“We are here, we are now”

“We are here, we are now” is an expression of presence and shared life in a novel where time repeatedly removes Henry from the moment he occupies with Clare. The phrase’s force lies in the contrast between Henry’s partial, dislocated knowledge of the future and Clare’s insistence on touching, seeing, and choosing what is actually before her. In their search for a home, presence becomes more than an idea: it is the difference between hearing about a house and standing inside the one she wants to make theirs.

Meaning and Context

For Henry and Clare, the present is precious because it cannot be assumed to last. Henry’s time travel gives him fragments of other times, but those glimpses do not amount to ordinary shared experience. Clare would like to see the places Henry visits for herself, even wishing that he could videotape his excursions. His account of a house contains enough detail to sound familiar and promising, yet he did not look at its address; his visit was only a brief one. The gap between having heard about a place and having encountered it herself gives the passage its quiet argument about presence.

Clare describes her longing to access Henry’s memories through a concrete analogy: when she was fourteen, Mark tried to teach her to draw on his Macintosh, but she wanted to reach through the screen and touch the real thing. She prefers direct contact—textures and colors—over a mediated image. The computer screen thus gives shape to a difficulty particular to their relationship: Henry may carry impressions from elsewhere, but Clare cannot enter those experiences merely by listening to him describe them. Her desire is not to deny his knowledge; it is to share a world that can be encountered together.

Presence and the House Hunt

The house search turns that difference in experience into a practical disagreement. Henry’s knowledge of one promising house has not made the search satisfying for Clare; she compares following his excursions to driving a toy remote-control car, which she tends to steer into walls on purpose. The image expresses her frustration with a process in which another person’s distant perspective seems to direct her without letting her take hold of the place herself.

Clare therefore asks Henry whether she can house-hunt by herself for a while. He agrees, though he seems a little hurt, and she reasons that the decision will not alter the outcome if they are going to end up in the same house anyway. Henry accepts that logic but asks her not to fall for any more hellholes. Their exchange holds together two different kinds of confidence: the sense that the eventual home is already settled, and Clare’s need to discover it through her own attention and judgment.

Recognition and Choice

About a month and roughly twenty houses later, Clare finds the home on Ainslie in Lincoln Square. It is a red-brick bungalow built in 1926. When the real-estate agent opens the door, Clare feels that something fits. She walks straight to the back window and looks out at the backyard; there she recognizes the future studio and grape arbor. Her response is immediate: she says they will buy it.

The order of her actions matters. Clare does not begin by inspecting the entire house or asking Henry to confirm its identity. She goes directly to the back window, where the studio and arbor make the house legible as a future place for their shared life. The scene joins anticipation to physical discovery: what had been a reported possibility becomes a location Clare can see for herself and choose. In this sense, the house is not simply a destination that Henry has somehow foreseen. It becomes theirs through Clare’s own encounter with it.

Shared Future, Unequal Knowledge

The agent is surprised that Clare makes her decision before seeing the rest of the house and asks about her husband. Clare answers that he has already seen it, then agrees to look through the house. The exchange underscores the unusual arrangement of their knowledge: Henry’s earlier visit has preceded Clare’s, yet she is the one who recognizes the place and commits to buying it. His prior glimpse cannot replace her presence there.

The episode therefore gives the expression “We are here, we are now” a domestic, deliberately ordinary shape. Its stakes are not limited to a philosophical claim about time. They are carried by a real-estate key box, a bungalow’s back window, and the moment Clare sees a studio and grape arbor in the yard. Henry and Clare may expect to arrive at the same future, but the passage distinguishes foreknowledge from participation. Their home becomes meaningful when the future is met as a present place, seen and chosen by Clare herself.