Entr'acte (15 page)

“How did the machine get you from place to place?” Joyce asked.

“Wells said that you traveled two years per minute inside his machine, and that yesterday lies to the west,” Cliff said. “If you’ve been to California you know that is probably the case.”

Having made a joke, he paused for “Connie’s” reaction, and when she smiled at him he began to titter. The laugh rumbled up in him and finally erupted into a guffaw that turned heads in the room.

135

Bart, who had floated back into the living room, saw Joyce talking to a man and headed in her direction.

Joyce saw him set his face with that territorial glare and cringed inside. Why is it I barely meet a guy and they decide we’re paired up for life? she thought.

She stood up as he arrived, and took Cliff’s arm. “Bart, I’d like you to meet Cliff Collins, a physics student at Columbia. Bart plays the sax in a Broadway orchestra.”

The men shook hands stiffly and then squared off like two boxers looking for an opening. Finally, Cliff spoke up. “And how do you know Connie?” he asked.

Bart glanced quizzically at Joyce, cocking his head.

“Cliff is an old family friend,” Joyce blurted out. Cliff seemed a little startled, and sad, by this pronouncement, but the three of them knew immediately that it was the truth.

“What are you all talking about?” Bart asked pleasantly.

“Time travel,” Joyce said lightly. She held Bart’s gaze a moment. “Cliff was explaining to me how it might be possible.”

“Actually, I was describing the plot of a science fiction novel,”

he said.

136

ENTR’ACTE

“Who knows, today’s science fiction could be tomorrow’s scientific fact,” Bart said.

“You may be right,” Cliff mused. “Anyway, in H.G. Wells’

time machine, you can calculate exactly where in time you want to go by the formula he lays out. You are in a conscious but vaporized state inside the machine because of the acceleration, but your body reforms when you stop.”

Bart glanced at Joyce and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head no, almost imperceptibly. The answer didn’t lie here.

“Cliff, how about this idea?” She launched into a brief explanation of the worm hole theory of the universe, as he had laid it out for her on the deck of his retirement condo in Maine.

The young Columbia student seemed fascinated. “You’re saying the universe is like a slice of Swiss cheese.”

“More like sea foam, with all those tiny bubbles,” Joyce suggested helpfully.

Cliff paced up and down in front of the sofa as he mulled this over in his mind. Finally, he stopped and said, “I don’t think so, Connie. The Earth is suspended in a universe of infinite size, but with finite distances between the objects. For example, we can calculate the exact distance between the Earth and the moon, or the distance to Mars.

“Also, time is a dimension, like height and depth. For the universe to be consistent, there would have to be these shortcuts in the other dimensions too,” he said.

“But I applaud your creativity to come up with such a thought experiment. I didn’t think you were given to thinking of such things,” Cliff said admiringly. He seemed more sure than ever that he had found his ideal woman.

Joyce smiled wanly at him.

“What about this, professor?” Bart said jovially. “Suppose I 137

FRANK JULIANO

could go back in time, and I killed my grandparents. Would I disappear?”

“Ah, that old paradox,” Cliff sniffed.

Bart winced in spite of himself, and Joyce smiled sympathetically at him.

“There are a lot of assumptions there, Bart, but basically it would work like this: a tautology. Do you know what that is?”

Bart nodded, a bit peeved.

“If your grandparents had been killed before they had their child, your parent, obviously you couldn’t have been born. So obviously, for you to have been born in the first place you could not have killed your grandparents,” Cliff said patiently.

“Something would prevent you, then, from doing anything that would alter the future?” Joyce asked.

“What about this?” Bart interjected. “Could you meet yourself? You know, go back to an earlier time in your life and meet the younger you?”

“No,” Cliff said, draining off the last of his drink and placing the glass on a passing serving tray. He was growing expansive, having collected a small knot of fascinated listeners around him.

“With all the conjecturing that’s been done on this subject—

and that’s all that’s been done—no one is saying you could exist in two points in time at the same moment.

“There is only one of each of us, and that would not change,”

Cliff pontificated.

