The Time Traveler's Almanac (162 page)

“Well?” Danny said. “Did worlds collide?”

“You already said that, you broken record,” she said. A third little stab. The room shifted again, and her fingers fretted at her eyes.

“Well?” he said. “Did worlds collide?”

The little flurries of sensation were making her palms prickle with sweat. Danny wasn’t reacting. He had barely moved an inch – hadn’t even moved – same expression, the same tonal quality, the same lift to the I in
collide
and slight Yorkshire slur to the
s.
When looked at, the room wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting: the wallpaper wasn’t turning into sugar and the armchairs weren’t growing feet.

“I’m admitting defeat,” she said.

“Well?” Danny said. “Did worlds collide?”

For long moments Rosamund just breathed. She pinched the bridge of her nose to make that nearly-a-headache sensation go away, suddenly horribly certain that she had turned her best friend into a space mannequin and that at forty-two she would never be able to get another half as good, but the man opposite reached out and took her hand to keep her steady. Rosamund was stupidly relieved at that. “Ease up,” he said. “What’s happened?”

Now they were both looking around. She was having no apparent effect. The rug was not bleeding, the air tasted of nothing but air, and they both had their fingerprints. Once when she was younger and pregnant she’d made soap bubbles every time she blinked, which had distracted her from being younger and pregnant and thinking listlessly about marrying the father. Danny got worried and jogged her elbow: “Earth to Rosamund Tilly. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“You’re not holding up any fingers, you egg.”

The room blurred again. Right before her Danny-on-the-sofa unzipped and re-zipped back to where he’d been sitting, so fast that it was like he hadn’t moved at all. Lamplight caught all the worn patches on his suit. His expression was vague and somehow familiar—

“Well?” Danny said. “Did worlds collide?”

Even then she didn’t get frightened, she told herself. Three cheers for Dr. Tilly.

*   *   *

Time for a test. She was a doctor, after all, and though she was a doctor of Medieval Literature she still retained a duty to Science. She launched herself off the sofa like a shell firing and went to the clock, took down the time, wrote it on the back of a grocery bill – 8:14 – and put it on the coffee table. Dr. Tilly stood beside it like a guard, scrunching up her hands in her daffodil-coloured skirt and feeling ridiculous as the clock marched on to 8:15. Nothing happened.

Danny was leaning over to read. “8:14?”

Oh, well, what the hell. Dr. Tilly tensed up before she said, “Testing?”

*   *   *

Another big blur, another jerk of dislocation as she found herself back on the sofa, totally discombobulated. Once more Danny wore that pensive, waiting expression and she couldn’t even look at it as his mouth started to round out the words, as her grocery list sat next to the clock pristine and un-written-on. The clock read: 8:14.

“Well?” said Danny. “Did worlds collide?”

Time travel! The house had never mixed up
time
before. Dr. Tilly thought that she must have done something really rotten to have it drop something like this in her lap. She would have been excited if she hadn’t been so horrified: the house was probably destroying the space-time continuum right now and forming a thousand glittering paradoxes all because she hadn’t really cleaned the kitchen. Once she’d forgotten to weed the window boxes and the house had dissolved her feet right up to the ankle.

She knew three scientific things: 1. she was caught in a time loop, set off by 2. speaking, and 3. all of this was incredibly unscientific. So Dr. Tilly got her grocery bill again and scribbled on the back, worried that perhaps this too would send her careening back to the start:

CAUSED TIME LOOP, D

—but nothing happened. Whew.

Danny Number Six looked at her, then looked at the grocery list, then looked at her, and had the reaction that she’d guessed he had; he was completely delighted. He took his ballpoint pen out of his pocket and clicked it on and off, a sure sign of ecstasy in a stockbroker. “Are you sure?” She nodded again. “Good God. Why no verbal?”

Her writing was getting increasingly cramped.
SPEAKING
=
SWITCH. SOUND???

“All right. Don’t worry, I’m a licensed professional,” he said, leaning forward and putting the laptop away. “A time loop means you’ve already gone back. How many iterations of the loop so far, Rose?” She raised her fingers. “Six? This is insane.”

Dr. Tilly wrote again:
got to break it though, this is ridiculous!!

