"He said you're not crazy," Marrity ventured.
"Good to hear." A brass ashtray lay on the table next to her purse, and she leaned forward and pulled a pack of Marlboros and a lighter out of her purse.
"My father's… mummified head?" Marrity cleared his throat. "They've got?"
"They say they killed him in 1955. I don't know why."
"That's when he disappeared. That's why he never came back to us. That would be why, if it's true." He sat back on the couch, not believing it but considering it. "I've hated him all these years."
How can I let go of that? he thought in bewilderment. Hating him has been the basis of my resolve to be the opposite sort of father to Daphne.
After a moment Charlotte asked, "You on the wagon?"
"Hmm? Oh, no, sorry." Marrity picked up his third beer and took a deep sip. When he put it down again he said, " 'Drink, for you know not whence you came nor why — drink, for you know not why you go nor where.'"
Charlotte laughed and lifted her free arm and draped it over his shoulders. "'A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou,'" she said. He looked into her face — he could see himself mirrored in the sunglasses — and she quickly leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
He reached up and touched her cheek, and suddenly he was kissing her in earnest, and she had opened her mouth and her hand was gripping his shoulder. He tasted gin on her tongue. There were hoots from nearby tables, but he didn't care.
A flash of sudden astonishment made him close his lips and lean back.
Her face was still very close. She raised one eyebrow.
"It's Daphne," he said hoarsely.
Charlotte actually blushed as she pulled her arm back and folded her hands in her lap. "Oops! She doesn't need this."
Marrity closed his eyes to concentrate, and he projected an image of himself hugging Daphne; and in return he got a clear impression of… cautious amusement, like a wink through tears.
"It's okay," he told Charlotte. "She didn't mind. We've got to get her back."
"We will. These people aren't stupid." She sighed deeply and gulped her martini. "I didn't mind either."
Marrity could still taste her gin. He was shaky. It had been two years since he had kissed a woman, and a whole lot longer than that since he had kissed a woman he didn't know well. "I didn't either," he said quickly. Then he took a deep breath and changed the subject: "Mossad, you said — that's Israel's secret service?"
"Shoot at you in the morning, kiss you in the afternoon. What's left?" She sighed and he watched her light a cigarette. "Yes, Israel. They've apparently kept close track of all things Einsteinian. Did you know that after the first president of Israel died, in 1952, they asked Einstein if he'd be president? It wasn't just a gesture — the Mossad knew that Einstein had made some unpublished discoveries."
"Like a time machine." Marrity shook his head. "I think you said — Jesus — that that's me, that old guy, that old drunk guy! Who claimed he was my dad? Like, me from the future?"
"One future, not the future. There isn't any the future. He used this machine in your grandmother's shed to come back here to 1987 from 2006. His life—"
"2006? Then he's only… if he's me… fifty-four. He looks older."
Marrity tried to summon skepticism, and found he didn't have any. He believed it, believed that the pouchy-faced old man was in fact himself, and he hated the thought of that querulous old fool walking around and talking to people. Marrity had never been drunk enough to have done and said things he couldn't remember later, but he felt as if it was happening now. What might he be saying, Marrity wondered helplessly, what personal secrets of mine might he be blabbing to these people?
Marrity could feel his face getting hot. "Is Daphne talking to him? "
"I don't imagine he's eager to talk to her," said Charlotte quietly. "He's experienced two lifelines already — one broke somehow, and spilled him into the other. In the original happy one, Daphne died yesterday, in that Italian restaurant. He wants to make sure that in this time line she doesn't grow up — doesn't go on living."
Marrity was dizzy, and couldn't make himself look at Charlotte. "He's not me, I could never want that. What could Daphne ever do—"
He was staring down at his clenched fists, and Charlotte took hold of one of them. "There is no the future," she repeated. "When you get free of this, you and Daphne can do anything you choose to do." She squeezed his hand. "But he told Golze that in his second lifeline, you — he, that is, he and Daphne were both alcoholics, living in a trailer somewhere, and they hated each other. Daphne tried to take his car at one point, and he tried to block her, and she backed it over him."
"Those weren't us. Those weren't us."
"Make them not be."
She was facing him, so he couldn't see her eyes. "What do you—" he began, then halted uncertainly. When she cocked her head, he went on: "It's none of my business, but what do you want to use the time machine for?"
She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a long sigh of smoke. "True," she said, almost absently, "it's none of your business. But none of your life is my business — I am not Daphne's keeper — but somehow I'm knee deep in it anyway." She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. "You've got an advance warning to go easy on the booze, haven't you?"
"Yes, I guess I have."
"Did you plan to start going easy today?"
"No, not today."
She picked up her empty glass and half stood up — then sat back down again. "I want to go back," she said quietly but quickly, "and prevent my younger self from being blinded in 1978. All I've worked for is to save her. I don't even think of that little girl as me anymore, I think of her more as my lost daughter who needs rescuing. If I can save her I can disappear, and she'll be a new person, born out of me like—" She waved her empty glass.
"Like parthenogenesis," said Marrity.
"Exactly. Identical body, but not this person." She took hold of his empty glass in her free hand and straightened gracefully to her feet. "Same again?"
"Same again."
The Roosevelt Hotel was right across the street from the banners and green copper roofs of the Chinese Theater forecourt, and Lepidopt shifted to stare at the ornate old structure as Malk turned off Hollywood Boulevard at Orange and found a parking place at the curb, avoiding the Roosevelt's valet parking.
Do they wonder what's become of their Charlie Chaplin slab? Lepidopt thought, rocking in the abruptly stopped car. Who'd imagine it's in the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino now?
"APAM, gentlemen," said Mishal as they got out of the car and blinked in the heat and late afternoon sun glare of the summer Hollywood sidewalk.
Lepidopt had had enough. APAM, short for Avtahat Paylut Modienit, meant securing operational activity, and it was the first thing a Mossad katsa was required to learn.
"We're katsas," he said shortly.
"Of course you are," said Mishal with a smile.