Impossible Things (45 page)

“And what about all the resentment and distrust and desire that’s been built up in the meantime? What about all that longing for the past?”

“It will be used in my time-displacement experiments,” Dr. Young said.

“The hell it will.”

Dr. Young grabbed for the temporal oscillator and got it away from her before she could flip the switch. “I couldn’t let you turn it off,” he said. “There’s no telling what the sudden release of all that temporal energy might do.”

“It’s too late,” Dr. Lejeune said. “I already did.”

•    •    •

Linda called just after Don left for the state meet. “I was just wondering if I should bring an overnight bag. The weather report looks like we might have to stay overnight. Is it still chicken-pox city over there?”

“Yes,” Carolyn said, “and it’s highly contagious, so you’d better not get too close to Don. He’s never had the chicken pox, and it would be terrible if you got it with those French-cut leotards and all.”

After she hung up, she went in and checked on the patients. Liz was asleep on the couch with a Texas A & M brochure in her hand. Susy Hopkins was in her and Don’s bed. Her mother had called to say she had to work the late shift in the pediatrics ward because of all the chicken pox. Wendy still hadn’t finished breaking out. She looked flushed.

Carolyn put her hand on Wendy’s forehead, expecting it to be warm, but it felt cool. She felt her own forehead. Warm, too warm. I must not have had the chicken pox after all, she thought. But she had. In college. She’d been the only person in her whole dorm to get it, and the doctor hadn’t been able to figure out how she’d caught it.

She covered Wendy up. There was an afghan at the foot of the bed. She took it into Liz’s room and lay down under it.

She had been in the infirmary ten days, and the doctor had made her make a list of everybody she might have exposed, and she had written Don’s name down because he sat next to her in psychology, and that was how they met.

She was shivering badly, hunched under the too-small afghan. Her throat ached. I’m definitely catching chicken pox, she thought. Only I can’t be. I had it fall quarter of my sophomore year. The quarter Allison was in Europe. I remember now. She put her hand under her burning cheek and fell asleep.

•    •    •

The lights went out, and he couldn’t see anything. He took a step forward and crashed into something. A wastebasket. He didn’t remember there being a wastebasket next to the bar. He tried to set it back up and cracked his knee against something else. A chair. There hadn’t been any chairs in the bar either. And no bar stools either. He and Stephanie Forrester’s head usher had had to kind of lean on the bar to drink their clockstoppers. He must be back in his dorm room.

“Who’s there?” a female voice said. “Is somebody there?”

He was not in his room. He took a step backward and crashed into the wastebasket again.

“I know there’s somebody there,” the voice said, sounding frightened. He heard a crash, and then she must have opened the curtains or pulled a shade or something, because he could see her in the pale light thrown from a street lamp outside.

She was sitting up on a bed, wrapped in a blanket on top of the covers. There was a book open on the bed beside her. She must have fallen asleep reading. There was a clock on the desk. It said three-thirty. The lamp she’d just tried to turn on was lying on its side on the floor. He moved to pick it up.

“Don’t you come near me!” the girl said, scrambling back to the head of the bed, the blanket held up tight against her. “How did you get in here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked around the room. There was a chain on the door. The window. Maybe he’d come in the window and shut it behind him. It was snowing. Snowflakes drifted past the street lamp outside, and he could see it piled up on the windowsill. “I don’t know,” he said helplessly.

The girl was looking at the window and the chained door, too. “Are you a friend of Allison’s?” she asked.

“No.” Stephanie Forrester. He had been ushering at
Stephanie Forrester’s wedding and … “Are you a friend of Stephanie’s?”

“No,” she said. “Are you drunk?”

That must be it. He was drunk. It would explain a number of things, such as why he couldn’t remember what he was doing in some strange girl’s room in the middle of the night. “I’m drunk,” he said, suddenly remembering. “I was drinking clockstoppers with Stephanie’s head usher. Beer and wine. Together.”

“That’ll do it,” she said, not sounding particularly frightened anymore. She had let the blanket slip a little, and he could see that she was wearing a brown T-shirt that barely covered her hips. Nebraska State College, the yellow letters on the T-shirt said. He tried not to feel worried about that. And the snow.

