Prediction

Chapter 1

September 2018

I DIDN’T DREAM it or have a vision or hear a voice. No bushes burned—not that I saw, anyway. No one passed over their esoteric knowledge to me by means of electromagnetic induction. I didn’t have a revelation.

This was more subtle, more gradual. A series of coincidings whose accumulation became so powerful that even I, a complete skeptic, couldn’t ignore them anymore. Or wasn’t allowed to. Depending on your point of view.

It was the kind of thing that should’ve happened to my friend Nicole, who was into the occult, mysticism, spirit channeling, crystals, pendulums, candles, omens, and all that New Age jazz. She would’ve given up her job as a fully-pension-vested social worker if she could’ve had this one thing happen to her.

Hell, she probably would’ve run me over with her too-large trucklike car if she could’ve had this happen to her instead of me. Despite our friendship.

I would gladly have given the experience to her, traded it off, so to speak, and I told her so that day, the day that our friendship had just enough mutual something-or-other erode from it to cause our relationship to sag.

"You what?" Nicole said.

We were having lunch in that restaurant she likes to go to, the one that has no food that vegan me can or would want to eat, so I was stuck having a lettuce and tomato sandwich on poisonous burnt rye toast while she gorged on a dripping hunk of dead animal shoved between the jaws of a blood-soaked Kaiser roll.

I hadn’t been sure if I should tell her everything—or anything, for that matter. But I’d decided to that morning when I woke up and saw, as usual, my sometime boyfriend Junior in bed next to me.

What I knew was too much to keep to myself, and I wouldn’t think of telling Junior. Although of course, inevitably, he did find out. As did several billion other people.

"I have—I’ve gotten—it was so hard to describe and I hadn’t spoken this to anyone, so I was grasping for the right words—I’ve been given a, well, I’m not sure what to call it."

Try something, Nicole said. She was eyeing me through squinted-down lids while she gnashed away at her primitive lunch.

"A glimpse," I said.

"You’ve been given a glimpse," Nicole said. She was finished with the remains of her slaughtered fellow being and had moved on to taking great gulps out of her root beer float, a concoction that has the nerve to put cow in its name, unlike the sandwich, which employed the usual euphemisms.

It’s more than a glimpse, really, I said. I was beginning to regret calling Nicole and asking her to meet me for lunch. For starting to tell her what I knew. Because it wasn’t just a glimpse, it was knowledge. And my sandwich was awful.

What’s more than a glimpse? Nicole said between slurps at the dregs of the so-called brown cow. "A view? A notice? A—I don’t know—look?"

Too bad Nicole isn’t the latest in USB hubs or a new trend in machine-loomed rugs or maybe a series of too-adorable collectible dolls, because then I’d be able to describe her perfectly, with lots of luscious adjectives, some devious adverbs, and a few unexpected and vibrant verbs thrown in there to excite you and get you to buy something you probably have no use for.

Nicole, though, is a person, unavailable in a catalog (as far as I know), and, unlike long-brown-haired me, has supersupersupershort platinum blond hair, wears a veritable Sephora’s worth of makeup and nail polish, and, in contrast to her appearance, is all about stability and security, hence the social work job, a field she finally settled on after years of partying and fucking around, although some of that persists, but only during the hours that she’s not good-doing.

I have to get back to work, I said.

Since when did you have to get back to work? Nicole said.

It wasn’t really a vision, I said. I pulled my sandwich apart and ate the lettuce leaves. The tomato looked like it had been overexposed to radiation. I pushed it aside, along with the burnt toast.

You had a vision!!! Nicole slammed her empty float glass down on the lovely retro Formica-topped table and did her best to stare straight into my psyche, a place even I had rarely visited.

I wouldn’t call it that, I said.

"You just did!" Nicole said. Or rather, shouted.

But it wasn’t really like that, I said.

I cannot believe you had a vision, Nicole said. She looked like she was about to cry.

"I’ve been trying to have a vision my entire life—Nicole is a well-known exaggerator and can’t possibly have been trying to have a vision her whole life, since, for example, no two-month-old is trying to have a vision—and I’ve never even come close. And now you, who don’t care a flying swimming fuck about this, had a vision?!? It’s not fair!"

It wasn’t really a vision, I said. "It’s more like—I’m not sure how to say it—a knowing."

