2015

2015 is the novel’s present-day marker for two scenes in which the future presses into ordinary decisions: Apollo Kagwa and Patrice Green debate whether to sell a valuable book now, while Patrice later reads William Wheeler’s oversized bottle of Tab as a glimpse of what lies ahead.

The Book Sale and the Cost of Waiting

On a Wednesday afternoon, Apollo and Patrice travel by train toward Long Beach, New York, with the book sale on their minds. Patrice supports selling, but wonders whether waiting until the woman connected to the book has died could double the amount offered. The imagined gain comes with a risk: they might sell too soon if she dies within the following year.

Apollo counters with the uncertainty of waiting. It is already 2015, he argues, and she might live another ten years; meanwhile, the buyer is prepared to pay $70,000 for a book Apollo bought for $100. He treats the offer as an extraordinary markup available now, rather than a reason to speculate about a future that may be distant or may arrive sooner than expected. Patrice jokes that rational arguments will not settle the matter, exposing the tension between a concrete present offer and a hoped-for windfall.

Apollo pats Patrice’s shoulder and reassures him that the woman will not die soon. The gesture closes their exchange without resolving its underlying uncertainty: the sale is measured not only in money, but against a future neither friend can know.

A Bottle as a Figure of the Future

At the Long Beach station, the ticket agent’s unattended microphone leaves the waiting area humming with a low, fuzzy buzz. William Wheeler reaches into a plastic bag and takes out a sixty-four-ounce bottle of Tab. Its faded pink wrapper, now the color of fiberglass insulation, makes the old soft drink conspicuous; after returning to the Subaru, Wheeler rests against its hood and chugs from the jug.

Patrice contrasts the bottle with more familiar signs of trouble, such as a forty-ounce beer or a liter of gin. The Tab is ridiculous instead, and his question about who still drinks it in 2015 leads to the sharper observation that it represents Apollo’s future. The remark makes the year more than a date: alongside the book-sale calculation, it places the characters’ present inside the shadow of aging and what may come next, using an obsolete drink and a startlingly large container as its comic, unsettling image.