Sinner

“Culpeper,” she answered.

It never got old, her taking my calls.

“It thrills me when you answer the phone like that,” I told her. I walked to the edge of the roof deck. I could see palm trees and more roof decks. The rest of them were empty, so it was just me and the sun. “Please tell me you are naked.”

“I’m at work, Cole.”

“Naked? Well, it is Santa Monica. Do you have Virtual Me?”

“Of course I do. You just tweeted.”

“Was I funny? Did the Colebots like it?” I watched a little boy appear on one of the roof decks one house away, on the other side of the empty rental. He had a little plane in his hand, and he was flying it up, up, up as high as he could get.

“Oh, please,” Isabel replied. “Also, I think Baby tried to call Virtual Cole.”

“I know. I know everything. Could you possibly use your skills to find me a Colebot who’s having a party in the L.A. area today? Or getting married? Or divorced? Some sort of festive occasion that might involve music?”

I watched the little boy on the deck sail his plane around the table. He was deeply content in a way that I couldn’t ever remember being. If it had been me, I would’ve flown that plane to the edge of the roof deck and jumped.

“I thought you knew everything.” Isabel sighed noisily.

“What’s in it for me?”

“My eternal admiration of your superior intellect.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Also, Baby wants to have dinner with us.”

She made a noise that I couldn’t interpret. Then she said again, “I’ll see what I can do.”

After she hung up, I noticed the boy had come to the edge of the roof deck and was staring at me.

“Hey,” I told him. “We’re twins.”

It wasn’t as creepy as it sounded. We were both wearing khaki shorts and no shirts and were tan with sun-kissed brown hair. I couldn’t decide if he was four or nine or twelve. I had no idea of the specifics of children. He was too young to drive, but old enough to be able to turn doorknobs.

“Are you a time traveler?” he called warily.

“Yes,” I replied. I was pleased that he had also noticed the similarity. Already I was shaping this into a song. “But only forward.”

“Are you me?”

“Sure,” I said.

He scratched his stomach with the plane. “What is my future?”

I said, “You’re famous, and you have a Mustang.”

We both looked at the Saturn parked behind the building.

With a frown, the boy hurled the plane at me. It careened through the shimmering air before disappearing somewhere into the roof crevices of the rental house, palms hiding it.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” I said. “You’ve probably broken it.”

The boy looked dismissive. “It’s not about the landing. It’s about the flying.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I felt agreeably goose-bumpy, like I was creeping myself out on purpose. “Maybe you are me.

Are you real?”

On the chair behind me, my phone rang. It was Isabel, calling me back. I pointed at the boy and turned to answer it.

“I found you a wedding,” she said.

“I think I just talked to younger me from the past,” I replied.

I turned back around, but the roof deck opposite was now empty. “He was flying a plane.”

“Great. I hope you told him to not do drugs. Do you want the address or the name or what?”

I tried to see where the little plane had landed. I sort of wanted it. I made a note to break into the rental house if at all possible. “Give me the everything. Oh, tweet that. That’s something I would say.”

“I’m hanging up now.” She did.

I called T.

“Cole!” he said gladly.

“Life is about to happen,” I said, with a last glance toward where I had seen younger me. “I’m just putting on a shirt.”

He and Joan arrived so quickly that I suspected he had been lying around waiting for me to call. Together, we made the odious journey across the courtyard to Leyla’s part of the compound.

Joan and T trailed me, cameras on shoulders.

“Hey,” I said to Leyla.

She was sitting at the island in the kitchen, eating a plate of chopped-up raw vegetables, her dreads hanging around her long face. She blinked at me and then at the cameras. I had not knocked, but she didn’t say anything about it. I tried not to hate her, because it felt like a victory for Baby.

“Today is the day we make magic happen,” I said.

Leyla ate a piece of something green. She chewed. We all got older while she swallowed. “What did you have in mind?”

“Grand things. Where’s your kit?”

She just looked at me. I couldn’t tell if she was high or stupid or simply hating me back. None of those things were mutually exclusive.

“Your drums? These things?” I air-drummed. “Get them.

Put them in the Saturn. Come with me into the future.”

She put another vegetable in her mouth. She chewed.

“Since we started this conversation,” I said, “two hundred babies have been born on this planet. And what have we accomplished?

You have eaten that thing.”

Leyla swallowed. “You didn’t hurry to get over here until now. Time is continuous, Cole. It doesn’t speed up and slow down. Do not let yourself be fooled by whims. Contentment is constancy.” She drew a slow, even line in the air with something I thought was a zucchini.

I said, “Sure. Okay. But we’re on a schedule now. Drums.

Saturn. You and me, baby. Bring your garden there. You can eat it on the way. Do you have a wheelbarrow or something? I’ll chuck it in there for you while you get your kit together.”

She didn’t move. “What am I playing?”

“Music.”

“What kind of music?”

“Mine.”

“Do I know it?”

“There is this thing called jamming and it means you play a piece of music with other people even if you have never heard it before, and if you tell me you have no idea how that’s done, put down that carrot because I’m firing you.”

Leyla ate the carrot. “Music is inherent, man,” she said.

“And you don’t have to be such a hole all the time. I’ll get the drums.”

Jeremy was at band practice with people who were not me when I arrived to fetch him.