“A powerfully original love story. BOTTOM LINE: Amazing trip.”
　—PEOPLE
　
“To those who say there are no new love stories, I heartily recommend The Time Traveler’s Wife, an enchanting novel, which is beautifully crafted and as dazzlingly imaginative as it is dizzyingly romantic.”
　—SCOTT TUROW

　
AUDREY NIFFENEGGER’S innovative debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, is the story, of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
　
The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other, as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals— steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control, making their story intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.


THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
a novel by Audrey Niffenegger

　
Copyright notice

　
Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector;
this inner time is our wife.
　—J. B. Priestley, Man and Time


LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
—Derek Walcott

　
For

ELIZABETH HILLMAN TAMANDL May 20, 1915—December 18, 1986

and

NORBERT CHARLES TAMANDL February 11, 1915—May 23, 1957



PROLOGUE
　
CLARE: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.
　I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.
　I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that’s been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?
　Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
　
　
HENRY: How does it feel? How does it feel? Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your book, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking in any direction, which will eventually yield a farmhouse, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time-consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.
　Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up too quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep. You hear blood rushing in your head, feel vertiginous falling sensations. Your hands and feet are tingling and then they aren’t there at all. You’ve mislocated yourself again. It only takes an instant, you have just enough time to try to hold on, to flail around (possibly damaging yourself or valuable possessions) and then you are skidding across the forest-green-carpeted hallway of a Motel 6 in Athens, Ohio, at 4:16 a.m., Monday, August 6, 1981, and you hit your head on someone’s door, causing this person, a Ms. Tina Schulman from Philadelphia, to open this door and start screaming because there’s a naked, carpet-burned man passed out at her feet. You wake up in the County Hospital concussed with a policeman sitting outside your door listening to the Phillies game on a crackly transistor radio. Mercifully, you lapse back into unconsciousness and wake up again hours later in your own bed with your wife leaning over you looking very worried.
　Sometimes you feel euphoric. Everything is sublime and has an aura, and suddenly you are intensely nauseated and then you are gone. You are throwing up on some suburban geraniums, or your father’s tennis shoes, or your very own bathroom floor three days ago, or a wooden sidewalk in Oak Park, Illinois, circa 1903, or a tennis court on a fine autumn day in the 1950s, or your own naked feet in a wide variety of times and places.
　How does it feel?
　It feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven’t studied for and you aren’t wearing any clothes. And you’ve left your wallet at home.
　When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.
　Is there a logic, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell? I don’t know. There are clues; as with any disease there are patterns, possibilities. Exhaustion, loud noises, stress, standing up suddenly, flashing light—any of these can trigger an episode. But: I can be reading the Sunday Times, coffee in hand and Clare dozing beside me on our bed and suddenly I’m in 1976 watching my thirteen-year-old self mow my grandparents’ lawn. Some of these episodes last only moments; it’s like listening to a car radio that’s having trouble holding on to a station. I find myself in crowds, audiences, mobs. Just as often I am alone, in a field, house, car, on a beach, in a grammar school in the middle of the night. I fear finding myself in a prison cell, an elevator full of people, the middle of a highway. I appear from nowhere, naked. How can I explain? I have never been able to carry anything with me. No clothes, no money, no ID. I spend most of my sojourns acquiring clothing and trying to hide. Fortunately I don’t wear glasses.
　It’s ironic, really. All my pleasures are homey ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare’s long red-gold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare’s breasts, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked. I love meandering through the stacks at the library after the patrons have gone home, lightly touching the spines of the books. These are the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced from them by Time’s whim.
　And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and crumple-faced. Clare with her arms plunging into the papermaking vat, pulling up the mold and shaking it so, and so, to meld the fibers. Clare reading, with her hair hanging over the back of the chair, massaging balm into her cracked red hands before bed. Clare’s low voice is in my ear often.
　I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.


I
THE MAN OUT OF TIME


Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

...Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,—just what is wholly
unsayable.
— from The Ninth Duino Elegy,
Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Stephen Mitchell

   
FIRST DATE, ONE
　Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)
　
CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitors’ Log: Clare Abshire, 11:15 10-26-91 Special Collections. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I’ve gotten past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books. The elevator is dimly lit, almost silent. I stop on the third floor and fill out an application for a Reader’s Card, then I go upstairs to Special Collections. My boot heels rap the wooden floor. The room is quiet and crowded, full of solid, heavy tables piled with books and surrounded by readers. Chicago autumn morning light shines through the tall windows. I approach the desk and collect a stack of call slips. I’m writing a paper for an art history class. My research topic is the Kelmscott Press Chaucer. I look up the book itself and fill out a call slip for it. But I also want to read about papermaking at Kelmscott. The catalog is confusing. I go back to the desk to ask for help. As I explain to the woman what I am trying to find, she glances over my shoulder at someone passing behind me. “Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you,” she says. I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry.
　I am speechless. Here is Henry, calm, clothed, younger than I have ever seen him. Henry is working at the Newberry Library, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I am jubilant. Henry is looking at me patiently, uncertain but polite.
　“Is there something I can help you with?” he asks.
　“Henry!” I can barely refrain from throwing my arms around him. It is obvious that he has never seen me before in his life.
　“Have we met? I’m sorry, I don’t...” Henry is glancing around us, worrying that readers, co-workers are noticing us, searching his memory and realizing that some future self of his has met this radiantly happy girl standing in front of him. The last time I saw him he was sucking my toes in the Meadow.
　I try to explain. “I’m Clare Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl.,.” I’m at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him. I want to laugh at the weirdness of the whole thing. I’m flooded with years of knowledge of Henry, while he’s looking at me perplexed and fearful. Henry wearing my dad’s old fishing trousers, patiently quizzing me on multiplication tables, French verbs, all the state capitals; Henry laughing at some peculiar lunch my seven-year-old self has brought to the Meadow; Henry wearing a tuxedo, undoing the studs of his shirt with shaking hands on my eighteenth birthday. Here! Now! “Come and have coffee with me, or dinner or something...” Surely he has to say yes, this Henry who loves me in the past and the future must love me now in some bat-squeak echo of other time. To my immense relief he does say yes. We plan to meet tonight at a nearby Thai restaurant, all the while under the amazed gaze of the woman behind the desk, and I leave, forgetting about Kelmscott and Chaucer and floating down the marble stairs, through the lobby and out into the October Chicago sun, running across the park scattering small dogs and squirrels, whooping and rejoicing.
　
HENRY: It’s a routine day in October, sunny and crisp. I’m at work in a small windowless humidity-controlled room on the fourth floor of the Newberry, cataloging a collection of marbled papers that has recently been donated, The papers are beautiful, but cataloging is dull, and I am feeling bored and sorry for myself. In fact, I am feeling old, in the way only a twenty-eight-year-old can after staying up half the night drinking overpriced vodka and trying, without success, to win himself back into the good graces of Ingrid Carmichel. We spent the entire evening fighting, and now I can’t even remember what we were fighting about. My head is throbbing. I need coffee. Leaving the marbled papers in a state of controlled chaos, I walk through the office and past the page’s desk in the Reading Room. I am halted by Isabelle’s voice saying, “Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you,” by which she means “Henry, you weasel, where are you slinking off to?” And this astoundingly beautiful amber-haired tall slim girl turns around and looks at me as though I am her personal Jesus. My stomach lurches. Obviously she knows me, and I don’t know her. Lord only knows what I have said, done, or promised to this luminous creature, so I am forced to say in my best librarianese, “Is there something I can help you with?” The girl sort of breathes “Henry!” in this very evocative way that convinces me that at some point in time we have a really amazing thing together. This makes it worse that I don’t know anything about her, not even her name. I say “Have we met?” and Isabelle gives me a look that says You asshole. But the girl says, “I’m Clare Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl,” and invites me out to dinner. I accept, stunned. She is glowing at me, although I am unshaven and hung over and just not at my best. We are going to meet for dinner this very evening, at the Beau Thai, and Clare, having secured me for later, wafts out of the Reading Room.
　As I stand in the elevator, dazed, I realize that a massive winning lottery ticket chunk of my future has somehow found me here in the present, and I start to laugh. I cross the lobby, and as I run down the stairs to the street I see Clare running across Washington Square, jumping and whooping, and I am near tears and I don’t know why.
　Later that evening:
　
HENRY: At 6:00 p.m. I race home from work and attempt to make myself attractive. Home these days is a tiny but insanely expensive studio apartment on North Dearborn; I am constantly banging parts of myself on inconvenient walls, countertops and furniture. Step One: unlock seventeen locks on apartment door, fling myself into the living room-which-is-also-my-bedroom and begin stripping off clothing. Step Two: shower and shave. Step Three: stare hopelessly into the depths of my closet, gradually becoming aware that nothing is exactly clean. I discover one white shirt still in its dry cleaning bag. I decide to wear the black suit, wing tips, and pale blue tie. Step Four: don all of this and realize I look like an FBI agent. Step Five: look around and realize that the apartment is a mess. I resolve to avoid bringing Clare to my apartment tonight even if such a thing is possible. Step Six: look in full-length bathroom mirror and behold angular, wild-eyed 6’1“ ten-year-old Egon Schiele look-alike in clean shirt and funeral director suit. I wonder what sorts of outfits this woman has seen me wearing, since I am obviously not arriving from my future into her past wearing clothes of my own. She said she was a little girl? A plethora of unanswerables runs through my head. I stop and breathe for a minute. Okay. I grab my wallet and my keys, and away I go: lock the thirty-seven locks, descend in the cranky little elevator, buy roses for Clare in the shop in the lobby, walk two blocks to the restaurant in record time but still five minutes late. Clare is already seated in a booth and she looks relieved when she sees me. She waves at me like she’s in a parade.
　“Hello,” I say. Clare is wearing a wine-colored velvet dress and pearls. She looks like a Botticelli by way of John Graham: huge gray eyes, long nose, tiny delicate mouth like a geisha. She has long red hair that covers her shoulders and falls to the middle of her back. Clare is so pale she looks like a waxwork in the candlelight. I thrust the roses at her. “For you.”
　“Thank you,” says Clare, absurdly pleased. She looks at me and realizes that I am confused by her response. “You’ve never given me flowers before.”
　I slide into the booth opposite her. I’m fascinated. This woman knows me; this isn’t some passing acquaintance of my future hejiras. The waitress appears and hands us menus.
　“Tell me,” I demand.
　“What?”
　“Everything. I mean, do you understand why I don’t know you? I’m terribly sorry about that—”
　“Oh, no, you shouldn’t be. I mean, I know.. .why that is.” Clare lowers her voice. “It’s because for you none of it has happened yet, but for me, well, I’ve known you for a long time.”
　“How long?”
　“About fourteen years. I first saw you when I was six.”
　“Jesus. Have you seen me very often? Or just a few times?”
　“The last time I saw you, you told me to bring this to dinner when we met again,” Clare shows me a pale blue child’s diary, “so here,”—she hands it to me—“you can have this.” I open it to the place marked with a piece of newspaper. The page, which has two cocker spaniel puppies lurking in the upper right-hand corner, is a list of dates. It begins with September 23, 1977, and ends sixteen small, blue, puppied pages later on May 24, 1989. I count. There are 152 dates, written with great care in the large open Palmer Method blue ball point pen of a six-year-old.
　“You made the list? These are all accurate?”
　“Actually, you dictated this to me. You told me a few years ago that you memorized the dates from this list. So I don’t know how exactly this exists; I mean, it seems sort of like a Mobius strip. But they are accurate. I used them to know when to go down to the Meadow to meet you.” The waitress reappears and we order: Tom Kha Kai for me and Gang Mussaman for Clare. A waiter brings tea and I pour us each a cup.
　“What is the Meadow?” I am practically hopping with excitement. I have never met anyone from my future before, much less a Botticelli who has encountered me 152 times.
　“The Meadow is a part of my parents’ place up in Michigan. There’s woods at one edge of it, and the house on the opposite end. More or less in the middle is a clearing about ten feet in diameter with a big rock in it, and if you’re in the clearing no one at the house can see you because the land swells up and then dips in the clearing. I used to play there because I liked to play by myself and I thought no one knew I was there. One day when I was in first grade I came home from school and went out to the clearing and there you were.”
　“Stark naked and probably throwing up.”
　“Actually, you seemed pretty self-possessed. I remember you knew my name, and I remember you vanishing quite spectacularly. In retrospect, it’s obvious that you had been there before. I think the first time for you was in 1981; I was ten. You kept saying ‘Oh my god,’ and staring at me. Also, you seemed pretty freaked out about the nudity, and by then I just kind of took it for granted that this old nude guy was going to magically appear from the future and demand clothing.” Clare smiles. “And food.”
　“What’s funny?”
　“I made you some pretty weird meals over the years. Peanut butter and anchovy sandwiches. Pate and beets on Ritz crackers. I think partly I wanted to see if there was anything you wouldn’t eat and partly I was trying to impress you with my culinary wizardry.”
　“How old was I?”
　“I think the oldest I have seen you was forty-something. I’m not sure about youngest; maybe about thirty? How old are you now?”
　“Twenty-eight.”
　“You look very young to me now. The last few years you were mostly in your early forties, and you seemed to be having kind of a rough life... It’s hard to say. When you’re little all adults seem big, and old.”
　“So what did we do? In the Meadow? That’s a lot of time, there.”
　Clare smiles. “We did lots of things. It changed depending on my age, and the weather. You spent a lot of time helping me do my homework. We played games. Mostly we just talked about stuff. When I was really young I thought you were an angel; I asked you a lot of questions about God. When I was a teenager I tried to get you to make love to me, and you never would, which of course made me much more determined about it. I think you thought you were going to warp me sexually, somehow. In some ways you were very parental.”
　“Oh. That’s probably good news but somehow at the moment I don’t seem to be wanting to be thought of as parental.” Our eyes meet. We both smile and we are conspirators. “What about winter? Michigan winters are pretty extreme.”
　“I used to smuggle you into our basement; the house has a huge basement with several rooms, and one of them is a storage room and the furnace is on the other side of the wall. We call it the Reading Room because all the useless old books and magazines are stored there. One time you were down there and we had a blizzard and nobody went to school or to work and I thought I was going to go crazy trying to get food for you because there wasn’t all that much food in the house. Etta was supposed to go grocery shopping when the storm hit. So you were stuck reading old Reader’s Digests for three days, living on sardines and ramen noodles.”
　“Sounds salty. I’ll look forward to it.” Our meal arrives. “Did you ever learn to cook?”
　“No, I don’t think I would claim to know how to cook. Nell and Etta always got mad when I did anything in their kitchen beyond getting myself a Coke, and since I’ve moved to Chicago I don’t have anybody to cook for, so I haven’t been motivated to work on it. Mostly I’m too busy with school and all, sol just eat there.” Clare takes a bite of her curry. “This is really good.”
　“Nell and Etta?”
　“Nell is our cook.” Clare smiles. “Nell is like cordon bleu meets Detroit; she’s how Aretha Franklin would be if she was Julia Child. Etta is our housekeeper and all-around everything. She’s really more almost our mom; I mean, my mother is...well, Etta’s just always there, and she’s German and strict, but she’s very comforting, and my mother is kind of off in the clouds, you know?”
　I nod, my mouth full of soup.
　“Oh, and there’s Peter,” Clare adds. “Peter is the gardener.”
　“Wow. Your family has servants. This sounds a little out of my league. Have I ever, uh, met any of your family?”
　“You met my Grandma Meagram right before she died. She was the only person I ever told about you. She was pretty much blind by then. She knew we were going to get married and she wanted to meet you.”
　I stop eating and look at Clare. She looks back at me, serene, angelic, perfectly at ease. “Are we going to get married?”
　“I assume so,” she replies. “You’ve been telling me for years that whenever it is you’re coming from, you’re married to me.”
　Too much. This is too much. I close my eyes and will myself to think of nothing; the last thing I want is to lose my grip on the here and now.
　“Henry? Henry, are you okay?” I feel Clare sliding onto the seat beside me. I open my eyes and she grips my hands strongly in hers. I look at her hands and see that they are the hands of a laborer, rough and chapped.
　“Henry, I’m sorry, I just can’t get used to this. It’s so opposite. I mean, all my life you’ve been the one who knew everything and I sort of forgot that tonight maybe I should go slow.” She smiles. “Actually, almost the last thing you said to me before you left was ‘Have mercy, Clare.’ You said it in your quoting voice, and I guess now that I think of it you must have been quoting me.” She continues to hold my hands. She looks at me with eagerness; with love. I feel profoundly humble.
　“Clare?”
　“Yes?”
　“Could we back up? Could we pretend that this is a normal first date between two normal people?”
　“Okay.” Clare gets up and goes back to her side of the table. She sits up straight and tries not to smile.
　“Um, right. Gee, ah, Clare, ah, tell me about yourself. Hobbies? Pets? Unusual sexual proclivities?”
　“Find out for yourself.”
　“Right. Let’s see.. .where do you go to school? What are you studying?”
　“I’m at the School of the Art Institute; I’ve been doing sculpture, and I’ve just started to study papermaking.”
　“Cool. What’s your work like?”
　For the first time, Clare seems uncomfortable. “It’s kind of...big, and it’s about.. .birds.” She looks at the table, then takes a sip of tea.
　“Birds?”
　“Well, really it’s about, um, longing.” She is still not looking at me, so I change the subject.
　“Tell more about your family.”
　“Okay.” Clare relaxes, smiles. “Well...my family lives in Michigan, by a small town on the lake called South Haven. Our house is in an unincorporated area outside the town, actually. It originally belonged to my mother’s parents, my Grandpa and Grandma Meagram. He died before I was born, and she lived with us until she died. I was seventeen. My grandpa was a lawyer, and my dad is a lawyer; my dad met my mom when he came to work for Grandpa.”
　“So he married the boss’s daughter.”
　“Yeah. Actually, I sometimes wonder if he really married the boss’s house. My mom is an only child, and the house is sort of amazing; it’s in a lot of books on the Arts and Crafts movement.”
　“Does it have a name? Who built it?”
　“It’s called Meadowlark House, and it was built in 1896 by Peter Wyns.”
　“Wow. I’ve seen pictures of it. It was built for one of the Henderson family, right?”
　“Yes. It was a wedding present for Mary Henderson and Dieter Bascombe. They divorced two years after they moved in and sold the house.”
　“Posh house.”
　“My family is posh. They’re very weird about it, too.”
　“Brothers and sisters?”
　“Mark is twenty-two and finishing pre-law at Harvard. Alicia is seventeen and a senior in high school. She’s a cellist.” I detect affection for the sister and a certain flatness for the brother. “You aren’t too fond of your brother?”
　“Mark is just like Dad. They both like to win, talk you down until you submit.”
　“You know, I always envy people with siblings, even if they don’t like them all that much,”
　“You’re an only child?”
　“Yep. I thought you knew everything about me?”
　“Actually I know everything and nothing. I know how you look without clothes, but until this afternoon I didn’t know your last name. I knew you lived in Chicago, but I know nothing about your family except that your mom died in a car crash when you were six. I know you know a lot about art and speak fluent French and German; I had no idea you were a librarian. You made it impossible for me to find you in the present; you said it would just happen when it was supposed to happen, and here we are.”
　“Here we are,” I agree. “Well, my family isn’t posh; they’re musicians. My father is Richard DeTamble and my mother was Annette Lyn Robinson.”
　“Oh—the singer!”
　“Right. And he’s a violinist. He plays for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But he never really made it the way she did. It’s a shame because my father is a marvelous violin player. After Mom died he was just treading water.” The check arrives. Neither of us has eaten very much, but I at least am not interested in food right now. Clare picks up her purse and I shake my head at her. I pay; we leave the restaurant and stand on Clark Street in the fine autumn night. Clare is wearing an elaborate blue knitted thing and a fur scarf; I have forgotten to bring an overcoat so I’m shivering.
　“Where do you live?” Clare asks.
　Uh oh. “I live about two blocks from here, but my place is tiny and really messy right now. You?”
　“Roscoe Village, on Hoyne. But I have a roommate.”
　“If you come up to my place you have to close your eyes and count to one thousand. Perhaps you have a very uninquisitive deaf roommate?”
　“No such luck. I never bring anyone over; Charisse would pounce on you and stick bamboo slivers under your fingernails until you told all.”
　“I long to be tortured by someone named Charisse, but I can see that you do not share my taste. Come up to my parlor.” We walk north along Clark. I veer into Clark Street Liquors for a bottle of wine. Back on the street Clare is puzzled.
　“I thought you aren’t supposed to drink?” I m not?
　“Dr. Kendrick was very strict about it.”
　“Who’s he?” We are walking slowly because Clare is wearing impractical shoes.
　“He’s your doctor; he’s a big expert on Chrono-Impairment.”
　“Explain.”
　“I don’t know very much. Dr. David Kendrick is a molecular geneticist who discovered—will discover why people are chrono-impaired. It’s a genetic thing; he figures it out in 2006.” She sighs. “I guess it’s just way too early. You told me once that there are a lot more chrono-impaired people about ten years from now.”
　“I’ve never heard of anyone else who has this—impairment.”
　“I guess even if you went out right now and found Dr. Kendrick he wouldn’t be able to help you. And we would never have met, if he could.”
　“Let’s not think about that.” We are in my lobby. Clare precedes me into the tiny elevator. I close the door and push eleven. She smells like old cloth, soap, sweat, and fur. I breathe deeply. The elevator clangs into place on my floor and we extricate ourselves from it and walk down the narrow hallway. I wield my fistful of keys on all 107 locks and crack the door slightly. “It’s gotten much worse during dinner. I’m going to have to blindfold you.” Clare giggles as I set down the wine and remove my tie. I pass it over her eyes and tie it firmly at the back of her head. I open the door and guide her into the apartment and settle her in the armchair. “Okay, start counting.”
　Clare counts. I race around picking underwear and socks from the floor, collecting spoons and coffee cups from various horizontal surfaces and chucking them into the kitchen sink. As she says “Nine hundred and sixty-seven,” I remove the tie from her eyes. I have turned the sleeper-sofa into its daytime, sofa self, and I sit down on it. “Wine? Music? Candlelight?”
　“Yes, please.”
　I get up and light candles. When I’m finished I turn off the overhead light and the room is dancing with little lights and everything looks better. I put the roses in water, locate my corkscrew, extract the cork, and pour us each a glass of wine. After a moment’s thought I put on the EMI CD of my mother singing Schubert lieder and turn the volume low.
　My apartment is basically a couch, an armchair, and about four thousand books.
　“How lovely,” says Clare. She gets up and reseats herself on the sofa. I sit down next to her. There is a comfortable moment when we just sit there and look at each other. The candlelight flickers on Clare’s hair. She reaches over and touches my cheek. “It’s so good to see you. I was getting lonely.”
　I draw her to me. We kiss. It’s a very.. .compatible kiss, a kiss born of long association, and I wonder just exactly what we’ve been doing in this meadow of Clare’s, but I push the thought away. Our lips part; usually at this point I would be considering how to work my way past various fortresses of clothing, but instead I lean back and stretch out on the sofa, bringing Clare along with me by gripping her under the arms and pulling; the velvet dress makes her slippery and she slithers into the space between my body and the back of the sofa like a velvet eel. She is facing me and I am propped up by the arm of the sofa. I can feel the length of her body pressing against mine through the thin fabric. Part of me is dying to go leaping and licking and diving in, but I’m exhausted and overwhelmed.
　“Poor Henry.”
　“Why ‘Poor Henry?’ I’m overcome with happiness.” And it’s true.
　“Oh, I’ve been dropping all these surprises on you like big rocks.” Clare swings a leg over me so she’s sitting exactly on top of my cock. It concentrates my attention wonderfully.
　“Don’t move,” I say.
　“Okay. I’m finding this evening highly entertaining. I mean, Knowledge is Power, and all that. Also I’ve always been hugely curious to find out where you live and what you wear and what you do for a living.”
　“ Voila!” I slide my hands under her dress and up her thighs. She’s bearing stockings and garters. My kind of girl. “Clare?”
　“Oui.”
　“It seems like a shame to just gobble everything up all at once. I mean, a little anticipation wouldn’t hurt anything.”
　Clare is abashed. “I’m sorry! But, you know, in my case, I’ve been anticipating for years. And, it’s not like cake.. .you eat it and it’s gone.”
　“Have your cake and eat it too.”
　“That’s my motto.” She smiles a tiny wicked smile and thrusts her hips back and forth a couple times. I now have an erection that is probably tall enough to ride some of the scarier rides at Great America without a parent.
　“You get your way a lot, don’t you?”
　“Always. I’m horrible. Except you have been mostly impervious to my wheedling ways. I’ve suffered dreadfully under your regime of French verbs and checkers.”
　“I guess I should take consolation in the fact that my future self will at least have some weapons of subjugation. Do you do this to all the boys?”
　Clare is offended; I can’t tell how genuinely. “I wouldn’t dream of doing this with boys. What nasty ideas you have!” She is unbuttoning my shirt. “God, you’re so...young.” She pinches my nipples, hard. The hell with virtue. I’ve figured out the mechanics of her dress.
　
　The next morning:
　

