Out of Time (18 page)

The things that had once defined him, detachment and control, lay in rubble at his feet. She’d given him the chance to live again, and he’d thrown it in her face. Judging from the way she’d treated him since, she wasn’t about to forgive him. Not that he deserved her forgiveness. Or would even know what to do with it if it were given. Not much to worry about there either; she would be gone in the morning, just as she had been every morning since Coney Island. Yet, somehow, hope flickered in his chest, refusing to be snuffed out completely.

Knowing Charlie’s was the only place he’d see her, Simon went in early. The bar was eerily quiet. Empty tables, empty chairs: the perfect place for an empty man. Charlie was putting a new picture of Lillian Gish on the wall behind the bar. He straightened the corners and stood back to admire his work.

“Pretty little thing, ain’t she?”

“Hmm? Oh, I suppose,” Simon said, as he took a seat on one of the wooden stools. He’d never felt so at sixes and sevens; a bleak future ahead, and nothing but mistakes behind him.

Charlie shook his head and pulled out the bottle of Glenlivet from behind the counter. “You got it bad,” he said and set-up two cups. “Lizzy still givin’ ya the cold shoulder?”

Simon’s frown was answer enough, and Charlie nodded in commiseration. “Want a snort? Cure what ails ya?”

Simon desperately wanted a drink, but feared he wouldn’t be able to stop with just one. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

Charlie opened the bottle and poured the drinks. “Naw, probably not.” He slid one cup across the wooden counter to Simon. “Sometimes wise ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Simon laughed and took the cup, but he didn’t drink. Charlie raised his cup in toast. “Here’s mud in yer eye.”

Simon breathed in the scent, letting it fill his lungs with pungent warmth before taking a sip. “Quite good.”

Charlie nodded and stared down into his empty cup. His usually jovial face was lined with worry. “You try the flowers?”

“I think we’re well beyond that,” Simon said, surprised at his willingness to talk to the man, but he felt too tired to fight it anymore.

“I know you don’t want me stickin’ my nose in, but bein’ alone ain’t good for no man.”

Charlie’s wide shoulders seemed bowed under some unseen pressure. He looked at Simon with unaccustomed passion, a ghost of pain floating in his eyes. Simon knew the look. He’d seen it often enough in the mirror. “Who was she?”

Charlie’s meaty face wrinkled in a mixture of chagrin and sorrow. “Mary. She was beautiful, my Mary.” He poured another drink and looked down into the cup, his eyes dreamy and distant. “Seems like yesterday.”

Charlie closed his eyes for a moment and smiled ruefully. “A real looker. And a sweeter girl you never will find. Met her in the park. Saw her walking with her sister. Real pinched-face sort of broad. Just made Mary look even prettier. Not that she needed the help.”

He stopped for a moment, poured another and took a deep drink of the Scotch. “Minute I laid eyes on her, I knew she was the girl for me. Crazy, huh?”

Simon shook his head, remembering the first day he’d seen Elizabeth. She raised her hand, interrupting his lecture, and challenged his theory on the motivational hunger of lycanthropics. He was annoyed at the disruption and impressed with her audacity. But it wasn’t her question that lingered in his mind later that day. It was the sound of her voice, the tilt of her head, the fire in her eyes.

“Anyway,” Charlie continued, breaking Simon from his reminiscence, “I walked right over to her and introduced myself. Tipped my hat and said, name’s Charlie Blue and I think I love you.”

Simon grinned in spite of himself.

Charlie laughed and reddened at the memory of his boldness. “I know, but ya say some pretty stupid stuff when you’re in love. She laughed at me, but I was a cocky son of a gun and didn’t give up. She said it was improper for her to talk to a man she hadn’t been introduced to. See? Her sister piped up that no matter what, it wouldn’t be proper for her to be talking with the likes of me, but Mary, she had this look in her eyes. Then she, I’ll never forget, she asked me if I knew anyone in the park. Told her I knew the cop over on the southeast corner. Course, I didn’t tell her how I knew him,” he added with a wink.

“Luck was on my side that day. She knew the fella too. God bless him, old Pete never let on and gave us the proper how do ya do’s. And from that moment on, I couldn’t think of nothin’ else but her. It was like a fever, ya know? A wonderful fever.”

