Play it Again Sam Pt. 02

Friday July 15^th, 2016 Day 1

"What is love? Baby don't hurt me....don't hurt me....no more"

The first day was just a normal day.

I got up at 5:00 am in the guest room, dressed in the suit I had laid out the night before, and commuted into New York.

I went to my office on Wall Street. Well, my cubicle.

I was an analyst at Broadwell and Marx. My job was to research companies and financial products. I would try to identify winners and losers, then pass on my findings to a junior associate, who would review my work, along with that of a bunch of other analysts.

Then the junior associate would make his own recommendations to a senior associate, who would make the actual buy and sell decisions. The senior associate would of course credit any gains to his own brilliance and blame his underlings' faulty analysis for any losses.

When you say you work on Wall Street people assume you must be living the dream, climbing the golden mountain. I was languishing in the copper foothills.

I got the job immediately after graduating at 21 from Rutgers with a degree in finance. The degree got me in the door, but in 6 years since then I hadn't advanced far. Getting ahead on Wall Street is as much about who you know as what you know. While I will readily admit that I'm no rainmaker, I have seen less qualified, less talented men and women shoot past me on the corporate ladder.

Still, I made a good salary. My career may have been building more slowly than I would have liked, but I believed I'd reach that mountain top eventually. I just hoped I would still be young enough to enjoy the view.

I put in an action packed day of pouring through financial documents, then headed home a little after six.

I walked in the door to some delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. Not having to commute a couple hours each day, Julie left for work later and came home earlier. She worked in a hospital, but wasn't actually a health care provider, so she got to keep regular hours. Julie cooked dinner most weeknights and I tried to make it up on the weekends, as long as I didn't have to put in overtime, which happened fairly often.

Tonight was a "breakfast for dinner night." Nothing quite compares to the smell of bacon.

"Yum. What is that heavenly smell?"

"Bacon and eggs are done, home fries are in the oven. I set the toaster when I heard you pull up."

"I wasn't talking about the food," I replied as I nuzzled her neck and breathed deeply.

She shivered a little. Julie always melts when you play with her neck. I loved to breathe gently on the nape of her neck and work my way around, using my lips to just barely brush the fine, almost invisible hairs. Her head would tilt back involuntarily, mouth slightly open, giving off uncontrollable little sighs and shivers.

While the smell of bacon may be hard to beat, it's nothing against the clean, sweet smell of a woman. Julie had that seemingly effortless ability that women have to always smell good. Of course women would say it's not effortless at all. It takes a lot of work. I think I can speak on behalf of my fellow men that we greatly appreciate it.

"Oh god. Stop that Sam, save it for later. I'm hungry."

"So am I."

I had moved on to kissing her neck, but now I added some light nibbling. I teased Julie that she had a vampire fetish.

"Fuck it, we can heat the food up later," she said as she turned to lay a scorcher of a kiss on me.

But now it was my turn to hit the brakes. "No, no. You're right. You went to the trouble of cooking, we really shouldn't let it go to waste."

I stepped quickly away over to the cabinet and pulled out a couple of plates. Julie looked torn between outrage and horniness.

"You are gonna get it later, buster. Don't wear that mouth out, because it's getting a workout."

"I take it your sore throat went away?"

"False alarm, your'e back in our bed where you belong tonight."

We didn't run up to bed after dinner. We cuddled up on the couch and watched some TV. Julie loves a show called Trauma. It purports to be a serious medical drama set in a trauma center, but was more concerned with detailing the salacious sex lives of the doctors and nurses.

Julie said that while the show was greatly exaggerated, there was some truth to the idea that hospitals were meat markets. Apparently, who was sleeping with who was pretty much an unending discussion in the billing offices where she worked. Hearing about the promiscuity in her workplace wasn't exactly comfortable for me, but I didn't fault my wife for the actions of her less moral coworkers.

Any job that combined boatloads of stress with money is a pressure cooker for sex. I worked on Wall Street surrounded by so called alpha males, who thought nothing of cheating on their wives and girlfriends. Some days the lobby of our 30^th story offices would have so many pampered women waiting for lunch dates that it felt like "take your mistress to work day." The brazenness of some of them was stunning.

