Page 12 of Love and Other Paradoxes

He thundered down the stairs, his fury at Diana’s words only slightly tempered by the fact that he had thought the exact same

thing about her. But it didn’t make any sense. They were destined to be together. Something was going to turn him into her

type: he just had to figure out what.

He was reaching into his coat pocket for the book when he remembered where he was. He couldn’t exactly whip it out and consult

it in Diana’s corridor. But he couldn’t take it outside either: it was a quarter to twelve, inside visiting hours, and he

didn’t want to ruin his mystique with the time travellers. On impulse, he ducked into the nearest bathroom and locked the

door. He sat in the dry bath and read through the Introduction, seeking out the most romantic thing he had ever done for Diana.

As always, the book was frustratingly thin on details. He was about to give up when his skimming eye caught the phrase fell in love with him all over again .

“Oh aye. Here we go,” he murmured, leaning over the pages.

Greene’s legendary devotion to Dartnell extended beyond mere words. Throughout their relationship, he showered her with extravagant gifts, like the surprise trip he arranged to a friend’s private island. “It was incredible to be somewhere so secluded,” Dartnell was quoted as saying. “Like it was just the two of us, alone in the universe. I fell in love with him all over again.”

Joe stared emptily down the plughole. Despite having been at Cambridge for two years, he was yet to make any friends who had

private islands. It was so much easier to be romantic when you were already rich and famous.

He pocketed the book and let himself out onto Trinity Street. Twelve o’clock had come and gone; so had Vera and her latest

group. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him.

“Greeney!” His nickname clashed so wildly with the Joseph Greene he had just been reading about that it gave him whiplash.

He finally spotted Rob, waving at him from behind the postbox.

“What are you doing here?”

“Lurking. Word on the Assassin street is, Darcy’s at Trinity.”

Rob looked very calm for a man about to face his nemesis. “Wait. Darcy’s finally your target?”

“No, not yet. Just trying to get the latest intel. My current target’s at Sidney.” He headed for Green Street, beckoning Joe

to follow. “Come with me. You might learn something.”

“I doubt that,” he said, but followed anyway. Being an Assassin had given Rob an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city that

Joe could turn to his advantage. “Can you think of anywhere in Cambridge that’s really... secluded?”

Rob shot him a look. “Creepy.”

“No, I mean like—somewhere to take a girl.”

“Not making it any less creepy.”

“You’re not understanding. Deliberately. I want to take Diana somewhere she’s never been before.”

Rob led the way across the road—Joe cringed in anticipation of the inevitable bike—and turned up the narrow pedestrian alley of Sussex Street. “There’s this restaurant on Chesterton Road. It’s quiet, intimate, the food is incredible —”

“That sounds like it costs money,” he interrupted. “My overdraft’s nearly maxed out. I need something free.” Looking up, he

did a double take. Standing on the balustrade by the baked potato shop was Vera. She wasn’t wearing her tabard; if she hadn’t

been staring at him with such intensity, he might not have recognised her.

He checked his watch. Twenty past twelve. She shouldn’t be here. He felt an aggrieved impulse to march up to her and recite

the terms and conditions. But something else was strange. No time travellers crowded onto the steps beside her: she was alone.

He had been staring at her for too long. With a look of alarm, she hurried down the steps and strode away. He watched her

disappear into the crowd, wondering what had brought her here out of hours. Maybe she was a fan of his poetry. That might

be what had drawn her to the job in the first place: the chance to use her position to get her own private tour. Whatever

the reason, he was annoyed. Now he’d have to watch out for her every time he met up with Esi.

“Greeney?” Rob beckoned him in the opposite direction.

Joe followed him through an open gate into the back of Sidney Sussex College. “So?” he prompted. “Any ideas?”

“You could try the secret terrace.”

“What secret terrace?”

“The one you can get to from your battlements.” Rob stopped next to a window and peered inside.

Joe shuddered. “By inching along a death-defyingly narrow ledge and shinning up a drainpipe?”

“Yeah. That one.” Rob pulled at the window. It swung open. “Yes! My accomplice came through.” He turned to Joe. “Give me a boost?”

He knelt, wincing as Rob stepped on his shoulder and climbed up through the window. He dropped with surprising agility and

turned to help Joe through. “Might not be a great idea. You’re not much of a climber. Wouldn’t want you ending up smeared

across Trumpington Street as a patch of Greeney-flavoured jam.”

His old fear, that his life would amount to nothing but a page-six story in the Courier . “It would be a really stupid way to die,” he agreed.

“Speaking of stupid ways to die...” Rob crouched over the bedside table.

Joe came closer to see what he was looking at: an old-fashioned perpetual calendar, with dials for the day, month, and year.

