The Invention of Everything Else (17 page)

"You stole the plane?" she interrupts, having already guessed the abrupt end to his Army career.

"The sky looked very big that night. I barely gave it a thought."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No."

"You're lucky to be alive."

"Lucky, yes, that someone left that plane unattended." Arthur was smiling as he remembered. "I haven't the slightest regret, Louisa. I was flying, alone, out over the ocean. It went off without a hitch."

"Without a hitch?"

"Well, dishonorable discharge. You know what that is?"

"I suppose I can imagine," Louisa said, though as she watched Arthur tell the story it seemed that he felt very little resembling dishonor. He smiled out the window. "What was flying like?" She leaned forward onto her elbows.

"Nothing else in the world."

"Nothing?"

"Almost nothing," he said, turning back to look at her. And Louisa, as he had guessed, understood all the vagaries in that word "almost."

The size of the hangar makes Louisa's knees feel loose and wobbly, or perhaps it is Arthur. Something has dismissed the laws of gravity, and Louisa is concerned that the breezes out here could blow her away.

Two old planes that look as though they will never fly again are
tucked away in one corner. They resemble tin toys, tiny within the tremendous hangar. Louisa's thoughts are floating somewhere up near her shoulders. She teases Arthur, warning him away from the planes.

"So here's the place," Azor says and leaves Louisa, Arthur, and Walter standing a bit dumbstruck, uncertain what they are seeing. Louisa cranes her neck about. It is very exciting, though it is hard to tell just what it all is.

"He sleeps here?" Walter asks Lou while Azor tears about, running up and down ladders to fetch a needed tool and dashing back to his worktable to quickly refer to his notes, demonstrating the vigor of a much younger man. He flits, a mosquito, moving from concern to concern, all the while ignoring the mystery that is hidden beneath a terrifically pieced-together patchwork quilt, stitched for a giant from ten or more odd blankets. The three visitors say very little. They stare, uncertain if they should offer to lend a hand. They want to, but how exactly does one help a person build a time machine? Louisa picks up one of Azor's wrenches. Azor sees her looking. He turns and, as if woken from his reverie, remembers that they are there for a demonstration. He faces the huge, cloaked mystery in the middle of it all.

"Walter," he calls. "Please," he says, summoning Walter over, "can you get that side?" Each man grabs a corner of the hodgepodge fabric, and by walking toward the hangar's back door, they drag the cover off as they move. Walter turns to stare. Everyone turns to stare. There in the middle of the hangar is a time machine. And how, Louisa asks herself, does she know it is a time machine when she has never before in her life seen a time machine? It is too wonderful to be anything else.

Fabricated from what appears to be scrap metal, the surface of the ship is pieced together in an awkward checkerboard pattern, squares of metal in all sizes and shades, some shiny, some dull, the pieces held together with rivets. The craft itself looks to Louisa like two ice cream cones turned onto their sides, bracing one center ball of silver ice cream.

"How," Walter asks, visibly floored, "did you make it?"

"Well," Azor says, "I'd stare up at the sky a lot, puzzling over the problem of time. I'd stare at my watch trying to figure something out. Staring didn't work, so I just started to build it. Then I just kept on building, working a little bit every day. You'd be surprised. You can build almost anything if you have two years, an empty airport, and a pile of
Popular Mechanics.
I would have been done even sooner if those guys from the Army had left me alone."

"Huh?"

"Oh, a couple of fellows from the Army, or at least they say they're from the Army, have been snooping around here. I have to hide out every time they show up."

"I thought you told Big Chief Ezra that you were working with the military?" Arthur says.

"I said I was 'in contact and communication' with them. That's true. They come and rifle through my stuff and I scream obscenities at them from those woods over there."

Arthur smiles. Louisa smiles. Walter clears his throat.

Though the rest of them are bundled up in their winter coats, Azor is wearing a pair of cotton pants and a tan work shirt. His sleeves are rolled up as though he doesn't feel the chill at all. Even the hair covering his head is scarce, a trace of threads pulled back and held in place with some sort of grease.

