My parents struggle to tell me something while we have Christmas dinner. They avoid it between cleared throats, sips of wine, and futile conversation about inflation and how warm it is for December. I start to wonder which relative passed away. My mother looks at the time on her phone and hurries into the kitchen, her feet mute on the floor. The conversation shifts to my final year of “finding myself” as a liberal arts major at a commuter college. My mother re-enters, stacking Tupperware tableside and botching the pronunciation of “internship” as she proclaims I should get one at Google. Then, in one long run-on sentence, she barks at my aunt to start setting out plates for dessert and asks if my friends are stopping by. My grandpa tuts and shakes his head, a chessboard with our unfinished game beside him at the end of the table. Paper, paper, paper, my mother asserts. No time for real dishes! With the husk in his voice, my grandpa says, It was never like this. Sun hasn’t even begun to set yet, as my mother takes away plates still laden with white meat. I reach and scrape the mashed potatoes smeared at the edge as she pulls mine away. It’s not like this in Europe. Grandpa’s grainy voice is a ripple on the water, starting loud and ending at a mumble. Grandfathers like him across the country speak in adages melded with forewarnings, likely reciting the same premonition to deaf ears and minds focusing on tomorrow. Dad, finish your chess game, my mother tells him as she eyes the black Kit-Cat Klock on the wall, its oval eyes and long tail shifting rapidly back and forth. She whispers to herself in a panic as she starts doing two things at once. Her face scrunches, revealing the dimples on her forehead. Anyone hear that ticking noise? She yells. Probably the heat coming on chimes my dad, who has already begun disassembling the fake Christmas tree in the other room. We sip on coffee with our feet lifted. The vacuum pushes and pulls beneath the table. Crustier crumbs from pies and pastries falling onto the floor rattle in the roller and dustbin. I don’t know where I went wrong with you, Grandpa murmurs to my mother. It’s how it is now, Dad, my mother says in a matter-of-fact way. He turns to me using his whole body. Don’t let it happen to you, kiddo. The next morning, I find a sticky note on the table that reads 

Going to tomorrow. Took Grandpa. Leftovers in the fridge.

It’s the last time I see my parents.

*

It’s not until I attend my philosophy class the following semester that it becomes apparent it’s happening at my university. My professor, typically pedantic and full of trivial details, resorts to brevity and the salient facts. It happens in other lectures, too. The astute students take notice of it first, marking start and end times on their iPhones or at the top of their notebooks. Whispers of concern and delight bounce off the walls when we are dismissed. By the second week of February, classes end thirty minutes earlier. Someone in my sociology class says the same thing has been happening at their cousin’s high school thirty minutes north of here. It’s the new university policy and It’s part of the new pacing in the curriculum become recited mantras among tenured professors and adjuncts alike. By the following week, nearly all the faculty have gone to tomorrow. Then, everything is posted weekly online. Campus becomes a barren wasteland with the occasional melancholic student walking into buildings unhappy about class being held in person. On my commutes, people tailgate me. Everyone from teenagers with pickups and headlights to soccer moms with CR-Vs kiss the bumper of my 2017 Nissan Altima. One of those “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” cars with its undentable steel siding and aluminum rims that never dirty. Custodial staff and office admins find me in empty classrooms and lecture halls completing my work during the typical class meeting times. I steal a couple mannequins from an abandoned Old Navy and smuggle them into the lecture hall. I dress one up in a cardigan and find a wig that matches my philosophy professor’s hair. I place the other one in the chair that once belonged to a redhead I played eye tag with. I pull a short-sleeved crop top over the plastic breasts wishing I was ever this close to the actual girl’s cleavage. It helps to self-talk. I tell myself I’m not crazy when I raise my hand or stand beside the busty mannequin, reciting my scribbled one-liners. I bundle up in my overcoat and scarf when the university stops paying the heating bill in March. I stay the full duration of class time, asking the plastic professor the same questions I emailed the actual professor. Neither replies to me.

*

The university cancels the graduation ceremony. I dress up in thrift shop regalia that extends just past my knees. As I pause at the top of the staircase that leads into my living room, my thumb swipes across my phone until I find a YouTube clip of graduation music. Then I proceed. Both feet touch each carpeted stair until I feel the hardness of the living room floor. I slowly survey my surroundings, smiling at the sofa set from Bob’s Discount Furniture and the extending Persian rug in front of it. I wave at two candles of similar vanilla scent and the thick hardcover book of Henri Matisse art resting on the lift-top coffee table. I salute the oil paintings my mother bought on clearance from Home Goods. I sink into the cushion of the sofa and switch to a YouTube clip of a Harvard commencement speech from some TV actor I barely know. When it’s over, I walk to the fridge and press my thumbs against the cork of a bottle of cheap champagne. It ricochets off the ceiling, landing somewhere I’ll never look. The foam oozes down the neck of the bottle, dripping onto the kitchen floor.  

