The Christmas Eve Letter: A Time Travel Novel (40 page)

Eve smiled at him, her eyes lighting up with joy when she saw he was awake.

“Hey there, Patrick.  Wassup?”

He squinted at her.  What did she say?  Was it really Eve?  It was her hair that first startled him.  Her glossy blonde locks were styled in a chic messy bob, parted at the side. She wore tight designer jeans, a tight fitting red sweater, long hoop earrings and 2-inch heels. 

Eve sashayed toward him, her face glowing with happiness.  Patrick tried to speak but nothing came out.  She drew up to his bedside, looking down at him with warm blue eyes. 

“Feeling more like yourself?” she asked.

He tried to speak again and failed.  He just kept staring up at her.  Her presence surrounded him, like some feverish dream. 

“Myself?  Where am I?” he finally said.

“Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.”

He looked her over again, his drowsy eyes still trying to take it all in.  “I don’t understand… Your clothes, Miss Kennedy.  Your hair.  What has happened to you?”

Eve posed, with a hand on her hip.  “Do you like my new look?  I did it all for you, so you could see me as I really am.”

He stared, straining to understand.  “I don’t know you, Miss Kennedy.”

She reached and touched his hair.  “Yes, you do, Patrick.  It’s the same ole me, just packaged a little differently.”

He held her eyes for a time.  “Yes, yes… your eyes are the same.”

“I
am
the same, Patrick.  Just the same.  You’ve been sick for a long time.”

He quietly, politely studied her.  “You are quite attractive, Miss Kennedy.”

“And you look better today than you have for a very long time.” 

Eve turned serious.  “Do you remember anything, Patrick, about what happened?”

“Just pieces of dreams.  Odd dreams,” he said inspecting his room.  “What is all this?  All these things?  I don’t understand all this.”

“Just relax, Patrick.  I’ll tell you everything when you’re better.”

“What day is it?”

“Saturday, December 19th.”

He lowered his gaze.  “So much time has passed.”

Eve thought,
You have no idea.

He looked at her, expectant.  “When can I leave and return home?”

“Tomorrow morning you will be discharged to my care.”

His eyes were vague and large.  “Your care?”

He thought about it.  “Well, there is something intimately pleasant about that, Miss Kennedy.”

Eve found a chair, tugged it to his beside and sat down.  She looked at him earnestly.

“Patrick, I think the time is finally right for me to tell you the truth about myself: where I came from and who I truly am.  It is a bizarre story—even an unbelievable story—but while I’m telling you, I want you to look deeply into my eyes.  You know me well now.  We have been through a lot together.  You will know from my eyes that what I’m going to tell you is the truth.  The absolute truth.”

Eve’s heart was already beating rapidly.  After Patrick heard the truth, would he still be in love with her?  Would he feel trapped, as she had felt in 1885?

“You sound quite melodramatic, Miss Kennedy.  Please tell your story.  I have been waiting for this for a very long time.”

And so Eve told him everything, leaving out nothing, including the fact that Patrick Gantly was now living in the year 2016.

Patrick did gaze into Eve’s beautiful blue eyes as she told her story, honestly and methodically.  He saw a clear, strong force in her eyes and, whenever she mentioned him by name, he saw warmth and tenderness.  He saw desire.  These are what moved him most about Eve Kennedy’s outlandish and ridiculous tale of time travel, and how he was now living in the 21st century, in the year 2016. 

Patrick didn’t know why Eve felt it necessary to fabricate such a story, but most of him didn’t care, and a lot of him still felt weak and confused and, frankly, uninterested.

It was Eve who enthralled him—richly captivated him—by her graceful gestures, her contralto voice that seemed to vibrate deep into his chest, and her lovely, animated face that was at times serious, at times eager, but always so very pretty, with those glistening, tender red lips that he longed to kiss.

When Eve finished, she sat back, waiting for his response, trying to read his impassive face.  Patrick gave her that devastating, lopsided, cocky grin that she had always found irresistible.  How she wanted to climb on top of him and kiss it until it vanished.

“So?” Eve asked.  “So now that you know everything, what do you think?”

He shrugged his left shoulder.  “To be honest, Miss Kennedy, I…”

She cut him off.  “Stop calling me Miss Kennedy.  My name is Evelyn Aleta Sharland.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “As you say, then, Miss Sharland.”