CLARE: I wake up and I don’t know where I am. An unfamiliar ceiling. Distant traffic noises. Bookshelves. A blue armchair with my velvet dress slung across it and a man’s tie draped over the dress. Then I remember. I turn my head and there’s Henry. So simple, as though I’ve been doing it all my life. He is sleeping with abandon, torqued into an unlikely shape as though he’s washed up on some beach, one arm over his eyes to shut out the morning, his long black hair splayed over the pillow. So simple. Here we are. Here and now, finally now.
　I get out of bed carefully. Henry’s bed is also his sofa. The springs squeak as I stand up. There’s not much space between the bed and the bookshelves, so I edge along until I make it into the hallway. The bathroom is tiny. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, grown huge and having to stick my arm out the window just so I can turn around. The ornate little radiator is clanking out heat. I pee and wash my hands and my face. And then I notice that there are two toothbrushes in the white porcelain toothbrush holder.
　I open the medicine cabinet. Razors, shaving cream, Listerine, Tylenol, aftershave, a blue marble, a toothpick, deodorant on the top shelf. Hand lotion, tampons, a diaphragm case, deodorant, lipstick, a bottle of multivitamins, a tube of spermicide on the bottom shelf. The lipstick is a very dark red.
　I stand there, holding the lipstick. I feel a little sick. I wonder what she looks like, what her name is. I wonder how long they’ve been going out. Long enough, I guess. I put the lipstick back, close the medicine cabinet. In the mirror I see myself, white-faced, hair flying in all directions. Well, whoever you are, I’m here now. You may be Henry’s past, but I’m his future. I smile at myself. My reflection grimaces back at me. I borrow Henry’s white terrycloth bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door. Underneath it on the hook is a pale blue silk robe. For no reason at all wearing his bathrobe makes me feel better.
　Back in the living room, Henry is still sleeping. I retrieve my watch from the windowsill and see that it’s only 6:30. I’m too restless to get back into bed. I walk into the kitchenette in search of coffee. All the counters and the stove are covered with stacks of dishes, magazines, and other reading material. There’s even a sock in the sink. I realize that Henry must have simply heaved everything into the kitchen last night, regardless. I always had this idea that Henry was very tidy. Now it becomes clear that he’s one of those people who is fastidious about his personal appearance but secretly slovenly about everything else. I find coffee in the fridge, and find the coffee maker, and start the coffee. While I wait for it to brew, I peruse Henry’s bookshelves.
　Here is the Henry I know. Donne’s Elegies and Songs and Sonnets. Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe. Naked Lunch. Anne Bradstreet, Immanuel Kant. Barthes, Foucault, Derrida. Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Winnie the Pooh. The Annotated Alice. Heidegger. Rilke. Tristram Shandy. Wisconsin Death Trip. Aristotle. Bishop Berkeley. Andrew Marvell. Hypothermia, Frostbite and Other Cold Injuries.
　The bed squeaks and I jump. Henry is sitting up, squinting at me in the morning light. He’s so young, so before—. He doesn’t know me, yet. I have a sudden fear that he’s forgotten who I am.
　“You look cold” he says. “Come back to bed, Clare.”
　“I made coffee,” I offer.
　“Mmm, I can smell it. But first come and say good morning.”
　I climb into bed still wearing his bathrobe. As he slides his hand under it he stops for just a moment, and I see that he has made the connection, and is mentally reviewing his bathroom vis-a-vis me.
　“Does it bother you?” he asks.
　I hesitate.
　“Yes, it does. It does bother you. Of course.” Henry sits up, and I do, too. He turns his head toward me, looks at me. “It was almost over, anyway.”
　“Almost?”
　“I was about to break up with her. It’s just bad timing. Or good timing, I don’t know.” He’s trying to read my face, for what? Forgiveness? It’s not his fault. How could he know? “We’ve sort of been torturing each other for a long time—” He’s talking faster and faster and then he stops. “Do you want to know?” No.
　“Thank you.” Henry passes his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were coming or I’d have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.” There’s a lipstick smear under Henry’s ear, and I reach up and rub it out. He takes my hand, and holds it. “Am I very different? Than you expected?” he asks apprehensively.
　“Yes...you’re more...” selfish, I think, but I say, “...younger.”
　He considers it. “Is that good or bad?”
　“Different.” I run both hands over Henry’s shoulders and across his back, massaging muscles, exploring indentations. “Have you seen yourself, in your forties?”
　“Yes. I look like I’ve been spindled and mutilated.”
　“Yeah. But you’re less—I mean you are sort of—more. I mean, you know me, so....”
　“So right now you’re telling me that I’m somewhat gauche.”
　I shake my head, although that is exactly what I mean. “It’s just that I’ve had all these experiences, and you...I’m not used to being with you when you don’t remember anything that happened.”
　Henry is somber. “I’m sorry. But the person you know doesn’t exist yet. Stick with me, and sooner or later, he’s bound to appear. That’s the best I can do, though.”
　“That’s fair,” I say. “But in the meantime...”
　He turns to meet my gaze. “In the meantime?”
　“I want...”
　“You want?”
　I’m blushing. Henry smiles, and pushes me backward gently onto the pillows. “You know.”
　“I don’t know much, but I can guess a thing or two.”
　Later, we’re dozing warm covered with midmorning October pale sun, skin to skin and Henry says something into the back of my neck that I don’t catch.
　“What?”
　“I was thinking; it’s very peaceful, here with you. It’s nice to just lie here and know that the future is sort of taken care of.”
　“Henry?”
　“Hmm?”
　“How come you never told yourself about me?”
　“Oh. I don’t do that.”
　“Do what?”
　“I don’t usually tell myself stuff ahead of time unless it’s huge, life-threatening, you know? I’m trying to live like a normal person. I don’t even like having myself around, so I try not to drop in on myself unless there’s no choice.”
　I ponder this for a while. “I would tell myself everything.”
　“No, you wouldn’t. It makes a lot of trouble.”
　“I was always trying to get you to tell me things.” I roll over onto my back and Henry props his head on his hand and looks down at me. Our faces are about six inches apart. It’s so strange to be talking, almost like we always did, but the physical proximity makes it hard for me to concentrate.
　“Did I tell you things?” he asks.
　“Sometimes. When you felt like it, or had to.”
　“Like what?”
　“See? You do want to know. But I’m not telling.”
　Henry laughs. “Serves me right. Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s go get breakfast.”
　Outside it’s chilly. Cars and cyclists cruise along Dearborn while couples stroll down the sidewalks and there we are with them, in the morning sunlight, hand in hand, finally together for anyone to see. I feel a tiny pang of regret, as though I’ve lost a secret, and then a rush of exaltation: now everything begins.
　
A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING
　Sunday, June 16, 1968
　
HENRY: The first time was magical. How could I have known what it meant? It was my fifth birthday, and we went to the Field Museum of Natural History. I don’t think I had ever been to the Field Museum before. My parents had been telling me all week about the wonders to be seen there, the stuffed elephants in the great hall, the dinosaur skeletons, the caveman dioramas. Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn’t see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word. My parents described the cases and cases of butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles. I was so excited that I woke up before dawn. I put on my gym shoes and took my Papilio ulysses and went into the backyard and down the steps to the river in my pajamas. I sat on the landing and hatched the light come up. A family of ducks came swimming by, and a raccoon appeared on the landing across the river and looked at me curiously before washing its breakfast and eating it. I may have fallen asleep. I heard Mom calling and I ran back up the stairs, which were slippery with dew, careful not to drop the butterfly. She was annoyed with me for going down to the landing by myself, but she didn’t make a big deal about it, it being my birthday and all.
　Neither of them were working that night, so they took their time getting dressed and out the door. I was ready long before either of them. I sat on their bed and pretended to read a score. This was around the time my musician parents recognized that their one and only offspring was not musically gifted. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying; I just could not hear whatever it was they heard in a piece of music. I enjoyed music, but I could hardly carry a tune. And though I could read a newspaper when I was four, scores were only pretty black squiggles. But my parents were still hoping I might have some hidden musical aptitude, so when I picked up the score Mom sat down next to me and tried to help me with it. Pretty soon Mom was singing and I was chiming in with horrible yowling noises and snapping my fingers and we were giggling and she was tickling me. Dad came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and joined in and for a few glorious minutes they were singing together and Dad picked me up and they were dancing around the bedroom with me pressed between them. Then the phone rang, and the scene dissolved. Mom went to answer it, and Dad set me on the bed and got dressed.
　Finally, they were ready. My mom wore a red sleeveless dress and sandals; she had painted her toenails and fingernails so they matched her dress. Dad was resplendent in dark blue pants and a white short-sleeved shirt, providing a quiet background for Mom’s flamboyance. We all piled into the car. As always, I had the whole backseat to myself, so I lay down and watched the tall buildings along Lake Shore Drive flicking past the window.
　“Sit up, Henry” said Mom. “We’re here.”
　I sat up and looked at the museum. I had spent my childhood thus far being carted around the capital cities of Europe, so the Field Museum satisfied my idea of “Museum,” but its domed stone facade was nothing exceptional. Because it was Sunday, we had a little trouble finding parking, but eventually we parked and walked along the lake, past boats and statues and other excited children. We passed between the heavy columns and into the museum.
　And then I was a boy enchanted.
　Here all of nature was captured, labeled, arranged according to a logic that seemed as timeless as if ordered by God, perhaps a God who had mislaid the original paperwork on the Creation and had requested the Field Museum staff to help Him out and keep track of it all. For my five-year-old self, who could derive rapture from a single butterfly, to walk through the Field Museum was to walk through Eden and see all that passed there.
　We saw so much that day: the butterflies, to be sure, cases and cases of them, from Brazil, from Madagascar, even a brother of my blue butterfly from Down Under. The museum was dark, cold, and old, and this heightened the sense of suspension, of time and death brought to a halt inside its walls. We saw crystals and cougars, muskrats and mummies, fossils and more fossils. We ate our picnic lunch on the lawn of the museum, and then plunged in again for birds and alligators and Neanderthals. Toward the end I was so tired I could hardly stand, but I couldn’t bear to leave. The guards came and gently herded us all to the doors; I struggled not to cry, but began to anyway, out of exhaustion and desire. Dad picked me up, and we walked back to the car. I fell asleep in the backseat, and when I awoke We were home, and it was time for dinner.
　We ate downstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Kim’s apartment. They were our landlords. Mr. Kim was a gruff, compact man who seemed to like me but never said much, and Mrs. Kim (Kimy, my nickname for her) was my buddy, my crazy Korean card-playing babysitter. I spent most of my waking hours with Kimy. My mom was never much of a cook, and Kimy could produce anything from a soufflé to bi him bop with panache. Tonight, for my birthday, she had made pizza and chocolate cake.
　We ate. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and I blew out the candles. I don’t remember what I wished for. I was allowed to stay up later than usual, because I was still excited by all the things we’d seen, and because I had slept so late in the afternoon. I sat on the back porch in my pajamas with Mom and Dad and Mrs. and Mr. Kim, drinking lemonade and watching the blueness of the evening sky, listening to the cicadas and the TV noises from other apartments. Eventually Dad said, “Bedtime, Henry.” I brushed my teeth and said prayers and got into bed. I was exhausted but wide awake. Dad read to me for a while, and then, seeing that I still couldn’t sleep, he and Mom turned out the lights, propped open my bedroom door, and went into the living room. The deal was: they would play for me as long as I wanted, but I had to stay in bed to listen. So Mom sat at the piano, and Dad got out his violin, and they played and sang for a long time. Lullabies, lieder, nocturnes; sleepy music to soothe the savage boy in the bedroom. Finally Mom came in to see if I was asleep. I must have looked small and wary in my little bed, a nocturnal animal in pajamas.
　“Oh, baby. Still awake?”
　I nodded.
　“Dad and I are going to bed. Are you okay?”
　I said Yes and she gave me a hug. “It was pretty exciting today at the museum, huh?”
　“Can we go back tomorrow?”
　“Not tomorrow, but we’ll go back real soon, okay?” Okay.
　“G’night.” She left the door open and flipped off the hall light. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
　I could hear little noises, water running, toilet flushing. Then all was quiet. I got out of bed and knelt in front of my window. I could see lights in the house next door, and somewhere a car drove by with its radio blaring. I stayed there for a while, trying to feel sleepy, and then I stood up and everything changed.
　
　
Saturday, January 2, 1988, 4:03 a.m. /Sunday, June 16, 1968, 10:46 p.m.
(Henry is 24, and 5)
　
HENRY: It’s 4:03 a.m. on a supremely cold January morning and I’m just getting home. I’ve been out dancing and I’m only half drunk but utterly exhausted. As I fumble with my keys in the bright foyer I fall to my knees, dizzy and nauseated, and then I am in the dark, vomiting on a tile floor. I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a long liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I’ve gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century. I get up, shaking, and venture toward the doorway, tile icy under my bare feet, gooseflesh and all my hairs standing up. It’s absolutely silent. The air is clammy with air conditioning. I reach the entrance and look into the next room. It’s full of glass cases; the white streetlight glow through the high windows shows me thousands of beetles. I’m in the Field Museum, praise the Lord. I stand still and breathe deeply, trying to clear my head. Something about this rings a bell in my fettered brain and I try to dredge it up. I’m supposed to do something. Yes. My fifth birthday... someone was there, and I’m about to be that someone...I need clothes. Yes. Indeed.
　I sprint through beetlemania into the long hallway that bisects the second floor, down the west staircase to the first floor, grateful to be in the pre-motion-detector era. The great elephants loom menacingly over me in the moonlight and I wave to them on my way to the little gift shop to the right of the main entrance. I circle the wares and find a few promising items: an ornamental letter opener, a metal bookmark with the Field’s insignia, and two T-shirts that feature dinosaurs. The locks on the cases are a joke; I pop them with a bobby pin I find next to the cash register, and help myself. Okay. Back up the stairs, to the third floor. This is the Field’s “attic,” where the labs are; the staff have their offices up here. I scan the names on the doors, but none of them suggests anything to me; finally I select at random and slide my bookmark along the lock until the catch pushes back and I’m in.
　The occupant of this office is one V. M. Williamson, and he’s a very untidy guy. The room is dense with papers, and coffee cups and cigarettes overflow from ashtrays; there’s a partially articulated snake skeleton on his desk. I quickly case the joint for clothes and come up with nothing. The next office belongs to a woman, J. F. Bettley. On the third try I get lucky. D. W. Fitch has an entire suit hung neatly on his coat rack, and it pretty much fits me, though it’s a bit short in the arms and legs and wide in the lapels. I wear one of the dinosaur T-shirts under the jacket. No shoes, but I’m decent. D. W. also keeps an unopened package of Oreo cookies in his desk, bless him. I appropriate them and leave, closing the door carefully behind me.
　Where was I, when I saw me? I close my eyes and fatigue takes me bodily, caressing me with her sleepy fingers. I am almost out on my feet, but I catch myself and it comes to me: a man in silhouette walking toward me backlit by the museum’s front doors. I need to get back to the Great Hall.
　When I get there all is quiet and still. I walk across the middle of the floor, trying to replicate the view of the doors, and then I seat myself near the coat room, so as to enter stage left. I can hear blood rushing in my head, the air conditioning system humming, cars whooshing by on Lake Shore Drive. I eat ten Oreos, slowly, gently prying each one apart, scraping the filling out with my front teeth, nibbling the chocolate halves to make them last. I have no idea what time it is, or how long I have to wait. I’m mostly sober now, and reasonably alert. Time passes, nothing happens. At last: I hear a soft thud, a gasp. Silence. I wait. I stand up, silently, and pad into the Hall, walking slowly through the light that slants across the marble floor. I stand in the center of the doors and call out, not loud: “Henry.”
　Nothing. Good boy, wary and silent. I try again. “It’s okay, Henry. I’m your guide, I’m here to show you around. It’s a special tour. Don’t be afraid, Henry.”
　I hear a slight, oh-so-faint noise. “I brought you a T-shirt, Henry. So you won’t get cold while we look at the exhibits.” I can make him out now, standing at the edge of the darkness. “Here. Catch.” I throw it to him, and the shirt disappears, and then he steps into the light. The T-shirt comes down to his knees. Me at five, dark spiky hair, moon pale with brown almost Slavic eyes, wiry, coltish. At five I am happy, cushioned in normality and the arms of my parents. Everything changed, starting now.
　I walk forward slowly, bend toward him, speak softly. “Hello. I’m glad to see you, Henry. Thank you for coming tonight.”
　“Where am I? Who are you?” His voice is small and high, and echoes a little off the cold stone.
　“You’re in the Field Museum. I have been sent here to show you some things you can’t see during the day. My name is also Henry. Isn’t that funny?”
　He nods.
　“Would you like some cookies? I always like to eat cookies while I look around museums. It makes it more multi-sensory.” I offer him the package of Oreos. He hesitates, unsure if it’s all right, hungry but unsure how many he can take without being rude. “Take as many as you want. I’ve already eaten ten, so you have some catching up to do.” He takes three. “Is there anything you’d like to see first?” He shakes his head. “Tell you what. Let’s go up to the third floor; that’s where they keep all the stuff that isn’t on display. Okay?”
　“Okay.”
　We walk through darkness, up the stairs. He isn’t moving very fast, so I climb slowly with him.
　“Where’s Mom?”
　“She’s at home, sleeping. This is a special tour, only for you, because it’s your birthday. Besides, grown-ups don’t do this sort of thing.”
　“Aren’t you a grown-up?”
　“I’m an extremely unusual grown-up. My job is to have adventures. So naturally when I heard that you wanted to come back to the Field Museum right away, I jumped at the chance to show you around.”
　“But how did I get here?” He stops at the top of the stairs and looks at me with total confusion.
　“Well, that’s a secret. If I tell you, you have to swear not to say anything to anyone.”
　“Why?”
　“Because they wouldn’t believe you. You can tell Mom, or Kimy if you want, but that’s it. Okay?”
　“Okay....”
　I kneel in front of him, my innocent self, look him in the eyes. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”
　“Uh-huh....”
　“Okay. Here’s how it is: you time traveled. You were in your bedroom, and all of a sudden, poof! you are here, and it’s a little earlier in the evening, so we have plenty of time to look at everything before you have to go home.” He is silent and quizzical. “Does that make sense?”
　“But...why?”
　“Well, I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ll let you know when I do. In the meantime, we should be moving along. Cookie?”
　He takes one and we walk slowly down the corridor. I decide to experiment. “Let’s try this one.” I slide the bookmark along a door marked 306 and open it. When I flick on the lights there are pumpkin-sized rocks all over the floor, whole and halved, craggy on the outside and streaked with veins of metal inside. “Ooh, look, Henry. Meteorites.”
　“What’s meteorites?”
　“Rocks that fall from outer space.” He looks at me as though I’m from outer space. “Shall we try another door?” He nods. I close the meteorite room and try the door across the corridor. This room is full of birds. Birds in simulated flight, birds perched eternally on branches, bird heads, bird skins. I open one of the hundreds of drawers; it contains a dozen glass tubes, each holding a tiny gold and black bird with its name wrapped around a foot. Henry’s eyes are the size of saucers. “Do you want to touch one?”
　“Uh-huh.”
　I remove the cotton wadding from the mouth of a tube and shake a goldfinch onto my palm. It remains tube-shaped. Henry strokes its small head, lovingly. “It’s sleeping?”
　“More or less.” He looks at me sharply, distrusting my equivocation. I insert the finch gently back into the tube, replace the cotton, replace the tube, shut the drawer. I am so tired. Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction. I lead the way out into the hall, and suddenly I recollect what it was I loved about this night when I was little.
　“Hey, Henry. Let’s go to the library.” He shrugs. I walk, quickly now, and he runs to keep up. The library is on the third floor, at the east end of the building. When we get there, I stand for a minute, contemplating the locks. Henry looks at me, as though to say, Well, that’s that. I feel in my pockets, and find the letter opener. I wiggle the wooden handle off, and lo, there’s a nice long thin metal prong in there. I stick one half of it into the lock and feel around. I can hear the tumblers springing, and when I’m all the way back I stick in the other half, use my bookmark on the other lock and presto, Open Sesame!
　At last, my companion is suitably impressed. “How’d you do that?”
　“It’s not that hard. I’ll teach you another time. Entrez!” I hold open the door and he walks in. I flip on the lights and the Reading Room springs into being; heavy wooden tables and chairs, maroon carpet, forbidding enormous Reference Desk. The Field Museum’s Library is not designed to appeal to five-year-olds. It’s a closed-stacks library, used by scientists and scholars. There are bookcases lining the room, but they hold mostly leather-bound Victorian science periodicals. The book I’m after is in a huge glass and oak case by itself in the center of the room. I spring the lock with my bobby pin and open the glass door. Really, the Field ought to get more serious about security. I don’t feel too terrible about doing this; after all, I’m a bona fide librarian, I do Show and Tells at the Newberry all the time. I walk behind the Reference Desk and find a piece of felt and some support pads, and lay them out on the nearest table. Then I close and carefully lift the book out of its case and onto the felt. I pull out a chair. “Here, stand on this so you can see better.” He climbs up, and I open the book.
　It’s Audubon’s Birds of America, the deluxe, wonderful double-elephant folio that’s almost as tall as my young self. This copy is the finest in existence, and I have spent many rainy afternoons admiring it. I open it to the first plate, and Henry smiles, and looks at me. “ ‘Common Loon’” he reads. “It looks like a duck.”
　“Yeah, it does. I bet I can guess your favorite bird.”
　He shakes his head and smiles.
　“What’ll you bet?”
　He looks down at himself in the T-Rex T-shirt and shrugs. I know the feeling.
　“How about this: if I guess you get to eat a cookie, and if I can’t guess you get to eat a cookie?”
　He thinks it over and decides this would be a safe bet. I open the book to Flamingo. Henry laughs.
　“Am I right?”
　“Yes!”
　It’s easy to be omniscient when you’ve done it all before. “Okay, here’s your cookie. And I get one for being right. But we have to save them ‘til we’re done looking at the book; we wouldn’t want to get crumbs all over the bluebirds, right?”
　“Right!” He sets the Oreo on the arm of the chair and we begin again at the beginning and page slowly through the birds, so much more alive than the real thing in glass tubes down the hall.
　“Here’s a Great Blue Heron. He’s really big, bigger than a flamingo. Have you ever seen a hummingbird? I saw some today!”
　“Here in the museum?”
　“Uh-huh.”
　“Wait ‘til you see one outside—they’re like tiny helicopters, their wings go so fast you just see a blur....” Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse of paper slowly rises up and over. Henry stands attentively, waits each time for the new wonder, emits small noises of pleasure for each Sandhill Crane, American Coot, Great Auk, Pileated Woodpecker. When we come to the last plate, Snow Bunting, he leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the engraving. I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I loved, remember wanting to crawl into it and sleep.
　“You tired?”
　“Uh-huh.”
　“Should we go?” Okay.
　I close Birds of America, return it to its glass home, open it to
　Flamingo, shut the case, lock it. Henry jumps off the chair and eats his Oreo. I return the felt to the desk and push the chair in. Henry turns out the light, and we leave the library.
　We wander, chattering amiably of things that fly and things that slither, and eating our Oreos. Henry tells me about Mom and Dad and Mrs. Kim, who is teaching him to make lasagna, and Brenda, whom I had forgotten about, my best pal when I was little until her family moved to Tampa, Florida, about three months from now. We are standing in front of Bushman, the legendary silverback gorilla, whose stuffed magnificence glowers at us from his little marble stand in a first floor hallway, when Henry cries out, and staggers forward, reaching urgently for me, and I grab him, and he’s gone. The T-shirt is warm empty cloth in my hands. I sigh, and walk upstairs to ponder the mummies for a while by myself. My young self will be home now, climbing into bed. I remember, I remember. I woke up in the morning and it was all a wonderful dream. Mom laughed and said that time travel sounded fun, and she wanted to try it, too.
　That was the first time.
　
FIRST DATE, TWO
　Friday, September 23, 1977 (Henry is 36, Clare is 6)
　
HENRY: I’m in the Meadow, waiting. I wait slightly outside the clearing, naked, because the clothes Clare keeps for me in a box under a stone are not there; the box isn’t there either, so I am thankful that the afternoon is fine, early September, perhaps, in some unidentified year. I hunker down in the tall grass. I consider. The fact that there is no box full of clothes means that I have arrived in a time before Clare and I have met. Perhaps Clare isn’t even born yet. This has happened before, and it’s a pain; I miss Clare and I spend the time hiding naked in the Meadow, not daring to show myself in the neighborhood of Clare’s family. I think longingly of the apple trees at the western edge of the Meadow. At this time of year there ought to be apples, small and sour and munched by deer, but edible. I hear the screen door slam and I peer above the grass. A child is running, pell mell, and as it comes down the path through the waving grass my heart twists and Clare bursts into the clearing.
　She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is still wearing her school uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and knee socks with penny loafers, and she is carrying a Marshall Field’s shopping bag and a beach towel. Clare spreads the towel on the ground and dumps out the contents of the bag: every imaginable kind of writing implement. Old ballpoint pens, little stubby pencils from the library, crayons, smelly Magic Markers, a fountain pen. She also has a bunch of her dad’s office stationery. She arranges the implements and gives the stack of paper a smart shake, and then proceeds to try each pen and pencil in turn, making careful lines and swirls, humming to herself. After listening carefully for a while I identify her humming as the theme song of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
　I hesitate. Clare is content, absorbed. She must be about six; if it’s September she has probably just entered first grade. She’s obviously not waiting for me, I’m a stranger, and I’m sure that the first thing you learn in first grade is not to have any truck with strangers who show up naked in your favorite secret spot and know your name and tell you not to tell your mom and dad. I wonder if today is the day we are supposed to meet for the first time or if it’s some other day. Maybe I should be very silent and either Clare will go away and I can go munch up those apples and steal some laundry or I will revert to my regularly scheduled programming, I snap from my reverie to find Clare staring straight at me. I realize, too late, that I have been humming along with her.
　“Who’s there?” Clare hisses. She looks like a really pissed off goose, all neck and legs. I am thinking fast,
　“Greetings, Earthling,” I intone, kindly.
　“Mark! You nimrod!” Clare is casting around for something to throw, and decides on her shoes, which have heavy, sharp heels. She whips them off and does throw them. I don’t think she can see me very well, but she lucks out and one of them catches me in the mouth. My lip starts to bleed.
　“Please don’t do that.” I don’t have anything to staunch the blood, so I press my hand to my mouth and my voice comes out muffled. My jaw hurts.
　“Who is it?” Now Clare is frightened, and so am I.
　“Henry. It’s Henry, Clare. I won’t hurt you, and I wish you wouldn’t throw anything else at me.”
　“Give me back my shoes. I don’t know you. Why are you hiding?” Clare is glowering at me.
　I toss her shoes back into the clearing. She picks them up and stands holding them like pistols. “I’m hiding because I lost my clothes and I’m embarrassed. I came a long way and I’m hungry and I don’t know anybody and now I’m bleeding.”
　“Where did you come from? Why do you know my name?”
　The whole truth and nothing but the truth. “I came from the future. I am a time traveler. In the future we are friends.”
　“People only time travel in movies.”
　“That’s what we want you to believe.”
　“Why?”
　“If everybody time traveled it would get too crowded. Like when you went to see your Grandma Abshire last Christmas and you had to go through O’Hare Airport and it was very, very crowded? We time travelers don’t want to mess things up for ourselves, so we keep it quiet.”
　Clare chews on this for a minute. “Come out.”
　“Loan me your beach towel.” She picks it up and all the pens and pencils and papers go flying. She throws it at me, overhand, and I grab it and turn my back as I stand and wrap it around my waist. It is bright pink and orange with a loud geometric pattern. Exactly the sort of thing you’d want to be wearing when you meet your future wife for the first time. I turn around and walk into the clearing; I sit on the rock with as much dignity as possible. Clare stands as far away from me as she can get and remain in the clearing. She is still clutching her shoes.
　“You’re bleeding.”
　“Well, yeah. You threw a shoe at me.”
　“Oh.”
　Silence. I am trying to look harmless, and nice. Nice looms large in Clare’s childhood, because so many people aren’t.
　“You’re making fun of me.”
　“I would never make fun of you. Why do you think I’m making fun of you?”
　Clare is nothing if not stubborn. “Nobody time travels. You’re lying.”
　“Santa time travels.”
　“What?”
　“Sure. How do you think he gets all those presents delivered in one night? He just keeps turning back the clock a few hours until he gets down every one of those chimneys.”
　“Santa is magic. You’re not Santa.”
　“Meaning I’m not magic? Geez, Louise, you’re a tough customer.”
　“I’m not Louise,”
　“I know. You’re Clare. Clare Anne Abshire, born May 24, 1971. Your parents are Philip and Lucille Abshire, and you live with them and your grandma and your brother, Mark, and your sister, Alicia, in that big house up there.”
　“Just because you know things doesn’t mean you’re from the future.”
　“If you hang around a while you can watch me disappear” I feel I can count on this because Clare once told me it was the thing she found most impressive about our first meeting.
　Silence. Clare shifts her weight from foot to foot and waves away a mosquito. “Do you know Santa?”
　“Personally? Um, no.” I have stopped bleeding, but I must look awful. “Hey, Clare, do you happen to have a Band-Aid? Or some food? Time traveling makes me pretty hungry.”
　She thinks about this. She digs into her jumper pocket and produces a Hershey bar with one bite out of it. She throws it at me.
　“Thank you. I love these.” I eat it neatly but very quickly. My blood sugar is low. I put the wrapper in her shopping bag. Clare is delighted.
　“You eat like a dog.”
　“I do not!” I am deeply offended. “I have opposable thumbs, thank you very much.”
　“What are posable thumbs?”
　“Do this.” I make the “okay” sign. Clare makes the “okay” sign. “Opposable thumbs means you can do that. It means you can open jars and tie your shoes and other things animals can’t do.”
　Clare is not happy with this. “Sister Carmelita says animals don’t have souls.”
　“Of course animals have souls. Where did she get that idea?”
　“She said the Pope says.”
　“The Pope’s an old meanie. Animals have much nicer souls than we do. They never tell lies or blow anybody up.”
　“They eat each other.”
　“Well, they have to eat each other; they can’t go to Dairy Queen and get a large vanilla cone with sprinkles, can they?” This is Clare’s favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world (as a child. As an adult Clare’s favorite food is sushi, particularly sushi from Katsu on Peterson Avenue).
　“They could eat grass.”
　“So could we, but we don’t. We eat hamburgers.”
　Clare sits down at the edge of the clearing. “Etta says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
　“That’s good advice.”
　Silence.
　“When are you going to disappear?”
　“When I’m good and ready to. Are you bored with me?” Clare rolls her eyes. “What are you working on?”
　“Penmanship.”
　“May I see?”
　Clare gets up carefully and collects a few pieces of stationery while fixing me with her baleful stare. I lean forward slowly and extend my hand as though she is a Rottweiler, and she quickly shoves the papers at me and retreats. I look at them intently, as though she has just handed me a bunch of Bruce Rogers’ original drawings for Centaur or the Book of Kells or something. She has printed, over and over, large and larger, “Clare Anne Abshire.” All the ascenders and descenders have swirling curlicues and all the counters have smiley faces in them. It’s quite beautiful.
　“This is lovely.”
　Clare is pleased, as always when she receives homage for her work. “I could make one for you.”
　“I would like that. But I’m not allowed to take anything with me when I time travel, so maybe you could keep it for me and I could just enjoy it while I’m here.”
　“Why can’t you take anything?”
　“Well, think about it. If we time travelers started to move things around in time, pretty soon the world would be a big mess. Let’s say I brought some money with me into the past. I could look up all the winning lottery numbers and football teams and make a ton of money. That doesn’t seem very fair, does it? Or if I was really dishonest, I could steal things and bring them to the future where nobody could find me.”
　“You could be a pirate!” Clare seems so pleased with the idea of me as a pirate that she forgets that I am Stranger Danger. “You could bury the money and make a treasure map and dig it up in the future.” This is in fact more or less how Clare and I fund our rock-and-roll lifestyle. As an adult Clare finds this mildly immoral, although it does give us an edge in the stock market.
　“That’s a great idea. But what I really need isn’t money, it’s clothing.”
　Clare looks at me doubtfully.
　“Does your dad have any clothes he doesn’t need? Even a pair of pants would be great. I mean, I like this towel, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that where I come from, I usually like to wear pants.” Philip Abshire is a tad shorter than me and about thirty pounds heavier. His pants are comical but comfortable on me.
　“I don’t know....”
　“That’s okay, you don’t need to get them right now. But if you bring some next time I come, it would be very nice.”
　“Next time?”
　I find an unused piece of stationery and a pencil. I print in block letters: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29,1977 AFTER SUPPER. I hand Clare the paper, and she receives it cautiously. My vision is blurring. I can hear Etta calling Clare. “It’s a secret, Clare, okay?”
　“Why?”
　“Can’t tell. I have to go, now. It was nice to meet you. Don’t take any wooden nickels.” I hold out my hand and Clare takes it, bravely. As we shake hands, I disappear.
　
　Wednesday, February 9, 2000 (Clare is 28, Henry is 36)