Rob scrolled through the final set of numbers until they read 2150. He picked up a pad and paper from the victim’s bedside

and wrote a note saying, You have died of old age .

“Wow,” said Joe. “Genius.”

Rob clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before we get caught up in the time vortex.”

It turned out the time vortex was the least of Rob’s worries. Someone was waiting outside the window, armed with a banana.

“Bang,” said the assassin lugubriously.

Rob looked disbelievingly at Joe. “I’m dead.”

“What is it with you and bananas?”

“The banana was incidental. My accomplice sold me out.” Rob glared at his killer, who was taking a picture for posterity.

“I forgot rule one of the Game. Make yourself hard to find.”

Joe stared at his friend. “So you’re dead? It’s over?”

“Respectively, yes and no. There’s still the Lent Term Game, and the May Week Game. Two more chances to meet Darcy in the field and triumph.” Rob lifted his chin. “I do not fear death,” he proclaimed, “for my future is glory.”

“Is that a quote from something?”

“Yes. Rob Trevelyan, 2005.” He pointed at Joe. “If you use it in a poem, I want royalties.”

Joe stared into space. I do not fear death, for my future is glory. There was something important here, unfurling in his mind like seaweed when the tide came in. Rob was dead. Joseph Greene lives with Diana Dartnell in London.

He had documentary proof that he would still be alive at sixty. He didn’t need to worry about falling and dying, because he

couldn’t. Not for at least another forty years.

“Greeney?” Rob waved a hand in front of Joe’s face. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much,” he said distantly. “I just realised I’m immortal.”

Twenty minutes later, he stood on the edge of the battlements, ready to jump.

A voice like Dr. Lewis’s rang in the back of his mind—the way to be destined to live to sixty was not to throw yourself off

any buildings—but he dismissed it. The book proved that whatever he did between now and then couldn’t kill him.

Unless he was wrong.

He saw Esi in his mind’s eye, looking down tenderly at her mum’s picture. If she was right, there was no deterministic force,

no hand of fate holding him back from plunging to his death. But if she was right, then his future was nothing but a possibility.

He couldn’t believe that. He needed it to be a fixed reality, even if he had to stake his life on it.

He gathered himself, counted to three, and leapt.

An instant of terrifying plummet. He was falling, nothing between him and the old, cold stones of the court below. His feet

hit the ledge, jarring his knees. He scrabbled at the wall, gripped for a crack between the stones, and held.

He clung, sweating, gasping, feeling invincibly alive. He shuffled crabwise along the narrow ledge, grabbed the drainpipe,

and shinned up, a preternatural strength animating his limbs. Hauling himself over the lip of the roof, he got to his feet

and emerged onto the secret terrace.

“Terrace” was pushing it. It was a flat niche between tiled roofs, with a view of the edge of King’s College Chapel crisscrossed

by wires. The place felt like Cambridge folded in on itself, a portal to past and present and future all at once. It was perfect.

Shaking, he opened his phone and took a picture. He sent it to Diana with the message:

New rehearsal space?

She didn’t reply. Not that day, not the next day, not the day after that. He was still forlornly checking his phone as he

sat in the vaulted cellars of Clare College bar, waiting to escort Esi back from her African Caribbean Society meeting. She’d

jokingly invited him along— might be good for you, standing out for a change —but they’d agreed it was probably best if he met up with her afterwards.

As the meeting broke up and the ACS members started to drift into the bar, he saw her, laughing easily in the midst of a group, her braids pinned up in a way that accentuated her cheekbones. She had swapped her usual sweater and leggings for a patterned black-and-white dress that looked like stark shadows in sunlight. It was like seeing a different person. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she excused herself and came to sit on the bench next to him.

“How did it go?” he asked.

She slumped, laying her head briefly on his shoulder. He felt a wave of electricity run through him. “No joy?” he said with

forced calm.

“She wasn’t there, and I didn’t hear anyone mention her. Was fun when I asked if the society gives out awards, though. They

thought that was hilarious.” She looked over at the group she’d come in with, huddled by the jukebox arguing over song choices.

“Hard to remember they’re all my dad’s age in the future.” As the opening riff of “Kiss” by Prince echoed through the bar,

she rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe it’s not that hard.”

He touched the badge on her shoulder bag. “You didn’t think about introducing them to The Swerves?”

She choked on a laugh. “Oh yeah. I should have just got out the—the recording disk, and put it on the megaphone.”

“Gramophone? Come on. We have CDs, you know.”

“Sounds painful.” Her eyes went distant, her lips and shoulders moving minutely to the music, as if she couldn’t help it.

“This is, like, my dad’s party anthem.”

