takes
back the move.
"So why do you like Paul?" I ask her. I look up in time to see her blushing
fervently.
"He's so... beautiful," Clare says. There's something about the way she says it
that makes me feel strange. I study the board, and it occurs to me that Clare could
checkmate me if she took my bishop with her knight. I wonder if I should tell her
this. If she was a little younger, I would. Twelve is old enough to fend for
yourself. Clare is staring dreamily at the board. It dawns on me that I am jealous.
Jesus. I can't believe I'm feeling jealous of a multimillionaire rock star geezer old
enough to be Clare's dad.
"Hmpf," I say.
Clare looks up, smiling mischievously. "Who do you like?"
You, I think but don't say. "You mean when I was your age?"
"Um, yeah. When were you my age?"
I weigh the value and potential of this nugget before I dole it out. "I was your
age in 1975. I'm eight years older than you."
"So you're twenty?"
"Well, no, I'm thirty-six." Old enough to be your dad.
Clare furrows her brow. Math is not her strongest subject. "But if you were
twelve in 1975...."
"Oh, sorry. You're right. I mean, I myself am thirty-six, but somewhere out
there"-I wave my hand toward the south-"I'm twenty. In real time."
Clare strives to digest this. "So there are two of you?"
"Not exactly. There's always only one me, but when I'm time traveling
sometimes I go somewhere I already am, and yeah, then you could say there are
two. Or more."
"How come I never see more than one?"
"You will. When you and I meet in my present that will happen fairly
frequently." More often than I'd like, Clare.
"So who did you like in 1975?"
"Nobody, really. At twelve I had other stuff to think about. But when I was
thirteen I had this huge crush on Patty Hearst."
Clare looks annoyed. "A girl you knew at school?"
I laugh. "No. She was a rich Californian college girl who got kidnapped by
these awful left-wing political terrorists, and they made her rob banks. She was
on the news every night for months."
"What happened to her? Why did you like her?"
"They eventually let her go, and she got married and had kids and now she's a
rich lady in California. Why did I like her? Ah, I don't know. It's irrational, you
know? I guess I kind of knew how she felt, being taken away and forced to do
stuff she didn't want to do, and then it seemed like she was kind of enjoying it."
"Do you do things you don't want to do?"
"Yeah. All the time." My leg has fallen asleep and I stand up and shake it until
it tingles. "I don't always end up safe and sound with you, Clare. A lot of times I
go places where I have to get clothes and food by stealing."
"Oh." Her face clouds, and then she sees her move, and makes it, and looks
up at me triumphantly. "Checkmate!"
"Hey! Bravo!" I salaam her. "You are the chess queen dujour."
"Yes, I am," Clare says, pink with pride. She starts to set the pieces back in
their starting positions. "Again?"
I pretend to consult my nonexistent watch. "Sure." I sit down again. "You
hungry?" We've been out here for hours and supplies have run low; all we have
left is the dregs of a bag of Doritos.
"Mmhmm." Clare holds the pawns behind her back; I tap her right elbow and
she shows me the white pawn. I make my standard opening move, Queen's Pawn
to Q4. She makes her standard response to my standard opening move, Queen's
Pawn to Q4. We play out the next ten moves fairly rapidly, with only moderate
bloodshed, and then Clare sits for a while, pondering the board. She is always
experimenting, always attempting the coup d'eclat. "Who do you like now?" she
asks without looking up.
"You mean at twenty? Or at thirty-six?"
"Both."
I try to remember being twenty. It's just a blur of women, breasts, legs, skin,
hair. All their stories have jumbled together, and their faces no longer attach
themselves to names. I was busy but miserable at twenty. "Twenty was nothing
special. Nobody springs to mind."
"And thirty-six?"
I scrutinize Clare. Is twelve too young? I'm sure twelve is really too young.
Better to fantasize about beautiful, unattainable, safe Paul McCartney than to
have to contend with Henry the Time Traveling Geezer. Why is she asking this
anyway?
"Henry?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you married?"
"Yes," I admit reluctantly.
"To who?"
"A very beautiful, patient, talented, smart woman."
Her faces falls. "Oh." She picks up one of my white bishops, which she
captured two moves ago, and spins it on the ground like a top. "Well, that's
nice." She seems kind of put out by this news.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Clare moves her queen from Q2 to KN5. "Check."
I move my knight to protect my king.
"Am I married?" Clare inquires.
I meet her eyes. "You're pushing your luck today."
"Why not? You never tell me anything anyway. Come on, Henry, tell me if I'm
gonna be an old maid."
"You're a nun," I tease her.
