Haunting Melody (32 page)

Savanna nodded. “Don’t speculate. No news is
good news, maybe?”

Her cell phone rang. “Oh poo, it’s the
theatre. I was supposed to be there an hour ago for financial
discussions on hirin' more dancers. But you were more important,”
she grinned, “and your story far more entertainin’.”

She rose, hugged me, gathered her belongings
and headed for the door. I stopped her. “Savanna. Thanks - for
believin’ and carin’. Hey. Wait a sec. I do have designs for the
fairies and Oberon.”

She turned. “You’re kiddin’. When did you do
them?”

“After we rescued Denise and Nevin Dupre. I
couldn’t sleep, so I wandered around the old Flynn house, sketched
them out and stuffed them in my bag.”

I handed them to her. She hugged me.

“These are super! We should send you
traveling more often.”

“Go away, Savanna.”

“Gotcha.” She paused. “Mel? If nothing else,
remember this – you got to be a real live Ziegfeld Follies girl.
No, it doesn’t make up for losing Briley, but damn, what a
wonderful memory to carry. Even if you can’t share it with anyone
but me.”

She left and I wandered back to the computer.
I spent the next few hours trying to find out what had happened to
Briley. I discovered that Denise and Frank had indeed gotten
married, had children of their own, Denise had opened a restaurant
called Follies Francais South and Frank had opened a music
store.

I already knew that Saree and Izzy had spent
their lives in Memphis. Saree’s dance studio had been a success;
Izzy had become features editor of the Courier-Appeal in the 1930s.
I was thrilled to read about my friends. I was in pain not knowing
what happened to Briley.

Lucy and I made about three trips downstairs
to knock on Fiona Belle’s door, but there was never an answer.
Perhaps she really had stayed in 1919. Perhaps she and Briley had
run off to Tupleo, Mississippi to visit Elvis’s birthplace. Perhaps
she’d taken over for me in the Follies since she knew every song
and probably every dance.

Around eleven I quit jogging up and down
stairs and went to bed. I even slept.

At two a.m. I heard my door click. The lights
flashed on. And I could hear the rain coming through the
window.

It was all starting again. How that was
possible since I knew I’d done the haunting and I’d already been
sent to 1919 and come back was bizarre. But I didn’t care about the
how or even the why. I just wanted it to stop.

Lucy and I checked the door. Nothing. No
little gnome of a woman stood outside bearing scones and dolls. I
turned off the light in case it started popping on without visible
means of support, then I pulled out the cord. I didn’t hear any
singing, but from the sound of it, the rain was coming into the
living room again.

“Come on, Lucy. We’ve done this before. Let’s
nail that window shut if we have to.”

She pranced along beside me as we made our
way through the dark apartment to the window. The rain had changed
to a slow, fine mist, so I leaned outside to see if my
leather-clad, umbrella-wielding friends would skate by, or if the
pre-teen delinquents were out doing their inept version of
carjacking.

The streetlights were on full, but there was
no activity below. I started to move away when a man in a jogging
suit came into view. A wet golden retriever pup followed him. An
orange cap flashed under the lights, and an orange backpack bounced
around his ribs. His face remained hidden.

I knew that body and I knew that dog. I heard
a voice call, “Come on, Dee Gee.”

I leaned as far out the window as I could and
shouted, “Briley! Up here!”

He stopped, cocking his head in much the same
manner as the dog. They both turned as I continued to scream his
name.

He saw me and yelled, “Melody!”

He and the dog ran toward my apartment
building and stopped under my window, four floors below. He waved
at me. I waved back. We grinned at each other.

“Hey!”

“Hey, yourself! Stay there, okay? I’m coming
down.”

“Or I can come up.”

“Nope. Lucy needs to piddle.”

He nodded. Not the most romantic words he and
I had ever exchanged, but it was better than anything that
moonlight, roses, and violins could provide. Briley was alive! And
here. In my time.

I quickly threw on some jeans and a
sweatshirt, looped the leash around Lucy’s neck, ran down four
flights of stairs then flung open the doors leading into the
lobby.

