Fifty-four
Alone, Cam slumped against the desk and stared, unseeing, at the small unfinished painting sitting there.
The events of the day were threatening to overwhelm her, and the gala hadn’t even begun.
Saying good-bye to Jacket felt like a door had closed in her life with an abrupt slam.
She felt adrift, rudderless, uncertain of Peter or her future.
More than anything, she longed to see Peter, to find out what he knew about that letter and to be reassured that what she had jettisoned everything for still existed.
She sensed a presence in the doorway and turned expectantly.
But it was Mertons, who regarded her with curiosity.
“Good evening, Miss Stratford. Do you know where I might find Peter?”
There was an undercurrent there she didn’t like. Her time with Peter couldn’t be over after only a few hours. It would be too cruel. “No,” she lied. “I haven’t seen him. Why?”
But the effusive, deferential Mertons of a few days ago was gone. He entered her office as if she were not present and scanned each of her bookshelves in succession. He was a man on a mission, and Cam could guess what it was. She had to work hard not to look at her laptop.
“Something I can do for you?” she asked.
“Miss Stratford, I’m going to be honest with you. We know how you’re traveling.”
“You do?” She forced her eyes forward.
“Yes. We’ve fixed the time tube to a book. Inside the Artist’s Studio.”
Cam felt a faint sweat rise on her scalp. “Really?”
“We believe there’s a time tube linked to a book in Romania.
But we’ve had that copy under observation for years, so we thought you were relying on some other method, some hole we hadn’t yet discovered.
However, the most recent calculations show a very similar Brown coefficient.
Obviously you have found a way to get a copy. ”
“Yes, because I like to do all of my reading in Romanian.”
“This isn’t a laughing matter.”
“Do you see me laughing? I would think the Guild has bigger fish to fry.”
Mertons frowned.
She said, “It means having more important—”
“I know what it means, Miss Stratford. I was thinking about where else you might keep your books. I’ve been to your apartment.”
“I do a lot of research at Chuck E. Cheese’s as well. I find the quiet helps me concentrate.”
He narrowed his eyes, sensing a jest, but dutifully wrote the name down in his notebook.
“I recommend the pizza,” she added. “Close your eyes. You’ll swear you’re in Naples.”
He flipped the pen over, clicked a button, and it started to flicker, like a small computer monitor.
He ran it across the note he’d just taken.
Then he held it up like a thermometer and read, “‘Cheese, Chuck E. Indoor playground-slash-restaurant designed for kid parties. Best known for humanlike rat mascot and terrifying animatronic theater performers. Issues own coinage. Key words: headache, noise, heartburn, juvenile ululation.’” He gave Cam a look.
“I didn’t say it was for everyone.”
He clicked the pen again and the display went dark. “Miss Stratford, I’m about to lose my patience.”
“Hey, it’s not my job to assist you every time you decide to go on a fishing expedition. Yes, I know,” she said, realizing she was beginning to sound like a one-trick pony as far as metaphors were concerned, “we’re big on fish here.”
“Would you be interested to know that the Guild has finally decided to invoke the O’Janpa Convention? Yes, Peter is about to be jerked back like a bad dog on a very short leash.”
“Even if I knew what the O’Janpa Convention is, which I don’t, why would I be interested?” As far as Mertons knew, she was still at odds with Peter.
He waved the pen up and back across the plane in front of her face, then held it up and read.
“Stratford, Campbell. Author, curator, art historian, time-tube criminal, subject of a series of paintings entitled Wednesday Afternoons. Former life partner: Jacket Sprague. Nurtures a deep and nearly overwhelming love for Restoration-era painter Peter Lely, despite a several-century difference in time spans and her petty jealousy over his long-dead—”
“I am not jealous!” She flushed so hard her ears seemed to crackle with the intensity of deep-fried bologna.
He continued to read. “—a feeling Lely returns.”
The bologna reached flash point. “I-I—He returns it?”
Mertons lifted a brow and smiled.
“Yes, fine,” she said. “I have feelings for him. He returns it?”
“‘Feelings’? Feelings one might refer to as love?”
“Yes, love, dammit. Mertons!”
He nodded. “He returns it. I believe I practically spelled it out for you when I came to visit.”
“Is that pen up-to-date? I mean, like, as of this minute?”
He cleared his throat awkwardly and held up the object in question for her to observe. No lights. He hadn’t turned it back on.
“Bastard.”
He shrugged. “We can’t do mind reading. Not even in the Afterlife.” He slipped the pen back in his pocket. “Does this knowledge by any chance change your answer? Do you know where Peter is?”
She shook her head. She never, ever wanted Mertons to find him.
“Whether you tell me or not, the Guild will find him, and if I can bring him back before they do, he’ll face better odds.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means they’re extremely angry, Miss Stratford.
No one has ever defied their commands before, so flagrantly and for so long, though I must say, you’re getting close.
Look, I don’t know how you think you ended up in your current life.
But it wasn’t a matter of the former you just deciding you were going to be an accomplished art historian in your next reincarnation. ”
She shifted. She’d never considered her former self at all.
“It took the generosity of whatever Guild you’re covered under,” he said, “and years of good behavior. In short, you earned it. Peter, it goes without saying, has squandered every iota of goodwill he possessed chasing you down. He won’t be an acclaimed artist in his next life.
