In Times Like These (38 page)

“You can stay in here with me if you want,” she tells Francesca.

“That would be great.”

Blake and I open the room next door and find a nearly identical space inside, minus the extra window.

I turn on the heater and stand with my bare feet as close to it as I dare. A few minutes later, Cowboy Bob and Levi find us.

“Will this work out for you?” Bob leans in at the doorway.

“Definitely. Thank you,” Blake replies.

Levi looks at my bare feet and smirks a little. “Looks like you
shouldn’t a left them shoes lyin’ in the barn.”

Bob looks from my feet to Levi. “Oh. That’s right. I forgot. We still have your things.”

“You do?” Blake says.

“Yeah, you left a pile of clothes in the barn your first time through. I never knew
whom they belonged to then, but we kept them in a closet in the house. You’ll probably be wanting them back.”

“That would be phenomenal,” I say, rubbing my bare arms.

Bob leads us through the house to a back bedroom that has been converted into an office. He rolls aside a track door to the closet and shows us the shelves inside. There are a few different piles of clothes, but I recognize my blue sneakers sitting atop my department store jacket, looking slightly dusty. Francesca’s pea coat and scarf are next to it. As I collect our things, I can’t help but wonder whom the other piles belong to.

“You get a lot of people leaving stuff here?”

“Looks that way,” Bob says. “I must have gotten some additions along the way, because I’ve never seen most of these before. I’m sure I’ll meet their owners eventually.”

“You have a pretty interesting life.”

“Yeah.” He closes the closet door. “Can’t argue with you there.”

My toes feel infinitely better when I meet back up with the girls. Francesca is elated to see her coat and scarf again. She finds her hat stuffed in one of her pockets as well, but she positively swoons over getting her boots back. Mym admires them too.

We leave the girls alone to change, and once they reemerge from their room, we turn off all the lights. Bob has retained the blankets from the balloon and we each carry one as we walk behind the house and into the open expanse of prairie. Bob guides us through the darkness and the tall grass. The stars have come out in force. We reach the top of a small rise that offers a panoramic view of the prairie and sky. Bob has obviously grown accustomed to the sight, but the rest of us keep our eyes skyward, taking in the immense array of stars.

“This is better than any observatory,” Francesca says.

“I’ve never seen a view like this anywhere,” Blake adds.

We lay down the blankets and sprawl out in a circle. Cowboy Bob points
out the constellation Leo and it’s not long till we spot meteorites.

“It’s usually most active toward the morning, but this isn’t bad either,” Bob says.

Mym is lying to my left and Blake to my right. Francesca and Bob have aligned themselves facing the other direction. We point out meteorites until our arms get tired; then there are long periods of just lying in the quiet, appreciating the night.

After a while, I hear Francesca roll over and address us. “I know it’s technically only a bit after lunch for you guys, but we haven’t slept since 1986, so I’m pretty tired.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Bob says.

Blake rises slowly as well. “You coming back too?”

“I think I’m going to lie here for a bit,” I say.

Blake looks from me to Mym and then nods. “All right. I’ll see you back there.”

Once their footsteps have receded into the distance, Mym and I are left with just the sounds of the breeze through the grasses. I point out a pair of especially bright meteorites, but when I turn to look at her, I realize she’s not looking at the sky, but rather at me.

“You’re an odd one, Benjamin Travers.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s something up with you
, but I haven’t figured out just what it is yet.”

“Am I doing a better job at meeting you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time I met you, in 1986, you seemed to think I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.”

“Hmm. I think you’re doing okay. Future me might have higher standards though.” She looks back to the sky.

“Does it get really hard to keep all your relationships straight with all this time traveling?”

“It’s different with different people.” She pauses a moment and then continues. “You have to pick the ones you want to stick with.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just don’t have enough time to keep up with everyone. You might think that time travel would make it easier to keep up with friends. It really doesn’t. It makes it harder, because you end up with friends in different times. Sometimes it’s multiple versions of the same friend. There’s only one of you to go around, so you have to pick. You have to decide which relationships you are going to keep working on and make them great. It’s the only way I’ve found that works.”

“So Cowboy Bob is one of your relationships you keep?”

She nods.

“Are you and him
 . . . a thing?”

“A thing?”

“Yeah, you know, are you . . . romantically involved?”

Her smiling eyes meet mine and then go back to the stars. “No.
Bob and I . . . we just both like to float around. He’s a great friend. He always has been.”

I look back to the sky and stay quiet for a few minutes.

“You have somebody waiting for you back in 2009?” She’s watching me again.

“Hmm, n
o. Not really. I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell recently. My last relationship didn’t end very well. I’ve been just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Something different I guess.”

“You gonna try playing for the other team?”

“Not that different.”

She smiles again. “Well now when you get home, you’ll be a seasoned time traveler. You can impress all the girls.”

“Does that work for you? Playing the time traveler card?”

“
I haven’t really had to,” she says.

“Ah. I see.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I’m not saying I don’t need to. I just don’t usually get into that with people. Most guys aren’t really interested in being with a girl who can go look up their past behavior in person.”

“Ha, yeah, I guess you would be pretty hard to lie to. Maybe you just need to find guys who have less to hide.”

“Maybe.”

“You seem like you have a pretty awesome relationship with your dad. Does he usually approve of your friends?”

“He’s really great. I think he knows that I know better than to let myself get mixed up with the wrong people. I had a bit of a rebellious phase when I was a teenager. It didn’t really pay off though.”