Eve sighed, shaking her head in frustration.  “Whatever.  What do you think?  What do you think about my story, Patrick?”

“Miss Sharland,” Patrick continued.  “It was a lovely and entertaining story, but we still have to leave New York.  Inspector Byrnes and Albert Harringshaw will not rest until we are under lock and key, or dead.  I suggest that you manage my immediate release so that we can book passages on the first ship to San Francisco.”

Eve stared at him, intensely, her eyes blinking fast.   “You don’t believe me?  I mean, you didn’t believe a word I said, did you?”

“Miss Sharland, Eve, it was a highly imaginative story, but stories will not help us escape to San Francisco.”

Eve stood up and began pacing the room, thinking.  She stopped and turned, suddenly, facing him.

“Detective Sergeant Gantly, I will be back tomorrow morning and you will be discharged.  In the meantime, think about everything I’ve told you, because unless you believe me, tomorrow you’re going to have quite a shock.”

The next morning, Eve brought Patrick new underwear, a T-shirt, khaki pants, a red and green flannel shirt, blue and white sneakers, and a brown leather jacket, all purchased the day before at Bloomingdale’s.  He’d stared at them, apprehensively, but he put them on, carefully, silent and watchful, still feeling shaky and dazed.  He gazed at himself in the mirror for a long time, his face passing from confusion to curiosity.

He sat in a wheelchair and was rolled down the hall by a tall, pleasant black man, whose speech Patrick was fascinated by, as he kept cocking his ear whenever the man used his colorful slang.  Eve accompanied Patrick down the corridor, into the elevator, and out into the wide, lower lobby that led to 5
^th
Avenue.  Eve watched Patrick closely, as tension, surprise and fear began to grip him.  His body tightened as he became absorbed and worried. 

He saw all ethnic types pass, people with cell phones pressed to their ears, dressed casually, young women in tight jeans, low blouses and high skirts.  Christmas music was everywhere, emanating from some upper distant heavenly realm, and Patrick kept tilting back his head, trying to locate the source.

Christmas lights blinked, children were loud, no one was smoking in the building and the modern architecture was distracting and disorienting.  He saw open laptops, e-readers and women in bright orange and blue hair.  He glanced up at Eve with wide, troubled eyes, seeking any explanation.  She ignored him, a slight smile pasted on her lips. 

And then they passed through the wide glass automatic door to the street—5
^th
Avenue and 98
^th
Street!  It was boiling with activity, and the cacophony of sound assaulted his ears, agitating his nerves. 

And what were those?  Those great moving vehicles shooting past, and two kids on skateboards sailing by?  A giant enclosed omnibus was blocked by a man, bald as a cue ball, dressed in black leather, striding a shiny machine.  The omnibus driver blasted his horn, glowered at the bald man and made a violent gesture for him to move.  The insulted bald man stuck a finger up and shouted curses.  He then kick-started his machine and it growled to life, with steam exploding from rear pipes, in jets of gray smoke.  The machine roared away in an angry retreat and disappeared into a snarl of weaving, chaotic traffic.

There was speed and noise and the chopping sound of something high over his head.  Patrick ducked away, shaded his eyes and looked up to see a helicopter beating its way across the sky, like some whirling metallic monster.

In fear and overload, Patrick threw his hands over his ears and clamped his eyes shut.  “Stop!” Patrick demanded.  “Just stop!  Get me out!  Out!”

He was flushed and sweating.  “Where am I?  What’s going on, Eve?”

Eve leaned over and calmly whispered in his ear.  “Just take it easy.  Relax.  I tried to tell you.  I tried to tell you that you’re living in the 21st century.  I’ll get you home.”

With spooked eyes and on shaky legs, he let Eve help him into a yellow taxi.  He sank into himself, sitting silent and watchful, his hands balled into fists, his eyes fixed ahead, refusing to look to either side as they traveled home. 

Had he died and gone to some sort of hell, where noise and movement assailed every sense and bludgeoned every emotion?  Was he lost in some perpetual nightmare from which he couldn’t wake himself up?

Eve knew what Patrick was going though.  It had been the same for her when she had first landed in 1885.

Inside Eve’s apartment, Patrick stood trembling by the empty fireplace, staring bleakly.  Eve stood next to him, while Georgy Boy sniffed at Patrick’s new sneakers.