*

It takes me a few days to make pour-over coffee correctly. Tiny air bubbles enlarge and burst at the surface as I pour the steaming water in clockwise circles onto the grounds. The Sunday paper snug in my armpit states the U.S. Census Bureau reports nine percent of the population has gone to tomorrow. The number is projected to increase in major cities and suburbs. 

Horticulture becomes an unforeseen pleasure. I flatten the mulch and fertilizer coating the base of my mother’s tomato garden with my hands until the space between my fingernails is brown. I kiss the ones that begin to yellow and caress the green ones with my thumb, assuring them that their time will come. I blueprint my vegetable garden imperialism. Seeking room for radishes and carrots, I make myself into a lowercase “t” measuring the dimensions of the backyard with my footsteps. Overcast and rainy days keep me busy inside doing tedious tasks that I never cared to help my parents with. Between folding laundry, dusting fixtures, and cleaning dishes, I sit at the end of the table, pinching the tips of the pawns and bishops scrutinizing my next move on the chessboard. I mimic my grandpa’s gestures. A fist covers my mouth and chin. My lips brush left and right in the space between my knuckles, a soundless harmonica. Eyes unblinking until the black and white squares on the board fuse together from double vision. Tomorrow, I’ll sit on the other side and peruse a move for just as long.

I use savings gathered from pawned family jewelry to pay for utilities until the money runs out. Everything but the water is cut off. A man in a cheap suit knocks on the door and hands me a foreclosure notice. He fails to hide concern behind his smirk. I have 120 days to vacate the property. My friends Fletcher, Dom, and Travis get the same notice at their houses. We take turns swigging cheap tequila, devising an elaborate plan to burn our houses down and have insurance companies pay us. The alcohol makes us maudlin, and we call each other pussies when we say there’s too much sentimental value to go through with it. We aren’t the type to talk about the parents or siblings that left. Fletcher, my six-foot-six friend of twenty years, finds therapy in womanizing, often telling girls he’s being drafted by the Knicks. When the morning comes, he cries in their arms begging to be held. Travis’s real name is Theodore, but we call him Travis because he looks like Travis Barker from Blink-182, and he plays the drums. Last week, I overheard him mumbling credit card information to a telehealth therapist in a bathroom stall. We frequent the local hero dive bar where they still play ballads on old jukeboxes and where townies remember our game-winning touchdowns and home runs from high school. We hate ourselves for throwing punches at the drunks who call our fathers cowards. Dom, the muscle of our group and former All-State wrestler, breaks a cue stick over a man’s back. That’s when we know he’s taking it the hardest. It’s always after the third pitcher of beer that we start making declarations. It’ll never happen to us! Our bottles clink after we vow, and we chug slowly. The pact is binding. We live like kings. When we’re not fishing in the reservoir or chasing girls, we pick up dead-end jobs stocking shelves at libraries, hauling debris at construction sites and waxing floors at grammar schools off for summer. As fine dining becomes old-fashioned, we put on weight. Our faces fill from eating at upscale restaurants losing their customers to fast-food chains and buffets. They allow us in, even in our cut sleeves and mesh shorts. Our faces dive into bisques, wagyu beef, colossal shrimp cocktail, and chicken cordon bleu. When maître d’s and waiters bring us the bill at full price, we fling the bones from tomahawk steaks and racks of lamb at their heads. We empty our pockets of small bills and merge them at the center of the table like meager poker pots.

*

As summer ripens and the money runs out, Travis and Dom get jobs taking orders at busy diners and flipping burgers in fast food joints because they start paying double the minimum wage. Drive-thru lines at burger chains extend for miles. National news helicopters spot the longest one in some town in upstate New York. Fletcher and I land corporate grunt jobs. I take the backroads to the office, coasting through residential neighborhoods where delivery drivers defy speed limits and burn rubber off their tires. In school pickup lines, working parents shove their palms into their car horns. Everyone proceeds at a crawl, all four wheels always moving as elementary teachers yank children from backseats and windows. Children cry for the goodbye of their mothers who blow kisses and shout, Mommy’s gotta go to tomorrow sweetie! 

