Page 144 of Life Out of Order

“Yes,” Oliver says. He takes the towel from the bar and unfurls it onto his lap. I stand and put my left foot on the towel. Oliver surrounds my foot with terry cloth and presses firmly. Mmm.

“What is that?” he asks. I look down. He’s running his thumb across my faded tattoo. It’s on the arch of my foot.

“Ah,” I say. “That’s a relic. All the chrono-displaced children used to have these tattoos. I barely remember getting it; I was four. I sat on my daddy’s lap in the tattoo parlor. The walls were covered with bright pictures. They had to sedate me to do it. When I woke up and saw it, I cried and Dad said it was a magic number. If I was ever lost, I was supposed to show it to a kind lady or gentleman and they would call my parents. The tattoo was our phone number.”

“Clever,” Oliver says. “Our system is different. I like this better. Why is the tattoo on your foot?” I extricate my foot from his hands and place my other foot on the towel. I have to hold on to the sink for balance.

“That’s what Dr. Kendrick recommended. He figured if it was on the bottom of my foot I could cover it; he didn’t want it on my wrist where anyone could see it. My dad objected to putting my name or address on me. He worried that I might need to lie to the police occasionally.”

“In my time they scan your eye,” Oliver says. “It never helped me; my parents didn’t sign me up. But everyone in our building knew me. The neighbors made sure I got home.”

“When are you coming from?”

“May 2046.” Oliver squirts lotion on his hand and rubs it into the arch of my foot and works it around my toes. It’s cold but oddly arousing. “You?”

“2076.” I run my hand through his hair, which is wet with melted snow. “It’s strange to see the difference in our ages amplified. If we weren’t time travelers we’d never have become lovers.”

“No.” He takes my other foot back and rubs lotion into it. Suddenly he looks up at me and smiles. “If someone saw us now they would not imagine us . . . loving.”

I think of the expression on his face when he arrived, seeing me, and I feel a little sad. No amount of time travel can make me any younger. But I have had a whole lifetime of Oliver in my bed, and he has had . . . I try to calculate. “Oliver. How many times have we—have you—”

“Once.”

No wonder he came bellowing up the stairs. “Let’s get into bed and watch the snow falling.” I pull the plug, and the water drains from the tub with a squeal of suction. Oliver turns out the bathroom light, the hall light, the bedroom light. I take off his shirt and climb into bed as quickly as possible; Oliver hops into bed still wearing his bathrobe. The bed is cold, and Oliver spoons around me. He opens his bathrobe and gasps when my flesh touches his; he is wonderfully warm, so I must feel icy to him. Outside, snow swirls delicately, catching the orange light of the streetlamp. I am so happy to be indoors, not caught out in the cold. I think about my dad, who lost his feet to frostbite. All my life I have been frightened of winter.

Oliver breathes slowly; I wonder if he’s asleep. In his present, his parents are still alive, though he’ll never see them again. Some of his warmth has communicated through his skin to mine. My hands and thighs and feet are still cold, but my backside is now toasty.

“Alba,” he says, very quietly. “May I . . . ? Do you mind . . . ?”

My eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t think you’d want me.”

“No, it is the opposite; I must seem like a child to you. I was ashamed.”

“Here in the dark, we’ll be our best selves.” I turn toward him.

“Oh, your hands are cold!” Oliver stifles laughter. “Mmm. Oh? You’ll be my great composer, and I’ll be your muse.”

“You’ll be the brilliant pianist who makes sure there’s music at the end of the world.”