Samantha Smart (6 page)

“Thanks, but I don’t eat meat,” Jordan replied, smiling his million-dollar smile. “I feel like it slows me down, and I have a very active life.”

I know,
Samantha thought. She struggled to think of something to say that would keep the conversation going.

“So–aren’t you in that group Heatwavvve?
I mean, I’m sorry but you–you look almost exactly like–”

“Jordan Anderson?” Jordan interrupted. “Yeah, that’s me. Do you know the band?”

“I–I actually have every one of your songs. I–” Samantha broke into a nervous giggle, “I’m actually kind of amazed to be meeting you. I have... a huge poster of you... on my wall, or, I, um, used to.”

“Used to?” Jordan sounded slightly surprised. “Have you outgrown Heatwavvve
already?”

“No... no! I still love Heatwavvve.
I just–well, I kind of had to... move recently, and I don’t really have any of my stuff.”

“Oh, well–that’s a shame. Hey, tell you what,” the gorgeous dreamboat said, flashing that smile and patting her on the back, “my manager’s office is two blocks from here. If you want you can walk over there with me and I’ll give you a brand new poster, signed by the whole group.”

“Wow, that’d be awesome,” said Samantha, still in dreamland.

“Come on, then,” Jordan began, getting up and lightly taking her arm to lead her. She let him pull her to her feet and began floating along like a scarf tied to the singer’s arm, his touch sending waves of pleasure-electricity through her body. They made it about a block before she even thought to look at her watch, though when she did it alarmed her.

“Oh, wait–” she began, trying to stop. Her watch read 2:55. “Jordan, I–I’m sorry, I can’t actually go right now.”

“Aw, come on,” he continued pulling her, “it’ll just take a minute! It’s right up here... ”

“I–no,” Samantha pulled backward, halting their progress. “I can’t Jordan, I have to be somewhere, like
now.
”

Jordan’s grip tightened on her arm and he continued to protest, saying again that it would ‘only take a minute.’ At last Samantha pulled her arm free of his hand, almost yelling at him.

“
I have to go.
”

“All right!” he replied, putting up his hands and looking around somewhat shiftily to see if people were watching them. Then he calmed down a bit and apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Samantha,” he began, trying to look cool and collected again.

“How,” Samantha asked looking straight into his eyes, “did you know my name?”

“Samantha,” he continued, looking strange and nervous again. “You told me. Just now.”

“Whatever,” Samantha replied, feeling that something weird had just happened but needing to get moving. “I have to go, Jordan, but if you want, I, um, I walk my dog every day around noon at Belvedere Castle in the park, uptown.”

“Okay,” Jordan smiled his winning smile again. “Well, maybe I’ll see you there sometime. I’ll try to bring you a poster.”

“That’d be great. Bye, Jordan, it was, ah, nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, you too. Take care.”

Odd,
Samantha thought to herself as she turned around and headed back towards Twenty-sixth Street. Had she told Jordan her name? She couldn’t remember; she felt, in fact, like the whole conversation had been a strange dream. It was like he had been, well,
was
the only person other than The Professor who had existed in both the normal timeline and the new, altered one that she was walking through now.

She shook her head to clear it of confusion and dreaminess. It didn’t matter right now–she was at the door to the building whose address matched the one on the piece of paper given to her by The Professor. She scanned the board at the entrance with her eyes and found the name she was looking for–Alan Horrowitz And Associates–and noted the call number next to it, 060.
Her fingers dialed the number on the phone-like keypad and a voice answered.

“Alan Horrowitz and Associates,” it said in a bored, nasally voice. “Who’s calling, please?”

Samantha cleared her throat and thought quickly, spewing out the best thing she could think of.

“Hi, this is Samantha Smart–I’m here to interview Ms. Edelstein for my, uh, school newspaper, the...
Roslyn High Examiner...
”

“One moment please,” the voice replied. This was followed by a long silence.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring at the little metal speaker, the buzzer buzzed to let her in. She almost didn’t snap out of her daze in time but caught the door and opened it just before the sound stopped.

Samantha made her way to the elevator in the lobby’s far right-hand corner, located the agent’s office on the directory board and walked through the doors when they opened, pressing the button on the inside for the fifth floor. The doors closed and she began to move slowly upward, watching the numbers light up as she passed floors two, three and four. As ‘five’ lit up, the elevator stopped, opening its doors and ringing a little bell that sounded like it belonged in a Japanese economy car.

Apparently the whole floor was occupied by Alan Horrowitz And Associates,
as there was a sort of lobby here, too, with a receptionist’s desk straight in front of her. She walked up to it, noticing that the receptionist was on the phone, and stood waiting patiently.

“No, Mr. Horrowitz doesn’t represent
children’s
authors,” she was saying to someone. “I– know that adolescents aren’t
exactly
children, but as I said–” more silence as the persistent author continued in a minuscule voice Samantha could almost make out. “Yes, well, again, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid your book just isn’t our kind of material. Thank you!” The receptionist hung up, looking peeved at the caller, then noticed Samantha and instantly painted a somewhat patronizing smile back onto her face.

“You must be Ms. Smart,” she said in a voice that dripped with feigned honey. “We’ve been expecting you.” Samantha smiled and nodded.

“Come on, then,” she said, getting up from the desk and motioning for Samantha to follow her down a long hallway. “Ms. Edelstein doesn’t usually give interviews, but I think she was a bit charmed by the notion of a young girl from a high school paper. Right this way... ” She opened a door to a large, sunny office with Alan Horrowitz’s name on it. Samantha was led in and seated in a comfortable chair in front of an impressively large desk, and the receptionist pressed a button on the desk intercom and spoke into it.

“Mr. Horrowitz, Samantha Smart is here from the school paper.”