During my training, my coworkers speak curtly. Even the executives in Armani suits seem to forget regular punctuation. Words like “a,” “an,” “of,” and “the” become nonexistent. Most begin to speak only in nouns and verbs. Once I finally get good at decoding it all, they talk faster. On calls and in meetings, people go over earnings reports and presentations like those radio guys rapidly reciting disclaimers that provide important details before the next ad. The president holds a company wide morning meeting. His Windsor knot is snug against his throat. Facial stubble like sandpaper on his middle-aged baby face. After the jargon and verbal formalities, he states they’re relocating the company to tomorrow. I return from lunch to the sight of vacant cubicles for as far as the eye can see.

Fletcher, Dom, and Travis adapt to the speed and culture of their jobs. During happy hours, words shoot out of their mouths. I clutch their shoulders with a hey, hey, hey or woah woah woah, telling them to take a breath. I shake them, hoping to rattle it out of their system. As the days and weeks pass, I begin to get the same text from each of them. 

Goin to tmrw. Sorry dude. Have a drink for me. Love you bro.

I drink for my farewelling friends, raising glasses in their honor. By the final week of the summer, I have a drink for three, sipping each beer slowly. 

*

I look for jobs elsewhere. I ask old age facilities, spas, and hotel concierges if they’re hiring. I stumble into the bookstore where I now spend most of my afternoons. There’s a pretty girl who stocks the shelves, answers the phones, and handles the cash register. The big signs in the glass advertise seventy percent off—up from fifty last month. For the most part, I am the only browser in the store. I muster the courage to engage in flirtatious banter. I wait patiently at the register area. Be right with ya, she says from behind one of the giant shelves. She’s quick to wisecrack, poking fun before she comes around the counter. The novel is just about dead ya know. The big publishers can’t market it anymore. Her voice is melodic, suited more for an indie folk singer-songwriter than a bookseller. I counter with I guess I’m a dying breed with the best of them. Redness blooms on her cheeks every time she smiles. Extending past her shoulders, her natural dark hair competes with blonde from the root to the tips. She checks the back covers, as if she’s never read the synopsis of Moby Dick or Gatsby. May be worth something one day, I say. Like those old baseball cards of Mickey Mantle or something. Between bagging them individually she fidgets with the ends of her hair. I was told women do that when they’re nervous or are attracted to someone. I ask her about the University of Maryland sweater she’s wearing. My surmise that she’s a few years older than me is confirmed when we exchange graduation years. I don’t ask, but she tells me the store is closing at the end of the month. My consoling sigh awards me her hazel green eye contact. Her bookstore is one of about one hundred left in the country with their doors still open. Ya know, if you keep coming back every day and purchase a dozen or so of the classics, you’d probably buy us another month. She says the whole sentence with a smile. The first one I see on her. She says her name is Dafne, and I don’t take a chance with a Scooby Doo joke. I go back every day, stocking up on Twain, Dickens, Austen, and Orwell—each day designated to a different author until the day she closes the doors.

*

Our first dates are in cafes sipping coffees, walking in parks, and listening to vinyl records over a joint. We laugh and talk shit about the songs now without bridges or pre-choruses and the people who listen to them. We attend matinees. Most of the motion pictures now have plotlines that skip the rising action. We struggle to find theaters playing anything over an hour and a half. We comb through the state, finding underground theaters in the city playing the longer films of eras past. I’d never met a girl who liked Kurosawa before. She speaks about axial cuts and the poise in the framing and the emphasis on nature in scenes and it makes me want to marry her. Do I feel it happening to me? I want to do it as soon as possible. Tomorrow. At a courthouse with two witnesses. Maybe her parents.

At night, I drive us out where busy towns and city lights don’t block the sight of the stars. Blanket on the hood, backs against the windshield of my Nissan. The moon is high and yellow. In between pulls on a cigarette, we point to flurries of stars and make up names of galaxies. Our chests bounce when we cackle. Dafne lets the playful moment settle before clearing her throat to shift the tone in her voice. She asks what I want to be. What my direction is. I realize she’s the type to disregard levity when I tell her an astronomer. Lying or making up something impressive may salvage her impression of me. Or at least permit my hand up her shirt if we make out. Interjection saves me the trouble, as she tells me she wants to work as an editor for a big fashion magazine. She was an English major in college, but took enough credits in fashion design to earn her minor because English and literature won’t pay the mortgage. She mimics her father’s burly midwestern accent as a kind of fuck you. Says he didn’t go to tomorrow. An apology in tow. Given my tendency to cry when I speak in anger, I swallow my irate response condemning my parents and the promise I’ll never be an absentee father. Instead, I tell her about my parents’ house. How in a month I’ll be homeless. She finds my candidness charming. Her cheek rests on my sternum. My rushing heartbeat against her ear tells her how much I like her. She’s good at not letting awkward silences ensue. Her head doesn’t come off my chest when she talks. So, where do you think tomorrow is? She asks. What? I reply, more reaction than confusion. You know that part of the interstate where it merges into two lanes kind of unexpectedly? Where the crab apple trees and cherry blossoms take the color of the season. I know it, but don’t bother interrupting with acknowledgement. No matter what, there’s always traffic there. Always from an accident from people trying to beat the other at the merging lane. In front of you, you can see the mountain rearing its head. Feels like you’re heading into a daydream. I like the way she explains things. She can find silver linings in just about everything. If you go far enough, there’s that long tunnel that goes through the mountain. I’ve never been through it. I would always veer off to the nearest exit because that’s where my aunt lived, and we’d go there on holidays. Her head rises off my chest, and she turns her neck to look at me. Have you ever been through it? She issues a look of apathy when I tell her no. Her chin lands on my pec, emitting a humming vibration against it when she speaks. I think it’s just on the other side. 

