Bears Discover Fire

Stretch shrugged. “That’s between the gallery owners and their insurance companies. But we are not thieves. In fact—”

“What about the people?” I asked.

“You stay out of this,” Borogove whispered, in ingles. “You’re just here to translate.”

I ignored her. “You know, in this coming holocaust thing. What happens to the people?”

“We’re not allowed to save people,” said Shorty.

“No big deal,” said Stretch. “People all die anyway. Only great art is forever. Well, almost forever.”

“And Bucky made the short list!” said Borogove. “That son of a bitch. But I’m not surprised. If self-promotion can—”

“Bucky?” Stretch looked confused.

“Bucky Borogove. My late ex-husband. The artist whose work is hanging all around us here. The art you came to save for future generations.”

“Oh no,” said Stretch. He looked around at the giant tits and asses hanging on the walls. “We can’t take this stuff. It would never fit through the Chronoslot anyway. We came to give you time to get rid of it. We’re here for the early works of Teresa Algarin Rosado, the Puerto Rican neoretromaximinimalist. You will hang her show next week, and we’ll come back and pick up the paintings we want.”

“I beg your pardon!” said Borogove. “Nobody tells me who will or will not hang in this gallery. Not even guys from the future. Besides, who’s ever heard of this Rosado?”

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” said Stretch. “It’s just that we already know what will happen. Besides, we’ve already deposited three hundred thousand dollars in your account first thing tomorrow.”

“Well, in that case…” Borogove seemed mollified. “But who is she? Do you have her phone number? Does she even have a phone? A lot of artists—”

“How many paintings are you going to buy?” I asked.

“You stay out of this!” she whispered in ingles.

“But I am Teresa Algarin Rosado,” I said.

I quit my job as a security guard. A few nights later I was in my apartment when I noticed a shimmering by the sink. The air began to glow and… but you’ve seen Star Trek. I barely had time to pull on my jeans. I was painting and I usually work in a T-shirt and underpants.

“Remember me, one of the two guys from the future?” Shorty said, in Spanish, as soon as he had fully appeared.

“So you can talk,” I said, in Spanish also. “Where’s your companero?”

“It’s his night off. He’s got a date.”

“And you’re working?”

“It’s my night off too. I just—uh—uh…” He blushed.

“Couldn’t get a date,” I said. “It’s all right. I’m about ready to knock off anyway. There’s a Bud in the refrigerator. Get me one too.”

“You always work at midnight? Can I call you Teresa?”

“Please do. Just finishing a couple of canvases. This is my big chance. My own show. I want everything to be just right. What are you looking for?”

“A bud?”

“A Bud is a cerveza,” I said. “The top twists off. To the left. Are you sure you guys are from the future and not the past?” (Or just the country, I thought to myself.)

“We travel to many different time zones,” he said.

“Must be exciting. Do you get to watch them throw the Christians to the lions?”

“We don’t go there, it’s all statues,” he said. “Statues won’t fit through the Chronoslot. You might have noticed, Stretch and I broke quite a few before we quit trying.”

“Stretch?”

“My partner. Oh, and call me Shorty.”

It was my first positive illustration of the power of the past over the future.

“So what kind of art do you like?” I asked while we got comfortable on the couch.

“I don’t like any of it, but I guess paintings are best; you can turn them flat. Say, this is pretty good cerveza. Do you have any roll and rock?”

I thought he meant the beer but he meant the music. I also had a joint, left over from a more interesting decade.

“Your century is my favorite,” Shorty said. Soon he said he was ready for another petal.

“Bud,” I said. “In the fridge.”

“The cerveza in your century is very good,” he called out from the kitchen.

“Let me ask you two questions,” I said from the couch.

“Sure.”

“Do you have a wife or a girlfriend back there, or up there, in the future?”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “There are no single girls in the future. What’s your second question?”

“Do you look as cute out of that shimmery suit as you do in it?”

“There’s one missing,” said Borogove, checking off her list as the workmen unloaded the last of my paintings from the rented panel truck and carried them in the front door of the gallery. Other workmen were taking Bucky’s giant tits and asses out the back door.

“This is all of it,” I said. “Everything I’ve ever painted. I even borrowed back two paintings that I had traded for rent.”

Borogove consulted her list. “According to the two guys from the future, three of your early paintings are in the Museo de Arte Inmortal del Mundo in 2255: ‘Tres Dolores,’ ‘De Mon Mouse,’ and ‘La Rosa del Futuro.’ Those are the three they want.”

“Let me see that list,” I said.

“It’s just the titles. They have a catalogue with pictures of what they want, but they wouldn’t show it to me. Too much danger of Timesplits.”

“Slips,” I said. We looked through the stacked canvases again. I am partial to portraits. “De Mon Mouse” was an oil painting of the super in my building, a rasta who always wore Mickey Mouse T-shirts. He had a collection of two.

“Tres Dolores” was a mother, daughter, and grandmother I had known on Avenue B; it was a pose faked up from photographs—a sort of tampering with time in itself, now that I thought of it.

But “La Rosa del Futuro”?

“Never heard of it,” I said.

Borogove waved the list. “It’s on here. Which means it’s in their catalogue.”

“Which means it survives the holocaust,” I said.

“Which means they pick it up at midnight, after the opening Wednesday night,” she said.

“Which means I must paint it between now and then.”

“Which means you’ve got four days.”

“This is crazy, Borogove.”

“Call me Mimsy,” she said. “And don’t worry about it. Just get to work.”

“There’s pickled herring in the nevera,” I said, in Spanish.

“I thought you were Puerto Rican,” said Shorty.

“I am, but my ex-boyfriend was Jewish, and that stuff keeps forever.”

“I thought there were no single men in New York.”

“Exactly the problem,” I said. “His wife was Jewish too.”

“You’re sure I’m not keeping you from your work?” said Shorty.

“What work?” I said forlornly. I had been staring at a blank canvas since ten P.M. “I still have one painting to finish for the show, and I haven’t even started it.”