“So there’s no way I’m here and, say, in 2007 auditioning for a show,” Joyce asked, with a sheepish shrug to Bart.

“If you got lucky you could be in the original cast and in the revival at the same time!” someone called out.

“Maybe while I’m here I’m not aware I’m there, and vice versa,” Joyce mused.

“But you see that would not happen,” Cliff insisted. “There 138

ENTR’ACTE

can only be one of you, and you are here. What might be possible, assuming any of this is possible, is that you could travel to a time that is not your own and observe.

“You may or may not be there physically, perhaps only your essence, or soul if you will, makes the journey. But we can be certain that you would not be able to interact with people out of your era.”

“Why is that?” someone asked Cliff.

“Because,” he preened. “The universe is logical and consistent. The past cannot be changed. Time travel cannot be ruled out logically, but it has to obey the rule that once an event occurs, it always occurs.”

Bart and Joyce shot each other worried glances, and gently disengaged from the conversation. There were enough shouted follow-up questions for Cliff to deal with that he could not break off the discussion to follow them.

“It sounds like Connie is doomed to get murdered,” Bart whispered.

“She’s going to disappear the day after tomorrow,” Joyce said.

“But nobody knows where she is and everyone thinks I’m her.

Am I going to disappear and get killed in her place?”

“I don’t think so,” Bart said reasonably. “Remember, the professor there said there is only one of each of us, and we know that you are alive more than 70 years from now.

“Who is that guy, anyway?” he asked.

“When I was growing up, I called him Uncle Cliff,” Joyce giggled.

Someone was asking Cliff if she knew when she was going to die, and kept going back in time to avoid that date, would she live forever?

The answer came back that, if the woman remained on Earth, she would age at the same rate regardless of what point in time she 139

FRANK JULIANO

existed in, and so would have the same lifespan. What date the calendar said wouldn’t matter.

Joyce tried to absorb this information and Cliff caught her eye beseechingly. She smiled back at him.

“He’d like to be more than your uncle,” Bart grunted near her ear.

“I told you Connie had a gun in her bedroom, and a book of names,” Joyce said. “Suppose some of those people are here? Maybe we can find out something about Connie from them.”

They decided that, since Joyce would be expected to know the people mentioned in Connie’s book if they were present, Bart would make discreet inquiries. She gave him the names she remembered: Sondra and Mildred, Dr. S and Clancey.

One rather pompous older fellow who was being referred to as

“Doc” was holding court by the piled-up coats. He had a goatee and a pinched, simian face.

The topic was controlling the means of production, and the speaker was extolling the virtues of a “workers’ paradise.”

“Goddamn Red,” Bart muttered. “Bolsheviks. Trotskyites.”

“You’ll be glad to know Communism collapses under its own weight,” Joyce said. “Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Russia, exists under a Communist system for years until all of a sudden, in the fall of 1989, the leaders decide themselves it doesn’t work and just hand over power.”

“Why doesn’t it work? I mean, what does it in?” Bart asks.

“If you guarantee people a subsistence, you take away their incentive to strive for more, and the economy collapses,” Joyce said. “People line up for toilet paper. Stores can’t stock basic necessities.”

The “doctor” overheard that last comment, and interrupted himself to point a finger at Joyce. “You just want to preserve your 140

ENTR’ACTE

comfortable, bourgeois lifestyle on the backs of the workers,” he yelled.

“Oh, please!” Joyce dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

One of the people around the speaker ran after Joyce and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Dr. Williams is not accustomed to being spoken to that way,”

he admonished her.

“He’d better get used to it,” Joyce said.

Just then Cliff crossed in front of her on his way to the door.

A blonde woman had wrapped herself around him like she was a mink stole. If Cliff bent at the waist, he could lift her in the fireman’s carry.

“She thinks I’m interesting,” the young student said with an embarrassed smile.

“I agree with her,” Joyce said kindly.

“Will I see you again, Connie?” Cliff’s voice was almost hoarse from tension and overuse.

Joyce picked up one of his hands and looked him in the eyes.

“I can guarantee it,” she said softly. Joyce kissed him lightly on the cheek as Cliff left, his new friend in tow.

