“I don’t get it. She tells me to stay away from you at the Expo, and then she—”
“From her point of view, once I warned you on the Metro, I’d done what she needed me to do. And to be honest, I don’t know if Older Pru remembers any of it.”
“Okay, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the key to understanding your aunt. What if you had the chance to go back and tell yourself not to make the mistakes you made? A chance to change everything you think went wrong in your life?”
“Well, I sort of do. But . . . it’s dangerous, right? Katherine says it messes with your head, and I’d like to have as many marbles left as possible, if we make it out of this alive.”
“Katherine’s right. But either Pru didn’t know that or at some point she moved past caring. She runs her younger self pretty ragged, tasking her with errands that she won’t entrust to anyone else. I guess, from her perspective, it’s no different from what Saul had her doing when he’d order her to show up in visions or at church events—he didn’t like it when she started to show signs of age, so he’d have someone go back to the middle of the night when she was under twenty, wake her up, make her up, and pack her off to wherever he needed a message delivered.”
“So twenty is old to him?”
“I don’t know. It’s think it’s more that the Cyrists have pitched Pru as ageless. She’s a big part of the whole eternal-life myth for the Koreshan Cyrists, and a lot of Cyrists still believe that. I guess you could say she’s sort of a living trademark.”
“That’s insane. How many times has she . . .”
“No clue. A general rule of thumb I follow is the older the Prudence, the more likely she’s bat-shit crazy. You’ll get flashes of sanity, but they’re rare as she gets older, because so many bits of memory have been overwritten. Do you know about VHS?”
The question is such a total non sequitur that it literally stops me in my tracks, and then I have to hustle to catch up. “What? You mean, like video tapes? A little, I guess. We’ve used DVDs as long as I can remember. What does that have to do with—”
“When you get back, ask your dad what happens when you record over them. I don’t understand the technology, but it helped Kate get a handle on it before. Something about afterimages. Anyway, the more I’ve thought about it, the more certain I am that Pru wanted me to know what they were planning with you. I don’t know if she was put up to it by her older self or if she just happened to learn something accidentally, but she led me to that doorway and then disappeared. That’s when I heard Simon running his mouth to someone, probably one of the trainees, about going after you to get the diary and the whole plot to erase Katherine in 1893.”
We’re approaching a crowd of about twenty men, a few with kids in tow, lined up outside a café. Once we’re past the group, Kiernan holds up a finger for me to wait and then steps over to whisper something to a thin man near the end of the line. A boy of five or six, with long blond hair falling down over tired eyes, clutches the man’s pant leg, staring up at Kiernan as they talk.
The guy listens to Kiernan for a moment, then shakes his head and waves him off. He looks back, however, as though he’s reconsidering what he was told, as we’re walking away.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“They’re lined up for the bookie. Told him the smart money’s on the Browns, ’cause Cy isn’t pitching, which actually isn’t true, but they lose anyway. Don’t think I convinced him. Must be a die-hard Americans fan.”
“Is this baseball? I thought the Browns were football, and I’ve never even heard of the Americans.”
He covers his heart in mock pain. “Of course, it’s baseball. The Americans become the Red Sox. The Browns are Saint Louis. Don’t know what they become. You know Cy Young, right?”
“I’ve heard of the award. A pitcher, right?”
“Not just a pitcher. The best pitcher ever, who, even in your day, holds the record for consecutive hitless innings. That game you and I watched on the 4th, my God, he pitched twenty innings, thirteen without giving up a single run.”
“But baseball’s only nine innings.” I’m pretty sure on this point, based on the three or four games I’ve seen.
“Yes, but there were eleven extra innings. Then Cy gave up two runs at the end. Even though we lost, that was one incredible game.”
I can’t help but smile, because he sounds as animated as when he was a kid back at the Expo. “You said we went to the game. Was Other-Kate into baseball?”
“Um, not really,” he admits with a little frown. “It was an early birthday present for me. She slept through about half the game.”
The Nationals game I saw with Dad didn’t go into extra innings, and I was still ready to snooze after an hour, so she has my sympathy. I don’t mention it, though, since Kiernan would clearly consider it blasphemy.
“The games are a lot of fun, though,” he continues. “The Americans are at home next week. I could get tickets—”
“I don’t think so.”
He grins, and I’m pretty sure he’s making Other-Kate comparisons, but it isn’t worth sitting through a game to prove him wrong, especially when I’d probably end up dozing off and proving him right.
We stroll along in silence for a few minutes. Or rather we’re silent, though I can’t say the same for the city. From what I can tell, there isn’t any order at all to the traffic. Trolley cars, horse-drawn buggies, and the occasional car—all painted black—share the road, but they are sharing only in the loosest sense of the word. It’s more accurate to say that it’s every vehicle for itself. Every few seconds you hear a loud clang from one or both ends of a trolley trying to avoid braking for one of the many carriages, bicycles, or pedestrians wandering on and off the tracks.
Another bell rings out behind us, and I turn toward Kiernan. “Is it always this crazy? I wouldn’t have thought there’d be so much traffic on Saturday.”
“This isn’t busy. You should see this area before the subway is built.”
As I glance away from the traffic and look again at the buildings, I realize that at some point we crossed an invisible culture line. Most people two or three blocks back looked European, but the residents here are almost entirely Asian, and most of the signs appear to be written in Chinese.
Kiernan notices my expression and says, “Yeah, we’re in Chinatown. But don’t worry. It’s safe.”
“Why would you assume that I’d think it wasn’t safe?” I ask.
He looks puzzled. “Well, I don’t know. Because it’s different?”
I raise an eyebrow, but then I realize he isn’t being intentionally racist. It’s like this experiment we did in sociology class last year. Things that are different, things that don’t fit into our own typical surroundings, do tend to set off some sort of subliminal trigger in most people. Your pulse beats faster, you become more aware of your environment, more in touch with your fight-or-flight response. So I just give him a smile and say, “I’ve been to Chinatown before. In DC. This can’t be much different.”
“Maybe not,” he says, sniffing the air. “Do they have bao in DC’s Chinatown?”
“They do. I’ve seen them at dim sum.” I take a deep breath and catch hints of bread, garlic, and sesame. Looking across the street, I locate the source of the aroma—Lock Sen Low Chinese Restaurant.
“I don’t know dim sum,” he says. “But I do know bao. They were breakfast for me and Da most mornings at the Expo. And since I haven’t had breakfast . . .” Without warning, he grabs my arm and executes one of those suicidal maneuvers I’ve seen several other people try in the past few minutes. Rather than cross at the corner like a civilized person, he yanks us into traffic, just before a trolley comes barreling around the bend. So now we’re the reason the conductor is clanging the bell and shouting as the trolley misses us by mere inches.