Bears Discover Fire

weather. Large areas of Martha’s Vineyard are swamps and marshes, filled with vicious insects. In contrast, there are no wastelands on Bayfill Island, where all the land is dry land and rain runs off as clear and clean as when it fell. Large areas of Block Island are out of sight and sound of the ocean, drastically lowering property values. On ingeniously S-shaped Bayfill Island, every property is ocean-front property; there are no “cheap seats” in the house.

But enough poetry. It’s time to go and see for ourselves. Miss Crumb has just signaled me that Eden- Prudential’s chartered airbus has arrived to take us on our tour of the two sites. We only have to walk a block to board. As you leave the office here, we’ll be crossing the East Thirty-fourth Street Extension. Watch your step; the ground is still a little springy.

Are there any questions?

TWO GUYS FROM THE FUTURE

“We are two guys from the future.”

“Yeah, right. Now get the hell out of here!”

“Don’t shoot! Is that a gun?”

That gave me pause; it was a flashlight. There were two of them. They both wore shimmery suits. The short one was kind of cute. The tall one did all the talking.

“Lady, we are serious guys from the future,” he said. “This is not a hard-on.”

“You mean a put-on,” I said. “Now kindly get the hell out of here.”

“We are here on a missionary position to all mankind,” he said. “No shit is fixing to hang loose any someday now.”

“Break loose,” I said. “Hey, are you guys talking about nuclear war?”

“We are not allowed to say,” the cute one said.

“The bottom line is, we have come to salvage the artworks of your posteriors,” the tall one said.

“Save the art and let the world go. Not a bad idea,” I said. “But, mira, it’s midnight and the gallery’s closed. Come back en la manana.”

“Que bueno! No hay mas necesididad que hablaren ingles,” the tall one said. “Nothing worse than trying to communicate in a dead language,” he went on in Spanish. “But how did you know?”

“Just a guess,” I said, also in Spanish; and we spoke in the mother tongue from then on. “If you really are two guys from the future, you can come back in the future, like tomorrow after we open, right?”

“Too much danger of Timeslip,” he said. “We have to come and go between midnight and four A.M., when we won’t interfere with your world. Plus we’re from far in the future, not just tomorrow. We are here to save artworks that will otherwise be lost in the coming holocaust by sending them through a Chronoslot to our century in what is, to you, the distant future.”

“I got that picture,” I said. “But you’re talking to the wrong girl. I don’t own this art gallery. I’m just an artist.”

“Artists wear uniforms in your century?”

“Okay, so I’m moonlighting as a security guard.”

“Then it’s your boss we need to talk to. Get him here tomorrow at midnight, okay?”

“He’s a her,” I said. “Besides, mira, how do I know you really are, on the level, two guys from the future?”

“You saw us suddenly materialize in the middle of the room, didn’t you?”

“Okay, so I may have been dozing. You try working two jobs.”

“But you noticed how bad our ingles was. And how about these outfits?”

“A lot of people in New York speak worse ingles than you,” I said. “And here on the Lower East Side, funny suits don’t prove anything.” Then I remembered a science fiction story I had once heard about. (I never actually read science fiction.)

“You did what?” said Borogove, the gallery owner, the next morning when I told her about the two guys from the future.

“I lit a match and held it to his sleeve.”

“Girl, you’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”

“He wasn’t carrying a gun. I could tell. Those shimmery suits are pretty tight. Anyway, when I saw that the cloth didn’t burn, I decided I believed their story.”

“There’s all sorts of material that doesn’t burn,” Borogove said. “And if they’re really two guys from the future who have come back to save the great art of our century, how come they didn’t take anything?” She looked around the gallery, which was filled with giant plastic breasts and buttocks, the work of her dead ex-husband, “Bucky” Borogove.

She seemed disappointed that all of them were still hanging.

“Beats me,” I said. “They insist on talking to the gallery owner. Maybe you have to sign for it or something.”

“Hmmm. There have been several mysterious disappearances of great art lately. That’s why I hired you; it was one of the conditions of Bucky’s will. In fact, I’m still not sure this isn’t one of his posthumous publicity stunts. What time are these guys from the future supposed to show up?”

“Midnight.”

“Hmmm. Well, don’t tell anyone about this. I’ll join you at midnight, like Macbeth on the tower.”

“Hamlet,” I said. “And tomorrow’s my night off. My boyfriend is taking me to the cockfights.”

“I’ll pay you time and a half,” she said. “I may need you there to translate. My espanol is a little rusty.”

Girls don’t go to cockfights and I don’t have a boyfriend. How could I? There aren’t any single men in New York.

I just didn’t want Borogove to think I was easy.

But in fact, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

I was standing beside her in the gallery at midnight when a column of air in the center of the room began to shimmer and glow and… But you’ve seen Star Trek. There they were. I decided to call the tall one Stretch and the cute one Shorty.

“Bienvenidos to our century,” said Borogove, in Spanish, “and to the Borogove Gallery.” Her Spanish was more than a little rusty; turned out she had done a month in Cuernavaca in 1964. “We are described in Art Talk magazine as ‘the traffic control center of the Downtown Art Renaissance.’”

“We are two guys from the future,” Stretch said, in Spanish this time. He held out his arm.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” said Borogove. “I can tell by the way you arrived here that you’re not from our world. But if you like, you could show me some future money.”

“We’re not allowed to carry cash,” said Shorty.

“Too much danger of Timeslip,” explained Stretch. “In fact, the only reason we’re here at all is because of a special exemption in the Chronolaws, allowing us to save great artworks that otherwise would be destroyed in the coming holocaust.”

“Oh dear. What coming holocaust?”

“We’re not allowed to say,” said Shorty. It seemed to be the only thing he was allowed to say. But I liked the way that no matter who he was talking to, he kept stealing looks at me.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Stretch, looking at his watch. “It doesn’t happen for quite a while. We’re buying the art early to keep the prices down. Next month our time (last year, yours) we bought two Harings and a Ledesma right around the corner.”

“Bought?” said Borogove. “Those paintings were reported stolen.”