TIme After Time tbu-2

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  “Yep.”

  “Oh.” She looks up to the top of the tower again, then back at me. “Why?”

  I rest my hands on her shoulders and give her a quick kiss. “No cheating.” In the time it’s taken us to have this discussion, at least ten people have stepped into the line. I jump in at the end.

  “Why is, you know…that”—she makes this weird gesture with her hand—“cheating?”

  “Because it is. It’s like rock climbing. You can’t just magically find yourself on top of a mountain, staring out at an insane view. You’ve got to earn it. Without cheating.” She presses her lips together, like she’s trying not to smile. “Besides, there aren’t a lot of discreet places up there.” She shoots me a confused look and I step closer so I can’t be overheard. “There’s nowhere to arrive without being seen by a bunch of people.”

  “Oh.”

  “Which, you know, some might find shocking.”

  “Yeah, I suppose some might.” She nods and tries to hold a serious expression, but I can see that smile still trying to peek through. “So we’re taking the elevator?” It’s a question, but she says it more like a statement.

  “Nope. That’s cheating too.” She starts to say something, but I hold my finger up, and say, “Wait a sec.”

  I haven’t exchanged my American dollars for French francs yet, so I’ve been subtly scanning the people in line for the perfect target and I just found him: older guy, jeans and tennis shoes, fanny pack with an American flag pinned to the belt.

  When the line snakes around, I hold up three twenty-dollar bills and ask him if he’ll buy us two tickets to the second deck via the stairs in exchange for them. He checks the prices on the board, calculates the profit, and happily takes the money from my hand.

  “The stairs?” Anna asks.

  I just grin.

  “How many stairs?”

  “I don’t know. A lot. We can count them if you want to.” She smacks me with the back of her hand. “Trust me, you’ll love this. We can stop and look at the view on the way up.” Fanny-pack Guy hands me our two tickets and we head to the entrance.

  As it turns out, there are six hundred and seventy steps, and we don’t even have to count them, because every tenth one is conveniently painted with a number. The higher we go, the more frequently Anna stops, saying she has to catch her breath. But I notice she’s refusing to look around, and whenever I point out the sites, she just nods and keeps climbing. She looks relieved when we finally reach the second platform.

  Down on the ground, it was already much colder here in Paris than it was in Evanston, but up on the tower, it feels like the middle of winter. Anna’s trying to play it off like she isn’t cold, but I can see her shivering as we stand here, leaning against the railing, staring out over the city. I suddenly remember that I brought my sweater, so I take it out of my backpack and hand it to her. She pulls it over her head. It hangs almost to the edge of her skirt and the sleeves go past her fingers and she looks completely adorable.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around to find a woman grinning wide and holding a camera out in my direction. She says something in a language that’s not English or French as she gestures between herself and the man standing to her right. I take the camera from her and hand it to Anna.

  “You’re the photographer,” I say, and Anna looks grateful as she brings the camera to her face. She snaps a few pictures and hands it back to them.

  “I hope one of those pictures turns out,” Anna says when they’re out of earshot. “They probably won’t have another night on the Eiffel Tower again.” I’m about to tell her that they’re probably checking the pictures right now when I remember that cameras don’t work that way yet. Then I realize that Anna’s staring out at the view and not talking. I wish I’d thought to go to her house and get her camera for her.

  “Stay here,” I say, and without giving her any time to reply, I double back toward the elevator bank, past the people in line, and into the crowded gift shop. Right behind the counter, I find what I’m looking for. I convince the cashier to accept an American twenty in exchange for a ten-franc item, and less than ten minutes later I’m heading back to Anna with a plastic bag swinging by my side.

  But when I return to the spot where I left her, she’s gone. I walk all the way around the deck, but she’s nowhere to be found. I head back toward the center of the platform and see her there, pacing back and forth in front of the elevators.

  “Hey.” I come up behind her and grab her by the waist. She jumps. “You okay?”

  She flips around, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “You left me on the Eiffel Tower?”

  “Just for a minute,” I say, and her eyes grow wide. I’m clearly not supposed to find this amusing, but I can’t help it. She’s just standing there, looking small and pissed off and adorable in my sweater.

  “You’re laughing at me?” Her eyes grow even wider and I think she’s going to start yelling at me or something, but instead she steps forward and takes my face in her hands. “What if something happened to you? What if you got knocked back?” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know what date it is,” she practically whispers.

  I’m still finding this amusing, even though I’m clearly not supposed to. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I kiss her and I’m relieved when she lets me. “I’m not going to get knocked back. And besides, you know I never take you out of your time. Never. You’re always a really awkward phone call and an outrageously expensive plane ride away from your parents, but that’s it. Okay?”

  She presses her lips together and nods.

  “I just wanted to get you this.” I hand her the plastic gift-shop bag, and she peeks inside. Her whole expression relaxes as the grin spreads across her face.

  “You bought a disposable camera?”

