“You’re Unstuck,” I say.
She nods, proud of me for finally getting it. “Remember, I was a stewardess at Einstein before I moved to the Paradox. And that was back before they improved the shielding. Turns out”—she taps her head—“I was very susceptible to the radiation. It happened before I even met you.” She laughs. “It’s funny, I almost gave it away. The first time we met, I told you to take the job here before you told me it’d been offered to you. You’re usually sharper than that. I think you were just gobsmacked by my beauty.”
“But if you could see what was going to happen, why didn’t you just not go in the kitchen?”
She sighs. “Even if I had the words to explain it, I’m not sure you’d understand. Sometimes I don’t. All I know is, some things, it’s not that they must be, it’s that they should be. Sometimes the universe decides.”
“I’d like to have a few words with the universe.”
“You will,” she says. “Before this is over, you will.”
“How are you here now? How are you showing me this?”
She leans into my ear, presses her body against mine. Keeping me from falling before I even knew I was going to fall. “Being Unstuck isn’t a disease, mi reina. It is an evolution.” She holds me tighter, almost like she’s pulling me inside her. “I was forged in a fire of self-acceptance. I had to fight to be the person I am. Facing myself? I already did that.”
“But how are you here? Right now? What is…this?”
“Places like this”—she looks around and smiles—“they hold on to energy. I died, yes, and it was an accident. Not your fault. After it happened, part of me stayed here. It suits me. Remember the bodhisattva’s vow? Even in the acceptance of my own fate, I knew there were ways I could still be of service.”
Mena takes my hands in hers, and holds them in front of us. She nods toward the painting. “All those little dots that make the bigger picture. That was the best way I could think of to explain time. Time is a collection of moments. Put them together, that’s you. That’s your portrait. Being fully Unstuck means being able to step back and see more of the picture.” She turns, showing me the expanse of hallway. As I turn to follow her gaze I feel the presence behind me shift, staying out of my line of sight.
“I was so terrible to so many people,” I tell her. “They all cared so much and they tried so hard and I just pushed and I pushed and…”
“Hey,” she says, pulling me in for another hug. “You loved hard and you lost hard. And no, my love, you did not handle it right. You were a big-time dick.”
At this, I am able to muster a little laugh.
And I’m noticing that, the more we talk, the better I feel.
She takes my hand and we walk. The presence follows but gives us space. There are paintings on the wall now, or maybe they’re photographs. Young January sitting on her bed, the room so huge and empty compared to her small frame. Not true to scale, but that’s how it felt.
January walking across the stage at the TEA graduation, but instead of her parents’ seats being empty, it’s all of the seats.
January standing in an empty hotel lobby.
“I know that you took the loneliness you felt as a child and turned it into a way to protect yourself,” Mena says. “Think about how much you struggled, pushing away connection. Especially after I was gone. It takes a lot of effort to be angry.”
She stops in front of another picture. The two of us, standing at the railing, looking out over the lobby. She’s kissing my neck, and I’m smiling.
“I found a family in this place,” she says. “I found you. And I knew that after I was gone you’d be in safe hands because these people are your family too. The Paradox is our sangha.”
Just like that, we’re back in the hotel. Standing on the blue carpet dotted with my blood. There’s still that presence behind me. That feeling of looking at myself. But it doesn’t make the hair on my neck stand. It doesn’t make me so anxious.
“We’re not outside time,” Mena says, caressing my collarbone. “We’re beyond it. In the place where we can face the things we need to face. I’m here to do it with you.”
She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me around.
Before me is the little girl.
It’s funny, the way memory works. The way you can bury things and then pave over them. They’re still there, and you might even truly forget them, but then they come back and it’s like they were never gone.
My favorite pair of sneakers, that I wore into the ground. That green sweatshirt, the color of which I didn’t like, but it just fit so well, like a gentle and constant hug.
It’s almost silly to me now, how I couldn’t recognize myself.
I take a step forward and lower myself to one knee. The little girl flinches for a moment, and I shush her, tell her everything is going to be okay, and I brush her hair aside to reveal her tearstained face. In it, I see the anger and the fear that came to define me. I see myself at the moment when I decided the world around me was hostile and the safest thing to do was hide from it.
I take the girl in my arms, press her face into the crook of my neck, and tell her, “I’m sorry.”
And when I do this, all the buzzing in my brain, all the pain in my body, it just goes. Like I’ve been walking around for years tensing every muscle and just decided to stop. In this moment I see the portrait of my life.
January Cole, wanting so desperately to touch and be touched, but believing it’s a weakness, when really, our vulnerability is the greatest strength we have.
“They’re in trouble,” Mena says. “Our family. Plus everyone who ever was, and will ever be.”
My arms are empty now. I stand and turn to her. “The timestream is coming apart.”
“Hmm,” Mena says. “It is.”
“What’s going to happen?” I ask. “If you can see the picture, tell me I can fix this. Or has the universe decided already?”
“What was the other question I asked you, that day in the museum? About the painting?”
I think back. It takes a second. There’s a lot to process right now. “You asked me what the people in the painting were looking at. In the water, off the frame.”
Mena laughs. “Time isn’t a painting. It’s just a way to help explain a concept that, truthfully, our brains aren’t able to comprehend. Yes, I see more than you, but I only see a fraction of the sheer immensity of it. The majesty of it. What those people are looking at, the things beyond the edges, those are the parts I can’t see.”
“Eternalism is bullshit then?” I ask.
Mena shrugs. “It’s all another kōan. The past is written. The future? That’s written in pencil, not pen. And no, the universe is not inclined toward destruction. It helps to think of entropy as part of a cycle of growth and rebirth. But hey, I could do this all day. And there’s work to do now.”
“So there is a chance,” I say.
Mena smiles. “Not chance. Choice.”
“For me, I mean. There’s a chance for me.”