My goddess, Nicole said. Her hands were shaking. "You didn’t have a vision. You had a direct knowing. Do you even have a clue about what that means?"

It means I know something, I said. I did know something.

What? Nicole said. Spill it.

I knew she’d get to this part eventually. That I’d get to this part eventually.

I mean, that was the reason I’d called her to begin with. This was too big to keep to myself. And Junior, well, he’d never understand. He didn’t even understand what I did for a living.

He thought that copywriter meant I had a job with the patent office or something and gave copyrights to new products. Or perhaps that I worked for the Library of Congress (from my kitchen table) and assigned obscure series of numbers to upcoming books. What I mean is: he didn’t care.

Well, what is it? Nicole said. She’d started tapping her knife on the table.

Stop that, I said. That’s really annoying.

No more annoying than you are, she said. You can see how long we’ve known each other.

Please, stop it, I said.

So she finally put the knife down and said, What is it you know? It must be something huge, Cassey, or you wouldn’t be putting me through this utter agony.

It’s not agony, I said. Discomfort, maybe.

Stop contradicting me! Nicole said. I hate it when you do that.

I never do that, I said. Although, come to think of it, I often do that.

You’re still not coughing it up, Nicole said. She picked up the knife again and gave me a threatening look—Talk now or I’ll start tapping it again.

I know about a future event, I said.

Oh my fucking goddess, Nicole said. "You did have a vision. I cannot believe this happened to you, of all people. You probably don’t even appreciate it!"

That was true—I hadn’t appreciated it at first, but after the seventh coinciding, or whatever it could be called, I’d started to.

"I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you and you’ve had a vision, a direct knowing, and I’ve never even had a damned glimpse!" Nicole got that about-to-cry look activated again.

You’d better tell me what it is, Cassey. I can’t stand the suspense any longer. Her hand was dangling the knife over the tabletop, tapping it into the air, which at least wasn’t onto the table.

That’s the thing, I said. "I don’t know exactly what it is."

"So what do you know? Tell me that. Immediately!" Nicole’s black eyes shifted over from concerned social worker into demanding interrogator. A fascinating transformation.

I just know that on May 2, 2019, something is going to happen that’s going to change the lives of everyone on the planet.

Chapter 2

NICOLE BURST INTO tears. This was truly a bursting or I never would’ve resorted to such a cliché. I, who know fifteen hundred different ways to describe floor tile and can write shiver-inducing back cover copy for mass-market thrillers, do not have to say anyone, much less my closest friend, burst into tears. However, she did, and I believe in honest descriptions.

What? Nicole said, sniffling, the snot running from her nose onto her upper lip.

What? I said.

What the hell is going to happen? Nicole said.

I don’t know that, I said. "I just know that it is going to happen."

You know what this means, Nicole said.

I suppose it means that something huge is going to happen that day, I said, master of the obvious that I am.

"It means you have an obligation now, Nicole said. You can’t just sit at home writing those frivolous descriptions of tableware and lounge outfits anymore. You have to tell the world what you know."

Oh no no no no no, I said. There might’ve been another thousand nos in there. If they weren’t exactly said, they were thought . . . and meant.

I have no obligation to anyone, I said.

Not even to Junior? Nicole said. She had a special fondness for Junior. In fact . . .

No, not even to Junior, I said. We had zero commitments, zero promises, and, really, zero future. Although he was an okay guy. In some ways. But he wasn’t the guy. In any way.

This is different, Cassey, Nicole said. This is enormously very very different, she added for unnecessary emphasis.

I told you, I said. I think that’s enough for now.

"But it’s going to affect the entire planet, said Nicole. You have to let them know!"

She ordered another root beer float and I resisted ordering a lemonade. Refined sugar often isn’t vegan, I hate to say. Or think about why.

"And how come you don’t know what’s going to happen? You know the exact date!"

Nicole was getting indignant. As though it were general knowledge—or at least her specific knowledge—that once a knowing, if that’s what you’d call this, was bestowed, it was, necessarily, complete. Unlike my pathetically second-rate, half-baked knowing.

I don’t know why I don’t know! I said. I was attempting to not shout.

You’re going to have to get on social media the minute you get home, Nicole said. Because you cannot keep this to yourself.

I really do have to go, I said.