Briley stood just outside. We stared at each
other for a long moment. Finally, he reached out his hands, took
mine, and guided me close. We clung together then his hand gently
lifted my chin. I looked up into his eyes.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I thought I was too.” He grinned. “I’m so
damned glad I was wrong!”

He pulled me close to him and kissed me with
both passion and desperation, as though trying to make up for the
time we’d been apart. Or to reassure us both that this was
real.

We broke apart when the sound of applause hit
our ears. I turned and saw two black- leather-clad men clapping
while the third held the oversized umbrella over the trio. For no
good reason, seeing them solidified my whole time-traveling
experience into reality.

We bowed in response to the applause. They
bowed back, turned and glided on down the street.

A cold nose nudged my ankle. I glanced down
and crooned, “Duffy! You sweet puppy, you.”

I reached down and gave the dog a hug. Lucy
sat, quietly staring at the two new males in her “mom’s” life.

“Lucy? Meet Duffy - or you can call him Dee
Gee, depending on how he’s behaving on certain days. Your possible
new mate, little girl, depending on how well y’all get along.”

Briley grinned. “Border collie-lab-retriever
puppies. Sounds great. They can live with you until we get married
since obviously you need to be herded and fetched back home
whenever you get the urge to visit other times.”

I snuggled against his chest for a moment.
“If I’m going anywhere, you’re going with me. The dogs can stay
with Fiona Belle - if she returns from wherever. Which reminds me,
how did you get here?”

Briley took my hand. “Let’s find someplace
dry and private and I’ll tell you all about it.”

We separated the dogs, who were happily
engaged in a bout of sniffing and nosing and licking, and went back
upstairs to my apartment. I quickly made a pot of coffee while
Briley towelled off the excited pups. We sat on the small sofa and
sipped our hot drinks and smiled at each other for at least ten
minutes before we felt the need to talk.

Finally I broke the warm silence. “So, what
happened after I vanished into the future?”

Briley smiled. “You scared that fake prince
into nearly having cardiac arrest. He sat in shock for a minute or
two then dropped the gun. I took the opportunity to kick it, then
him, right across the room. Very satisfying. A few punches and our
cowardly so-called god caved in.”

“Violence. Good. I approve. He deserved a few
socks in the jaw.”

Briley rolled his eyes in a show of
innocence. “I never said jaw.”

“Oh?”

“Let’s simply say I did not fight clean.”

“Ah. Got it. Okay. Go on.”

“I was in the throes of permanently injuring
Mr. Herzochevskia but Izzy and Officers O’Callahan and O’Bryan came
racing in and hauled him away. Quite honestly, I didn’t care what
happened to him after that. Izzy stayed with me while I tried,
rather incoherently, to explain how you’d vanished.”

“Oh, boy. I’ll bet he loved that little
tale.”

“Well, he did seem a bit skeptical. But he
was willing to listen, and he’s the one who kept me from throwing
myself out the window in sheer despair after seeing you disappear
before my eyes.”

“I wish I could thank him for that.”

Briley hugged me. “Helping him discover that
Saree was the love of his life was thanks enough.”

I brightened. “I did do that, didn’t I? And
here I was being pitiful thinking I hadn’t had an effect on
anything in 1919.”

“Well, that’s just crazy. You got them
together, you found Frank and helped rescue Denise and Nevin and
you integrated a Memphis bar and….”

I laughed. “Okay. I’m not sure how much my
part was in any of those things, but thanks for making me believe I
made a contribution.”

His voice softened.“Well, if that weren’t
enough, Mel, you saved me from a life of mistrust and pain.”

I grew quiet. “That makes everything worth
it.”

He drew me close and we stopped talking for a
spot of what Saree would have termed “canoodling.”

Finally, I came up for air. “Oh! Was Saree
there too? With you and Izzy in the room with our Prince?”

“She came in five minutes after the police
had gone. Heard my whole story about my lost love and her sheet
music and cell phones and dolls. She, unlike Isaac the doubtful,
immediately believed it wholeheartedly. She said you were somehow
different - she just wasn’t sure what that difference was. And
she’s the one who got me back here. Well, got me to travel into the
future.”

“Really? How? Don’t keep me in suspense
here.”

“She saw the doll you’d dropped in your haste
to avoid the bullets aimed at you. And she said if that was how you
got here in the first place and got away in the second place – her
words - then maybe I could do the same.”