“I tried to tell you, Patrick,” she said gently.  “I wanted to make it easier for you.”

He was quiet for a long time before he finally spoke.  “I don’t feel so well.  I need to sleep.  I have to sleep.”

Patrick slept soundly until the next morning, Sunday, December 20
^th
.  Eve had insisted that he sleep in her queen-sized bed, and he was too weak and beaten by his experience to argue.  Eve had slept on the sofa bed.

She was sitting in her small kitchen at the counter when Patrick wandered in, dressed in the light blue pajamas she’d bought for him. 

She examined his face.  The color had returned to his cheeks and his eyes were clear.  The day-old shadow of beard suited him, and his curly, black hair had grown long, thick and sexy.

Eve felt instant desire, but she masked it.  “How are you?” she asked, softly.  “How do you feel?”

He ran a hand through his hair.  “Physically, fine, I think.  The other aspect… Well, I don’t know really.  I’ve been staring out your bedroom window at the cars, as you call them.  I’ve been watching the people stroll by and I feel lost in some kind of crazy dream.  I am still trying to figure all this out.  I just feel…” He lifted a helpless hand.  “…lost.” 

Eve stood up.  “It will take time, Patrick.  It took me time.”

“Time?” he said, quietly, thoughtfully. “Yes, time.  I see now, why you couldn’t tell me the truth.  Yes, I see that now.  Who would ever believe… How could you tell anyone about this?  I still do not believe it and I see it with my own eyes.”

His eyes explored her.  She wore jeans, a white sweater and delicate snowflake earrings.  Her hair was piled up and pinned on top of her head. 

And then, there it was again—that unimaginable, indescribable attraction to her.  She was a magnetic miracle to him.  A gift of fascination and allure, in any time or in every time.  They stayed silent and motionless, just taking in the joy of looking at each other.  Their absolute isolation, the truth, and this new intimacy made them both feel excited, yet shy and unsure.

“Are you hungry?”  Eve asked.

“Like a big bear.”

“Sit down.  I’ll fix you some eggs.  An omelet.  I’m a good omelet maker.  Meanwhile, I just made fresh coffee.”

While he ate, they talked little, mostly about her apartment and Georgy Boy, who lingered near Eve, not letting her out of his sight. 

After Patrick had dressed in his previous day’s clothes, they sat in the living room, him on the chair by the fireplace with lighted candles, and she on the couch.  She explained the TV and her cell phone and showed him her laptop computer.  He was afraid to touch it; afraid it might explode.

“How can it give such vast, precise and rapid information?  Where does it come from?” he said, glancing about the apartment.  “I just don’t understand it, Eve.”

Eve thought.  “Think of it like this.  Picture a gigantic library and all the books.  Now imagine that this little box, computer, can access anything in the library almost instantaneously.”

Patrick’s forehead knotted up in thought.  “Yes, but how?”

“Kind of like through invisible telegraph wires.”

He nodded, pondering it.  “Can you communicate with people from other times?  Other worlds?”

“Wow, aren’t you a forward thinker.” 

“Wow?”  Patrick said playfully.  “As in the Bow Wow verse?” 

Their eyes met, as they both recalled their conversation in the tea shop in 1885. 

“No, we can’t communicate with people in other worlds and other times,” Eve said thoughtfully.  “At least not yet.” 

As they drank coffee, Eve covered some world history between 1885 and 2016, showing him photos on her laptop, including some of the Harringshaws.  Eve was delighted to see a beautiful shot of John Allister and Evelyn on their wedding day, a photo which had not been there in October when she first researched the family.  The newly-weds were shining with happiness.

 She watched Patrick’s eyes fill with wonder, bright interest and then disappointment.

“I would have thought the wars would have stopped; the killing; the poverty.  It’s all still here in this time?”

Eve took his hand.  “It’s better, Patrick.  In this time, it’s better than it was in 1885.  We
are
making progress, even if it’s slow.  I’m sure there are people who would disagree with me, but I’m an optimist.  I believe things are better, and in another 130 or so years, the world will be better still.  I’m sure of it.”

Patrick stood and paced the room for a while.  Then he stopped, tugged on an ear and stared into space.

“What will I do here, Eve?  What can I do in this time?  I don’t know anything about this time and place.  I’m a total stranger.  I’m a baby.”