Robert Silverberg - Jennifer's Lover

Finch nodded. “That’s fascinating.”

Nort said, “We do not interfere, you know. We move around like spies, doing our studies and never interacting with the past-folk, out of fear of consequences, of course. But this was an exception. I was captivated by Jennifer instantly.”

“Captivated,” said Finch bleakly.

“Captivated, yes. We became lovers. It is a kind of incest, I imagine, but is not very serious, outside the direct maternal line, yes? My studies suffer. Now I come only to this year. Jennifer is a wonderful woman. You know?”

“I know, yes.” Finch looked toward Jennifer. “I haul my ass over eight states peddling primitive data-processing devices while you amuse yourself with a lover from the twenty-third century. That absolutely captivates me, Jennifer. I can’t tell you how—”

“Dale, please. You know I love you. But—but—”

Nort looked troubled. “You are not accepting of this?”

“I am not accepting, no,” Finch said.

“But this is the late twentieth century, a decadent time for the marriage custom, and you are sophisticated, educated, elite persons. It is my understanding that toleration of nonmarital sexual interpersonation is widespread in your cohort. You are displeased I love your wife?”

“Very,” said Finch in a gray voice. He lowered himself into the chair by the window and said, “You’re a hell of a guy for keeping a straight face, Nort. I have to admire that. Throughout this whole routine you’ve been very convincing. But I’m worn out, and I can’t take any futuristic rigmarole any more. Please put your clothes on and go away and don’t come back, and leave Jennifer and me to pick up the pieces of our marriage. Okay? Because if I catch you here again, I might do something violent, which is against my nature, and I’ll probably have to divorce Jennifer, which is the last thing in the world I want to do even now.”

“You doubt I am from a future time?”

“I doubt you are from a future time, yes.”

Nort climbed out of the bed. Finch noticed a thin plastic band of some constantly oscillating greenish color around his left thigh. He touched it and disappeared, and when he reappeared, a moment later, he was in a different corner of the room, holding out a folded newspaper to Finch. Finch glanced at it: the New York Times for April 16, 2037. The main headline was something about Pope Sixtus performing Easter services on the moon. Finch made a little choking sound and started to scan the other stories, but Nort, with an apologetic smile, took the paper from him, vanished again, and reappeared without it, back in the bed. “I have sorrow,” he said softly, “but I am forbidden to let you inspect the newspaper in detail. Shall I do other things? What would convince you I am genuine?”

Finch wanted to sob. He shook his head and said, “Don’t bother. I don’t need to know. You probably are what you say you are. Will you go away now? Go annoy Millard Fillmore.”

“I am loving your wife.”

“You have loved my wife. That’s the correct grammar. It’s over. Listen, I’m a ruthless late-twentieth-century man, and you’re on dangerous ground. I have weapons. If you’re killed while on a field trip, will you stay dead in 2215?”

Jennifer said, “Dale, stop talking that way.”

“What do you want me to say? He flashes in here like something out of Buck Rogers, he screws my wife every time I look the other way, he upsets my daughter and alienates my son with his crazy future toys, and now I’m supposed to—”

“You mustn’t threaten him, Dale. You’re behaving extremely prehistorically. Haven’t you ever had an affair?”

“Never. Not once.”

“Those motels—”

“Not once. I suppose you’ve had plenty, though.”

“Two before this one,” she said, reddening a little. “I thought you knew. This isn’t 1906, after all. They were both absolutely casual.”

Finch thought of that polished perfect sphere that was his metaphor for the flawlessness of his relationship with Jennifer. He thought of the two-bodied male-female entities of Plato’s Symposium. His face was leaden and his hands shook.

She said, “‘This is more serious, Dale. I’m terribly fond of Nort. I love you as much as ever, but he’s shown me other aspects of life, things I never dreamed of, and I’m not talking about sex. I mean spiritual concepts, human potentialities, the—”

“All right,” said Finch. “I won’t try to compete. I won’t shoot him and I won’t punch him and I won’t do anything else uncivilized. Why don’t the two of you get the hell off to A.D. 2215 and carry on the rest of your affair there, okay? Go have a flying fuck in the century after next and let me alone. Okay? Okay? The two of you. Let—me—”

Nort disappeared. So did Jennifer.

“Alone,” Finch finished weakly. “Jennifer? Jennifer? Where are you? Hey, I wasn’t serious! Jennifer! Goddamn it, what kind of sadistic stunt is this? Where are you?”

The cruelty of their game astounded him. He waited for them to pop back into the room as Nort had done with the newspaper, but they did not, and as the minutes went by he began to suspect that they were not going to. Numb with disbelief, he prowled the house, searching closets for them. Suddenly horror-struck, he rushed to Jason’s room, then to Samantha’s, but the children were still there, Jason asleep, Samantha awake and troubled by the shouting she had heard. He picked her up and held her a long moment, and tears came to him. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.” He returned to the bedroom and sat there until dawn, waiting for Jennifer.

In the morning he phoned the office to say that severe family problems had forced him to return from Pittsburgh suddenly and that he needed an indefinite leave of absence, with or without pay. His supervisor was wholly understanding, not at all skeptical, as if Finch’s voice communicated precisely how stunned and bewildered he was. He managed to deliver the children to school, and then spent the morning by the telephone, hoping to hear from Jennifer. But no word came from her all day. In late afternoon he called his parents to say that Jennifer had gone off somewhere without warning and could they please come early for their holiday visit, because he wasn’t sure he could handle all this domestic stuff alone. They arrived the next day and asked blessedly few questions. In their generation, he thought, it must have been the usual thing for marriages to break up without warning.

Jennifer did not come back. He felt like someone who had been given a single wish and had used it stupidly: now she was off in the inconceivable future with Nort. Was that possible? Was this not all some kind of bizarre dream? Apparently not, for on Christmas Eve a note from Jennifer materialized inexplicably on the livingroom table, dated 14 Oct 2215 and wishing him happy holidays and assuring him of her love and telling him not to expect her back. “Sometimes you simply have to follow your destiny,” she concluded. “I had only a fraction of a second to make my decision and I made it, and maybe I’ll regret it, but I did what I had to do. I miss you, darling. And you know how much I miss Samantha and Jason.” Next to the note was a little package, with a tag marked Merry Christmas from Nort. It contained a tiny crystal ball that when held close to his eye showed him what looked like an Antarctic landscape, gales howling and placid penguins wandering around on an ice floe. He put it down, and when he picked it up a second time it displayed the Pyramids, with a long line of tourists milling about. Finch flung it against the wall and it cracked in half and turned cloudy. He wished he had not done that.