I did. I had to get out of there before Nicole and I had our bimonthly argument about my not being on social media and how could I be such a hermit? Didn’t I realize there was no such thing as privacy anymore? That it was some throwback Victorian ideal?

Nicole’s last words to me before we parted on the street and she went back to her futile job of helping the local Indian tribe cope with having had their lands and heritage and very lives taken from them were: You can’t keep this to yourself.

Chapter 3

I WENT BACK through my journals that afternoon—Mediterranean-inspired floor tiles be damned—and saw, to my horror and alarm, that for no real reason that I could see, I’d noted the date May 2, 2019, not just once or twice, but at least twenty-three times during the past fifteen years.

I didn’t delve back into my teenagedom—bad enough that I’d had to live it—so I had no way of knowing if I’d written that date anywhere in the narrative or margins of those well-buried—and in some cases, burnt-to-cinders—journals.

Or incorporated May second into another wish list somewhere. Or written it down as the day I’d get married. Or would make my first million. Or would achieve the ten most significant goals I’d set for myself. Or something.

I might not be into anything New Age or occult, per se, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in goal setting and in consciously directing my creative energies. I’ve even read up on the law of attraction, seen The Secret—Nicole made me—that type of thing.

But none of that prepared me for the knowing. Or even hinted at it. I’d never heard of anything like it before, not counting revelations, which I didn’t think this was. Or is. Isn’t a revelation a kind of sudden thing that just hits you—pow!—and then you know?

This wasn’t like that. This was more like, I started seeing that date in some version or another in the most unlikely places—like as client code 522019 for a freelance job I’d done or I’d pause a video I was streaming and it was stopped at exactly 52:19 or I bought a new juicer and got a breakage policy for it that expired on 5/2/19 or I’d be sitting in my black-and-white Nash Metropolitan at the intersection of Park and Main forever and the car in front of me had the license plate EBB019.

It was that license plate that kind of sent me over the edge. Because that light is fairly quick. I’ve never sat there for very long. But that day, the traffic light didn’t change until after I’d noticed the license plate. Until after I’d not just noticed it but realized that EBB equals 522.

It didn’t take a World War II code breaker to figure that one out. Although when they invent time travel, I’m definitely going to go back to WWII and apply for one of those jobs, among other things I have planned for my forays into the past.

That night Junior came by with Chinese food for dinner—fortunately the local place was happy to honor my vegan needs—and after we ate, I broke up with him.

Come on, Cassey, you don’t mean it, Junior said.

Yeah, I do mean it, I said. I really like you, Junior, but, you know, I’m thirty-five and I’ve got to start getting serious.

I’m serious, Junior said. He gave me that hangdog look he has that’s often a prelude to hoped-for sex.

But I’m not, I said.

Junior put his arms around my waist, leaned back, and stared up at me from under his thick brows. Come on, sweetheart, you know you love me.

"I do love you, Junior, but, more like you’re my brother," I said.

Although anyone who’d done the things with their brother that I’d done with Junior would no doubt be spending the rest of their life on a therapist’s couch. But we hadn’t had sex for a couple of months, and I hadn’t missed it.

One last time? Junior said before he left. Fortunately, I’d never let him stash anything in my very small—although, I’m relieved to say, not officially tiny—house, so he had no need to pack up anything more than a toothbrush, which he didn’t take. I threw it out that night.

No, I said, standing at the open front door. Although I was tempted. It had been more than two months.

Until he said, Then it’s okay with you if I call Nicole?

Isn’t the one who’s initiated the breakup supposed to be the one with the next partner waiting in the wings? I didn’t know another likely or even unlikely candidate.

But it didn’t matter, because something huge was going to change my life and the lives of everyone on May 2, 2019. I did know that.

Chapter 4

October 2018

I WAS STANDING in line at the health food store. The woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, aren’t you Cassey Dumas?

I turned around to see Carla Sykes, a social worker who used to be at the same place where Nicole still works. Carla was in private practice now, teaching some kind of let’s-think-everything-through-before-we-have-a-fit kind of thing. The very kind of thing that someone who’s about to have a fit would never be able to accomplish, even if they could remember the instructions or that there were instructions.

Carla? I said. Nice to see you. I can lie with the best of them.

I saw about your prediction, she said.

