Millennium (23 page)

The menu was in French. Guess what? She spoke it like a native. So I let her order, hoping she wouldn’t saddle me with snails or eels or something.

Our drinks arrived at a close approximation of the speed of light. I could see in our waiter’s eyes that Louise had made another conquest.

Somebody started playing a piano. Louise paused, and I saw that look again. She was consulting the memory banks, but she couldn’t have had to look hard for that one.

“‘As Time Goes By,’” she said.

“Here’s looking at
you
, kid,” I said, and raised my glass.

She drained hers neat. I must have stared.

“I needed that,” she said.

I motioned for the waiter, and sure enough, he’d been looking at Louise and some of her magic rubbed off on me, because he was there very quickly with another of the same.

“It certainly looked like it.” I needed one, too, but I sipped
at mine. She sat sort of sideways in the chair, one arm draped along the back, her legs stretched out to the side of the table. She seemed totally relaxed, and more beautiful than ever. She cocked her head slightly.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Don’t get mad, but I’ve got to say it. You’re very beautiful, and I’m doing my best not to stare too much.”

She dimpled at that, and accepted it with a wry nod.

“I can hardly believe my good fortune.”

The smile faded a little. “I’m not sure how I should take that.”

“What I mean is, I know anybody could see what I see in you, but I’m having a hard time understanding what you see in me.”

She sat up a little straighter, and her smile faded some more. Actually, by then it was almost a frown.

“At the risk of letting you think I was feeling sorry for you, you looked lonely and depressed. You looked like you needed a friend. Well, so do I, and I don’t have any. I wanted to get my mind off the things I saw today and I thought it probably wouldn’t do you any harm, either. But if you—”

“Wait, I’m sorry I said—”

“No, let me finish. I’m not doing you any favors. And I’m not out to get anything from you. I’m not a reporter. I’m not a disaster freak. Don’t talk about me like I’m your ‘good fortune.’ I’m me, and when I accepted your invitation it was because I was impressed at how you handled all those fools at the press conference and how you seem to be working so hard at unraveling the mistakes made by the people I work for and I thought I might like to get to know you.”

She looked me up and down, clinically.

“Of course, I could have been wrong.”

I hadn’t until that moment thought she might have been a reporter. I still didn’t think so. But I wasn’t spending a lot of time worrying about it one way or the other, as all I could see just then was something beautiful in danger of being wrecked by my suspicions.

“I wish I hadn’t said that,” I said.

“Well, you did.” She sighed, and looked away from me. “Maybe I did come down on you a bit hard.”

“I was asking for it.”

“It’s been a hard day.” She looked at her second drink. She tossed it down. I did the same, hoping her opinion of her own capacity for liquor was close to the truth. It wouldn’t be much fun if she got sloppy drunk.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“You’re certainly direct.”

“It saves time.”

“I’m forty-four.”

“Good God,” she said. “Were you worried that I was too young for you? Is that what you couldn’t figure out?”

“Part of it.”

“I’m thirty-three. Does that make you feel better?”

“Yeah. I figured you for twenty-six.” That wasn’t quite true. When I first saw her I thought she was a lot younger, and later I thought she might be a little older. Twenty-six was splitting the difference.

“I wish I could just wipe out the last couple minutes and start all over with you,” I told her.

“I’m willing.” She lit another cigarette from the butt of the one she had been smoking. It was the only thing about her I didn’t like, but you can’t have everything.

“You were right about me,” I said. It wasn’t as hard to say as I’d thought it would be. “I am lonely, and I’ve been depressed. Or I was. I felt a lot better as soon as you bumped into me.”

“Even with coffee in your lap?”

“I meant later, on the escalator—”

She reached over the table and touched my hand.

“I know what you meant. I hate airports in strange towns. You feel so anonymous. All those people.”

“Especially this time of the year.”

