iselldrugstothecommunity | But Time Takes Time, You Know [Musebox]

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But Time Takes Time, You Know [Musebox]

It's hard to research things that haven't happened yet, Howard discovers. Rather than hitting the library, like he would have on Stacy, he has to spend a lot of time thinking, sitting around talking to Barbara about every detail he remembers of his family history. Every year that passes by, the memories get a little more obscure, a little less refined, and he starts to panic, thinking that he won't have enough information to track down his family at all soon.

Over endless cups of tea, Barbara asks questions ("do you remember your mother's maiden name? do you know where your father's parents were from before they came to California? do you remember what their professions were?") to try and drag out the useful information, but it ends up being a stray memory of a Christmas dinner that puts the pieces in place.

"My grandma has to be in San Francisco. They had a one year wedding anniversary ornament on the Christmas tree of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I'm pretty sure they got married in 1969."

What they were doing in San Francisco is beyond his knowledge, but it's the closest they have to a shot. He doesn't know what hospitals his parents were born in, or where his paternal grandparents might be now, or even what year his parents are going to meet. It takes a lot of agonizing before he decides to spend all that money he's been saving in a can under the sink on plane tickets for him and Barbara to go there, but when he invites her she agrees that it's important to him, and besides, how often does one get to vacation in America?

So they both have suitcases packed and a promise to be back in ten days, waiting for Ian in the kitchen to come drive them to the airport. Howard's nervous, naturally, because he's not sure how he'll introduce himself to total strangers as their grandkid from the future. But he's come to relax a bit - a bit - over the last few years, and as such he just chews his lip and bounces his leg a bit rather than panics. He even got six hours of sleep last night. It's truly a miracle.

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"I won't ever know if I'd be a good father." In a way, there's a part of him that wishes he could even entertain the idea - but why subject a child to the cruelness of the world, or to the instability of a father sick in the head? How will he ever look at a kid and not be reminded of slaughters, or stop seeing them as a threat?

Not that it matters. He's twenty and he hasn't been kissed. Maybe while Barbara's sleeping tonight he'll hit the Castro.

"You're good to your pets," reasoned Barbara as they climbed the steps to the entrance of the hotel. "Maybe you're a good father in that respect?"

"It's not the same." He uses his key to get into their room, reflecting how strange it is still to him to use keys instead of cards. "I don't know how I'd feel about it if the FAYZ hadn't happened."

"Just like a lot of things, you'd probably feel entirely different," Barbara replied as she shut the door behind her once she'd walked in after Howard. "But if the FAYZ hadn't happened, would you have met me?"

He doesn't really often stop to consider that the FAYZ had good sides too. He's not sure he wants to. "Maybe. Stacy might have scooped me up anyway."

But he's mostly saying that to be stubborn.

"It's possible, I suppose," Barbara considered as she bent over to rummage about in her luggage. "But you wouldn't have been the same. Maybe we wouldn't have grown so attached, or maybe you'll have let me cuddle you a lot sooner."

"Hey, I wasn't that bad." He drops off some luggage and finally eats the hot dog she got him, cold as it now is. "It only took like seven or eight months. You make it sound like it took half a decade."

"Sometimes it feels that long - only because it feels like it was that long ago that we were on Stacey." Not that Barbara missed it terribly, but looking back on it, she had some fond memories.

In the privacy of their hotel room, he feels comfortable doing this. He leans over and wraps his arms around her, resting his head on her chest.

"If you still get that burning urge to cuddle me, you ask and I'll find a convenient time. You're over that hurdle." He breaks away from her and pats his wallet. "Come on, let's go and get you relaxed."

Although they'd cuddled rather a lot since leaving Stacey, she wasn't certain just how many times he'd instigated it. Certainly not to the point that his head was on her chest. Barbara grinned inwardly.

"Don't forget that you're to relax as well," she added, following him out. "This entire affair might be somewhat stressful but you have to at least try."

"'Somewhat'. 'Somewhat stressful' is your car breaking down in the morning. This is like, catastrophically stressful. Apocalyptically stressful. Judgment day's coming and you forget your hail mary's stressful. Feel my pulse, it's in the 260's."

He's exaggerating, slightly. He checks his wallet for cab money and decides that they should walk instead.

"How's America, so far? The hot dogs are better in Britain."

Barbara simply gave him a 'don't be so silly' look as they walked back out of the hotel. It was only a brief look, as she had to concentrate on not tripping down the stairs.

