Time After Time (21 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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He frowned and tensed slightly. She felt the change, rose and looked at him. He averted his head and sat up straight, a troubled expression on his face.
“Are you all right?”
“I'm not sure.”
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing's wrong,” he replied, staring across the room at a fern in a terra-cotta pot. The bloody hell nothing was wrong!
Since she trusted him already, didn't she deserve the honesty that she had asked for? Then he shuddered. He might never again have her arms around him and feel her lithe frame next to his. He might as well call her Juliet and admit that he had stabbed Tybalt without cause. Yes, what he was about to say could shatter them forever, and
no trip on a time machine could repair that kind of damage. But she had to know.
“There's something I haven't told you,” he said, quietly anguished.
She took his face in her hands and looked square into his eyes. “If you're going to tell me that you lied to me before just so you could—”
“I haven't lied to you!”
“Let me finish.” She paused. “If you're going to say that you're married, I won't believe you.” She looked down. Her face was pale and her voice became distant. “And if you really are, then please don't tell me. Just leave and don't come back.”
“For the last time, Amy, I am not married!” he exploded, then sprang to his feet and paced. “What do you think I am? A bloody philanderer?”
Puzzled, she stared at him as he walked in irregular patterns. “Well, if you're not married, what else could possibly be wrong?”
“I … I don't know how …” His voice cracked.
“Dammit, Herbert, will you please tell me?”
“I … I was born in Essex, London, on September twenty-first—”
“Oh my God.” Exasperated, she exhaled in a long hiss. Then she glared at him. “So you're a Virgo. Terrific. I'm a Scorpio. Want to throw the I Ching?”
“Amy!” he cried with agony. “I was born one hundred and thirteen years ago!”
He must be joking, she thought, staring at him, amazed. What incredible gibberish! Is he mad?
There was, however, a limit to her threshold of pain. She could take no more of this little man rattling on about the fourth dimension. She slowly rose to her feet.
“Herbert?”
“Now that you understand, my dear,” he said, unthinking, “I can tell you that I hate to be called Herbert. I am H. G. Wells, and I prefer to be addressed by my initials.”
“H. G. Wells?” She hadn't been prepared for that. “And Shakespeare's just around the corner, right?” she said sarcastically.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I think you'd better go now,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. She saw his eyes open wide. Then dim as if someone had turned off a light behind them.
“You don't believe me,” he said dully. “For a moment there, I thought—” Suddenly, he approached her, his arms open wide. “Amy, you must—”
“Please don't come near me!”
He sighed bitterly. “I knew this would happen. I knew that telling you the truth would ruin everything, but you had to know.
And I could no longer carry on the grotesque charade of being a modern, incredibly naïve Britisher, especially if we were—”
“If we were what?”
“Please forget it. Nothing matters anymore.” He started for the door, head down, disconsolate.
“Forget what?”
He turned. “It's a damnable pity!”
“What's a pity? What are you talking about?”
“I don't know about anyone else in this room, but I happen to be falling in love with you!”
Surprised, she stared at him, astonished and bewildered.
And then suddenly he sank onto the couch in a paroxysm of sobs. He angrily wiped away tears. “There is no God! No Supreme Being would ever create a human being and then allow this to happen to him!”
“Herbert, are you all right?” She wasn't at all sure about herself. “Will you please tell me what is going on?”
“I just did! My name is H. G. Wells, and I was born in 1866, and I came here—not on a bloody airship—but on a time machine that right now I wish I'd never invented!
“And I probably never would have landed here in the first place if Dr. Leslie John Stephenson hadn't stolen away in my machine! And he is no ordinary killer, my dear lady! Oh, no! I don't know how much of a history buff you are, what with your Robert Kennedys and the like, but villain I am pursuing a man they call Jack the Ripper!”
The man's definitely a nut, she told herself, and God knows what his reference to Jack the Ripper means. She began looking around for something to protect herself with. Her heartbeat pounded.
He rose from the couch. “It is of no use.” His voice was low and sad. “I might as well try to tell this couch here that it is—like me—a perpetually moving swirl of electrons.” Defeated, he slowly moved toward the door.