*

Dafne and I move into a studio with low rent and high ceilings on the outskirts of the city where no one has been reported to have gone to tomorrow. We’re nestled in a quaint town that pays cash and calls you “sir” and “ma’am.” We go a year until we start referring to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. She gets a job at a fashion magazine as an assistant editor, spending most days fetching coffees, at photoshoots, or polishing writing. I work as a real estate agent, making good use of my psychology major. Too handsome to be a paper pusher. That’s what Dafne says. We enjoy the pace and solace of our lives. We get to know and explore our new community as much as we do each other’s bodies. Some weekends are spent entirely in the bedroom. Every morning goodbye kiss ends with the same whisper, Not to us today. Our version of “I love you.” However, it begins to happen the way winter breezes slip into cracks in windows. More emails flood Dafne’s inbox—more responsibilities that she brings home after five o’clock. Checking the time on her watch and phone develops into something of a compulsive addiction. When I hide them from her, she hides her hands from me. The clamminess smears the Sharpie marker tallies on her palm, where she tracks how many hours are left in the day. I duct tape the digital clocks on the microwave and oven. She works later every week, her face lit blue by the glow of the laptop screen, fingers like legs on a scurrying spider across her keyboard. Then, a promotion drags her into the city more often. She sips coffee through a straw late at night knowing the slurping will wake me. The lack of sleep seeps into her pores. It turns her skin porcelain and makes her eyelids hang. Eleven o’clock sometimes comes with the sound of a time bomb in her head and she covers her ears shouting to ask if I hear it, too. I walk up beside her as midnight approaches and suggest she gets to bed with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Neither of us know her strength as her hands clutch my collar. She affirms I need this done by tomorr…then she releases. 

We try age-old tricks to keep it from progressing, like making a New Year’s resolution and giving it up for Lent. Still, it worsens by spring. I come home early from work and find a black Kit-Cat Klock on the wall. Its oval eyes and long tail shift back and forth. Blood rushes to my face and I feel it in the follicles of my hair. I ask why she bought it, my words laced with ire. I thought it was cute, Dafne says. I got it from the nostalgia shop down the road. I demand she never goes back to that shop again. It takes a week for us to stop fighting about it. After a bad day and two glasses of whiskey, I take my little league bat to the Kit-Cat Klock, shattering all nine of its plastic lives across the floor. She jabs her pointer finger at me, her voice in a pitch I haven’t heard yet. When she runs out of different variations of “piece of crap” to call me, I am banished to the grocery store with a list.

At my leisure, I coast up and down every aisle. Even the ones I don’t need anything from. Suddenly, wheels on carts skid against the waxed floor as shoppers cut me off. In other aisles, people reach over others who inspect items for more than a few seconds, grabbing what they need without an “excuse me.” Around corners, people’s carts collide then dash away without apologies or words exchanged. At checkout, the cashier is quick to tell me he’s going to college. Just a gig to make some money right now, he assures me. He swipes my canned pasta and cereal boxes across the red scanner like a blackjack dealer flipping cards at a busy table. Have to beat the store record, he says. In the other lanes, cashiers swipe food just as quickly, the sharp beeping noise scanning filling the airspace. Ah, six seconds short, he says. I’m provided a look of disdain when I consider paying cash. The woman behind me in the robe and Ugg slippers offers me a similar glance as the cashier counts my cash, struggling to break down the change in his head. He’s already begun scanning the robed woman’s items as I juggle the change and receipt.