“This is beyond ridiculous. Did you forget to defrost the fridge again?”

Will experiment. You forget what happens each time I reset the loop.
Judiciously she added a sad face, :(

“Let’s not go into the physics and assume you’re creating endless worlds in 14 Arden Lane with each new loop, it will give the chinchillas and I a logistics headache,” he said, leaning back and drumming his fingers on his knee. “Go ahead. What’s the worst that can happen? Goodbye from the future, you know – I as Future Daniel Tsai will cease to be.”

that is horrible do not put it that way!!

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do what you have to do, Rosamund.”

“I will, I promise,” she said, and—

*   *   *

“Well?” said Danny Seven. “Did worlds collide?”

*   *   *

Dr. Tilly went around and touched all the walls and the photographs, hoping the house would respond. New try. “Did worlds collide?” asked Danny Eight. On the next loop she went and made sure all of the chinchillas were coping in their hutch as Danny Nine craned his head, nonplussed, and that didn’t do anything either. Next. Danny Ten followed her as she left the house but going out into the street did nothing more than make her eyes squint in the chill lemon-rind glare of the lamps, and at 8:18 in that iteration her eldest daughter Sparrow sent her a text message she didn’t read. The neighbours peered at her through their curtains. “Did worlds collide?” asked Danny Eleven. In the throes of despair and rattling around the house like an old car, Dr. Tilly dusted her glass cats. Nothing happened, though at one point her cellphone tweeted in her pocket.

Sitting there on the sofa with what felt like an ice-cream headache, Dr. Tilly permitted herself an expletive: “Jesus H. Christ,” she said.

“Well?” said Danny Twelve. “Did worlds collide?”

She said a ruder word.

*   *   *

Dr. Tilly put her head in her hands, which caught Danny Thirteen’s attention immediately as he reached over to touch her shoulder. “What happened?” he said, and for a moment she was tempted to explain everything again; to rely on his thoughtfulness and candor, but instead she sighed and went to get her notebook. Perhaps waiting was another experiment too, and she didn’t have to worry him in the process.

I’m mute. The house is not happy with me.

“Is that all?” The relief in her best friend’s voice was palpable. “Well, that’s nothing. We could play Charades.”

NO

“We could enjoy the quiet.” Rosamund made a very rude motion like a gunshot salute, and seeing her so uncharacteristically hangdog he relented: “Well, come here and we’ll watch TV until the house forgives you, but we just missed the news.”

They both pretended to watch the Food Network on mute. 14 Arden Lane was silent except for the low burble of the dishwasher and the muffled sound of chinchillas in the next room. She put her head on the shoulder of his dusty coat and allowed herself five seconds of frustrated self-pity, and enjoyed those five seconds immensely. When she and Daniel were alone she pretended that he never flinched slightly or was given pause by anything, and she just smelled the old familiar smell of his shampoo and overheated laptop. At 8:18 her cellphone buzzed in her pocket, which she ignored.

She and Danny had once both sworn that they would be presidents, astronauts and rock stars, and now in their forties they shared mid-life crises in the same way they’d used to share chocolates. She knew she could be careless and cavalier and hard to deal with, and had won the lottery with Daniel. As best friends went he was reliably fantastic. She liked the way his dark hair was cut short, with sprigs of early grey at the temples, liked his hair in general: it was a pretty shallow thing to like about a person, but she liked so much about Danny that she was amazed by every new thing she found charming. There were lines at his eyes and mouth that made his rare smile a little lopsided and piratical, no asset for a chartered stockbroker. When she touched his hair he hesitated.

“It’s bizarre not to have you talking,” he said. “I have to admit, I don’t actually like it.”

Rosamund wrote afresh in her notebook:

Sometimes I think you’re angry at me.

“Don’t even try to have a conversation like this,” he said, avoiding the issue like a champ, “it annoys me watching you painstakingly write that out.”

