by Gene Gant
When I walked into the bathroom, Cato was slumped comfortably in the tub, buried up to his neck in mounds of white, glistening bubbles. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, a smile tweaking one corner of his very kissable lips.
“It’s a big tub,” he said casually. “Come on in.”
WE STAYED in the tub for over an hour. Cato turned on the whirlpool system, which cycled the water through heated jets, keeping the comforting warmth at a steady state. He cuddled me, massaged my neck and shoulders with his strong hands, and fed me sweet pieces of dried tropical fruits. We didn’t talk at all during that time. With my head back and my eyes closed, I pushed all thoughts of prison from my mind and lost myself in the soothing rush of the water and the delightful feel of Cato’s body against mine.
Eventually, my thoughts turned to something Cato had said earlier. I looked over my shoulder at him. “Hey,” I said quietly, trying not to break the spell and shattering it all the same, “tell me about this recruiting mission you’re on.”
His head was back, resting against the edge of the tub, and his eyes were closed. “Mmm. What?”
“When we were on that roof in 1952, you said you were on some kinda recruiting mission. Who’re you trying to recruit?”
He opened one eye and looked at me. “You’re killing the mood, dude.”
“I’m just trying to understand you,” I replied. I liked the guy and wanted to trust him, but he seemed so mysterious.
He opened his other eye, a teasing smile crossing his mouth. “Ah. You find me intriguing, huh?”
I smiled back. “Yeah, I do.”
He started caressing my chest with his hands. “Well, you intrigue me too. We’re a lot more alike than you realize. That’s one of the reasons I’m so crazy for you. You remind me of myself in some ways. When I was fifteen, I got off on the wrong track just like you did.”
“You were in a gang?”
He shook his head. “I got into computer hacking. And I was damn good at it. I hacked some of the best-protected private systems in the world, ordering electronics and stuff under fake accounts. Stealing, in other words. It was ironic because I actually wanted to be a cop before….” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a bouncing ball. “I stayed away from government systems because I thought it would be too dangerous to hack those. As it turned out, hacking private systems was even more dangerous. One of those companies had a shady underside that didn’t like what I’d done. They sent a goon out to blow up my parents’ house with me in it. Lucky for me my family was under government protection. FBI agents staked out the house and caught the goon with the bomb on him. He accepted a plea bargain that took down a whole corporate board. The law let me off with a slap on the wrist because of my dad, but my parents really lowered the boom on me, and that ended my hacking career.”
I smirked at him.
“What?”
“You tell me stuff and make yourself more mysterious at the same time. What stopped you from becoming a cop?”
“Oh God. My boss says I talk too much. Seems he’s right.” He paused, studying my face. “I can’t tell you why I didn’t become a cop. I’d be revealing the future to you. That’s another TIA directive: no revealing the future to someone in the past. The knowledge might cause that person to make decisions he or she otherwise wouldn’t have made and change the course of history.”
“Come on,” I wheedled, leaning forward so I could look back at him more directly. “You already revealed part of the future to me, that humans develop time travel—”
“And my boss isn’t happy I did that.”
“So how much more pissed would he be if you told me what stopped you from becoming a cop, or what this recruiting mission you’re on is all about?”
“A hell of a lot, that’s how much. In addition to being teed off about some of the stuff I’ve told you, my boss and the techies aren’t happy that I’m moving you around in space-time. They’re a cautious bunch, but I’m very good at what I do for them, so they give me a little leeway here and there. I have to be careful not to push them too far, though, or they’ll snatch me out of the field. They’ve done that before, and I’ve really been pushing things when it comes to you.”
“But why are you bending all these rules and risking your job for me?”
Cato blushed, the skin on his cheeks and neck purpling. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back against him, hugging me tightly from behind. “I’ve fantasized about this for so long,” he murmured, “holding you, touching you this way. You and me together….” He started kissing my neck and the side of my face, gently, uncertainly. It felt good. I liked his tenderness, the almost shy way he pressed his lips to my skin. I turned my face to him and kissed him on the mouth.
