But enough poetry. It’s time to go and see for ourselves. Miss Crumb has just signaled me that Eden-Prudential’s chartered airbus has arrived to take us on our tour of the two sites. We only have to walk a block to board. As you leave the office here, we’ll be crossing the East Thirty-fourth Street Extension. Watch your step; the ground is still a little springy.
Are there any questions?
“We are two guys from the future.”
“Yeah, right. Now get the hell out of here!”
“Don’t shoot! Is that a gun?”
That gave me pause; it was a flashlight. There were two of them. They both wore shimmery suits. The short one was kind of cute. The tall one did all the talking.
“Lady, we are serious guys from the future,” he said. “This is not a hard-on.”
“You mean a put-on,” I said. “Now kindly get the hell out of here.”
“We are here on a missionary position to all mankind,” he said. “No shit is fixing to hang loose any someday now.”
“Break loose,” I said. “Hey, are you guys talking about nuclear war?”
“We are not allowed to say,” the cute one said.
“The bottom line is, we have come to salvage the artworks of your posteriors,” the tall one said.
“Save the art and let the world go. Not a bad idea,” I said. “But,
“
“Just a guess,” I said, also in Spanish; and we spoke in the mother tongue from then on. “If you really are two guys from the future, you can come back in the future, like tomorrow after we open, right?”
“Too much danger of Timeslip,” he said. “We have to come and go between midnight and four A.M., when we won’t interfere with your world. Plus we’re from far in the future, not just tomorrow. We are here to save artworks that will otherwise be lost in the coming holocaust by sending them through a Chronoslot to our century in what is, to you, the distant future.”
“I got that picture,” I said. “But you’re talking to the wrong girl. I don’t own this art gallery. I’m just an artist.”
“Artists wear uniforms in your century?”
“Okay, so I’m moonlighting as a security guard.”
“Then it’s your boss we need to talk to. Get him here tomorrow at midnight, okay?”
“He’s a her,” I said. “Besides,
“You saw us suddenly materialize in the middle of the room, didn’t you?”
“Okay, so I may have been dozing. You try working two jobs.”
“But you noticed how bad our
“A lot of people in New York speak worse
“You did
“I lit a match and held it to his sleeve.”
“Girl, you’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”
“He wasn’t carrying a gun. I could tell. Those shimmery suits are pretty tight. Anyway, when I saw that the cloth didn’t burn, I decided I believed their story.”
“There’s all sorts of material that doesn’t burn,” Borogove said. “And if they’re really two guys from the future who have come back to save the great art of our century, how come they didn’t take anything?” She looked around the gallery, which was filled with giant plastic breasts and buttocks, the work of her dead ex-husband, “Bucky” Borogove.
She seemed disappointed that all of them were still hanging.
“Beats me,” I said. “They insist on talking to the gallery owner. Maybe you have to sign for it or something.”
“Hmmm. There have been several mysterious disappearances of great art lately. That’s why I hired you; it was one of the conditions of Bucky’s will. In fact, I’m still not sure this isn’t one of his posthumous publicity stunts. What time are these guys from the future supposed to show up?” , “Midnight.”
“Hmmm. Well, don’t tell anyone about this. I’ll join you at midnight, like Macbeth on the tower.”
“Hamlet,” I said. “And tomorrow’s my night off. My boyfriend is taking me to the cockfights.”
“I’ll pay you time and a half,” she said. “I may need you there to translate. My
Girls don’t go to cockfights and I don’t have a boyfriend. How could I? There aren’t any single men in New York.
I just didn’t want Borogove to think I was easy.
But in fact, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
I was standing beside her in the gallery at midnight when a column of air in the center of the room began to shimmer and glow and… But you’ve seen