“I know. They’re all frowning. It’s better out at the gates. People are happier out there, meeting the people they came to
pick up. But I hate to work the main terminal. Everybody’s in a hurry, and there are always computer problems. Reservations getting lost…you know.”

I felt a chill there. What if she was a reporter?

“When they pulled me off the ticket desk and sent me out to the hanger I was almost relieved, can you imagine that? I mean, after they promised me there wouldn’t be any dead bodies out there.”

I didn’t say anything. If she wanted horror stories, this was the time to ask me about them.

“But we weren’t going to talk about work,” she said. “Except I would like to know how a man who’s only forty-four years old came to have such a sad face.”

“I put it together here and there over the years. But you don’t want to hear about that.”

So that’s exactly what we talked about: my life and hard times. I tried to stop myself but it was no good. I didn’t get weepy about it, thank all the gods, and beyond a certain point and a certain number of drinks I can’t recall exactly what I
did
say except I’m sure it wasn’t about the details of my work. At least we stuck to that part of the agreement. Mostly I told her about what the job was doing to me. About what had happened to my marriage, about waking up with a fear of falling, and the dream where I’m moving through this long dark tunnel full of flashing lights.

*    *    *

The drinks didn’t hurt anything. By the time dinner came we’d each had quite a few, and I was feeling as relaxed and unguarded as I ever get. There’s a wonderful feeling of release in talking about things you’ve held inside too long.

But when the food arrived I calmed down enough to realize what we’d been having could hardly be called a conversation. Her part in it had been to provide the ears and a sympathetic comment or two.

“So how do you like your job?” I asked, and she laughed. I
met her eyes for a moment, and saw no reproach there. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been carrying on like this.”

“Hush and eat your dinner. I don’t mind listening. I told you, I thought you looked like you needed a friend.”

“You said you did, too. I haven’t been a very good one so far.”

“You needed to talk worse than I did. I’m flattered that you chose me to talk to. I must have an honest face, or something.”

“Or something.”

I’d almost forgotten what it was like, feeling good about myself, and I was grateful. So I asked her about herself and she told me a few things while we ate.

Her father had a lot of money. She had a degree in art from some college back east. She hadn’t grown up thinking she’d ever have to support herself. She married the right guy, who turned out to be not so right after all. She left him and had been trying to make it on her own. There’d been a miscarriage.

I gathered the art career was a failure. She’d been shocked to discover how hard it was to make a living, but she did not want to return to her father. He kept sending her gifts that she didn’t have the willpower to refuse, like the car outside.

She told the whole story very glibly, and finished up before the dessert came. Every time I asked for a detail she had it ready. It was fascinating, really, because about halfway through the story I realized I didn’t believe a word of it.

You know what? I didn’t give a shit. By then I had a pleasant glow that was a long way from being drunk but felt very nice indeed. She’d matched me drink for drink and, as far as I could see, was completely sober.

“Can you fly?” I asked her.

She looked startled, then suspicious.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you could.”

“I’ve flown small planes.”

“I thought so.”

She’d hardly touched her dessert. Come to think of it, she’d
hardly touched anything, though the food was excellent. And she’d smoked all the time. She’d gone through one pack and put a dent in another.

I started to think about riding back to the airport with her in that rolling bomb. And I wondered why she’d lied to me. Don’t ask me how I knew she had been lying; I
knew.

“Can you take me home?” I said.

“I don’t know if anyone can do that, Bill. I’ll try.”

*    *    *

She did all right. Maybe she’d realized my terror on the way to the restaurant, because she slowed down considerably.

Then I was dropped off in front of the hotel, like a coed at the dorm. I felt a little funny about it, but I figured I shouldn’t come on too heavy. I expected to see her in the morning, anyway.

I found my room in a warm glow that lasted until I had the door shut behind me. Then I was once again in a strange hotel room, far from home, alone. I wished I had a drink, knew it was the worst possible thing for me, and wished for it again. I dialed room service and then, in a rare display of willpower, hung up before they answered. I opened the drapes and looked out at the lights. I sat by the window.