"America is lovely," she said once they'd set foot at the bottom, "I'm finding that a lot of the food is better in Britain, but the people are far more...charismatic. And the views are very charming - I haven't seen anything beautiful like the bridge since we visited Scotland."

Her honeymoon to Scotland however, was on a beach and being on beaches often helped with the view.

"Seems like forever ago." Four years, almost. Howard always sends something on every anniversary.

"It's...I mean, it's not like a remember. Obviously. None of this is like I remember, but it's still sort of familiar." After a while of walking, they reach the spa. "You can do a massage, if you want. My treat. Unless you think Ian would be weird about it."

She knew that Ian wouldn't have any real issues with it, even if a man worked on her, she knew that Ian would drop the subject after a short time.

"We won't tell him," Barbara smiled and followed Howard to the counter. Although she wasn't certain whether or not Howard could actually afford to treat her to a massage, Barbara wasn't going to say as much. Instead she waited just behind him.

He totally can't afford it, but he'd rather steal than admit that to Barbara. He books the massage and the hot room and some other things, more for her than him, although he admits he does need to relax some (a lot). He finds it kind of soothing and meditative to do things for her. It's as if he's rationalizing that he's worth all the trouble.

Soon enough, they are officially 'relaxing'. Howard's investigating the mud bath because that's just kind of awesome. He's still not sure what the point of cucumbers over the eyes is.

Barbara very nearly fell asleep during the massage. Were she not trying to hold back groans of pleasure, she could very well have drifted off. Once she was finished, she found Howard at the mudbath.

"Now why did I think I'd find you here?" she asked, smiling, and stripped off the robe to sit in the bath opposite. Barbara slid in so far, that only the top of the straps of her swimming costume could be seen below her head.

"You know I'm very clean," he says with a mock sniff, sinking until the mud's up to his chin. It's true - boy does love his showers. The mud also does a nice job of keeping him from feeling self-conscious about being seen mostly undressed, with the new shape of his body. "But how often do you get to lounge around in hot mud? Ian's going to think we made this up."

"Ah, but we're not telling Ian, remember?" Barbara said, holding up a finger that dripped with chunks of hot mud. "I will admit that, as peculiar as bathing in mud is, it feels rather wonderful." She sunk a bit further in and closed her eyes.

"How are you coping with all of this inactivity?" she asked a moment later, eyes still closed.

"I thought we just weren't telling him about the massage." Howard stares up at the ceiling, letting the mud get in the hair on the back of his head. He thinks about what Barbara's asking, whether it's just about the last few hours or in general.

"I guess it's like taking a drug. It's weird, relaxing like this. Like totally foreign to my body." He takes a deep breath. The mud smells perfumed. It probably is, he thinks. "Do you think...I mean, do you think Ian could find me janitor work somewhere? Like overnight at Coal Hill? You know I can work hard, I just need a shot."

Barbara frowned, "I can ask, but I don't know how much power he has over the cleaning staff." Ian had been promoted to one of the assistant headmasters of the school, but aside from a slightly higher salary, she had little idea of what else it entailed.

"I just need a second source of income." That isn't pickpocketing or breaking and entering, his current supplementary sources of revenue. "They don't pay me beans at the shop. They think I don't notice that only white people have been getting the raises for the last two years, but I notice."

Not that he feels compelled to pursue any sort of remedy for it - he's already convinced it wouldn't work.

She couldn't quite reach Howard from where she was, or his tub. Hopefully her look of pity would suffice for the moment.

"As I said, I can ask but unfortunately I can't promise anything." Barbara sat quietly for a moment. "If he can't help you, do you have any other ideas?"

"I could play guitar on a street corner. You know, when it's not cold or raining out." And if he had a guitar, and knew how to play one, but he trusts his innate musical talent on that front. "Or I could..."

He doesn't want to say 'move back in'. He doesn't know if he actually could do that.

"You could canvass cleaning companies, if that's what you want to do," Barbara said, picking up where he'd trailed off. "Hand in a resume to all the companies in the area. Someone's bound to pick you up, surely."

"You're right, someone's got to need help out there. It's just frustrating, you got to be licensed to be a repairman and I'm really good at that too. My landlords were letting me live with cheaper rent because I'd fix all their stuff, but I did too good a job, now they don't need my services anymore."

This is a slight embellishment on the truth, but he is good at repairing things. And the formalism of the modern economy does frustrate him, when for the most part his skills were honed in the informal economies of the FAYZ and Stacy.

He gets up out of the mud. "We should get heading back. Decide if we want to see Rose and Hal again tomorrow or skip off into the sunset and see San Jose instead."

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