DAVE
probably shouldn’t have tried to see how Helen was doing because his own emotions were still churning. But he called her from a drugstore, and she said yes, she’d like to see him, and suggested lunch. They met at an Applebee’s on City Avenue.
She looked worn, dazed, and her eyes were bloodshot.
Nothing in his life had been quite as painful as sitting with her that day, seeing those raw emotions and knowing that, had it been
Dave
who’d died, she’d have been sorry but would have gotten over it easily enough.
The conversation was full of regrets, things not said, acts undone. She was as soft and vulnerable as Dave had ever seen her. By all the laws of nature, Shel was dead. Was he still bound to keep his distance? He wondered how she would react if she knew Shel was probably in Dave’s kitchen at that moment, making a submarine sandwich.
He wanted to tell her. There was a possibility that, when she
did
find out, when she got past her anger with Shel, she’d hold it against
Dave
as well. He also, God help him, wanted to keep Shel
dead
. It was hard to admit to himself, but it was true. He wanted nothing more than a clear channel to Helen Suchenko. But when he watched her bite down the pain, when the tears came, when she excused herself with a shaky voice and hurried back to the ladies’ room, he could stand it no more. “Helen,” he said, “are you free this afternoon?”
She sighed. “It’s my afternoon off. Just as well. People get nervous around weepy doctors. I’m free. But I’m not in the mood to go anywhere.”
“Can I persuade you to come out to my place?”
She looked desperately fragile. “I don’t think so, Dave. I need time to myself.”
He listened to the hum of conversation around them. “Please,” he said. “It’s important.”
THE
gray skies sagged down into the streets, and all the headlights were on. Helen followed him in her small blue Ford. He watched her in the mirror, playing back all possible scenarios on how to handle this.
He’s not dead, Helen.
Leave out the time-travel stuff, he decided, at least for now. Use the story he’d told Jerry as an example of how misunderstandings can occur. And then bring him into the room. Best not to warn
him
. God knows how he’d react. But get them together, present him with a fait accompli, and you will have done your self-sacrificial duty, Dave. You dumb bastard.
He pulled into his driveway, opened the garage, and rolled inside. The rain had grown even more intense. Helen stopped behind him, and hurried out of her car. “This way.” Dave waved her into the garage.
“Glad to be out of that,” she said, with a drenched smile. “Dave, I can’t stay long.”
“Okay. We’ll only need a minute.”
The garage opened into the kitchen. He unlocked the door but stopped to listen before going farther. Everything was quiet inside. He stood back so she could enter and closed the door behind her, making no effort to muffle the sound. He switched on the kitchen light, then led the way into the living room. “About Shel—” He raised his voice a notch.
“Yes?”
“This is going to come as a shock.”
She frowned. “You’re not going to tell me he was already married.”
“No. Nothing like that.”
A white envelope lay on a side table, with Dave’s name on it, printed in Shel’s precise hand. He snatched it up, but not before she’d seen it.
“Just a list of things to do.” He pushed it into his pocket. “How about some coffee?”
“Sure. Sounds good.”
“It’ll have to be instant.” He went back out into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove.
She followed. “Do you always do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Write yourself notes?”
“It’s my to-do list. It’s the first thing I do every morning.”
She got two cups down. “What’s going to come as a shock?”
“Give me a second,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He slipped out and opened the envelope.
Dear Dave,
I don’t know how to write this. But I have to think about what’s happened, and figure out what I need to do. I don’t want to jump the gun if it’s not necessary. You understand.
I know this hasn’t been easy for you. But I’m glad you were there. Thanks.
Shel
P.S. I’ve left most of my estate to the Leukemia Foundation. That will probably generate a half dozen lawsuits from my relatives. But if any of those vultures shows signs of winning, I’ll come back personally and deal with them.
Dave read it a half dozen times. Then he crumpled it, pushed it into his pocket, and went back to the kitchen.
She was looking out the window. Usually, Dave’s grounds were alive with blue jays and squirrels. But none of the critters was in sight at the moment. “It’s lovely,” she said. Then: “So, what’s this about?”
“Son of a gun,” he said. “I went out to get it, and I forgot.” He suggested she relax for a minute “while I get something.” He hurried upstairs in search of an idea.
The wardrobe also functioned as a small museum. It held items brought home from their travels, objects of inestimable value, but only if you knew their origin. It had a sextant designed and built by Leonardo, a silver bracelet that had once belonged to Calpurnia, a signed folio of Jean Racine’s
Andromaque
, a pocket watch that Leo Tolstoy had carried while writing
War and Peace
. There were photos of Martin Luther and Albert Schweitzer and Pericles and Francesco Solimena. All more or less worthless.
He couldn’t bear to give Calpurnia’s bracelet to Helen without being able to tell her what it was. He decided instead on a gold medallion he’d bought from a merchant in Thebes during the fifth century, B.C. It carried a serpent’s likeness. An Apollonian priest had insisted it was a steal. At one time, he’d said, it had belonged to Aesculapius, the divine doctor, who had been so good he cured the dead. He’d backed up his statement by trying to buy it from Dave, offering six times what he’d paid for it.
He carried it downstairs and gave it to Helen, telling her that Shel had wanted him to be sure she got it in case anything happened to him. She glowed and turned it over and over, unable to get enough of it. “It’s exquisite,” she said. And the tears came again.
If that thing had possessed any curative powers, Dave could have used them at that moment.
RAIN
filled the world. Gradually, a murky curtain descended on the windows, and the world beyond passed from view. “I think we’re going to get six inches before this is over,” he told her. The Weather Channel was saying two.
He put on some music. She stood by the curtains, enjoying a glass of Chablis. They’d started the fire, and it crackled and popped comfortably. David added Mozart and hoped the storm would continue.