　
CLARE: It’s early, about six in the morning and I’m sleeping the thin dreamy sleep of six in the morning when Henry slams me awake and I realize he’s been elsewhen. He materializes practically on top of me and I yell, and we scare the shit out of each other and then he starts laughing and rolls over and I roll over and look at him and realize that his mouth is bleeding profusely. I jump up to get a washcloth and Henry is still smiling when I get back and start daubing at his lip.
　“How’d that happen?”
　“You threw a shoe at me.” I don’t remember ever throwing anything at Henry.
　“Did not.”
　“Did too. We just met for the very first time, and as soon as you laid eyes on me you said, ‘That’s the man I’m going to marry,’ and you pasted me one. I always said you were an excellent judge of character.”
　
　Thursday, September 29, 1977 (Clare is 6, Henry is 35)
　
CLARE: The calendar on Daddy’s desk this morning said the same as the paper the man wrote. Nell was making a soft egg for Alicia and Etta was yelling at Mark cause he didn’t do his homework and played Frisbee with Steve. I said Etta can I have some clothes from the trunks? meaning the trunks in the attic where we play dress up, and Etta said What for? and I said I want to play dress up with Megan and Etta got mad and said It was time to go to school and I could worry about playing when I got home. So I went to school and we did adding and mealworms and language arts and after lunch French and music and religion. I worried all day about pants for the man cause he seemed like he really wanted pants. So when I got home I went to ask Etta again but she was in town but Nell let me lick both the beaters of cake batter which Etta won’t let us because you get salmon. And Mama was writing and I was gonna go away without asking but she said What is it, Baby? so I asked and she said I could go look in the Goodwill bags and have anything I wanted. So I went to the laundry room and looked in the Goodwill bags and found three pairs of Daddy’s pants but one had a big cigarette hole. So I took two and I found a white shirt like Daddy wears to work and a tie with fishes on it and a red sweater. And the yellow bathrobe that Daddy had when I was little and it smelled like Daddy. I put the clothes in a bag and put the bag in the mud-room closet. When I was coming out of the mud room Mark saw me and he said What are you doing, asshole? And I said Nothing, asshole and he pulled my hair and I stepped on his foot really hard and then he started to cry and went to tell. So I went up to my room and played Television with Mr. Bear and Jane where Jane is the movie star and Mr. Bear asks her about how it is being a movie star and she says she really wants to be a veterinarian but she is so incredibly pretty she has to be a movie star and Mr. Bear says maybe she could be a veterinarian when she’s old. And Etta knocked and said Why are you stepping on Mark? and I said Because Mark pulled my hair for no reason and Etta said You two are getting on my nerves and went away so that was okay. We ate dinner with just Etta because Daddy and Mama went to a party. It was fried chicken with little peas and chocolate cake and Mark got the biggest piece but I didn’t say anything because I licked the beaters. So after dinner I asked Etta if I could go outside and she said did I have homework and I said Spelling and bring leaves for art class, and she said Okay as long as you come in by dark. So I went and got my blue sweater with the zebras and I got the bag and I went out and went to the clearing. But the man wasn’t there and I sat on the rock for a while and then I thought I better get some leaves. So I went back to the garden and found some leaves from Mama’s little tree that she told me later was Ginkgo, and some leaves from the Maple and the Oak. So then I went back to the clearing he still wasn’t there and I thought Well, I guess he just made up that he was coming and he didn’t want pants so bad after all. And I thought maybe Ruth was right cause I told her about the man and she said I was making it up because people don’t disappear in real life only on TV. Or maybe it was a dream like when Buster died and I dreamed he was okay and he was in his cage but I woke up and no Buster and Mama said Dreams are different than real life but important too. And it was getting cold and I thought maybe I should just leave the bag and if the man came he could have his pants. So I was walking back up the path and there was this noise and somebody said Ouch. Dang, that hurt. And then I was scared.
　
HENRY: I kind of slam into the rock when I appear and scrape my knees. I am in the clearing and the sun is setting beautifully in a spectacular J. M. W. Turner blowout orange and red over the trees. The clearing is empty except for a shopping bag full of clothes and I rapidly deduce that Clare has left these and this is probably a day shortly after our first meeting. Clare is nowhere in sight and I call her name softly. No response. I dig through the bag of clothes. There’s the pair of chinos and the beautiful pair of brown wool trousers, a hideous tie with trout all over it, the Harvard sweater, the oxford-cloth white shirt with ring around the collar and sweat stains under the arms, and the exquisite silk bathrobe with Philip’s monogram and a big tear over the pocket. All these clothes are old friends, except for the tie, and I’m happy to see them. I don the chinos and the sweater and bless Clare’s apparently hereditary good taste and sense. I feel great; except for the lack of shoes I’m well equipped for my current location in spacetime. “Thanks, Clare, you did a great job ” I call softly.
　I am surprised when she appears at the entrance to the clearing. It’s getting dark quickly and Clare looks tiny and scared in the half light.
　“Hi.”
　“Hi, Clare. Thanks for the clothes. They’re perfect, and they’ll keep me nice and warm tonight.”
　“I have to go in soon.”
　“That’s okay, it’s almost dark. Is it a school night?”
　“Uh-huh.”
　“What’s the date?”
　“Thursday, September 29,1977.”
　“That’s very helpful. Thanks.”
　“How come you don’t know that?”
　“Well, I just got here. A few minutes ago it was Monday, March 27, 2000. It was a rainy morning and I was making toast.”
　“But you wrote it down for me.” She takes out a piece of Philip’s law office letterhead and holds it out for me. I walk to her and take it, and am interested to see the date written on it in my careful block lettering. I pause and grope for the best way to explain the vagaries of time travel to the small child who is Clare at the moment.
　“It’s like this. You know how to use a tape recorder?”
　“Mmhmm.”
　“Okay. So you put in a tape and you play it from the beginning to the end, right?”
　“Yeah....”
　“That’s how your life is. You get up in the morning and you eat breakfast and you brush your teeth and you go to school, right? You don’t get up and suddenly find yourself at school eating lunch with Helen and Ruth and then all of a sudden you’re at home getting dressed, right?”
　Clare giggles. “Right.”
　“Now for me, it’s different. Because I am a time traveler, I jump around a lot from one time to another. So it’s like if you started the tape and played it for a while but then you said Oh I want to hear that song again, so you played that song and then you went back to where you left off but you wound the tape too far ahead so you rewound it again but you still got it too far ahead. You see?”
　“Sort of.”
　“Well, it’s not the greatest analogy in the world. Basically, sometimes I get lost in time and I don’t know when I am.”
　“ What’s analogy?”
　“It’s when you try to explain something by saying it’s like another thing. For example, at the moment I am as snug as a bug in a rug in this nice sweater, and you are as pretty as a picture, and Etta is going to be as mad as a hatter if you don’t go in pretty soon.”
　“Are you going to sleep here? You could come to our house, we have a guest room.”
　“Gosh, that’s very nice of you. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to meet your family until 1991.”
　Clare is utterly perplexed. I think part of the problem is that she can’t imagine dates beyond the 70s. I remember having the same problem with the ‘60s when I was her age. “Why not?”
　“It’s part of the rules. People who time travel aren’t supposed to go around talking to regular people while they visit their times, because we might mess things up.” Actually, I don’t believe this; things happen the way they happened, once and only once. I’m not a proponent of splitting universes.
　“But you talk to me.”
　“You’re special. You’re brave and smart and good at keeping secrets.”
　Clare is embarrassed. “I told Ruth, but she didn’t believe me.”
　“Oh. Well, don’t worry about it. Very few people ever believe me, either. Especially doctors. Doctors don’t believe anything unless you can prove it to them.”
　“I believe you.”
　Clare is standing about five feet away from me. Her small pale face catches the last orange light from the west. Her hair is pulled back tightly into a ponytail and she is wearing blue jeans and a dark sweater with zebras running across the chest. Her hands are clenched and she looks fierce and determined. Our daughter, I think sadly, would have looked like this.
　“Thank you, Clare.”
　“I have to go in now.”
　“Good idea.”
　“Are you coming back?”
　I consult the List, from memory. “I’ll be back October 16. It’s a Friday. Come here, right after school. Bring that little blue diary Megan gave you for your birthday and a blue ballpoint pen” I repeat the date, looking at Clare to make sure she is remembering.
　“Au revoir, Clare.”
　“Aurevoir....”
　“Henry.”
　“ Au revoir, Henri.” Already her accent is better than mine. Clare turns and runs up the path, into the arms of her lighted and welcoming house, and I turn to the dark and begin to walk across the meadow. Later in the evening I chuck the tie in the dumpster behind Dina’s Fish ‘n Fry.
　
LESSONS IN SURVIVAL
　Thursday, June 7, 1973 (Henry is 27, and 9)
　
HENRY: I am standing across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago on a sunny June day in 1973 in the company of my nine-year-old self. He is traveling from next Wednesday; I have come from 1990. We have a long afternoon and evening to frivol as we will, and so we have come to one of the great art museums of the world for a little lesson in pick-pocketing.
　“Can’t we just look at the art?” pleads Henry. He’s nervous. He’s never done this before.
　“Nope. You need to know this. How are you going to survive if you can’t steal anything?”
　“Begging.”
　“Begging is a drag, and you keep getting carted off by the police. Now, listen: when we get in there, I want you to stay away from me and pretend we don’t know each other. But be close enough to watch what I’m doing. If I hand you anything, don’t drop it, and put it in your pocket as fast as you can. Okay?”
　“I guess. Can we go see St. George?”
　“Sure.” We cross Michigan Avenue and walk between students and housewives sunning themselves on the museum steps. Henry pats one of the bronze lions as we go by.
　I feel moderately bad about this whole thing. On the one hand, I am providing myself with urgently required survival skills. Other lessons in this series include Shoplifting, Beating People Up, Picking Locks, Climbing Trees, Driving, Housebreaking, Dumpster Diving, and How to Use Oddball Things like Venetian Blinds and Garbage Can Lids as Weapons. On the other hand, I’m corrupting my poor innocent little self. I sigh. Somebody’s got to do it.
　It’s Free Day, so the place is swarming with people. We stand in line, move through the entry, and slowly climb the grandiose central staircase. We enter the European Galleries and make our way backward from the seventeenth-century Netherlands to fifteenth-century Spain. St. George stands poised, as always, ready to transfix his dragon with his delicate spear while the pink and green princess waits demurely in the middleground. My self and I love the yellow-bellied dragon wholeheartedly, and we are always relieved to find that his moment of doom has still not arrived.
　Henry and I stand before Bernardo Martorell’s painting for five minutes, and then he turns to me. We have the gallery to ourselves at the moment.
　“It’s not so hard,” I say. “Pay attention. Look for someone who is distracted. Figure out where the wallet is. Most men use either their back pocket or the inside pocket of their suit jacket. With women you want the purse behind their back. If you’re on the street you can just grab the whole purse, but then you have to be sure you can outrun anybody who might decide to chase you. It’s much quieter if you can take it without them noticing.”
　“I saw a movie where they practiced with a suit of clothes with little bells and if the guy moved the suit while he took the wallet the bells rang.”
　“Yeah, I remember that movie. You can try that at home. Now follow me.” I lead Henry from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth; we arrive suddenly in the midst of French Impressionism. The Art Institute is famous for its Impressionist collection. I can take it or leave it, but as usual these rooms are jam-packed with people craning for a glimpse of La Grande Jatte or a Monet Haystack. Henry can’t see over the heads of the adults, so the paintings are lost on him, but he’s too nervous to look at them anyway. I scan the room. A woman is bending over her toddler as it twists and screams. Must be nap time. I nod at Henry and move toward her. Her purse has a simple clasp and is slung over her shoulder, across her back. She’s totally focused on getting her child to stop screeching. She’s in front of Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge. I pretend to be looking at it as I walk, bump into her, sending her pitching forward, I catch her arm, “I’m so sorry, forgive me, I wasn’t looking, are you all right? It’s so crowded in here....” My hand is in her purse, she’s flustered, she has dark eyes and long hair, large breasts, she’s still trying to lose the weight she gained having the kid. I catch her eye as I find her wallet, still apologizing, the wallet goes up my jacket sleeve, I look her up and down and smile, back away, turn, walk, look over my shoulder. She has picked up her boy and is staring back at me, slightly forlorn. I smile and walk, walk. Henry is following me as I take the stairs down to the Junior Museum. We rendezvous by the men’s toilets.
　“That was weird,” says Henry. “Why’d she look at you like that?”
　“She’s lonely,” I euphemize. “Maybe her husband isn’t around very much.” We cram ourselves into a stall and I open her wallet. Her name is Denise Radke. She lives in Villa Park, Illinois. She is a member of the museum and an alumna of Roosevelt University. She is carrying twenty-two dollars in cash, plus change. I show all this to Henry, silently, put the wallet back as it was, and hand it to him. We walk out of the stall, out of the men’s room, back toward the entrance to the museum. “Give this to the guard. Say you found it on the floor.”
　“Why?”
　“We don’t need it; I was just demonstrating.” Henry runs to the guard, an elderly black woman who smiles and gives Henry a sort of half-hug. He conies back slowly, and we walk ten feet apart, with me leading, down the long dark corridor which will someday house Decorative Arts and lead to the as-yet-unthought-of Rice Wing, but which at the moment is full of posters. I’m looking for easy marks, and just ahead of me is a perfect illustration of the pickpocket’s dream. Short, portly, sun burnt, he looks as though he’s made a wrong turn from Wrigley Field in his baseball cap and polyester trousers with light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt. He’s lecturing his mousy girlfriend on Vincent van Gogh.
　“So he cuts his ear off and gives it to his girl—hey, how’d you like that for a present, huh? An ear! Huh. So they put him in the loony bin...”
　I have no qualms about this one. He strolls on, braying, blissfully unaware, with his wallet in his left back pocket. He has a large gut but almost no backside, and his wallet is pretty much aching for me to take it. I amble along behind them. Henry has a clear view as I deftly insert my thumb and forefinger into the mark’s pocket and liberate the wallet. I drop back, they walk on, I pass the wallet to Henry and he shoves it into his pants as I walk ahead.
　I show Henry some other techniques: how to take a wallet from the inside breast pocket of a suit, how to shield your hand from view while it’s inside a woman’s purse, six different ways to distract someone while you take their wallet, how to take a wallet out of a backpack, and how to get someone to inadvertently show you where their money is. He’s more relaxed now, he’s even starting to enjoy this. Finally, I say, “Okay, now you try.”
　He’s instantly petrified. “I can’t.”
　“Sure you can. Look around. Find someone.” We are standing in the Japanese Print Room. It’s full of old ladies.
　“Not here.”
　“Okay, where?”
　He thinks for a minute. “The restaurant?”
　We walk quietly to the restaurant. I remember this all vividly. I was totally terrified. I look over at my self and sure enough, his face is white with fear. I’m smiling, because I know what comes next. We stand at the end of the line for the garden restaurant. Henry looks around, thinking.
　In front of us in line is a very tall middle-aged man wearing a beautifully cut brown lightweight suit; it’s impossible to see where the wallet is. Henry approaches him, with one of the wallets I’ve lifted earlier proffered on his outstretched hand.
　“Sir? Is this yours?” says Henry softly. “It was on the floor.”
　“Uh? Oh, hmm, no,” the man checks his right back pants pocket, finds his wallet safe, leans over Henry to hear him better, takes the wallet from Henry and opens it. “Hmm, my, you should take this to the security guards, hmm, there’s quite a bit of cash in here, yes,” the man wears thick glasses and peers at Henry through them as he speaks and Henry reaches around under the man’s jacket and steals his wallet. Since Henry is wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt I walk behind him and he passes the wallet to me. The tall thin brown-suited man points at the stairs, explaining to Henry how to turn in the wallet. Henry toddles off in the direction the man has indicated, and I follow, overtake Henry and lead him right through the museum to the entrance and out, past the guards, onto Michigan Avenue and south, until we end up, grinning like fiends, at the Artists Cafe, where we treat ourselves to milkshakes and french fries with some of our ill-gotten gains. Afterwards we throw all the wallets in a mailbox, sans cash, and I get us a room at the Palmer House.
　“So?” I ask, sitting on the side of the bathtub watching Henry brush his teeth.
　“ ot?” returns Henry with a mouth full of toothpaste.
　“What do you think?”
　He spits. “About what?”
　“Pick-pocketing.”
　He looks at me in the mirror. “It’s okay.” He turns and looks directly at me. “I did it!” He grins, largely.
　“You were brilliant!”
　“Yeah!” The grin fades. “Henry, I don’t like to time travel by myself. It’s better with you. Can’t you always come with me?”
　He is standing with his back to me, and we look at each other in the mirror. Poor small self: at this age my back is thin and my shoulder blades stick out like incipient wings. He turns, waiting for an answer, and I know what I have to tell him—me. I reach out and gently turn him and bring him to stand by me, so we are side by side, heads level, facing the mirror.
　“Look.” We study our reflections, twinned in the ornate gilt Palmer House bathroom splendor. Our hair is the same brown-black, our eyes slant dark and fatigue-ringed identically, we sport exact replicas of each other’s ears. I’m taller and more muscular and shave. He’s slender and ungainly and is all knees and elbows. I reach up and pull my hair back from my face, show him the scar from the accident. Unconsciously, he mimics my gesture, touches the same scar on his own forehead.
　“It’s just like mine,” says my self, amazed. “How did you get it?”
　“The same as you. It is the same. We are the same.”
　A translucent moment. I didn’t understand, and then I did, just like that. I watch it happen. I want to be both of us at once, feel again the feeling of losing the edges of my self, of seeing the admixture of future and present for the first time. But I’m too accustomed, too comfortable with it, and so I am left on the outside, remembering the wonder of being nine and suddenly seeing, knowing, that my friend, guide, brother was me. Me, only me. The loneliness of it.
　“You’re me.”
　“When you are older.”
　“But...what about the others?”
　“Other time travelers?”
　He nods.
　“I don’t think there are any. I mean, I’ve never met any others.”
　A tear gathers at the edge of his left eye. When I was little, I imagined a whole society of time travelers, of which Henry, my teacher, was an emissary, sent to train me for eventual inclusion in this vast camaraderie. I still feel like a castaway, the last member of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. My self, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry. I hold him, hold me, for a long time.
　Later, we order hot chocolate from room service, and watch Johnny Carson. Henry falls asleep with the light on. As the show ends I look over at him and he’s gone, vanished back to my old room in my dad’s apartment, standing sleep-addled beside my old bed, falling into it, gratefully. I turn off the TV and the bedside lamp. 1973 street noises drift in the open window. I want to go home. I lie on the hard hotel bed, desolate, alone. I still don’t understand.
　
　Sunday, December 10, 1978 (Henry is 15, and 15)

　
HENRY: I’m in my bedroom with my self. He’s here from next March. We are doing what we often do when we have a little privacy, when it’s cold out, when both of us are past puberty and haven’t quite gotten around to actual girls yet. I think most people would do this, if they had the sort of opportunities I have. I mean, I’m not gay or anything.
　It’s late Sunday morning. I can hear the bells ringing at St. Joe’s. Dad came home late last night; I think he must have stopped at the Exchequer after the concert; he was so drunk he fell down on the stairs and I had to haul him into the apartment and put him to bed. He coughs and I hear him messing around in the kitchen.
　My other self seems distracted; he keeps looking at the door. “What?” I ask him. “Nothing,” he says. I get up and check the lock. “ No,” he says. He seems to be making a huge effort to speak. “Come on,” I say.
　I hear Dad’s heavy step right outside my door. “Henry?” he says, and the knob of the door slowly turns and I abruptly realize that I have inadvertently unlocked the door and Henry leaps for it but it’s too late: Dad sticks his head in and there we are, in flagrante delicto. “Oh,” he says. His eyes are wide and he looks completely disgusted. “Jesus, Henry.” He shuts the door and I hear him walking back to his room. I throw my self a reproachful glare as I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I walk down the hall to Dad’s bedroom. His door is shut. I knock. No answer. I wait. “Dad?” Silence. I open the door, stand in the doorway. “Dad?” He’s sitting with his back to me, on his bed. He continues to sit, and I stand there for a while, but I can’t bring myself to walk into the room. Finally I shut the door, walk back to my own room.
　“That was completely and totally your fault,” I tell my self severely. He is wearing jeans, sitting on the chair with his head in his hands. “You knew, you knew that was going to happen and you didn’t say a word. Where is your sense of self preservation? What the hell is wrong with you? What use is it knowing the future if you can’t at least protect us from humiliating little scenes—”
　“Shut up ” Henry croaks. “Just shut up.”
　“I will not shut up,” I say, my voice rising. “I mean, all you had to do was say—”
　“Listen.” He looks up at me with resignation. “It was like.. .it was like that day at the ice-skating rink.”
　“Oh. Shit.” A couple years ago, I saw a little girl get hit in the head with a hockey puck at Indian Head Park. It was horrible. I found out later that she died in the hospital. And then I started to time travel back to that day, over and over, and I wanted to warn her mother, and I couldn’t. It was like being in the audience at a movie. It was like being a ghost. I would scream, No, take her home, don’t let her near the ice, take her away, she’s going to get hurt, she’s going to die, and I would realize that the words were only in my head, and everything would go on as before.
　Henry says, “You talk about changing the future, but for me this is the past, and as far as I can tell there’s nothing I can do about it. I mean, I tried, and it was the trying that made it happen. If I hadn’t said something, you wouldn’t have gotten up....”
　“Then why did you say anything?”
　“Because I did. You will, just wait.” He shrugs. “It’s like with Mom. The accident. Immer wieder.” Always again, always the same.
　“Free will?”
　He gets up, walks to the window, stands looking out over the Tatingers’ backyard. “I was just talking about that with a self from 1992. He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.”
　“But whenever I am, that’s my present. Shouldn’t I be able to decide—”
　“No. Apparently not.”
　“What did he say about the future?”
　“Well, think. You go to the future, you do something, you come back to the present. Then the thing that you did is part of your past. So that’s probably inevitable, too.”
　I feel a weird combination of freedom and despair. I’m sweating; he opens the window and cold air floods into the room. “But then I’m not responsible for anything I do while I’m not in the present.”
　He smiles. “Thank God.”
　“And everything has already happened.”
　“Sure looks that way.” He runs his hand over his face, and I see that he could use a shave. “But he said that you have to behave as though you have free will, as though you are responsible for what you do.”
　“Why? What does it matter?”
　“Apparently, if you don’t, things are bad. Depressing.”
　“Did he know that personally?”
　“Yes.”
　“So what happens next?”
　“Dad ignores you for three weeks. And this”—he waves his hand at the bed—“we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
　I sigh. “Right, no problem. Anything else?”
　“Vivian Teska.”
　Vivian is this girl in Geometry whom I lust after. I’ve never said a word to her.
　“After class tomorrow, go up to her and ask her out.”
　“I don’t even know her.”
　“Trust me.” He’s smirking at me in a way that makes me wonder why on earth I would ever trust him but I want to believe. “Okay.”
　“I should get going. Money, please.” I dole out twenty dollars. “More.” I hand him another twenty.
　“That’s all I’ve got.”
　“Okay.” He’s dressing, pulling clothes from the stash of things I don’t mind never seeing again. “How about a coat?” I hand him a Peruvian skiing sweater that I’ve always hated. He makes a face and puts it on. We walk to the back door of the apartment. The church bells are tolling noon. “Bye,” says my self.
　“Good luck,” I say, oddly moved by the sight of me embarking into the unknown, into a cold Chicago Sunday morning he doesn’t belong in. He thumps down the wooden stairs, and I turn to the silent apartment.
　
　Wednesday, November 17/Tuesday, September 28, 1982 (Henry is 19)

