And when presently—dark now, Fifth Avenue streetlamps on—I came around the last turn of the path, the Plaza had a spotlighted fountain twinkling before it, and cars pulling up to and leaving from, and people walking in through and out of, the Fifth Avenue entrance. And all around, and behind it—a great backdrop for it—the hard-glittering towers of Manhattan in the time I’d been born into.
26
AT RUBE’S APARTMENT I had the easy chair, sitting by the windows in a parallelogram of late-afternoon sun, coffee mug in hand. But Rube—well, he didn’t pace, wasn’t nervous. He just walked, in his army pants, leather slippers, and white shirt. Wandered around his little living room listening, smiling, nodding, interested. I’d actually found Z but Rube didn’t seem to care about that. What had I done in New York? What had I seen? What was it like?
He laughed genuinely when I quoted from The Greyhound, then wanted to know what the usherettes wore. And what the audience wore, and what they said in the lobby during intermission. And Mrs. Israel, and Professor Duryea, the dance teacher—and Jolson, my God! Tell me about them. And what the streets looked like. And Broadway.
He couldn’t get enough, walking the room listening, smiling, nodding. Didn’t give a damn about Z, far as I could tell. Finally I asked him about it, and he said, “Oh, we’ve been working too, Si, since you left. And now we know all about Major Archibald Butt. Your Jotta Girl was dead right. ‘Jotta Girl,’ ” he repeated mockingly. “How’d you come up with that?” I shrugged, a little annoyed, and he said, “I remember her all right. From the Project. Hot little number.”
“ ‘Hot little number.’ Rube, if you ever develop the ability, head for the 1920s; you’ll be right at home.”
“I only wish I could. Anyway, your Jotta Girl was right: Everybody in the world but us knew who Major Archibald Butt was. The checkout girl at Safeway knows. Your paper-delivery boy knows. And Dr. D sure did, once you’d blabbed to him. But now I know too. I’ve read all about him. Your pal Major Archibald Butt sailed for Europe. As we learned too late to brief you. We also know that he got his papers; the letters of intent or whatever. And that he sailed for home. We know the date now, and we even know the ship. But he never got home.” Rube stood at my chair grinning down at me like a little kid.
“Well, if you should ever happen to feel like it, you might let me know too.”
“He sailed . . .” Rube began to laugh, shoulders jiggling. “Huh, huh, huh, huh, oh my God. He sailed—ah, hah, hah, hah, hah! Si, he sailed for home on the goddamn Titanic!”
After a moment I said, “Maybe you won’t mind if I don’t laugh. I knew him, God damn it!”
“You disappoint me. Always have. Because you don’t really have any imagination. This absolutely astounding ability is wasted on you, wasted. All it has ever really meant to you is going back to 1880-whatever, and Julia. Willy. And your goddamn dog. Add fireplace and slippers, and that’s enough for you.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“What I could do with your ability!”
I pretended to cross myself at the thought.
“Simon, old fellow, even though you know that it isn’t so, I believe you still actually think of the past as immutable. The Titanic sank. Major Butt drowned. World War One happened. Nothing to be done about it. You’ve never really and truly got hold of the idea that if you can go back before these things hap—”
“Rube, it’s you who’s never understood. I’ve had time—and reason—to think, and the notion that Dr. D is right keeps sneaking into my mind. Whatever has happened is our past. What reason to go back and interfere with it? We’re formed by our past; we’d change our own fate—blindly.”
“Dr. D and his timid convert.” Then, briskly, as though the nonsense were over now, he said, “Si, I want you to go back. And keep the Titanic from sinking.” I smiled but he ignored it. “We have a 1911 passport made up for you, a real one, a good one, only a name change. It’s just a big printed sheet, no photos then, thank God. You’ve got to go back, Si, because—we’ve researched this—the sinking of the Titanic seems to have been an event that changed the course of the world it belonged to. Even more than the loss of the people who went down with her was an attitude lost with it. A way people thought about the world and the century. After the Titanic things were never the same. It was a kind of Big Bang that changed everything. And the world veered off in another and wrong direction, the century that could have been, derailed. But . . . could you get yourself back to May 1911?”
I sat grinning, openly laughing at him. “Sure, but I won’t. I just goddamn well won’t. Why? What lunacy do you have in mind?”
He told me, and I just grinned some more. “Home, Rube. I’m going home.”
He stood blinking at me, his face regretful, and said, “Si, I hope you will forgive me for what I have to do,” and turned to walk to a little desk he had across the room. There he pushed aside a flat glass paperweight and picked up what I could see was a folded sheet of computer printout, holes down the sides. He brought it over, handed it to me, and I took and unfolded it, a long double sheet.
I couldn’t tell what it was, no heading, just a long list, several dozen lines down the page in slightly faded computer print. Every line began with my name: Morley, Morley, Morley, clear down the left side. Following the first Morley, a comma, then Aaron D., a string of numerals, and HD, July 1, 1919. Then Morley, Adam A., a string of numerals, and HD, Dec. 17, 1918. Six or eight more Morleys followed by HD, meaning Honorable Discharge, it occurred to me. Then Morley, Calvin C., his serial number, and MIA, June 11, 1918, and I knew what this sheet was, and my hand began to tremble minutely, the paper vibrating, and my eyes wouldn’t quite work right, and didn’t want to, but I couldn’t possibly help it, and looked down at the last name on the list just above the torn-off edge, and it was there: Morley, William S.—S for Simon—his army serial number, and KIA, Dec. 2, 1917. Just in time for Christmas! my mind screamed. And I looked up at Rube, waiting, his face a little desperate. Before I could speak he said, pleading, “You had to know about Willy, Si! And you want to know, don’t you? Don’t you? Because I didn’t fake that; don’t ever think that. It’s real. It’s true.”
I knew it was, and that in a single instant everything had changed and that I was going—had to try!—into the New York of May 1911, to attempt the craziness that could only occur in the mind of Ruben Prien.
“No, I don’t blame you,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Not your fault at all. You son of a bitch.”
27
NO TROUBLE IN MAY 1911 booking a first-class passage on the Mauretania at the Cunard Line office on Lower Broadway. Next month maybe, but plenty of space now. Just time after that to buy clothes, right there on Lower Broadway: shirts, linen, shoes, pants, Norfolk jacket, cap, for walking on deck. Even dinner clothes. Along with two leather bags. Then a cab to Pier 52.