That seemed to make him bolder. He kissed me harder. His hands roamed over my body, touching, squeezing, stroking. My heart quickened, and so did my breathing. I reached back and grabbed the top of his head. The smooth wet heat of his skin, the thick silkiness of his black hair… he excited me like no other guy I’d known. I wanted him. I wanted him so much.
He seemed to want—need—me more than I did him. Strange. He was so beautiful, so fit. Surely he could have any gay dude he wanted. The fact that he wanted me said something about the kind of person he was. His breathing was suddenly heavy. I could feel the pounding of his heart, so hard it seemed he was afraid. The clutch of his arms around me became almost desperate. He whispered my name urgently, again and again, in my ear.
It began distantly, the sensation so tiny it was almost lost among all the other heady feelings rippling through my body. The feeling grew quickly in me, however, becoming an overwhelming rush. Panic clawed through my chest and choked me. Suddenly, it was Deshaun’s hands I felt on my body, Deshaun’s voice I heard in my ear, taunting and full of hatred.
“Stop! Stop, please stop!” I grabbed Deshaun’s—no, Cato’s—arms and tore them away from me. I shoved myself up and out of the tub, splashing water over the floor. I stood there shaking and dripping. “I can’t, Cato. I can’t. I’m sorry….”
Cato climbed out of the tub and crossed to me. He held out his hands but was careful not to touch me. “It’s okay, Gavin. It’s okay. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
I grabbed a bath towel and dried myself, trying to force my body to stop shaking.
“Do you want me to take you back to solitary?” Cato asked. He was still studying me with worried eyes.
“No. Hell no. I wish I didn’t have to ever see the inside of Escanaba again.”
He started drying his own body, watching me closely as he did so. “Are you okay?”
“It’s not you, Cato. It’s just… I couldn’t….”
“You don’t have to explain. I know what the Cold Bloods have done to you at Escanaba, and I hate it. I hate them for hurting you. I’m sorry for pushing you into something you aren’t ready for.”
I tied the towel around my waist. “I’m tired. Can we get some sleep?”
“Sure, man.”
He gave me a pair of his pajamas, a blue version of the green paisley pair he put on himself. He turned off the lights, and we lay down on the bed. Cato stayed close to his side, leaving a wide space between us. In the darkness, I felt cold and alone, the way I’d felt every night in Escanaba. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
I slid over to Cato’s side of the bed. He slipped his arm around me.
It seemed only seconds afterward that I fell asleep.
THIS TIME, in the dream, I was charging down a long, dark hallway. Raging. Infuriated. Chasing someone I hated so much my brain blocked every sight except his fleeing shadowy figure racing ahead of me. But I could hear Dad.
“Gavin, don’t go after him! Come back!”
Dad sounded afraid for me, and I wanted to go back to him. But I was angry and driven by the desire for revenge. I kept going, closing in on my target, getting farther away from my dad.
Behind me, a terrible loud noise erupte
d like tons of rock crashing together. The hall began caving in, walls breaking apart as if whacked to pieces by some angry invisible giant. Looking up, I saw huge cracks appear in the ceiling, ripping this way and that like dark snakes trying to catch me in their coils. Flickers of fear began to filter through my rage, but I kept chasing the guy scurrying ratlike ahead of me. Chunks of plaster rained down, hitting me in the head and back. I tripped over something and stumbled forward to my knees. Debris crashed down all around me, breaking bones, crushing me.
The last thing I heard before dying was my dad’s scream.
“WAKE UP. Come on, wake up.”
Cato’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently, brought me around. I opened my eyes to the sight of his face hovering over me. “You started fighting in your sleep,” he said. “That must’ve been some dream you were having.”
I looked around, unsure of where I was. Hotel room? This was Cato’s hotel room. I was safe and my dad was still in a coma, in the hospital. Every nerve in my body seemed jangled.
“What time is it?”
“We’ve got thirty-six minutes to get you back to solitary so the guard on night watch can look in on you,” Cato replied without consulting his watch. “How about we take a swim?”