Clare shudders. "Boy, I hope not." She takes one of my pawns with her rook.
"How did you meet your wife?"
"Sorry. Top secret information." I take her rook with my queen.
Clare makes a face. "Ouch. Were you time traveling? When you met her?"
" I was minding my own business."
Clare sighs. She takes another pawn with her other rook. I'm starting to run
low on pawns. I move Queen's Bishop to KB4.
"It's not fair that you know everything about me but you never tell me
anything about you."
"True. It's not fair." I try to look regretful, and obliging.
"I mean, Ruth and Helen and Megan and Laura tell me everything and I tell
them everything."
"Everything?"
"Yeah. Well, I don't tell them about you."
"Oh? Why's that?"
Clare looks a bit defensive. "You're a secret. They wouldn't believe me,
anyway." She traps my bishop with her knight, flashes me a sly smile. I
contemplate the board, trying to find a way to take her knight or move my
bishop. Things are looking grim for White. "Henry, are you really a person?"
I am a bit taken aback. "Yes. What else would I be?"
"I don't know. A spirit?"
"I'm really a person, Clare."
"Prove it."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"I mean, I don't think you could prove that you're a person, Clare."
"Sure I can."
"How?"
"I'm just like a person."
"Well, I'm just like a person, too." It's funny that Clare is bringing this up;
back in 1999 Dr. Kendrick and I are engaged in philosophical trench warfare over
this very issue. Kendrick is convinced that I am a harbinger of a new species of
human, as different from everyday folks as Cro-Magnon Man was from his
Neanderthal neighbors. I contend that I'm just a piece of messed-up code, and
our inability to have kids proves that I'm not going to be the Missing Link. We've
taken to quoting Kierkegaard and Heidegger at each other and glowering.
Meanwhile, Clare regards me doubtfully.
" People don't appear and disappear the way you do. You're like the Cheshire
Cat."
"Are you implying that I'm a fictional character?" I spot my move, finally:
King's Rook to QR3. Now she can take my bishop but she'll lose her queen in the
process. It takes Clare a moment to realize this and when she does she sticks out
her tongue at me. Her tongue is a worrisome shade of orange from all the Doritos
she's eaten.
"It makes me kind of wonder about fairy tales. I mean, if you're real, then why
shouldn't fairy tales be real, too?" Clare stands up, still pondering the board, and
does a little dance, hopping around like her pants are on fire. "I think the ground
is getting harder. My butt's asleep."
"Maybe they are real. Or some little thing in them is real and then people just
added to it, you know?"
"Like maybe Snow White was in a coma?"
"And Sleeping Beauty, too."
"And Jack the beanstalk guy was just a real terrific gardener."
"And Noah was a weird old man with a houseboat and a lot of cats."
Clare stares at me. "Noah is in the Bible. He's not a fairy tale."
"Oh. Right. Sorry." I'm getting very hungry. Any minute now Nell will ring
the dinner bell and Clare will have to go in. She sits back down on her side of the
board. I can tell she's lost interest in the game when she starts building a little
pyramid out of all the conquered pieces.
"You still haven't proved you're real" Clare says.
"Neither have you."
"Do you ever wonder if I'm real?" she asks me, surprised.
"Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist
in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about
each other."
Clare frowns, and makes a motion with her hand as though to bat away this
odd idea. "Pinch me," she requests. I lean over and pinch her lightly on the arm.
"Harder!" I do it again, hard enough to leave a white and red mark that lingers
for some seconds and then vanishes. "Don't you think I would wake up, if I was
asleep? Anyway, I don't feel asleep."
"Well, I don't feel like a spirit. Or a fictional character."
"How do you know? I mean, if I was making you up, and I didn't want you to
know you were made up, I just wouldn't tell you, right?"
I wiggle my eyebrows at her. "Maybe God just made us up and He's not
telling us."
"You shouldn't say things like that," Clare exclaims. "Besides, you don't even
believe in God. Do you?"
I shrug, and change the subject. "I'm more real than Paul McCartney."
Clare looks worried. She starts to put all the pieces back in their box, carefully
dividing white and black. "Lots of people know about Paul McCartney-I'm the
only one who knows about you."
"But you've actually met me, and you've never met him."
"My mom went to a Beatles concert." She closes the lid of the chess set and
stretches out on the ground, staring up at the canopy of new leaves. "It was at
Comiskey Park, in Chicago, August 8,1965." I poke her in the stomach and she
curls up like a hedgehog, giggling. After an interval of tickling and thrashing
around, we lie on the ground with our hands clasped across our middles and
Clare asks, "Is your wife a time traveler too?"
"Nope. 