Charlie started to take another drink, but his cup was empty, and he set it aside. “I courted her best I could. She was from a good family. The kind that lives so high up they can’t see nothin’ without lookin’ down their noses. Me, I was a regular Joe, but Mary, she made me feel special. Like me, Charlie Blue, was somebody.”

Simon knew the feeling, the way Elizabeth had looked when he gave her the stuffed tiger—like he was the only man in the world.

Charlie looked at the bottle for a moment, then pushed it aside with the back of his hand. “One day, we hadn’t seen each other for a week. We’re supposed to meet, and she don’t show. That’s not her, so I get worried. I go round to her house, and her mother tells me she won’t be seeing me no more. Seems she’s found another fella. Somebody who could give her the things I couldn’t, I guess.” His voice couldn’t hide the bitterness, even after all the years.

“I didn’t believe it at first. Not my Mary. So, I went back the next day and told ’em I wasn’t leavin’ till she told me face to face.”

Charlie shook his head, and his eyes misted over. “I was a damn fool. She came down and stood behind the screen door. Looked me in the eye and told me it was over.”

Simon remembered all too well the expression on Elizabeth’s face when she told him she was moving out. An ending before a beginning.

Charlie’s brawny hands clenched around the empty cup. “I was so angry, I couldn’t see straight. Didn’t see straight. Didn’t see what was right in front of me. She was thin. Too thin. And so pale. But I didn’t see it. All I saw was red.” He laughed bitterly. “Last time I saw her, and I didn’t even really see her.”

Simon fought down the panic that welled inside his chest.

Charlie sighed heavily and played with the frayed ends of his bar rag. “Got a letter from her sister ’bout two months later. Mary had the influenza and…died. Didn’t want me to know. Didn’t want me to watch it happen.”

The desperation Simon had felt during his nightmare prickled at his skin. Watching Elizabeth die.

Charlie nodded slowly, once again resigned to his fate. “I woulda taken those two months over the nothin’ I got any day. I shoulda kept on tryin’. Never be another Mary. Not for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Eleven years ago. Coulda been yesterday.” He looked up from the tattered edges of the rag and made sure he caught Simon’s eye. “You’re a lucky man, Professor. You’ve got your Mary. Don’t let her go.”

Simon nodded thoughtfully and drank the last of his Scotch. Elizabeth wasn’t his to lose. Or was she? The real question was, did he have the courage to find out?

Elizabeth gave Simon a wide berth all night. A few times he made tacit overtures; a gaze that lingered a moment too long, the beginnings of an unsure smile, and he even stuttered something about her hair. If she didn’t know better, she might let herself believe he was feeling contrite. But this was Simon Cross after all. The same man who’d just two nights before rejected and humiliated her. The same man who had nothing more to say than that he was sorry.

She’d fooled herself into believing he was something he wasn’t and paid the price. Working at Charlie’s used to be fun, but now it was all she could do to keep a smile plastered on her face for the customers. It wasn’t bad enough that she had to work with him all night, but the walk home was unbearable. Once they were in the room, she could crawl into bed, hide in the darkness. But the silence and awkwardness of walking home on the deserted streets was strangely too intimate.

Tonight she was lucky; it was bank night. Growing up around pool halls and race tracks, Elizabeth knew what that really meant. Banks, the kind Charlie and some of her father’s friends used, were no more than glorified bookies. A safe house to store your cash. The locations changed to keep the bad guys and the feds guessing. It was a risky way to handle money, but when you made your living under the table, it came with the territory.

If she could make the run with Lester the bouncer, then he could walk her on to the apartment, and she could avoid the death march with Simon. It was a good plan. Of course, convincing Charlie wasn’t so easy. He rejected the idea at first. He wasn’t too crazy about letting her go to the safe house. Guns, money, and a pretty girl—nothing good ever came out of that mix. She promised to stay out of the way, but he wouldn’t budge. When she pushed out her lower lip in her patented pout, his resolve began to weaken. She knew it was dirty pool, using her feminine wiles, but what good were wiles unless you used them now and again? Finally, Charlie agreed, the old softie, but only if she did everything Lester told her.

For his part, Simon accepted her announcement with resignation. She’d expected a lecture, or, at the very least a disapproving glare. He simply nodded and asked her to be careful. With one last significant look at Lester, he left to walk home alone. For a brief second, Elizabeth wanted to go after him, but thankfully the moment of madness passed.