“That sounds good.”
He went to the dresser and pulled out two pairs of swim trunks. “These ought to fit you,” he said, tossing a pair my way.
I climbed out of bed, stripped off the pajamas, and slid into the trunks. The rubberized waistband was loose on me, slipping down until it caught at the top of my hips. Cato’s were sized just right. He went to what I thought was a window and pulled back the curtain. “Come on,” he said as he slid open a glass door.
I followed him out onto a patio. The sky overhead was still dark, dappled with the white points of countless stars. The patio opened onto a wide, empty white beach, and beyond the beach was the gently lapping surge where dark waves washed up. The beach was off an ocean; I could smell the salt in the warm air. The sky, where it met the ocean, was pink and purple with the light of the rising sun. We weren’t in a hotel as I’d originally thought. I looked back and saw that we’d exited a large house with tan bricks and lots of windows.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“On the big island in Hawaii.”
“Wait.” I paused, considering what he’d just said, a fresh jolt of worry zipping along my nerves. “Isn’t Hawaii like, three hours or something behind Eastern Time? If it’s dawn here, isn’t it nine or ten in the morning in Detroit? And doesn’t that mean the guards have already checked my cell and now they think I escaped or something?”
Cato’s smile was calm, patient. “The difference between time zones isn’t what’s important here. We’re actually two weeks in the future from the date I last took you out of your cell. The techies are going to move you back in time to your present and put you in your cell before the guard checks on you.”
“Oh, I get it. But you said you have to get me back to solitary in thirty-something minutes. If we’re two weeks ahead of my time, and you can always have me put back in my cell before I’m missed, why can’t I stay at this beach for a week or a month?”
“For now, I’m not allowed to pull you out of your present for more than eight hours at a time.” He took a deep breath, apparently preparing himself for a longwinded explanation. “Let’s say I take you back to New Year’s Day 1936 and keep you in that year for ten months. Your body is going to age in those ten months as it normally would. You could also do things during that time like gaining or losing weight, or get your arm chopped off in an accident, or become involved in a cult and start worshiping cucumbers. So even though we return you to the exact moment we took you from your present, you’re going to be very different from the way you were, and the people around you will notice. More importantly, those differences could start all kinds of changes in your present timeline—”
“And get you in trouble for fucking up the past,” I finished.
“That would be the least of humanity’s problems. Changes in history would have a ripple effect and warp reality….” He shook himself like a dog coming out of a cold lake. “Let’s not even think about that. Jeepers! Changing the subject, this is a private beach, so there’s no chance that anyone will see us here. We can focus on enjoying ourselves.” He reached for my hand and then caught himself, a guilty flicker in his eyes. “Let’s go.”
We didn’t swim, just walked knee-deep through the surf together. The sibilant rush of the incoming waves and the warm breezes off the ocean had a calming effect, making me feel loose and at ease. Cato glanced at me now and then, a small sad smile on his face. He stayed near, keeping as close a proximity between us as he could without making any kind of physical contact. His longing flowed off him like an electrical current; he obviously had deep feelings for me. I was sorry for him, sorry that I didn’t have similar feelings, but I had known the guy for such a short time. I liked him, and in another life, I would have jumped at the chance to date and get to know him. Maybe we could’ve been boyfriends. If nothing else, I wanted to lick him all over like a Tootsie Pop even now. It just felt so dangerous sometimes when Cato touched me, something for which I could thank Deshaun and the rest of the Cold Bloods.
The sun appeared, a sliver of orange-red poking up over the distant horizon. “Let’s go in the house and get you into your jumpsuit. It’s time we moved you back to solitary,” Cato said. We turned and walked out of the surf, heading across the beach toward the house. The cool wet sand clumped like gritty glue between my toes.
I didn’t want to go back to that dank cell. My body already felt chilled. Dad’s voice, calling to me in the dream, still lingered in my mind. “So, when exactly do I get to see my dad?”
