The time traveler's wife (38 page)

"Holy cats." Gomez stands in the
doorway. I see Charisse standing behind him on tiptoe, trying to see over his
shoulder. "Wow," she says, pushing past Gomez. Henry throws a dish
cloth over his prone duplicate's genitalia.

"Oh, Henry, don't worry about it, I've
drawn a gazillion models—"

"I try to retain a modicum of
privacy," Henry snaps. Charisse recoils as though he's slapped her.
"Listen, Henry-—" Gomez rumbles. I can't think with all this going
on. "Everyone please shut up," I demand, exasperated. To my surprise
they do. "What happens?" I ask Henry, who has been lying on the floor
grimacing and trying not to move. He opens his eyes and stares up at me for a
moment before answering.

"I'll be gone in a few minutes," he
finally says, softly. He looks at Henry. "I want a drink." Henry
bounds up and comes back with a juice glass full of lack Daniels. I support
Henry's head and he manages to down about a third of it.

"Is that wise?" Gomez asks.

"Don't know. Don't care," Henry
assures him from the floor. "This hurts like hell." He gasps.
"Stand back! Close your eyes—"

"Why?—" Gomez begins. Henry is
convulsing on the floor as though he is being electrified. His head is nodding
violently and he yells "Clare!" and I close my eyes. There is a noise
like a bed sheet being snapped but much louder and then there is a cascade of
glass and china everywhere and Henry has vanished.

"Oh my God," says Charisse. Henry and
I stare at each other. That was different, Henry. That was violent and ugly.
What is happening to you? His white face tells me that he doesn't know either.
He inspects the whiskey for glass fragments and then drinks it down.

"What's with all the glass?" Gomez
demands, gingerly brushing himself off. Henry stands up, offers me his hand.
He's covered with a fine mist of blood and bits of crockery and crystal. I
stand up and look at Charisse. She has a big cut on her face; blood is running
down her cheek like a tear.

"Anything that's not part of my body gets
left behind," Henry explains. He shows them the gap where he had a tooth
pulled because he kept losing the filling. "So whenever I went back to, at
least all the glass is gone, they won't have to sit there and pick it out with
tweezers,"

"No, but we will," Gomez says, gently
removing glass from Charisse's hair. He has a point.

LIBRARY SCIENCE
FICTION

Wednesday, March 8, 1995 (Henry is 31)

Henry: Matt and I are playing Hide and Seek in
the stacks in Special Collections. He's looking for me because we are supposed
to be giving a calligraphy Show and Tell to a Newberry Trustee and her Ladies'
Lettering Club. I'm hiding from him because I'm trying to get all of my clothes
on my body before he finds me.

"Come on, Henry, they're waiting,"
Matt calls from somewhere in Early American Broadsides. I'm pulling on my pants
in Twentieth-Century French livres d'artistes. "lust a second, I just want
to find this one thing," I call. I make a mental note to learn
ventriloquism for moments like this. Matt's voice is coming closer as he says,
"You know Mrs. Connelly is going to have kittens, just forget it, let's
get out there—" He sticks his head into my row as I'm buttoning my shirt.
"What are you doing?"

"Sorry?"

"You've been running around naked in the
stacks again, haven't you?" "Um, maybe." I try to sound
nonchalant.

"Jesus, Henry. Give me the cart."
Matt grabs the book-laden cart and starts to wheel it off toward the Reading
Room. The heavy metal door opens and closes. I put on my socks and shoes, knot
my tie, dust off my jacket and put it on. Then I walk out into the Reading
Room, face Matt over the long classroom table surrounded by middle-aged rich
ladies, and begin to discourse on the various book hands of lettering genius
Rudolf Koch. Matt lays out felts and opens portfolios and interjects
intelligent things about Koch and by the end of the hour he seems like maybe
he's not going to kill me this time. The happy ladies toddle off to lunch. Matt
and I move around the table, putting books back into their boxes and onto the
cart.

"I'm sorry about being late," I say.