　
HENRY: I’m in the back of a police car in Zion, Illinois. I am wearing handcuffs and not much else. The interior of this particular police car smells like cigarettes, leather, sweat, and another odor I can’t identify that seems endemic to police cars. The odor of freak-outedness, perhaps. My left eye is swelling shut and the front of my body is covered with bruises and cuts and dirt from being tackled by the larger of the two policemen in an empty lot full of broken glass. The policemen are standing outside the car talking to the neighbors, at least one of whom evidently saw me trying to break into the yellow and white Victorian house we are parked in front of. I don’t know where I am in time. I’ve been here for about an hour, and I have fucked up completely. I’m very hungry. I’m very tired. I’m supposed to be in Dr. Quarrie’s Shakespeare seminar, but I’m sure I’ve managed to miss it. Too bad. We’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream.
　The upside of this police car is: it’s warm and I’m not in Chicago. Chicago’s Finest hate me because I keep disappearing while I’m in custody, and they can’t figure it out. Also I refuse to talk to them, so they still don’t know who I am, or where I live. The day they find out, I’m toast because there are several outstanding warrants for my arrest: breaking and entering, shoplifting, resisting arrest, breaking arrest, trespassing, indecent exposure, robbery, und so weiter. From this one might deduce that I am a very inept criminal, but really the main problem is that it’s so hard to be inconspicuous when you’re naked. Stealth and speed are my main assets and so, when I try to burgle houses in broad daylight stark naked, sometimes it doesn’t work out. I’ve been arrested seven times, and so far I’ve always vanished before they can fingerprint me or take a photo.
　The neighbors keep peering in the windows of the police car at me. I don’t care. I don’t care. This is taking a long time. Fuck, I hate this. I lean back and close my eyes.
　A car door opens. Cold air—my eyes fly open—for an instant I see the metal grid that separates the front of the car from the back, the cracked vinyl seats, my hands in the cuffs, my gooseflesh legs, the flat sky through the windshield, the black visored hat on the dashboard, the clipboard in the officer’s hand, his red face, tufted graying eyebrows and jowls like drapes—everything shimmers, iridescent, butter fly-wing colors and the policeman says, “Hey, he’s having some kinda fit—” and my teeth are chattering hard and before my eyes the police car vanishes and I am lying on my back in my own backyard. Yes. Yes! I fill my lungs with the sweet September night air. I sit up and rub my wrists, still marked where the handcuffs were.
　I laugh and laugh. I have escaped again! Houdini, Prospero, behold me! for I am a magician, too.
　Nausea overcomes me, and I heave bile onto Kimy’s mums.
　
　Saturday, May 14, 1983 (Clare is 11 almost 12)
　
CLARE: It’s Mary Christina Heppworth’s birthday and all the fifth-grade girls from St. Basil’s are sleeping over at her house. We have pizza and Cokes and fruit salad for dinner, and Mrs. Heppworth made a big cake shaped like a unicorn’s head with Happy Birthday Mary Christina! in red icing and we sing and Mary Christina blows out all twelve candles in one blow. I think I know what she wished for; I think she wished not to get any taller. That’s what I would wish if I were her, anyway. Mary Christina is the tallest person in our class. She’s 5’9“. Her mom is a little shorter than her, but her dad is really, really tall. Helen asked Mary Christina once and she said he’s 67”. She’s the only girl in her family. and her brothers are all older and shave and they’re really tall, too. They make a point of ignoring us and eating a lot of cake and Patty and Ruth especially giggle a lot whenever they come where we are. It’s so embarrassing. Mary Christina opens her presents. I got her a green sweater just like my blue one that she liked with the crocheted collar from Laura Ashley. After dinner we watch The Parent Trap on video and the Heppworth family kind of hangs around watching us until we all take turns putting on our pajamas in the second floor bathroom and we crowd into Mary Christina’s room that is decorated totally in pink, even the wall-to-wall carpet. You get the feeling Mary Christina’s parents were really glad to finally have a girl after all those brothers. We have all brought our sleeping bags, but we pile them against one wall and sit on Mary Christina’s bed and on the floor. Nancy has a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps and we all drink some. It tastes awful, and it feels like Vicks VapoRub in my chest. We play Truth or Dare. Ruth dares Wendy to run down the hall without her top on. Wendy asks Francie what size bra Lexi, Francie’s seventeen-year-old sister, wears. (Answer: 38D.) Francie asks Gayle what she was doing with Michael Planner at the Dairy Queen last Saturday. (Answer: eating ice cream. Well, duh.) After a while we all get bored with Truth or Dare, mainly because it’s hard to think of good dares that any of us will actually do, and because we all pretty much know whatever there is to know about each other, because we’ve been going to school together since kindergarten. Mary Christina says, “Let’s do Ouija board,” and we all agree, because it’s her party and cause Ouija board is cool. She gets it out of her closet. The box is all mashed, and the little plastic thing that shows the letters is missing its plastic window. Henry told me once that he went to a séance and the medium had her appendix burst in the middle of it and they had to call an ambulance. The board is only really big enough for two people to do it at once, so Mary Christina and Helen go first. The rule is you have to ask what you want to know out loud or it won’t work. They each put their fingers on the plastic thing. Helen looks at Mary Christina, who hesitates and Nancy says, “Ask about Bobby,” so Mary Christina asks, “Does Bobby Duxler like me?” Everybody giggles.
　The answer is no, but the Ouija says yes, with a little pushing by Helen. Mary Christina smiles so hugely I can see her braces, top and bottom. Helen asks if any boys like her. The Ouija circles around for a while, and then stops on D, A, V. “David Hanley?” says Patty, and everybody laughs. Dave is the only black kid in our class. He’s real shy and small and he’s good at math. “Maybe he’ll help you with long division” says Laura, who is also very shy. Helen laughs. She’s terrible at math. “Here, Clare. You and Ruth try.” We take Helen and Mary Christina’s places. Ruth looks at me and I shrug. “I don’t know what to ask,” I say. Everybody snickers; how many possible questions are there? But there are so many things I want to know. Is Mama going to be okay? Why was Daddy yelling at Etta this morning? Is Henry a real person? Where did Mark hide my French homework? Ruth says, “What boys like Clare?” I give her a mean look, but she just smiles. “Don’t you want to know?”
　“No,” I say, but I put my fingers on the white plastic anyway. Ruth puts her fingers on too and nothing moves. We are both touching the thing very lightly, we are trying to do it right and not push. Then it starts to move, slow. It goes in circles, and then stops on H. Then it speeds up. E, N, R, Y. “Henry,” says Mary Christina, “who’s Henry?” Helen says, “I don’t know, but you’re blushing, Clare. Who is Henry?” I just shake my head, like it’s a mystery to me, too. “You ask, Ruth.” She asks (big surprise) who likes her; the Ouija spells out R, I, C, K. I can feel her pushing. Rick is Mr. Malone, our Science teacher, who has a crush on Miss Engle, the English teacher. Everybody except Patty laughs; Patty has a crush on Mr. Malone, too. Ruth and I get up and Laura and Nancy sit down. Nancy has her back to me, so I can’t see her face when she asks, “Who is Henry?” Everybody looks at me and gets real quiet. I watch the board. Nothing. Just as I’m thinking I’m safe, the plastic thing starts to move. H, it says. I think maybe it will just spell Henry again; after all, Nancy and Laura don’t know anything about Henry. I don’t even know that much about Henry. Then it goes on: U, S, B, A, N, D. They all look at me. “Well, I’m not married; I’m only eleven.”
　“But who’s Henry?” wonders Laura. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s somebody I haven’t met yet.” She nods. Everyone is weirded out. I’m very weirded out. Husband? Husband?
　
　Thursday, April 12, 1984 (Henry is 36, Clare is 12)

