The Two Timers

VI

John Breton made several abortive attempts to leave for his office, but each time returned to pick up small objects — papers, cigarettes, a notebook. The mounting tension in the pit of Jack’s stomach drove him away from the kitchen table, with a muttered apology, and up into the still-air privacy of his bedroom. He sat tensely on the edge of the bed, listening for the sound of the Lincoln crackling down the driveway.

When it finally came he went out onto the landing and part-way down the stairs. He stood there in the big house’s dark brown silence, hovering, feeling like a pike meditatively selecting its level in dim waters. Nine years, he thought. I’ll die. I’ll touch her, and I’ll die.

He went the rest of the way down, unable to prevent himself moving stealthily, and into the kitchen. Kate was standing near the window, washing apples. She did not look around, but went on dousing the pale green fruit with cold water. The simple domestic action struck Breton as being somehow incongruous.

“Kate,” he said. “Why are you doing that?”

“Insecticides.” She still refused to turn her head. “I always wash the apples.”

“I see. You’ve got to do it this morning? It’s urgent, is it?”

“I want to put them away in the fridge.”

“But there’s no hurry, is there?”

“No.” She sounded contrite, as though he had forced her to admit something shamefuL

Breton felt guilty — he was really putting her through it. “Did you ever notice the way fruit looks so much brighter and more colorful when it’s submerged in water?”

“No.”

“It does. Nobody knows why. Kate!”

She turned to face him and he caught her hands. They were wet and cold, stirring ghastly memories far back in his mind. He kissed the chilled fingers, making his own private penance.

“Don’t do that.” She tried to pull her hands away, but he tightened his grip.

“Kate,” he said urgently. “I lost you nine years ago — but you lost something, too. John doesn’t love you, and I do. It’s as simple as that.”

“It isn’t safe to make snap judgments about John.”

“For me it’s safe. But just look at the facts — he went off to work this morning as if nothing had happened. Leaving us alone. Do you think I’d leave you alone with a declared rival? I’d…” Breton left the sentence unfinished. He had been going to say he would kill his rival first.

“That was John acting hurt. He tries mental judo, you know. If you push, be pulls. If you pull, he pushes.”

Kate was speaking quickly, in desperation, as Breton drew her to him. He slid his fingers gently up the fluted back of her neck, through the hair and gripped her head, turning her face to him. She resisted for a few seconds, then — all at once — came to him with mouth wide open. Breton kept his eyes open during that first kiss, trying to imprint the moment on his mind, to raise it beyond time itself.

Later, as they lay in the parchment-colored light of the shuttered bedroom, Breton stared at the ceiling in wonderment. So this, he thought, is sanity. He let his brain absorb the sensations of relaxed well-being that were flooding in from every part of his body. In this mood, everything connected with the process of being alive was good. He could have got immense pleasure from a thousand simple things that had been forgotten somewhere along the way — climbing a hill, drinking beer, chopping wood, writing a poem.

He put his hand on the cool skin of Kate’s thigh. “How do you feel?”

“All right.” Her voice was sleepy, remote.

Breton nodded, looking at the room through his brand- new eyes. The baffled sunlight had a yellowed, Mediterranean quality about it, restful yet absolutely clear. And it revealed no flaws in his Time B universe. A strangely relevant fragment from. an old poem drifted into his mind.

The painted sceneries recall Such toil as Canaletto spent To give each brick upon each wall Its due partition of cement.

He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Kate. “My name should have been Canaletto,” he said.

She stared up at him, half-smiling, then turned her face away and he knew she was thinking about John. Breton sank down on his pillow, absentmindedly sliding a finger beneath the strap of his watch to touch the hidden lump of the chronomotor module buried beneath his skin. John Breton was the one flaw in the Time B universe.

But that state of affairs was strictly temporary.