He might be a mental case, she thought, but it was clear that he was not going to harm her. As a matter of fact, the more she watched him, the more normal he seemed. Hold it, she thought, and sat up straight. She had to play this out, for no man was going to get off that easily after spinning such an incredible tale.
He had his hand on the doorknob when she spoke.
“Wait.”
He sagged and pressed his forehead against the cool, enameled surface.
“Sit down.”
He returned to the couch and gingerly perched on its edge, appearing to her vaguely reminiscent of a dog with a broken spirit. She leaned forward. She thought, is any of this possible?
Was he actually from another galaxy? Or an alien who had transmogrified himself into a small and infinitely lovable English gentleman? She shivered. If this were indeed an encounter of the third kind, then that meant that she had slept with a creature! God help her if his original form were that of an insect and she was pregnant! No, no, she told herself, that's just too surreal.
Finally, she began thinking clearly and smiled grimly. First, this man was naive and helpless. Second, she had made both spoken and unspoken commitments. Third, she had obviously frightened him. Fourth, this was his demented way of extracting himself from a delicate situation. (Perhaps all he had expected was a one-night stand and had suddenly discovered that he cared for her.) Therefore, what he was really trying to say was that he was already spoken for. That was it, wasn't it? Pure and simple, no matter what he'd said before, he had a wife back home in a cottage near the seashore. He wasn't chasing a killer, he was probably collecting books for the University of Oxford's library. That had to be the answer.
“Why didn't you just say so in the first place?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why didn't you admit that you were married? What did you think I was going to do? Shoot you? I mean, face it. I've slept with married men before.”
He blushed.
Aha, she thought. I was right!
“The irony of it.”
“What irony?”
“My dear girl, the irony is that someday I might be able to prove to you that I am the writer and inventor H. G. Wells, from 1893 London, but it seems that I'll never convince you that I happen to be foot-loose and fancy-free.”
“Oh, come on, Herbert!”
“H.G.,” he corrected her.
“All right, H.G., whatever! Since you're obviously not man enough to admit it, you might at least tell me why you concocted that bullshit story about spinning along the fourth dimension in a time machine! I mean, there must be a reason!”
“I would agree.”
“Well, then?”
“It is the truth,” he replied flatly.
“Ohhh, damn you!” She pushed back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “That's it, then. I'm sorry. Would you please leave?”
“What if I could prove to you that I am H. G. Wells? And that I recently arrived in San Francisco in a time machine?”
“That's impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, given the wizardry of science and technology.”
“Look, just forget it, okay? Just forget it and lock the door on your way out.” She turned away and closed her eyes tightly, but could not ignore the twinge of interest inside her.
“Listen, wasn't I right about Stephenson being alive? That was the truth, wasn't it?”
“Yes.”
“What if I could prove to you that I am who I am?”
“Okay, okay! Just let me think a minute, will you?” She bit her nails—a habit that she had given up at age eight—and thought hard. She sighed. He might not be lying to her, but what he was saying was impossible. Yet, she had to see this thing through, she had to go with him every step of the journey.
She got out of her chair. She was slightly dizzy and had to hold her head. Then she smiled. Her giddiness was not the result of emotional turmoil; rather, it was the product of a strange excitement that had seized her. What if he could prove his identity? If so, her predilection for him might turn out to be cosmic.
“All right, H.G. Prove it.”
“Do you have any tools?” he asked in an urgent voice.
“Tools?” She could not hide her amazement.
“You know, pliers, screwdrivers, wrenches, wire cutters, drills and the like.”
“Yes, I have a few, but why?”
“And some oil. I'll need a can of oil, too.”
 
 
At the corner of Fourteenth and Noe streets in a dour and uninteresting section of the city, Stephenson got out of a taxi, paid the driver, then walked briskly to the address she had given him. He suddenly shivered. His purple silk shirt beckoned the cold; he felt as if it were fashioned from ice. Tomorrow, he must purchase a coat. Not anything as dreary as a wool Chesterfield, but rather one of those imitation-leather creations that the colored men seemed so enamored of.
