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If only she'd answered differently. If only she'd never answered at all. "So--what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" "Paradox," Maria said. "What do you know about paradox?" he asked. She turned away from her margarita, which she pretended was a social drink, just her and the girls, out for margaritas, oh, they just stepped out for a second: the man had an unnatural sparkle in his eyes. A glint. A sheen. He said something. "Sorry, what?" "Paradox." She licked salt off the far rim of the glass. "Like a time-traveller who kills his great-grandfather before the guy produced...what's the word?" "Offspring." "No, you wanted to know about paradox. Like when you see your husband at home, and fifty minutes of freeway driving later, you see him in the arms of another woman. One event physically precludes the existence of a second event, which occurs anyway. Paradox." "Not necessarily," the man said. She looked at him again. He'd put on sunglasses. Or maybe he was just about to take them off, while time travelling into the past. "Got a time machine? I don't think so." It was hard to remember whether she was trying to be witty inside her own head or out loud. She decided she didn't care anymore. "Damn it. You're the one who wants to talk. You make sense of it." Whatever it was. "You were telling me about your research," the man said. Glasses and weird eyes aside, he was a good-looking guy. Maria had to wonder what he wanted her for. No wedding ring. "That's right," Maria agreed, although remembered no such thing. "Failure. Paradox. Success. My marriage. After he was done screwing my best friend, he flickered and disappeared. I stopped here for a drink, and he walked through the room and went into the bathroom. He's been walking through this room and going into the bathroom for hours now. And he Never. Comes. Out. I went in there. He's stacking up in the stalls. Bodies and bodies, like a crashed computer program." "You know too much," said the man. He grinned. She could almost see his eyes flash at her through the glasses. Little sexy LED flashes. Maria laughed. Her drink had changed colors since the last time she'd looked at it. "I watched a photon go back in time at the lab today. And then I watched it never have gone back in time at all. It's all a trick of mirrors, you know. Mirrors and..." The man nodded. "You're going crazy." "Tell me about it." He did. Maria, pretty little Maria, was going to see time go askew for the rest of her life. She was going to see what should have been collapsed possibilities, and she was going to breathe life into them, one after another, and as they lived, they always would have been. She'd have no past, no future. She'd start seeing herself: she'd start becoming everyone she saw, over and over, and endless iterations of all possible Marias, until she'd pushed everyone else away into the never-had-been. She believed him; she was drunk. Allen passed her and went into the men's room. "I got the perfect setup for you," the man said. "Lender's Friend Hotel." "Yeah, right," Maria said. Allen passed her again, and she slumped onto the man's leather coat. ___ A male voice said, "I don't have time for this." "Oh, no. You got time for this," said the guy who'd been hitting on her in the bar. "Time traveller." "So?" Maria concentrated on trying to crack open one eye. With effort, the guck stuck to her eyelid broke free and hung off her eyelashes. She still couldn't see. "You don't plan to be your own bartender for the rest of eternity, do you?" "No." "Time traveller. Time traveller. Vern, have you always been such a frikken' idiot?" "Silence, Marvin." Her eye cleared. You get the worst, gummiest slime in your eye after a good tequila drunk. A cute little boy in shorts--blond hair, cowlick, fat little fists--growled in the other voice, "You have to kill her before she destroys this world." The man from the bar snorted. "Take her to your place. Teach her how to tend bar. She'll do it damned better than you will. The clients never talk to you, but they'll talk to her. Make her sign a contract saying she'll never be able to leave. Get it? If she can't leave, and your place contains all possible hotels anyway, there's no paradox." "Don't wanna die," Maria said. It came out, "Dannadye." She said it again. "Dandi." The boy looked at her. The man's voice came out of his throat again. "All right." --- "So--what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Marie shrugged. No point starting a conversation with someone who wasn't going to stick around very long. The guy, who looked as banal as they come, started talking to the little green man who climbed up onto the barstool next to him. She grabbed some glasses off a table--only one had been drunk, but the other two had been drained of their spirits--and cursed the way she'd been left short-handed tonight. Dandi passed her, his head bobbing up and down with his long strides. "The private room is ready." "Yeah. But check. It's been a rough night for continuity, man." He gave the order for the party's drinks. Marie grimaced and slapped a wet towel onto her table. "Where am I gonna get fresh apple juice? Let alone non-coagulating human blood? At night?" But it was an empty complaint: she'd find them in the bar fridge, she'd always have found them right in the bar fridge, where they now usually were. "Marv coming?" Dandi nodded. "And my other brother. Arthur. Older brother." Maria grinned to see Dandi chatter at her like a nervous schoolboy. "I knew you when you were in short pants," she muttered. "What?" "Nothing. Arthur?" "And a girl. Tanya." "A girl? The boss lets you have girls? At your age?" Dandi rolled his eye. Behind the monocle, something glittered. "An important girl. We hope she'll be working here." Maria shrugged. "Whatever. Just tell Marv I get off at two." "Yes." Dandi patted his pockets and put his monocle in his eye. "Of course." It fit over the one he'd already had in and merged together with it. "Of course. Of course." "You already said that. I told you it was a bad night for continuity." She started on the drinks. Marv came in; she felt his hands slip under her shirt from across the room and disappear into a time shortly after two a.m. that moring, upstairs: they were going to have had a good night of it later. Maria smiled at him. Marvin walked over to the table with the three women. "Ladies," he said. "Marvin Scald at your service." "Charmed," said one. "Get off it!" said another. "Shall we?" asked the third. Dandi led them back to the private room. "I like what you've done with the mirrors," said one, despite the fact that there were no mirrors in the room. "But what happened to the whores?" said the second. "Shh," said the third. "Look." The ladies stopped. That, Maria thought, must be Arthur, the third brother. He looked like a street bum--smelled like one, too. He had a ragged old blue bandana tied over his eyes. The woman he had with him shimmered... The retreated to the private room, and Maria brought them their drinks. The apple-blood concoction went to the shimmering woman, who shuddered and pushed it away. Dandi stared at her until she picked it up and drank it. She gagged and drank again. At the bar, a small, twitcy man in a gray suit and another man, built like a 125% copy enlargement of the other one, only with curly auburn hair, sat and bothered each other. "So--what's a nice girl like you doing in--" the big one rumbled. The small one kicked him from behind the bar. "Sorry, B," the big one said. If only she'd answered differently. If only she'd never answered at all: "Paradox," Maria said. Both men's mouths dropped open. "Paradox?" the little one stuttered. Allen walked by, three of him in a row, to underscore the situation. "You're interested in paradox, eh? Let me tell you about paradox," Maria said. "But first, tell me what brings you to Long Dachsund--Land's End, I mean?" "Long Dachsund," the tall one chortled. "Shut up, Durwood," the short one said. "Don't mind him, miss," Durwood said. "He may have got all the brains, but he sure missed out on the sense of humor..." words |
