What Was I Thinking? (7 page)

“Really!
Is it a coincidence that the
name is the same as your last name?”

“No, not at all.
It was established over a
hundred years ago, by an ancestor of mine, and first refusal goes to anyone
named—of my name.”

“Oh. How nice,” I said inanely. How odd, I
thought. Named chairs are common enough at universities. I knew of several at
Wash U. But reserving them for a namesake was a new one. I didn’t know much
about the process, but I had the impression that winning a chair was much like
winning a prestigious scholarship—lots of competition, project submissions,
presentations. But, then again, I didn’t know much, and it wasn’t my business
anyway.

Speaking of none of my business—“and Roland
House? Is that your family also?”

“Yes. It was built by the same person who set
up the trust. Use of the house is part of the trust for the chair. The rules
state that, while the Chair is vacant, the university must keep the house in
good repair, and in compliance with building codes, and in return it can use
the public rooms. When the Chair is awarded, the house is provided to the
recipient, along with the stipend and other accoutrements.”

“Oh.” Oh. He was awfully generous with
information that was none of my business. I wondered why.

We reached my building before I could think of
anything else to say. When we stopped, he got out too, and saw me into the
building and up to my own door before he said good night. I shouldn’t have been
surprised, but I was.

I took a long, hot shower, trying to wash away
the day and all its stresses. Then I was out of things to do. It was too early
to go to bed, but I didn’t feel up to anything, even microwaving some supper. I
wandered around feeling lonely and sad, picking things up and putting them back
down without seeing them.

If ever there was a night for guilty pleasures,
this was it. I made popcorn with lots of real butter melted over it, poured a
Diet Coke over ice, and turned on the TV to the saved episode of
Surf Cops
.

I know I said I looked down on the show, and I
do, but Jack Huguenot is
so
good
looking, and after a hard—make that grueling—day at work, watching him on junk
TV and eating junk food was heaven. Silly dialogue, simple plot, and a few
gratuitous explosions set off by good-looking actors were just what I needed.
No one needed to know.

* * * *

Friday was ordinary, which was nice. I managed
to leave on time and dress up a little for my dinner with Bert. He had emailed
to say we had reservations at
L’Avignon
, which was a white-tablecloth restaurant.
Other patrons would, no doubt, be in an assortment of casual to extremely
casual dress, but already I knew Bert well enough to know he would be dressed
up.

Dinner was fine. It was good to be out on a
date, and good to relax, but you can’t really talk with waiters hovering, and
heavy-duty theoretical physics just doesn’t go with fine china and crystal.

I was intrigued by Bert’s hints about time
travel, and I wanted to see his basement lab and hear all about it.

Fortunately, Mrs. Peacock didn’t work evenings
or weekends, so we had the place to ourselves and could talk anywhere in the
whole house. We did, chattering away as we headed for the basement. His
computer was there, as advertised, but it wasn’t even turned on. He seemed more
comfortable with physical models.

There was only one model here, and it looked
much more like a working experiment than the ones upstairs. It was in a tall,
narrow Plexiglas display, like a giant ant farm. It seemed to represent a huge,
wild river twisting around and through the universe. When I said as much, Bert
seemed delighted.

“Yes, exactly!
I’ve read some theories that
time is like a river, twisting through the universe, bumping into random
objects, running at varying speeds, and sometimes eddying around obstructions.
That seems to me to be the most likely explanation, though you’ll recognize
that it has a lot in common with the Mobius strip and the tesseract theories.”

“And wormholes,” I said. As far as I knew—and I
hadn’t read about time travel theory in years—wormholes were the current
favorite among theorists. But, to a non-physicist, a wormhole was just a
difficult term for the pin between the two folds of cloth in the tesseract. The
basic concept was consistent. So was the basic problem: generating enough speed
to make the trip.

“I get it so far,” I said, “but isn’t it
impossible in actuality? I seem to remember that Einstein said humans could
never travel faster than the speed of light, and even though that’s been
disproven, current science says that generating enough speed to outrun time—or
warp the fabric of the universe—would take more energy than we can we can
generate here on earth.”

“Exactly!”
Bert said excitedly. “You’ve
hit the nail on the head! And that’s where the river analogy pays off. I
discovered time has
waves
, just like
water. Like a large river, it always has small waves that lap a little at the
edges, but so little that it’s barely noticeable. But once in a great while, a
monsoon hits so hard in the ocean that feeds the river that a tidal wave sweeps
inland, and into the river, swamping everything in its path, and carrying
boaters farther and faster than would otherwise be possible.”

I blinked, and thought about it, looking hard
at the river model.

“See?” he asked, pushing a lever on its base.
Water flooded the mouth of the river, and then it splashed crazily through the
twists and turns, overflowing here, completely covering planets there.

I laughed with delight. “Wow! That would be
scary to ride.”

“Yes, but it could be done! You
see,
the wave goes both forward and backward, in succession,
just like a wave. It swamps forward and then recedes just as violently, if not
more so. The key is to navigate within the wave, to choose the direction of
travel as well as the point of exit.”

Bert explained his whole theory to me, complete
with abstruse detail and equations on whiteboards. To the extent that I
followed it, it made good sense. Naturally, he left me in the dust somewhere in
the last hour. Otherwise, I could have come up with the theory myself. Still, I
thought I got the gist.

“So, you’re sure time travel for humans is
possible, and that it can be engineered to be safe, and controllable?”

