Tomorrow by C. K. Kelly Martin Page A

says Mitchell Nelson is scheduled to take the oath of office in approximately an hour. Freya reluctantly stands, leaving her cereal bowl orphaned on the couch. “Let me know if anything else happens,” she says. “I have to hop into the shower.” I’d forgotten that Freya has to be over at Expo soon and automatically frown. I wish there were more time before she had to leave, that we could spend the day together adjusting to the implications of the shooting.
    Freya’s lips smack against mine just before she disappears, and when she pads into the room minutes later she’s wearing one towel and has swept her hair up in a second. I tell her she didn’t miss a thing, and Freya unwraps her hair and begins towel-drying it. Her legs are perfectly smooth under the bath towel. I can’t resist reaching out to wrap my hand around the back of her knee and running it up her thigh a little.
    Freya’s fingers play with my hair. I lean my head against her belly a nd listen to her say, “Hey, did I mention Dennis and Scott invited us to a barbecue they’re having on June fourteenth?”
    “I don’t think so. I’ll try to book the day off.” Dennis and Scott, a gay couple who helped us get this apartment, are two of Freya’s best customers at Il Baccaro. Dennis and Scott know the super because they used to live in a larger unit here, before Scott inherited a pile of money from an old aunt and bought them a house over in Kitsilano, just a few blocks up from the beach.
    Freya’s really fond of them both and has referred to Scott and Dennis as the uncles she never had. In 2063 no one would bat an eyelash at their relationship, but in 1986 there are people who hate them on sight. Those people would hate my mothers too. I think about Rosine over in Toronto all the time and wonder how she’s getting by. They stole her memories of Bening when they wiped and covered her and sent her back into the past with me, but other than that, she’s still the same person.
    In some ways , the 1980s is the time before people ruined the planet, and in other ways, it’s a nearly barbaric era. So much hate and judgment based on race, gender, and sexual orientation, things we paid little attention to in 2063.
    “Okay,” Freya says lightly as she pulls away to continue getting ready. “Have fun watching the new future unfold.”
    I smirk at the phrase ‘the new future . ’ There was a fork in the road we weren’t sure was coming, but now it has, and after Freya leaves for work I watch Mitchell Nelson officially become the forty-first president of the United States. He’s about six feet tall, pale, clean-shaven, and unremarkable looking, except for his eyes, which appear steely yet sincere. I keep staring at him, looking for signs of U.N.A. allegiance in his face.
    Finally I have to cycle over to Expo to put in a four -hour shift. A pall hangs over the crowd as I load people on and off the skyride gondolas that give you a bird’s-eye view of the fair. Snatches of conversation about Reagan and Nelson flit by my ears as I take people’s arms to help them. Only the kids seem unaffected by the news. The children are usually the ones who get most excited about the gondola, but normally it seems as if most people who pass through the fair’s entrance gates are ready to believe the future is full of promise. Today, when that might be closer to true than it’s been in a long time, people probably believe it less.
    The gap between the crowd’s sadness and anger and my own feelings of confusion and endless possibility makes me edgy. Because I have three hours between the end of my Expo shift and the seven o’clock start at Greasy Ryan’s, I head back to the apartment, hoping to catch up with Freya, who has the night off.
    Despite the weird atmosphere at Expo , I’ve gotten through half the day on a single cigarette and I’m fighting the idea of smoking a second when the phone rings.
    “Hello,” the female voice says. “Is this Robert Clark?”