　
HENRY: Clare and I are playing chess in the fire circle in the woods. It’s a beautiful spring day, and the woods are alive with birds courting and birds nesting. We are keeping ourselves out of the way of Clare’s family, who are out and about this afternoon. Clare has been stuck on her move for a while; I took her Queen Three moves ago and now she is doomed but determined to go down fighting.
　She looks up, “Henry, who’s your favorite Beatle?”
　“John. Of course.”
　“Why ‘of course’?”
　“Well, Ringo is okay but kind of a sad sack, you know? And George is a little too New Age for my taste.”
　“What’s ‘New Age’?”
　“Oddball religions. Sappy boring music. Pathetic attempts to convince oneself of the superiority of anything connected with Indians. Non-Western medicine.”
　“But you don’t like regular medicine ”
　“That’s because doctors are always trying to tell me I’m crazy. If I had a broken arm I would be a big fan of Western medicine.”
　“What about Paul?”
　“Paul is for girls.”
　Clare smiles, shyly. “I like Paul best.”
　“Well, you’re a girl.”
　“Why is Paul for girls?”
　Tread carefully, I tell myself. “Uh, gee. Paul is, like, the Nice Beatle, you know?”
　“Is that bad?”
　“No, not at all. But guys are more interested in being cool, and John is the Cool Beatle.”
　“Oh. But he’s dead.”
　I laugh. “You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.”
　Clare hums the beginning of “When I’m 64.” She moves her rook forward five spaces. I can checkmate her now, and I point this out to her and she hastily takes back the move.
　“So why do you like Paul?” I ask her. I look up in time to see her blushing fervently.
　“He’s so... beautiful,” Clare says. There’s something about the way she says it that makes me feel strange. I study the board, and it occurs to me that Clare could checkmate me if she took my bishop with her knight. I wonder if I should tell her this. If she was a little younger, I would. Twelve is old enough to fend for yourself. Clare is staring dreamily at the board. It dawns on me that I am jealous. Jesus. I can’t believe I’m feeling jealous of a multimillionaire rock star geezer old enough to be Clare’s dad.
　“Hmpf,” I say.
　Clare looks up, smiling mischievously. “Who do you like?”
　You, I think but don’t say. “You mean when I was your age?”
　“Um, yeah. When were you my age?”
　I weigh the value and potential of this nugget before I dole it out. “I was your age in 1975. I’m eight years older than you.”
　“So you’re twenty?”
　“Well, no, I’m thirty-six.” Old enough to be your dad.
　Clare furrows her brow. Math is not her strongest subject. “But if you were twelve in 1975....”
　“Oh, sorry. You’re right. I mean, I myself am thirty-six, but somewhere out there”—I wave my hand toward the south—“I’m twenty. In real time.”
　Clare strives to digest this. “So there are two of you?”
　“Not exactly. There’s always only one me, but when I’m time traveling sometimes I go somewhere I already am, and yeah, then you could say there are two. Or more.”
　“How come I never see more than one?”
　“You will. When you and I meet in my present that will happen fairly frequently.” More often than I’d like, Clare.
　“So who did you like in 1975?”
　“Nobody, really. At twelve I had other stuff to think about. But when I was thirteen I had this huge crush on Patty Hearst.”
　Clare looks annoyed. “A girl you knew at school?”
　I laugh. “No. She was a rich Californian college girl who got kidnapped by these awful left-wing political terrorists, and they made her rob banks. She was on the news every night for months.”
　“What happened to her? Why did you like her?”
　“They eventually let her go, and she got married and had kids and now she’s a rich lady in California. Why did I like her? Ah, I don’t know. It’s irrational, you know? I guess I kind of knew how she felt, being taken away and forced to do stuff she didn’t want to do, and then it seemed like she was kind of enjoying it.”
　“Do you do things you don’t want to do?”
　“Yeah. All the time.” My leg has fallen asleep and I stand up and shake it until it tingles. “I don’t always end up safe and sound with you, Clare. A lot of times I go places where I have to get clothes and food by stealing.”
　“Oh.” Her face clouds, and then she sees her move, and makes it, and looks up at me triumphantly. “Checkmate!”
　“Hey! Bravo!” I salaam her. “You are the chess queen dujour.”
　“Yes, I am,” Clare says, pink with pride. She starts to set the pieces back in their starting positions. “Again?”
　I pretend to consult my nonexistent watch. “Sure.” I sit down again. “You hungry?” We’ve been out here for hours and supplies have run low; all we have left is the dregs of a bag of Doritos.
　“Mmhmm.” Clare holds the pawns behind her back; I tap her right elbow and she shows me the white pawn. I make my standard opening move, Queen’s Pawn to Q4. She makes her standard response to my standard opening move, Queen’s Pawn to Q4. We play out the next ten moves fairly rapidly, with only moderate bloodshed, and then Clare sits for a while, pondering the board. She is always experimenting, always attempting the coup d’eclat. “Who do you like now?” she asks without looking up.
　“You mean at twenty? Or at thirty-six?”
　“Both.”
　I try to remember being twenty. It’s just a blur of women, breasts, legs, skin, hair. All their stories have jumbled together, and their faces no longer attach themselves to names. I was busy but miserable at twenty. “Twenty was nothing special. Nobody springs to mind.”
　“And thirty-six?”
　I scrutinize Clare. Is twelve too young? I’m sure twelve is really too young. Better to fantasize about beautiful, unattainable, safe Paul McCartney than to have to contend with Henry the Time Traveling Geezer. Why is she asking this anyway?
　“Henry?”
　“Yeah?”
　“Are you married?”
　“Yes,” I admit reluctantly.
　“To who?”
　“A very beautiful, patient, talented, smart woman.”
　Her faces falls. “Oh.” She picks up one of my white bishops, which she captured two moves ago, and spins it on the ground like a top. “Well, that’s nice.” She seems kind of put out by this news.
　“What’s wrong?”
　“Nothing.” Clare moves her queen from Q2 to KN5. “Check.”
　I move my knight to protect my king.
　“Am I married?” Clare inquires.
　I meet her eyes. “You’re pushing your luck today.”
　“Why not? You never tell me anything anyway. Come on, Henry, tell me if I’m gonna be an old maid.”
　“You’re a nun,” I tease her.
　Clare shudders. “Boy, I hope not.” She takes one of my pawns with her rook. “How did you meet your wife?”
　“Sorry. Top secret information.” I take her rook with my queen.
　Clare makes a face. “Ouch. Were you time traveling? When you met her?”
　“ I was minding my own business.”
　Clare sighs. She takes another pawn with her other rook. I’m starting to run low on pawns. I move Queen’s Bishop to KB4.
　“It’s not fair that you know everything about me but you never tell me anything about you.”
　“True. It’s not fair.” I try to look regretful, and obliging.
　“I mean, Ruth and Helen and Megan and Laura tell me everything and I tell them everything.”
　“Everything?”
　“Yeah. Well, I don’t tell them about you.”
　“Oh? Why’s that?”
　Clare looks a bit defensive. “You’re a secret. They wouldn’t believe me, anyway.” She traps my bishop with her knight, flashes me a sly smile. I contemplate the board, trying to find a way to take her knight or move my bishop. Things are looking grim for White. “Henry, are you really a person?”
　I am a bit taken aback. “Yes. What else would I be?”
　“I don’t know. A spirit?”
　“I’m really a person, Clare.”
　“Prove it.”
　“How?”
　“I don’t know.”
　“I mean, I don’t think you could prove that you’re a person, Clare.”
　“Sure I can.”
　“How?”
　“I’m just like a person.”
　“Well, I’m just like a person, too.” It’s funny that Clare is bringing this up; back in 1999 Dr. Kendrick and I are engaged in philosophical trench warfare over this very issue. Kendrick is convinced that I am a harbinger of a new species of human, as different from everyday folks as Cro-Magnon Man was from his Neanderthal neighbors. I contend that I’m just a piece of messed-up code, and our inability to have kids proves that I’m not going to be the Missing Link. We’ve taken to quoting Kierkegaard and Heidegger at each other and glowering. Meanwhile, Clare regards me doubtfully.
　“ People don’t appear and disappear the way you do. You’re like the Cheshire Cat.”
　“Are you implying that I’m a fictional character?” I spot my move, finally: King’s Rook to QR3. Now she can take my bishop but she’ll lose her queen in the process. It takes Clare a moment to realize this and when she does she sticks out her tongue at me. Her tongue is a worrisome shade of orange from all the Doritos she’s eaten.
　“It makes me kind of wonder about fairy tales. I mean, if you’re real, then why shouldn’t fairy tales be real, too?” Clare stands up, still pondering the board, and does a little dance, hopping around like her pants are on fire. “I think the ground is getting harder. My butt’s asleep.”
　“Maybe they are real. Or some little thing in them is real and then people just added to it, you know?”
　“Like maybe Snow White was in a coma?”
　“And Sleeping Beauty, too.”
　“And Jack the beanstalk guy was just a real terrific gardener.”
　“And Noah was a weird old man with a houseboat and a lot of cats.”
　Clare stares at me. “Noah is in the Bible. He’s not a fairy tale.”
　“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I’m getting very hungry. Any minute now Nell will ring the dinner bell and Clare will have to go in. She sits back down on her side of the board. I can tell she’s lost interest in the game when she starts building a little pyramid out of all the conquered pieces.
　“You still haven’t proved you’re real” Clare says.
　“Neither have you.”
　“Do you ever wonder if I’m real?” she asks me, surprised.
　“Maybe I’m dreaming you. Maybe you’re dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other’s dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other.”
　Clare frowns, and makes a motion with her hand as though to bat away this odd idea. “Pinch me,” she requests. I lean over and pinch her lightly on the arm. “Harder!” I do it again, hard enough to leave a white and red mark that lingers for some seconds and then vanishes. “Don’t you think I would wake up, if I was asleep? Anyway, I don’t feel asleep.”
　“Well, I don’t feel like a spirit. Or a fictional character.”
　“How do you know? I mean, if I was making you up, and I didn’t want you to know you were made up, I just wouldn’t tell you, right?”
　I wiggle my eyebrows at her. “Maybe God just made us up and He’s not telling us.”
　“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Clare exclaims. “Besides, you don’t even believe in God. Do you?”
　I shrug, and change the subject. “I’m more real than Paul McCartney.”
　Clare looks worried. She starts to put all the pieces back in their box, carefully dividing white and black. “Lots of people know about Paul McCartney—I’m the only one who knows about you.”
　“But you’ve actually met me, and you’ve never met him.”
　“My mom went to a Beatles concert.” She closes the lid of the chess set and stretches out on the ground, staring up at the canopy of new leaves. “It was at Comiskey Park, in Chicago, August 8,1965.” I poke her in the stomach and she curls up like a hedgehog, giggling. After an interval of tickling and thrashing around, we lie on the ground with our hands clasped across our middles and Clare asks, “Is your wife a time traveler too?”
　“Nope. Thank God.”
　“Why ‘thank God’? I think that would be fun. You could go places together.”
　“One time traveler per family is more than enough. It’s dangerous, Clare.”
　“Does she worry about you?”
　“Yes,” I say softly. “She does.” I wonder what Clare is doing now, in 1999. Maybe she’s still asleep. Maybe she won’t know I’m gone.
　“Do you love her?”
　“Very much,” I whisper. We He silently side by side, watching the swaying trees, the birds, the sky. I hear a muffled sniffling noise and glancing at Clare I am astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face toward her ears. I sit up and lean over her. “What’s wrong, Clare?” She just shakes her head back and forth and presses her lips together. I smooth her hair, and pull her into a sitting position, wrap my arms around her. She’s a child, and then again she isn’t. “What’s wrong?”
　It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought maybe you were married to me.”
　
　Wednesday, June 27, 1984 (Clare is 13)
　
CLARE: I am standing in the Meadow. It’s late June, late afternoon; in a few minutes it will be time to wash up for supper. The temperature is dropping. Ten minutes ago the sky was coppery blue and there was a heavy heat over the Meadow, everything felt curved, like being under a vast glass dome, all near noises swallowed up in the heat while an overwhelming chorus of insects droned. I have been sitting on the tiny footbridge watching waterbugs skating on the still small pool, thinking about Henry. Today isn’t a Henry day; the next one is twenty-two days away. It is now much cooler. Henry is puzzling to me. All my life I have pretty much just accepted Henry as no big deal; that is, although Henry is a secret and therefore automatically fascinating, Henry is also some kind of miracle and just recently it’s started to dawn on me that most girls don’t have a Henry or if they do they’ve all been pretty quiet about it. There’s a wind coming; the tall grass is rippling and I close my eyes so it sounds like the sea (which I have never seen except on TV). When I open them the sky is yellow and then green. Henry says he comes from the future. When I was little I didn’t see any problem with that; I didn’t have any idea what it might mean. Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older. I wonder if Henry could take me to the future. The woods are black and the trees bend over and whip to the side and bow down. The insect hum is gone and the wind is smoothing everything, the grass is flat and the trees are creaking and groaning. I am afraid of the future; it seems to be a big box waiting for me. Henry says he knows me in the future. Huge black clouds are moving up from behind the trees, they come up so suddenly that I laugh, they are like puppets, and everything is swirling toward me and there is a long low peal of thunder. I am suddenly aware of myself standing thin and upright in a Meadow where everything has flattened itself down and so I lie down hoping to be unnoticed by the storm which rolls up and I am flat on my back looking up when water begins to pour down from the sky. My clothes are soaked in an instant and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, an incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hands on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him.
　
　Sunday, September 23, 1984 (Henry is 35, Clare is 13)
　
HENRY: I am in the clearing, in the Meadow. It’s very early in the morning, just before dawn. It’s late summer, all the flowers and grasses are up to my chest. It’s chilly. I am alone. I wade through the plants and locate the clothes box, open it up, and find blue jeans and a white oxford shirt and flip-flops. I’ve never seen these clothes before, so I have no idea where I am in time. Clare has also left me a snack: there’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich carefully wrapped in aluminum foil, with an apple and a bag of lay’s potato chips. Maybe this is one of Clare’s school lunches. My expectations veer in the direction of the late seventies or early eighties. I sit down on the rock and eat the food, and then I feel much better. The sun is rising. The whole Meadow is blue, and then orange, and pink, the shadows are elongated, and then it is day. There’s no sign of Clare. I crawl a few feet into the vegetation, curl up on the ground even though it is wet with dew, and sleep.
　When I wake up the sun is higher and Clare is sitting next to me reading a book. She smiles at me and says, “Daylight in the swamp. The birds are singing and the frogs are croaking and it’s time to get up!”
　I groan and rub my eyes. “Hi, Clare. What’s the date?”
　“Sunday, September 23, 1984.”
　Clare is thirteen. A strange and difficult age, but not as difficult as what we are going through in my present. I sit up, and yawn. “Clare, if I asked very nicely, would you go into your house and smuggle out a cup of coffee for me?”
　“Coffee?” Clare says this as though she has never heard of the substance. As an adult she is as much of an addict as I am. She considers the logistics.
　“Pretty please?”
　“Okay, I’ll try.” She stands up, slowly. This is the year Clare got tall, quickly. In the past year she has grown five inches, and she has not yet become accustomed to her new body. Breasts and legs and hips, all newly minted. I try not to think about it as I watch her walk up the path to the house. I glance at the book she was reading. It’s a Dorothy Sayers, one I haven’t read. I’m on page thirty-three by the time she gets back. She has brought a Thermos, cups, a blanket, and some doughnuts. A summer’s worth of sun has freckled Clare’s nose, and I have to resist the urge to run my hands through her bleached hair, which falls over her arms as she spreads out the blanket.
　“Bless you.” I receive the Thermos as though it contains a sacrament. We settle ourselves on the blanket. I kick off the flip-flops, pour out a cup of coffee, and take a sip. It’s incredibly strong and bitter. “Yowza! This is rocket fuel, Clare.”
　“Too strong?” She looks a little depressed, and I hasten to compliment her.
　“Well, there’s probably no such thing as too strong, but it’s pretty strong. I like it, though. Did you make it?”
　“Uh-huh. I never made coffee before, and Mark came in and was kind of bugging me, so maybe I did it wrong.”
　“No, it’s fine.” I blow on the coffee, and gulp it down. I feel better immediately. I pour another cup.
　Clare takes the Thermos from me. She pours herself half an inch of coffee and takes a cautious sip. “Ugh,” she says. “This is disgusting. Is it supposed to taste like this?”
　“Well, it’s usually a little less ferocious. You like yours with lots of cream and sugar.”
　Clare pours the rest of her coffee into the Meadow and takes a doughnut. Then she says, “You’re making me into a freak.”
　I don’t have a ready reply for this, since the idea has never occurred to me. “Uh, no I’m not.”
　“You are so.”
　“Am not.” I pause. “What do you mean, I’m making you into a freak? I’m not making you into anything.”
　“You know, like telling me that I like coffee with cream and sugar before I hardly even taste it. I mean, how am I going to figure out if that’s what I like or if I just like it because you tell me I like it?”
　“But Clare, it’s just personal taste. You should be able to figure out how you like coffee whether I say anything or not. Besides, you’re the one who’s always bugging me to tell you about the future.”
　“Knowing the future is different from being told what I like,” Clare says.
　“Why? It’s all got to do with free will.”
　Clare takes off her shoes and socks. She pushes the socks into the shoes and places them neatly at the edge of the blanket. Then she takes my cast-off flip-flops and aligns them with her shoes, as though the blanket is a tatami mat. “I thought free will had to do with sin.”
　I think about this. “No, ” I say, “why should free will be limited to right and wrong? I mean, you just decided, of your own free will, to take off your shoes. It doesn’t matter, nobody cares if you wear shoes or not, and it’s not sinful, or virtuous, and it doesn’t affect the future, but you’ve exercised your free will”
　Clare shrugs. “But sometimes you tell me something and I feel like the future is already there, you know? Like my future has happened in the past and I can’t do anything about it.”
　“That’s called determinism,” I tell her. “It haunts my dreams.”
　Clare is intrigued. “Why?”
　“Well, if you are feeling boxed in by the idea that your future is unalterable, imagine how I feel. I’m constantly running up against the fact that I can’t change anything, even though I am right there, watching it.”
　“But Henry, you do change things! I mean, you wrote down that stuff that I’m supposed to give you in 1991 about the baby with Down Syndrome, And the List, if I didn’t have the List I would never know when to come meet you. You change things all the time.”
　I smile. “I can only do things that work toward what has already happened. I can’t, for example, undo the fact that you just took off your shoes.”
　Clare laughs. “Why would you care if I take them off or not?”
　“I don’t. But even if I did, it’s now an unalterable part of the history of the universe and I can’t do a thing about it.” I help myself to a doughnut. It’s a Bismarck, my favorite. The frosting is melting in the sun a little, and it sticks to my fingers.
　Clare finishes her doughnut, rolls up the cuffs of her jeans and sits cross-legged. She scratches her neck and looks at me with annoyance. “Now you’re making me self-conscious. I feel like every time I blow my nose it’s a historic event.”
　“Well, it is.”
　She rolls her eyes. “What’s the opposite of determinism?”
　“Chaos.”
　“Oh. I don’t think I like that. Do you like that?”
　I take a big bite out of the Bismarck and consider chaos. “Well, I do and I don’t. Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.”
　“But, Henry, you’re forgetting about God—why can’t there be a God who makes it mean something?” Clare frowns earnestly, and looks away across the Meadow as she speaks.
　I pop the last of the Bismarck into my mouth and chew slowly to gain time. Whenever Clare mentions God my palms start to sweat and I have an urge to hide or run or vanish.
　“I don’t know, Clare. I mean, to me things seem too random and meaningless for there to be a God.”
　Clare clasps her arms around her knees. “But you just said before that everything seems like it’s all planned out beforehand.”
　“Hpmf,” I say. I grab Clare’s ankles, pull her feet onto my lap, and hold on. Clare laughs, and leans back on her elbows. Clare’s feet are cold in my hands; they are very pink and very clean. “Okay,” I say, “let’s see. The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway. Right?”
　Clare wiggles her toes at me. “I guess.”
　“And what do you vote for?”
　Clare is silent. Her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about Jesus and Mary are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. A year ago she would have said God without hesitation. In ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years after that Clare will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless. And after that? I don’t know. But right now Clare sits on the threshold of adolescence with her faith in one hand and her growing skepticism in the other, and all she can do is try to juggle them, or squeeze them together until they fuse. She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I want God. Is that okay?”
　I feel like an asshole. “Of course it’s okay. That’s what you believe.”
　“But I don’t want to just believe it, I want it to be true.”
　I run my thumbs across Clare’s arches, and she closes her eyes. “You and St. Thomas Aquinas both,” I say.
　“I’ve heard of him,” Clare says, as though she’s speaking of a long-lost favorite uncle, or the host of a TV show she used to watch when she was little.
　“He wanted order and reason, and God, too. He lived in the thirteenth century and taught at the University of Paris. Aquinas believed in both Aristotle and angels.”
　“I love angels,” says Clare. “They’re so beautiful. I wish I could have wings and fly around and sit on clouds.”
　“Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.‘”
　Clare sighs, a little soft sigh that means I don’t speak German, remember? “Huh?”
　“‘Every angel is terrifying.’ It’s part of a series of poems called The Duino Elegies, by a poet named Rilke. He’s one of our favorite poets.”
　Clare laughs. “You’re doing it again!”
　“What?”
　“Telling me what I like.” Clare burrows into my lap with her feet. Without thinking I put her feet on my shoulders, but then that seems too sexual, somehow, and I quickly take Clare’s feet in my hands again and hold them together with one hand in the air as she lies on her back, innocent and angelic with her hair spread nimbus-like around her on the blanket. I tickle her feet. Clare giggles and twists out of my hands like a fish, jumps up and does a cartwheel across the clearing, grinning at me as if to dare me to come and get her. I just grin back, and she returns to the blanket and sits down next to me.
　“Henry?”
　“Yeah?”
　“You are making me different.”
　“I know”
　I turn to look at Clare and just for a moment I forget that she is young, and that this is long ago; I see Clare, my wife, superimposed on the face of this young girl, and I don’t know what to say to this Clare who is old and young and different from other girls, who knows that different might be hard. But Clare doesn’t seem to expect an answer. She leans against my arm, and I put my arm around her shoulders.
　“ Clare!” Across the quiet of the Meadow Clare’s dad is bellowing her name. Clare jumps up and grabs her shoes and socks.
　“It’s time for church ” she says, suddenly nervous.
　“Okay,” I say. “Um, bye.” I wave at her, and she smiles and mumbles goodbye and is running up the path, and is gone. I lie in the sun for a while, wondering about God, reading Dorothy Sayers. After an hour or so has passed I too am gone and there is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we were there at all.
　
AFTER THE END
　Saturday, October 27, 1984 (Clare is 13, Henry is 43)
　
CLARE: I wake up suddenly. There was a noise: someone called my name. It sounded like Henry. I sit up in bed, listening. I hear the wind, and crows calling. But what if it was Henry? I jump out of bed and I run, with no shoes I run downstairs, out the back door, into the Meadow. It’s cold, the wind cuts right through my nightgown. Where is he? I stop and look and there, by the orchard, there’s Daddy and Mark, in their bright orange hunting clothes, and there’s a man with them, they are all standing and looking at something but then they hear me and they turn and I see that the man is Henry. What is Henry doing with Daddy and Mark? I run to them, my feet cut by the dead grasses, and Daddy walks to meet me. “Sweetheart,” he says, “what are you doing out here so early?”
　“I heard my name” I say. He smiles at me. Silly girl, his smile says, and I look at Henry, to see if he will explain. Why did you call me, Henry? but he shakes his head and puts his finger to his lips, Shhh, don’t tell, Clare. He walks into the orchard and I want to see what they were looking at but there’s nothing there and Daddy says, “Go back to bed, Clare, it was just a dream.” He puts his arm around me and begins to walk back toward the house with me and I look back at Henry and he waves, he’s smiling, It’s okay, Clare, I’ll explain later (although knowing Henry he probably won’t explain, he’ll make me figure it out or it will explain itself one of these days). I wave back at him, and then I check to see if Mark saw that but Mark has his back to us, he’s irritated and is waiting for me to go away so he and Daddy can go back to hunting, but what is Henry doing here, what did they say to each other? I look back again but I don’t see Henry and Daddy says, “Go on, now, Clare, go back to bed,” and he kisses my forehead. He seems upset and so I run, run back to the house, and then softly up the stairs and then I am sitting on my bed, shivering, and I still don’t know what just happened, but I know it was bad, it was very, very bad.
　
　Monday, February 2, 1987 (Clare is 15, Henry is 38)
　
CLARE: When I get home from school Henry is waiting for me in the Reading Room. I have fixed a little room for him next to the furnace room; it’s on the opposite side from where all the bicycles are. I have allowed it to be known in my household that I like to spend time in the basement reading, and I do in fact spend a lot of time in here, so that it doesn’t seem unusual. Henry has a chair wedged under the doorknob. I knock four knocks and he lets me in. He has made a sort of nest out of pillows and chair cushions and blankets, he has been reading old magazines under my desk lamp. He is wearing Dad’s old jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, and he looks tired and unshaven. I left the back door unlocked for him this morning and here he is.
　I set the tray of food I have brought on the floor. “I could bring down some books.”
　“Actually, these are great.” He’s been reading Mad magazines from the ‘60s. “And this is indispensable for time travelers who need to know all sorts of factoids at a moment’s notice,” he says, holding up the 1968 World Almanac.
　I sit down next to him on the blankets, and look over at him to see if he’s going to make me move. I can see he’s thinking about it, so I hold up my hands for him to see and then I sit on them. He smiles. “Make yourself at home,” he says.
　“When are you coming from?”
　“2001. October”
　“You look tired.” I can see that he’s debating about telling me why he’s tired, and decides against it. “What are we up to in 2001?”
　“Big things. Exhausting things.” Henry starts to eat the roast beef sandwich I have brought him. “Hey, this is good.”
　“Nell made it.”
　He laughs. “I’ll never understand why it is that you can build huge sculptures that withstand gale force winds, deal with dye recipes, cook kozo, and all that, and you can’t do anything whatsoever with food. It’s amazing.”
　“It’s a mental block. A phobia.”
　“It’s weird.”
　“I walk into the kitchen and I hear this little voice saying, ‘Go away.’ So I do.”