About 10 pm we went through our nightly rituals, locking up, turning out lights.

We made love and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

...

Honestly, I've forgotten more than I remember of that first day. At the time it was just an unremarkable weekday in the life of a happily married man.

One note of interest is that I changed my alarm before going to bed, to one of my phone's standard alarms. I'd been waking up to Haddaway for a week and I was sick of it.

....

Friday July 15^th, 2016 Day 2

"What is love? Baby don't hurt me....don't hurt me....no more"

'What the hell?'

I am not a morning person. Once I get moving I'm okay, but getting out of bed is a struggle, and generally I am not at my best before I get my coffee fix.

This morning my baseline grogginess was a rapidly turning to full on bewilderment.

Why was I in the guest room? Didn't I change that alarm? Why was my alarm going off on a Saturday that I didn't have to work?

Have you ever had a very realistic dream, where you were just going through a normal day? You get up, got to school or work. Then at some point during the day you just....wake up?

That was my first thought, though I'd never had that particular dream go through an entire day. And I usually spent a least part of the dream losing my clothes in public somehow.

Could that be what this was? It was so realistic. Did I dream a whole day?

I must have.

There, laid out on the chair of the guest room, was the suit I had laid out Thursday night. Last night? I walked over to it. Same suit, same shirt, same tie. I picked up the shirt and gave it the sniff test. It definitely wasn't worn. The suit was unwrinkled, still in the wrap from the cleaners.

Weird.

I shook it off and got dressed. At this point I was just pissed off that I dreamed of working for nine hours. My subconscious must be some kind of asshole. At least it could have given me an office. Maybe have my new boss, Scarlett Johansson, sexually harass me.

The drive to New Jersey transit didn't ring any bells. I'd driven it so many times that it would be strange if I did get a sense of déjà vu.

But the train was another matter. I got on the third car and sat on the east side, as was my habit. There wasn't any superstition to it. The third car stopped in front of the newsstand where I got my morning paper (Wall Street Journal, natch). I just walked straight in and took the first open seat in my line of sight.

The trouble started at the first stop after Trenton. A young blond got on and sat next to me. The problem was that I remembered her from my "dream." She was the typical young commuter, wearing casual clothes and a backpack, texting and listening to her earbuds. She wasn't especially memorable except that she had her hair in a ponytail, exposing earlobes that had been stretched wide enough to fit a toilet paper tube in. Not that she actually had empty rolls of Charmin in them of course. They had ear rings of a sort.

I clearly remembered her from last night's "dream." I remembered wondering if her ears looked like cooked spaghetti with the rings out. I also wondered if she let her boyfriend fuck her ear-holes.

Apparently I had been staring, because she brought my attention to it in that subtle way New Yorkers have.

"What the fuck are you staring at, dick breath?"

"Does he fuck them?" Oh shit! Did I say that out loud?

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?!?"

"Uh...uh...nothing, nothing. Just thinking out loud. Sorry to bother you."

I beat a hasty retreat to the back of the train car, followed by a litany of insults and threats. Most of the other riders didn't even look up. Typical day on the train.

I sat down in a fog. What is it the same girl? It had to be. But how? I certainly couldn't ask her, even if I wasn't now worried she might spit on me. "Were you in my dream last night?" No way.

Was it a dream? Maybe I had my days mixed up. Maybe yesterday was Thursday? But the clothes...

I was driving myself crazy, so I decided to distract myself with ritual. Every day on my ride into work I read the Journal.

And that sealed the deal.

It was the Same. Damn. Paper.

My imagination is not this good. I did not dream read every article in the whole damn newspaper. I flipped through it frantically, not believing my eyes. I recognized every article. I'd read them. They may not have all made an impression at the time, but there was no way I could read the paper and not be absolutely certain that I had read it the day before.

