Unhappenings (32 page)

After a suitable pause, she said, “Listen. I am so touched that you have told me as much as you have, I couldn’t possibly blame you if you stopped now. If you want your secrets, you may certainly keep them.” She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. The little bit of extra closeness that brought felt electric. “But I don’t think you want them.”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “I’m just afraid they will scare you away.”

She took my hand and looked me square in the eyes. “I am not going anywhere.”

And that finally pushed me over the edge of my secrecy.

“I’m not from 2145.”

As I let that sink in, I saw some of the determination drain out of her face, and her mouth open unconsciously.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

“Are we okay, or should I stop there?”

She was still holding my hand, and I felt her squeeze it just a little.

“We’re good,” she said. “I did not see that coming. But we’re good. How far…? When…?”

“2092.”

Again, she took a moment to process this. “2092? You’re from the past?” I nodded. And then she made a leap I never would have predicted. “Nigel-Graham. You really are both of them.”

“Wow,” I said with no small degree of relief. “That saved me some time.”

“I want to meet him,” she said, continuing to surprise.

“You can’t. Even I’m not allowed to talk to him directly.”

She squeezed my hand again, more assertively.

“Thank you for letting me in,” she said.

I nodded, unable to tell her that if everything went to plan, I would be inviting her much further in, very soon.

thena visited again. Given the tone of our last two encounters, I was starting to wonder how long it would be before she showed up, if at all. But she did. I found her waiting for me outside my apartment. Before I had a chance to speak, she hugged me. This was unusual, but not the first time from my frame of reference, or hers.

“Hey,” I said. She didn’t let go. “Are you all right?”

She pulled back and nodded. “I want things to be better between us, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too. Sorry about last time.”

She shook her head. “Don’t. It’s okay. I just…” She looked away. “I need someone to talk to. Can we table the other stuff? For now? I do want to answer your questions. But today I just need you to be here for me.”

“Of course.”

She took my hands. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

The world blinked. We were back at the park. There was no evident reaction to our arrival. Even knowing the cause for that effect, noticing it was a bit creepy.

“This is your safe place,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

She ignored the question. “Do you remember the last time I brought you here?”

“Yes,” I said. “You wanted me to kill a dog.” As I said that, I spied the gray whippet from before. Its person was wearing the same thing I had seen her in the last time. “Wait,
that
dog. Is this the same day?”

She ignored that question as well. “Would you?” she asked.

“Would I?”

“Kill the dog. If you knew what it meant.” She stared at the animal, a blank look on her face.

“Like, right now?” I considered the possibility. Even as a thought experiment, it made me incredibly uncomfortable. “I don’t think so. Maybe if I had time to think about it.” I shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t help. I’m sorry, I can’t kill the dog.” I took a moment to consider what its day must be like right now. Beautiful weather, a person to please. He seemed like a reasonably happy dog, or at least a dog with reasons to be happy. I was going to remark on that to Athena, but when I looked at her, I saw that she had given up on the whippet.

She was looking at the stroller.

So many things went through my head at that moment. Our last conversation had started with her asking me about killing baby Hitler. This one started with her asking me if I was willing to kill a dog on a moment’s notice.

“Who is the baby?” I asked, as calmly as I knew how.

She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off the stroller. On a bench next to it sat a young couple, doubtless oblivious to us.

“No more questions today, okay?” With that, she took my hand, and held it tight. “Just be here for me. Be my rock. Just for a little bit.” We stood there in silence for perhaps half a minute.

The world blinked.

“Thank you,” she said, and handed me two small clear yellow rods, about the size of paper clips.

“What are these?” I asked.

“The missing components of the wrist modules. They’ll work now.”

I turned them over in my hand.

“Why?” was all I could think to say.

She took my face in her hands and made me look at her. “Because I am trusting you to give her the choice. And I am trusting her to say no. And because if I don’t give you these, you are going to do something even more stupid in your quest to have her.”

She hugged me again.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said, and blipped out.

I stood outside my home, too paralyzed to go inside. Too many possibilities argued in my head, some demanding immediate action on my part, others doing their best to calm me down. Over all that din, the only item that meant a damn to me at that moment was that if that was the same day I had already visited twice, it was sometime in 2115. The baby had to be at least four years too old to be Helen.

Nothing else mattered.

t took me four days to get the wrist modules up and running, and another two to test them. After that, it was just a matter of working up the courage. That took a week, at the end of which Helen decided to visit her mother. Four more days of profoundly impatient waiting later, I was ready.

I found her at her desk. It was the middle of the afternoon, well past my lunch hour. She did not expect to see me. I was greeted with the usual happy face.

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you,” I said.

“Well, that’s new.”

I sat in the chair next to her desk, and put an envelope in front of her. She made a surprised face.

“What’s this?”

“You could open it and find out.”

She steepled her fingers in front of her. “I suppose I could do that. Or perhaps I could take this, and leave it, forever sealed, perhaps framed. It could be the mystery of a lifetime. Just guessing what it might be could sustain me for years.”

“Or you could open it.”

“Or,” she said, taking it, “I could open it.”

What lay inside were tickets and hotel reservations. One week in Hawaii. Neither of us had been on a proper vacation the entire time we had known each other. I imagined the setting to be the perfect venue for my offer of time travel. She had already expressed interest, so I did not expect resistance. I just wanted it to be as perfect as it could be.

She pulled out the tickets, and read them without reaction. Setting them aside, she removed the reservation details. Five star hotel, right on the beach. We had an entire suite. She read this in silence.

“I got us a suite,” I pointed out redundantly. “We each have our own room.”

This reassurance accomplished nothing. My heart pounded, probably attempting to throw itself on the floor. How could I have miscalculated her response this badly? I considered the possibility she was pulling my leg, but then the moment stretched past any reasonable point of humor. Her eyes had gone wide, and she looked down and away.

“Please say something,” I said.

She said something. “I’m seeing someone.”

We allowed that idea to hang in the air between us, like a poisonous vapor. All my plans, all my hopes, had been crushed the very moment I finally let my guard down. Well played, curse. All I could bring myself to say was, “Of course you are.”

Of course she was.