Page 7 of Life Out of Order

“Flirting.”

“Aw, I can’t help it.” Zach smiles. “Do you want another drink? Or something to eat? I heard there was food but I haven’t seen any.” He seems a little nervous now, drumming his long fingers lightly against his knees.

“Now you’re being a waiter again,” I say.

He notices me noticing his hands and stills them. “It’s cozy up here,” Zach says. “I wish someone would bring us a pizza. I don’t feel like going anywhere.”

“Don’t, then,” I say. I pull out my phone and text Nadia: Bring us food? She texts back: What am I, yr servant? Where r u? I answer: upstairs. help. food. She replies: oh please.

We chat about nothing; the recent earthquakes in Oklahoma, the unseasonably warm winter we were having in Chicago until this sudden blizzard. Then Nadia pokes her head around the doorframe. “Room service.” She walks in unsteadily, bearing a plate full of little sandwiches and three vodka shots. Zach takes the plate from her as Nadia sidles past him and plops down between us. “Everybody’s dancing. You should come down, join us.” I listen to the commotion downstairs, I can pick out the chorus of “Long Tall Sally.” Zach offers me the plate and I take a sandwich. It’s a tiny BLT; I eat it in four bites. I didn’t know I was hungry. We gobble up the rest of the sandwiches as Nadia watches. She does one of the vodka shots.

“I hear you got a story published in Granta,” Nadia says to Zach. “Congratulations.”

Zach lowers his eyes bashfully, then glances at me, seemingly pleased. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Junior said it was amazing.” Nadia turns to me. “It’s about botanists who time travel back to the nineteenth century and try to save all the seeds, you know, for biodiversity?” Her expression says What is his deal? and I shake my head very slightly.

“How can they save the seeds?” I ask Zach. “I mean, they can’t bring anything back with them, and most time travelers don’t have that kind of range, the nineteenth century would be kind of a stretch.”

“Well, it’s steampunk, so it’s not real time travel, they have a time machine and they bring their laboratory and they have the right clothes and all that,” he says.

“So they save the world? Do they bring bees, too?” I ask.

“Oh, no, it all goes completely wrong,” Zach says. “The scientists all die of meningitis before they can do anything useful and a bunch of nineteenth-century farmers steal the time machine and end up stranded in twelfth-century Paris.”

“That sounds about right,” says Nadia. “Time travel isn’t very practical. Real time travelers spend all their time just trying to find clothes.”

“Not all their time,” I say. “They have to find food, too.”

Zach says, “You girls sound like you know all about it.”

Nadia laughs. “We’re experts. Want us to make sure your parents never meet each other? We can do it on our next trip, no charge.” I pinch her. She pinches back, harder.

Zach says, “That’s pretty appealing, actually. What did Junior tell you?”

“Just that your dad has a restraining order against your mom,” Nadia replies. “And that it ought to be the other way around.”

“Can you do it so that my sisters and I still exist but our parents never get together?”

“Nope, I’m afraid you are all going to vanish as soon as our mission is accomplished,” says Nadia, looking quite pleased about it.

“She’s wrong,” I tell Zach. I wish Nadia would go away. She’s practically sitting on Zach’s lap and I think that she is pretty tipsy and then I hope she is just pretending to be tipsy. “There’s no such thing as the butterfly effect. And time travelers can’t change the past. So you and your sisters are safe.”

Nadia says, “You’re no fun, Alba.” She looks at Zach. “She’s too serious. You should cheer her up.”

“Okay,” Zach says, meeting my eyes over Nadia’s head. “I’ll try.”

Caralora comes in, sees Nadia and says, “Hey, Miss Kendrick. Junior’s been looking all over for you.” Nadia gets up and stands for a moment, balancing on her heels. Caralora says, “I think it’s late enough to ditch the diving platforms. Kick ’em off, Nadia, before you take a spill.” I take my heels off, Nadia hesitates and then does the same. “Good girl,” says Caralora. “Come on now.” She helps Nadia around the bed and out of the room. I cross my legs and then realize that the tattoo on my foot is visible through the stockings, so I uncross them.

“She’s a handful,” says Zach. He takes one of the vodka shots off the plate and offers it to me. I accept it, so he takes the other one. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I echo. We click glasses and down the shots. My dad once told me it’s bad form to gasp afterward so I don’t, but I make a little strangled sound.

“Did I mishear or is her last name Kendrick?” asks Zach. “Like the doctor who first discovered time-travel genes?”

“She’s his daughter,” I say. Don’t ask me any more, I think.

“No wonder she was so into that story,” says Zach. “She told me she has a friend who has it.”