in the upper left corner; Tuesday, March 10. “No, it’s Sunday,” he thought, “what’s up with this?” He slid his phone closer and looked at the screen; Tuesday March 10. “This can’t be right.” he muttered as he stood up and stared again at the two screens. “How could I have slept for forty-eight hours?”

           He hurried into the bedroom and in fifteen minutes he was putting on his last clean shirt from the drycleaner. Five minutes later he threw his laptop bag into the backseat of his car and headed downtown. The heavy freeway traffic was further proof that it wasn’t Sunday. The closer he got to his office the more confused he became. “What in the hell happened?” he muttered.

           As he got off the elevator and headed down the hallway it seemed as though he was being ignored by his coworkers. The usual greetings and waves were missing and it made him both curious and uncomfortable. He was no sooner settled at his desk when his assistant walked in. “Morning, Anne,” he said, trying to sound normal.

           “Good morning, Matt, and I sure hope it stays that way.” She dropped slowly into the chair in front of his desk. “Mind telling me why you didn’t return all my calls and e-mails yesterday? Everybody was wondering where you were. McClain is really pissed. The CynTech account is his biggest priority around here.”

           Matt hesitated, trying to get his bearings. “Yeah well I uh, I wasn’t feeling well and I stayed in bed all day.” He didn’t like lying to her but it was all he could think of on the spur of the moment.

           And you couldn’t at least call me and tell me?” Before Matt could answer she added, “Never mind, let’s just try to pull things together. We only have until tomorrow at two. Laurie and Dave are waiting for your direction and I’ll need everything from you by nine tomorrow morning to put the Power Point together.” She leaned back in the chair and looked at him without expression.

           The strangeness of his situation still filled his thoughts. He waited a moment and then replied, “Thanks, Anne, and don’t worry, even if I have to finish things at home tonight I’ll get it done.”

           The rest of the day was full of tension and pressure. Matt’s mind was constantly switching back and forth between the presentation and his lost two days. He worked until six and then packed up his files and laptop. The Tuesday rush hour was lighter than usual and he pulled into his driveway earlier than he expected. Dinner was a reheated piece of leftover lasagna, his first attempt at post-marriage cooking. For the rest of the evening he dug through his notes and struggled to focus on the project. It was nearly midnight when he sat back in his chair and stared at his laptop screen. The presentation looked clear and strong. Anne would add the graphics tomorrow and they’d be ready to make their pitch to CynTech. He rewarded himself with an extra large pour of his usual bourbon nightcap. He laid in bed, his thoughts returning to his two day mystery but when the bourbon finally kicked in he fell asleep.

           Matt was already sitting on the edge of the bed when the alarm went off at six. He had awakened around five and couldn’t get back to sleep. He slapped the off button, took his phone and tablet from their chargers and walked into the kitchen. He wanted to get into the office early so he decided against making coffee. He sat at the counter for a quick scan of the newspaper. When it came up on the screen he gasped audibly. The date said it was Monday March 26. He was shaking as he grabbed his phone for verification. It read Monday March 26. Whatever confusion and worry he’d experienced from his lost two days suddenly seemed like nothing. He had gone to sleep and when he woke up it was six days later.

           He sat there, frozen in place, unable to move or process what was happening. If the dates were right on his pad and phone there could only be hell to pay at the office. It meant that he’d missed the presentation and probably lost a potential client. His shower and dressing happened in a fog. He wondered if there was something wrong with his health or if he was losing his mind. All kinds of strange questions popped into his head as he finished getting dressed. If he’d been asleep for six days why hadn’t he peed in his bed? And why wasn’t he hungry from not eating for so long? And having just shaved, why was there only the normal, daily stubble and not almost a week’s worth of beard? None of it made sense and he felt totally powerless to change anything.

           The morning commute took about as long as it usually did but it seemed like hours to Matt. He considered turning around several times but finally pulled into the parking garage. The elevator was crowded and he avoided making any eye contact on the ride up to his floor. The walk down the corridor brought the same chilly indifference from his colleagues and he knew he’d broken the world record for work-related screw-ups.

           It felt like a gut punch when he walked into his office. A large cardboard box sat on his desk, full of his personal items and everything that said the office was his. Even the framed photographs of his fishing trip to the Caribbean had been taken down and placed into the box. He laid his laptop bag on the desk and collapsed into his chair. He felt sick to his stomach. Before he could fully grasp what was going on Anne walked in. He tried to read her expression and decided it was a mix of anger and sadness. “Morning.” was all he could get out.

           “Matt, I couldn’t be sorrier about this but you gave Mr. McClain no other choice. Your little disappearance from the planet cost us any chance to get the CynTech account. You were missing in action for six days. You let down your team and the company.”

           Matt straightened up in his chair. “I wish I could explain this to you. Something is going on that I don’t understand. It’s like time is different for me than everyone else.”

           Anne stood there frowning and shaking her head. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you okay? Some people are wondering if you’ve got a drinking problem or something. They say you’re the one that always wants them to join you at happy hour.”

           “It’s nothing like that, I don’t really drink that much. It’s just that I’m confused about the way things are happening around me. I don’t know what else to say.”