　“Are you eating enough? You look thin.”
　I feel fat. “I’m eating.” I have a dismal thought. “Am I very fat in 2001? Maybe that’s why you think I’m too thin.”
　Henry smiles at some joke I don’t get. “Well, you’re kind of plump at the moment, in my present, but it will pass.”
　“Ugh.”
　“Plump is good. It will look very good on you.”
　“No thanks.” Henry looks at me, worrying. “You know, I’m not anorexic or anything. I mean, you don’t have to worry about it.”
　“Well, it’s just that your mom was always bugging you about it.”
　“‘Was’?”
　“Is.”
　“Why did you say was?”
　“No reason. Lucille is fine. Don’t worry.” He’s lying. My stomach tightens and I wrap my arms around my knees and put my head down.
　
HENRY: I cannot believe that I have made a slip of the tongue of this magnitude. I stroke Clare’s hair, and I wish fervently that I could go back to my present for just a minute, long enough to consult Clare, to find out what I should say to her, at fifteen, about her mother’s death. It’s because I’m not getting any sleep. If I was getting some sleep I would have been thinking faster, or at least covering better for my lapse. But Clare, who is the most truthful person I know, is acutely sensitive to even small lies, and now the only alternatives are to refuse to say anything, which will make her frantic, or to lie, which she won’t accept, or to tell the truth, which will upset her and do strange things to her relationship with her mother. Clare looks at me. “Tell me,” she says.
　
CLARE: Henry looks miserable. “I can’t, Clare.”
　“Why not?”
　“It’s not good to know things ahead. It screws up your life.”
　“Yes. But you can’t half tell me.”
　“There’s nothing to tell.”
　I’m really beginning to panic. “She killed herself.” I am flooded with certainty. It is the thing I have always feared most.
　“ No. No. Absolutely not.”
　I stare at him. Henry just looks very unhappy. I cannot tell if he is telling the truth. If I could only read his mind, how much easier life would be. Mama. Oh, Mama.
　
HENRY: This is dreadful. I can’t leave Clare with this. “Ovarian cancer,” I say, very quietly. “Thank God,” she says, and begins to cry.
　
　Friday, June 5, 1987 (Clare is 16, Henry is 32)
　
CLARE: I’ve been waiting all day for Henry. I’m so excited. I got my driver’s license yesterday, and Daddy said I could take the Fiat to Ruth’s party tonight. Mama doesn’t like this at all, but since Daddy has already said yes she can’t do much about it. I can hear them arguing in the library after dinner.
　“You could have asked me—”
　“It seemed harmless, Lucy....”
　I take my book and walk out to the Meadow. I lie down in the grass. The sun is beginning to set. It’s cool out here, and the grass is full of little white moths. The sky is pink and orange over the trees in the west, and an arc of deepening blue over me. I am thinking about going back to the house and getting a sweater when I hear someone walking through the grass. Sure enough, it’s Henry. He enters the clearing and sits down on the rock. I spy on him from the grass. He looks fairly young, early thirties maybe. He’s wearing the plain black T-shirt and jeans and hi-tops. He’s just sitting quietly, waiting. I can’t wait a minute longer, myself, and I jump up and startle him.
　“Jesus, Clare, don’t give the geezer a heart attack.”
　“You’re not a geezer.”
　Henry smiles. He’s funny about being old.
　“Kiss,” I demand, and he kisses me.
　“What was that for?” he asks.
　“I got my driver’s license!”
　Henry looks alarmed. “Oh, no. I mean, congratulations.”
　I smile at him; nothing he says can ruin my mood. “You’re just jealous.”
　“I am, in fact. I love to drive, and I never do.”
　“How come?”
　“Too dangerous.”
　“Chicken.”
　“I mean for other people. Imagine what would happen if I was driving and I disappeared? The car would still be moving and kaboom! lots of dead people and blood. Not pretty.”
　I sit down on the rock next to Henry. He moves away. I ignore this. “I’m going to a party at Ruth’s tonight. Want to come?”
　He raises one eyebrow. This usually means he’s going to quote from a book I’ve never heard of or lecture me about something. Instead he only says, “But Clare, that would involve meeting a whole bunch of your friends.”
　“Why not? I’m tired of being all secretive about this.”
　“Let’s see. You’re sixteen. I’m thirty-two right now, only twice your age. I’m sure no one would even notice, and your parents would never hear about it.”
　I sigh. “Well, I have to go to this party. Come with and sit in the car and I won’t stay in very long and then we can go somewhere.”
　
HENRY: We park about a block away from Ruth’s house. I can hear the music all the way down here; it’s Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime. I actually kind of wish I could go with Clare, but it would be unwise. She hops out of the car and says, “Stay!” as though I am a large, disobedient dog, and totters off in her heels and short skirt toward Ruth’s. I slump down and wait.
　
CLARE: AS soon as I walk in the door I know this party is a mistake. Ruth’s parents are in San Francisco for a week, so at least she will have some time to repair, clean, and explain, but I’m glad it’s not my house all the same. Ruth’s older brother, Jake, has also invited his friends, and altogether there are about a hundred people here and all of them are drunk. There are more guys than girls and I wish I had worn pants and flats, but it’s too late to do anything about it. As I walk into the kitchen to get a drink someone behind me says, “Check out Miss Look-But-Don’t-Touch!” and makes an obscene slurping sound. I spin around and see the guy we call Lizardface (because of his acne) leering at me. “Nice dress, Clare.”
　“Thanks, but it’s not for your benefit, Lizardface.”
　He follows me into the kitchen. “Now, that’s not a very nice thing to say, young lady. After all, I’m just trying to express my appreciation of your extremely comely attire, and all you can do is insult me...”He won’t shut up. I finally escape by grabbing Helen and using her as a human shield to get out of the kitchen.
　“This sucks,” says Helen. “Where’s Ruth?”
　Ruth is hiding upstairs in her bedroom with Laura. They are smoking a joint in the dark and watching out the window as a bunch of Jake’s friends skinny dip in the pool. Soon we are all sitting in the window seat gawking.
　“Mmm,” says Helen. “I’d like some of that.”
　“Which one?” Ruth asks.
　“The guy on the diving board.”
　“Ooh.”
　“Look at Ron,” says Laura.
　“That’s Ron?” Ruth giggles.
　“Wow. Well, I guess anyone would look better without the Metallica T-shirt and the skanky leather vest,” Helen says. “Hey, Clare, you’re awfully quiet.”
　“Um? Yeah, I guess,” I say weakly.
　“Look at you,” says Helen. “You are, like, cross-eyed with lust. I am ashamed of you. How could you let yourself get into such a state?” She laughs. “Seriously, Clare, why don’t you just get it over with?”
　“I can’t,” I say miserably.
　“Sure you can. Just walk downstairs and yell ‘Fuck me!’ and about fifty guys would be yelling ‘Me! Me!’”
　“You don’t understand. I don’t want—it’s not that—”
　“She wants somebody in particular,” Ruth says, without taking her eyes off the pool.
　“Who?” Helen asks.
　I shrug my shoulders.
　“Come on, Clare, spit it out.”
　“Leave her alone,” Laura says. “If Clare doesn’t want to say, she doesn’t have to.” I am sitting next to Laura, and I lean my head on her shoulder.
　Helen bounces up. “I’ll be right back.”
　“Where you going?”
　“I brought some champagne and pear juice to make Bellinis, but I left it in the car.” She dashes out the door. A tall guy with shoulder-length hair does a backwards somersault off the diving board.
　“Ooh la la,” say Ruth and Laura in unison.
　
HENRY: A long time has passed, maybe an hour or so. I eat half the potato chips and drink the warm Coke Clare has brought along. I nap a bit. She’s gone for so long that I’m starting to consider going for a walk. Also I need to take a leak.
　I hear heels tapping toward me. I look out the window, but it’s not Clare, it’s this bombshell blond girl in a tight red dress. I blink, and realize that this is Clare’s friend Helen Powell. Uh oh.
　She clicks over to my side of the car, leans over and peers at me. I can see right down her dress to Tokyo. I feel slightly woozy,
　“Hi, Clare’s boyfriend. I’m Helen.”
　“Wrong number, Helen. But pleased to meet you.” Her breath is highly alcoholic.
　“Aren’t you going to get out of the car and be properly introduced?”
　“Oh, I’m pretty comfortable where I am, thanks.”
　“Well, I’ll just join you in there, then.” She moves uncertainly around the front of the car, opens the door, and plops herself into the driver’s seat.
　“I’ve been wanting to meet you for the longest time,” Helen confides.
　“You have? Why?” I desperately wish Clare would come and rescue me, but then that would give the game away, wouldn’t it?
　Helen leans toward me and says, sotto voce, “I deduced your existence. My vast powers of observation have led me to the conclusion that whatever remains when you have eliminated the impossible, is the truth, no matter how impossible. Hence,” Helen pauses to burp. “How unladylike. Excuse me. Hence, I have concluded that Clare must have a boyfriend, because otherwise, she would not be refusing to fuck all these very nice boys who are very much distressed about it. And here you are. Ta da!”
　I’ve always liked Helen, and I am sad to have to mislead her. This does explain something she said to me at our wedding, though. I love it when little puzzle pieces drop into place like this.
　“That’s very compelling reasoning, Helen, but I’m not Clare’s boyfriend.”
　“Then why are you sitting in her car?”
　I have a brainstorm. Clare is going to kill me for this. “I’m a friend of Clare’s parents. They were worried about her taking the car to a party where there might be alcohol, so they asked me to go along and play chauffeur in case she got too pickled to drive.”
　Helen pouts. “That’s extremely not necessary. Our little Clare hardly drinks enough to fill a tiny, tiny thimble—”
　“I never said she did. Her parents were just being paranoid.”
　High heels click down the sidewalk. This time it is Clare. She freezes when she sees that I have company.
　Helen jumps out of the car and says, “Clare! This naughty man says he is not your boyfriend.”
　Clare and I exchange glances. “Well, he’s not,” says Clare curtly.
　“Oh,” says Helen. “Are you leaving?”
　“It’s almost midnight. I’m about to turn into a pumpkin.” Clare walks around the car and opens her door. “Come on, Henry, let’s go.” She starts the car and flips on the lights.
　Helen stands stock still in the headlights. Then she walks over to my side of the car. “Not her boyfriend, huh, Henry? You had me going there for a minute, yes you did. Bye bye, Clare.” She laughs, and Clare pulls out of the parking space awkwardly and drives away. Ruth lives on Conger. As we turn onto Broadway, I see that all the street lights are off. Broadway is a two-lane highway. It’s ruler-straight, but without the streetlights it’s like driving into an inkwell.
　“Better turn on your brights, Clare,” I say. She reaches forward and turns the headlights off completely.
　“Clare—!”
　“Don’t tell me what to do!” I shut up. All I can see are the illuminated numbers of the clock radio. It’s 11:36.I hear the air rushing past the car, the engine of the car; I feel the wheels passing over the asphalt, but somehow we seem to be motionless, and the world moves around us at forty-five miles per hour. I close my eyes. It makes no difference. I open them. My heart is pounding.
　Headlights appear in the distance. Clare turns her lights on and we are rushing along again, perfectly aligned between the yellow stripes in the middle of the road and the edge of the highway. It’s 11:38.
　Clare is expressionless in the reflected dashboard lights. “Why did you do that?” I ask her, my voice shaking.
　“Why not?” Clare’s voice is calm as a summer pond.
　“Because we could have both died in a fiery wreck?”
　Clare slows and turns onto Blue Star Highway. “But that’s not what happens” she says. “I grow up and meet you and we get married and here you are.”
　“For all you know you crashed the car just then and we both spent a year in traction.”
　“But then you would have warned me not to do it,” says Clare.
　“I tried, but you yelled at me—”
　“I mean, an older you would have told a younger me not to crash the car.”
　“Well, by then it would have already happened.”
　We have reached Meagram Lane, and Clare turns onto it. This is the private road that leads to her house. “Pull over, Clare, okay? Please?” Clare drives onto the grass, stops, cuts the engine and the lights. It’s completely dark again, and I can hear a million cicadas singing. I reach over and pull Clare close to me, put my arm around her. She is tense and unpliant.
　“Promise me something.”
　“What?” Clare asks.
　“Promise you won’t do anything like that again. I mean not just with the car, but anything dangerous. Because you don’t know. The future is weird, and you can’t go around behaving like you’re invincible—”
　“But if you’ve seen me in the future—”
　“Trust me. Just trust me.”
　Clare laughs. “Why would I want to do that?”
　“I dunno. Because I love you?”
　Clare turns her head so quickly that she hits me in the jaw,
　“Ouch.”
　“Sorry.” I can barely see the outline of her profile. “You love me?” she asks.
　“Yes.”
　“Right now?”
　“Yes.”
　“But you’re not my boyfriend.”
　Oh. That’s what’s bugging her. “Well, technically speaking, I’m your husband. Since you haven’t actually gotten married yet, I suppose we would have to say that you are my girlfriend.”
　Clare puts her hand someplace it probably shouldn’t be. “I’d rather be your mistress.”
　“You’re sixteen, Clare.” I gently remove her hand, and stroke her face.
　“That’s old enough. Ugh, your hands are all wet.” Clare turns on the overhead light and I am startled to see that her face and dress are streaked with blood. I look at my palms and they are sticky and red. “Henry! What’s wrong?”
　“I don’t know.” I lick my right palm and four deep crescent-shaped cuts appear in a row. I laugh. “It’s from my fingernails. When you were driving without the headlights.”
　Clare snaps off the overhead light and we are sitting in the dark again. The cicadas sing with all their might. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
　“Yeah, you did. But usually I feel safe when you’re driving. It’s just—”
　“What?”
　“I was in a car accident when I was a kid, and I don’t like to ride in cars.”
　“Oh—I’m sorry.”
　“‘S okay. Hey, what time is it?”
　“Oh my God.” Clare flips the light on. 12:12. “I’m late. And how can I walk in all bloody like this?” She looks so distraught that I want to laugh.
　“Here.” I rub my left palm across her upper lip and under her nose. “You have a nosebleed.”
　“Okay.” She starts the car, flips on the headlights, and eases back onto the road. “Etta’s going to freak when she sees me.”
　“Etta? What about your parents?”
　“Mama’s probably asleep by now, and it’s Daddy’s poker night.” Clare opens the gate and we pass through.
　“If my kid was out with the car the day after she got her license I would be sitting next to the front door with a stopwatch.” Clare stops the car out of sight of the house.
　“Do we have kids?”
　“Sorry, that’s classified.”
　“I’m gonna apply for that one under the Freedom of Information Act.”
　“Be my guest.” I kiss her carefully, so as not to disturb the faux nosebleed. “Let me know what you find out.” I open the car door. “Good luck with Etta.”
　“Good night.”
　“Night.” I get out and close the door as quietly as possible. The car glides down the drive, around the bend and into the night. I walk after it toward a bed in the Meadow under the stars.
　
　Sunday, September 27, 1987 (Henry is 32, Clare is 16)
　
HENRY: I materialize in the Meadow, about fifteen feet west of the clearing. I feel dreadful, dizzy and nauseated, so I sit for a few minutes to pull myself together. It’s chilly and gray, and I am submerged in the tall brown grass, which cuts into my skin. After a while I feel a little better, and it’s quiet, so I stand up and walk into the clearing.
　Clare is sitting on the ground, next to the rock, leaning against it. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with what I can only describe as anger. Uh oh, I think. What have I done? She’s in her Grace Kelly phase; she’s wearing her blue wool coat and a red skirt. I’m shivering, and I hunt for the clothes box. I find it, and don black jeans, a black sweater, black wool socks, a black overcoat, black boots, and black leather gloves, I look like I’m about to star in a Wim Wenders film. I sit down next to Clare.
　“Hi, Clare. Are you okay?”
　“Hi, Henry. Here.” She hands me a Thermos and two sandwiches.
　“Thanks. I feel kind of sick, so I’ll wait a little.” I set the food on the rock. The Thermos contains coffee; I inhale deeply. Just the smell makes me feel better. “Are you all right?” She’s not looking at me. As I scrutinize Clare, I realize that she’s been crying.
　“Henry. Would you beat someone up for me?”
　“What?”
　“I want to hurt someone, and I’m not big enough, and I don’t know how to fight. Will you do it for me?”
　“Whoa. What are you talking about? Who? Why?”
　Clare stares at her lap. “I don’t want to talk about it. Couldn’t you just take my word that he totally deserves it?”
　I think I know what’s going on; I think I’ve heard this story before. I sigh, and move closer to Clare, and put my arm around her. She leans her head on my shoulder.
　“This is about some guy you went on a date with, right?”
　“Yeah.”
　“And he was a jerk, and now you want me to pulverize him?”
　“Yeah.”
　“Clare, lots of guys are jerks. I used to be a jerk—”
　Clare laughs. “I bet you weren’t as big of a jerk as Jason Everleigh.”
　“He’s a football player or something, right?”
　“Yes.”
　“Clare, what makes you think I can take on some huge jock half my age? Why were you even going out with someone like that?”
　She shrugs. “At school, everybody’s been bugging me ‘cause I never date anyone. Ruth and Meg and Nancy—I mean, there are all these rumors going around that I’m a lesbian. Even Mama is asking me why I don’t go out with boys. Guys ask me out, and I turn them down. And then Beatrice Dilford, who is a dyke, asked me if I was, and I told her no, and she said that she wasn’t surprised, but that’s what everybody was saying, so then I thought, well, maybe I’d better go out with a few guys. So the next one who asked was Jason. He’s, like, this jock, and he’s really good looking, and I knew that if I went out with him everyone would know, and I thought maybe they would shut up.”
　“So this was the first time you went out on a date?”
　“Yeah. We went to this Italian restaurant and Laura and Mike were there, and a bunch of people from Theater class, and I offered to go Dutch but he said no, he never did that, and it was okay, I mean, we talked about school and stuff, football. Then we went to see Friday the 13th, Part VII, which was really stupid, in case you were thinking of seeing it,”
　“I’ve seen it.”
　“Oh. Why? It doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.”
　“Same reason you did; my date wanted to see it.”
　“Who was your date?”
　“A woman named Alex.”
　“What was she like?”
　“A bank teller with big tits who liked to be spanked.” The second this pops out of my mouth I realize that I am talking to Clare the teenager, not Clare my wife, and I mentally smack myself in the head.
　“Spanked?” Clare looks at me, smiling, her eyebrows halfway to her hairline.
　“Never mind. So you went to a movie, and...?”
　“Oh. Well, then he wanted to go to Traver’s.”
　“What is Traver’s?”
　“It’s a farm on the north side.” Clare’s voice drops, I can hardly hear her. “It’s where people go to...make out.” I don’t say anything. “So I told him I was tired, and wanted to go home, and then he got kind of, urn, mad.” Clare stops talking; for a while we sit, listening to birds, airplanes, wind. Suddenly Clare says, “He was really mad.”
　“What happened then?”
　“He wouldn’t take me home. I wasn’t sure where we were; somewhere out on Route 12, he was just driving around, down little lanes, God, I don’t know. He drove down this dirt road, and there was this little cottage. There was a lake nearby, I could hear it. And he had the key to this place.”
　I’m getting nervous. Clare never told me any of this; just that she once went on a really horrible date with some guy named Jason, who was a football player. Clare has fallen silent again.
　“Clare. Did he rape you?”
　“No. He said I wasn’t.. .good enough. He said—no, he didn’t rape me. He just—hurt me. He made me..” She can’t say it. I wait. Clare unbuttons her coat, and removes it. She peels her shirt off, and I see that her back is covered with bruises. They are dark and purple against her white skin. Clare turns and there is a cigarette burn on her right breast, blistered and ugly. I asked her once what that scar was, and she wouldn’t say. I am going to kill this guy. I am going to cripple him. Clare sits before me, shoulders back, gooseflesh, waiting. I hand her her shirt, and she puts it on.
　“All right,” I tell her quietly. “Where do I find this guy?”
　“I’ll drive you,” she says.
　
　Clare picks me up in the Fiat at the end of the driveway, out of sight of the house. She’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s a dim afternoon, and lipstick, and her hair is coiled at the back of her head. She looks a lot older than sixteen. She looks like she just walked out of Rear Window, though the resemblance would be more perfect if she was blond. We speed through the fall trees, but I don’t think either of us notices much color. A tape loop of what happened to Clare in that little cottage has begun to play repeatedly in my head.
　“How big is he?”
　Clare considers. “A couple inches taller than you. A lot heavier. Fifty pounds?”
　“Christ.”
　“I brought this.” Clare digs in her purse and produces a handgun.
　“Clare!”
　“It’s Daddy’s.”
　I think fast. “Clare, that’s a bad idea. I mean, I’m mad enough to actually use it, and that would be stupid. Ah, wait.” I take it from her, open the chamber, and remove the bullets and put them in her purse. “There. That’s better. Brilliant idea, Clare.” Clare looks at me, questioning. I stick the gun in my overcoat pocket. “Do you want me to do this anonymously, or do you want him to know it’s from you?”
　“I want to be there.”
　“Oh.”
　She pulls into a private lane and stops. “I want to take him somewhere and I want you to hurt him very badly and I want to watch. I want him scared shitless.”
　I sigh. “Clare, I don’t usually do this kind of thing. I usually fight in self-defense, for one thing.”
　“Please.” It comes out of her mouth absolutely flat.
　“Of course.” We continue down the drive, and stop in front of a large, new faux Colonial house. There are no cars visible. Van Halen emanates from an open second-floor window. We walk to the front door and I stand to the side while Clare rings the bell. After a moment the music abruptly stops and heavy footsteps clump down stairs. The door opens, and after a pause a deep voice says, “What? You come back for more?” That’s all I need to hear. I draw the gun and step to Clare’s side. I point it at the guy’s chest.
　“Hi, Jason,” Clare says. “I thought you might like to come out with us.”
　He does the same thing I would do, drops and rolls out of range, but he doesn’t do it fast enough. I’m in the door and I take a flying leap onto his chest and knock the wind out of him. I stand up, put my boot on his chest, point the gun at his head. C’est magnifique mais ce n’estpas la guerre. He looks kind of like Tom Cruise, very pretty, all-American. “What position does he play?” I ask Clare.
　“Halfback.”
　“Hmm. Never would of guessed. Get up, hands up where I can see them,” I tell him cheerfully. He complies, and I walk him out the door. We are all standing in the driveway. I have an idea. I send Clare back into the house for rope; she comes out a few minutes later with scissors and duct tape.
　“Where do you want to do this?”
　“The woods.”
　Jason is panting as we march him into the woods. We walk for about five minutes, and then I see a little clearing with a handy young elm at the edge of it. “How about this, Clare?”
　“Yeah.”
　I look at her. She is completely impassive, cool as a Raymond Chandler murderess. “Call it, Clare.”
　“Tie him to the tree.” I hand her the gun, jerk Jason’s hands into position behind the tree, and duct tape them together. There’s almost a full roll of duct tape, and I intend to use all of it. Jason is breathing strenuously, wheezing. I step around him and look at Clare. She looks at Jason as though he is a bad piece of conceptual art. “Are you asthmatic?”
　He nods. His pupils are contracted into tiny points of black. “I’ll get his inhaler,” says Clare. She hands the gun back to me and ambles off through the woods along the path we came down. Jason is trying to breathe slowly and carefully. He is trying to talk.
　“Who...are you?” he asks, hoarsely.
　“I’m Clare’s boyfriend. I’m here to teach you manners, since you have none.” I drop my mocking tone, and walk close to him, and say softly, “How could you do that to her? She’s so young. She doesn’t know anything, and now you’ve completely fucked up everything...”
　“She’s a.. .cock.. .tease.”
　“She has no idea. It’s like torturing a kitten because it bit you.”
　Jason doesn’t answer. His breath comes in long, shivering whinnies. Just as I am becoming concerned, Clare arrives. She holds up the inhaler, looks at me. “Darling, do you know how to use this thing?”
　“I think you shake it and then put it in his mouth and press down on the top.” She does this, asks him if he wants more. He nods. After four inhalations, we stand and watch him gradually subside into more normal breathing.
　“Ready?” I ask Clare.
　She holds up the scissors, makes a few cuts in the air. Jason flinches. Clare walks over to him, kneels, and begins to cut off his clothes. “Hey,” says Jason.
　“Please be quiet,” I say. “No one is hurting you. At the moment.” Clare finishes cutting off his jeans and starts on his T-shirt. I start to duct tape him to the tree. I begin at his ankles, and wind very neatly up his calves and thighs. “Stop there,” Clare says, indicating a point just below Jason’s crotch. She snips off his underwear. I start to tape his waist. His skin is clammy and he’s very tan everywhere except inside a crisp outline of a Speedo-type bathing suit. He’s sweating heavily. I wind all the way up to his shoulders, and stop, because I want him to be able to breathe. We step back and admire our work. Jason is now a duct-tape mummy with a large erection. Clare begins to laugh. Her laugh sounds spooky, echoing through the woods. I look at her sharply. There’s something knowing and cruel in Clare’s laugh, and it seems to me that this moment is the demarcation, a sort of no-man’s-land between Clare’s childhood and her life as a woman.
　“What next?” I inquire. Part of me wants to turn him into hamburger and part of me doesn’t want to beat up somebody who’s taped to a tree.
　Jason is bright red. It contrasts nicely with the gray duct tape.
　“Oh,” says Clare. “You know, I think that’s enough.”
　I am relieved. So of course I say, “You sure? I mean there are all sorts of things I could do. Break his eardrums? Nose? Oh, wait, he’s already broken it once himself. We could cut his Achilles’ tendons. He wouldn’t be playing football in the near future.”
　“No!” Jason strains against the tape.
　“Apologize, then,” I tell him.
　Jason hesitates. “Sorry.”
　“That’s pretty pathetic—”
　“I know,” Clare says. She fishes around in her purse and finds a Magic Marker. She walks up to Jason as though he is a dangerous zoo animal, and begins to write on his duct-taped chest. When she’s done, she stands back and caps her marker. She’s written an account of their date. She sticks the marker back in her purse and says, “Let’s go.”
　“You know, we can’t just leave him. He might have another asthma attack.”
　“Hmm. Okay, I know. I’ll call some people.”
　“Wait a minute,” says Jason.
　“What?” says Clare.
　“Who are you calling? Call Rob.”
　Clare laughs. “Uh-uh. I’m going to call every girl I know.”
　I walk over to Jason and place the muzzle of the gun under his chin. “If you mention my existence to one human and I find out about it I will come back and I will devastate you. You won’t be able to walk, talk, eat, or fuck when I’m done. As far as you know, Clare is a nice girl who for some inexplicable reason doesn’t date. Right?”
　Jason looks at me with hatred. “Right.”
　“We’ve dealt with you very leniently, here. If you hassle Clare again in any way you will be sorry.”
　“Okay.”
　“Good.” I place the gun back in my pocket. “It’s been fun.”
　“Listen, dickface—”
　Oh, what the hell. I step back and put my whole weight into a side kick to the groin. Jason screams. I turn and look at Clare, who is white under her makeup. Tears are running down Jason’s face. I wonder if he’s going to pass out. “Let’s go,” I say. Clare nods. We walk back to the car, subdued. I can hear Jason yelling at us. We climb in, Clare starts the car, turns, and rockets down the driveway and onto the street.
　I watch her drive. It’s beginning to rain. There’s a satisfied smile playing around the edges of her mouth. “Is that what you wanted?” I ask.
　“Yes,” says Clare. “That was perfect. Thank you.”
　“My pleasure.” I’m getting dizzy. “I think I’m almost gone.”
　Clare pulls onto a sidestreet. The rain is drumming on the car. It’s like riding through a car wash. “Kiss me,” she demands. I do, and then I’m gone.
　
　Monday, September 28, 1987 (Clare is 16)