The joy in her voice was infectious. “He throws a good party?”

“The best.” Her face lit up. “Everyone comes round to our house—my aunties, my uncles, cousins, neighbours, friends—and we

just eat and talk and laugh and dance together, all night. Till morning, sometimes.”

He looked over his shoulder, where the ACS meeting was turning into a free-flowing gathering, drawing in other students from

across the bar. “Looks like some of them might be up for that.”

He caught a flash of longing in her eyes, but she shook her head. “Too late. I blew my cover. Someone asked me what I’m studying.” She looked seriously at him. “Did you know, time science is apparently ‘not even a subject’?”

“Says who?”

“Some guy Adewale who seemed personally offended by the idea.” She drew in a long breath. “I should’ve known this society

thing wouldn’t work out. I mean, Mum was an only child of Ghanaian immigrants. She felt so much pressure to do well here.

Even if she’d been interested in anything outside of her studies, it’s not like she’d have had the time.”

“Don’t give up yet. We’ll keep trying. And we can search more colleges too. She’s got to be at one of them.” He felt strangely

reluctant to change the subject, but he had no choice. “In the meantime, we should talk about Diana. There’s been... a

development.”

She sat up, her face filling with dread. “What did you do this time?”

“I tried asking her out. Like you said.”

“And?”

“And... she kicked me out and basically told me not to come back.”

Esi’s head sank into her hands. “Tell me what happened. And I mean everything. What you said, what she said, how she looked—I

need all of it.”

He told her. She listened, silent and serious, her chin resting in her palm. Her dress fell off one shoulder, drawing his

eye to the curve of her neck.

“Joseph Greene.” She clicked her fingers. “Are you done? You just, like—tailed off midsentence.”

He blinked. “Oh. Uh—that was it.”

She no longer looked existentially terrified, which he took as a good sign. “Okay. So. There’s a chance you haven’t fucked this up completely.”

“Really?”

“You said you’d like to know her better. She answered by reminding you she has a boyfriend. That means she was already thinking

of you romantically. And it sounds like she wasn’t completely against the idea, until you talked about her and Crispin being

happy.”

“Fuck.” He ground his knuckles into his forehead. “I knew that was going too far.”

“No, no, it’s good! It tells us a lot that she reacted that way. It means she’s not happy with him, and she is interested in you on some level, even if she can’t admit it yet.”

He sat back, baffled. “I don’t get it. She tells me I’m not her type, and you say that means she’s into me. What would she

have done if she really wasn’t interested?”

She gave him a that’s obvious look. “She would have laughed.”

He shook his head. “I am so glad you speak girl.”

“‘I am so glad you speak girl.’ Joseph Greene, famous lover.” She drew in a breath. “So, have you heard from her since?”

He held up his phone. “I sent her this message right after. No reply.”

She squinted at the screen, then back at him, her eyes crinkling in disappointment. “You just sent her that? With no explanation,

no reference to anything she said?” She tipped her head back and addressed the vaulted ceiling. “This. This is why it’s so

hard to be a woman who dates men.”

He tried not to focus on the soft hollow of her throat. “Are men not better in the future?”

She laughed, her head dropping. “You know what, I think it actually might have got worse. You at least are teachable.” She pressed her hands flat on the bench between them. “Here’s a test. Joseph Greene. What’s the first thing we do when we’ve hurt someone through our actions?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Apologise?”

“Apologise.” She patted him on the head. “You get a gold star.” She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Okay, how’s this.

‘Sorry about before. You’re beautiful, and I got carried away.’”

“Bury a compliment in there. Nice.” He typed the message eagerly. “What else?”

Esi closed her eyes and extended her hand towards Joe, like she was channelling him. “‘Sometimes,’” she said, “‘I get poetry

mixed up with real life.’”

He was indignant. “That makes me sound like a psycho.”

“No. It makes you sound like a passionate artist ,” she growled. “Which is exactly who she wants you to be.”

He sighed and added it to the message. “Okay,” he said, feeling like he was getting the hang of it. “And now I say it won’t

happen again.”

“No!” She rapped the back of his hand. “Bad poet!”

“What? You told me to say that last time!”

“This is different from last time. Last time, she didn’t want your attention. This time, she does.”

He groaned. “This is so complicated.”

“It’s really not.”

He went back over the message, then held it up to show her. She scrolled through it and nodded. “Send.”

He pressed the button and put his phone away, feeling like he had just survived an exam.

The ACS gathering had divided into an impromptu dance floor and an informal study group. Esi’s head was turned over her shoulder, watching the talking, laughing students around the table. He could almost see the gap she saw, the person who should have been there but wasn’t.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

She looked at him, her eyes huge in her solemn face. “What if we don’t?