Al was watching him steadily now, waiting to hear what he was going to say next with as much interest as the teenage girl in front of him.
He was saved by the chirping of the handlink.
Al studied the readout and said nothing. Sam raised an eyebrow. Al ignored him.
“Look, if I asked you straight out, would you promise not to go to that party tonight?”
She looked up then, eyes blazing, and snatched her hand away. “You know, you’re just as bad as Kevin is. You treat me like I’m some kind of little kid, unless it’s convenient. Well, you can’t tell me what to do!”
“Bethica—”
She slipped off the stool and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
Sam looked helplessly at Al.
He sighed and resumed polishing the bar. “Well, Plan A didn’t work. Got any suggestions for Plan B?”
Now it was Al’s turn to shake his head. “You could try taking Kevin out before the party.”
The polishing rag paused. “Seems to me you’ve made that sort of suggestion before. It didn’t work then, either.”
"So sue me.”
Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to hang around forever making me crazy?”
First you complain because I’m not around. Now you ant to get rid of me?”
The rag slapped onto the bar, splattering water the length of the bar. “Dammit, Al, what is going on? Is it something at the Project? What’s wrong?”
Al studied him. his face impassive, no emotions showing. It was the face of a man who had faced down enemies and survived, of a man who had received orders he didn’t like and carried them out anyway because that was his job, of a man who hid his own feelings and carried on.
It was not a face he had shown Sam Beckett very often.
"Things at the Project,” he said, enunciating each word carefully, “are just fine. Everything is going as expected.”
Baffled, Sam stared back. “Then why are you acting this way? Al, we’re friends. What’s going on? Is it Tina?”
Al flinched.
“It is Tina, isn’t it?”
“No,” the Observer said, his gravelly voice hoarser now.
"It isn’t Tina. It’s Janna. My—wife.”
Wife. Wife?
“You’re not married,” Sam said, barely hearing his own words. “You used to be. Did you get married again, after— after I left?”
“I guess I did.” Al looked weary again. “I wasn’t married the last time I walked into the Imaging Chamber, but when I left it, I was.”
Something in Sam Beckett’s forebrain kicked into high gear, ducking around holes in his memory, examining the ramifications of the Observer’s statement. It took a few minutes, staring past Al’s head, to reach a conclusion.
“Why didn’t we think of that before?” he whispered.
“What do you mean? You did think of it,” Al snapped, remembering years of minor changes, years of asking Ziggy every time he prepared to leave the Imaging Chamber. “I
don’t know what it is you do, but sometimes Tina and Gooshie are married and sometimes they aren’t, sometimes you’re”—Al abruptly changed gears—“sometimes Verbeena has a doctorate in psychology and sometimes in psychiatry, sometimes—this is the part that really drives me nuts—we’re overrun seven million bucks and sometimes we’re on budget. And up until now I’ve been five times divorced and still single, but this time I’m married.
“And unless there’s somebody else running around mucking up the past, Sam, it’s all your fault. We’ve got to get you home, just to make things settle down!”
“But if . . . if things change every time you leave the Imaging Chamber, when you go back you’ll probably be single again, right? So everything should be okay again?”
The impassive face was gone, replaced by another Sam had seen only once before—when he’d told the Observer he wouldn’t change the past to save Al’s first marriage, the one to Beth. It was a look of such anguish he closed his eyes against it, and heard Al’s next words that much more clearly.
“When I go back,” Al agreed, speaking very softly, “I’ll probably be single again. Janna will be somebody I never met, or somebody I only know from work. And I don’t want that, Sam. I don’t want this to change. I love her.”
“But to stay married to her . . .,” Sam whispered, already knowing the answer, unable to finish the sentence.
Al finished it for him, mercilessly. “To stay married to her, I can’t risk going back.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kevin Hodge slid out from under his truck and wiped grease off his hands. Bethica was standing over him, tapping her foot impatiently.
"So?” he said. “What?”
"Are you still having that party tonight?”
"Yeah, sure. Why not?”
"Are you going to have beer and booze?”
Kevin got to his feet and looked down at her. “Of course we’re going to have beer and booze. It isn’t a party otherwise.”
“Good,” she said, and turned and stomped off.
"Unless Wickie takes it away from you again,” one of his friends mocked. “Wickie’s good at taking stuff away from you.”
Bethica stopped and turned around.
Kevin glared at the boys. “Not any more.”
His friends laughed at him. “You shoulda seen your face,” one unwary kid sitting on the tailgate of the truck said.
In two strides Kevin crossed to the back of the truck, reached up and took the boy by the neck, hauled him out of the truck bed and threw him on the ground. “You got something to say?”
The boy remained where he was, stunned.
Bethica backed away several steps and watched him warily. Kevin wheeled around to glare at her, too. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” she assured him. “Nothing, Kevin.”
He was staring at her with a kind of madness blazing in his eyes. “He’s not going to make a fool of me twice,” he said in a voice so low only she could hear. “Nobody makes a fool of me, not like that. You hear me, Beth? I’ll kill him if he tries. And you know I mean it.”
Then, raising his voice, he said, “I’m getting a whole keg this time, and I’m
