【时间旅行者的妻子】46

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we sport exact replicas¹ of each other’s ears. I’m taller and more muscular and shave. He’s slender and ungainly and is all knees and elbows. I reach up and pull my hair back from my face, show him the scar from the accident.

Unconsciously, he mimics² my gesture, touches the same scar on his own forehead.

　“It’s just like mine,” says my self, amazed. “How did you get it?”

　“The same as you. It is the same. We are the same.”

　A translucent³ moment. I didn’t understand, and then I did, just like that. I watch it happen. I want to be both of us at once, feel again the feeling of losing the edges of my self, of seeing the admixture of future and present for the first time. But I’m too accustomed, too comfortable with it, and so I am left on the outside, remembering the wonder of being nine and suddenly seeing, knowing, that my friend, guide, brother was me. Me, only me. The loneliness of it.

　“You’re me.”

　“When you are older.”

　“But...what about the others?”

　“Other time travelers?”

　He nods.

　“I don’t think there are any. I mean, I’ve never met any others.”

　A tear gathers at the edge of his left eye. When I was little, I imagined a whole society of time travelers, of which Henry, my teacher, was an emissary, sent to train me for eventual⁴ inclusion in this vast camaraderie⁵. I still feel like a castaway, the last member of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. My self, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry. I hold him, hold me, for a long time.

　Later, we order hot chocolate from room service, and watch Johnny Carson. Henry falls asleep with the light on. 

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