That’s nice, I said as the cashier called out for the next customer.

Carla followed me to the register. I think it’s amazing, she said.

That’s nice, I said again.

I was making sure the cashier was ringing up my purchases properly. Weren’t they supposed to have a magic grocery cart by now? One where some superscanner would just glom onto all the items and come up with the total? Although even if they would have it, I figured this store wouldn’t get it for another century.

May second, Carla said.

What? I said. Do raw cashews really cost that much? I sighed. I like cashews, so it didn’t really matter how much they cost.

Your prediction, Carla said.

I don’t know what you mean, I said.

At that point, I put together everything that I remembered Carla saying over the last couple of minutes and realized something was terribly wrong. How could she know about May second?

It’s on Nicole’s Facebook page, Carla said, as though she’d heard my thoughts.

Really? I said. I’d have to have Nicole remove that immediately.

That couldn’t be too hard, could it? Deleting something from a Facebook page?

As long as no one else had picked up on it. As long as Nicole hadn’t also tweeted it or done some cleverly artsy Instagram thing with it. As long as Nicole hadn’t also told everyone at work and at the bar where she hung out on Saturdays so she could socially network while in the company of other social networkers.

Hopeless.

Oh, that Nicole, I said, hoping that was both specific and vague enough to get Carla off the topic.

She said you’re psychic, Carla said. But by then I’d paid and was ready to leave. So I did.

I fled the store. Carla still had to pay for her purchases—and despite her practically prepubescent body’s indication that she hardly ate, she had quite a load of foodstuffs—and I had to get as far away from her as quickly as possible.

That’s how I ended up in the Rose Café, which stocked the most tempting array of sugar cookies ever to be displayed in this hemisphere, but of course they weren’t vegan. I had a cup of Earl Grey and looked out the window.

I loved Anaconda, even though I didn’t fit in in Montana at all—vegan, leftwing, free spirit, thirty-five years old and my hair’s still down to my butt, etc.

But Anaconda was somehow different from most of the rest of the state, and I felt at home here. And of course, I love the snow, although the big stuff wasn’t due for a few weeks yet.

It’s just fun to sit in the café window and watch the passing scene, even if there’s nothing and no one passing. So much fun that I didn’t notice that someone had sat down across from me at my window table until he spoke.

You’re Cassandra Dumas, aren’t you? the gorgeous male voice said. I swallowed my mouthful of Earl Grey and felt the voice all the way through the center of my body, straight down into my loins.

No, I said, then tore my gaze from the window and looked at the speaker. He was a not-bad-looking fellow, an interesting-looking fellow, with wonderfully flawed features, mussy dark blond hair, and unnervingly blue eyes. Definitely a tall man, since he loomed over me even from his seat. Broad shoulders. Beautiful hands.

I recognize you, he said. We met once at the Moderne. Jones Upton. He held out his hand, so I shook it.

You’re one of Nicole’s friends? I said. Nicole knew everyone at the Moderne, so he probably was.

I know her peripherally, he said.

Then you’re not her Facebook so-called friend? I said. I was hopeful. Maybe he wasn’t going to ask me about the prediction.

I’m not anyone’s Facebook friend, he said.

Me either, I said.

Fate, he said.

Destiny, I said. The air between us gave off sparks.

What about a couple of cookies? he said. He had a plate in front of him, I noticed.

Vegan, I said.

Too bad, he said, then purposely ate a cookie as though it were the most savory, delicious, amazing food item he’d ever had. Perhaps it was.

I sipped my tea as if it were ambrosia. Perhaps it was.

How about we just get married this afternoon and kick over all this preamble? he said.

Okay, I said. Whatever had been stirring in my loins stirred even more. But isn’t there a blood test or something?

Let’s go find out, he said.

That’s how I ended up married to Jones Upton, who, as it turned out, Nicole had never met. Neither had anyone else in Anaconda.

Chapter 5

THE WEDDING. THE honeymoon. The whirlwind. All quite similar—fast, exciting, unexpected, thrilling, and kinda scary. Although I’ve never seen an actual whirlwind, if what I think of as a whirlwind actually is one.

There I was—one moment I didn’t know the, I must admit, intriguing stranger sitting across from me at the Rose Café, and sometime during the next hour I’d become his wife.

