Bears Discover Fire

“Which one?”

“La Rosa del Futuro,” I said. I had the title pinned to the top corner of the frame. Maybe that was what was blocking me. I wadded it up and threw it at the wall. It only went halfway across the room.

“I think that’s the most famous one,” he said. “So you know it gets done. Is there a blossom—”

“A Bud,” I said. “In the door of the fridge.”

“Maybe what you need,” he said, with that shy, sly futuristic smile I was growing to like, “is a little rest.”

After our little rest, which wasn’t so little, and wasn’t exactly a rest, I asked him, “Do you do this often?”

“This?”

“Go to bed with girls from the past. What if I’m your great-great-grandmother or something?”

“I had it checked out,” he said. “She’s living in the Bronx.”

“So you do! You bastard! You do this all the time.”

“Teresa! Mi corazon! Never before. It’s strictly not allowed. I could lose my job! It’s just that when I saw those little…”

“Those little what?”

He blushed. “Those little hands and feet. I fell in love.”

It was my turn to blush. He had won my heart, a guy from the future, forever.

“So if you love me so much, why don’t you take me back to the future with you?” I asked, after another little rest.

“Then who would paint all the paintings you are supposed to paint over the next thirty years? Teresa, you don’t understand how famous you are going to be. Even I have heard of Picasso, Michelangelo, and the great Algarin—and art is not my thing. If something happened to you, the Timeslip would throw off the whole history of art.”

“Oh. How about that.” I couldn’t seem to stop smiling. “So why don’t you stay here with me.”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said. “But if I stayed here, I wouldn’t be around to come back here and meet you in the first place. And if I had stayed here, we would know about it anyway, since there would be some evidence of it. See how complicated Time is? I’m just a delivery guy and it gives me a headache. I need another leaf.”

“Bud,” I said. “You know where they are.” He went into the kitchen for a cerveza and I called out after him: “So you’re going to go back to the future and let me die in the coming holocaust?”

“Die? Holocaust?”

“The one you’re not allowed to tell me about. The nuclear war.”

“Oh, that. Stretch is just trying to alarm you. It’s not a war. It’s a warehouse fire.”

“All this mischigosch for a warehouse fire?”

“It’s cheaper to go back and get the stuff than to avoid the fire,” he said. “It all has to do with Timeslip insurance or something.”

The phone rang. “How’s it going?”

“It’s two in the morning, Borogove!” I said, in ingles.

“Please, Teresa, call me Mimsy. Is it finished?”

“I’m working on it,” I lied. “Go to sleep.”

“Who was that?” Shorty asked, in Spanish. “La Gordita?”

“Don’t be cruel,” I said, pulling on my T-shirt and underpants. “You go to sleep, too. I have to get back to work.”

“Okay, but wake me up by four. If I oversleep and get stuck here—”

“If you had overslept we would already know about it, wouldn’t we?” I said, sarcastically. But he was already snoring.

“I can’t put it off for a week!” said Borogove the next day at the gallery. “Everybody who’s anybody in the downtown art scene is going to be here tomorrow night.”

“But—”

“Teresa, I’ve already ordered the wine.”

“But—”

“Teresa, I’ve already ordered the cheese. Plus, remember, whatever we sell beyond the three paintings they’re coming for is gravy. Comprende?”

“En ingles, Borogove,” I said. “But what if I don’t finish this painting in time?”

“Teresa, I insist, you must call me Mimsy. If you weren’t going to finish it, they would have arranged a later pickup date, since they already know what will happen. For God’s sake, girl, quit worrying. Go home and get to work! You have until tomorrow night.”

“But I don’t even know where to start!”

“Don’t you artists have any imagination? Make something up!”

I had never been blocked before. It’s not like constipation; when you’re constipated you can work sitting down.

I padded and paced like a caged lion, staring at my blank canvas as if I were trying to get up the appetite to eat it.

By eleven-thirty I had started it and painted it out six times. It just didn’t feel right.

Just as the clock was striking midnight, a column of air near the sink began to shimmer and… but you’ve seen Star Trek. Shorty appeared by the sink, one hand behind his back.

“Am I glad to see you!” I said. “I need a clue.”

“A clue?”

“This painting. ‘La Rosa del Futuro.’ Your catalogue from the future has a picture of it. Let me see it.”

“Copy your own painting?” Shorty said. “That would cause a Timeslip for sure.”

“I won’t copy it!” I said. “I just need a clue. I’ll just glance at it.”

“Same thing. Besides, Stretch carries the catalogue. I’m just his helper.”

“Okay, then just tell me what’s it a picture of.”

“I don’t know, Teresa…”

“How can you say you love me if you won’t even break the rules to help me?”

“No, I mean I really don’t know. Like I said, art is not my thing. I’m just a delivery guy. Besides—” He blushed. “You know what my thing is.”

“Well, my thing is art,” I said. “And I’m going to lose the chance of a lifetime—hell, of more than that, of artistic inmortalidad—if I don’t come up with something pretty soon.”

“Teresa, quit worrying,” he said. “The painting’s so famous even I’ve heard of it. There’s no way it can not happen. Meanwhile, let’s don’t spend our last—”

“Our what? Our last what? Why are you standing there with your hands behind your back?”

He pulled out a rose. “Don’t you understand? This Chronolink closes forever after the pickup tonight. I don’t know where my next job will take me, but it won’t be here.”

“So what’s the rose for?”

“To remember our… our…” He burst into tears.

Girls cry hard and fast and it’s over. Guys from the future are more sentimental, and Shorty cried himself to sleep.

After comforting him as best I could, I pulled on my T-shirt and underpants and found a clean brush and started pacing again. I left him snoring on the bed, a short brown Adonis without even a fig leaf.

“Wake me up at four,” he mumbled, then went back to sleep.

I looked at the rosa he had brought. The roses of the future had soft thorns; that was encouraging. I laid it on the pillow next to his cheek and that was when it came to me, in the form of a whole picture, which is how it always comes to me when it finally does. (And it always does.)