wears thick glasses and peers at Henry
through them as he speaks and Henry reaches around under the man's jacket and
steals his wallet. Since Henry is wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt I walk behind
him and he passes the wallet to me. The tall thin brown-suited man points at the
stairs, explaining to Henry how to turn in the wallet. Henry toddles off in the
direction the man has indicated, and I follow, overtake Henry and lead him right
through the museum to the entrance and out, past the guards, onto Michigan
Avenue and south, until we end up, grinning like fiends, at the Artists Cafe,
where we treat ourselves to milkshakes and french fries with some of our
ill-gotten gains. Afterwards we throw all the wallets in a mailbox, sans cash, and I
get us a room at the Palmer House.
"So?" I ask, sitting on the side of the bathtub watching Henry brush his teeth.
" ot?" returns Henry with a mouth full of toothpaste.
"What do you think?"
He spits. "About what?"
"Pick-pocketing."
He looks at me in the mirror. "It's okay." He turns and looks directly at me. "I
did it!" He grins, largely.
"You were brilliant!"
"Yeah!" The grin fades. "Henry, I don't like to time travel by myself. It's better
with you. Can't you always come with me?"
He is standing with his back to me, and we look at each other in the mirror.
Poor small self: at this age my back is thin and my shoulder blades stick out like
incipient wings. He turns, waiting for an answer, and I know what I have to tell
him-me. I reach out and gently turn him and bring him to stand by me, so we are
side by side, heads level, facing the mirror.
"Look." We study our reflections, twinned in the ornate gilt Palmer House
bathroom splendor. Our hair is the same brown-black, our eyes slant dark and
fatigue-ringed identically, we sport exact replicas of each other's ears. I'm taller
and more muscular and shave. He's slender and ungainly and is all knees and
elbows. I reach up and pull my hair back from my face, show him the scar from
the accident. Unconsciously, he mimics my gesture, touches the same scar on his
own forehead.
"It's just like mine," says my self, amazed. "How did you get it?"
"The same as you. It is the same. We are the same."
A translucent moment. I didn't understand, and then I did, just like that. I
watch it happen. I want to be both of us at once, feel again the feeling of losing
the edges of my self, of seeing the admixture of future and present for the first
time. But I'm too accustomed, too comfortable with it, and so I am left on the
outside, remembering the wonder of being nine and suddenly seeing, knowing,
that my friend, guide, brother was me. Me, only me. The loneliness of it.
"You're me."
"When you are older."
"But...what about the others?"
"Other time travelers?"
He nods.
"I don't think there are any. I mean, I've never met any others."
A tear gathers at the edge of his left eye. When I was little, I imagined a whole
society of time travelers, of which Henry, my teacher, was an emissary, sent to
train me for eventual inclusion in this vast camaraderie. I still feel like a
castaway, the last member of a once numerous species. It was as though
Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized
that it was his own. My self, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry. I hold
him, hold me, for a long time.
Later, we order hot chocolate from room service, and watch Johnny Carson.
Henry falls asleep with the light on. As the show ends I look over at him and he's
gone, vanished back to my old room in my dad's apartment, standing
sleep-addled beside my old bed, falling into it, gratefully. I turn off the TV and
the bedside lamp. 1973 street noises drift in the open window. I want to go home.
I lie on the hard hotel bed, desolate, alone. I still don't understand.
Sunday, December 10, 1978 (Henry is 15, and 15)
Henry: I'm in my bedroom with my self. He's here from next March. We are doing
what we often do when we have a little privacy, when it's cold out, when both of
us are past puberty and haven't quite gotten around to actual girls yet. I think
most people would do this, if they had the sort of opportunities I have. I mean,
I'm not gay or anything.
It's late Sunday morning. I can hear the bells ringing at St. Joe's. Dad came
home late last night; I think he must have stopped at the Exchequer after the
concert; he was so drunk he fell down on the stairs and I had to haul him into the
apartment and put him to bed. He coughs and I hear him messing around in the
kitchen.
My other self seems distracted; he keeps looking at the door. "What?" I ask
him. "Nothing," he says. I get up and check the lock. " No," he says. He seems to
be making a huge effort to speak. "Come on," I say.