He held my hand between his large beautiful ones while we stood at the desk at the Deer Lodge County Clerk’s office and got the license, then got married, then drove off—in his car, a sporty turquoise convertible, a make and model I’d never seen before—and I’ve never written car copy—but it was quite sexy—to the Hickory House Inn, the bed-and-breakfast where he was staying.

Just passing through, he’d said when I’d asked him where he lived. That was before we got married, in case you’re wondering how I married someone whose place of residence I didn’t know.

So, you see, I did know where he lived, at least at that moment. He was living at the Hickory House. In the well-named Montana Room, the one with the big log bed, the mirrors on the back wall, the Waltz in the Woods throw rug, and, I’d have to guess, extremely soundproofed walls, since no one ever said a word to us about the noises we made during our stay there.

Although we did get some sly smiles from other guests at breakfast all four mornings. We must have smiled in return, but I don’t remember that part. I was too busy looking at Jones.

Here’s where, if I were going to, I’d tell you what a magical first night we had together. How we ripped off each other’s clothes and made love right there, up against the door to the room, neither of us able to wait to get into the bed or even onto the other throw rug on the wood floor. That that was how much we wanted and needed and craved each other.

And how in the middle of the night, Jones woke me up with his sweet kisses and whispered words of love and longing and deep commitment to me, to us.

Really, that was the scariest part. Even though I’d told Junior that I wanted to be serious and he wasn’t the one to get serious with, I hadn’t thought for even a second that I’d meet someone to get so completely serious with so soon. My impression had always been that these things take time, that you have to get to know a person.

But, the thing is, oddly, weirdly, inexplicably, I felt that I did know Jones, even though, of course, as Nicole reminded me time and time again over the next few months, I didn’t know him at all.

That day and the days of our marriage and honeymoon, though, I did know him. He was my lover, my friend, my husband, and he was himself, a fascinating person, full of insights and concerns and awareness and cosmic understandings.

On the second night, after we’d made love for the third time since we’d gotten up that morning, we were lying in the big bed, the patchwork quilt beneath us, Jones half sitting up against the log headboard, and me lying across his chest, both of us still steeped in each other’s sweat.

Jones said, Have you ever thought about the possibility of life somewhere else?

You mean, outside of Anaconda? I said. Sometimes I forgot there was life outside Anaconda. Even though I hadn’t lived here that long, it had become my home.

I mean, outside of the Earth, Jones said.

Something flipped over in my stomach just then, and I remembered the prediction. That I’d hadn’t told him, my own husband.

I forgot to tell you, I said. As though I’d even had time to tell him any facts about myself. Between meeting, getting married, and having nonstop sex, I’d told him hardly anything. Therefore, you might say that forgotten wasn’t quite accurate.

In another galaxy, Jones said. Far away from here.

"I’ve had kind of a knowing," I said. I wasn’t sure how to tell him.

Because there is, you know, a great possibility, he said. He stroked my hair, then wound it between his hands and pulled it back away from my face, leaned over, and kissed me in that amazing way he has, penetrating me to my very innermost being.

My entire body, my entire everything, responds to Jones. It was that way the very first moment I saw him. Inexplicable, really.

Something huge is going to happen on May second, I said. I’ve been shown.

I know, he said, then gently moved me off his chest, hoisted his satisfyingly large, sturdy, beautifully masculine body upright, positioned himself over me, wedged himself between my legs, and slowly slowly slowly entered me. Not just with his exquisite sex but, it seemed, with his unknowable essence.

How do you know?

That was my last coherent thought for quite some time. And despite our calling out each other’s names, my ecstatic screams and groans, and the beautiful, deep noises that erupted from Jones’s throat and chest, the neighbors never complained.

Chapter 6

ON THE FOURTH morning, I woke up, Jones’s muscular arm draped across my torso, and remembered that I had a deadline to meet. I hadn’t been thinking about work at all. Hadn’t been thinking about anything at all, really. Just enjoying my newly married bliss. Kind of a three-day bask.

But my subconscious mind is well programmed with the due dates for all my jobs, and it woke me up with a reminder that the copy wasn’t going to write itself. If only.

Jones, I said as I felt him harden against my thigh. He moved me closer to him.

Um? he said.

I have to get back to work, I said. Very unconvincingly.