The rest of that day is just a fog. I'm pretty sure I went to work. I stumbled through the rest of the day like a zombie. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I stumbled through it like a chihuahua, wide eyed and slightly trembling. Every 15 minutes was another déjà vu episode. I couldn't stop "remembering" things as they were happening right in front me.

I truly felt like I was losing my mind.

Friday July 15^th, 2016 Day 3

"What is love? Baby don't hurt me....don't hurt me....no more"

I jerked awake, saw I was back in the guest bedroom, and screamed. It wasn't a girly scream. It was very manly. Macho even. In fact it was more like a lion's roar.

My wife came running in.

"Did you hear that? It sounded like a woman screaming."

She ran to the window, searching the backyard for a young lady being murdered.

"Um...that was me."

"What? Did you hurt yourself, are you injured?"

"No, no. I...I think I'm going crazy Julie," I croaked.

"What do mean? You're scaring me baby."

I hesitated a second before answering. If I was going to share this with anyone it was my wife, but saying it out loud was a big step. I thought I might be having a real psychotic break. I didn't want to scare my wife. Or worse, have her think I was crazy.

"I keep reliving the same day. This is the third day in a row I've woken up here in the guest room on July 15th. Yesterday I thought I was just confused, but now I know it's really happening."

Julie had a pained look on her face. Her natural inclination to be supportive to the man she loved was warring with her skepticism. I could tell she didn't believe me. I couldn't blame her, I wouldn't believe me either. How could I prove it to her?

"Baby," she said. 'Maybe it's stress. Maybe you should take the day off and rest. Are you sure it wasn't just a nightmare you had last night? You're still in bed. It looks like you just woke up and screamed."

I thought of something.

"Go get dressed. I'll prove it to you. I've read today's paper twice now. Come with me to the corner store and you'll see."

I have to give her credit. Normally she would still be in bed. She didn't argue, she just went and threw on some clothes. She's roused from sleep by her husband screaming and spouting insanity, and she handled it like a champ. She could see I was really upset and she wanted to help however she could.

God, I loved her. I felt much calmer, knowing Julie was by my side.

I was supremely confident as we drove to the nearest gas station and got a copy of the Journal. We went home and sat at the kitchen table before getting down to business.

As it turns out my confidence was misplaced. My bright idea was for Julie to choose an article at random and I would give her details from it that I couldn't have known without reading it.

I may have read through the paper twice over the last couple days, but I hadn't memorized it. When Julie chose an article, I could usually summarize what it was about and cite some stat or name mentioned. But not always. I hadn't anticipated being quizzed later. There were a few columns that Julie had to practically read to me before I remembered them. Even worse, since most of the articles were financial news, Julie raised the point that I could have just known some of the content. If the article was about the 2^nd quarter earnings of Apple, it didn't take pre-knowledge to guess that the sales figures for the new iPhone were prominently featured. And if I could quote some specific sales numbers and stock projections...well I did work on Wall Street.

"Shit, this is embarrassing."

"Well it was a little inconclusive, but honestly, you knew a lot more than I thought you would. I can see this is really getting to you. I'm going to call Susan and take a personal day. I don't think you should be alone."

Susan was the head of the billing department at Julie's hospital. I knew there wouldn't be any difficulty getting the day off. Julie was probably the most honest and conscientious person I had ever met. I'd never heard her tell a lie. Employers absolutely loved her. Not that she'd had many. Her bosses would fight to keep her. Where I was climbing the corporate ladder at a snail's pace, Julie was the assistant director of the billing department of St. Gertrudes. The hospital administration was trying to find a place to promote her to before she was snagged by a corporate headhunter.

She walked back into the kitchen, where I was sitting despondent.

"Come on Sam," she said, leading me into the living room and cuddling up with me on the couch.

I ended up laying with my head in her lap as she softly stroked my hair. I just closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. I had been racking my brain in the kitchen for any way I could prove what was going on. But there was nothing. If I could take her to work, maybe. But nothing really memorable happened that I could predict in advance, and while she was being very understanding, asking her to take the train to New York just to humor my rantings might be pushing it.

