Part II: A Past That Is Also a Future — NEW YEAR’S EVE, ONE - The Time Traveler's Wife

Friday, December 31, 1999, 11:55p.m. (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)

Henry: Clare and I are standing on a rooftop in Wicker Park with a multitude of other hardy souls, awaiting the turn of the so-called millennium. It’s a clear night, and not that cold; I can see my breath, and my ears and nose are a bit numb. Clare is all muffled up in her big black scarf and her face is startlingly white in the moon/street light. The rooftop belongs to a couple of Clare’s artist friends. Gomez and Charisse are nearby, slow-dancing in parkas and mittens to music only they can hear. Everyone around us is drunkenly bantering about the canned goods they nave stockpiled, the heroic measures they have taken to protect their computers from meltdown. I smile to myself, knowing that all this millennial nonsense will be completely forgotten by the time the Christmas trees are Picked up off the curbs by Streets and San.

We are waiting for the fireworks to begin. Clare and I lean against the waist-high false front of the building and survey the City of Chicago. We are facing east, looking toward Lake Michigan. “Hello, everybody” Clare says, waving her mitten at the lake, at South Haven, Michigan. “It’s funny,”

she says to me. “It’s already the new year there. I’m sure they’re all in bed.” We are six stories up, and I am surprised by how much I can see from here. Our house, in Lincoln Square, is somewhere to the north and west of here; our neighborhood is quiet and dark. Downtown, to the southeast, is sparkling. Some of the huge buildings are decorated for Christmas, sporting green and red lights in their windows. The Sears and The Hancock stare at each other like giant robots over the heads of lesser skyscrapers. I can almost see the building I lived in when I met Clare, on North Dearborn, but it’s obscured by the taller, uglier building they put up a few years ago next to it. Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel obliged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff. There isn’t much traffic; everyone wants to be somewhere at midnight, not on the road. I can hear bursts of firecrackers here and there, punctuated occasionally with gunfire from the morons who seem to forget that guns do more than make loud noises. Clare says, “I’m freezing” and looks at her watch. “Two more minutes.” Bursts of celebration around the neighborhood indicate that some people’s watches are fast.

I think about Chicago in the next century. More people, many more. Ridiculous traffic, but fewer potholes. There will be a hideous building that looks like an exploding Coke can in Grant Park; the West Side will slowly rise out of poverty and the South Side will continue to decay. They will finally tear down Wrigley Field and build an ugly megastadium, but for now it stands blazing with light in the Northeast.

Gomez begins the countdown: “Ten, nine, eight...” and we all take it up: “seven, six, five, four, THREE! TWO! ONE! Happy New Year!” Champagne corks pop, fireworks ignite and streak across the sky, and Clare and I dive into each other’s arms. Time stands still, and I hope for better things to come.