The Seven Year Slip

Clementine recalls Aunt Analea telling her “if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do” (12), a message she takes to heart as she currently sits in a Michelin-starred restaurant called the Olive Branch. Clementine is a senior publicist at Strauss & Adder publishing, and she is there with her best friends Drew—a senior editor—and her pregnant wife Fiona—a designer at the publishing company. Drew planned the lunch in an attempt to speak with the restaurant’s famous chef, James Ashton, who had written an article she loves and with whom she wants to publish a new book. Drew talks about the chef’s talents, and Clementine admits that she hasn’t read his article.

Fiona and Drew ask about Clementine’s love life, and she reveals that she broke up with her boyfriend, Nate, a week ago because he thinks she is too closed off and only cares about her work. Clementine doesn’t disagree with this, knowing the truth behind it and having never been in love with Nate or anyone else. This breakup happened in the middle of Clementine’s move into her late Aunt Analea’s Upper East Side apartment, a topic she avoids when her friends try to bring it up in discussion. It is later revealed that Analea died by suicide.

Clementine changes the subject by ordering the chef’s signature dessert, a deconstructed lemon pie. She then asks a waiter if they can speak with James Ashton. She suddenly gets a panicked email from one of the authors she represents, and dashes out of the restaurant, bumping into a man on the way out and nearly causing him to drop her friends’ lemon pie. She efficiently solves the problem with the author once she gets back to work, but Clementine continues to think about the man she ran into. She didn’t understand how, in their quick collision, the stranger seemed to recognize her.

Clementine describes her work at Strauss & Adder, a small publishing house that is known for its travel guides. When Fiona returns from lunch, she tells Clementine that James Ashton has already received many publishing offers from different companies and that he was the man Clementine ran into on the way out.

Clementine meets with her boss, Rhonda Adder, the co-publisher of the house whom Clementine admires and wants to emulate. Clementine hopes to be Rhonda’s successor when she retires, and everyone believes she will be. Rhonda notices that Clementine has rescinded her request for time off in August, a time she had always reserved for summer trips with Analea before her death six months earlier. Rhonda denies her decision to not take a vacation from work, knowing that Clementine, in her last seven years of working for the company, never gives herself a break when she needs it. Rhonda also intends to retire soon, and Clementine will need some time off before she is given Rhonda’s job.

Clementine thinks about the vacations she historically took with her aunt and how she has become a shell of the person she once was since her aunt’s passing. On her way out of the office on a Friday at 8:30 pm, Clementine grabs a New York City travel guide that someone at the office was giving away. She reflects on how her aunt would love the absurdity of Clementine having a travel guide for the city she lives in.

Clementine inherited Apartment B4 of the Monroe from her aunt six months earlier but had only moved in the week before when the rent at her previous apartment was increasing. Though it had always felt like home while her aunt was alive, Clementine does not feel that the apartment is truly hers. Clementine still imagines Analea everywhere and associates the apartment with only her aunt. Going up to the apartment, she thinks of the stories her aunt had told her about the magic apartment, recognizing now that none of them were true. Clementine falls asleep on the couch as soon as she gets in.

Clementine is woken up by a hand on her shoulder, and it takes her a moment to realize that she should be alone in her apartment and that this is a stranger. She opens her eyes to see a man in his mid-twenties who somehow knows her name. After she attacks him, he tries to explain that his mother is a friend of her aunt’s, and Analea was letting him sublet her apartment for the summer, warning him that her niece Clementine might occasionally spend the night. He gives Clementine a note from Analea that confirms this and tells her his name is Iwan. Though Iwan thinks this explains everything, Clementine refuses to believe him, and he says he will leave without her having to ask. As Iwan goes to pack his things, Clementine looks around the apartment and sees several of Analea’s things she had thrown out or lost, along with a calendar on the wall from seven years prior.

She learns from Iwan that Analea, in this time period, is traveling in Norway, and she remembers their trip there from seven years earlier. Clementine says she needs air, so Iwan opens a window before she can warn him not to, letting in two pigeons that Analea claimed had lived outside her apartment all her life and never aged. The pigeons begin to attack Clementine’s hair, and Iwan tosses them out of the window. Clementine tries to remember if her aunt had mentioned anything about subletting her apartment seven years ago and thinks of the stories she had told her about Apartment B4 being magical. Clementine flees the apartment, telling Iwan to be gone by the time she returns.

