A Bridge of Years

Billy had remembered a lot recently. Sometimes the memories came flooding out of him, a river mysterious in its source. Maybe he was getting old. Maybe some flaw in the armor (or in himself) allowed these freshets of remembrance. He had never been a particularly good soldier; he was what the infantry doctors had called an “anomalous subject,” prone to unpredictable chemistries and odd neural interactions. Most soldiers loved their armor, and so did Billy, but he loved it the way an addict loves his addiction: profoundly, bitterly.

He extracted from Lawrence Millstein the address of the apartment where his prey—Tom Winter—lived.

He considered going there directly, but the sun had come up now and the morning streets were fiercely bright. He looked through Lawrence Millstein’s back window over a landscape of iron fire escapes, across the enclosed courtyard where a gutted TV set glittered like a bottle washed up from the sea. Billy was fully armored now and it would be hard to move in daylight without drawing attention.

But he was comfortable here … at least for a while.

Lawrence Millstein had wrapped a wad of toilet paper around the stump of his finger. He sat in a chair staring at Billy. He had not stopped staring at Billy since the moment Billy switched on the bedroom light. “It’s going to be a hot day,” Billy said, watching Millstein flinch at the sound of his voice. “A scorcher.”

Millstein didn’t venture a response.

“It gets hot where I come from,” Billy said. “We had summers that made this look like Christmas. Not so humid, though.”

In a voice that sounded uncomfortably like A

“Ohio,” Billy said.

“There’s nothing like you in Ohio,” Millstein said.

“You’re right.” Billy smiled. “I live in the wind. I’m not even born yet.”

Lawrence Millstein, who was a poet, seemed to accept this.

An hour passed while Billy contemplated his options. Finally he said, “Do you know his number?”

Millstein was weary and not paying attention. “What?”

“His telephone number. Tom Winter.”

Millstein hesitated.

“Don’t lie to me again,” Billy cautioned. “Yes. I can call him.”

“Then do that,” Billy said. Millstein repeated, “What?”

“Call him. Tell him to come over. He’s been here before. Tell him you need to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“So I can kill him,” Billy said irritably.

“You evil son of a bitch,” Millstein said. “I can’t invite him to his death.”

“Consider the alternative,” Billy suggested.

Millstein did so, and seemed to wither before Billy’s eyes. He cradled his wounded hand against his chest and rocked back and forth, back and forth.

“Pick up the phone,” Billy said.

Millstein picked up the receiver and braced it against his shoulder while he dialed the number. Billy calculated the number and memorized it, listening to the clatter of the dial each time it spun home. He was a little surprised Millstein was actually doing this; he’d guessed the odds were fifty-fifty that Millstein would refuse and Billy would have to kill him. Millstein held the receiver to his ear, breathing in little sobs, eyes half shut, then hung up the phone with a triumphant slam. “Nobody’s home!”

“That’s all right,” Billy said. “We’ll try again later.”

Billy’s prediction was correct: the day was long and hot.

He opened the tiny window but the trickle of air it admitted was syrupy and stank of gasoline. Billy’s armor kept him cool, but Lawrence Millstein turned pale and began to sweat. The sweat ran down his face in glossy rivulets and Billy told him to drink some water before he fainted.

Sunset came late and Billy began to grow impatient. He felt the pressure of the armor; if he didn’t take some action soon he would have to power down. When he was up too long he grew edgy, nervous, a little unstable. He looked at Lawrence Millstein and frowned.

Millstein hadn’t moved from his chair all day. He sat upright by the phone, and every time he called Tom Winter’s apartment Billy pictured Millstein as A

Billy thought about this.

He said, “Does Tom Winter live alone?”

Millstein regarded him with a dread so familiar it had become tiresome.

“No,” Millstein said faintly.

“Lives with a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where she might be?” The silence now was protracted.

“You could call her and just leave a message,” Billy suggested. “It wouldn’t be hard.”

“She might come here with him,” Millstein said, and Billy recognized this as a prelude to capitulation. Not that there was any question of it, really.

“I don’t care about her,” Billy said.

Millstein trembled as he picked up the phone.

It should have gone easily after that and Billy wasn’t sure why it didn’t: some flicker of his attention, maybe, or of the armor’s.

He waited with Lawrence Millstein through the long evening after sunset, while the air through the window turned cooler and the apartment tilled with shadows. He listened to the sound of voices from the courtyard. Not far away, a man was shouting in Spanish. A baby was crying. A phonograph played La Traviata.

Billy was distracted a moment by the lonesome sound of the music and by the stirring of the burlap curtains in the breeze. This was a kind of paradise, he thought, this old building where people lived without fighting over rice and corn, where nobody came and took children away and put them in golden armor. He wondered if Lawrence Millstein knew about living in paradise.

Then there was a knock at the door.

Billy turned, but Lawrence Millstein was already standing up, shouting.

He shouted, “No! Oh, fuck, Joyce, go away!”

Then Billy killed him. The door opened and a woman stood outlined in the light from the hallway, a huge brown-complexioned woman in a flower-print dress; she peered into the dark apartment through thick lenses. “Lawrence?” she said. “It’s Nettie—from next door!”

Billy killed Nettie with his wrist beam, but his hand shook and the beam cut not neatly but like a ragged knife, so that the blood went everywhere, and Nettie made a noise that sounded like “Woof!” and fell back against the faded wallpaper.

Then the hallway was full of voices and distress and although Billy had soothed his armor with these killings he knew his real business would have to wait.

Sixteen

A woman in the crowd tugged Joyce away from the doorway, away from the bodies. Tom understood by the look on her face that Lawrence was inside and that Lawrence was dead.

His first impulse was to comfort her. But the crush of tenants held him back, and the sirens were closer now … He edged down the stairwell and out to the sidewalk. He couldn’t allow himself to be questioned even casually, with a wallet full of ID from the future and no one to vouch for him but Joyce.

A crowd formed around him as the police cruisers pulled up. Tom stood discreetly back among them. He watched the cops erect a barricade; he watched two medics hustle from an ambulance into the building, then stroll out moments later to stand under a streetlight, smoking and laughing. The red rotary lights on the police cars made the street ominous and bleak. Tom stood a long time even after the crowd began to thin, waiting.

There was a hush when the bodies came out: two amorphous shapes under blankets.

Joyce emerged a little after that, a fat man in a brown suit escorting her toward an unmarked car. The fat man, Tom guessed, was a police detective. He must have asked her whether she knew either of the victims; yes, she would have said, that one … She would cooperate because she’d want to help find the killer.