The Bearded Time Traveller

It is tough to love a man with a beard. It is tougher to love a man who travels through time. Don't get me started on how it feels to love a bearded time traveller. 

If not for my wedding ring, and a sink clogged with the rough edges of his facial hair whenever he tries to trim them, I would think I'm still a bachelorette. I do not know if it is the radiation from his time travel or the genes from his inheritance which give his beard an affinity for growth. I remain puzzled over his faulty memory too, even though I like to imagine it's just because he does not pay attention to something I say after I've repeated it thrice already. As the unwashed sink makes you realise, perhaps he never listens to me even the first three times. 

I go near the telephone, and dial his number from my kitchen table. It is not because I don’t have a smart phone. The telephone helps me call him when he's in another time, you see. 

I dial his phone number, then wait for it to ring. It does. Once, then twice. It stops as always, and I hear his pre-recorded voice - "Please enter the date you would like to contact." I engage with the dial again. 03 for the date, 01 for the month, and 19... Which year is it this time? I look at the note stuck on the fridge. My husband is a scientist, but he goes around with a handwriting justifiable only for a doctor. I hedge my bets on 1964. 03011964. The phone starts to ring once more. Once, twice, now thrice. After this, the routine silence. 

"Hello?" a familiar voice eventually asks. 

"Hello, it's your wife," I say, in a threatening tone, intending to treat him to quite the rant for not cleaning the sink. He has a standing request to not call him while he’s travelling, unless it's an emergency, or unless he has taken a day off and is just travelling to the past for collectibles to sell on eBay when he comes back home. His forgetfulness would be the reason for me to classify the reason for this call as an 'emergency'. 

"My... wife?" he asks, with a genuine surprise in his voice. 

"I am in no mood for humour," I said, with a certain sternness in my voice. 

"But, who is this?" he asks. 

I look at the note stuck on the fridge once more. His '6' increasingly looks like a clumsy '0'. 

"How old are you right now?" I ask him, with apprehension of my own. 

"Twenty-six," he says, even as he starts to pant. 

I can hear faint shouts from the other side of the phone, along with the use of firearms. My husband had never minded multi-tasking. One grows used to shooting people interferring with the fabric of time while talking to your wife on the phone, I suppose. 

The noise is loud enough for me to give him a few moments of silence to fight off whatever faction he had become involved with this time around. At twenty-six, he was clean-shaved, had just learnt the ropes of time travelling, and was dating me for over two years. I felt myself feeling nostalgic when he spoke again. "Wait, is that... you?" There was a tone of recognition in his voice. 

"Ah yes, it is me," I say. 

"So, you do marry me. You've been running away from the ring for some time now," my future husband says. I cannot help but realise there is joy in his voice. 

"And you've been running away from the truth of how exactly you get injuries for quite some time now, I suppose." 

There is silence on the other end. He shoots his gun. I hear him reload it, then his response - "I have, I have. Guessing by this phone call, I do tell you in the end." 

"Quite soon, yes." 

"And why does that happen?" 

"I never knew why. But I guess it had to do with you getting shot in the shoulder." 

"The shoulder? Oh lord, I broke it as a kid once. I haven’t been shot yet this month. Please, not my shoulder." 

"You'll be fine, young man." 

More bullets are shot. "Good to hear. So how should I tell you?" 

"What I can tell you is where you eventually told everything to me. On Christmas Eve, at my favourite restaurant. You booked the seat months in advance." 

"Wait..." he suddenly says. "Today is Christmas Eve in my time! But we thought of planning something special at your place." 

"Ah well, then you have one more stop to get off at in the past before returning home." 

"That is very much manageable." The proximity of the gunshots has come closer by now. "Wait, but if today is Christmas Eve, and you say I get shot..." He trails off from this thought. 

"The hospitals in 1964 have decent service, and rather relaxed attitudes towards checking your social security number," I say. 

I can hear him shooting more rounds than he can afford. He will get out of there alive, I realise, but a thud is met with a moan. So that was how he got shot. The call comes to an end on its own, and I replace it on the receiver. 

I get up to revisit the note. It is 1904. Wondering how he hides something as out of place as a mobile phone from plain view while travelling at the beginning of the twentieth century, I dial his number and then the proper date this time around - 03011904. 

"Hello?" he asks, with the same voice and the same hurry. 

"It is your wife." 

"My wife..." This time, the voice is subdued by worry and not surprise. Time has shown its effects on him too. 

"Yes. And you have forgotten to clean the sink. Again. Despite me telling you for the umpteenth time. Right before you shaved and galivanted to the latest trouble today." 

"You told me?" He sounds distracted. Gunfire can be heard once more. But the shots fired from close range are precise, rhythmic. They are from his weapon, and proof that he has learnt with age. 

"I did, mister. I did," I say. He had learnt a few weeks into marriage that I would adopt this as my tone for a threat. 

"I need to go now," he says. And the line is dead once more. I know he is facing no trouble, but he knows it would be smart to get off the line. I lean back in my chair. 

"Hello, darling, I'm back," the same voice calls out from the kitchen door just as I’m about to get my feet up. I look behind him. My husband stands there. His beard is trimmed, his face as handsome as ever, and there isn’t a single spot on his clothes. But his cuffs are wet. 

"Did you come back home a few minutes earlier so that you could wash the sink while I was on the call with you?" 

"I might have," he shrugs, breaking into a smile. 

 I get up. "I wish you could go back to the past and teach yourself good handwriting as well." 

"And the guys I fought today wish the bootstrap paradox did not exist." 

I look at him with a questioning glance. His sense of humour becomes intentionally scientific when he wants to change the topic. "I will go up to the sink to check,” I say. “In the meanwhile, could you think about what to cook for lunch?" 

As I climb up the stairs, he says - "I was wondering, maybe we could go to your favourite restaurant?" 

"But doesn't that require booking a few months in advance?" 

My time travelling husband smiles at me. "I might have made reservations for us at another stop in the past before coming home." 

# 

The twenty-six-year-old time traveller was anxious as he picked up his landline. It would be a couple of years until he made one which could place calls across time. His arm was bandaged. He had spent a few days recovering in the hospital in 1964 before returning home, but his upper body still pained. 

"Hello?" his girlfriend asked on the other side of the phone. 

"I was wondering if we could have dinner at your favourite restaurant tonight?" The man thought about how his partner had never liked plans made at the last minute. 

She, on the other hand, looked at the turkey lying on the kitchen surface. The stuffing had been a disaster. This dinner was one she did not want to mess up. She was thinking of proposing to him on Christmas Eve, but now that the day had come around, things were not going her way so far. "I would love to. But will we get seats?" 

The time traveller looked at the receipt of a booking he has just made. He would have a lot of explaining to do over the next few meals and days, he realised. "I managed to get a table for the two of us." 

"Ah well", she said. The both of them had a smile on their lips and the slightest hint of nervousness hidden in their eyes. "I’ll see you in the evening then. If only I could travel through time to meet you right now."