  I shrug. “You looked a little sad about taking that couple’s picture.” I guide her over to the railing. “Smile,” I say, holding the camera out in front of us. I press the button and the shutter snaps, but when I press it again, nothing happens. I’m turning it around in my hands, looking at it from all angles and trying to figure out what to do next, when Anna takes it from me, chuckling as she runs her thumb along a little wheel that must advance the film. She holds her arm out and presses the button.

  After she’s taken four or five shots, she stops and looks at the camera. I can tell by the way she’s staring at it, running her finger along its edges, that this small cardboard box contains so much more than a few images of the two of us on an undeveloped strip of film. It’s not a memory or a postcard, it’s more than she’s ever had—tangible proof that we exist together, outside both her world and mine.

  “Bennett?” she says, still looking down at the camera.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are we going back home tonight?” When her eyes find mine, I shake my head no.

  Her gaze travels up to the brightly lit iron beams above us, and a grin spreads across her face. “I never thought I’d be standing on the Eiffel Tower and saying this but…can we get out of here?”

  16

  Clouds are filtering the morning sun but it’s still bright enough to stir me from sleep. I rub my eyes as I take in the unfamiliar room, remembering little by little where I am right now. In Paris. With Anna.

  She’s sitting in the window ledge, her bare legs bent and visible below the hem of one of my T-shirts. Her chin is resting on her knees and she’s staring out the window at the city below.

  I kick off the covers and cross the room. “What are you doing way over here?” I pull her hair to one side and kiss the back of her neck.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She’s quiet for a few seconds, and then she says, “I keep having to remind myself that this is all happening. That I’m actually here.”

  “Then we should get going. We have a whole day in Paris and we still won’t come close to seeing everything.”

  Anna turns her head and gives me the biggest smile. And then she sits up str
aighter and spins in place, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. “I didn’t mean Paris. I meant here, with you.”

  * * *

  We grab coffees at the café downstairs and make a game plan. We decide to skip the obvious sights, the museums and cathedrals and monuments, but agree that we can’t miss the Seine, so we order our pain au chocolat to go and head toward the river. We find a place to sit on the bank, and Anna pops a chunk of bread into her mouth. She closes her eyes, letting the dough and chocolate melt on her tongue.

  “God, that’s incredible. Why can’t we make bread that tastes like this?”

  “You and me?” I joke and she stares at me.

  “Americans.”

  “Oh. Because we aren’t French,” I say matter-of-factly.

  She tears off another chunk of bread and pops it into my mouth, presumably to shut me up.

  We spend the rest of the morning wandering around aimlessly, meandering down the smallest alleys we can find, popping into bakeries when they smell too good to simply walk past. Anna stops at a corner store that appears to sell everything from drinks to cheesy Parisian trinkets, and heads for the cooler. She grabs two bottles of water and tosses one to me.

  The clerk is ringing us up when Anna sees a display on the counter. “Ah, here you go.” She hands me a laminated map. “This is what we need,” she says, tapping the surface.

  I take it from her hand and slip it back into the rack where it was. “We don’t need a map.”

  “Why not?” She looks confused at first, but then her face falls. “How many times have you been to Paris?”

  “Twice. Both times for concerts, and I barely even walked around the city.” Anna waits patiently for a better explanation. “I just prefer to get lost.”

  She raises her eyebrows and stares at me. “You want to get lost? In Paris?”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  She looks unconvinced. She might also look a bit terrified. So I grab the map from the rack and set it down on the counter. “Fine. We’ll get a map. But it’s purely for backup.”

  The cashier gives us the total but I hold my hand up in the air and tell her to wait. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Anna cocks her head to the side, and gives me a Haven’t we already covered this? expression, but I laugh under my breath and take off anyway.

  I have to snake around a few aisles, but I finally find a small section of bike accessories, and that’s where I find the padlocks. I return to the counter, using a little sleight of hand to keep it hidden from her view.

  “Here,” I say as I take my backpack off and hand it to Anna, along with the map. “Find an extremely inconvenient pocket for that, would you?” While she’s busy with the zipper, I remove the padlock and its key from their packaging, and slip them into the front pocket of my jeans.

  I look at her and say, “Now we have a destination.”

  “We do?”

  “Yeah. I want to show you something.”

  “Do you need the map?” She smiles.

  I look at her and shake my head. “No, I do not need the map.”

  * * *

  I may need the map. We’ve been walking along the banks of the river for a good forty minutes, and we keep passing bridges, but so far, I haven’t seen the sign that marks the one I need. I give myself one more bridge before I fold. Then I spot it: a dark green sign with white type that reads PONT DES ARTS.

  The pedestrian-only footbridge is more crowded than I expected it to be. Couples are sitting on the benches in the center and people are clustered in groups along the railings. Everyone seems to be speaking French.

  I find a spot against the railing and sit down. I lean back against a post and Anna sits between my legs. Just as she’s reclining against my chest, a police siren blares by and fades away. “I love how even the most common sounds remind you that you’re somewhere else,” she says.

