In Times Like These (57 page)

“Will you guys
give me just a second?” I move to Mym and grab her forearm. “Can I talk to you real quick?” She lets me pull her into the library.

Mercutio and
Tybalt are squawking at each other on top of their cage. I move us away from the racket they’re making and face Mym near the table with the world map on it. “So this is it?” I say.

“Yeah. I guess so,” she replies.

“What happened?” I say. “Am I completely misreading things here? Was there never anything else? When I first met you, you made it sound like we were . . . I don’t know, something more.”

“That was before,” she says.

“Before what?” I say.

“Before I put you through all this. Before I made you come back and almost get yourself and your friends killed.”

“But it worked out,” I say.

“Did it?” s
he says. “Blake’s out there with a gunshot wound in his neck, you got injured and almost died, Francesca got beaten and held hostage. . .” Her eyes are starting to tear up.

“Hey.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

She brushes a tear from her eye and looks away. “How can this ever be okay?”

“We’re all alive and going home together. It’s going to be fine.”

She looks back to my face. “You don’t hate me for this? For putting you through all this?”

“No. Why would I? I me
an yeah, it kind of sucked for parts of it, but I’m not mad about it. I don’t think any of us are. We’re just glad to be alive, and going home. If anything, we’re happy. You really helped us out back in Montana.”

“That was when I was younger.
I didn’t know any better then. I didn’t know about any of this.”

“It doesn’t matter. You still helped. You’d never even met us, and you helped us. That counts for a lot.”

Mym wipes away her tears again. She sniffs. “I just didn’t know how you would be once you knew what I’d done.”

“T
his is me knowing,” I say. “And I’m not mad. I’m frankly relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Yeah, I thought you just stopped liking—”

Francesca pokes her
head around the corner. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but your dad is seeming kind of impatient for us to get going.”

Mym nods and wipes at her eyes again.

“Okay,” I say.
Mym gives me a smile. I reach out my hand and she brushes my fingertips with hers.

Okay. Now we’re back in business.

I join the others gathered around Quickly’s anchor. Mr. Cameron has provided a stool to set it on, and everyone extends a chronometer hand to touch it.

“March 18
th, 1300 Zulu, Ben,” Dr. Quickly says.

I dial in my chronometer settings without having to look. Francesca raises her eyebrows at me. I give her a wink.

“So, Doctor,” Francesca says. “I know you’re taking us home to our own timestream, but is there any chance I can talk you into making a couple quick stops first?”

Dr. Quickly looks up from assessing
our chronometers. “Yes. I suppose that could be arranged. Let’s just get to my office first. We can sort it all out from there. On the count of three now.”

I look up to Mym watching me from next to Mr. Cameron and Robbie. Her eyes are bright and smiling.
Wait, how am I going to find her again?

Quickly counts off. “One, two, three.”

We blink.

<><><>

The Friday night crowd at the Green Dragon Tavern is lively. I open the door for Francesca and shut it behind me to keep out the winter chill. A quick scan of the patrons shows me the one we’re after. I gesture toward the blonde head protruding from a booth near the kitchen. “He’s in the back.”

I watch Francesca cut through the crowd from my position near the doorway. Cole is wiping down the area near the taps at the far end of the bar. Our eyes meet briefly
, but he shows no sign of recognizing me. I can’t hear what Francesca says as she reaches the booth at the back, but Guy rises out of the booth with a drunken grin on his face. Francesca makes a comment and his smile wavers. He never sees Francesca’s knee as it drives upward into his crotch. He crumples to the floor in a heap. A collective “Oooh!” goes up from the crowd around them, and a quartet of girls at a high top near the bar starts clapping.

Francesca next strides across the room and walks straight past a server and behind the bar. I see Cole reach his hands down and cover his groin protectivel
y. Francesca reaches her arms around his neck however, and stretching up on her tip toes, puts a hand to the back of his head, and plants a long kiss on his lips. Cole’s hands slowly move around to her back. Francesca eventually releases him and gives him a nod. Without another word, she turns on her heel and walks back through the crowd to me.

“Okay. We’re done here.”

I open the door and we exit back into the snow.

<><><>

It’s still raining on the softball field. We’re standing in the visitor’s dugout, looking across home plate at the dugout we left from. The powerline is still popping and snapping around the bench.

“I’m
gonna need to do something about that,” Quickly says. “I can’t have a rash of displaced power company employees bouncing around the universe when they try to fix it.” He turns to us and smiles. He points a spectrometer at the bench we just arrived on and then back to us. He shows us the frequency readings.

“They match,” Francesca says.

“Just like advertised,” he replies.

Home.
For real this time.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Blake says. He extends his hand.

Quickly shakes it. “I should be thanking you. Without you, I wouldn’t have a timestream to go back to.”

“What are you going to do now?” Francesca says. “Will we see you again?”

“Oh, there’s plenty to keep an old scientist busy in this world,” Quickly replies. “And lots of good people to keep in touch with.”

“Do we get to be some of your good people?” Carson says.

“The best,” Quickly replies.

I remove my chronometer from my wrist and hold it out to him. “I guess we won’t be needing these anymore.”

Quickly crosses his arms and gives my outstretched hand an appraising stare. “Why don’t you hang on to that, Benjamin. The universe is a big place, and time is even bigger. You never know when you might need to get in a little exploring.” He winks.

“We also still owe you a lot of money,” Francesca says. “We probably disposed of a good hundred thousand dollars of yours.”

