The Time Traveler's Wife

s "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 Raw and The Cooked," 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 l'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-climbing 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. I 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'l