"How did you know what to do?" Arthur takes a step closer to Azor, addressing him in his deep, whispery voice.

"That's a good question. Who can you ask to teach you to build a time machine when no one has ever built a time machine before?"

"Yes," Arthur says.

Azor walks toward the ship with his chin tucked to his chest as though he is thinking it over. He starts to fuss with one of the metal plates, fingering the rivets along the edge. "No one," he says again, smiling. He continues singing his song about the monkey and the chimp. Azor's breath is visible in the hangar's cold air. Louisa, Arthur, and Walter watch the exhaled air as though it might somehow contain all the answers, all the blueprints for his design. Azor shakes his head quickly like a wet dog. "Good question," he says and claps his hands, dismissing it. "Now. Who wants to go for a spin?"

"I do," Walter says, stepping forward before the words have even left Azor's lips.

Louisa looks about the hangar. She spreads her arms slightly out to the side as if trying to slow everything down. "Dad," Louisa says, but with very little air behind it. She's not sure she wants him to go anywhere inside that metal contraption. No matter how wonderful it might be.

"What?" Walter asks.

And when she hasn't got a good answer, at least not one she can say in front of Arthur and Azor, she comes up with something to mutter. "Nothing," she says, and then, "How long will you be gone?"

"We won't be gone any time at all. We'll return just at the moment we left," Azor says.

"But have you ever gone anywhere in it before?"

"That's another good question," Azor answers, not answering at all.

"Dad," Louisa says again, but Walter looks at her, squinting his eyes as if she were a sour thought he'd like to be rid of at the moment, as if she were trying to keep him from all the possibilities, and—worst of all—as if she were acting like his mother instead of his daughter.

All three men wait on her decision. She lets out a breath, a loud sigh. She looks once at Arthur. She's not Walter's mother. Louisa nods her head. She lets go of him. At least for the moment.

"Now, if I could just ask for your assistance. We are going to have to push the craft out the back door here. See these runners? It slides right along them. It's not heavy at all. Out back is where I keep the launch pad."

"Launch?" Louisa asks, worry returning. "Azor, have you done this before?"

"What?" he asks.

"Traveled through time."

Azor tries to push the machine forward, alone. It does not move. "Why, we're traveling through time right now, dear."

Both Walter and Arthur are looking again at Louisa, waiting for her to give them a sign. She breathes heavily. She twists her mouth.

What if the time machine works? Or what if she is the only one among them all with any sense? She tucks her head and starts to push. Arthur, Azor, and Walter, following her lead, get behind the craft and shove, all of them smiling into their collars.

The metal, Louisa is surprised to realize, is warm to the touch. It is the only warm thing in this freezing cold hangar. At Azor's call they push together as though trying to dislodge an automobile from a deep, muddy rut. After a few synchronized attempts—"Ready, push!"—the craft begins to move on uncertain and creaky wheels. With a bit of momentum behind them they find it easy to push the machine, though it's almost twice Louisa's height. When they reach the back door Azor
holds up his hands for them to stop. Peeking his head out back, he looks both to the left and to the right, making certain that the coast is clear, before giving them the signal to continue pushing. They roll the craft down a short ramp to a wooden stage where Azor has painted a bright yellow
X
.

Why shouldn't it be possible, Louisa wonders. She knows a family with a television in their house, and every day airplanes, far heavier than this really rather svelte and slender craft, barrel through the sky. Airplanes even pass through different time zones. Isn't that time travel?

Walter rubs his mittened hands together, excited. He climbs up inside the belly of the machine, turning once to wave goodbye. Louisa raises her hand up to her shoulder slowly. "Good luck," she yells, though Walter has already disappeared inside the craft.

Azor walks around the machine once more, doing a last-minute safety check. He is about to seal the hatch when Louisa stops him. "Azor, I forgot to tell you something," she says, which is not entirely true. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him until right now. "That man you mentioned on the radio, Nikola Tesla?"

"Yes?"

"He lives at the New Yorker. Room 3327. I know him. I mean, I've seen him, cleaned his room, kind of. I talked to him."

"Really?" Azor says, his small head brightening as if a light bulb were peeking out from under his shirt collar.