　
CLARE: At school on Monday, everybody looks at me but no one will speak to me. I feel like Harriet the Spy after her classmates found her spy notebook. Walking down the hall is like parting the Red Sea. When I walk into English, first period, everyone stops talking. I sit down next to Ruth. She smiles and looks worried. I don’t say anything either but then I feel her hand on mine under the table, hot and small. Ruth holds my hand for a moment and then Mr. Partaki walks in and she takes her hand away and Mr. Partaki notices that everyone is uncharacteristically silent. He says mildly, “Did you all have a nice weekend?” and Sue Wong says, “Oh, yes” and there’s a shimmer of nervous laughter around the room. Partaki is puzzled, and there’s an awful pause. Then he says, “Well, great, then let s embark on Billy Budd. In 1851, Herman Melville published Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, which was greeted with resounding indifference by the American public...” It’s all lost on me. Even with a cotton undershirt on, my sweater feels abrasive, and my ribs hurt. My classmates arduously fumble their way through a discussion of Billy Budd. Finally the bell rings, and they escape. I follow, slowly, and Ruth walks with me.
　“Are you okay?” she asks.
　“Mostly.”
　“I did what you said.”
　“What time?”
　“Around six. I was afraid his parents would come home and find him. It was hard to cut him out. The tape ripped off all his chest hair.”
　“Good. Did a lot of people see him?”
　“Yeah, everybody. Well, all the girls. No guys, as far as I know.” The halls are almost empty. I’m standing in front of my French classroom. “Clare, I understand why you did it, but what I don’t get is how you did it.”
　“I had some help.”
　The passing bell rings and Ruth jumps. “Oh my god. I’ve been late to gym five times in a row!” She moves away as though repelled by a strong magnetic field. “Tell me at lunch,” Ruth calls as I turn and walk into Madame Simone’s room.
　“ Ah, Mademoiselle Abshire, asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.” I sit between Laura and Helen. Helen writes me a note: Good for you. The class is translating Montaigne. We work quietly, and Madame walks around the room, correcting. I’m having trouble concentrating. The look on Henry’s face after he kicked Jason: utterly indifferent, as though he had just shaken his hand, as though he was thinking about nothing in particular, and then he was worried because he didn’t know how I would react, and I realized that Henry enjoyed hurting Jason, and is that the same as Jason enjoying hurting me? But Henry is good. Does that make it okay? Is it okay that I wanted him to do it?
　“ Clare, attendez” Madame says, at my elbow.
　After the bell once again everyone bolts out. I walk with Helen. Laura hugs me apologetically and runs off to her music class at the other end of the building. Helen and I both have third-period gym.
　Helen laughs. “Well, dang, girl. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How’d you get him taped to that tree?”
　I can tell I’m going to get tired of that question. “I have a friend who does things like that. He helped me out.”
　“Who is ‘he’?”
　“A client of my dad’s,” I lie.
　Helen shakes her head. “You’re such a bad liar.” I smile, and say nothing.
　“It’s Henry, right?”
　I shake my head, and put my finger to my lips. We have arrived at the girls’ gym. We walk into the locker room and abracadabra! all the girls stop talking. Then there’s a low ripple of talk that fills the silence. Helen and I have our lockers in the same bay. I open mine and take out my gym suit and shoes. I have thought about what I am going to do. I take off my shoes and stockings, strip down to my undershirt and panties. I’m not wearing a bra because it hurt too much.
　“Hey, Helen,” I say. I peel off my shirt, and Helen turns.
　“Jesus Christ, Clare!” The bruises look even worse than they did yesterday. Some of them are greenish. There are welts on my thighs from Jason’s belt. “Oh, Clare.” Helen walks to me, and puts her arms around me, carefully. The room is silent, and I look over Helen’s shoulder and see that all the girls have gathered around us, and they are all looking. Helen straightens up, and looks back at them, and says, “Well?” and someone in the back starts to clap, and they are all clapping, and laughing, and talking, and cheering, and I feel light, light as air.
　
　Wednesday, July 12, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)
　
CLARE: I’m lying in bed, almost asleep, when I feel Henry’s hand brushing over my stomach and realize he’s back. I open my eyes and he bends down and kisses the little cigarette burn scar, and in the dim night light I touch his face. “Thank you,” I say, and he says, “It was my pleasure,” and that is the only time we ever speak of it.
　
　Sunday, September 11, 1988 (Henry is 36, Clare is 17)
　
HENRY: Clare and I are in the Orchard on a warm September afternoon. Insects drone in the Meadow under golden sun. Everything is still, and as I look across the dry grasses the air shimmers with warmth. We are under an apple tree. Clare leans against its trunk with a pillow under her to cushion the tree roots. I am lying stretched out with my head in her lap. We have eaten, and the remains of our lunch lie scattered around us, with fallen apples interspersed. I am sleepy and content. It is January in my present, and Clare and I are struggling. This summer interlude is idyllic.
　Clare says, “I’d like to draw you, just like that.”
　“Upside down and asleep?”
　“Relaxed. You look so peaceful.”
　Why not? “Go ahead.” We are out here in the first place because Clare is supposed to be drawing trees for her art class. She picks up her sketchbook and retrieves the charcoal. She balances the book on her knee. “Do you want me to move?” I ask her.
　“No, that would change it too much. As you were, please.” I resume staring idly at the patterns the branches make against the sky.
　Stillness is a discipline. I can hold quite still for long stretches of time when I’m reading, but sitting for Clare is always surprisingly difficult.
　Even a pose that seems very comfortable at first becomes torture after fifteen minutes or so. Without moving anything but my eyes, I look at Clare. She is deep in her drawing. When Clare draws she looks as though the world has fallen away, leaving only her and the object of her scrutiny. This is why I love to be drawn by Clare: when she looks at me with that kind of attention, I feel that I am everything to her. It’s the same look she gives me when we’re making love. Just at this moment she looks into my eyes and smiles.
　“I forgot to ask you: when are you coming from?”
　“January, 2000.”
　Her face falls. “Really? I thought maybe a little later.”
　“Why? Do I look so old?”
　Clare strokes my nose. Her fingers travel across the bridge and over my brows. “No, you don’t. But you seem happy and calm, and usually when you come from 1998, or ‘99 or 2000, you’re upset, or freaked out, and you won’t tell me why. And then in 2001 you’re okay again.”
　I laugh. “You sound like a fortune teller. I never realized you were tracking my moods so closely.”
　“What else have I got to go on?”
　“Remember, it’s stress that usually sends me in your direction, here. So you shouldn’t get the idea that those years are unremittingly horrible. There are lots of nice things in those years, too.”
　Clare goes back to her drawing. She has given up asking me about our future. Instead she asks, “Henry, what are you afraid of?”
　The question surprises me and I have to think about it. “Cold,” I say. “I am afraid of winter. I am afraid of police. I am afraid of traveling to the wrong place and time and getting hit by a car or beat up. Or getting stranded in time, and not being able to come back. I am afraid of losing you.”
　Clare smiles. “How could you lose me? I’m not going anywhere.”
　“I worry that you will get tired of putting up with my undependableness and you will leave me.”
　Clare puts her sketchbook aside. I sit up. “I won’t ever leave you,” she says. “Even though you’re always leaving me.”
　“But I never want to leave you.”
　Clare shows me the drawing. I’ve seen it before; it hangs next to Clare’s drawing table in her studio at home. In the drawing I do look peaceful. Clare signs it and begins to write the date. “Don’t,” I say. “It’s not dated.”
　“It’s not?”
　“I’ve seen it before. There’s no date on it.”
　“Okay.” Clare erases the date and writes Meadowlark on it instead. “Done.” She looks at me, puzzled. “Do you ever find that you go back to your present and something has changed? I mean, what if I wrote the date on this drawing right now? What would happen?”
　“I don’t know. Try it,” I say, curious. Clare erases the word Meadowlark and writes September 11, 1988.
　“There,” she says, “that was easy.” We look at each other, bemused. Clare laughs. “If I’ve violated the space-time continuum it isn’t very obvious.”
　“I’ll let you know if you’ve just caused World War III.” I’m starting to feel shaky. “I think I’m going, Clare.” She kisses me, and I’m gone.
　
　Thursday, January 13, 2000 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)
　
HENRY: After dinner I’m still thinking about Clare’s drawing, so I walk out to her studio to look at it. Clare is making a huge sculpture out of tiny wisps of purple paper; it looks like a cross between a Muppet and a bird’s nest. I walk around it carefully and stand in front of her table. The drawing is not there.
　Clare comes in carrying an armful of abaca fiber. “Hey.” She throws it on the floor and walks over to me. “What’s up?”
　“Where’s that drawing that used to hang right there? The one of me?”
　“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it fell down.” Clare dives under the table and says, “I don’t see it. Oh, wait here it is.” She emerges holding the drawing between two fingers. “Ugh, it’s all cobwebby.” She brushes it off and hands it to me. I look it over. There’s still no date on it.
　“What happened to the date?”
　“What date?”
　“You wrote the date at the bottom, here. Under your name. It looks like it’s been trimmed off.”
　Clare laughs. “Okay. I confess. I trimmed it.”
　“Why?”
　“I got all freaked by your World War III comment. I started thinking, what if we never meet in the future because I insisted on testing this out?”
　“I’m glad you did.”
　“Why?”
　“I don’t know. I just am.” We stare at each other, and then Clare smiles, and I shrug, and that’s that. But why does it seem as though something impossible almost happened? Why do I feel so relieved?
　
CHRISTMAS EVE, ONE ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR
　Saturday, December 24, 1988 (Henry is 40, Clare is 17)
　
HENRY: It’s a dark winter afternoon. I’m in the basement in Meadowlark House in the Reading Room. Clare has left me some food: roast beef and cheese on whole wheat with mustard, an apple, a quart of milk, and an entire plastic tub of Christmas cookies, snowballs, cinnamon-nut diamonds, and peanut cookies with Hershey’s Kisses stuck into them. I am wearing my favorite jeans and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I ought to be a happy camper, but I’m not: Clare has also left me today’s South Haven Daily; it’s dated December 24, 1988. Christmas Eve. This evening, in the Get Me High Lounge, in Chicago, my twenty-five-year-old self will drink until I quietly slide off the bar stool and onto the floor and end up having my stomach pumped at Mercy Hospital. It’s the nineteenth anniversary of my mother’s death.
　I sit quietly and think about my mom. It’s funny how memory erodes. If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp moments standing out. When I was five I heard her sing Lulu at the Lyric Opera. I remember Dad, sitting next to me, smiling up at Mom at the end of the first act with utter exhilaration. I remember sitting with Mom at Orchestra Hall, watching Dad play Beethoven under Boulez. I remember being allowed to come into the living room during a party my parents were giving and reciting Blake’s Tyger, Tyger burning bright to the guests, complete with growling noises; I was four, and when I was done my mother swept me up and kissed me and everyone applauded. She was wearing dark lipstick and I insisted on going to bed with her lip prints on my cheek. I remember her sitting on a bench in Warren Park while my dad pushed me on a swing, and she bobbed close and far, close and far.
　One of the best and most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. I have even spoken to her a few times; little things like “Lousy weather today, isn’t it?” I give her my seat on the El, follow her in the supermarket, watch her sing. I hang around outside the apartment my father still lives in, and watch the two of them, sometimes with my infant self, take walks, eat in restaurants, go to the movies. It’s the ‘60s, and they are elegant, young, brilliant musicians with all the world before them. They are happy as larks, they shine with their luck, their joy. When we run across each other they wave; they think I am someone who lives in the neighborhood, someone who takes a lot of walks, someone who gets his hair cut oddly and seems to mysteriously ebb and flow in age. I once heard my father wonder if I was a cancer patient. It still amazes me that Dad has never realized that this man lurking around the early years of their marriage was his son.
　I see how my mother is with me. Now she is pregnant, now they bring me home from the hospital, now she takes me to the park in a baby carriage and sits memorizing scores, singing softly with small hand gestures to me, making faces and shaking toys at me. Now we walk hand in hand and admire the squirrels, the cars, the pigeons, anything that moves. She wears cloth coats and loafers with Capri pants. She is dark-haired with a dramatic face, a full mouth, wide eyes, short hair; she looks Italian but actually she’s Jewish. My mom wears lipstick, eye liner, mascara, blush, and eyebrow pencil to go to the dry cleaner’s. Dad is much as he always is, tall, spare, a quiet dresser, a wearer of hats. The difference is his face. He is deeply content. They touch each other often, hold hands, walk in unison. At the beach the three of us wear matching sunglasses and I have a ridiculous blue hat. We all lie in the sun slathered in baby oil. We drink Rum and Coke, and Hawaiian Punch.
　My mother’s star is rising. She studies with Jehan Meek, with Mary Delacroix, and they carefully guide her along the paths of fame; she sings a number of small but gemlike roles, attracting the ears of Louis Behaire at the Lyric. She understudies Linea Waverleigh’s Aida. Then she is chosen to sing Carmen. Other companies take notice, and soon we are traveling around the world. She records Schubert for Decca, Verdi and Weill for EMI, and we go to London, to Paris, to Berlin, to New York. I remember only an endless series of hotel rooms and airplanes. Her performance at Lincoln Center is on television; I watch it with Gram and Gramps in Muncie. I am six years old and I hardly believe that it’s my mom, there in black and white on the small screen. She is singing Madama Butterfly.
　They make plans to move to Vienna after the end of the Lyric’s ‘69 -’70 season. Dad auditions at the Philharmonic. Whenever the phone rings it’s Uncle Ish, Mom’s manager, or someone from a record label.
　
　I hear the door at the top of the stairs open and clap shut and then slowly descending footsteps. Clare knocks quietly four times and I remove the straight-backed chair from under the doorknob. There’s still snow in her hair and her cheeks are red. She is seventeen years old. Clare throws her arms around me and hugs me excitedly. “Merry Christmas, Henry!” she says. “It’s so great you’re here!” I kiss her on the cheek; her cheer and bustle have scattered my thoughts but my sense of sadness and loss remains. I run my hands over her hair and come away with a small handful of snow that melts immediately.
　“What’s wrong?” Clare takes in the untouched food, my uncheerful demeanor. “You’re sulking because there’s no mayo?”
　“Hey. Hush.” I sit down on the broken old La-Z-Boy and Clare squeezes in beside me. I put my arm around her shoulders. She puts her hand on my inner thigh. I remove it, and hold it. Her hand is cold. “Have I ever told you about my mom?”
　“No.” Clare is all ears; she’s always eager for any bits of autobiography I let drop. As the dates on the List grow few and our two years of separation loom large, Clare is secretly convinced she can find me in real time if I would only dole out a few facts. Of course, she can’t, because I won’t, and she doesn’t.
　We each eat a cookie. “Okay. Once upon a time, I had a mom. I had a dad, too, and they were very deeply in love. And they had me. And we were all pretty happy. And both of them were really terrific at their jobs, and my mother, especially, was great at what she did, and we used to travel all over, seeing the hotel rooms of the world. So it was almost Christmas—”
　“What year?”
　“The year I was six. It was the morning of Christmas Eve, and my dad was in Vienna because we were going to move there soon and he was finding us an apartment. So the idea was that Dad would fly into the airport and Mom and I would drive out and pick him up and we would all continue on to Grandma’s house for the holidays.
　“It was a gray, snowy morning and the streets were covered in sheets of ice that hadn’t been salted yet. Mom was a nervous driver. She hated expressways, hated driving to the airport, and had only agreed to do this because it made a lot of sense. We got up early, and she packed the car. I was wearing a winter coat, a knit hat, boots, jeans, a pullover sweater, underwear, wool socks that were kind of tight, and mittens. She was dressed entirely in black, which was more unusual then than it is now.”
　Clare drinks some of the milk directly from the carton. She leaves a cinnamon-colored lipstick print. “What kind of car?”
　“It was a white ‘62 Ford Fairlane.”
　“What’s that?”
　“Look it up. It was built like a tank. It had fins. My parents loved it— it had a lot of history for them.
　“So we got in the car. I sat in the front passenger seat, we both wore our seatbelts. And we drove. The weather was absolutely awful. It was hard to see, and the defrost in that car wasn’t the greatest. We went through this maze of residential streets, and then we got on the expressway. It was after rush hour, but traffic was a mess because of the weather and the holiday So we were moving maybe fifteen, twenty miles an hour. My mother stayed in the right-hand lane, probably because she didn’t want to change lanes without being able to see very well and because we weren’t going to be on the expressway very long before we exited for the airport.
　“We were behind a truck, well behind it, giving it plenty of room up there. As we passed an entrance a small car, a red Corvette, actually, got on behind us. The Corvette, which was being driven by a dentist who was only slightly inebriated, at 10:30 a.m., got on just a bit too quickly, and was unable to slow down soon enough because of the ice on the road, and hit our car. And in ordinary weather conditions, the Corvette would have been mangled and the indestructible Ford Fairlane would have had a bent fender and it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.
　“But the weather was bad, the roads were slick, so the shove from the Corvette sent our car accelerating forward just as traffic slowed down. The truck ahead of us was barely moving. My mother was pumping the brakes but nothing was happening.
　“We hit the truck practically in slow motion, or so it seemed to me. In actuality we were going about forty. The truck was an open pickup truck full of scrap metal. When we hit it, a large sheet of steel flew off the back of the truck, came through our windshield, and decapitated my mother.”
　Clare has her eyes closed. “No.”
　“It’s true.”
　“But you were right there—you were too short!”
　“No, that wasn’t it, the steel embedded in my seat right where my forehead should have been. I have a scar where it started to cut my forehead.” I show Clare. “It got my hat. The police couldn’t figure it out. All my clothes were in the car, on the seat and the floor, and I was found stark naked by the side of the road.”
　“You time traveled.”
　“Yes. I time traveled.” We are silent for a moment. “It was only the second time it ever happened to me. I had no idea what was going on. I was watching us plow into this truck, and then I was in the hospital. In fact, I was pretty much unhurt, just in shock.”
　“How.. .why do you think it happened?”
　“Stress—pure fear. I think my body did the only trick it could.”
　Clare turns her face to mine, sad and excited. “So...”
　“So. Mom died, and I didn’t. The front end of the Ford crumpled up, the steering column went through Mom’s chest, her head went through the now empty windshield and into the back of the truck, there was an unbelievable amount of blood. The guy in the Corvette was unscathed. The truck driver got out of his truck to see what hit him, saw Mom, fainted on the road and was run over by a school bus driver who didn’t see him and was gawking at the accident. The truck driver had two broken legs. Meanwhile, I was completely absent from the scene for ten minutes and forty-seven seconds. I don’t remember where I went; maybe it was only a second or two for me. Traffic came to a complete halt. Ambulances were trying to come from three different directions and couldn’t get near us for half an hour. Paramedics came running on foot. I appeared on the shoulder. The only person who saw me appear was a little girl; she was in the back seat of a green Chevrolet station wagon. Her mouth opened, and she just stared and stared.”
　“But—Henry, you were—you said you don’t remember. And how could you know this anyway? Ten minutes and forty-seven seconds? Exactly?”
　I am quiet for a while, searching for the best way to explain. “You know about gravity, right? The larger something is, the more mass it has, the more gravitational pull it exerts? It pulls smaller things to it, and they orbit around and around?”
　“Yes....”
　“My mother dying...it’s the pivotal thing...everything else goes around and around it...I dream about it, and I also—time travel to it. Over and over. If you could be there, and could hover over the scene of the accident, and you could see every detail of it, all the people, cars, trees, snowdrifts—if you had enough time to really look at everything, you would see me. I am in cars, behind bushes, on the bridge, in a tree. I have seen it from every angle, I am even a participant in the aftermath: I called the airport from a nearby gas station to page my father with the message to come immediately to the hospital. I sat in the hospital waiting room and watched my father walk through on his way to find me. He looks gray and ravaged. I walked along the shoulder of the road, waiting for my young self to appear, and I put a blanket around my thin child’s shoulders. I looked into my small uncomprehending face, and I thought...I thought....”I am weeping now. Clare wraps her arms around me and I cry soundlessly into her mohair-sweatered breasts.
　“What? What, Henry?”
　“I thought, I should have died, too!”
　We hold each other. I gradually get hold of myself. I have made a mess of Clare’s sweater. She goes to the laundry room and comes back wearing one of Alicia’s white polyester chamber music playing shirts. Alicia is only fourteen, but she’s already taller and bigger than Clare. I stare at Clare, standing before me, and I am sorry to be here, sorry to ruin her Christmas.
　“I’m sorry, Clare. I didn’t mean to put all this sadness on you. I just find Christmas.. .difficult.”
　“Oh, Henry! I’m so glad you’re here, and, you know, I’d rather know—I mean, you just come out of nowhere, and disappear, and if I know things, about your life, you seem more...real. Even terrible things.. .I need to know as much as you can say.” Alicia is calling down the stairs for Clare. It is time for Clare to join her family, to celebrate Christmas. I stand, and we kiss, cautiously, and Clare says “Coming!” and gives me a smile and then she’s running up the stairs. I prop the chair under the door again and settle in for a long night.
　
CHRISTMAS EVE, TWO
　Saturday, December 24, 1988 (Henry is 25)
　
HENRY: I call Dad and ask if he wants me to come over for dinner after the Christmas matinee concert. He makes a half-hearted attempt at inviting me but I back out, to his relief. The Official DeTamble Day of Mourning will be conducted in multiple locations this year. Mrs. Kim has gone to Korea to visit her sisters; I’ve been watering her plants and taking in her mail. I call Ingrid Carmichel and ask her to come out with me and she reminds me, crisply, that it’s Christmas Eve and some people have families to kowtow to. I run through my address book. Everyone is out of town, or in town with their visiting relatives. I should have gone to see Gram and Gramps. Then I remember they’re in Florida. It’s 2:53 in the afternoon and stores are closing down. I buy a bottle of schnapps at Al’s and stow it in my overcoat pocket. Then I hop on the El at Belmont and ride downtown. It’s a gray day, and cold. The train is half full, mostly people with their kids going down to see Marshall Field’s Christmas windows and do last minute shopping at Water Tower Place. I get off at Randolph and Walk east to Grant Park. I stand on the IC overpass for a while, drinking, and then I walk down to the skating rink. A few couples and little kids are skating. The kids chase each other and skate backward and do figure eights. I rent a pair of more-or-less my size skates, lace them on, and walk onto the ice. I skate the perimeter of the rink, smoothly and without thinking too much. Repetition, movement, balance, cold air. It’s nice. The sun is setting. I skate for an hour or so, then return the skates, pull on my boots, and walk.
　I walk west on Randolph, and south on Michigan Avenue, past the Art Institute. The lions are decked out in Christmas wreathes. I walk down Columbus Drive. Grant Park is empty, except for the crows, which strut and circle over the evening-blue snow. The streetlights tint the sky orange above me; it’s a deep cerulean blue over the lake. At Buckingham Fountain I stand until the cold becomes unbearable watching seagulls wheeling and diving, fighting over a loaf of bread somebody has left for them. A mounted policeman rides slowly around the fountain once and then sedately continues south.
　I walk. My boots are not quite waterproof, and despite my several sweaters my overcoat is a bit thin for the dropping temperature. Not enough body fat; I’m always cold from November to April. I walk along Harrison, over to State Street. I pass the Pacific Garden Mission, where the homeless have gathered for shelter and dinner. I wonder what they’re having; I wonder if there’s any festivity, there, in the shelter. There are few cars. I don’t have a watch, but I guess that it’s about seven. I’ve noticed lately that my sense of time passing is different; it seems to run slower than other people’s. An afternoon can be like a day to me; an El ride can be an epic journey. Today is interminable. I have managed to get through most of the day without thinking, too much, about Mom, about the accident, about all of it...but now, in the evening, walking, it is catching up with me. I realize I’m hungry. The alcohol has worn off. I’m almost at Adams, and I mentally review the amount of cash I have on me and decide to splurge on dinner at the Berghoff a venerable German restaurant famous for its brewery.
　The Berghoff is warm, and noisy. There are quite a few people, eating and standing around. The legendary Berghoff waiters are bustling importantly from kitchen to table. I stand in line, thawing out, amidst chattering families and couples. Eventually I am led to a small table in the main dining room, toward the back. I order a dark beer and a plate of duck wursts with spaetzle. When the food comes, I eat slowly. I polish off all the bread, too, and realize that I can’t remember eating lunch. This is good, I’m taking care of myself, I’m not being an idiot, I’m remembering to eat dinner. I lean back in my chair and survey the room. Under the high ceilings, dark paneling, and murals of boats, middle-aged couples eat their dinners. They have spent the afternoon shopping, or at the symphony, and they talk pleasantly of the presents they have bought, their grandchildren, plane tickets and arrival times, Mozart. I have an urge to go to the symphony, now, but there’s no evening program. Dad is probably on his way home from Orchestra Hall. I would sit in the upper reaches of the uppermost balcony (the best place to sit, acoustically) and listen to Das Lied von der Erde, or Beethoven, or something similarly un-Christmasy. Oh well. Maybe next year. I have a sudden glimpse of all the Christmases of my life lined up one after another, waiting to be gotten through, and despair floods me. No. I wish for a moment that Time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say I’m sorry until it is as meaningless as air. I don’t want to burden this warm festive restaurant with grief that I would have to recall the next time I’m here with Gram and Gramps, so I pay and leave.
　Back on the street, I stand pondering. I don’t want to go home. I want to be with people, I want to be distracted. I suddenly think of the Get Me High Lounge, a place where anything can happen, a haven for eccentricity. Perfect. I walk over to Water Tower Place and catch the #66 Chicago Avenue bus, get off at Damen, and take the #50 bus north. The bus smells of vomit, and I’m the only passenger. The driver is singing Silent Night in a smooth church tenor, and I wish him a Merry Christmas as I step off the bus at Wabansia. As I walk past the Fix-It shop snow begins to fall, and I catch the big wet flakes on the tips of my fingers. I can hear music leaking out of the bar. The abandoned ghost train track looms over the street in the sodium vapor glare and as I open the door someone starts to blow a trumpet and hot jazz smacks me in the chest. I walk into it like a drowning man, which is what I have come here to be.
　There are about ten people in the place, counting Mia, the bartender. Three musicians, trumpet, standing bass, and clarinet, occupy the tiny stage, and the customers are all sitting at the bar. The musicians are playing furiously, swinging at maximum volume like sonic dervishes and as I sit and listen I make out the melody line of White Christmas. Mia comes over and stares at me and I shout “Whiskey and water!” at the top of my voice and she bawls “House?” and I yell “Okay!” and she turns to mix it. There is an abrupt halt to the music. The phone rings, and Mia snatches it up and says, “Get Me Hiiiiiiiiigh!” She sets my drink in front of me and I lay a twenty on the bar. “No,” she says into the phone. “Well, daaaang. Well, fuck you, too.” She whomps the receiver back into its cradle like she’s dunking a basketball. Mia stands looking pissed off for a few moments, then lights a Pall Mall and blows a huge cloud of smoke at me. “Oh, sorry.” The musicians troop over to the bar and she serves them beers. The rest-room door is on the stage, so I take advantage of the break between sets to take a leak. When I get back to the bar Mia has set another drink in front of my bar stool. “You’re psychic,” I say.
　“You’re easy.” She plunks her ashtray down and leans against the inside of the bar, pondering. “What are you doing, later?”
　I review my options. I’ve been known to go home with Mia a time or two, and she’s good fun and all that, but I’m really not in the mood for casual frivolity at the moment. On the other hand, a warm body is not a bad thing when you’re down. “I’m planning to get extremely drunk. What did you have in mind?”
　“Well, if you’re not too drunk you could come over, and if you’re not dead when you wake up you could do me a huge favor and come to Christmas dinner at my parents’ place in Glencoe and answer to the name Rafe.”
　“Oh, God, Mia. I’m suicidal just thinking about it. Sorry.”
　She leans over the bar and speaks emphatically. “C’mon, Henry. Help me out. You’re a presentable young person of the male gender. Hell, you’re a librarian. You won’t freak when my parents start asking who your parents are and what college you went to.”
　“Actually, I will. I will run straight to the powder room and slit my throat. Anyway, what’s the point? Even if they love me it just means they’ll torture you for years with ‘What ever happened to that nice young librarian you were dating?’ And what happens when they meet the real Rafe?”
　“I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that. C’mon. I’ll perform Triple X sex acts on you that you’ve never even heard of.”
　I have been refusing to meet Ingrid’s parents for months. I have refused to go to Christmas dinner at their house tomorrow. There’s no way I’m going to do this for Mia, whom I hardly know. “Mia. Any other night of the year—look, my goal tonight is to achieve a level of inebriation at which I can barely stand up, much less get it up. Just call your parents and tell them Rafe is having a tonsillectomy or something.”
　She goes to the other end of the bar to take care of three suspiciously young male college types. Then she messes around with bottles for a while, making something elaborate. She sets the tall glass in front of me. “Here. It’s on the house.” The drink is the color of strawberry Kool-Aid.
　“What is it?” I take a sip. It tastes like 7-Up.
　Mia smiles an evil little smile. “It’s something I invented. You want to get smashed, this is the express train.”
　“Oh. Well, thank you.” I toast her, and drink up. A sensation of heat and total well-being floods me. “Heavens. Mia, you ought to patent this. You could have little lemonade stands all over Chicago and sell it in Dixie cups. You’d be a millionaire.”
　“Another?”
　“Sure.”
　As a promising junior partner in DeTamble & DeTamble, Alcoholics at Large, I have not yet found the outer limit in my ability to consume liquor. A few drinks later, Mia is peering at me across the bar with concern.
　“Henry?”
　“Yeah?”
　“I’m cutting you off.” This is probably a good idea. I try to nod my agreement with Mia, but it’s too much effort. Instead, I slide slowly, almost gracefully, to the floor.
　I wake up much later at Mercy Hospital. Mia is sitting next to my bed. Her mascara has run all over her face. I’m hooked up to an IV and I feel bad. Very bad. In fact, every kind of bad. I turn my head and retch into a basin. Mia reaches over and wipes my mouth.
　“Henry—” Mia is whispering.
　“Hey. What the hell.”
　“Henry, I’m so sorry—”
　“Not your fault. What happened?”
　“You passed out and I did the math—how much do you weigh?”
　“175.”
　“Jesus. Did you eat dinner?”
　I think about it. “Yeah.”
　“Well, anyway, the stuff you were drinking was about forty proof. And you had two whiskeys.. .but you seemed perfectly fine and then all of a sudden you looked awful, and then you passed out, and I thought about it and realized you had a lot of booze in you. So I called 911 and here you are.”
　“Thanks. I think”
　“Henry, do you have some kind of death wish?” I consider. “Yes.” I turn to the wall, and pretend to sleep.
　
　Saturday, April 8, 1989 (Clare is 17, Henry is 40)
　
CLARE: I’m sitting in Grandma Meagram’s room, doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with her. It’s a bright cool April morning and I can see red tulips whipping in the wind in the garden. Mama is down there planting something small and white over by the forsythia. Her hat is almost blowing off and she keeps clapping her hand to her head and finally takes the hat off and sets her work basket on it.
　I haven’t seen Henry in almost two months; the next date on the List is three weeks away. We are approaching the time when I won’t see him for more than two years. I used to be so casual about Henry, when I was little; seeing Henry wasn’t anything too unusual. But now every time he’s here is one less time he’s going to be here. And things are different with us. I want something...I want Henry to say something, do something that proves this hasn’t all been some kind of elaborate joke. I want. That’s all. I am wanting.
　Grandma Meagram is sitting in her blue wing chair by the window. I sit in the window seat, with the newspaper in my lap. We are about halfway through the crossword. My attention has drifted.
　“Read that one again, child,” says Grandma.
　“Twenty down. ‘Monkish monkey.’ Eight letters, second letter ‘a’, last letter ‘n’.”
　“ Capuchin.” She smiles, her unseeing eyes turn in my direction. To Grandma I am a dark shadow against a somewhat lighter background. “That’s pretty good, eh?”
　“Yeah, that’s great. Geez, try this one: nineteen across, ‘Don’t stick your elbow out so far. Ten letters, second letter ’u‘.”
　“ Burma Shave. Before your time.”
　“Arrgh. I’ll never get this.” I stand up and stretch. I desperately need to go for a walk. My grandmother’s room is comforting but claustrophobic. The ceiling is low, the wallpaper is dainty blue flowers, the bedspread is blue chintz, the carpet is white, and it smells of powder and dentures and old skin. Grandma Meagram sits trim and straight. Her hair is beautiful, white but still slightly tinged with the red I have inherited from her, and perfectly coiled and pinned into a chignon. Grandma’s eyes are like blue clouds. She has been blind for nine years, and she has adapted well; as long as she is in the house she can get around. She’s been trying to teach me the art of crossword solving, but I have trouble caring enough to see one through by myself. Grandma used to do them in ink. Henry loves crossword puzzles.
　“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it,” says Grandma, leaning back in her chair and rubbing her knuckles.
　I nod, and then say, “Yes, but it’s kind of windy. Mama’s down there gardening, and everything keeps blowing away on her.”
　“How typical of Lucille,” says her mother. “Do you know, child, I’d like to go for a walk.”
　“I was just thinking that same thing,” I say. She smiles, and holds out her hands, and I gently pull her out of her chair. I fetch our coats, and tie a scarf around Grandma’s hair to stop it from getting messed up by the wind. Then we make our way slowly down the stairs and out the front door. We stand on the drive, and I turn to Grandma and say, “Where do you want to go?”
　“Let’s go to the Orchard,” she says.
　“That’s pretty far. Oh, Mama’s waving; wave back.” We wave at Mama, who is all the way down by the fountain now. Peter, our gardener, is with her. He has stopped talking to her and is looking at us, waiting for us to go on so he and Mama can finish the argument they are having, probably about daffodils, or peonies. Peter loves to argue with Mama, but she always gets her way in the end. “It’s almost a mile to the Orchard, Grandma.”
　“Well, Clare, there’s nothing wrong with my legs.”
　“Okay, then, we’ll go to the Orchard.” I take her arm, and away we go. When we get to the edge of the Meadow I say, “Shade or sun?” and she answers, “Oh, sun, to be sure,” and so we take the path that cuts through the middle of the Meadow, that leads to the clearing. As we walk, I describe.
　“We’re passing the bonfire pile. There’s a bunch of birds in it—oh, there they go!”
　“Crows. Starlings. Doves, too,” she says.
　“Yes...we’re at the gate, now. Watch out, the path is a little muddy. I can see dog tracks, a pretty big dog, maybe Joey from Allinghams‘. Everything is greening up pretty good. Here is that wild rose.”
　“How high is the Meadow?” asks Grandma.
　“Only about a foot. It’s a real pale green. Here are the little oaks.”
　She turns her face toward me, smiling. “Let’s go and say hello.” I lead her to the oaks that grow just a few feet from the path. My grandfather planted these three oak trees in the forties as a memorial to my Great Uncle Teddy, Grandma’s brother who was killed in the Second World War. The oak trees still aren’t very big, only about fifteen feet tall. Grandma puts her hand on the trunk of the middle one and says, “Hello.” I don’t know if she’s addressing the tree or her brother.
　We walk on. As we walk over the rise I see the Meadow laid out before us, and Henry is standing in the clearing. I halt. “What is it?” Grandma asks. “Nothing,” I tell her. I lead her along the path. “What do you see?” she asks me. “There’s a hawk circling over the woods,” I say. “What time is it?”
　I look at my watch. “Almost noon.”
　We enter the clearing. Henry stands very still. He smiles at me. He looks tired. His hair is graying. He is wearing his black overcoat, he stands out dark against the bright Meadow. “Where is the rock?” Grandma says. “I want to sit down ” I guide her to the rock, help her to sit. She turns her face in Henry’s direction and stiffens. “Who’s there?” she asks me, urgency in her voice. “No one ” I lie.
　“There’s a man, there,” she says, nodding toward Henry. He looks at me with an expression that seems to mean Go ahead. Tell her. A dog is barking in the woods. I hesitate.
　“Clare,” Grandma says. She sounds scared.
　“Introduce us,” Henry says, quietly.
　Grandma is still, waiting. I put my arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Grandma,” I say. “This is my friend Henry. He’s the one I told you about.” Henry walks over to us and holds out his hand. I place Grandma’s hand in his. “Elizabeth Meagram,” I say to Henry.
　“So you’re the one,” Grandma says.
　“Yes,” Henry replies, and this Yes falls into my ears like balm. Yes.
　“May I?” She gestures with her hands toward Henry.
　“Shall I sit next to you?” Henry sits on the rock. I guide Grandma’s hand to his face. He watches my face as she touches his. “That tickles,” Henry says to Grandma.
　“Sandpaper,” she says as she runs her fingertips across his unshaven chin. “You’re not a boy,” she says.
　“No.”
　“How old are you?”
　“I’m eight years older than Clare.”
　She looks puzzled. “Twenty-five?” I look at Henry’s salt and pepper hair, at the creases around his eyes. He looks about forty, maybe older.
　“Twenty-five,” he says firmly. Somewhere out there, it’s true.
　“Clare tells me she’s going to marry you,” my grandmother says to Henry.
　He smiles at me. “Yes, we’re going to get married. In a few years, when Clare is out of school.”
　“In my day, gentlemen came to dinner and met the family.”
　“Our situation is...unorthodox. That hasn’t been possible.”
　“I don’t see why not. If you’re going to cavort around in meadows with my granddaughter you can certainly come up to the house and be inspected by her parents.”
　“I’d be delighted to,” Henry says, standing up, “but I’m afraid right now I have a train to catch.”
　“Just a moment, young man—” Grandma begins, as Henry says, “Goodbye, Mrs. Meagram. It was great to finally meet you. Clare, I’m sorry I can’t stay longer—” I reach out to Henry but there’s the noise like all the sound is being sucked out of the world and he’s already gone. I turn to Grandma. She’s sitting on the rock with her hands stretched out, an expression of utter bewilderment on her face.
　“What happened?” she asks me, and I begin to explain. When I am finished she sits with her head bowed, twisting her arthritic fingers into strange shapes. Finally she raises her face toward me. “But Clare,” says my grandmother, “he must be a demon.” She says it matter-of-factly, as though she’s telling me that my coat’s buttoned up wrong, or that it’s time for lunch.
　What can I say? “I’ve thought of that,” I tell her. I take her hands to stop her from rubbing them red. “But Henry is good. He doesn’t feel like a demon.”
　Grandma smiles. “You talk as though you’ve met a peck of them.”
　“Don’t you think a real demon would be sort of—demonic?”
　“I think he would be nice as pie if he wanted to be.”
　I choose my words carefully. “Henry told me once that his doctor thinks he’s a new kind of human. You know, sort of the next step in evolution,”
　Grandma shakes her head. “That is just as bad as being a demon. Goodness, Clare, why in the world would you want to marry such a person? Think of the children you would have! Popping into next week and back before breakfast!”
　I laugh. “But it will be exciting! Like Mary Poppins, or Peter Pan.”
　She squeezes my hands just a little. “Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.”
　I look at the pile of clothes lying crumpled on the ground where Henry has left them. I pick them up and fold them. “Just a minute,” I say, and I find the clothes box and put Henry’s clothes in it. “Let’s go back to the house. It’s past lunchtime.” I help her off the rock. The wind is roaring in the grass, and we bend into it and make our way toward the house. When we come to the rise I turn and look back over the clearing. It’s empty.
　A few nights later, I am sitting by Grandma’s bed, reading Mrs. Dalloway to her. It’s evening. I look up; Grandma seems to be asleep. I stop reading, and close the book. Her eyes open.
　“Hello,” I say.
　“Do you ever miss him?” she asks me.
　“Every day. Every minute.”
　“Every minute,” she says. “Yes. It’s that way, isn’t it?” She turns on her side and burrows into the pillow.
　“Good night,” I say, turning out the lamp. As I stand in the dark looking down at Grandma in her bed, self-pity floods me as though I have been injected with it. It’s that way, isn’t it? Isn’t it.
　
EAT OR BE EATEN
　Saturday, November 30, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)
　