There was a terrible loneliness in her as she touched his neck, folded down a piece of his collar. It wasn’t 14 Arden Lane that was lonely, she suddenly thought, it was
her;
she was an armoured creature, self-sufficient, but for the terrible fact of needing her best friend all the time excepting when she wanted to finish a book. Her fingers curled at his neck and she was aware of everything, aware of the outside night-time and how her clothes felt on her skin, of how his face was a mask and how he wouldn’t look at her. Her fingers brushed his cheek and his jaw and the side of his mouth, sifted through his hair. Rosamund Tilly was an empty glass.

“Don’t,” said Danny.

At university they’d draped all over each other and never cared. They’d both had their gay periods then, reverting straight the next semester when Rosamund admitted she couldn’t do all the clogged-up sinks and he admitted he couldn’t deal with the late nights, and life proceeded from there. Daniel had one and a half divorces and Dr. Tilly had littered Hartford with a committed lack of commitment. She’d also littered Hartford with Snowdrop and Sparrow Tilly, who were the delights of her life, or at least would be when one or the other stopped texting her, and now that they were grown up being without Daniel was a terrible chore. Rosamund had never been lonely for anyone except Daniel Tsai, and when she pressed closer she could feel the beat of his heart slithering arrhythmically against her arm.

“Don’t,” he said again. Her mouth was very close to his mouth. Danny’s dark eyes were fathomless and closed. “We can’t handle change, Rosamund. I love you too much and know you too well. Think about this.”

The room closed down claustrophobically on her. She wanted to say:
do you know how long I’ve thought about this?
Or:
I want you more than anyone I ever thought I wanted.
And:
I’m so sorry.
Instead she accidentally said, “I—”

*   *   *

“Well?” Danny Fourteen said. “Did worlds collide?”

*   *   *

Dr. Tilly quit wasting time. She shot to her feet, made a beeline for her notebook, laptop jabbing into her thigh and irritated at the faint smell of chinchillas as she wrote. He said, “What,” as she flipped over pages, pretty patient as she gestured him away from trying to look – all he did was eventually get up and get himself a glass of water, as though this were a perfectly normal evening.

“Just nod your head for
all’s well
and shake it for
things not well,
” said Daniel, “maybe flailing a little for something in the middle, God knows, I didn’t learn how to deal with this in school.”

Now used to gestures, she jabbed a finger at him until he sat back down on the squashy sofa and looked up at her expectantly. Dr. Tilly did not expect to feel so shaky. She tasted nervousness in her saliva as she flipped up the notebook—

Don’t stop me, Daniel.

“Oh, yes, that calms me down,” said Danny. “
That
makes me feel perfectly at ease.”

Flip.
We need to talk.

“Okay. Any reason you’re using flashcards?”

Flip.
& what I’m saying here is all true and nothing to do with any house magic.

Danny still looked pretty buttoned-up and patient, but his voice had that overly reasonable cast people took on if they thought you were a bit loopy. “Okay. Go on.”

what did you have for lunch today??

“Rose, you already asked, and it was a peanut butter protein bar.”

Mr. Daniel Tsai, are you in love with me?

He didn’t even take it in. He read it, looked at her face, saw the question there as well, and smiled as gently as a chartered stockbroker could when faced with a woman for whom the date was over – self-effacing, running one hand through that grey-sprigged hair as though trying to consider how best to put things. “So that’s what you’re worried about,” he said carefully. “Rosamund, you know I care about you, don’t you? You and the girls are the most important people in my life who don’t share my genetic code.”

This was not going well. She had made some mistake. When Danny decided the best defense was a good offense, he went in with irritated guns blazing. “I know we joke around a lot,” he was saying. “Is it the flirting? We can stop if it makes you uncomfortable. To be honest, I do love you. But I haven’t been
in
love with you since I was eighteen.”

It was incredible. She hadn’t thought you could physically feel your heart breaking, a sort of sucking sensation near the aorta as it imploded into itself. Dr. Tilly hadn’t thought her heart would break at all. “Don’t worry,” he added, “nothing’s going to change, Rose. Nothing.”

“Let me try this again,” she said.

*   *   *

“Well?” Danny Fifteen said. “Did worlds collide?”

*   *   *

It was a little funny, even, how his reactions didn’t change, how she noticed the quirk of his eyebrows once he got to halfway through her litany. Her handwriting had perhaps been a little messier this time. There was only one change now, a question of semantics—