Time Out of Mind (18 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
You're beginning to feel something, aren't you?”
Gwen had been watching his brow.
Nothing I can grab hold of,” he answered. But Gwen thought she saw a certain defiance in his manner. He'd
stiffened a bit and was walking with greater purpose. The
umbrella-cane snapped forward.
Do you,” he asked finally, “feel any sense of being
out of place here? Might anybody put you down, for ex
ample, if they knew you chose to spend time in this part of the city?”
“
Of course not.” She shook her head. “The fact is I do
spend a fair amount of time here. I've been to Carnegie
Hall three or four times, the last for a Bach festival. And
I've been to the Russian Tea Room for both lunch and dinner.”
“
What's that?”
A restaurant next to Carnegie Hall.” She pointed up
the street. “It caters to the music crowd mostly. At lunch
the place maintains a sort of bohemian chic to keep the turtleneck-and-sneaker set feeling at home, but they get
concertgoers in the evening. A lot of black tie.”
“
Like Tony Pastor’s?''
”
I don't know Tony Pastor's.”
“
Or the bar of the Hoffman House. Except that's for men
only.”
“
You're joking.”
Corbin glanced at her blankly.
“
Where,” Gwen asked, “would you find a public bar in
this city that excludes women?”
“
Well, it's ...” Corbin stammered, his expression sud
denly clouded. He was staring into the distance ahead of
them. “It's not a question of exclusion. More a matter
of...”
“
Of what, Jonathan?” She tried to follow his eyes.
“
Propriety.” His voice was barely audible.
That
corner. Gwen Leamas tried to make herself
light and quiet so as not to disturb whatever was entrancing Jonathan Corbin.
“
Tell me about the Hoffman House,” she said softly.
”
A hotel. Like many another.”
About the Hoffman House bar, then. It caters to gen
tlemen like yourself?”
Not all those seen there are gentlemen. It is a favorite
of the Tammany crowd, and of actors and professional athletes. Some good men, at least, among those. And of course
every rustic who visits New York feels bound to go there
and gape at the painting. No, they are not all gentlemen,
dearest. There is more than one patron who might be better
for having his ears ...”
“
Go on, Jonathan. His what?”
Corbin stopped. He halted in mìdstride, swaying, and for
a moment Gwen thought he would fall. He bent and picked
up a handful of snow, which he pressed hard against his
face, sucking in cold air through gloved fingers. Concerned
but excited, Gwen pressed him.
“
Might be better for having his what, Jonathan? Don't
lose your thought.”
”
... his ears boxed. God damn!”
“
The man you thrashed. He was in the Hoffman House
bar?”
Corbin nodded, his eyes wide.
“
His name, Jonathan. Quick, before you lose it.”
“
One of Gould's people. Corning. Carney. Something
like that.”
“
Then who is Gould?”
I don't know. Jay Gould, I guess. One of the old robber
barons.”
You guess, you say. A moment ago you would have known.” But Gwen knew she had herself to blame. She'd called him Jonathan. There he was, walking with Margaret a
gain back in that other time and chatting away with all
sorts of new clues and she, like a dolt, had to call him two
or three times by a name that was almost certain to pull
him back out of it. Well, she thought, I won't make that
mistake again. What do we suppose Margaret called him?
I assume they didn't call each other dearest all day long.
How about my darling? Did they say that then? Of course.
As in “Oh, my darling, Clementine.” “In any event,” she told him, “we've made progress. This ghost of yours beat
up a man whose name sounds like Corning, who possibly
worked for the financier Jay Gould, in the men's bar of a
hotel called the Hoffman House.”
It's not a men's bar. Just a bar. Women didn't go
there.”
Whatever.” She took his hand in hers. “Now here's
the important part. You saw something while we were walking that made him come out inside you. You were
staring up ahead toward the corner where we think your
dream starts. Was that it? Was that corner what brought
him out?”
Corbin raised his head and focused on the northwest cor
ner, diagonally across Seventh Avenue from Carnegie Hall.
It did nothing to him. The sidewalk there was covered for
two hundred feet in either direction by a sheltered walkway
of the type that protects pedestrians at construction sites. A
Chock Full O' Nuts restaurant on the corner was barely
visible under the walkway, and a dozen or so smallish
shops on either side. On the Fifty-seventh Street side, he
saw a green awning that marked the entrance of the build
ing that housed the restaurant and shops. Only a portion of the awning and its brass posts was visible under the walkway scaffolding. There was writing on it. A street address
number. There were also words but they were almost totally
obscured. The letters
The Ös
were all he saw.
“
Urn, darling?” Gwen tugged at his sleeve.
