He opened the door to his apartment quietly, so as not to wake Laura. She’d been sleeping over a lot, and Jeff figured she’d be moving in with him soon. He wasn’t sure how his colleagues at City College would take this—the 1960s were one of the decades of sexual liberation, but Jeff wasn’t enough of an expert on that aspect of popular culture to know just how far that went.
He tiptoed into the bedroom. He liked looking at Laura when she was sleeping. Her eyes were open just a crack, and he could see the bottoms of her soft brown eyes tracing some sort of REM-dream diagram. He hoped it was of him. He looked at her body, her breasts, one nipple partly exposed. He could do a lot worse than spending the next twenty-three years with her.
He walked carefully back into the kitchen, put the papaya juice into the refrigerator—he loved it, a living antique, right out of the Smith-Sonyian—and took out some eggs. Was cholesterol verboten in this decade? He’d been meaning to ask Laura. It certainly wasn’t in his. He started a pot of water boiling for the eggs, and sat down at the table to read the paper.
“Jesus!” he shouted.
“What’s the matter?” Laura shuffled out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes.
Jeff shook his head in shocked disbelief.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Laura walked over, put a concerned hand on his shoulder.
Jeff pointed to the paper.
“What? What is it?” Laura asked.
Jeff jabbed at a picture. “I know her,” he rasped. “She was a member of my team. Rena Sarrett.”
Laura leaned over, and read aloud the article associated with the photograph. “…Run down by a bus on Central Park South last week… died the next day… her co-workers say she was hired by Gaulin’s, an insurance firm, about six months ago… attempts to locate Miss Sarrett’s relatives have all proven unsuccessful… police would appreciate anyone with information contacting them…”
“She was part of your project?” Laura asked.
“Right,” Jeff said, his voice choked with emotion.
Laura had the presence of mind to turn off the water, which was furiously boiling. “And you and she were lovers?”
“What?” Jeff croaked.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said.
“Yeah, we were lovers. Once. A long time ago—actually, in a time which doesn’t even goddamn exist yet. Does that matter?”
“Did you love her?” Laura asked.
“Yes,” Jeff said, tears in his eyes. “But not as much as I love you.”
Laura put her arms around his neck, stroked his chest. “That’s all that matters to me. I love you too.”
Jeff rubbed the side of his face against her hand.
“What does this mean?” Laura asked. “I mean, your friend getting killed…
“It means they sent her back too—maybe to find me here, who knows, maybe they got one of my messages after all,” Jeff said. “Or maybe they were trying to send her back to 1985, to do the same job I was supposed to do, but for some reason she got sucked back here to the 1960s too. I don’t know.”
“What are you—we—going to do now?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know,” Jeff said.
“I don’t really want to go to this party,” Jeff said, trudging reluctantly after Laura up a steep street in Washington Heights.
“Come on.” Laura turned around and pulled his hand. “It’s been over a month since you found out about Rena, and all you’ve been doing is moping and brooding—it’s time you got out and saw some people. It’s summer already, for God’s sake.”
“Not moping—thinking,” Jeff said. “I was knocked unconscious in Dallas, Rena was killed by a bus, both in places we shouldn’t have been. There’s got to be some comprehensible pattern in this.”
“I know,” Laura said, more softly. “It’s almost as if there’s something in the nature of things that doesn’t want people to time travel—and punishes them when they do.”
“You know I dreamed about Rena dead, shortly after I got out of the Dallas hospital,” Jeff said, recalling this for the first time. “I wonder if that has any connection to any of this.”
“Well, remember you told me that Kip Thorpe—”
“Thorne,” Jeff corrected.
“Right, Kip Thorne and his people hypothesized that people flip into alternate universes when they change history through time travel—that that’s how the loops opened by the Thorne stay clean—so maybe, somehow, because you’re here in the past, you’ve caused an alternate universe to come into being, and in that universe you already lived past knowing about Rena’s death, because that universe is progressing at a different pace, and somehow your dream connected you to this alternate version of your self…”
Jeff smiled. It was at times like this that he could understand how he had come to feel so close to Laura. “You don’t think I’m such a lunatic anymore, huh?”
Laura snuggled against him. “You’re definitely a lunatic—no doubt about that—but maybe not about time travel.”
Jeff kissed her on the forehead.
“Well, here we are at Joannie’s building,” Laura said. “Don’t worry, I’m sure there’ll be other teachers there. Just think of this as another great safari into 1960s culture.”
“What can I fix you, Professor?”
“A scotch and water would be fine.” Richard Atwick adjusted his thin-rimmed glasses and quietly eyed the hosed legs and sleek red dress of his benefactor. “Why, thank you, Carla,” he said, taking the drink from her hand, “and I must say you’re looking as lovely tonight as always.”
He gulped half his drink down in one swallow and, sloshing the rest around in the glass, began walking through the six rooms of Joannie Pernelli’s parents’ apartment. The place was packed with partiers in varying states of dress, intimacy, and inebriation.
“Professor Harris.” Atwick strode over and extended his hand to Jeff. “I’ve seen you around campus, but I don’t think we’ve ever formally met. I’m Richard Atwick of Biology.” He suddenly put his hand to his ear as the Beatles’s “It Won’t Be Long” blared forth without warning.
“Nice to meet you,” Jeff said loudly over the twanging guitars. “Do you know Laura Chapin?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m glad to now.” Atwick said. “Are you doing graduate work?”
“Thanks for the compliment.” Laura smiled sweetly. “But I’m afraid I’m still undergrad. And if you two gentlemen have no objections, I think I’ll go off and mingle now with some of my own kind.”
“Nice.” Atwick watched her walk off and nodded at Jeff approvingly. “And what are you having to drink, Professor?”
“Please, call me Jeff.” Jeff tried not to respond to the nod. “I guess I’ll have some white wine if there’s any around.”
“Well, let’s just go and find some, shall we?” Atwick tugged on Jeffs arm and started towards the bottles on the far side of the room. “You know, I’m delighted that you’ll be joining us again this fall in the Sociology Department. Sociology—that’s a discipline of the future! It’s good we’re building up our faculty in that area.”
“Well, I’m happy to be here at City College. It’s certainly one of the best schools in the country.”
“Well, we like to think so.” Atwick beamed. “Ah, here’s some sort of Soave. Will that do? Good.” Atwick began pouring. “Now I’ve heard your specialty is mass culture. And you did your graduate work at…” Atwick handed Jeff a brimming paper cup.
Jeff sipped a little and spilled a little on his shirt. “University of Edinburgh. And my specialty’s really mass media—you know, the work of Marshall McLuhan—rather than mass culture.” Jeff got a pang as he thought again about how he had successfully recycled the cover the team had provided—any thought of the team brought along painful images of Rena…