'I'm sure.' And then, I added, 'Look-it's not you. It's me.' The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. He looked like I'd hit him with a sandbag. I shook my head in annoyed frustration. 'God, I know that sounds stupid. But everything is all mixed up right now-like I'm in an emotional quake zone. I keep waiting for the ground to settle, but the shaking just gets worse and worse. I don't know whether to jump under a table or run out into the street.'
'Let me help -?'
'Listen, sweetheart…' I sat down on the edge of the bed, my shirt still unbuttoned. 'I don't want to hurt you.'
'You won't hurt me - '
'I already have. I've taken advantage of you.'
'No, you haven't. I'm here because I want to.'
'Geezis. Listen to us.' I ran my hand through my hair. 'We sound like… like we're married.'
'Our first fight-?' He grinned.
'Matty. Listen to me. It's time to get serious. People die around me. I make mistakes, people die. I tell someone it's safe, he steps on a land mine. I read the map wrong, we walk into an ambush. I fire a mortar-it blows up the wrong people. You're not safe around me. Nobody is.'
He licked his lips uncertainly. He reached over and put his hand on mine. 'I'll take the chance.' He swallowed hard. 'I have nowhere else to go.'
'I said you could stay as long as you wanted. I meant it. But maybe you should want to be somewhere else. I'm scared -not for me, but for you.'
'Mike, please don't make me go - '
'I'm not throwing you out, kiddo. Just… let me go out for a drive and try to think things through. This case- there's something stinking wrong here. It scares me. And I don't know why. All I know is that I've got this gnawing in my gut like there are snipers on the roofs of buildings and tunnels everywhere under the streets and land mines in the crosswalks. You were right before, when you said I can't stand not knowing. I've just got to get out of here and go out and look around. Even if I don't find anything, the looking is what I need.'
'Are you sure, Mikey?' I stood up, finished tucking in my shirt. 'Go back to sleep. I just need an hour or two.'
In this neighborhood, the night smells of jasmine and garlic. The apartment is just downwind of a little Italian restaurant with a permanent cauldron of simmering marinara. Rolled up to Santa Monica Boulevard and cruised east. It was late. The Union Pacific engine was already rolling massively west. The boulevard still had train tracks down the center. As long as the railroad could claim they were still using the tracks, the city couldn't pull them up, so every night they ran an old diesel engine down the center of the boulevard, all the way out to West Hollywood and back.
Farther east, the hustlers were hung out on the meat rack, most of them parked right on the borderline. The hustlers pretended to hitchhike. You drove west and picked them up east of La Brea, but they didn't discuss ways and means until after you drove through the intersection-the city's jurisdiction ended there. So that's how the hustlers tested for plainclothes; if you were vice, you couldn't cross the street. Once you were west of La Brea, it was a theme park-you could ride all the boys you can afford.
The hustlers were skinny and young-runaways mostly. Maybe a few junkies too. I wondered why our perp hadn't targeted them. Maybe he had. Who ever worries about the death of a male prostitute?
Turned on KFWB, the late-night DJ was playing a cut from the new Beatles album. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 'A Day in the Life.' He blew his mind out in a car. Cruised all the way to Gower where the buildings grew shorter, older, and trashier-the second-rate sound studios and third-rate editing houses, then turned around and headed back west.
'So why not fuck Matty?' I asked myself. 'It's not like - '
'Because,' I answered. 'Because.'
'Ahh, this is going to be an intelligent conversation.'
'Shut up.' And then I added, 'Because I'm not one of them.'
'Yeah? Then why are we having this conversation? The truth is, you're afraid that you are.'
I pulled over to the side of the boulevard and sat there shaking. He blew his mind out in a car. Part of me wanted to go home and climb back into bed and part of me was terrified that I would. Because I knew that if I ever climbed into that particular bed again, I'd never get out-
Someone knocked on the window. A hustler? I shook my head and waved him away.
He knocked again.
Pressed the button and rolled the window down. Eakins stuck his head in and said cheerfully, 'Had enough?'
He didn't wait for my answer. He opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat. This wasn't the same Eakins I'd seen two weeks ago. That one had been middle-aged and methodical. This was a younger Eakins, impish and light.
'Yes. I've had enough. What the fuck is going on?'
He shrugged. 'It's a snipe hunt. A dead end. You've been wasting your time.
'But the disappearances are real…'
'Yeah, they are.'
'So how can the case be a dead end?' 'Because I say so. Want some advice?'
'What?'
'Go home to your boyfriend and fuck your brains out, both of you. And forget everything else.'
I looked at him. 'I can't do that-'
'Yeah, I knew you'd say that. Too bad. That would save everyone a lot of trouble -especially you.'
'Is that a threat?'
'Mike-you have to stop.'
'I can't stop. I have to know what's going on.'
'For your own safety-'
'I can take care of myself.'
'Go home. Go to bed. Don't interfere with things you don't understand.'
'Then explain it to me.'
'I can't.'
'Then I can't stop.'
'Is that your final offer?'
'Yes.'
'Okay.' He sighed. He took out a flask and took a healthy swallow from it. He flipped open a pair of sunglasses and put them on. 'You can't say I didn't try. Say good-bye to your past.' Eakins touched his belt buckle -and the world flashed and shook with a bright bang that left me shuddering and queasy in my seat. 'Welcome to 2032, Mike. The post-world.'
My eyes were watering with the sudden brightness. It was still night, but the night blazed. The streets were brighter than day. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, doused with ice water, and struck by lightning-and like I'd shot off in my shorts at the same time.
'What the fuck did you just do?!'
'Time-hopped us sixty-five years up -and triggered a major quake in the zone we left behind. You're outta there, Mike. For good. A sixty-five-year jolt will produce at least three years of local displacement. Your Mustang is a lot of mass; bouncing that with us makes for a large epicenter, we probably sent ripples all the way to West Covina.'
I couldn't catch my breath -the physical aftereffects, the emotional shock, the dazzling lights around us -
Eakins passed me the flask. 'Here. Drink this. It'll help.'
I didn't even bother to ask what was in it-but it wasn't scotch. It tasted like cold vanilla milkshake, only with a warm peach afterglow like alcohol, but wasn't. 'What the fuck-' As the glow spread up through my body, the queasiness eased. I started to catch my breath.
'I'll give you the short version. Time-travel is possible. But it's painful, even dangerous. Every time you punch a hole through time, it's like punching a hole in a big bowl of pudding. All the pudding around the hole collapses in to