No, you don’t, he mumbled into my ear, then started chewing on it.

Jones Upton, I said, trying to sound quite commanding and definitive, I mean it. I have a job, you know. Unlike you. Or do you have a job? I hadn’t thought to ask until then.

I do, he said. But it’s not that kind of job. He moved his head to my left breast and started doing unimaginably thrilling things with his tongue and teeth and lips.

Everything went blank for a while. Well, not really blank. Just the work part. That actually disappeared. My subconscious and I forgot about the deadline, about the whatever catalog it was we were working on, and threw our full concentration on Jones and on every moment we were experiencing together.

Afterward, while he was lying with his head on my stomach and I was playing with his permanently tousled hair, I said, What kind of job is it, then?

But it was as though I were taking opium. Not that I was in a fog or drugged or addicted. What I mean is: I didn’t care. I was curious, but in a very detached, Zen, everything-in-life-is-just-fine-with-me-so-what-the-hell way.

If he’d told me he was a mob hitman, I would’ve nodded and yawned and asked if we’d missed breakfast downstairs or if maybe we could go out to eat.

It’s more of a mission, he said.

Are you a spy? I said. I’d seen every one of those Mission movies and Jones looked nothing like what I’d come to think of as a spy on a mission. I tried picturing him with a weapon or doing impossible-seeming stunts and came up with a blank mental screen.

Not really, he said. Want breakfast?

You’re not going to tell me? I said. I was suddenly intensely curious. Incredibly hugely supersupercurious.

I’d married a spy on a mission! I was quite pleased with myself and had to know more. Me, a mere civilian copywriter, had married a big-deal spy, and I’d never even suspected. That’s how oblivious to spydom I was.

Later, Jones said.

We took a shower together and almost didn’t make it downstairs for breakfast, a breakfast the Hickory House cook had nicely accommodated to my vegan needs, so I was able to have blueberry pancakes along with the rest of the guests. I later found out that Jones had given the guy quite a generous tip.

After breakfast we got in Jones’s light turquoise convertible and although I’d thought we were going to my house, instead Jones drove us to Philipsburg, where we got a bucket of gravel that Jones and I carefully washed through, hoping to find a nice sapphire, which we did. Jones insisted on having it made into a ring for me, and we left it at the gem store, where they would cut the thing—really, it looked a lot like a blueish rock to me—and mount it into a setting.

I couldn’t find a setting I liked, and Jones told me not to be concerned, that he’d get something I would like, during which speech he looked at me with his sapphire-blue eyes and I couldn’t help but believe everything and anything he said to me.

Later, at my house, which Jones seemed to approve of, if his nodding at everything equaled approval, I was stunned by the number of emails and texts and phone messages I’d been ignoring for four days and decided against being overwhelmed and in favor of trying out my new marriage in my old bed.

That worked out quite well. Better than well.

Chapter 7

THE NEXT MORNING, though, everything changed.

Change is good. I’ve been told that. Been indoctrinated with that idea. But sometimes change doesn’t feel good. It feels not bad, but at the very least unnecessary, and that morning it felt intrusive.

If I couldn’t have things stay the same, I thought at the time, then maybe I could go back to the moment that Jones and I met and we could relive everything from the past five days over and over and over again, maybe two or three hundred million times, then I’d finally get tired of it and we could move on to something else.

Nicole, though, an expert on change, had other ideas.

Jones had gotten up early, done extraordinarily delicious things with me—and if you think this means that Jones tastes good, you’re correct, he does—and said he’d go back to the inn and gather his things unless of course I’d rather live there, in which case we’d gather my things and move them to the inn.

But as small—not tiny, I must emphasize—as my house is, it’s still bigger than the Montana Room at the Hickory Inn, so we took a vote and decided he’d move in with me, although Jones said we’d go house shopping starting the next day, since he thought it’d be better to have some property along with the building, and I had but a small and shaggy backyard that I’d made a point of neglecting.

I was just having another cup of tea—I despise coffee—when Nicole bashed on my front door, which, interestingly, was nearly the exact same color as Jones’s convertible.

Cassandra Dumas, I know you’re in there! Nicole said in her next-to-harshest voice.

I opened the door.

What canary did you eat? she said as she brushed past me and threw herself down at my kitchen table.

Oh, nothing, I said with fake nonchalance. I