Going for a walk to clear her mind, Clementine thinks of how Analea had told her that the apartment “bends time when you least expect it,” saying that “one moment you are in the present in the hall [...] the next you open the door and you slip through time into the past. Seven years [...] It’s always seven years” (45). Wanting to believe this story, Clementine doesn’t tell the doorman, Earl, about the man in her apartment.

Analea had once told Clementine about her first night at the apartment when she met a strange young woman. Analea’s apartment was suddenly furnished with someone else’s belongings. The woman, Vera, was not surprised to see Analea and attempted to explain to her that the apartment is a time slip and takes its residents seven years into the past and the future. Though Analea had instantly fallen for Vera, she left and didn’t see her again for another few months.

Concerning Analea and Vera, Clementine had always heard a particular version of the story when she was a child. However, when she was 12, Analea began including the sad parts she previously omitted when telling the story: She wanted to marry Vera but was heartbroken when she found her in her own time, because Vera was different. While Analea had wanted to travel the world, Vera wanted to have a family. Analea let her go and stayed the same while Vera changed.

In the present, Clementine remembers her aunt’s primary rule about the apartment: Never fall in love, as everyone in the apartment will eventually leave. Clementine questions why the apartment has brought her a stranger, rather than the aunt she so desperately misses, but is determined not to worry about it. In denial, she still wonders if she is imagining things.

Clementine returns to the apartment with the plan to carry on regardless of whether someone is there. Inside, she finds the apartment uninhabited but furnished as it was seven years ago, along with a note from Iwan apologizing for the intrusion. Clementine leaves and enters the apartment multiple times before she runs into Iwan, who still plans on leaving but has forgotten his toothbrush. As Iwan is leaving, Clementine thinks of how Analea had always told her she was brought to Vera when both of them were at a crossroads. Conflicted and wanting to live in a world in which her aunt still lives, she tells Iwan he can stay, but that she has to stay there, too. To thank her, Iwan offers to cook them dinner, and the two officially introduce themselves. Clementine feels like she may regret her decision to accept this stranger into her life.

As he begins to cook, Clementine learns that Iwan is a chef, and he tells her he is in New York to look for a job. He explains his plans to get a job as a dishwasher in a nice restaurant and to work his way up to being a chef. Only wanting him to know the real her, Clementine tells Iwan little about herself, excluding the details about her extensive travels with her aunt, as she thinks it gives people the wrong impression of her. Regardless, Iwan seems to understand Clementine and gives her the nickname “Lemon.” She thinks of where Iwan could be in the present, again remembering her aunt’s rule to never fall in love in the apartment.

Clementine gets to know Iwan better and learns about his passionate interest in food. He tells her about how food does not need to be fancy and that it should be inclusive and about the experience, rather than the prestige. Though she does not understand his interest, she longs for something she could be just as passionate about. Still, Clementine is somewhat annoyed when he tries to learn more about her and why she became a publicist. When he asks her what she does for fun, she is somewhat embarrassed to say that she goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to sit in front of Van Gogh’s paintings, something she always makes time to do on her birthday. Upstairs, they hear a neighbor playing a song on the violin from the Broadway musical Analea had once starred in. Iwan asks Clementine to dance with him, and she is surprised that she wants to, not feeling like herself. She then pulls away.

Clementine tells Iwan directly that she is not going to sleep with him—something he is surprised to hear as he was not trying to give her that impression. Clementine is emotionally caught up in the idea that they live seven years apart and the fact that her sudden attraction to Iwan in this time cannot end well for either of them. When Clementine offers to sleep on the couch and refuses to let Iwan take it, Iwan tells her that they are both adults, and Analea’s bed is big enough for the two of them. Clementine attempts to leave the apartment and return to her time again, but when she enters the apartment once more, she sees it is still seven years in the past. She hesitantly gets in bed with Iwan.