“Oh boy.”

He nodded. “Oh boy is right. I took the doll,
grabbed Duffy and held him – did I tell you he bit Peter in the
rump?”

I laughed, “No, you did not! But I’m
delighted. Steak for him tomorrow.”

“I see we both will have very spoiled
pets.”

“Yes. Get over it. They deserve the best.
Okay. You had the doll. You had Duffy. And?” I prompted.

“And Saree handed me the sheet music that was
on the piano. I said goodbye to her and to Izzy and didn’t stop for
anything or anybody. I wound the key in the doll. The next thing I
knew I was feeling kind of sick and then I passed out.”

“Been there. Done that. Not exactly like
riding the Staten Island Ferry, is it?”

“It’s a different mode of transportation,
that’s certain.”

“So where did you land? I ended up backstage
of a theatre performing The Lion King, thanks to one of Fiona
Belle’s little jokes.”

“I ended up in the back of a store. Mac’s
Music to be exact. The Mac shortened from McShan.”

I sat up. “In Memphis? As in the Mac’s Music
founded in the mid-Nineteen-twenties in Memphis, Tennessee?”

“That’s the very place.”

“Wow. I wonder how that happened. I mean, not
that the store opened, but that you landed there?”

Briley shook his head. “The sheet music I was
clinging to was a piece called "Memphis Melody." It had been
recorded by a band in a studio next door to the music store. Ready
to hear the kicker?”

“Sure.”

“The name of the group is called The Dupres.
The lead singer is a kid named after his great-grandfather, Nevin
Dupre McShan, who was adopted by Mr.Frank McShan after marrying
Denise Dupre.”

“I’m now totally flabbergasted and in the
same state of denial as our friend Izzy.”

“I was too. I woke up surrounded by a bunch
of musicians with earrings and strange haircuts and instruments
that were hooked up to giant amplifiers. I thought I’d died and
been sent directly down. The fact that the air-conditioning in the
store had been on the fritz for a week helped add to that
assumption.”

I grinned. “So you bonded with the young
Nevin much as you had with our own little dancin’ buddy from
1919?”

“I did. And he told about his great-grandad
Nevin and how he’d regaled his family with tales of courage
exhibited by a Follies chorine named Melody, and how she and a
stagehand named Briley saved him and his mama from an evil nutcase
who thought he was an Egyptian god. Nevin the Fourth wondered what
happened to Melody. That’s one reason he wrote that song.”

“Did you tell him the truth?”

Briley hugged me. “I fudged a little. May
have intimated that you and I were the great-great progeny of the
original Mel and Briley. Anyway, Nevin gave me a present to give to
you. The odd thing is that Nevin the First willed it to him to give
to me should I ever arrive. Spooky. Want it?”

“Of course!”

Briley rose and reached into the backpack
he’d dumped on the window seat. He pulled out a piece of sheet
music and handed it to me.

“How sweet! It’s "A Pretty Girl is Like a
Melody." An old copy. Even has the illustration of the Follies girl
on the front.”

“Look closer.”

I did. Then I started to cry as I read the
words, “To Nevin, my best beau. Love, Melody. June 1919.”

“It’s the copy I gave Nevin that day during
dress rehearsal, when we were in the alley!”

Briley’s tone grew softer. “The day I knew
I’d fallen for you. Just didn’t want to admit it or admit that you
were the one who made me realize I needed to go on with my life
whether I found Frank or not.”

I looked deep into his eyes. “And I didn’t
realize you were falling for me then, but I definitely remember
that day. Heck, why wouldn’t we? It was only a few weeks ago!”

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to do anything
about changing my life 1919, but are you ready for this? I just got
accepted to NYU-Polytech so I can finish getting my degree in
Engineering. I don't understand how my courses transferred from
nearly a hundred years ago but they did. I thought I’d have a
terrible time getting in without the credentials the majority of
the students have, but someone vouched for me.”

“That’s great! Do you know who or why?”

He grinned. “Word is a Mrs. Donovan Winthorp
told the head of the Engineering Department if he didn’t take me
she’d hex him and every generation after him. It did the
trick.”