There was a simple explanation for all this. It had started snowing while he and the head usher were in the bar. It snowed sometimes in California. Her boyfriend from Nebraska had given her the T-shirt.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he said, and instantly regretted it. She looked wildly around for something to defend herself with. “Your T-shirt,” he said hastily. “I figured your boyfriend gave it to you or something since it’s not from this school.”

“It
is
from this school,” she said. “Nebraska State College.”

“In Nebraska?” he said. He grabbed for the back of the desk chair and almost tipped it over again.

“Where exactly were you drinking these clockstoppers?” the girl asked.

“California.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Finally the girl said, “Don’t you remember anything about how you got here?”

“Yes,” he said. “I was … no.”

“It’ll come to you if you don’t think about it,” the girl said, and then looked scared. “I feel like I said that
before, or somebody said it to me. Only I have this funny feeling it hasn’t happened yet.”

She leaned forward on her hands and looked hard at him. “I know you,” she said. “You’re a temporal psychologist.”

“I’m an English major,” he said. “I was drinking clockstoppers with Stephanie Forrester’s head usher, and all of a sudden it got as black as—”

“The pit from pole to pole,” the girl said.

He knocked over the chair. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Carolyn Hendricks.”

She shook her head. “I’m Carolyn Rutherford.”

“That’s your maiden name. Your married name is Hendricks.”

“I’m not married,” she said, starting to look scared again.

“Not yet you’re not. But you will be. You’ll have two daughters.”

“You’re Dr. Andrew Simons,” she said suddenly. “You spent the last five years in Tibet studying déjà vu.”

“I spent the last five years in high school and going to Stanford. And why would I study déjà vu? I’m an English major.”

“Were
an English major. I think after tonight you’ll probably switch your major to psychology.” She sat back on her heels. “Hendricks, huh? I think there’s a guy named Hendricks in my psych class.”

“But you haven’t met him yet,” he said, no longer bewildered, no longer uneasy. “And I haven’t met you yet. But I will. In about twenty years.”

“Yes,” she said, “and I’ll be married and have two daughters, and you’ll be in Tibet.”

“And there won’t be any possible way for us to get together because the timing will be all wrong,” he said.

“All things are possible,” she said. “It’s three-thirty.” She smiled a little, leaning toward him on her hands. “They never check the rooms after midnight.”

“What about your roommate?” he said, and her sudden look of surprised joy almost staggered him.

“Oh,” she said happily, “this is the quarter Allison’s in Europe.”

“I couldn’t find you,” Don said. He was standing over her with a mug.

“Susy was in our bed,” she said sleepily. “How was the meet?” She sat up and pulled the afghan over her knees.

“We took second.” He got down on the bed and handed her the mug. “Jennifer Whipple got sick and couldn’t do her bar routine, and Linda quit. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she said, taking a sip. “What is this?”

“A suicide,” he said. “I remembered you were crazy about them in college, so I stopped at the 7-Eleven and bought some ginger ale and—”

“Ginger ale!” Carolyn said. “That was what I couldn’t remember.” She took another sip. “It tastes just like the ones Allison used to make. Oh, and speaking of Allison, I finally remembered when I had the chicken pox. It was the quarter Allison was in Europe. It was the strangest thing. I … Linda quit?”

“Halfway through the vaulting. She didn’t even come home on the bus with us. I tried to call you.”

“To tell me she quit?” she said.

“No. To tell you you’d had the chicken pox. Jennifer got sick, and all of a sudden I remembered you’d had it in college. It beats me how I could have forgotten, since that’s how we met. I came to see you in the infirmary.”

“I know,” Carolyn said. “The doctor made me make a list of who I might have exposed, and I put your name down because you sat next to me in my psych class.”

“You looked terrible when I came to see you in the infirmary,” he said, grinning at her. “You were all covered with scabs. And sitting there looking at you, I had this
funny kind of vision of the two of us married with two kids and both of them with the chicken pox. I don’t think Linda understood that part.”

“You told Linda?”

“Yeah. She was talking about how touchy you were on the phone. She said nobody could be that crabby unless they were coming down with something, and all of a sudden I remembered how I’d met you, and so I told her.”

“No wonder she quit,” Carolyn said.

“Yeah, I guess it was probably boring for a kid like her to have to listen to an old geezer like me talking about things that happened a long time ago. The funny thing is, it doesn’t feel like a long time ago, though, you know. It feels like it just happened yesterday.”