HENRY: Clare has invited me to dinner at her apartment. Charisse, Clare’s roommate, and Gomez, Charisse’s boyfriend, will also be dining. At 6:59 p.m. Central Standard Time, I stand in my Sunday best in Clare’s vestibule with my finger on her buzzer, fragrant yellow freesia and an Australian Cabernet in my other arm, and my heart in my mouth. I have not been to Clare’s before, nor have I met any of her friends. I have no idea what to expect.
　The buzzer makes a horrible sound and I open the door. “All the way up!” hollers a deep male voice. I plod up four flights of stairs. The person attached to the voice is tall and blond, sports the world’s most immaculate pompadour and a cigarette and is wearing a Solidarnosc T-shirt. He seems familiar, but I can’t place him. For a person named Gomez he looks very...Polish. I find out later that his real name is Jan Gomolinski.
　“Welcome, Library Boy!” Gomez booms.
　“Comrade!” I reply, and hand him the flowers and the wine. We eyeball each other, achieve detente, and with a flourish Gomez ushers me into the apartment.
　It’s one of those wonderful endless railroad apartments from the twenties—a long hallway with rooms attached almost as afterthoughts. There are two aesthetics at work here, funky and Victorian. This plays out in the spectacle of antique petit point chairs with heavy carved legs next to velvet Elvis paintings. I can hear Duke Ellington’s I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good playing at the end of the hall, and Gomez leads me in that direction.
　Clare and Charisse are in the kitchen. “My kittens, I have brought you a new toy,” Gomez intones. “It answers to the name of Henry, but you can call it Library Boy” I meet Clare’s eyes. She shrugs her shoulders and holds her face out to be kissed; I oblige with a chaste peck and turn to shake hands with Charisse, who is short and round in a very pleasing way, all curves and long black hair. She has such a kind face that I have an urge to confide something, anything, to her, just to see her reaction. She’s a small Filipino Madonna. In a sweet, Don’t Fuck With Me voice she says, “Oh, Gomez, do shut up. Hello, Henry. I’m Charisse Bonavant. Please ignore Gomez, I just keep him around to lift heavy objects.”
　“And sex. Don’t forget the sex,” Gomez reminds her. He looks at me. “Beer?”
　“Sure.” He delves into the fridge and hands me a Blatz. I pry off the cap and take a long pull. The kitchen looks as though a Pillsbury dough factory has exploded in it. Clare sees the direction of my gaze. I suddenly recollect that she doesn’t know how to cook.
　“It’s a work in progress,” says Clare.
　“It’s an installation piece,” says Charisse.
　“Are we going to eat it?” asks Gomez.
　I look from one to the other, and we all burst out laughing. “Do any of you know how to cook?”
　“No.”
　“Gomez can make rice.”
　“Only Rice-A-Roni.”
　“Clare knows how to order pizza.”
　“And Thai—I can order Thai, too.”
　“Charisse knows how to eat.”
　“ Shut up, Gomez,” say Charisse and Clare in unison.
　“Well, uh.. .what was that going to be?” I inquire, nodding at the disaster on the counter. Clare hands me a magazine clipping. It’s a recipe for Chicken and Shiitake Risotto with Winter Squash and Pine Nut Dressing. It’s from Gourmand, and there are about twenty ingredients. “Do you have all this stuff?”
　Clare nods. “The shopping part I can do. It’s the assembly that perplexes.”
　I examine the chaos more closely. “I could make something out of this.”
　“You can cook?” I nod.
　“It cooks! Dinner is saved! Have another beer!” Gomez exclaims. Charisse looks relieved, and smiles warmly at me. Clare, who has been hanging back almost fearfully, sidles over to me and whispers, “You’re not mad?” I kiss her, just a tad longer than is really polite in front of other people. I straighten up, take off my jacket, and roll up my sleeves. “Give me an apron,” I demand. “You, Gomez—open that wine. Clare, clean up all that spilled stuff, it’s turning to cement. Charisse, would you set the table?”
　One hour and forty-three minutes later we are sitting around the dining room table eating Chicken Risotto Stew with Pureed Squash. Everything has lots of butter in it. We are all drunk as skunks.
　
CLARE: The whole time Henry is making dinner Gomez is standing around the kitchen making jokes and smoking and drinking beer and whenever no one is looking he makes awful faces at me. Finally Charisse catches him and draws her finger across her throat and he stops. We are talking about the most banal stuff: our jobs, and school, and where we grew up, and all the usual things that people talk about when they meet each other for the first time. Gomez tells Henry about his job being a lawyer, representing abused and neglected children who are wards of the state. Charisse regales us with tales of her exploits at Lusus Naturae, a tiny software company that is trying to make computers understand when people talk to them, and her art, which is making pictures that you look at on a computer. Henry tells stories about the Newberry Library and the odd people who come to study the books.
　“Does the Newberry really have a book made out of human skin?” Charisse asks Henry.
　“Yep. The Chronicles of Nawat Wuzeer Hydembed. It was found in the palace of the King of Delhi in 1857. Come by some time and I’ll pull it out for you.”
　Charisse shudders and grins. Henry is stirring the stew. When he says “Chow time,” we all flock to the table. All this time Gomez and Henry have been drinking beer and Charisse and I have been sipping wine and Gomez has been topping up our glasses and we have not been eating much but I do not realize how drunk we all are until I almost miss sitting down on the chair Henry holds for me and Gomez almost sets his own hair on fire while lighting the candles.
　Gomez holds up his glass. “The Revolution!”
　Charisse and I raise our glasses, and Henry does, too. “The Revolution!” We begin eating, with enthusiasm. The risotto is slippery and mild, the squash is sweet, the chicken is swimming in butter. It makes me want to cry, it’s so good.
　Henry takes a bite, then points his fork at Gomez. “Which revolution?”
　“Pardon?”
　“Which revolution are we toasting?” Charisse and I look at each other in alarm, but it is too late.
　Gomez smiles and my heart sinks. “The next one.”
　“The one where the proletariat rises up and the rich get eaten and capitalism is vanquished in favor of a classless society?”
　“That very one.”
　Henry winks at me. “That seems rather hard on Clare. And what are you planning to do with the intelligentsia?”
　“Oh,” Gomez says, “we will probably eat them, too. But we’ll keep you around, as a cook. This is outstanding grub.”
　Charisse touches Henry’s arm, confidentially. “We aren’t really going to eat anybody,” she says. “We are just going to redistribute their assets.”
　“That’s a relief,” Henry replies. “I wasn’t looking forward to cooking Clare.”
　Gomez says, “It’s a shame, though. I’m sure Clare would be very tasty.”
　“I wonder what cannibal cuisine is like?” I say. “Is there a cannibal cookbook?”
　“ The Cooked and The Raw,” says Charisse.
　Henry objects. “That’s not really a how-to. I don’t think Levi-Strauss gives any recipes.”
　“We could just adapt a recipe,” says Gomez, taking another helping of the chicken. “You know, Clare with Porcini Mushrooms and Marinara Sauce over Linguini. Or Breast of Clare a la Orange. Or—”
　“Hey,” I say. “What if I don’t want to be eaten?”
　“Sorry, Clare,” Gomez says gravely. “I’m afraid you have to be eaten for the greater good.”
　Henry catches my eye, and smiles. “Don’t worry, Clare; come the Revolution ‘I’ll hide you at the Newberry. You can live in the stacks and I’ll feed you Snickers and Doritos from the Staff Lunchroom. They’ll never find you.”
　I shake my head. “What about ‘First, we kill all the lawyers’?”
　“No,” Gomez says. “You can’t do anything without lawyers. The Revolution would get all balled up in ten minutes if lawyers weren’t there to keep it in line.”
　“But my dad’s a lawyer,” I tell him, “so you can’t eat us after all.”
　“He’s the wrong kind of lawyer” Gomez says. “He does estates for rich people. I, on the other hand, represent the poor oppressed children—”
　“Oh, shut up, Gomez,” says Charisse. “You’re hurting Clare’s feelings.”
　“I’m not! Clare wants to be eaten for the Revolution, don’t you, Clare?”
　“No.”
　“Oh.”
　“What about the Categorical Imperative?” asks Henry.
　“Say what?”
　“You know, the Golden Rule. Don’t eat other people unless you are willing to be eaten.”
　Gomez is cleaning his nails with the tines of his fork. “Don’t you think it’s really Eat or Be Eaten that makes the world go round?”
　“Yeah, mostly. But aren’t you yourself a case in point for altruism?” Henry asks.
　“Sure, but I am widely considered to be a dangerous nutcase.” Gomez says this with feigned indifference, but I can see that he is puzzled by Henry. “Clare,” he says, “what about dessert?”
　“Ohmigod, I almost forgot,” I say, standing up too fast and grabbing the table for support. “I’ll get it.”
　“I’ll help you” says Gomez, following me into the kitchen. I’m wearing heels and as I walk into the kitchen I catch the door sill and stagger forward and Gomez grabs me. For a moment we stand pressed together and I feel his hands on my waist, but he lets me go. “You’re drunk, Clare,” Gomez tells me.
　“I know. So are you.” I press the button on the coffee maker and coffee begins to drip into the pot. I lean against the counter and carefully take the cellophane off the plate of brownies. Gomez is standing close behind me, and he says very quietly, leaning so that his breath tickles my ear, “He’s the same guy.”
　“What do you mean?”
　“That guy I warned you about. Henry, he’s the guy—”
　Charisse walks into the kitchen and Gomez jumps away from me and opens the fridge. “Hey,” she says. “Can I help?”
　“Here, take the coffee cups...” We all juggle cups and saucers and plates and brownies and make it safely back to the table. Henry is waiting as though he’s at the dentist, with a look of patient dread. I laugh, it’s so exactly the look he used to have when I brought him food in the Meadow...but he doesn’t remember, he hasn’t been there yet. “Relax,” I say. “It’s only brownies. Even I can do brownies.” Everyone laughs and sits down. The brownies turn out to be kind of undercooked. “Brownies tartare,” says Charisse. “Salmonella fudge,” says Gomez. Henry says, “I’ve always liked dough,” and licks his fingers. Gomez rolls a cigarette, lights it, and takes a deep drag.
　
HENRY: Gomez lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. There’s something about this guy that bugs me. Maybe it’s the casual possessiveness toward Clare, or the garden variety Marxism? I’m sure I’ve seen him before. Past or future? Let’s find out. “You look very familiar,” I say to him.
　“Mmm? Yeah, I think we’ve seen each other around.”
　I’ve got it. “Iggy Pop at the Riviera Theater?”
　He looks startled. “Yeah. You were with that blond girl, Ingrid Carmichel, I always used to see you with.” Gomez and I both look at Clare. She is staring intently at Gomez, and he smiles at her. She looks away, but not at me.
　Charisse comes to the rescue. “You saw Iggy without me?”
　Gomez says, “You were out of town.”
　Charisse pouts. “I miss everything,” she says to me. “I missed Patti Smith and now she’s retired. I missed Talking Heads the last time they toured.”
　“Patti Smith will tour again” I say.
　“She will? How do you know?” asks Charisse. Clare and I exchange glances.
　“I’m just guessing” I tell her. We begin exploring each other’s musical tastes and discover that we are all devoted to punk. Gomez tells us about seeing the New York Dolls in Florida just before Johnny Thunders left the band. I describe a Lene Lovich concert I managed to catch on one of my time travels. Charisse and Clare are excited because the Violent Femmes are playing the Aragon Ballroom in a few weeks and Charisse has scored free tickets. The evening winds down without further ado. Clare walks me downstairs. We stand in the foyer between the outer door and the inner door.
　“I’m sorry,” she says.
　“Oh, not at all. It was fun, I didn’t mind cooking.”
　“No,” Clare says, looking at her shoes, “about Gomez.”
　It’s cold in the foyer. I wrap my arms around Clare and she leans against me. “What about Gomez?” I ask her. Something’s on her mind. But then she shrugs. “It’ll be okay,” she says, and I take her word for it. We kiss. I open the outer door, and Clare opens the inner door; I walk down the sidewalk and look back. Clare is still standing there in the half-open doorway watching me. I stand, wanting to go back and hold her, wanting to go back upstairs with her. She turns and begins to walk upstairs, and I watch until she is out of sight.
　Saturday, December 14, 1991 Tuesday, May 9, 2000 (Henry is 36)
　
HENRY: I’m stomping the living shit out of a large drunk suburban guy who had the effrontery to call me a faggot and then tried to beat me up to prove his point. We are in the alley next to the Vic Theater. I can hear the Smoking Popes’ bass leaking out of the theater’s side exits as I systematically smash this idiot’s nose and go to work on his ribs. I’m having a rotten evening, and this fool is taking the brunt of my frustration.
　“Hey, Library Boy.” I turn from my groaning homophobic yuppie to find Gomez leaning against a dumpster, looking grim.
　“Comrade.” I step back from the guy I’ve been bashing, who slides gratefully to the pavement, doubled up. “How goes it?” I’m very relieved to see Gomez: delighted, actually. But he doesn’t seem to share my pleasure.
　“Gee, ah, I don’t want to disturb you or anything, but that’s a friend of mine you’re dismembering, there.”
　Oh, surely not. “Well, he requested it. Just walked right up to me and said, ‘Sir, I urgently need to be firmly macerated.’”
　“Oh. Well, hey, well done. Fucking artistic, actually.”
　“Thank you.”
　“Do you mind if I just scoop up ol‘ Nick here and take him to the hospital?”
　“Be my guest.” Damn. I was planning to appropriate Nick’s clothing, especially his shoes, brand new Doc Martens, deep red, barely worn. “Gomez.”
　“Yeah?” He stoops to lift his friend, who spits a tooth into his own lap.
　“What’s the date?”
　“December 14.”
　“What year?”
　He looks up at me like a man who has better things to do than humor lunatics and lifts Nick in a fireman’s carry that must be excruciating. Nick begins to whimper. “1991. You must be drunker than you look.” He walks up the alley and disappears in the direction of the theater entrance. I calculate rapidly. Today is not that long after Clare and I started dating, therefore Gomez and I hardly know each other. No wonder he was giving me the hairy eyeball.
　He reappears unencumbered. “I made Trent deal with it. Nick’s his brother. He wasn’t best pleased.” We start walking east, down the alley. “Forgive me for asking, dear Library Boy, but why on earth are you dressed like that?”
　I’m wearing blue jeans, a baby blue sweater with little yellow ducks all over it, and a neon red down vest with pink tennis shoes. Really, it’s not surprising that someone would feel they needed to hit me.
　“It was the best I could do at the time.” I hope the guy I took these off of was close to home. It’s about twenty degrees out here. “Why are you consorting with frat boys?”
　“Oh, we went to law school together.” We are walking by the back door of the Army-Navy surplus store and I experience a deep desire to be wearing normal clothing. I decide to risk appalling Gomez; I know he’ll get over it. I stop. “Comrade. This will only take a moment; I just need to take care of something. Could you wait at the end of the alley?”
　“What are you doing?”
　“Nothing. Breaking and entering. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
　“Mind if I come along?”
　“Yes.” He looks crestfallen. “All right. If you must.” I step into the niche which shelters the back door. This is the third time I’ve broken into this place, although the other two occasions are both in the future at the moment. I’ve got it down to a science. First I open the insignificant combination lock that secures the security grate, slide the grate back, pick the Yale lock with the inside of an old pen and a safety pin found earlier on Belmont Avenue, and use a piece of aluminum between the double doors to lift the inside bolt. Voila! Altogether, it takes about three minutes. Gomez regards me with almost religious awe.
　“ Where did you learn to do that?”
　“It’s a knack,” I reply modestly. We step inside. There is a panel of blinking red lights trying to look like a burglar alarm system, but I know better. It’s very dark in here. I mentally review the layout and the merchandise. “Don’t touch anything, Gomez.” I want to be warm, and inconspicuous. I step carefully through the aisles, and my eyes adjust to the dark. I start with pants: black Levi’s. I select a dark blue flannel shirt, a heavy black wool overcoat with an industrial-strength lining, wool socks, boxers, heavy mountain-climb ing gloves, and a hat with ear flaps. In the shoe department I find, to my great satisfaction, Docs exactly like the ones my buddy Nick was wearing. I am ready for action.
　Gomez, meanwhile, is poking around behind the counter. “Don’t bother,” I tell him. “This place doesn’t leave cash in the register at night. Let’s go.” We leave the way we came. I close the door gently and pull the grate across. I have my previous set of clothing in a shopping bag. Later I will try to find a Salvation Army collection bin. Gomez looks at me expectantly, like a large dog who’s waiting to see if I have any more lunch meat.
　Which reminds me. “I’m ravenous. Let’s go to Ann Sather’s.”
　“Ann Sather’s? I was expecting you to propose bank robbery, or manslaughter, at the very least. You’re on a roll, man, don’t stop now!”
　“I must pause in my labors to refuel. Come on.” We cross from the alley to Ann Sather’s Swedish Restaurant’s parking lot. The attendant mutely regards us as we traverse his kingdom. We cut over to Belmont. It’s only nine o’clock, and the street is teeming with its usual mix of runaways, homeless mental cases, clubbers, and suburban thrill seekers. Ann Sather’s stands out as an island of normalcy amid the tattoo parlors and condom boutiques. We enter, and wait by the bakery to be seated. My stomach gurgles. The Swedish decor is comforting, all wood paneling and swirling red marbling. We are seated in the smoking section, right in front of the fireplace. Things are looking up. We remove our coats, settle in, read the menus, even though, as lifelong Chicagoans, we could probably sing them from memory in two-part harmony. Gomez lays all his smoking paraphernalia next to his silverware.
　“Do you mind?”
　“Yes. But go ahead.” The price of Gomez’s company is marinating in the constant stream of cigarette smoke that flows from his nostrils. His fingers are a deep ochre color; they flutter delicately over the thin papers as he rolls Drum tobacco into a thick cylinder, licks the paper, twists it, sticks it between his lips, and lights it. “Ahh.” For Gomez, a half hour without a smoke is an anomaly. I always enjoy watching people satisfy their appetites, even if I don’t happen to share them.
　“You don’t smoke? Anything?”
　“I run.”
　“Oh. Yeah, shit, you’re in great shape. I thought you had about killed Nick, and you weren’t even winded.”
　“He was too drunk to fight. Just a big sodden punching bag.”
　“Why’d you lay into him like that?”
　“It was just stupidity.” The waiter arrives, tells us his name is Lance and the specials are salmon and creamed peas. He takes our drink orders and speeds away. I toy with the cream dispenser. “He saw how I was dressed, concluded that I was easy meat, got obnoxious, wanted to beat me up, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and got a surprise. I was minding my own business, really I was.”
　Gomez looks thoughtful. “Which is what, exactly?”
　“Pardon?”
　“Henry. I may look like a chump, but in fact your old Uncle Gomez is not completely sans clues. I have been paying attention to you for some time: before our little Clare brought you home, as a matter of fact. I mean, I don’t know if you are aware of it, but you are moderately notorious in certain circles. I know a lot of people who know you. People; well, women. Women who know you ” He squints at me through the haze of his smoke. “They say some pretty strange things.” Lance arrives with my coffee and Gomez’s milk. We order: a cheeseburger and fries for Gomez, split pea soup, the salmon, sweet potatoes, and mixed fruit for me. I feel like I’m going to keel over right this minute if I don’t get a lot of calories fast. Lance departs swiftly. I’m having trouble caring very much about the misdeeds of my earlier self, much less justifying them to Gomez. None of his business, anyway. But he’s waiting for my answer. I stir cream into my coffee, watching the slight white scum on the top dissipate in swirls. I throw caution to the winds. It doesn’t matter, after all.
　“What would you like to know, comrade?”
　“Everything. I want to know why a seemingly mild-mannered librarian beats a guy into a coma over nothing while wearing kindergarten-teacher clothing. I want to know why Ingrid Carmichel tried to kill herself eight days ago. I want to know why you look ten years older right now than you did the last time I saw you. Your hair’s going gray. I want to know why you can pick a Yale lock. I want to know why Clare had a photograph of you before she actually met you.”
　Clare had a photo of me before 1991 ? I didn’t know that. Oops. “What did the photo look like?”
　Gomez regards me. “More like you look at the moment, not like you looked a couple weeks ago when you came over for dinner.” That was two weeks ago? Lord, this is only the second time Gomez and I have met. “It was taken outdoors. You’re smiling. The date on the back is June, 1988.” The food arrives, and we pause to arrange it on our little table. I start eating as though there’s no tomorrow.
　Gomez sits, watching me eating, his food untouched. I’ve seen Gomez do his thing in court with hostile witnesses, just like this. He simply wills them to spill the beans. I don’t mind telling all, I just want to eat first. In fact, I need Gomez to know the truth, because he’s going to save my ass repeatedly in the years to come.
　I’m halfway through the salmon and he’s still sitting. “Eat, eat,” I say in my best imitation of Mrs. Kim. He dips a fry in ketchup and munches it. “Don’t worry, I’ll confess. Just let me have my last meal in peace.” He capitulates, and starts to eat his burger. Neither of us says a word until I’ve finished consuming my fruit. Lance brings me more coffee. I doctor it, stir it. Gomez is looking at me as though he wants to shake me. I resolve to amuse myself at his expense.
　“Okay. Here it is: time travel.”
　Gomez rolls his eyes and grimaces, but says nothing.
　“I am a time traveler. At the moment I am thirty-six years old. This afternoon was May 9, 2000. It was a Tuesday. I was at work, I had just finished a Show and Tell for a bunch of Caxton Club members and I had gone back to the stacks to reshelve the books when I suddenly found myself on School Street, in 1991.1 had the usual problem of getting something to wear. I hid under somebody’s porch for a while. I was cold, and nobody was coming along, and finally this young guy, dressed—well, you saw how I was dressed. I mugged him, took his cash and everything he was wearing except his underwear. Scared him silly; I think he thought I was going to rape him or something. Anyway, I had clothes. Okay. But in this neighborhood you can’t dress like that without having certain misunderstandings arise. So I’ve been taking shit all evening from various people, and your friend just happened to be the last straw. I’m sorry if he’s very damaged. I very much wanted his clothes, especially his shoes.” Gomez glances under the table at my feet. “I find myself in situations like that all the time. No pun intended. There’s something wrong with me. I get dislocated in time, for no reason. I can’t control it, I never know when it’s going to happen, or where and when I’ll end up. So in order to cope, I pick locks, shoplift, pick pockets, mug people, panhandle, break and enter, steal cars, lie, fold, spindle, and mutilate. You name it, I’ve done it.”
　“Murder.”
　“Well, not that I know of. I’ve never raped anybody, either.” I look at him as I speak. He’s poker-faced. “Ingrid. Do you actually know Ingrid?”
　“I know Celia Attley.”
　“Dear me. You do keep strange company. How did Ingrid try to kill herself?”
　“An overdose of Valium.”
　“1991? Yeah, okay. That would be Ingrid’s fourth suicide attempt.”
　“What?”
　“Ah, you didn’t know that? Celia is only selectively informative. Ingrid actually succeeded in doing herself in on January 2, 1994. She shot herself in the chest.”
　“Henry—”
　“You know, it happened six years ago, and I’m still angry at her. What a waste. But she was severely depressed, for a long time, and she just sunk down into it. I couldn’t do anything for her. It was one of the things we used to fight about.”
　“This is a pretty sick joke, Library Boy.”
　“You want proof.”
　He just smiles.
　“How about that photo? The one you said Clare has?”
　The smile vanishes. “Okay. I admit that I am a wee bit befuddled by that.”
　“I met Clare for the first time in October, 1991. She met me for the first time in September, 1977; she was six, I will be thirty-eight. She’s known me all her life. In 1991 I’m just getting to know her. By the way, you should ask Clare all this stuff. She’ll tell you ”
　“I already did. She told me.”
　“Well, hell, Gomez. You’re taking up valuable time, here, making me tell you all over again. You didn’t believe her?”
　“No. Would you?”
　“Sure. Clare is very truthful. It’s that Catholic upbringing that does it.” Lance comes by with more coffee. I’m already highly caffeinated, but more can’t hurt. “So? What kind of proof are you looking for?”
　“Clare said you disappear.”
　“Yeah, it’s one of my more dramatic parlor tricks. Stick to me like glue, and sooner or later, I vanish. It may take minutes, hours, or days, but I’m very reliable that way.”
　“Do we know each other in 2000?”
　“Yeah.” I grin at him. “We’re good friends.”
　“Tell me my future.”
　Oh, no. Bad idea. “Nope.”
　“Why not?”
　“Gomez. Things happen. Knowing about them in advance makes everything.. .weird. You can’t change anything, anyway.”
　“Why?”
　“Causation only runs forward. Things happen once, only once. If you know things...1 feel trapped, most of the time. If you are in time, not knowing...you’re free. Trust me.” He looks frustrated. “You’ll be the best man at our wedding. I’ll be yours. You have a great life, Gomez. But I’m not going to tell you the particulars.”
　“Stock tips?”
　Yeah, why not. In 2000 the stock market is insane, but there are amazing fortunes to be made, and Gomez will be one of the lucky ones. “Ever heard of the Internet?” No.
　“It’s a computer thing. A vast, worldwide network with regular people all plugged in, communicating by phone lines with computers. You want to buy technology stocks. Netscape, America Online, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon.com.” He’s taking notes.
　“Dotcom?”
　“Don’t worry about it. lust buy it at the IPO.” I smile. “Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.”
　“I thought you were pole-axing anyone who insinuated anything about fairies this evening?”
　“It’s from Peter Pan, you illiterate.” I suddenly feel nauseous. I don’t want to cause a scene here, now. I jump up. “Follow me ” I say, running for the men’s room, Gomez close behind me. I burst into the miraculously empty John. Sweat is streaming down my face. I throw up into the sink. “Jesus H. Christ,” says Gomez. “Damn it, Library—” but I lose the rest of whatever he’s about to say, because I’m lying on my side, naked, on a cold linoleum floor, in pitch blackness. I’m dizzy, so I lie there for a while. I reach out my hand and touch the spines of books. I’m in the stacks, at the Newberry. I get up and stagger to the end of the aisle and flip the switch; light floods the row I’m standing in, blinding me. My clothes, and the cart of books I was shelving, are in the next aisle over. I get dressed, shelve the books, and gingerly open the security door to the stacks. I don’t know what time it is; the alarms could be on. But no, everything is as it was. Isabelle is instructing a new patron in the ways of the Reading Room; Matt walks by and waves. The sun pours in the windows, and the hands of the Reading Room clock point to 4:15. I’ve been gone less than fifteen minutes. Amelia sees me and points to the door. “I’m going out to Starbucks. You want Java?”
　“Um, no, I don’t think so. But thanks.” I have a horrible headache. I stick my face into Roberto’s office and tell him I don’t feel well. He nods sympathetically, gestures at the phone, which is spewing lightspeed Italian into his ear. I grab my stuff and leave.
　Just another routine day at the office for Library Boy.
　
　Sunday, December 15, 1991 (Clare is 20)
　
CLARE: It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, and I’m on my way home from Henry’s apartment. The streets are icy and there’s a couple inches of fresh snow. Everything is blindingly white and clean. I am singing along with Aretha Franklin, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T!” as I turn off Addison onto Hoyne, and lo and behold, there’s a parking space right in front. It’s my lucky day. I park and negotiate the slick sidewalk, let myself into the vestibule, still humming. I have that dreamy rubber spine feeling that I’m beginning to associate with sex, with waking up in Henry’s bed, with getting home at all hours of the morning. I float up the stairs. Charisse will be at church. I’m looking forward to a long bath and the New York Times. As soon as I open our door, I know I’m not alone. Gomez is sitting in the living room in a cloud of smoke with the blinds closed. What with the red flocked wallpaper and the red velvet furniture and all the smoke, he looks like a blond Polish Elvis Satan. He just sits there, so I start walking back to my room without speaking. I’m still mad at him.
　“Clare.”
　I turn. “What?”
　“I’m sorry. I was wrong.” I’ve never heard Gomez admit to anything less than papal infallibility. His voice is a deep croak.
　I walk into the living room and open the blinds. The sunlight is having trouble getting through the smoke, so I crack a window. “I don’t see how you can smoke this much without setting off the smoke detector.”
　Gomez holds up a nine-volt battery. “I’ll put it back before I leave.”
　I sit down on the Chesterfield. I wait for Gomez to tell me why he’s changed his mind. He’s rolling another cigarette. Finally he lights it, and looks at me.
　“I spent last night with your friend Henry.”
　“So did I.”
　“Yeah. What did you do?”
　“Went to Facets, saw a Peter Greenaway film, ate Moroccan, went to his place.”
　“And you just left.”
　“That’s right.”
　“Well. My evening was less cultural, but more eventful. I came upon your beamish boy in the alley by the Vic, smashing Nick to a pulp. Trent told me this morning that Nick has a broken nose, three broken ribs, five broken bones in his hand, soft-tissue damage, and forty-six stitches. And he’s gonna need a new front tooth.” I am unmoved. Nick is a big bully. “You should have seen it, Clare. Your boyfriend dealt with Nick like he was an inanimate object. Like Nick was a sculpture he was carving. Real scientific-like. Just considered where to land it for maximum effect, wham. I would have totally admired it, if it hadn’t been Nick.”
　“Why was Henry beating up Nick?”
　Gomez looks uncomfortable. “It sounded like it might have been Nick’s fault. He likes to pick on.. .gays, and Henry was dressed like Little Miss Muffet.” I can imagine. Poor Henry.
　“And then?”
　“Then we burglarized the Army-Navy surplus store.” So far so good.
　“And?”
　“And then we went to Ann Sather’s for dinner.”
　I burst out laughing. Gomez smiles. “And he told me the same whacko story that you told me.”
　“So why did you believe him?”
　“Well, he’s so fucking nonchalant. I could tell that he absolutely knew me, through and through. He had my number, and he didn’t care. And then he—vanished, and I was standing there, and I just.. .had to. Believe.”
　I nod, sympathetically. “The disappearing is pretty impressive. I remember that from the very first time I saw him, when I was little. He was shaking my hand, and poof! he was gone. Hey, when was he coming from?”
　“2000. He looked a lot older.”
　“He goes through a lot.” It’s kind of nice to sit here and talk about Henry with someone who knows. I feel a surge of gratitude toward Gomez which evaporates as he leans forward and says, quite gravely, “Don’t marry him, Clare.”
　“He hasn’t asked me, yet.”
　“You know what I mean.”
　I sit very still, looking at my hands quietly clasped in my lap. I’m cold and furious. I look up. Gomez regards me anxiously.
　“I love him. He’s my life. I’ve been waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he’s here.” I don’t know how to explain. “With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel....”I shake my head. I can’t put it into words. “I can reach into him and touch time.. .he loves me. We’re married because.. .we’re part of each other....”I falter. “It’s happened already. All at once.” I peer at Gomez to see if I’ve made any sense.
　“Clare. I like him, very much. He’s fascinating. But he’s dangerous. All the women he’s been with fall apart. I just don’t want you blithely waltzing into the arms of this charming sociopath..”
　“Don’t you see that you’re too late? You’re talking about somebody I’ve known since I was six. I know him. You’ve met him twice and you’re trying to tell me to jump off the train. Well, I can’t. I’ve seen my future; I can’t change it, and I wouldn’t if I could.”
　Gomez looks thoughtful. “He wouldn’t tell me anything about my future.”
　“Henry cares about you; he wouldn’t do that to you.”
　“He did it to you.”
　“It couldn’t be helped; our lives are all tangled together. My whole childhood was different because of him, and there was nothing he could do. He did the best he could.” I hear Charisse’s key turning in the lock.
　“Clare, don’t be mad—I’m just trying to help you.”
　I smile at him. “You can help us. You’ll see.”
　Charisse comes in coughing. “Oh, sweetie. You’ve been waiting a long time.”
　“I’ve been chatting with Clare. About Henry.”
　“I’m sure you’ve been telling her how much you adore him,” Charisse says with a note of warning in her voice.
　“I’ve been telling her to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.”
　“Oh, Gomez. Clare, don’t listen to him. He has terrible taste in men.” Charisse sits down primly a foot away from Gomez and he reaches over and pulls her onto his lap. She gives him a look.
　“She’s always like this after church.”
　“I want breakfast.”
　“Of course you do, my dove.” They get up and scamper down the hall to the kitchen. Soon Charisse is emitting high-pitched giggles and Gomez is trying to spank her with the Times Magazine. I sigh and go to my room. The sun is still shining. In the bathroom I run hot hot water into the huge old tub and strip off last night’s clothes. As I climb in I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look almost plump. This cheers me no end, and I sink down into the water feeling like an Ingres odalisque. Henry loves me. Henry is here, finally, now, finally. And I love him. I run my hands over my breasts and a thin film of saliva is reaquified by the water and disperses. Why does everything have to be complicated? Isn’t the complicated part behind us now? I submerge my hair, watch it float around me, dark and net-like. I never chose Henry, and he never chose me. So how could it be a mistake? Again I am faced with the fact that we can’t know. I lie in the tub, staring at the tile above my feet, until the water is almost cool. Charisse knocks on the door, asking if I’ve died in here and can she please brush her teeth? As I wrap my hair in a towel I see myself blurred in the mirror by steam and time seems to fold over onto itself and I see myself as a layering of all my previous days and years and all the time that is coming and suddenly I feel as though I’ve become invisible. But then the feeling is gone as fast as it came and I stand still for a minute and then I pull on my bathrobe and open the door and go on.
　
　Saturday, December 22, 1991 (Henry is 28, and 33)
　
HENRY: At 5:25 a.m. the doorbell rings, always an evil omen. I stagger to the intercom and push the button.
　“Yeah?”
　“Hey. Let me in.” I press the button again and the horrible buzzing noise that signifies Welcome to My Hearth and Home is transmitted over the line. Forty-five seconds later the elevator clunks and starts to ratchet its way up. I pull on my robe, I go out and stand in the hall and watch the elevator cables moving through the little safety-glass window. The cage hovers into sight and stops, and sure enough, it’s me.
　He slides open the cage door and steps into the corridor, naked, unshaven, and sporting really short hair. We quickly cross the empty hall and duck into the apartment. I close the door and we stand for a moment looking ourselves over.
　“Well,” I say, just for something to say. “How goes it?”
　“So-so. What’s the date?”
　“December 22, 1991. Saturday”
　“Oh—Violent Femmes at the Aragon tonight?”
　“Yep.”
　He laughs. “Shit. What an abysmal evening that was.” He walks over to the bed— my bed—and climbs in, pulls the covers over his head. I plop down beside him.
　“Hey.” No response. “When are you from?”
　“November 13, 1996. I was on my way to bed. So let me get some sleep, or you will be sincerely sorry in five years.”
　This seems reasonable enough. I take off my robe and get back into bed. Now I’m on the wrong side of the bed, Clare’s side, as I think of it these days, because my doppelganger has commandeered my side.
　Everything is subtly different on this side of the bed. It’s like when you close one eye and look at something close up for a while, and then look at it from the other eye. I lie there doing this, looking at the armchair with my clothes scattered over it, a peach pit at the bottom of a wine glass on the windowsill, the back of my right hand. My nails need cutting and the apartment could probably qualify for Federal Disaster Relief funds. Maybe my extra self will be willing to pitch in, help out around the house a little, earn his keep. I run my mind over the contents of the refrigerator and pantry and conclude that we are well provisioned. I am planning to bring Clare home with me tonight and I’m not sure what to do with my superfluous body. It occurs to me that Clare might prefer to be with this later edition of me, since after all they do know each other better. For some reason this plunges me into a funk. I try to remember that anything subtracted now will be added later, but I still feel fretful and wish that one of us would just go away.
　I ponder my double. He’s curled up, hedgehog style, facing away from me, evidently asleep. I envy him. He is me, but I’m not him, yet. He has been through five years of a life that’s still mysterious to me, still coiled tightly waiting to spring out and bite. Of course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he’s had them; for me they wait like a box of unpoked chocolates.
　I try to consider him with Clare’s eyes. Why the short hair? I’ve always been fond of my black, wavy, shoulder-length hair; I’ve been wearing it this way since high school. But sooner or later, I’m going to chop it off. It occurs to me that the hair is one of many things that must remind Clare I’m not exactly the man she’s known from earliest childhood. I’m a close approximation she is guiding surreptitiously toward a me that exists in her mind’s eye. What would I be without her?
　Not the man who breathes, slowly, deeply, across the bed from me. His neck and back undulate with vertebrae, ribs. His skin is smooth, hardly haired, tightly tacked onto muscles and bones. He is exhausted, and yet sleeps as though at any moment he may jump up and run. Do I radiate this much tension? I guess so. Clare complains that I don’t relax until I’m dead tired, but actually I am often relaxed when I’m with her. This older self seems leaner and more weary, more solid and secure. But with me he can afford to show off: he’s got my number so completely that I can only acquiesce to him, in my own best interests.
　It’s 7:14 and it’s obvious that I’m not going back to sleep. I get out of bed and turn on the coffee. I pull on underwear and sweatpants and stretch out. Lately my knees have been sore, so I wrap supports onto them. I pull on socks and lace up my beater running shoes, probably the cause of the funky knees, and vow to go buy new shoes tomorrow. I should have asked my guest what the weather was like out there. Oh, well, December in Chicago: dreadful weather is de rigueur. I don my ancient Chicago Film Festival T-shirt, a black sweatshirt, and a heavy orange sweatshirt with a hood that has big Xs on the front and back made of reflective tape. I grab my gloves and keys and out I go, into the day.
　It’s not a bad day, as early winter days go. There’s very little snow on the ground, and the wind is toying with it, pushing it here and there. Traffic is backed up on Dearborn, making a concert of engine noises, and the sky is gray, slowly lightening into gray.
　I lace my keys onto my shoe and decide to run along the lake. I run slowly east on Delaware to Michigan Avenue, cross the overpass, and begin jogging beside the bike path, heading north along Oak Street Beach. Only hard-core runners and cyclists are out today. Lake Michigan is a deep slate color and the tide is out, revealing a dark brown strip of sand. Seagulls wheel above my head and far out over the water. I am moving stiffly; cold is unkind to joints, and I’m slowly realizing that it is pretty cold out here by the lake, probably in the low twenties. So I run a little slower than usual, warming up, reminding my poor knees and ankles that their life’s work is to carry me far and fast on demand. I can feel the cold dry air in my lungs, feel my heart serenely pounding, and as I reach North Avenue I am feeling good and I start to speed up. Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. As I run I displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath my feet. I remember, as a child, long before video games and the Web, threading filmstrips into the dinky projector in the school library and peering into them, turning the knob that advanced the frame at the sound of a beep. I don’t remember anymore what they looked like, what they were about, but I remember the smell of the library, and the way the beep made me jump every time. I’m flying now, that golden feeling, as if I could run right into the air, and I’m invincible, nothing can stop me, nothing can stop me, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing—.
　
　Evening, the same day: (Henry is 28 and 33, Clare is 20)
　
CLARE: We’re on our way to the Violent Femmes concert at the Aragon Ballroom. After some reluctance on Henry’s part, which I don’t understand because he loves les Femmes, we are cruising Uptown in search of parking. I loop around and around, past the Green Mill, the bars, the dimly lit apartment buildings and the laundromats that look like stage sets. I finally park on Argyle and we walk shivering down the glassy broken sidewalks. Henry walks fast and I am always a little out of breath when we walk together. I’ve noticed that he makes an effort to match my pace, now. I pull off my glove and put my hand in his coat pocket, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. I’m excited because Henry and I have never gone dancing before, and I love the Aragon, in all its decaying faux Spanish splendor. My Grandma Meagram used to tell me about dancing to the big bands here in the thirties, when everything was new and lovely and there weren’t people shooting up in the balconies and lakes of piss in the men’s room. But c’est la vie, times change, and we are here.
　We stand in line for a few minutes. Henry seems tense, on guard. He holds my hand, but stares out over the crowd. I take the opportunity to look at him. Henry is beautiful. His hair is shoulder-length, combed back, black and sleek. He’s cat-like, thin, exuding restlessness and physicality. He looks like he might bite. Henry is wearing a black overcoat and a white cotton shirt with French cuffs which dangle undone below his coat sleeves, a lovely acid-green silk tie which he has loosened just enough so that I can see the muscles in his neck, black jeans and black high-top sneakers. Henry gathers my hair together and wraps it around his wrist. For a moment I am his prisoner, and then the line moves forward and he lets me go.
　We are ticketed and flow with masses of people into the building. The Aragon has numerous long hallways and alcoves and balconies that wrap around the main hall and are ideal for getting lost and for hiding, Henry and I go up to a balcony close to the stage and sit at a tiny table. We take off our coats. Henry is staring at me.
　“You look lovely. That’s a great dress; I can’t believe you can dance in it.”
　My dress is skin-tight lilac blue silk, but it stretches enough to move in. I tried it out this afternoon in front of a mirror and it was fine. The thing that worries me is my hair; because of the dry winter air there seems to be twice as much of it as usual. I start to braid it and Henry stops me.
　“Don’t, please—I want to look at you with it down.”
　The opening act begins its set. We listen patiently. Everyone is milling around, talking, smoking. There are no seats on the main floor. The noise is phenomenal.
　Henry leans over and yells in my ear. “Do you want something to drink?”
　“Just a Coke.”
　He goes off to the bar. I rest my arms on the railing of the balcony and watch the cro