“The runner we’ll be looking for,” Jesse said. “Is he the author of those letters in the press?”
“When you need to know,” Kemp said, “I’ll tell you.”
* * *
Elizabeth returned unscathed from her afternoon protecting twenty-first-century tourists from the indignation of angry locals. There had been no real problem, she told Jesse. A few disapproving stares, but no one was throwing bricks. “Seems like most people don’t really care how morally compromised we are.”
“Well, this is New York,” Jesse said. “They tolerated Boss Tweed for years. People here are hard to shock.”
They took supper in the hotel dining room, as opposed to the staff room in the basement. Twenty-first-century cuisine. The waiter handed Jesse a menu as long as his forearm, which contained a great many words not recognizably English. “Does any of this translate into mutton?”
“Live a little,” Elizabeth said. “Let me order for you.”
“Is that customary?”
“Your manhood won’t wilt.”
She told the waiter to bring them two California chipotle burgers and various ancillary dishes. And beer of a particular brand, which came chilled, in a bottle with a lime wedge stuck in its neck. “Cheers,” she said.
“How were things back home?” he asked for the second time in as many days, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You really want to know?” She shrugged. “It was good to spend time with Gabby. She’s a big girl now. Smart. And independent, which is a good thing. My mom does a great job looking after her, and I’m grateful to her…”
“But?”
“But mom got religion after my dad died. Not in a good way. Joined a fundie church, and she won’t keep quiet about it around Gabby.”
“You’re not a churchgoer?”
“No. I mean, I don’t have strong opinions about how the universe was created or any of that stuff. I’m not a raging atheist. But I don’t think Noah’s ark was a real thing, and I don’t think God hates gays and heathens. If Gabby ever decides to join a church, that’s up to her, but I don’t want my mom teaching her stuff she’ll have to unlearn in biology class. So the arguments start as soon as Gabby’s down for the night—my mom’s all you need to get her baptized, and I’m like, she’s only four, what’s religion to her? Plus Gabby never fails to ask about her father. She knows he did some bad things, that he’s in prison for it. But it’s like an abscessed tooth, she won’t let it alone. ‘What did he do that was wrong? Does he want to hurt us? Why can’t I see him?’”
“What do you tell her?”
“As much of the truth as I think a four-year-old can understand. But the worst of it? My last day at home, we were taking a walk around the neighborhood, the three of us, me and my mom and Gabby, and Gabby tripped over the curb and skinned her knee. The usual kid crisis, but the thing is, she ran crying to my mom. Not to her mother—to her grandmother.”
“It was probably just—”
“Oh, I ran through all the probably just excuses. Probably she isn’t used to me being around, is what it boils down to. And that’s exactly the problem. Rock and a hard place. I need this job to make a real home for Gabby, but I can’t make a real home for Gabby while I have this job.”
Their meals arrived. Ground beef on a bun, fried potatoes, and salad, better than the fast-food equivalents Jesse had grown accustomed to at the City. The beef tasted like actual beef, for one thing.
“It’s the last year,” Jesse said. “You’ll be back with her soon.”
“But who’s to say another six months isn’t six months too many? How long does it take to lose that mother-daughter connection? Which is another reason why—”
“What?”
“Nothing. How’s your burger?”
“Good,” he said. “Hearty. A little complicated, what with the avocado and onions and all.”
“Best of both worlds, in a way—1877 American beef, grain fed and pharmaceutical free, butchered and stored to twenty-first-century standards. The hotel’s chef has an arrangement with a local slaughterhouse. Kobe beef’s got nothing on it, if you ask me.”
“Why, are your cattle anemic?”
“Two words: factory farm. Not that I have much experience with high-end beef. Half the time, at our house, we do McDonald’s like everybody else. My mom’s a Doritos-and-Coke kind of gal when she isn’t praying. But I try to make sure Gabby gets enough veggies.”
“If she lacks for anything,” Jesse said, “it’s not a mother’s love.”
Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. Elizabeth stared at him for an awkward moment. He hoped he hadn’t offended her. But she changed the subject: “I guess Kemp told you about San Francisco.”
“Not much about it. That we’ll be hunting a runner. Maybe or maybe not the infamous letter-writer.”
“Are you okay with San Francisco? Because I don’t know what happened to you there, but it was obviously bad enough to leave you traumatized.”
“Do you want me to tell you about it?”
She frowned. “I’m not asking you to.”
“I know.”
“I guess the question is, whatever happened, will it affect your work?”
He had lied to Kemp when Kemp asked a less well-informed version of the same question. But this was Elizabeth. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“You have enemies there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I appreciate the honesty. This is strictly between us. But if I need to know something, you’ll tell me, right?”
“I give you my word.”
An hour had passed, and their plates were as empty as they were going to get. Elizabeth said, “My room is on the third floor.”
“The one they gave me is on the fourth.”
“And I think we should keep it that way. Like I said, what happened at Futurity Station—”
“When we shared a bed, you mean? Speaking bluntly, which you usually prefer to do.”
He had not thought she was capable of blushing, that obligatory act of females in popular fiction. But she came close. “Okay, well, I don’t know if we should do it again. Not because I don’t want to, necessarily. But because there’s no future in it.”
Future: How many meanings could such a simple word have?
“The thing is,” Elizabeth went on, not meeting his eyes, “I thought about this a whole lot when I was back home. Told myself it was a mistake and unfair to both of us. Unprofessional conduct. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes.”
“And we’ve been apart long enough that being with you now seems kind of overwhelming.”
“All right.”
“That’s it? Just, all right?”
“I don’t know what else to say. I know I’m not entitled to expect anything. What happened at the depot is a memory I treasure, but I’m not so vain as to think it means I have a claim on you.”
The waiter arrived to clear their table. The rattle of plates and cutlery was the sound of empires falling. They folded their napkins and signed for their meals and walked in silence to the elevators. Jesse got a wave and a wink from Amos Creagh at the reception desk, which he pretended not to see. The elevator door rolled open; they punched their respective destinations into the panel of illuminated numbers.
The elevator rose to the third floor. The doors slid open. The doors slid closed.
“You missed your stop,” Jesse said.
“I changed my mind,” she said.
10
The Blackwell letters were a problem, but Kemp’s declaration to the press that he would publish the true story next December created enough ambiguity for the City to continue conducting its business more or less unmolested. Jesse supposed most folks thought of the visitors from the future as near-mythical beings—like the moon-men the New York Sun famously claimed to have discovered back in 1835—and mythical beings were expected to do shocking or unusual things. You’d be disappointed if they didn’t. The clergy and the columnists might disapprove, but that counted for little, barring further trouble.