           Anne sighed and said, “Well I don’t think Mr. McClain is going to understand that any more than I do. He wanted to talk to you but since we didn’t know if or when you’d ever step foot in the office again he scheduled a trip to Seattle.” She saw Matt look over her shoulder and when she turned around a building security guard was standing in the doorway.

           “I’m supposed to escort someone to the front door,” he said gruffly, looking right at Matt. “They said it’s you.”

           Anne seemed to tear up and said in a shaky voice, “Matt, I’m so sorry about this.”

           Matt walked back down the corridor, his laptop bag over his shoulder, the box in his arms and the security guard a few steps behind him. The coworkers who had ignored him on his last two walks down the hall were now staring and whispering. The corridor seemed a mile long.

           When he pulled into his driveway he didn’t even remember the trip from the office. Before the garage door closed he looked out and saw that his lawn looked like it hadn’t been mowed in weeks. That was the least of the problems that filled his mind as he walked into the house. It was only nine-thirty in the morning but he poured himself a small glass of bourbon and dropped to the sofa.

           He took a long sip of the bourbon and closed his eyes. He struggled to put his thoughts together in a way that made any sense. When he was home it seemed that everything was normal. Time passed at the usual pace. He felt okay physically. There was no sign that anything was different. But now every night when he went to sleep he woke up to what he thought was the next day but was really days into the future. After an hour of confusing analysis and a second glass of bourbon he came to the conclusion that he’d lost his mind. It wasn’t a conclusion based on science or fact, but it was all he could come up with. It was pure emotion. He finished his bourbon, laid down on the sofa and by ten-forty he was sound asleep.

           The sound of garbage trucks on the street out front woke him up at seven-fifteen the next morning. He knew it wasn’t the right day for the garbage pickup but after all that had been happening to him he wasn’t really surprised. He saw himself in the hall mirror as he headed to the bathroom, still wearing his slacks and shirt from the day before. “Or was it really from the day before?” he wondered. He went into the kitchen and as much as he didn’t want to know he picked up his tablet and opened the morning paper. The dateline read April 28, more than a month from when he fell asleep. He moaned and put his hands over his face trying to hold back tears. “My god,” he thought, “is this my new life?”

           He went through the day in a fog. He was unemployed and a look at his online bank account showed that a small severance check had been direct-deposited to his account the day after he was fired. To him that was a day that hadn’t yet happened. His April mortgage and car payments had been deducted. Outside of his house the world was turning at its normal pace. Inside his house everything seemed to be happening the way it always had. But the two timelines were frighteningly out of synch.

           Matt’s life settled into a bizarre routine of constantly trying to catch up. Every day he’d awaken to a date that was further and further away. His mailbox filled up every afternoon and the mailman left handwritten notes for him to bring his mail in daily because the box was too full to fit any more. His beautiful lawn had to be mowed every day in response to a notice of violation from the HOA that his yard had become an eyesore. Trying to watch his beloved Padres on television was pointless because the entire baseball season had happened in what was just a few days to Matt. Football season had begun. He couldn’t call a friend to schedule a get together to watch a game at his favorite bar because their gathering would end up being on two different days. He felt totally isolated.

The worst part was that bill collectors were hounding him for payment on his house and car. Two of his credit cards had been cancelled after what had felt to Matt like just a few weeks. His trips to the grocery store had to be pared back because of his dwindling bank accounts. Being penniless seemed inevitable and there was no way to predict when it would happen.

A few days into his entrapment an idea had come to him and he wondered if he could break the cycle that had torn his life apart. He tried a couple of times to stay up all night, thinking that staying awake would bring time back to its normal movement. All he got for the effort was exhaustion and it started playing on his mind.

           Almost in a masochistic way he had tracked the time counting each of his days and compared them to the dates that came up each morning on his phone and laptop. It was a maddening exercise that he couldn’t resist. After a few weeks, his weeks, he decided it was borderline self-destructive and he stopped. There was nothing to do but struggle through each day one at a time. No looking at dates, just the day of the week. It was the only way he could hang on to what was left of his sanity. He made that decision one Friday night and awoke on Saturday feeling only a little better.

           Just like when he was working, Saturdays had always lifted his spirits. Now that he was single again his recreational options had expanded but he couldn’t ignore the life maintenance that everyone had. After an arduous turn mowing the lawn that was always overgrown and pulling long-dead vegetables from his garden he showered and sat on the sofa. He remembered Saturdays with his friends; friends that had drifted away because they lived in a different time. His television had become his only constant companion.

It was hard to decide which college football game to watch but he chose one simply because there was a commercial playing. That was enough time to use the bathroom and open a beer. He settled in and by three beers and a whole game later he picked up the remote control hoping to find something more stimulating.

He found a local news station with a very attractive weather girl talking about what was coming. He didn’t pay much attention and just as he got up to go back to the bathroom came her enthusiastic pronouncement: “And remember everyone, tonight Daylight Savings Time ends so make sure you turn those clocks BACK an hour.”

THE END

Copyright Timothy Benson April 2020