"Yes, and I don't think he's from the future at all. Lonely, maybe, but not because he's from the future."

Azor starts laughing and his laughter makes Louisa angry.

"What's so funny?"

"I seem to remember you telling me this already."

"I've never breathed a word about him to you or even to Dad."

"I know. It's just that I remember this moment having already happened."

"You're having déjà vu."

"No. Nothing so mysterious, Lou. Time travel," he says and hunches his back like a camel, laughing. Azor disappears inside the ship and closes the hatch before she can disagree with him again.

Arthur has climbed back up the ramp and arranged a wooden crate so as to fashion a front-row seat for the two of them at the top of the
ramp. She sits down beside him, perched atop the crate. Their arms touch. They wait, stretching and kicking their legs every now and then. They wait for something to happen.

Louisa waves goodbye again, though they have already sealed themselves inside the vessel and cannot see her.

Then there is silence, a long silence. Arthur and Louisa continue to wait. The wind blows very cold of the ocean. Louisa expects to hear some sort of booster engine engage, expects a roar, but there is no sound except for the tinkling of icicles as they break off the eaves of the metal hangar. Every now and again the walls of the old building ping with cold and settle softly.

"What do you think is happening?"

"I don't know," Arthur says. "Maybe it's not working."

"Or maybe they decided not to go."

"Or maybe they've already gone somewhere and returned. Maybe it moves so fast we didn't even see it."

"Maybe."

They wait a bit longer. They can't hear anything from inside the ship, no voices, no mechanical whirring, just the loud caw of a hungry seagull that makes a mad flight across the field looking for something to eat.

"So how do they know the way home?"

And for just a moment Louisa is confused until she realizes that he doesn't mean Azor and Walter but rather the pigeons again. How do the pigeons know their way home? She still doesn't have an answer. "Maybe," Louisa proposes, "they're little time machines themselves. They always end up wherever they left from."

"Maybe," Arthur agrees quite seriously. "That seems as good a reason as any I've heard."

"You've been doing research?"

"Yes. Since I saw you on the subway."

"What have you heard?"

"They navigate by smell or by the stars. Magnetic force fields or some sort of psychic navigation. Or magic even. Not really one good answer. That's why I wondered what you thought."

"I don't know," Louisa says, looking down at her shoes. "I always just thought they did it and that was that."

"Magic, then."

"That's magic?" she asks, realizing that magic is a very unsatisfying reason for anything.

They are alone and the time machine is simply sitting there, doing very little. Louisa turns to look at Arthur and finds that his eyes are already on her. A long stare takes up residence between them, a stare that is thick with uncertain words. Each question is presented in Arthur's face. What is a pupil, an iris, an eye? What makes up the air he exhales? How does hair grow? How does skin feel? Why does the opening of his mouth, his full lips, pull her toward that darkness? What is the chemical compound of his saliva?

"Louisa," Arthur says, still looking, still speaking in his throaty whisper. "About what Azor said the other day." She looks away. Arthur stands and begins to pace back and forth in front of their wooden crate.

"Azor said many things." Louisa looks down at the craft. It is still just sitting there. Arthur stops walking. He stands in front of her for a moment before dropping down to his knees, not in a desperate way but in a very controlled, careful, surprising way. Still she looks away. She doesn't know where else to look. She thinks if she makes eye contact with Arthur it might melt her brain.

"Louisa," he starts again, waiting for her to look. She raises her eyes to meet his. "About what Azor said." His hands are knotted behind his back. "Louisa." He is speaking so softly she almost misses him say her name. Rather suddenly, he lowers his head down into her lap.

Louisa stares at the top of his scalp. The edge of the time machine is visible just beyond. She can see Arthur's pale part and the chaotic pattern of his dark hairs. She thinks she can even smell the scent of sleep rising up from his part, that ancient smell of bodies still warm underneath the covers, just about to wake up. Where does it come from? She moves her nose closer to his part, sniffing him. He smells like a man.

The wind blows. Her nose is running. Quickly, raising her sleeve up to her nose, she wipes.