“They need me.”
“The hell they do. One more earnest white college graduate isn’t going to turn the tide, for Christ’s sake. They have TV. They have pinheaded southern sheriffs beating women on all three networks. They have friends in the Kennedy administration. After the assassination—” He was drunker than he’d realized. He was giving away secrets. But that didn’t matter. “After the assassination they’ll have Lyndon Johnson signing civil rights legislation while Vietnam escalates. You want the future? Vietnam, Woodstock, Nixon, Watergate, Jimmy Carter, Ayatollah Khomeini, the whole fucking parade of cliches, with or without the help of Joyce Casella. Please,” he said. “Please don’t go get killed before we know each other better.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I know you at all. What’s all this shit about the future?”
“That’s where I’m from.”
She looked at him fiercely. “Tell me the truth or get out of my apartment.”
He described in broad and clumsy outline the train of events that had carried him here.
Joyce listened with focused patience but didn’t begin to believe him until he brought out his wallet and unpacked his ID from the card windows—his Washington State driver’s license, his Visa card, an expired American Express card, a card to access bank machines; from the billfold, a couple of tens bearing a mint date twenty years in the future.
Joyce examined all these things solemnly. Finally she said, “Your watch.”
He hadn’t worn it since his first visit; it was in the left-hand pocket of his jeans. She must have seen it. “It’s just a cheap digital watch. But you’re right. You can’t buy those here.”
He backed off and let her contemplate these things. He was a little more sober for the telling of it and he wondered whether this had been a terrible mistake. It must be frightening. God knows, it had frightened him.
But she fingered the cards and the money, then sighed and looked at him fearlessly.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said. “I guess we don’t sleep tonight.”
“I guess we don’t,” Tom said.
She held the cup in both hands as if it were anchoring her to the earth.
“Tell me again,” she said. “Tell me how you came here.” He rubbed his eyes. “Again?”
“Again. Slower.”
He took a deep breath and began.
By the time he finished it was past two a.m. The street outside was quiet, the light of the room seemed strange and sterile. He was dazed, sleepy, hung over. Joyce, however, was wide awake.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why a tunnel between here and—what’s it called? Bellfountain?”
“Belltower,” Tom said. “I don’t know. I didn’t build it, Joyce. I found it.”
“Anybody could have found it?”
“I suppose so.”
“And no one else used it?”
“Someone must have. At least once. Used it and, I guess, abandoned it. But I don’t know that for a fact.”
She shook her head firmly. “I don’t believe it.”
He felt helpless. He had shown her all the evidence he possessed, explained it as calmly as possible—
“No, I mean—I know it’s true. The cards, the money, the watch—maybe somebody could fake all that, but I doubt it. It’s true, Tom, but I don’t believe it. You understand what I’m saying? It’s hard to look at you and tell myself this is a guy from the year 1989.”
“What more can I do?”
“Show me,” Joyce said. “Show me the tunnel.” This wasn’t the way he had meant it to happen.
He walked with her—it wasn’t far—to the building near Tompkins Square.
“This place?” Joyce said. Meaning: a miracle—here? He nodded.
The street was silent and empty. Tom took his watch out of his pocket and checked it: three-fifteen, and he was dizzy with fatigue, already regretting this decision.
Later Tom would decide that the visit to the tunnel marked a dividing line; it was here that events had begun to spiral out of control. Maybe he sensed it already—an echo of his own future leaking through zones of fractured time.
He was reluctant to take her inside, suddenly certain it was a mistake to have brought her here at all. If he hadn’t been drunk … and then weary beyond resistance …
She tugged his hand. “Show me.”
And there was no plausible way to turn back. He took one more look at the bulk of the building, all those rooms and corridors he had never explored, a single window illuminated in the darkness.
He led her inside. The lobby was vacant, silent except for the buzzing of a defective fluorescent lamp. He grasped the handle of the door that led to the basement.
It wouldn’t turn.
“Trouble?” Joyce inquired.
He nodded, frowning. “It wasn’t locked before. I don’t think it had a lock.” He bent over the mechanism. “This looks new.”
“Somebody installed a new lock?”
“I think so.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Could mean somebody knows I’ve been here. Could mean the janitor found some kids in the basement and decided it was time for new hardware.”
“Is there a janitor?”
He shrugged.
She said, “But somebody must own the building. It’s a matter of record, right? You could look it up at City Hall.”
“I suppose so.” It hadn’t occurred to him. “Might be dangerous. This isn’t a Nancy Drew mystery. I don’t think we should draw attention to ourselves.”
“If we don’t open that door,” Joyce pointed out, “you can never go home again.”
“If we do open it, maybe they’ll put in a better lock next time. Or post a guard.” This was a chilling thought and he couldn’t help looking past her, through the cracked glass of the outer door. But the street was empty.
“Maybe we can open it without being too obvious,” Joyce said.
“We shouldn’t even try. We should get the fuck out of here.”
“Hey, no! I’m not backing out now.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “If this is true … I want to see.”
Tom looked at the lock more closely. Cheap lock. He took out his Visa card and slipped it between the door and the jamb. This worked on television but apparently not in real life; the card bumped into the bolt but failed to move it. “Give me your keys,” he said.
Joyce handed him her key ring.
He tried several of the keys until he found one that slid into the lock. By twisting it until it caught some of the tumblers he was able to edge the bolt fractionally inward; then he forced the card up until the door sprang open an inch.
A gust of cool, dank air spilled through the opening.
He felt the change in Joyce as they descended. She had been cocky and reckless, daring him on; now she was silent, both hands clamped on his arm.
In the first sub-basement he tugged the cord attached to the naked forty-watt bulb overhead—it cast a cheerless pale circle across the floor. “We should have brought a flashlight.”
“We probably should have brought an elephant gun. It’s scary down here.” She frowned at him. “This is real, isn’t it?”
“As real as it gets.”
The second lock, on the wooden door in the lowest sub-basement, had also been replaced. Joyce lit a series of matches while Tom examined the mechanism. Whoever had installed the lock had been in a hurry; the padlock was new and sturdy but the hasp was not. It was attached with three wood screws to the framing of the door; Tom levered the screws out with the edge of a dime and put them in his pocket.
Down into darkness.
They climbed over rubble. Joyce continued striking matches until Tom told her to stop; the fight was too feeble to be useful and he was worried about the flammable debris underfoot. She let the last match flicker out but flinched when the darkness closed over them. She said, “Are you sure—?