“I know,” Carolyn said. “That isn’t the only funny thing. I—”

“Listen, honey, I’ve got to go back to school,” Don said. He patted her knee. “I’ve got to unload the equipment. I just thought I’d better come check on you since you didn’t answer the phone.”

She draped the afghan over her shoulders and followed him into the living room. “I didn’t hear it ring,” she said. “And that’s not the only funny thing. I—”

“I decided on a college,” Liz said. She was sitting up on the couch dabbing calamine lotion on her arms. “NSC.”

“NSC?” Carolyn said. “I thought you’d narrowed it down to Vassar, Carleton, and Tufts.”

“Well, I had, but I couldn’t sleep because I was itching, and I got to thinking about how you and Dad are always saying how great NSC was, so I decided to go there instead.”

“It was great,” Don said. “That’s where I met your mother. She had the chicken pox and—”

“I
know
,” Liz said. “You’ve told that story about a million times.”

“The old geezer strikes again,” Don said. He kissed
Carolyn. “I’ll be back in an hour if I don’t suddenly go senile while I’m unloading the bus.” He kissed Carolyn again.

“I don’t see how having the chicken pox could have been all that romantic,” Liz said after he’d left.

“It was,” Carolyn said.

Dr. Lejeune went to see Andrew in the university infirmary. “Sherri Paprocki said to say hello,” she said. “She wants to know how you managed to get the chicken pox. The incubation period is only two weeks, and you didn’t catch it till five weeks after you’d left.”

“On the plane to L.A. I sat next to a little girl who must have been contagious,” he said. “It’s a good thing I decided not to go to Tibet.”

“Excuse me,” Bev Frantz said. She came in with a thermometer. “I need to take your temp.”

“Great,” Andrew said. “I was hoping I’d see you agai—”

She stuck the thermometer in his mouth and looked at the box. He smiled up at her. She concentrated fiercely on the LED readout.

He didn’t look sick except for the calamine-covered scabs all over his face and arms. In fact, he looked better than Dr. Lejeune had ever seen him look. Happier.

The box beeped. Bev took the sensor out of his mouth and shoved it back in its carrier. She turned to Dr. Lejeune. “Dr. Young’s been asking for you.”

“You really should go see him,” Andrew said. “I think he wants to apologize.”

“You’re the one he should apologize to,” she said, and then looked closely at him. “Or should he? Are you sure you got the chicken pox from that little girl?”

“Max really cares about you, you know,” Andrew said. “He told me the reason he started the project in the first place was to impress you.”

“Hmm,” Dr. Lejeune said. She told Andrew good-bye and went out in the hall.

“I wondered if I could talk to you about Dr. Simons for a minute,” Bev said. “I really like him, but when he was in here before for his cholera booster, I got the idea he was in love with somebody else.”

“He was,” Dr. Lejeune said. “A girl he knew in college. But that was a long time ago. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She started out the door and then turned around and went into Max’s room. He looked terrible. He had chicken pox on the top of his bald head, and he was wearing a pair of mittens that were taped at the wrist. “Well?” he said. “Has he asked her out yet?”

“Who?” Dr. Lejeune said.

“Andrew. Has he asked Bev out? I told him he’d better latch on to her while he still has the chance. I’ve been trying to get them together ever since I got in here. It’s the least I can do.”

“I thought you said matchmaking was a substitute for sex.”

“It is,” he said. “So was my time machine. I wanted to go back in time and be young again.”

“You’re not that old. You caught the chicken pox, didn’t you?”

“Nothing happened, did you know that? All that energy released at once, and nothing. Carolyn slept through the whole thing.” He reached up with his mittened hand to scratch his face and then laid his hand back in his lap. She had never felt so sorry for anyone in her whole life.

“Would you like me to rub on some calamine?” she asked.

“Nothing happened to him either.”

“He caught the chicken pox.” She opened the bottle of calamine and dabbed some on his cheek. “Did you know when Carolyn had it in college, she was the only person in her dorm to get it? Nobody could figure out
where she caught it from. Personally, I think she caught it from that poxy bunch of kids at her house. And now Andrew has the chicken pox, and nobody can figure out where he got it from.”