Free Q: A Novel by Evan Mandery

before Thanksgiving, one of Q’s friends left a nectarine on the professor’s desk. Luponi entered the near-empty lecture hall and obligingly asked, “What’s this?”
    “It’s a nectarine,” said Q’s friend. “Is deconstruction a nectarine?”
    “Heavens, no,” said Luponi.
    “Well, that’s the last thing I could come up with,” the student said. Then he picked up his nectarine and left the class forever.
    In the last days of the semester Professor Luponi argued that deconstruction is best understood as a type of analysis, in the sense of the word that Freud employs, and that the interpretation of words and experiences says as much about the listener as about the speaker.
    It was during this lecture that Q resolved to become an organic gardener.
    As I-60 continues with his Shangri-la tale of newlywed progressives in love, an engaging narrative of Lévi-Strauss reading groups and gluten-free vegan dinner parties, I feel what is at first a pang of resentment in my stomach, which swells into a more palpable aversion, and finally bursts into genuine loathing. This occurs shortly after I-60 delivers the news that he is, and thus I am or will be, the father of a beautiful baby boy. “You and Q name the baby after yourselves,” he says. “Quentin Evangeline Junior. This is not an act of hubris; it is solely for his nickname, QE II.”
    This is ostensibly happy news, but I-60 relates this part of the story solemnly, and I can tell from his manner that this event, for better or worse, is the transformative moment of my unlived life. I know it cannot be good and brace for the worst. The mere prospect of grief in my future life unnerves me. I don’t like pain, whether it’s mine or anyone else’s. I cried at the end of Titanic .
    Instead of simply telling me what happens, however, I-60 proposes that we meet for yet a third time, at La Grenouille no less, for him to deliver the third chapter in the never-ending tale of How My Life Went Horribly Wrong. I understand this is serious business, and that he has traveled a long way, but I am annoyed all the same. I will now be out for three dinners.
    Needless to say, when the bill arrives I-60 does not make so much as a gesture in its direction. This is particularly frustrating because, presuming even a modest rate of inflation, the check, which represents more than two days of my salary, would cost someone spending 2040 dollars something like ten bucks.
    “Perhaps if this is going to be a semiregular thing,” I say as I reach for the check, “we could undertake to share the damage. I imagine you have some recollection of what a young professor earns.”
    “Not much, that’s for sure. And you ain’t getting rich from your novels.”
    “Well, then?”
    “You know what our mother used to say,” I-60 says, smiling. “It all comes from the same pishka .”
    “Seriously,” I say. “This is the second time we have had dinner together and now there is going to be a third meal. I really don’t make very much, as you recall, and money is very tight. Q and I are trying to save as much as we can. Her parents are covering the wedding, but we don’t want to rely on them for anything more than that. We’re trying to save for our honeymoon and for an apartment. I certainly don’t have enough spare money to be eating meals at Bouley and Jean-Georges.” I cast him a serious look. “It would be great if you could help me out.”
    At this suggestion, I-60 grows solemn himself. “Time travel is still in its infancy,” he says. “Many of the practical and philosophical issues surrounding it are yet unexplored. What we do know is that it is highly problematic, potentially cataclysmic, for physical objects from one period to come into contact with the same physical object in another time line.”
    “So it’s okay for you to come back and talk with me, but if our watches were to encounter one another, that would be a problem.”
    “Yes.”
    “That makes no