“Yes.
Absolutely.
You
do need a sort of motorcar, though. To contain the instruments and protect
yourself from random objects in the time-wave, of course.”

“Of course.”
I thought about it. It really
was of course. Unless—or until—the
science were
very
far advanced, you wouldn’t be able to see where you were going, so you could
hit potholes, so to speak.

“Have you built a model? Could I see?”

“Indeed. I have a working model, right over
here.”

He opened a door into another room, and there,
bathed in fluorescent light, was a genuine Victorian monstrosity. Well,
possibly the love child of a Victorian monstrosity and a Model T. It looked
something like an antique car, and something like a horse-drawn carriage, and
had all sorts of curlicues and flourishes. I couldn’t tell which details were
functional, and which were merely decorative. The one thing I could tell was
that it was under renovation. It seemed to have once had metal walls with tiny
portholes—they were now
lying
damaged around the
floor—but the contraption now had Plexiglas for one wall and there were
additional Plexiglas panels leaning against the tool bench.

“Now,
this
is a working lab!” I said, looking around at the mess with approval. “And this
is amazing. You’re changing from steel to Plexiglas, I see. Can I touch it?”

I looked at Bert, and he nodded shyly. “I think
the Plexiglas will help a lot, both on lift and on visibility. I was very
excited to find out about it.”

I reached out with one finger, and touched the
new Plexiglas wall. It was thick and the whole contraption shuddered slightly
at my touch. The thing wasn’t fragile—it was just very, very tightly
engineered. Every part reacted to every other part. I couldn’t keep calling it
“the contraption,” though.

“It’s wonderful. What do you call it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I was thinking ‘
chronoautocar
’ but that doesn’t seem quite
right. I haven’t had much occasion to talk about it anyway, so it hasn’t
mattered. Mother suggested the Roland Steamer, as Mr. Ferris named his wheel after
himself, but I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I just call it ‘It’ to myself.”
He stopped and stared lovingly at
It
.

“Your mother knows about it?” This was the
first I’d heard of her, though of course I’d known there must be such a
creature.

“Yes. She’s the only one—until you—who didn’t
laugh when I tried to explain.”

Ooh. I suddenly realized I was in a basement
lair with an unmarried weird guy who confided in his mother. How long until he
told me what level of World of Warcraft he had mastered? Or invited me to watch
him joust at an event held by the Society for Creative Anachronism?

But I didn’t see any jousting equipment or
weird costumes anywhere, and he didn’t seem to
live
with his mother, so I let it go.

I leaned into
It
,
being very careful not to touch anything, while getting a good look at the
controls. “This is really something. And you said you have proof it works?
You’ve actually tried it?”

I turned to look at him, and found he had moved
closer. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve taken a short hop myself.”

“Really?
Really?”
I lost the capacity to think with the thrill of it.

“You believe me?” he asked, looking deep into
my eyes. “You truly do?”

I nodded. He kissed me. It was some kiss. This
guy definitely hadn’t wasted his youth on World of Warcraft. We broke apart,
and I felt an amazing connection between us. It was as if we were still
touching.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, looking at
me as if overcome. I stepped closer, and pulled him back to me, initiating the
kiss myself this time. He responded, clutching me against him, and I reached
for the curl at the back of the neck that I’d
been wanting
to touch ever since we’d met.

I don’t know how long we stood there, just
kissing with the most innocent of touches, but it felt like eternity and it
felt like less than a second. It seemed more intimate than some sex I’d had. I
was burning and I knew he was, too.

He pulled back abruptly. “I’m terribly sorry,”
He said stiffly. “That was completely inappropriate. I’ll see you home.”

He turned and left the It room. I stared after
him, gaping, then shut my mouth and followed. I must have misunderstood. I must
have been too lonely and desperate.

We didn’t speak again, even when we parted at
my apartment door. I was too humiliated to talk—almost too humiliated to walk.
I don’t know what he was feeling. I never even looked at his face again.

I just got inside the door, locked it, and slid
to the floor. I kind of wanted to cry again, but it seemed like a lot of
trouble.

The realization that Pete’s hand on my arm was my
first human touch in months must have shaken me up even more than I realized.
That must have been what made me misinterpret Bert’s kiss and make a fool of
myself.

I didn’t know what to do about it. Right now I
couldn’t face ever seeing Bert or anyone at work ever again. Being mature and
reasonable and working through my problems didn’t seem like a reasonable option
at the moment. Suicide might be a good idea, but I’d have to move to do it.
Seemed like a lot of trouble. So I just sat.

I tried not to be a baby about loneliness. It’s
the human condition, after all, and I had just hit one of those patches that
was
worse than usual. I thought I could handle it. I really
couldn’t though, and I needed to get at least a little grip.

I pulled my phone out of my purse and called
Cassie. She was married and across the state, not dead. If she felt like this,
I wouldn’t want her to hesitate to call
me
.
It would be okay to reach out. She answered on the first ring.

“Cassie,
it’s
Addie.
Can you talk?”

“Oh, Addie!
I’m so glad to hear from you.
Yes, of course!” The tension went out of my neck and shoulders. It was going to
be okay.
I
was going to be okay. I
still had one close friend.

“Oh, good.
It’s been the week from hell,
and I feel as if—”

“I really need to talk. I think this marriage
was a mistake.” She hadn’t even heard me. But part of being a friend is doing
the listening part. I’d listen to her, and then I’d get to tell her my worries.
And a personal conversation was a good thing in itself, no matter whose
problems are the topic.