The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (4)

I feel like Dorothy, when her house crash-landed in Oz and the world turned from black and white to color. We're not in Kansas anymore.

---

People don't appear and disappear the way you do. You're like the Cheshire Cat.

--

"Well, I don't feel like a spirit. Or a fictional character.

"How do you know?? I mean, if I was making you up, and I didn't want you to know you were made up, I just wouldn't tell you, right?" I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

"Maybe God just mad us up and He's not telling us."

---

The bathroom is tiny. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, grown huge and having to stick my arm out the window just so I can turn around.

---

"I still don't get it. I mean, I can see you not wanting your parents to know you were playing Lolita to his Humbert Humbert, but I don't get why you couldn't tell us. We would have been totally into it. I mean, we spent all this time feeling sorry for you, and worrying about you, and wondering why you, were such a nun-" Helen shakes here head.

"And there you were, screwing Mario the Librarian the whole time-" I can't help it, I'm blushing.

"I was not screwing him the whole time."

"Oh, come, on."

"Really! We waited till I was eighteen. We did it on my birthday."

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (3)

"So Henry" Helen says, "we hear that you are a librarian. But you don't look like a librarian."

"Actually, I am a Calvin Klein underwear model. The librarian thing is just a front."

---

"How come you guys are up if it's nighttime?"

Alba sniffs.

"You're making coffee, so it's morning."

"Oh, it's the old coffee-equals-morning fallacy," Henry says. "There's a hole in your logic, buddy."

"What?" Alba asks. She hates to be wrong about anything.

"You are basing you conclusion on faulty data; that is, you are forgetting that your parents are coffee fiends of the first order, and that we just might have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night in order to drink MORE COFFEE."

He's roaring like a monster, maybe a Coffee Fiend.

"I want coffee," says Alba. "I'm a Coffee Fiend." She roars back at Henry. But he scoops her off of him and plops her down on her feet. Alba runs around the table to me and throws her arms around my shoulders.

"Roar!" she yells in my ear. I get up to pick up and pick Alba up. She's so heavy now.

"Roar, yourself."

I carry her down the hall and throw her onto her bed, and she shrieks with laughter. The clock on her nightstand says 4:16 a.m.

"See?" I show her. "It's too early for you to get up."

After the obligatory amount of fuss Alba settles back into bed, and I walk back to the kitchen. Henry has managed to pour us both coffee."

---

"You look perfect; a Nice Young Man."

"When in fact, I am the Punk Librarian Deluxe. Parents, beware."

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (2)

The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"I came from the future. I am a time traveler. In the future we a friends."

"People only time travel in movies."

"That's what we want you to believe."

"Why?"

"If everybody time traveled it would get too crowded. Like when you when to see your Grandma Abshire last Christmas and it was very, very crowded? We time travelers don't want to mess things up for ourselves, so we keep it quiet."

[...]

"You're making fun of me."

"I would never make fun of you. Why do you think I'm making fun of you?"

Clare is nothing if stubborn.

"Nobody time travels. You're lying."

"Santa time travels."

"What?"

"Sure. How do you think he gets all those presents delivered in one night? He just keeps turning back the clock a few hours until he gets down every one of those chimneys."
"Santa is magic. You're not Santa."

"Meaning I'm not magic? Geez, Louise, you're a tough customer."

"I'm not Louise."

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (1)

"Henry - do other people have sex as much as we do?"

Henry considers.

"Most people.. no, I imagine not. Only people who haven't known each other very long and still can't believe their luck, I would think. Is it too much?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

I say this looking at my plate. I can't believe I'm saying this; I spent my entire adolescence begging Henry to fuck me and now I'm telling him it's too much. Henry sits very still.

"Clare, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize; I wasn't thinking."

I look up; Henry look stricken. I burst out laughing. Henry smiles, a little guilty, but his eyes are twinkling.

"It's just - you know, there are days when I can't sit down."

"Well.. you just have to say. Say nothing, dear, we've already done it twenty-three times today and I would rather read Bleak House."

"And you will meekly cease and desist?"

"I did, just then didn't I? That was pretty meek."

"Yeah. But then I felt guilty."

Henry laughs.

"You can't expect me to help you out there. It may be my only hope: day after day, week after week, I will languish, starving for a kiss, withering away for want of a blow job, and after a while you will look up from your book and realize that I'm actually going to die at your feet if you don't fuck me immediately but I won't say a word. Maybe a few little whimpering noises."

"But - I don't know, I mean, I'm exhausted, and you seem...fine. Am I abnormal, or something?"

Henry leans across the table and holds out his hands. I place mine in his.

"Clare."

"Yes?"

"It may be indelicate to mention this, but if you will excuse me for saying so, your sex drive far outstrips that of almost all the women I've dated. Most woman would have cried Uncle and turned on their answering machines month ago. But I should have thought... you always seemed into it. But if it's too much, or you don't feel like it, you have to say so, because otherwise I'll be tiptoeing around, wondering if I'm burdening you with my hideous demands."

"But how much sex is enough?"

"For me? Oh, God. My idea of the perfect life would be if we just stayed in bed all the time. We could make love more or less continuously, and only get up to bring in supplies, you know, fresh water and fruit to prevent scurvy, and make occasional trips to the bathroom to shave before diving back into bed. And once in a while we could change the sheets. And go to the movies to prevent bedsores."