"If you weren't brilliant," Matt
replies, "we would have tanned you and used you to rebind Das Manifest der
Nacktkultur by now."

"There's no such book."

"Wanna bet?"

"No." We wheel the cart back to the
stacks and begin reshelving the portfolios and books. I buy Matt lunch at the
Beau Thai, and all is forgiven, if not forgotten.

Tuesday, April 11, 1995 (Henry is 31)

Henry: There is a stairwell in the Newberry
Library that I am afraid of. It is located toward the east end of the long
hallway that runs through each of the four floors, bisecting the Reading Rooms
from the stacks. It is not grand, like the main staircase with its marble
treads and carved balustrades. It has no windows. It has fluorescent lights,
cinderblock walls, concrete stairs with yellow safety strips. There are metal
doors with no windows on each floor. But these are not the things that frighten
me. The thing about this stairwell that I don't like one bit is the Cage. The
Cage is four stories tall and runs up the center of the stairwell. At first
glance it looks like an elevator cage, but there is no elevator and never was.
No one at the Newberry seems to know what the Cage is for, or why it was
installed. I assume it's there to stop people from throwing themselves from the
stairs and landing in a broken heap. The Cage is painted beige. It is made of
steel. When I first came to work at the Newberry, Catherine gave me a tour of
all the nooks and crannies. She proudly showed me the stacks, the artifact
room, the unused room in the east link where Matt practices his singing,
McAllister's amazingly untidy cubicle, the Fellows' carrels, the staff lunch
room. As Catherine opened the door to the stairwell, on our way up to
Conservation, I had a moment of panic. I glimpsed the crisscrossed wire of the
Cage and balked, like a skittish horse.

"What's that?" I asked Catherine.

"Oh, that's the Cage," she replied,
casually.

"Is it an elevator?"

"No, it's just a cage. I don't think it
does anything."

"Oh." I walked up to it, looked in.
"Is there a door down there?"

"No. You can't get into it."

"Oh." We walked up the stairs and
continued on with our tour. Since then, I have avoided using that stairway. I
try not to think about the Cage; I don't want to make a big deal out of it. But
if I ever end up inside it, I won't be able to get out.

Friday, June 9, 1995 (Henry is 31)

Henry: I materialize on the floor of the Staff
Men's Room on the fourth floor of the Newberry. I've been gone for days, lost
in 1973, rural Indiana, and I'm tired, hungry, and unshaven; worst of all, I've
got a black eye and I can't find my clothes. I get up and lock myself in a
stall, sit down and think. While I'm thinking someone comes in, unzips, and
stands in front of the urinal pissing. When he's done he zips and then stands
for a moment and right then I happen to sneeze.

"Who's there?" says Roberto. I sit
silently. Through the space between the door and the stall I see Roberto slowly
bend down and look under the door at my feet.

"Henry?" he says. "I will have
Matt bring your clothes. Please get dressed and come to my office."

I slink into Roberto's office and sit down
across from him. He's on the phone, so I sneak a look at his calendar. It's
Friday. The clock above the desk says 2:17. I've been gone for a little more
than twenty-two hours. Roberto places the phone gently in its cradle and turns
to look at me. "Shut the door," he says. This is a mere formality
because the walls of our offices don't actually go all the way up to the
ceiling, but I do as he says. Roberto Calle is an eminent scholar of the
Italian Renaissance and the Head of Special Collections. He is ordinarily the
most sanguine of men, golden, bearded, and encouraging; now he gazes at me
sadly over his bifocals and says, "We really can't have this, you
know."

"Yes," I say. "I know."

"May I ask how you acquired that rather impressive
black eye?" Roberto's voice is grim. "I think I walked into a
tree."

"Of course. How silly of me not to think
of that." We sit and look at each other. Roberto says, "Yesterday I
happened to notice Matt walking into your office carrying a pile of clothing.
Since it was not the first time I had seen Matt walking around with clothing I
asked him where he had gotten this particular pile, and he said that he had
found it in the Men's Room. And so I asked him why he felt compelled to
transport this pile of clothing to your office and he said that it looked like
what you were wearing, which it did. And since no one could find you, we simply
left the clothing on your desk."

