Hey everyone, happy new year! I hope you'll forgive me for taking a day off last night; it was a busy one, fraught also with technical difficulties that rendered the internet temporarily useless. To make up for it, I provide you with the entirety of the next scene, the fight. I will update again in a week or so, but I hope you all enjoyed a felicitous Crissmissweek and a happy new year. Or whatever other denominations you may have decided to celebrate.

 -Otherwise

Chapters 14 and 15: The Fight

Theo shut the front door a bit harder than he had intended. He had just come home from celebrating at the bar with some colleagues, but had come home early, simply not in the mood for celebrations.

Claire rushed downstairs to meet him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, clearly concerned.

“The company’s second branch was approved,” he said flatly. “They want me to be the program coordinator there.” His gaze was aimed towards her ankles, a slight furrow in his brow. “It’ll be a healthy promotion,” he added. A robot would have been unable to replicate his lack of emotion as he spoke to his wife.

Claire sat down on the third stair from the bottom, looking up at her husband and trying to meet his eyes. “Then why isn’t that good news, honey? If you don’t want to do it, then don’t take the job. But it sounds good. We could get a bigger place,” she added cautiously.

“I can’t just not take the job,” he said exasperatedly. Theo walked into the kitchen without bothering to take off his clothes. He opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, and walked into the living-room part of their modest apartment. As he reached into his pocket for a bottle opener, he said, “When they said they ‘want’ me to take the position at the new branch, it’s because they don’t want to have to fire me here; I either uproot or find a new job.” He brooded for a moment before adding, “Which would probably mean uprooting anyway.” He threw the bottle cap across the room and collapsed onto the couch.

Claire sat down gently next to him, leaving enough room in case there was a sudden outburst. Her husband wasn’t often set off like this, but when he was, she had to be extremely cautious. “How far do we need to move?” she asked timidly. All she could think to do was to obtain the facts and construct a clear image of what was bothering him.

“More than a thousand miles. Halfway across the damn country.”

Claire sighed. That would mean a lot of sacrifices for her. She knew this, as did Theo. “It won’t be easy, but I think we should go. It makes the most sense.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Theo said, his voice low and strained. “Your whole life is here; I’d be taking everything away from you just to maintain the relative comfort of our lives.” He could feel his blood pressure rising.

“So what?” Claire asked, confused. “Your increased salary would probably make up for the contribution from my job.”

“But the job market is terrible right now; what if you can’t get another job?” Theo said, heatedly.

“Look,” she said, trying to stay calm despite his agitation, “it looks like one of us is going to have to go without a job for a while. It makes more sense for me to lose mine. I can’t support the two of us on just my paycheck.”

Theo sighed and set down his beer. “You’re wrong. I at least went on to get a Master’s degree, and one that’s more useful than a liberal arts degree; if one of us is going to be able to land a job, it would be me.”

“What, you don’t think my Bachelor’s degree is good for anything?” Claire spat. “You think you’re so much smarter and more worthy than I am?”

“In this case, yes,” said Theo, finally looking his wife in the eye. “Look, you always talked about going back to school, but in the end you settled for the little part-time job you have, working for little more than minimum wage. And as it turns out, you’re lucky to have that.”

“It’s more than just a part-time job, thank you,” she said pointedly. Her face was inches from his, but though she was getting angrier, she was also on the verge of tears. “I’m glad to know my job means so little to you or towards my intellect, though. At least I enjoy my job!” She pushed her hand into his chest and turned around, trying to calm down a bit.

“It does mean something to be, that’s the point!” Theo said loudly. “I don’t want to tear you away from this thing you have, and the friends you’ve made. I can’t ask you to give it up just for this stupid job of mine. And even if I don’t love my job like you do yours, mine is lucrative enough to support us and our lifestyle.” Theo was getting flustered. He wasn’t sure why he was arguing, but it suited his mood. One thing led to another and his bad day had stayed pretty lousy.

Claire turned to look at her husband again. “Honey,” she said, her voice no longer steady. “I love you. We can work this out; my friends and I would stay in touch, and I can make new friends.” The thought of leaving them, however, was visibly taking its toll on her.

Theo somehow felt the need to drive this point home. “And what about your father? Who is going to look after him?”

Claire considered this fact; it hadn’t occurred to her before he mentioned it. “He. . . We could. . .”

“We can’t take him with us; he probably shouldn’t travel ever again. He could go at any moment, and if he does and you’re not here –”

“Just stop!” she cried. “Just shut up! He’s holding out okay, and if his situation started to fall apart, nurses would tell me in time to fly here. . .”

“Come on, Claire!” Theo shouted. “He’s a dying man, and you would never forgive me if you weren’t able to be by his side because of me. You’ve visited him every afternoon for the last eight years, for God’s sake.”

“What do you mean, I wouldn’t forgive you? You really think I would hold that against you?” she asked, incredulously. “Am I that intolerable?”

“I know you, sweetheart,” he said with measured force. “You don’t let things go. It would eat away at you, and at us, and it would tear us apart. I can’t let that happen.”

“So what, you’re going to tear us apart right now instead?” she said, and collapsed weeping. “What the hell do you want me to do then? What. . .” The rest of her question was muffled by the sound of her sobs as she buried her face in her hands.

Happy sixth night! Just a few more to go, and then you have to wait a little while. Not long, but a little while. Like a week. First we'll be taking some time to determine the course of this site.

-Otherwise

Chapter 13

“It’s strange,” Theo said. The emptiness around him swallowed his voice, as though it were being absorbed into an enormous, dark cave with walls of thick carpet. He felt as though he had just pulled his head out of a bathtub as he stopped the course of memory and found himself back in the world where only he and Ted existed. “I remembered that night as exhilarating, spontaneous, and profoundly satisfying,” he continued.

“It didn’t fulfill your expectations, then?” Ted remarked. He grinned.

“No,” said Theo. “I mean, it was great to see and be with Ashley again. But not all the pieces were there. Something about the whole scene didn’t allow me to experience it the way I did then, the first time. The real time.”

“Well,” Ted commented soothingly, “you shouldn’t be too surprised. You have changed since then, which means that you remember things a bit differently than when you experienced them firsthand. The precedent for feeling like you did the real time was more distant just now, and memories developed since then are of course more clear.”

“I think I see what you mean, and why you’re letting me re-experience bits of my life like this,” said Theo. “But you’re right, I had a skewed version of that memory just now; I saw a skewed version of myself.” He took a moment to think about the whole situation. After a moment, though, the situation seemed a bit too large and vague to comprehend, so he gave up. “Could I do that again, but starting at a different moment?” he asked.

“Sure thing,” Ted replied. “Now that you’ve been through this memory existence once, you’d probably be fine going back even further, if you’d like.”

Theo thought about it for a while, then suddenly looked up knowingly. “Maybe it’s because I felt too in love with my wife that night that I wasn’t able to enjoy being seduced by Ashley. If I could remember more freshly the fight that nearly ended our marriage, I think I’d end up living that night at the dance as the self I remember, making the night just as memorable as I had thought until now.”

“Whatever it takes for you to understand the constant changes in your being that make it impossible to identify a single self,” Ted said. “Seeing how one part of your past directly affects your experience in a later moment ought to facilitate that. Are you ready?”

“Let me brace myself,” Theo said. It had been a hell of a fight. After a few deep breaths, he nodded.