He did not respond. His eyes, squinting, lifted and re-
focused upon the massive brown structure that rose up from
the scaffolding. Corbin felt his stomach tighten.
“
Darling, what is happening?”
He'd seen the building, noticed it, as they walked up the gentle slope of Fifty-seventh Street toward Carnegie Hall.
It would have been impossible not to see it. Even then it
was familiar. So familiar, he now realized, that it had sent
no particular signal to his brain. Like the office building he
entered many times each week without really seeing.
I'm okay,” he told her, his gaze dropping once again
to that green awning.
“
Is it that big brownstone? You know it, don't you?”
Brownstone. Yes, he nodded. One doesn't usually think
of brownstones as being that big but that's what it was. The building was eleven stories high, a fact Corbin knew with
out counting, but like the old Waldorf-Astoria it seemed
half again as large. Each two-paneled window, already
oversized, had a third pane above it, a transom made of
stained glass. Each stained-glass design was different. The
ceilings inside must have been ten, even twelve feet high.
On the outside, great ledges, bays, and cornices of stone
all contributed to the feeling of immensity. Near the roof
line he could see a dull mottled effect on the surface of the
outer walls. The stone up there was decomposing under
many decades of attack by weather and pollution. Veneer-
like slivers had randomly separated and fallen away, requiring the construction of the protective walkway below.
Jonathan!” Gwen Leamas turned his face toward her
own. “Do you know that building?”
”
I don't. I think he does.”
with the letters
Os.
Tell me the rest of it.”
“
The Osborne Apartments.”
“
You've seen the building before?”
”
I guess.”
“
Damnation, Jonathan. Have you or haven't you?”
”
I don't think so. I've never been over here.”
“
Then how could you know it says ‘The Osborne’?”
“
Maybe it doesn't.”
“
You're being exasperating, Jonathan. Let's go look.”
Corbin shook his head. “Gwen, I'm not going inside that
building.”
“
We'll get just near enough,” she promised, “to read
the script on the awning. And perhaps take the teeniest peek
through the front door.”
Corbin turned away, his jaw set.
Gwen decided not to press it. The relative calm that had
sustained him through the day thus far was beginning to
wear thin. Twice that she knew of, this ghost of Jonathan's had been in and out and Jonathan seemed well able to deal
with it. But this building seemed much closer to home than
any of the other stimuli. Very possibly it
was
home. A
single glance into the lobby might bring on a flood of clear
memories that would go a long way toward solving the
mystery. But it might also, as Jonathan said he feared, fully
bring out this strange other person while forever impris
oning Jonathan.
Let's cross.” She nudged him toward the curb. ''You can wait outside that Chock Full O' Nuts while I get a
closer look.”
mound left by the city's plows. He was not eager to be parked by Gwen on that corner,
the
corner, of all places,
and he wondered whether her choice was deliberate. But a
stubbornness that was entirely Jonathan Corbin kept him
from yielding fully to the sense of dread he felt.
Once there, she studied him closely, releasing him and
turning away only when he reassured her with a shake of
his head. Corbin did, in fact, feel surprisingly at ease, and,
realizing that, allowed himself to ponder why. His back was
to the large brown building. That could be part of it. Or all
of it. Around him, absolutely nothing was familiar. Looking
back across at Carnegie Hall, a building that had to be at
least as old as the Osborne Apartments, was like seeing it for the first time. It
was
the first time, of course, for Jon
athan Corbin, certainly from this perspective. But if the
man inside him had stood upon this corner, if this spot had
made an impression so profound that it endured for perhaps
a hundred years, Corbin would have expected it to trigger
at least an emotion or two. But there was nothing. Only a
sense of strangeness.
Looking south, in the direction from which the wind had
come that dark night, he saw only office buildings of stone
and glass, most with assorted retail stores at their street
levels. The roadway itself, Seventh Avenue, was much
wider than the dark street strewn with fallen wires that he
saw in the corners of his mind. Impossibly wider. They could hardly have moved all the buildings back. It could not be the same street.
ward Sixth Avenue, he again saw nothing at all that jogged
his memory. He could envision the Sixth Avenue Elevated
and the little signal tower that came before the terminus, but he knew he was creating these from past apparitions.
As he stood there, his imagination began to fill in other
details as they might have been during his grandfather's
time. There would have been trees along the sidewalks.
And fashionable town houses of ornate stone. There would
have been a church. Down there on the left. It would have
a single bell tower and it would be in a park-like setting
complete with a churchyard. He could almost see Gwen
and himself strolling past it on a quiet Sunday morning.
Past it? Why not toward it? Into it. Corbin brushed the detail aside. Perhaps they were headed toward another
church farther on. One of the Fifth Avenue churches.