Cato shrugged, and at first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Eleven hours and thirty-five minutes after you’re back in your cell, there’s going to be a thirteen-minute window when the door to your father’s room will be closed and no one will be in the room with him. That’s when I’ll take you in to see him.”
Chapter 7
CATO APPEARED like magic in my cell.
It was after lights-out, the end of what had seemed an endless day for me. I was sitting on the edge of my cot, staring, so anxious my body tingled as if I had Red Bull running through my veins. The darkness in front of me folded in on itself, producing a blinking effect, and Cato was there. He wasn’t wearing a guard uniform this time, just a gray T-shirt and skinny blue jeans and oversized black high-tops.
His mouth twitched a bit when he smiled. He was unmistakably nervous. “Okay, are you ready?” he whispered.
“I’m way ready,” I whispered back as I stood up.
“I can only give you twelve minutes in the hospital. I know that’s not a lot of time, but when those minutes are up, I’m pulling you out of there whether you’re ready or not.” Cato started to raise the wrist bearing his watch and hesitated. He looked me deep in the eye. “Listen, I had to beg my ass off because my boss really doesn’t like the idea of me doing this. I promised him you wouldn’t touch anything in your dad’s room. Keep your hands off his monitors, the medical equipment, the telephone and stuff, and don’t adjust his bed or anything like that, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” I grunted impatiently. “Can we just go already?”
He twitched that smile at me again, raised his watch, and traced his finger three times around the dial.
Blink.
The hospital room was small, dim, and cool. The door was closed, and the air had a vague, unsettling scent of disinfectant and sickness. The only furnishings were the bed, a small table that held a telephone, and a wooden chair with a padded seat. It was all the medical equipment clustered around the bed that made the room seem cluttered. A motionless figure lay on the bed, covered up to the chest in white blankets.
Dad.
My breath caught in my throat; my heart started pounding. Cato and I stood at the far side of the room. I was afraid to wa
lk the few steps that would take me to the bed.
“Go on,” Cato urged quietly.
I couldn’t move or take my eyes off my dad. “Cato?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you leave us alone?”
He didn’t want to do it. I could tell from the way he sucked air through his teeth in a sharp hiss. I turned to him as he looked at me, regret so stark in his eyes they seemed to glow with it. But he must have seen something in my face that overcame his misgivings. The regret gave way as sorrow lined his cute, smooth face. He’d do anything for me. I could see that in the affectionate glaze of his eyes, and the knowledge sent a tingle through my body. I didn’t think I’d ever get that kind of devotion from anybody but my dad.
“Okay, man. I understand,” Cato said. He ran his finger around the dial of his watch, the air folded in on him, and he was gone.
I turned back to Dad. His arms, lying straight and long over the top of the white blankets, were the saddest sight I’d ever seen. They were like dead brown logs dropped and forgotten in the snow. I walked slowly to the bed. It felt as if a snake was wriggling like mad in my stomach. I was afraid to see him, injured and caught between life and death. The sight was as bad as I’d feared. Dad’s face was swollen and grayish, his closed eyes sitting like two bruised fists above his cheeks. There was a gauze pad taped to the left side of his neck just below the ear, and his whole scalp was covered in thick white bandaging. A tube ran up his nose, and another, thicker tube was taped into his mouth. A rhythmic hiss-whoosh filled the room as a ventilator moved humidified air in and out of his lungs. Monitors around the bed beeped and buzzed as ragged red lines crawled brightly across the screen, flashing various numbers in an arcane reading of Dad’s life signs.
He didn’t even look like himself. It was only by the little scar through his left eyebrow, from where I tackled him hard years ago in a game of football with my friends, that I knew for sure it was him. He didn’t seem to be present anymore, the father I’d known, the man who sledded with me down the steep hill behind the abandoned school in our neighborhood, built bike ramps for me after I learned to ride, climbed on the roof of our house to hang Christmas lights, jogged by my side when I did training for my track team tryouts, and cracked the whip when I needed to get my ass back in line.