“Have they come visit you yet?”
“Who?”
“The Rexes.”
“Why would…?” I sighed. “No, but I think they will pretty soon. My bosses seem to think so, anyway.”
“Vacation, then?”
“Or medical leave.”
“Well, you get paid for doing nothing.”
“But less than I got paid for doing nothing before.”
She smiled, took a sip and started opening the containers.
We drank wine and ate shrimp and rice and scallops with sand in them, and watched the news. Aside from the Parliament’s latest tremendous display of support, there was a man who opened fire at an office in Atlanta, shooting five coworkers dead and wounding three, twenty inches of snow in Rome, tension along the Chinese-Indian border, a fire on the West Side that killed four people including two children, a small plane crashed two miles from a suburban airport, a late tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean, something about a bubble under Yellowstone that was long overdue, clouds in Chicago, with chances of rain, snow, hale and sunshine, a town of Hajim, liberated by our troops in the Middle East with minimal casualties, Bird Flu confirmed in Oslo, the Support-The-Troops holiday celebrations attracting the biggest number of patriots yet across the United States, including a dozen of top-listed pop-divas touring together through the military bases and camps, President would fly on official business to Vatican in two days or as soon as the airport is cleared of snow, and, at some point, there was a modest, presumably final note regarding yours truly. Of course, yours truly also starred in a couple of commercials, a healthy dose of which provided much needed breaks between the stories.
Despite that digital assault on sanity, I managed to keep up my upbeat attitude with the help of frequent glances at Iris’s legs. Iris appeared completely immune to the crap being poured into the living room through the 80-inch-wide window and proceeded to eat and giggle and point and shake her head, as though she was watching a comedy. She even made fun of my hair in the BOACC ad. As I conceded, with a mockingly hurt grimace, that my hair indeed looked like Gary Cody’s in “Born Free,” I wondered excitedly if she was nervous.
I knew I was. Like a homeless beagle in Seoul. Not at all fitting a man of my experience and, shall we say, mileage.
After breakfast we took our wine and I, nervously, offered to give her a tour of the place, strategically placing the bedroom to be the last waypoint of the itinerary. We looked out on the lake from the balcony, walked cautiously by the kitchen, visited the study and the fake Munch, the skill of whose forger she vigorously complimented, then finally, after I almost shoved her in and out of the bathroom, we reached the boudoir.
“This is it,” I said with a grand round gesture and leaned on the doorframe to try and appear nonchalant. The trouble was, I didn’t know what else to say or do. I opened my mouth and closed it. Opened it again, and this time she saw me closing it. I was pretty sure by then my face was becoming the color of the wine we’d drunk. For once, Iris dispelled my embarrassment instead of causing it.
She grinned and came close and said my silliness was cute. Then she rose to her tiptoes and kissed me. Off went the orange blanket, settling like a parachute over our clothes landing on the floor.
Later we lay in bed and neither of us was nervous anymore. We looked out of the window at the steel clouds pierced by sunbeams that looked like traces of God’s arrows. I placed my hand on her lower back.
“Iris?”
“Hmm?”
“Who are you, Iris?”
“I am a time traveler from the past.”
“From the past?”
“The past is the easiest to be a time traveler from.”
“Not really. If they invented a time machine in the past, how come we don’t have it now?”
“You don’t know a thing about what we do and do not have.”
“Maybe you have a point there. But if I was a time traveler, I would be from the future.”
“The future?”
“Well, there are really two choices. You can’t very well be a time traveler from the present.”
“Sure you can.”
She lifted her head and stared down at me; her hair, coal-black, a mess around her Asiatic-shaped, aquamarine eyes.
“I can’t believe you’d rather be from the future, though. You have a chance to use a time machine and you use it to travel to the past?”
“What’s wrong with the past?”
“It already happened. You would waste a chance of a lifetime to see something that’s already happened?”
I looked out of the window again. The clouds have regrouped, united and patched up the wounds. Maybe even forgotten about them already. Maybe I could get there before a certain thing happened. Leaving the thought a thought I have suddenly located another reason, not a fake one, but a more conversational truth it seemed to me.
“I am just not too sure about the future, you know?”
She didn’t answer. I squinted at her. She was looking back, smiling. Such and innocent, girlie smile she had.
“You think he’s right,” I stated accusingly.
“I don’t think he’s lying.”
“He might be crazy.”
“Wouldn’t necessarily make him wrong.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Wouldn’t necessarily make it wrong.”
“Can’t we talk about time machines instead?”
“We are.”
“A time traveler from present, you mean?” She just grinned, pushed away and got out of bed.
“Good thing you showed me the bathroom,” she dropped casually over her shoulder. I snickered.
“What do you suggest I do?” I called after her. I heard the water running, and the bathroom door closed. Falling back onto the pillow, I closed my eyes and imagined her there, naked, in front of the mirror wall, splashing freezing water over her face. Her hair got stuck to her cheeks; her lips moved soundlessly, but I read the single word they constructed easily.
“Survive.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Iris went home soon after the shower, declining my offer to move in, but giggling as she did. As I closed the door behind her and stood in the hallway, I suddenly grinned, warm despite being stark naked. Warm and at home I felt, for the first time in at least four months, but likely in a lot longer. Four months of lonely dread and four days of horror had been dispelled by just three hours spent with her. Those hours did more to make me believe that I could, in fact, go back to my normal life, than all the news coverage in the world. They also made me believe it was possible to anticipate something beautiful after making love rather than before it. I could have sworn even Jennifer never roused such feelings in me.
“I think I am in love,” I said aloud to sum it up, goose bumps advancing up my spine.
Thus upbeat, mind full of Iris, I drove several blocks to the FBI headquarters. A couple of News Vans started after me as I emerged from the parking garage, but the Winger made short work of those.
At the FBI building, as pristine and hectic as a psychiatric ward, I was led into a small room with comfortable leather armchairs resembling those we had on the show. There, three polite agents and I spoke at length about my adventures. Actually, they spoke at length, and I did little more than nod affirmatively to their questions, which were supposed to confirm the line of events the Bureau’s brilliant minds had reconstructed from clues. They didn’t seem to (and obviously neither did I, given the circumstances) care for any version of events other than their own, so it wasn’t surprising when we all came to the conclusion that their story hadn’t had a single incorrect assumption in it. We exchanged pleasantries — they congratulated me and I complimented them on the job well-done — and I got up to leave.