He won’t be a portrait painter. I doubt he’ll be a house painter.
I don’t know what he’ll be, but you can be sure it will be monotonously boring, soul grinding, and as far removed from a creative life as the Guild can manage. ”
“No painting?” she said, horrified.
She considered sadly what Peter’s existence would become without painting. He’d lost so much already.
“Mertons, you have to intervene. The man has paint in his blood. I’ve never seen him without a sketch pad within arm’s reach. You told me yourself he painted nonstop after he was dead. Oh, Mertons. He won’t have Ursula, he won’t have me. You can’t take painting away. You can’t do this to him.”
“It’s not me. It’s the Guild. They’ve had it up to here. First you and the time tube, then Peter and his damned quest. They’re tired of being ignored.”
She looked at the laptop and back at Mertons.
“What about a deal?”
“A deal? What deal?”
“Is the Guild as good as its word? If they promise to do something, will they?”
“It is the Afterlife, after all.” He waited expectantly.
“The time tube,” she said. “I’ll give it up. Show you the source. You can dig it up or drop dynamite down it or whatever it is you do to eradicate it.”
“And in return?”
“In return, you guarantee Peter the life of a painter.”
Mertons stroked his chin. “The life of a painter, eh?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t guarantee he’ll be at the top of his profession. I can’t guarantee he’ll be rich.”
“So long as he can paint, Mertons. He has to be able to paint.”
He frowned.
“What?” she asked. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s not a problem, per se.” He gave her a worried look. “I hope, Miss Stratford, you aren’t thinking he could be reborn here? You have to see that Peter will enter his new life as a babe, not as a man. By the time he is thirty, you would be, well—”
“No, Mertons. I wasn’t thinking that.” Such a thought had crossed her mind, but now even that possibility had been quashed.
“There’s one more thing. You won’t be able to use the tube as a way to shortcut your book research anymore.”
“I’m not going to write the book. Peter’s life will go unrecorded, at least by me.”
A flash of something—amusement? understanding?—rose in his eyes. “I see.”
“And in any case, when it started I only intended to buy the book, not travel through—” She caught herself.
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to write, especially if we’re talking fiction.
I’m a researcher, and a novel’s like building a campfire.
With a few good facts and the right spark, I can make a blaze that’ll knock your socks off. ”
He grinned. “I’ll consider my socks forewarned. And that’s what you’ll do?” he asked carefully.
When Peter is gone, he meant. God, don’t let it be soon. “Yes.” She smiled with considerably more optimism than she felt.
“It’s damned decent of you to do this for him. I’m pretty sure I can convince the Guild to take the offer.”
“Really?”
“I’m afraid you put a scare in them. An unregulated time tube is a very dangerous thing.”
“I don’t suppose there’ll be an artist’s life in my afterlife—or success in any profession, I’m betting.”
“No, you’d better grab whatever joy you can now. Though,” he added with a grave face, “you never know what can change. That’s why life is so interesting. You may do something so good or so helpful that it makes everyone up there forget you were ever a burr in their side.”
“Me, the writer of hot fictography, or me, the naked model spread out like some lascivious Artforum centerfold?”
He chuckled, and she decided the sight of Mertons laughing was not one to be missed.
“You know,” he said, “being entertained brings people immense happiness. Don’t underestimate the redemptive power of being able to entertain others.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Mertons. I won’t.”
“So…” He clapped his hands together. “Where is it? Is it in this room? Is the book here?”
She waved a finger back and forth. “Oh, no, no, no. Promise first. Tube later. I’ve learned how you people work.”
He sighed. “I’ll head out and be back before you know it.”
“Hey, um, take your time? Like, take the long way, maybe with a stopover in the Paleolithic era? I hear they have unbelievable cave art.”
Mertons tucked the notebook into his jacket pocket. “I’ll do my best, Miss Stratford. I can’t put off the Guild forever. Once they agree to this, they’ll want him back. The most you can expect is a few days. I think you had better not plan for more than that.” He gave her a significant look.
She’d always been the type to appreciate each moment, but even with every intention of savoring, was it possible to make the joy one could squeeze out of a few thousand minutes serve for a lifetime?
She thought of what one could gain and lose in the flash of circumstance.
She thought of meeting Peter the first time in that hallway.
She thought of her brother. She thought of the single, upending instant Peter’s eyes had met hers as she lay on that chaise.
She thought of opening that article from Burlington Magazine, and she thought of Peter, buoyed at the notion of becoming a father, then losing the wife, the child, and any reason to keep on living.
“Mertons, wait.”
He turned. “Yes?”
“I want him to be happy.”
“Painting, yes.”
“No, not just painting. I want him to have a wife—someone who’ll love and understand his work—and a child. At least one. He’d be such a good father. Do you think—I mean, it’s not too much to ask the Guild to do that too, is it?”
Mertons’s eyes softened. “It’s not too much to ask. Every man deserves it. I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
Cam wished everyone’s future could be so easily ordered.
* * *
Peter inserted himself into the small group of partygoers surrounding Woodson Ball.
“Howdy, Peter. How goes it?”
“Could I have a word in private? ’Tis a matter of some importance.”
Ball eyed him curiously, then put down his glass.