“Then you still owe me nothing,” Quickly replies. “Things that are worth nothing are easy to come by.”

I smile and snap the chronometer back on my arm. I extend my good hand toward him. “You really are amazing.”

“You flatter me, but I won’t hold it against you,” Quickly replies. “One does need a good bit of flattery from time to time.”

Francesca steps forward and wraps her arms around him. “We’ll never forget this.”

He pats her shoulder with affection. “Nor shall I.” When Francesca steps back, Dr. Quickly walks to one of the support beams and grips it with his chronometer hand. He turns and faces us.

“How will we find
you again if we need you?” I ask.

Quickly places his other hand on his chronometer. “In a universe full of variables, you can still find yourself some constants. The rest is trial and error. But if you come looking, I’ll bet you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
He gives us one last smile and then he’s gone.

We file out into the rain. We pause near the home dugout and look at our softball gear still lying
around the bench. The power line crackles near the entrance. A puddle of rain has spread throughout the dugout floor.

“Screw it,” Carson says. “We can buy more equipment for the team.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to go on that ride again,” Francesca says.

Our cars are still in the parking lot. I pause near Robbie’s.
“You still have that letter for his mom?”

Francesca nods as she tries to shield her face from the rain. “Yeah, I guess I’ll need to go over there after I get dried off. I don’t want his car getting towed.”

“You need help?” I say.

“No. I think I’ll be okay. It might be better if I talked to her alone. I know her pretty well.”

“I can go with you,” Carson offers. “I know her pretty well too.”

Francesca looks at him and then nods. “Okay.”
I catch the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

“You know where I’ll be,” Blake says.

I give him a hug. “Tell Mallory I said hi. I’m sorry you don’t have a ring this time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Blake says. “She won’t need a ring to know how I feel.”

“Good luck,” Francesca says, giving him a hug as well. “You going to be able to drive with that sling?”

“It’s just a couple of blocks. I think I can make it.” He backs up a few steps and gives us a salute.

“See ya, man,” I say. He turns and jogs for his Jeep.

Francesca steps over and hugs me next. I wrap my arms around her. “Thank you for coming back for me,” she mumbles from the vicinity of my chest.

“No problem, Fresca. That’s what friends are for.”

“You really
are pretty great.” She tilts her head up to look at me. “I probably ought to cut back on all the mean things I say about you all the time.”

I smile down at her. “Y
ou’re pretty great yourself. And intimidating. If I ever need to get in a fight with any more murderous thugs, I know who I want in my corner.”

She squeezes me and lets me go. She pulls her little fabric coin purse out of her pocket and retrieves her car key. “Maybe next time I come to on
e of your softball games, you’ll actually play a game.”

“T
here’s always next week.”

Carson slaps my hand and pulls me into a hug. “See you
, dude. Thanks for coming back to save me.”

“Hey,
I owed you one, remember?”

“I still think I could’ve taken that guy. I’d like to know how he got the best of me.”

“Alternate universe, man. And you were probably out of shape from being so rich and famous.” I smile. “No way he could beat you in your prime.”

“True story,” Carson says. He bumps my fist and follows Fra
ncesca toward her car. She gives me a wave from the driver’s seat.

I find my car keys in my glove box where I left them. When I pull up to the street in front of my apartment, I sit there for a moment and stare
at my door. The rain has stopped, but the trees are dripping large droplets into the puddles in the street. I look around my truck but realize I’ve got nothing to take in. I take the stairs two at a time. When I swing open the door, I find my water bottles and work shoes still on the floor. It feels like I’ve been gone forever. It’s only been a couple of hours.

I close the door behind me and feel suddenly at a loss for what to do. I pick up the
empty water bottles and carry them to the kitchen counter. I come back and nudge my work shoes over by the door where I won’t forget them.
Work
. I walk back to the refrigerator and read the calendar I have stuck to the freezer.
Damn. I’m supposed to be at work at 7 am tomorrow.

I open the refrigerator. The usual condiments gree
t me, but not much else. Closing the door and reaching into my pocket, I extract a zip lock bag that has one last survivor from Connie’s batch of chocolate chip cookies.
They were worth the return visit
. I consider saving it as a memento of the trip, but after a couple seconds of deliberation, pull it from the bag and eat it.

I trudge back to the living room and
collapse onto the couch. I stare at the blank television.
How am I going to explain to anyone what happened to me? No one will ever believe it.

With my good hand, I reach around on the couch next to me for the remote. I pick up my
junkmail and look under it. It’s not there. Surveying the room, I spot it on the edge of the kitchen counter.
Well forget that.

I begin to wad up the junk mail advertisements as I eye the trashcan in the corner.
Bet I can make it from here
. My junkmail won’t compress as easily as I’d hoped. I feel some resistance and give the ads a shake. An envelope flings out and sails into the open area on the floor between the kitchen and me. It lands with the clack of something solid.

I force myself
off the couch and check the rest of the ads. There are no more surprises. I drop them onto the coffee table and walk over to the envelope on the floor. There is a slight bulge at one end. Stooping to pick it up, I turn it over in my hands to check for some identification. It’s blank. I slip my finger in one end of the envelope and tear. Giving it a shake, a silver, horse-head chess piece tumbles into my palm. As I examine it, my heart starts to race. I reach inside the envelope. The photo is of the stained glass window and the other chess pieces. I immediately flip it over and read the description on the back, written out in Mym’s distinctive handwriting. “A great game in the making.” The rest of the back of the photo is still blank.