“This is giving me a headache,” Alice said.
“You know what time travel movie I always liked?” said John. “The one where Superman had to go back in time to save Lois Lane, and he just had to fly extra fast. Simple, effective.”
“I like the ones where the person has no say and is just yanked back and forth, like Kindred,” said Simon. He took out a cigarette and lit it, and then one by one, so did all the other men in the room. “My readers wouldn’t go for it, but a lot of people would.”
“The Time Brothers had a machine. You had one—maybe two?—with time travel, Simon?” Chip said. “The one with the paleontologist who goes back to the Triassic, what did he have? A magic bone?” He stifled a laugh.
“Yes, it was a magic bone, fuck you very much,” Simon said. “That magic bone bought me a house in East Hampton.”
“How nice for you and your bone,” Chip said.
“What’s it called when someone uses information from the future to influence the past? Like Biff and the almanac?” Alice asked.
“Well, that’s just good thinking,” Simon said, smiling.
“Right, so if I was, like, from the future, and I came back to tell you that at some year in the next ten years, the Red Sox will win the World Series, and then you all made a bazillion dollars by betting on the Red Sox, that’s just good news, because it doesn’t hurt anybody?” Alice asked. Everyone groaned, except Howard, the lone Bostonian. He cheered and pumped both fists in the air.
“Well, define hurt,” Simon said. “I personally bleed Yankee blue, so it would hurt me. But sure, I see what you mean.”
“Is this what you guys do at these things? You sit around and talk about books and movies and just make fun of each other?” Alice asked.
“Sometimes people bring margarita machines,” Chip said. “Or drugs.” Howard elbowed him. “She’s sixteen! Come on! Alice, do you really walk through a crowd of grown-up people in costumes and think to yourself, ‘I bet all these people are dead sober’？”
“No,” Alice said. “I don’t. But so how does a stub work? What’s a stub?”
“Like a parallel timeline, one that doesn’t affect the future that already happened. Sometimes people call it a continuum, or a continuing timeline, which I guess just means it can go on and on and not loop back in.” Howard crossed his arms. “I think I’ve read more books than all of you.”
“Oh, please,” Chip said. “You’re just the one who’s used to lecturing large groups of students, and so you talk the loudest.”
“But what about traveling back? Like, how do people get back? If there’s no time machine or whatever?” John handed Alice an apple, and she ate it, wondering if everything she was eating in 1996 would be rotten inside her body when she got home. If she got home. As if home were a particular point in time as well as a place.
“Wormhole?” Simon said.
“Portal?” John said.
“Ancient ruins? Magic?” Simon said. “In addition to the dinosaur bone, once I used an owl pellet that had been taken apart in the future, and a third-grade teacher got sucked back in time, and he had to find that very same owl in order to get back.”
“I cannot believe how much money you make,” Howard said, shaking his head.
“Do you guys know where my dad is? I actually need to talk to him,” Alice said. She felt her voice start to wobble. It was all too much, and she was wasting time.
Howard sighed and looked toward John, who tucked his chin toward his chest in a tight nod. “Come on, Al. I know where he is.”
34
Howard led Alice down the hallway, past the elevators, and made a left turn. They were standing in front of another hotel room.
“Is this where you murder me?” Alice joked. “Because there are a lot of witnesses.”
Howard rolled his eyes and raised his knuckles to knock. Inside the room, she heard a woman laugh, and then her father pulled open the door. Leonard wasn’t naked—he wasn’t even shirtless—but there was no mistaking the situation. Over his shoulder, Alice could see a woman putting on her earrings. Alice’s first thought was that it was exactly like when Donna Martin had been following Color Me Badd and instead found her mother in the midst of an affair on Beverly Hills, 90210, but that wasn’t exactly like this at all. Her father wasn’t married. Not to her mother, not to anyone.
“Look who I found,” Howard said. “Good to see you, Al.” He offered a small wave and got the hell out of the way, hurrying back down the hall.