Muriel swept by a moment later, on her way out with Tom.

“Don’t wait up Dearie,” she said with a tipsy giggle. “It’s so hot and stuffy in here, we’re going to get some air. We’ll probably go to breakfast after.”

Tom winked lewdly at Bart, and Joyce felt that sick feeling again. She would rather not witness such scenes.

Then she had a sudden inspiration. She put a hand on Muriel’s arm. “Is Dr. S here? That’s what I call him for short, his name is…”

Muriel wasn’t going to be any help. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Dearie.”

“Come on, let’s go,” an impatient Tom said, guiding Muriel to the door.

141

FRANK JULIANO

“Wait a minute. How about a guy named Clancey?” Joyce persisted.

“The only Clancey I know is over there. She’s an actress. You know her, Connie.”

Joyce looked where Muriel was pointing and saw a short, rather heavy young woman with long brown hair. “Clancey’s a woman? How about Sondra and Mildred?”

“I’d say they’re women too,” Tom snapped. He started to pull Muriel away again, and Bart put himself between Tom and the two roommates.

“What are you trying to tell me, Connie?” Muriel had a stunned, hurt look on her face, as if she’d been slapped. A tear was welling up in a corner of one eye.

“You’re a fine one to talk. I’d be careful myself if I were you.”

She shot a withering look at Bart, and then was gone.

“From the sound of it, Sondra, Muriel and Clancey are all—in a family way,” Bart said. “If you said Connie wrote that she brought them to see Dr. S, that could mean that he’s a, someone who helps women who…”

“An abortionist,” Joyce finally said. “Try to make time with Clancey and see what you can find out. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“Neither do I,” Bart said ruefully. “You telling me to drop a nickel on another girl.’

142

Coaxial cable snaked across the pale blue carpet in Debbie’s living room, as the television crews set up their equipment.

Three vans painted with their station logos were parked in front of the building, the satellite dishes on their roofs searching the sky for just the right line to transmit picture and sound.

Sgt. Ryerson had herded Joyce’s parents, Doug and Debbie into the bedroom that Joyce had been using, trying to prepare them for the questions that would be coming at them.

Mrs. Waszlewski sat on the bed, cradling one of her daughter’s stuffed animals. “We wanted her to finish college,” she said absently. “We wanted her to stay in Maine.”

“The thing is, the New York media can be a little—

aggressive,” Ryerson said. “If they ask you a question you don’t want to answer, just refuse to answer it. If you try to hedge, or give them any response at all, they’ll read into it what they want.”

“I can’t believe this is a big story,” Mr. Waszlewski said. “We just wanted to come and look for our daughter. We didn’t expect this.”

“Look at it this way,” Ryerson soothed. “The publicity can help. They’ll flash her picture and someone out there watching 143

FRANK JULIANO

TV or reading a newspaper may recognize her and help us find her.

“It’s a big story because it’s nearly summer, and not much happens. Also these guys are like anyone else, they’ll take the news where they can find it.

“Why go to Queens and dig up a political scandal if you’ve got a classic human interest story right here,” Ryerson said. “Parents from a small town looking for their lost daughter.”

“So they’re exploiting us,” Joyce’s father said angrily. “They’re turning my family’s time of worry into ratings for their stations and circulation for their newspapers.”

“Sure,” Ryerson said reasonably. “That’s why you want to turn it to your advantage, exploit them too. Enlist them in the search.

There’s nothing these cynical bastards like better than a happy ending.”

Doug picked up the stack of handbills off the dresser. The black and white sheets carried a photo of Joyce with “Have You Seen Her?” printed in bold letters across the top.

The flyer gave Joyce’s height, weight and age, and the phone number of Ryerson’s precinct for callers with information. It also discreetly suggested that Joyce may appear confused because of a medical problem.

“I put these on every utility pole I could find,” Doug said.

“Even on construction sites, where it was stenciled “Post No Bills” on the wooden barricades.

“I feel terrible about this,” he said. “I’m doing all I can.”

“Of course you are, and we appreciate it,” Joyce’s mother said.