Page 5 of Life Out of Order

“That’s a secret,” he says.

“Tell me anyway.”

“Maybe later,” Zach says.

“How much later? I have a short attention span.”

“When we’re driving away from our wedding in a car covered in shaving cream.” He sounds momentarily sincere. He doesn’t know I can’t marry anyone with his haircut. I laugh, and we smile at each other. “I shouldn’t even joke about that, I’d probably be a terrible husband,” Zach says. “My parents are ridiculously awful, they should have gotten divorced years ago, and now that they’re finally doing it they can’t agree on anything. They’re fighting over my sisters, the dog, even things neither of them want, like Tupperware. My mom broke all the dishes last week because he’d said she couldn’t have them.”

“Jeez.”

“She did it by throwing them out the window. She lives on the twelfth floor.”

“Did anybody get hurt?”

“No, it was a miracle. But the police came. Are your parents still married?”

“My dad died when I was five.”

“Oh, dang, I’m sorry . . . Do you remember him?”

“Yeah . . .” He’s caught me out, without even trying. I can’t tell him I just saw my not-dead-yet dad last week, or that we hang out sort of regularly in random times, that my dad is a presence in my life even though he’s never going to make it to his forty-fourth birthday. It isn’t a complete secret that I time travel; people who know me know that about me. But I’m in the habit of not telling new people, and if they stick around and become friends it’s awkward to tell them and eventually it seems like a bigger deal than it should.

I hear my name being called from behind the pile of coats. The Gomolinskis have arrived.

“Woo-hoo, Alba! Look at you!” Rosa comes around the bed, ducks past Zach and kisses me on both cheeks. “Hi, who are you?” she says to Zach, and to me, “Is he yours?”

“He came with Junior,” I say. “But Nadia has diverted him to me.” I haven’t told Rosa what she wants to know (is he ours?), because I am increasingly unsure; he looks like one of theirs, but he talks like one of us. Zach seems like a good guy, or at least he would if this was some other year in some other place.

Zach stands up awkwardly. Rosa is petite, but her voluminous skirt seems to take up the whole room. Her brothers shake hands with him. The Gomolinskis are half Polish and half Filipino; Rosa has gorgeous black hair and light blue eyes, and Joe and Max are medium height but broad and muscular; they both work as bouncers in a blues club. “This is Zach, he’s a friend of a friend of Junior’s. These are the Gomolinskis, Rosa, Max and Joe. I’ve known them since I was tiny.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Max says, but he and Joe are glowering at Zach, who looks a little startled. I shake my head slightly—I don’t need their protection at the moment.

“Come on, let’s go find Nadia,” Rosa says to her brothers. “Give ’em room to rhumba.” The three of them vanish as suddenly as they appeared.

“They’re running around kinda late,” Zach says as soon as they are safely out of earshot. It’s getting on toward midnight.

I lower my voice. “Their dad is Alderman Gomez. Jan Gomolinski, 50th Ward. So no, they don’t get stopped.”

“Huh. Nice to be them, I guess.”

“Where are you from?”

“Tulsa. I moved to Chicago four years ago.”

“Did you have curfew in Tulsa?”

“Yeah, but only for the under-eighteens, not for everybody like it is here,” he says.

“It cuts down on the murders. That’s the excuse, anyway.” I wonder if I should be talking about politics with this guy.

“People don’t enjoy shooting each other in the daytime?”

“I don’t think martial law has changed the murder rate much, it’s just different people doing the murdering now.”

“Oh well. I don’t mind being in all night.” He grins. “It’s like our own Decameron, we’ll stay in here and amuse each other till it’s safe to come out. Tell me a story.”

“What kind of story?”