Page 43 of Life Out of Order

“You don’t want to know,” Gomez says. Alba says, “A list of dates.”

“Okay,” I say. “Why is it a problem? Why do you need a source?”

“You’ll just make everyone panic,” Alba tells Gomez. “I’m sorry I ever told you.”

“Why did you?” Gomez says, softly. “It’s a hell of a thing to know.”

“What. Is. It?” I repeat.

“Pandora’s box,” Alba says. “When I was eleven I was trying to win an argument with Rosa and I said something that is irrefutable because it is true, but Rosa would have had to go see the future for herself to know it’s true. She got mad at me, fair enough, and we gave up the conversation before anybody said anything too harsh. But Gomez overheard us, and later he asked me about it. I shouldn’t have told him anything, but he made me feel—important—he was so serious. I dunno.” Alba scowls, defeated. She says to Gomez, “If it makes you any happier, after that I had a stricter policy about telling people stuff. You made me careful.”

“Too late for my peace of mind,” Gomez says.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” Alba informs him. “That’s what my dad used to say when I got to the edge of the stuff that wasn’t safe to know.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“Are you not listening?” Gomez replies. “Seriously?”

“Climate change,” Alba says. She waves her hand at the manila file folder, lying closed on the table between us, as though to banish it from the room. “That is a list of dates and events connected with climate change.”

“In the future?” My god, I think, how does she sleep?

Gomez says to me, “At this point, some of it has already happened.”

“All of it has happened,” Alba says. “We can’t change it. Why do you want a source, anyway? What source would anyone find credible? It’s just my personal experience.”

“I am meeting with some people from Extinction Rebellion tomorrow. I’d like you to be there, Alba.”

“No,” Alba says. “Absolutely not. Don’t be an idiot, Gomez.” I’ve never heard anyone but Rosa speak to Gomez like this. “You think this will motivate people to make the changes that need to happen? It will have the opposite effect. Everyone will tell themselves that we’re fucked anyway, so why should they give up beef, or bicycle to work? If you want anything to improve, people have to see change as a real possibility, something worth suffering for. If you put this out there, and somehow it motivates people to change, and then this all happens anyway—which it will—”

“What if we have to do better to achieve even that?” Gomez urges. “What if that is the best-case scenario?”

“Sure, that’s possible, maybe,” Alba says. “This is just what will be. Better isn’t possible. I’m not the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”

Alba and Gomez are not quite arguing, but they are speaking more emphatically than necessary in this sparsely furnished dining room. Gomez leans forward, ready to persuade, but then instead says, “So nothing I can do will make a difference?”

Alba shakes her head slightly, as though she’s too tired to move. “I don’t know, Gomez. As you said, maybe this is the outcome of all our best efforts, and it could have been worse. Do you remember when you used to try to help me with my math homework? Algebraic proofs? And you used to get pissed at me because I would leap to the answer without doing all the steps? That list is just the answers, without the steps. We don’t know how we got there, so there’s no point in trying to use it for anything. I wish you’d just put it through the shredder and forget about it.”

“Come with me tomorrow, Alba. At least talk to these people.”

“All I can do is confuse the situation. No.”

“It’s important.”

Alba’s expression is stony. “Gomez, you want to feel important, the same way I felt important when you asked me all those years ago. That’s the only reason you want to show this list to anyone, because it’s a huge thing, and you know it, and you want them to know you know it. But that’s not a good reason to tell a secret.”

As this conversation has gone on I’ve been feeling increasingly uncomfortable, and invisible. I feel like a kid again, watching my parents go at it. Maybe Alba and Gomez have forgotten I’m here? I suddenly want more than anything to be somewhere else. Then I think, I’m not a kid, and no one has tied me to this chair. I get up carefully, go to my room, collect my jacket and keys, then walk down the hall and out the front door, closing it gently behind me. I walk down the block to my car and sit behind the wheel. I lean my head back and close my eyes.

Time passes.

I think about something Alba said to me a while back: I’m not a vending machine for bits of the future. I hate it when people wheedle. If they need to know something, I tell them. They don’t have to drag it out of me.

Now that the sun is down it’s pretty chilly out here. I wonder if I should go back inside? Someone taps on the passenger side window. I expect Alba, but it’s Gomez. I flip the locks and he gets in. “Hey,” Gomez says. “Alba sent me out to apologize to you, but I’m not sure exactly why.” He offers me a smoke and I take it. We light up.

“No need. I wasn’t offended. I just wanted some air.”

Gomez shifts in the seat, trying to get comfortable. I crack open the windows. “May I ask you a personal question?” he says.