We spent the day chatting, trying to keep it light. I think Julie was hoping that I would snap out of whatever breakdown I was having if she could take my mind off it and calm me down. She did a great job of keeping me distracted, but I never forgot why we were lazing around the house instead of working. Despite that, I enjoyed the day. They say that trouble shared is trouble halved. Julie may not have believed I was reliving the day, but she very supportive in a general way.

As evening approached, I suddenly thought of a new way to prove it.

"Trauma!"

"What baby?"

"Trauma, your hospital soap opera! There's a new episode tonight. I've already seen it twice, I'll tell you what happens."

"Hmm...I don't know. I really hate spoilers."

"Wha-"

"Just kidding," she laughed. "Sorry, I know I shouldn't make fun. It was too easy. Go ahead baby, tell me what's going to happen tonight."

I smiled. She had me going there, and I had no problem breaking the tension a little.

"Okay. There's going to be a school bus crash and four kids are going to be rushed into the ER. Three will be just cuts and broken bones, but the fourth, a little girl, will have internal bleeding. She'll need emergency surgery and later in the show they'll have to go back in when a bone fragment missed the first time perforates a vein. Dr. Waters and Dr. Shaw hook up in a supply closet. Nurse Johnson gets an ultimatum from the ward's head nurse to get her drug habit under control or lose her job. And Dr. Dreamy gets a paternity lawsuit, but they leave who it's from as a cliffhanger."

For a minute there was silence as Julie tried to process what I'd said.

"That's too much detail to just be guesses, I'll give you that. Don't take this wrong, but I think I'd like withhold comment until the show comes on."

"Of course honey, I'm not offended. I don't blame you for being skeptical. I'm just glad you're willing to humor me and keep an open mind."

When Trauma came on, Julie sat forward and watched with a laser intensity. Twenty minutes in, she was giving me strange looks. At forty she mostly looked confused. By the time the show was over, she actually looked a little scared.

"It's real. You've really seen that before. I don't understand how this is possible. You're really living the same day over and over?"

"Three times now."

"But...I don't remember anything. Is it just you, or is the whole world caught in this time loop and only you remember? And why is it happening?"

Trust my wife to ask the questions I should have been asking. I was too wrapped up in the moment to think rationally about my situation.

"Not a fucking clue, Hon. But with you on my side, it feels like a huge weight has lifted from my shoulders."

"Well I don't know how much help I'll be figuring out the "how" and "why" of this. This is some Stephen Hawking shit. But more important than figuring out how it works is this- can we stop it?"

That brought me up short. "Stop it? To tell the truth I was just hoping it would stop on its own. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and it will be Saturday. That's what is supposed to happen. This....time loop for lack of a better word isn't natural. It can't last long.... Can it?"

We spit-balled back and forth for a while. But by now it was getting close to 11:00 and we were starting to drag. We hadn't actually done much during the day, but it had been very emotionally draining. I had been up since 5am, racking my brain trying to find proof for what I was going through, scared that maybe I wouldn't be able to, that maybe I was actually going insane.

"Maybe we should just go to bed and talk about this in the morning," I said.

"But I won't remember anything in the morning Babe. We'll have to start all over."

No shit. How could I forget that? I really wasn't thinking clearly.

"That's it!" yelled Julie.

"What's it?"

"Don't go to bed! The day resets when you go to sleep! So...DON'T."

Could it be that simple? Just stay up past midnight, till it was Saturday July 16^th. It was so easy!

"You're a genius, Hon!"

We really thought we were very clever (or at least Julie was). In hindsight it was dumb to get so I excited about our little half-baked hypothesis. We had no idea of the mechanics of this time loop. Having lived through many more days of it, I still don't. I have some solid guesses now, but that's still all they are- guesses.

We had no trouble staying up till midnight. We were pumped with adrenaline and when the clock struck 12am we were jumping up and down like kangaroos on speed.

Slowly our jumping, dancing, and congratulatory kisses tapered off. We both seemed to come to the realization at the same time.

"Is that it?" Julie asked at the same time I said, "How do we know if it worked?"

"What if it doesn't happen at midnight? What if it happens when I go to sleep?"