Upon my return, Dafne and I exchange stubborn silences. What happens after Tauruses fight. I sweep up the black and white fragments left of the cat clock. I cook what I know. Eggs scrambled and pancakes, breakfast for dinner. Her favorite. She turns on Monday Night Football. Our versions of “I’m sorry.” I wait two days to tell her it’s happening here. That we have to move.

*

We migrate to a cabin in the countryside less than an hour from the city. From the ceiling to walls to floor, wood meets wood. The perpetual smoky aroma of pine and cedar clings to the furnishing and cozy fabrics. Adjacent to the fireplace, two sprawling windows grant a view of the infinite snow-covered pine trees. Dafne opens one, hoping to air the place out. Most of my face becomes hair. We speak perfunctorily without eye contact. Succinct phrases. Unintentionally and nearly haiku. Most of her face becomes contempt. Sex becomes seldom. Only happening on birthdays or out of obligation. I learn how to hunt. Even when the snow is up to my knees and the feeling is gone in my fingertips, I wait patiently. It takes months for our tongues to develop a tolerance for the gaminess of venison and rabbit. We speak about the future over aged whiskey and warm fires. Sometimes I tickle the strings on a guitar. She confesses by the window as rain falls the way you’d see it in a melodrama. She tells me she’s grown to prefer the bustle and excitement of the city. How the middle of nowhere is no place to raise a child. A conversation premature by several years.

*

There’s a note on the table. Yellow paper. Black ink. It’s concise. Practically in bullet points. “I’m going to tomorrow,” it starts. For the career she’s grown to love and the future she’s grown further from out here. I’m still the man she loved when we first met. That’s why she had to leave. She doesn’t bother to acknowledge how complicated it sounds. 

*

It’s the third time I see spring turn the snow into steam since Dafne left. My shoulders and body harden from chopping firewood. I shout the names of everyone that’s left with each downward swing. When I lose the taste for venison and rabbit, I drive through the nearest towns. The storefronts in the big plazas all have signs on their doors or spray paint on the windows with the same message.

WENT TO TOMORROW

TAKE WHAT YOU WANT

I find what’s left of the nearly expired canned food. It goes quickly. Certain days of the week have a themed meal. Corn and tuna Tuesdays. Spam and fruit Fridays. My favorite. Then eggs and pancakes on Saturdays. Breakfast for dinner, her favorite. The time alone forces me to find company in bottled spirits. At night, the wolves holler. Their howls echo off the trees, carrying for miles. I raise a glass in their direction and shout, It’ll never happen to us!

*

I run a vacuum through the house. The all-purpose cleaning spray coats the tops of furniture and handles until the bottle is empty. I haul the garbage into a ditch. My nose crinkles at the smell of burning trash. I clean out my drawers, fold clothes, and replace my wardrobe for the warmer season. For the first time since she’s been gone, I venture into Dafne’s drawers. They still have clothes in them, the material pilled and thinned. A couple Nirvana T-shirts, checkered sweats, and unworn lingerie she probably hoped to have had the desire to wear. The smell of her still lingers on them. They scrunch in the grip of my fist. As I remove them, I find a thin rectangular strip that looks something like a pen. My eyes drag across the length of it, stopping where the words stack on top of each other.

+ Pregnant 

  – Not pregnant 

*

I leave the door cracked open with a sticky note on it for the wolves, telling them there are leftovers in the fridge. My Nissan Altima coughs and clicks when I turn the key. I caress the dashboard when the engine gets going. I keep a constant speed on the backroads. Weeds poke through where the asphalt separates. Bob Dylan’s grating voice sings against the static of the speakers, preaching if your time to you is worth saving, then you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone. It’s the part of April too warm for heat, too cool for AC. Once I get on the interstate, I crack the window. The wind produces a thumping whisper against my ear. I take the middle lane at forty miles an hour. The flat left rear tire doesn’t fight me. Dents and grooves in the road create a syncopation of jolts through my seat and the steering wheel. Three lanes merge into two. In the distance, the Northeast Appalachians jut out from the horizon. The speedometer needle budges slightly to the right. I try to count the white markers separating the lanes before they disappear under my left tire. I lose count somewhere in the forties. When I hear a ticking noise, I instinctively check my blinker signals and dashboard for maintenance lights. The muted color palette of the leaves and trees transitions to a blossoming pink and white. Absorbing the volume of the radio, the ticking noise blares. The dashboard trembles as the needle slowly arcs across the dial. I steady the wheel with white knuckles on ten and two. Up ahead, the tunnel comes into view like the mouth of the mountain opening wide. The red needle inches towards the triple digits. For a moment, the car feels weightless. I stare into the mouth of the tunnel. Gaping and inklike. My foot presses on the gas pedal until I feel the floor against my toes.