“Right! We’ll be in in a minute,” a man’s voice replied from the plastic box. The receptionist smiled at her and started towards the door.

“They’ll just be a moment. Can I get you anything while you’re waiting?”

“No, thank you,” Samantha replied politely as the spokesmodel-esque woman exited.

Think fast,
she said to herself. She pulled out a little notepad on which she had scribbled some ‘cover’ questions on the taxi-boat ride down, in addition to Professor Smythe’s ‘essential’ questions. She had to play this like she was actually interested in Violet Edelstein’s poetry and short stories, though she had read none of them. She realized, in fact, that she had never really interviewed anyone
before, except maybe her brother Todd, for some dumb school assignment. She hoped she could pull off the charade.

After five minutes or so, a side door into the office opened and a well-dressed man in his forties appeared, helping a very old woman walk to the chair opposite Samantha’s. She gave Samantha a smile as he helped her sit down, then the man walked over and shook her hand.

“Hello, Ms. Smart. This is the elusive Violet Edelstein.” He indicated the old woman.

“Hello,” Samantha replied, looking at both of them.

“I’m Alan Horrowitz, Ms. Edelstein’s agent. Ah, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some business to attend to, so I’ll leave you two alone.” He smiled and exited back through the door they had come in through.

“So,” Violet Edelstein said after a brief but somewhat uncomfortable silence. “You write for your school paper?”

“Yes,” Samantha blurted out. “But I’d like to write other things someday... like you.”

“I wrote for my high school newspaper,” the aged author began dreamily, “
The Pelham High Gazette.
My, that was a long time ago.”

“Um–did you like writing for the paper?” Samantha asked, pretending to take notes.

“Well... I suppose as much as you seem to,” she replied, staring at her with knowing eyes. “I always wanted to write fiction, though. And of course poetry, though,” she chuckled, “I certainly never expected to make money off of that. Fiction and poetry, they’re much more... imaginative. More fun to envision, you know?”

“Absolutely,” replied Samantha. “What would you say is the key to any successful story?”

The old woman thought for a moment, then lifted her finger and pointed at Samantha.

“Research. A story, a person, a place–all of these things are always more believable, more tangible if they are thoroughly and earnestly researched. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Samantha chewed her pen. “I would indeed. Do you, ah, do you remember when your first story was published?”

“Why, of course,” Violet responded. “Like it was yesterday. I was very young and naive then, but–” she smiled devilishly, “I also had the fires of love in me.

“My first story to be published was about a man who wanted to cure cancer, a man who wanted nothing more than to, well, to help his fellow man. It was called
The Mad Scientist.
He wasn’t really mad, of course, just very passionate about pursuing something that, well, that thousands of young scientists are still pursuing today. Curing cancer has proved to be quite a difficult task.” She chuckled.

“To be sure.” Samantha smiled back. “And was this man completely made up, or was he based on someone that you knew?”

The old woman eyed her thoughtfully. “There was a man I knew,” she began, hesitating. “He was very charming–not in the way that most girls might find a man to be charming, but very... admirable. Dedicated.”

“Dedicated,” Samantha repeated, scribbling. “And how did you come to know him?”

“We–well, we... dated for some time. A long time ago, before all this flooding business. We... we thought about getting married, actually–but that was back when every boy a girl dated was thought of as a potential husband, you know.” She chuckled again, looking up at the ceiling as if she were remembering something distantly pleasant. “He used to write me the sweetest letters... ”

“Well,” Samantha pressed on after a bit of silence. “What, ah, what became of this charming, dedicated fellow?”

“We... we lost touch, I suppose. He had talked about moving, to North Carolina, I think. He said he had a big opportunity there, that he was going there to ‘check into it’ and that he would write me again when he settled into a place–he had lived in Brooklyn up until then–but I never got his letter, if he wrote one. Then there was a–a terrible fire at my house and I had to move as well. It was all rather dramatic, really. I suppose we were just–never meant to be. But that’s all ancient history.”

Samantha’s mind was racing. A letter that wasn’t delivered, or was delivered to a pile of ashes. A wedding that never happened. A child who was never born? It was clutch time, and she decided to blurt out a blatant question.

“Ms. Edelstein,” she said a little shakily. “That man–was his name Vincent Bergen?”

Violet Edelstein looked shocked and seemed to become most pale, as if she had seen a ghost, and Samantha was briefly afraid she might have a heart attack or something.

“Why, yes–yes, it was. But how... how could you know that?” she asked in awe.

“Perhaps you were
meant to be together,” Samantha replied, getting up and taking the dumbstruck author’s hand. “Thank you, Ms. Edelstein,” she said firmly but gently. “ You have been a tremendous help. I think I have enough here for the story I wanted to write.” She moved toward the door, confident that this was all the information she needed.

“W–Wait,” the old woman squeaked out. “How do you know about... Vincent?”

“Research,” Samantha winked, exiting the office.

Samantha smiled as she walked in the late afternoon sun up Seventh Avenue. She had totally pulled off what she considered to be a very professional impersonation. Not only had she got the information she was sent to get, she had extracted it smoothly and cleverly, saving the blunt question for last, when she had been pretty much sure of the answer already. As much as she loved forensic science, this sort of work was very exciting, too. Perhaps she could be some sort of detective or private investigator–it was much the same as forensics, the basic gist being to gather the facts and try to make a logical conclusion. The exciting thing about this sort of work, though, was that you got to be out “in the field,” interacting with people in the real world and developing skills like impersonating school reporters. It was definitely less dull than sitting in a lab analyzing newspapers under a microscope, though her smart and logical side (of which she was very fond) told her that the latter job probably paid more, and The Professor’s bank account seemed to confirm this. She shrugged to herself; maybe she could do both. She was a young, energetic girl.