“What do you mean?”

“You really have to stick together as time travelers, if you want to keep the people you love. You have to be pretty close, so you can’t really get too much distance from each other. I did do little things to try to assert myself sometimes.” She smiles. “One time when I was about fourteen, I went and got my tongue pierced at this little stand at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It was going to be my way of acting out, because I knew Dad would hate it. I was so excited. I completely forgot to treat it with gravitites though, so the very first time I blinked out of there to go show him, it got left behind. Probably the most short-lived rebellion ever.”

“Ha. At least it makes a good story.”

“Yeah. I laughed at the time too. It made me realize how ridiculous I was being. I just went home and gave my dad a hug instead. He still doesn’t know anything about it.”

The constellations creep through the sky above us a
s we lie there and share stories about our lives. The conversation comes easy. It’s the wee hours of the morning when I finally gather up our blankets and head back to the house. Blake is snoring softly as I crack open the door to our room. Mym gives me a wave and a smile as she disappears into her doorway.

I know I oug
ht to be exhausted, but as I lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling above me, my mind won’t stop thinking of infinite future possibilities, and the way starlight reflects in blue eyes.

My late hours don’t seem as great of an idea when Blake shakes me awake. The morning sun is already bright as we step off the porch into the barnyard. Cowboy Bob waves us over from the front of the barn and Blake and I help him carry three car batteries to the gondola. Once he’s satisfied with the way they’re wired into the jump circuit, we head back to the house and find the girls in the kitchen. Mym dishes scrambled eggs onto plates, while Francesca turns strips of bacon and some sausages in a pan.

“That smells amazing,” Blake says.

“I’m no Connie, but hopefully I can’t screw up bacon,” Francesca replies.

“Where is Connie?” Blake says. “Is she okay? She didn’t . . . die or anything did she?”

“She’s okay,” Bob replies. “On vacation. I left a note about it.”

“That’s a pretty handy system,” I say.

“Yeah, i
t cuts down on the worry.”

The clink of forks on plates is the only sound when we first sit down to eat, but then Cowboy Bob broaches the subject of the next trip.

“What time are you looking to get back home? You have a specific date and time?”

“We need to get back to right after our softball game
, preferably,” Blake says.

“It was June 10
th, around sevenish,” I say.

“Okay, we probably can’t get you there exactly on time but we can get you close. We’ll get to June of 2009 by balloon and we can probably find you something that will work as an anchor to get you back to St. Pete. We both go there often enough. If Mym doesn’t have an anchor that will work, I might even have one.”

“Actually, I think I do have one that will work for 2009,” Mym says. “I have the piece of that bank clock.”

“Oh yeah. That thing’s there for a long time,” Bob replies.

Mym wipes her mouth with her napkin and explains. “There was a bank downtown that they demolished sometime around the millennium, but they left this free-standing clock on a wooden pillar still there, so for years and years there’s just this empty parking lot and a clock. I have a whole packet of photos of it from different times. I’ve free jumped it without a photo too, and been fine. I don’t really recommend that as a general rule, but realistically, the odds of you hitting something are pretty slim. Hopefully we have some time close, but worst case scenario, you could free jump it.”

“Or we could get you to the day of, or perhaps the day before
, right here, and you can just fly home by airline again,” Bob says.

“This is going to be a great day.” Blake grins. He slaps his hand down on the table and the silverware jumps.

“Whoa,” Francesca says.

“Sorry,” Blake replies
. “I’m just really excited.” He pops up from his seat and takes his plate to the sink.

“He’s got a girlfriend waiting at home,” Francesca explains to Cowboy Bob.

“Sounds like a lucky girl,” Bob replies.

Blake smiles. “I’m the lucky one. I just need to get back. Almost there.”

After we get the dishes cleaned, Blake and I convene with Mym and Francesca in their room to look through Mym’s photos. She locates a small square of wood with an envelope taped to it.

“I cut this piece out
the day before the clock got demolished. But it had a good long run before that, including all of 2009. Hopefully I have a photo of something close to your date.” She untapes the thick envelope of photos and hands out a small pile to each of us.

I sit on the floor and flip through the backs of mine. I notice some are yellowed and are dated as far back as the seventies. Some are slightly grainy like still shots taken from a surveillance video.

“I’ve got November of 2008 as my closest.” Blake lays his pile down and holds up one shot.

“I have September 2009, but we’d be three months late,” I say.

“Jackpot!” Francesca says. She slaps a photo down on the bed. “June 10th, 2009. Looks like it’s a window from 4:30 to 6:30 pm once you convert it. It’s Dr. Quickly’s handwriting. How’s that for right on the money?”

“Nice! It’s about time we catch a lucky break,” Blake says.

I grab the photo off the bed and look at the scene of the dusty parking lot.

Home. We’re almost there
.

“Do you guys want to take those clothes home with you?” Mym asks.

“Yes,” Francesca blurts out immediately.

“Come on then. We can use Bob’s gravitizer quick before we go.”

We follow her back to the house and she leads us upstairs to the loft. There is a bedroom and an office. Inside the office is a device about the size of a photocopier. It has a shape more along the lines of a microwave however, with a large hinged door on the front. We strip off our winter clothes and shoes, and Mym shoves them inside the machine. She shuts the door and latches it, then moves to the control panel. She checks to make sure it’s plugged in, and observes a graduated sight gauge full of blue fluid.