Once the money was bundled, she and Lester started out. The strain of the last few days was finally beginning to hit her, and she was more than grateful that Lester was a man of few words. They walked quietly along the empty streets. The sound of their footsteps and the occasional clatter of a milk horse cart were the only noises to disturb the night and her thoughts. Had it been her imagination or was Simon less Simony tonight? He seemed distracted and softer around the edges somehow.

She shook her head and walked a little faster. No. She was not going to fall for it again. She’d take the little, shreddy remnants of her heart and move on.

She was moving on.

Definitely moving on.

If he wanted to apologize, really apologize, he’d had ample opportunity. Well, maybe not ample. She’d been gone each morning before he woke up, ignored him at the club, and didn’t talk to him at home. But if he really wanted to, he’d have found a way. So, clearly, he didn’t want to. He liked it the way it was. Her suffering and burning in the hell of abject despair was obviously the way he wanted things.

And that was fine by her. Not the suffering, she could definitely do without that part, but she didn’t need him. She was a rock. She was an island. And channeling Simon and Garfunkel was never a good sign.

She sighed so heavily, Lester actually spoke. “You okay, Lizzy?”

“Yeah. Just thinking.”

“Ah,” he said and nodded sagely. “Gotcha.”

“We almost there?”

“Yeah, not too far. Ya know,” he said, casting a quick glance over at her. “Charlie might brain me for sayin’ sumpthin’ but, I figure you got as much a right to know as anybody. Maybe more.”

That caught her attention. “Know what?”

“About King. He ain’t what you—”

Suddenly, Lester stopped walking and grabbed Elizabeth’s arm. He cocked his big, bald head to the side.

“What is it?” she asked anxiously. His sausage-sized fingers dug into her arm.

“We’re bein’—”

The figures came out of the darkness too fast for either of them to react. A pair of iron hands clamped onto her arms, pulled her out of Lester’s grip and tossed her into the shadows of the alley.

SIMON SAT IN HIS chair, his personal prison, and waited. The minutes dragged on and still Elizabeth wasn’t home. The streets below were empty and still. The only sound piercing the night was the clatter of an old-fashioned milk cart, the horse’s hooves beating out an unnatural cadence in the city night.

Simon pulled back the curtain and looked down into the darkness, willing her slender silhouette to walk down the sidewalk. Not a soul was there. Slumping back into his chair, he absently felt for the gold watch in his pocket. The feel of the etched case under his fingers wasn’t as calming as it had been a few short days ago.

He took a deep breath and tried to content himself with waiting. As the minutes grew into an hour, an uneasy sense of foreboding welled deep inside him. He should have protested her accompanying Lester on Charlie’s errand, but he knew it would have fallen on deaf ears, or worse yet, driven her further away.

He’d been an absolute fool. He’d pushed her away and then idiotically wondered where she went. He should have gone after her tonight. The niggling voice in the back of his mind whispered his darkest fears. Was tonight the night his nightmares became reality?

The room was empty without her. He was empty without her. He should have laid his heart out for her, but he’d run away. Simon pushed the chair back and stood. Time to bloody well stop running.

He retraced the path he’d taken home—up Market Street and down Madison. He vaguely thought of calling Charlie at the bar, when he realized pay phones weren’t commonplace in the twenties. He rounded a corner when he heard a voice filtering up the street. He stopped for a moment and listened. There it was again. He crossed Madison and the sounds grew more distinct—a low guttural moan and a higher voice talking in hurried, anxious tones. His long legs quickened their stride and came to a sudden stop at the mouth of an alley.

Lester lay on his back, and the small huddled form of Elizabeth bent over him.

“Dear God,” Simon choked out.

Elizabeth swung her head around at the sound. Her eyes were wide with fear and a trickle of blood on her forehead stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin.

“Simon,” she gasped in relief. “How did you…” Her voice trailed off, and her expression changed. Her eyes hardened. “What are you doing here?”

She turned back to Lester, who moaned and tried to lift his head. “It’s all right, Les.”

Simon managed to get his legs to move again. It was all he could do not to take her into his arms. He knelt down next to her and tried to slow his thundering heart. “You’re hurt. What happened?”