I hear Dad's heavy step right outside my door. "Henry?" he says, and the knob
of the door slowly turns and I abruptly realize that I have inadvertently unlocked
the door and Henry leaps for it but it's too late: Dad sticks his head in and there
we are, in flagrante delicto. "Oh," he says. His eyes are wide and he looks
completely disgusted. "Jesus, Henry." He shuts the door and I hear him walking
back to his room. I throw my self a reproachful glare as I pull on a pair of jeans
and a T-shirt. I walk down the hall to Dad's bedroom. His door is shut. I knock.
No answer. I wait. "Dad?" Silence. I open the door, stand in the doorway. "Dad?"
He's sitting with his back to me, on his bed. He continues to sit, and I stand there
for a while, but I can't bring myself to walk into the room. Finally I shut the door,
walk back to my own room.
"That was completely and totally your fault," I tell my self severely. He is
wearing jeans, sitting on the chair with his head in his hands. "You knew, you
knew that was going to happen and you didn't say a word. Where is your sense of
self preservation? What the hell is wrong with you? What use is it knowing the
future if you can't at least protect us from humiliating little scenes-"
"Shut up " Henry croaks. "Just shut up."
"I will not shut up," I say, my voice rising. "I mean, all you had to do was
say-"
"Listen." He looks up at me with resignation. "It was like.. .it was like that day
at the ice-skating rink."
"Oh. Shit." A couple years ago, I saw a little girl get hit in the head with a
hockey puck at Indian Head Park. It was horrible. I found out later that she died
in the hospital. And then I started to time travel back to that day, over and over,
and I wanted to warn her mother, and I couldn't. It was like being in the audience
at a movie. It was like being a ghost. I would scream, No, take her home, don't let her
near the ice, take her away, she's going to get hurt, she's going to die, and I would
realize that the words were only in my head, and everything would go on as
before.
Henry says, "You talk about changing the future, but for me this is the past,
and as far as I can tell there's nothing I can do about it. I mean, I tried, and it was
the trying that made it happen. If I hadn't said something, you wouldn't have
gotten up...."
"Then why did you say anything?"
"Because I did. You will, just wait." He shrugs. "It's like with Mom. The
accident. Immer wieder." Always again, always the same.
"Free will?"
He gets up, walks to the window, stands looking out over the Tatingers'
backyard. "I was just talking about that with a self from 1992. He said something
interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in
the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be
there if we were there."
"But whenever I am, that's my present. Shouldn't I be able to decide-"
"No. Apparently not."
"What did he say about the future?"
"Well, think. You go to the future, you do something, you come back to the
present. Then the thing that you did is part of your past. So that's probably
inevitable, too."
I feel a weird combination of freedom and despair. I'm sweating; he opens the
window and cold air floods into the room. "But then I'm not responsible for
anything I do while I'm not in the present."
He smiles. "Thank God."
"And everything has already happened."
"Sure looks that way." He runs his hand over his face, and I see that he could
use a shave. "But he said that you have to behave as though you have free will, as
though you are responsible for what you do."
"Why? What does it matter?"
"Apparently, if you don't, things are bad. Depressing."
"Did he know that personally?"
"Yes."
"So what happens next?"
"Dad ignores you for three weeks. And this"-he waves his hand at the
bed-"we've got to stop meeting like this."
I sigh. "Right, no problem. Anything else?"
"Vivian Teska."
Vivian is this girl in Geometry whom I lust after. I've never said a word to her.
"After class tomorrow, go up to her and ask her out."
"I don't even know her."
"Trust me." He's smirking at me in a way that makes me wonder why on earth
I would ever trust him but I want to believe. "Okay."
"I should get going. Money, please." I dole out twenty dollars. "More." I hand
him another twenty.
"That's all I've got."
"Okay." He's dressing, pulling clothes from the stash of things I don't mind
never seeing again. "How about a coat?" I hand him a Peruvian skiing sweater
that I've always hated. He makes a face and puts it on. We walk to the back door
of the apartment. The church bells are tolling noon. "Bye," says my self.
"Good luck," I say, oddly moved by the sight of me embarking into the
unknown, into a cold Chicago Sunday morning he doesn't belong in. He thumps
down the wooden stairs, and I turn to the silent apartment.
Wednesday, November 17/Tuesday, September 28, 1982 (Henry is 19)
Henry: I'm in the back of a police car in Zion, Illinois. I am wearing handcuffs and
not much else. The interior of this particular police car smells like cigarettes,
leather, sweat, and another 