A pair of headlights crept past, out on Carmichael Drive. “I feel sorry for anybody who has to get around in this,” she said.
“Stay here.”
She laughed. “That wasn’t a hint, Dave. Thanks, anyhow. But when it lets up, I have to get home.”
They talked inconsequentials. She had composed herself, and Dave wanted to believe it was his proximity. But he had no real chance. Even if Shel were safely in his grave, he was still the embodiment of too many memories. The decent thing to do would be to fade out of her life, just as Carmichael Drive, and the trees that lined it, were fading now.
She talked about a break in the weather so she could get home. But Dave’s luck held. The rain continued to pour down, and they stayed near the fire. Dave was alone at last with Helen Suchenko, but it was a painful few hours. Yet he would not have missed them.
The Weather Channel reported that the storm system stretched from New York as far south as Baltimore. Rain would continue through the night.
What had she said?
“I feel sorry for anybody who has to get around in this.”
Dave was out in it. And on that night, shelter looked far away.
SHE
talked about Shel. She’d shake her head as if remembering something, then dismiss it. She’d veer off onto some other subject, a movie, a nephew who was giving the family trouble, a medical advance that held hope for a breakthrough against this or that condition. There were a couple of patients she was worried about. (She did not name them, of course.) And she had to deal with a few hypochondriacs whose lives were centered on imaginary illnesses. She revealed that Katie had told her he was leaving teaching at the end of the semester. How did he plan to support himself? He said he was going to buy and sell art.
“I didn’t know you knew anything about that.”
“Ah, me proud beauty,” he said, drawing out the last syllable, “there’s a lot about me you don’t know.” He added that he’d miss teaching, which wasn’t at all true. But it was the sort of thing people expected you to say.
Jerry’s observation about Shel was probably at least equally true of himself.
Dave had never really made his life count.
The teaching hadn’t done anything for him. He’d never been that good at it. Students didn’t crowd into his classrooms the way they did for, say, Marian Crosby. No student had ever told him how he’d changed her life. Or inspired her to read the classics in the original.
What Dave had come to realize was that, without Shel, he lacked a sense of purpose, a reason to exist. The last year had provided a new dimension to his life. Selma had changed him. As had Aristarchus and the Library. As had Ben Franklin. He’d come to understand what it meant to
live
. And it was all upstairs, in recordings of conversations with Voltaire and Charles Lamb and Herbert Hoover and Aristotle and H. G. Wells. Those dialogues would make the damnedest book the world had ever seen, commentaries by the principal actors, the people on civilization’s front lines, reporting on their dreams, their frustrations, their follies.
The Dryden Dialogues.
But it would never get written.
At seven minutes after six, the power failed and the lights went out.
The timing was perfect because Dave had just finished making dinner. He lit a couple of candles, and they sat in the flickering light and made jokes about how romantic it was. If the clouds had not dissipated, at least for those few hours they had receded.
Afterward, they retreated with their candles into the living room. The music had been silenced, so they sat listening to the fire and the rain. Occasionally, Dave glanced at the upstairs bedroom, half-expecting the door to open. He tried to plan what he would do if Shel suddenly appeared on the landing.
Eventually, the storm eased, and the power came back.
Helen obviously didn’t want to leave. “But tomorrow’s my day at the hospital. Have to be in early.” She got up and got her wrap out of the closet.
“You okay?”
“I
will
be,” she said.
DAVE
tried to imagine what he would feel if he were in Shel’s place. Knowing what the future held.
Where was he now?
He wanted to find him, to talk sense to him. To make sure he didn’t do anything foolish. Like using the converter to go back to the town house and confront what waited.
Or, possibly, try to end it himself.
So where might he be? He remembered the night at Lenny Pound’s when they’d made the list of what they wanted to do with the converters. And recorded the suggestions in Shel’s notebook. Mark Twain’s steamboat. Kit Carson. Leonidas.
There’d been one, in particular, that had lit Shel up.
Michelangelo.
CHAPTER 37
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.
—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
QUEEN MAB
DURING
the summer of 1496, a young and unknown Michelangelo arrived in Rome, looking for work. We could do him a favor, Shel had said, magnanimously. It would upset nothing, he’d get some money and some encouragement, and we would have the satisfaction of knowing we’d made a contribution to his career. And we could probably acquire one or two souvenirs along the way. The ultimate, Dave thought, in lawn sculpture.
They had not gotten around to it. And that meant Dave had a likely place to look for Shel.
This was the Rome of Alexander VI, a pope who brooked neither heresy nor opposition. It was a bad time for the True Faith, a few decades after the fall of Constantinople, when Europe had given sanctuary to armies of scholars from that benighted land. The scholars had repaid the good turn by unleashing the Renaissance. It was a dusty, unimposing Rome, still medieval, still brooding over lost glory. Dreary, bootstrap houses lined the narrow streets, themselves sinking into the rubble and ruins of imperial times. The hilltops were occupied by churches and palaces. More were under construction. The fortress of Sant’Angelo, containing Hadrian’s tomb, dominated the banks of the Tiber. The western approaches to the city were guarded by the old Basilica of St. Peter, the predecessor of the modern structure.
Dave by now was a master at tracking down people he wanted to find, even in cultures that didn’t have a phone book. In his clerical garb, he went directly to Pietro Cardinal Riario, portraying himself as acting for a man who hoped to buy salvation by making a substantial donation to whatever church project the Cardinal would recommend. Riario is, of course, known to history for his early support of Michelangelo, and for his occasional homicidal tendencies.
The future artist, the Cardinal said, was living in modest quarters not far from the Tiber. When Dave arrived, an hour later, he was not at home, but his landlord directed him to a dump site. There he found a young man seated atop a low hill at the edge of the facility, contemplating heaps of trash and rubble.