  We’re quiet for a long time, looking out over the water, until Anna twists her neck and looks up at me. “I’ve been dying to ask you something,” she says. I must be wearing an affirmative expression because she suddenly spins around to face me and looks me right in the eye. “When you stopped the fire, did you feel the same way you did after we changed things with Emma?”

  Her question catches me off guard and I react by dodging it. “I didn’t stop the fire. I changed a few things leading up to the fire. Big difference.” But Anna stares at me, not letting me off the hook.

  I look at her, remembering how I sat in my room that night, picturing the look on Anna’s face when she first saw Emma, unbroken. “Before, during, or after?” I ask.

  “All of the above.” She reaches out for the hem of my shirt and plays with it, running her finger back and forth along the edge.

  I start to fall back on the things I say when I don’t want to let people in: simple words like “fine” and “good” that slip so easily off my tongue. But instead, I feel myself lean in a little closer, like I’m ready to tell her everything.

  “Before? Scared,” I say flatly. “When you asked me to go back and help Emma, I honestly didn’t think I could do over that many days, and even if I could, I had no idea if it would work. Anything could have happened. We could have been knocked back right away. Or we could have changed the sequence of events, but the car accident might have happened a few hours later regardless. The number of things that could have gone wrong were just…” I trail off, shaking my head.

  “I thought Emma would be the first and last time I’d ever do anything like that. But when I heard what happened to those kids, I guess I just wanted to try it again. I mean, if could go back two days, why not three? And if it did work, if I could change it… Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified the entire time.”

  Anna doesn’t say anything, but she’s tracing tiny circles in my palms again, just like she did in Emma’s backyard last night. I think that means I’m supposed to keep talking.

  “During, I didn’t think about anything else. I just hoped it would work.” I’m hit with a vision of the school pictures that lined the hallway of apartment 3C.

  “And after…” I stop. I don’t know what to say about the after. After I installed the smoke detector and came home, I waited to see the news, and discovered that the do-over had worked. My dad looked proud and shocked at the same time, like I’d hit that inexplicable home run in a tied game, bottom of the ninth.

  “After,” I repeat. “It was like being in one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books and I chose a different ending. Those two kids were alive and safe, and I knew they shouldn’t have been. And that was…strange…to know that they died.”

  Anna brings my hand to her lips and kisses it. “And what about the side effects?”

  “Nothing,” I whisper. “No migraine. No dehydration. No side effects at all. I felt like I could have run around the block.” Another tour boat goes by and we stop to listen to the guide rattle off the interesting facts about this bridge that we’ve heard twice now.

  “Do you think—” Anna begins. She stops, waiting for a group of kids in matching soccer uniforms to walk past us. “Do you think it’s possible that do-overs aren’t such a bad thing?”

  I shake my head. “What do you mean? That I’m supposed to change things? No way. I did it once for you. I guess I did it this second time for my dad. But those were isolated incidents that I chose to do. It’s not like I’m now on a mission to stop the world’s tragedies. Besides, I still don’t know if there are ramifications or not.” I can’t even say it aloud, but part of me is still wondering if the people whose lives I’ve altered are affected by their changed pasts. Does Emma know at some unconscious level that she was in a massive car accident? Will those two kids…I can’t think about it. “Look, nothing’s changed. I’m purely an observer. I’m not supposed to alter the future.”

  “I’m not saying you’re supposed to, just that it felt good when you did. I mean, Emma and Justin are fine, right? Nothing horrible happened to them, th
ey just…got a second chance. And because of you, so did those kids.”

  I look past her, staring out over the water. A second chance. I sort of like the idea of that. Not that it matters, since I’m not doing it again.

  “Hey,” I say, as I lean back and reach into my front pocket. “I almost forgot why I brought you here in the first place.”

  She looks at me with a curious grin. I open her hand and rest the brass padlock in her palm. She takes her eyes off me to look down at it. “Why am I holding a padlock?” The sunlight bounces off the surface as she twists it around, examining it from all sides as if that will enlighten her.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this—it involves a few future details—but I heard this story and thought it was cool.” I shift in place and take a deep breath. “No one really knows when it started exactly, but by the end of two thousand nine, all of the railings on this bridge will be covered with padlocks. Couples who came to Paris from all over the world started writing their names on them, clipping them to this railing, and tossing the key into the river as a symbol…” Anna’s wearing an expression I can’t read, and I suddenly realize how lame I sound. “…of, like, their… Oh, never mind.” I reach for the padlock, but she snaps her hand closed.

  “Stop it. You’re not taking our lock.”

  “Yes, I am.” I reach for it again but she laughs and pulls her hand behind her back.

  She looks me in the eyes. “Go on.”

  “No. I heard that story and thought it was kind of romantic, but now that I say it out loud it sounds so cheesy.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I lean back against the post. Once she can tell I’m not going to try to take it away again, she brings her hand back to her lap and opens her palm. “I love it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She turns the padlock over in her palm again, this time as if she’s admiring it. “We don’t have anything to write with.”