I’m sure I would have gone to sleep there in that chair, but about twenty minutes later there was a knock on my door. I almost didn’t answer; it had to be Tom or somebody from the investigation with a problem I wasn’t up to solving.

But I did go to the door and when I opened it Louise was standing there with a paper sack and two glasses, trying to look cheerful and not doing a very good job of it.

“I thought you might like a nightcap,” she said, and started to cry.

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

“Sherman, set the dial on the Wayback Machine for the evening of December twelfth, nineteen eighty-something-or-other.”

“You got it, Mr. Peabody,” Sherman piped up.

Sherman. The bastard.

*    *    *

Our story thus far…

If you’ll recall, when we left our heroine she was heroically passed out at the mere mention of an historically insignificant miscarriage. That the miscarriage occurred a couple years after the baby was born was not worthy of special remark; it happened all the time, these days. In fact, now it was happening
every
time. I’d had my baby for two years. I suppose that could be seen as good fortune.

What’s Fortune? A magazine. What does it cost? Ten cents. But I’ve only got a nickel. That’s your good fortune.

If I get any heavier I’ll drop through the floor. Historical allusions, ten cents per kilobyte, courtesy of your local data-dumper. Nineteen-eighties our specialty.

My head was crammed with so much data about the era that
I could hardly clear my throat without coming up with an advertising jingle, movie synopsis, television show, or hoary joke.

“Sherman, what I am is a jokey whore.”

“Don’t fuck him unless you want to, Louise.”

“I don’t want to!”

The Gate opened up, and I…stepped through.

I sat through most of his news conference. It was fully as boring as I’d expected it to be, though of course we’d not been able to observe it since I was sitting there exerting temporal censorship.

There was only one bad moment. At the end of the press conference Mayer started asking the damndest questions. Looking for unusual data, he said. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it. And by the way, Mister Smith, have you found anything unusual having to do with time?

I nearly swallowed my cigarette.

What did that bastard know?

*    *    *

I spotted Smith across the crowded airport lobby. I didn’t have much trouble reaching him as he stepped on the escalator, though a couple people who hadn’t gotten out of my way didn’t like my methods. I didn’t care. They were all my ancestors, but I’d had it with ancestors. I’d spent my life trying to make a future for them, and look where it had got me.

*    *    *

We had worked hard on this moment, Sherman and I.

(This was after,
long
after, he threw water on my face or pinched my earlobe or slapped me or whatever he did to bring me around. My memories of that period are rather vague and I’d just as soon not discuss them, thank you. My memories of the hours following that, when Sherman and I had discussed the kid, are clear as can be, and I’d just as soon not discuss them either. I’m supposed to tell everything, but there are limits.)

“Meet cute,” Sherman had said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a term popular in various eras of twentieth-century Hollywood,
describing devices whose purpose is to effect the first plot element of the favorite story of the time, which began ‘boy meets girl.’”

“‘Boy loses girl, boy gets girl,’ right?”

“Right. We needn’t concern ourselves too much with the second part. He’ll lose you without our help, in the natural order of things, and of course he can’t get you in the end.”

“Whatever happened to happy endings?” I asked. “Don’t answer. They died out about the time I was born. So give me an example of meeting cute.”

“Veronica Lake as a disillusioned woman on her way out of Hollywood, who spends her last dollar on ham and eggs for Joel McRae, who turns out to be a famous director dressed as a bum to gather material for a movie he plans to make.
Sullivan’s Travels
, Preston Sturges, 1942.”

“You’ve been watching a lot of movies,” I said.

“About as many as you. Of course, my data-dumping capacity is larger, and I have better access to it.”

“You were thinking along these lines when you told me to dump the coffee in his lap.”

“Yes. Now he knows you. We must give him an opportunity to know you better.”

“So what’s your idea?”

*    *    *