He went up concrete steps into the foyer of a Victorian apartment building. The worn carpet was clean, yet smelled musty, and
someone in the ground-floor flat had fried bacon several hours ago. His nose wrinkled with distaste, just as his eyes narrowed upon seeing the faded decor. He hated to be reminded of the nineteenth century.
He scanned the mailboxes for her name. Sure enough, there it was: “Marsha McGee: 37
1/2
Noe Street.” He turned and bounded up the stairs two at a time. If he hesitated now—on this, his first legitimate liaison with a woman—then he would bolt from the building and run screaming to The Broadway. He could not think about it. He had to trust his own animal magnetism. He did not want to pay for the postmortems he performed anymore.
Suddenly, he was there, staring at the numbers on the door. Below them was a peephole window and a metal knocker with the brass plating peeling off. He took a deep breath and rapped quickly on the wood.
“Just a second!”
He heard quick footsteps, and then the door was flung open (without a prudent look through the peephole window). He felt a pleasant rush of warm air.
“Hi. C'mon in.” She was wearing jeans and a tight undershirt that emphasized her breasts and naked shoulders. Just brushed, her abundant hair shone, and he was reminded of a forbidden French postcard he had once found in his father's study called “Lady Godiva.”
He entered her apartment hesitantly. Was he overdressed for the occasion? If so, she did not seem to notice. She took his hand, led him across the bare wooden floor and pushed him down onto a splayed couch. It was the only piece of furniture in the room.
“Like a wine cooler?”
He nodded.
“Great, I've got a couple made up already.” She went into the kitchen and returned moments later with two glasses. She handed
him one, set hers on the floor by the couch. Then she went through what was once a double doorway into a darkened portion of the room that now served as her boudoir.
He saw her rummaging through a dresser (perhaps for a blouse to don?), then averted his head and tasted the concoction in the glass. It was a mixture of soda water, a peel of lemon and red wine. He was unimpressed, but the chilled liquid did soothe his dry throat.
She came back into the room proper, hips swaying as she moved, and went to the phonograph, which had been placed in the dormer bay window.
“You like Fleetwood Mac?”
“Quite,” he uttered, vague but curious.
“Everyone I know goes for Linda Ronstadt in a big way, but she's just too sad for me. All those ruined love affairs and lonely nights. What a life.” Then she laughed. “I could sure go for the money that chick's got, though.”
She pressed a button on the record machine and turned up the volume. The room was flooded with sound, and Stephenson instinctively jumped, making a quick move to protect his ear drums. He was sure that the music could be heard blocks away, yet she was swaying to the beat in the center of the room as if the sound were the most natural thing in the world. He relaxed, and enjoyed the primitive rhythm and the high, sweet harmonies. The music did not have the grandeur of his favorite, Ring of the Nibelungen (which he had had the great fortune to see performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the brilliant Wagner himself when he, Stephenson, was a first-year student at the Normal School of Science), but it was satisfactory. He smiled. It would do.
She sat down beside him, opened her left hand and revealed a hand-rolled cigarette. She lit it and inhaled deeply. The odor was unfamiliar to him; it wasn't tobacco, nor was it opium, which he had tasted in the squalid dens of the East End.
“It's some homegrown that I got from an old boy friend when I went back to Modesto to see my folks last month.” She spoke directly into his ear in order to be heard over the music. Her close, hot breath made him shiver. She took another drag on the curious cigarette, then held it out for him.
He balked at first, then quickly figured that her gesture must be some modern refinement of the old American Indian custom of passing the peace pipe. It was, thus, a ritual of friendship and trust, and he laughed inside. He took the homegrown, imitated her then collapsed with a series of coughs.
She giggled. “Oh, that homegrown! You gotta get used to it.”
He wiped away the tears in his eyes and nodded dumbly. A silent moment passed between them; there was only the music. He took a more conservative pull off the weed and passed it back.
“So what brings you to San Francisco?” she asked between drags, her eyes slitted now, her voice thick.
“The weather,” he replied, suddenly light and giddy inside.
“The weather? Jesus, if I could afford it, I'd move to Honolulu in the morning.”

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