He pauses as though I'm supposed to say
something, but I can't think of anything appropriate. He goes on, "This
morning Clare called and told Isabelle you had the flu and wouldn't be
in." I lean my head against my hand. My eye is throbbing. "Explain
yourself," Roberto demands. It's tempting to say, Roberto, I got stuck in
1973 and I couldn't get out and I was in Muncie, Indiana, for days living in a
barn and I got decked by the guy who owned the barn because he thought I was
trying to mess with his sheep. But of course I can't say that. I say, "I
don't really remember, Roberto. I'm sorry."

"Ah. Well, I guess Matt wins the
pool."

"What pool?"

Roberto smiles, and I think that maybe he's not
going to fire me. "Matt bet that you wouldn't even attempt to explain.
Amelia put her money on abduction by aliens. Isabelle bet that you were
involved in an international drug-running cartel and had been kidnapped and
killed by the Mafia."

"What about Catherine?"

"Oh, Catherine and I are convinced that
this is all due to an unspeakably bizarre sexual kink involving nudity and
books."

I take a deep breath. "It's more like
epilepsy," I say. Roberto looks skeptical. "Epilepsy? You disappeared
yesterday afternoon. You have a black eye and scratches all over your face and
hands. I had Security searching the building top to bottom for you yesterday;
they tell me you are in the habit of taking off your clothing in the
stacks."

I stare at my fingernails. When I look up,
Roberto is staring out the window. "I don't know what to do with you,
Henry. I would hate to lose you; when you are here and fully clothed you can be
quite...competent. But this just will not do!"

We sit and look at each other for minutes.
Finally Roberto says, "Tell me it won't happen again "

"I can't. I wish I could."

Roberto sighs, and waves his hand at the door.
"Go. Go catalogue the Quigley Collection, that'll keep you out of trouble
for a while." (The Quigley Collection, recently donated, is over two
thousand pieces of Victorian ephemera, mostly having to do with soap.) I nod my
obedience and stand up. As I open the door Roberto says, "Henry. Is it so
bad that you can't tell me?"

I hesitate. "Yes " I say. Roberto is
silent. I close the door behind me and walk to my office. Matt is sitting
behind my desk, transferring stuff from his calendar into mine. He looks up as
I come in. "Did he fire you?" Matt asks.

"No," I reply.

"Why not?"

"Dunno."

"Odd. By the way, I did your lecture for
the Chicago Hand Bookbinders." "Thanks. Buy you lunch tomorrow?"

"Sure." Matt checks the calendar in
front of him. "We've got a Show and Tell for a History of Typography class
from Columbia in forty-five minutes." I nod and start rummaging in my desk
for the list of items we're about to show. "Henry?"

"Yeah?"

"Where were you?" "Muncie,
Indiana. 1973."

"Yeah, right." Matt rolls his eyes
and grins sarcastically. "Never mind."

Sunday, December 17, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry
is 8)

Clare: I'm visiting Kimy. It's a snowy Sunday
afternoon in December. I've been Christmas shopping, and I'm sitting in Kimy's
kitchen drinking hot chocolate, warming my feet by the baseboard radiator,
regaling her with stories of bargains and decorations. Kimy plays solitaire
while we talk; I admire her practiced shuffle, her efficient slap of red card
on black card. A pot of stew simmers on the stove. There's a noise in the
dining room; a chair falls over. Kimy looks up, turns.

"Kimy" I whisper. "There's a
little boy under the dining room table."

Someone giggles. "Henry?" Kimy calls.
No answer. She gets up and stands in the doorway. "Hey, buddy. Stop that.
Put some clothes on, mister." Kimy disappears into the dining room.
Whispering. More giggles. Silence. Suddenly a small naked boy is staring at me
from the doorway, and just as suddenly he vanishes. Kimy comes back in, sits
down at the table, and resumes her game.