Time After Time (20 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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“Hi, I'm Marsha. Can I help you with something today?” Her voice sounded husky, but had a cheerful quality.
“I'd like these, to begin with.” He handed her the shirts.
“Hey, I like your accent!”
He grinned.
“Are you sure the size is right or would you like to try them on?”
“Oh, no, it's not necessary. The sizes are correct.”
“All right.” She went over to the cash register and left the shirts on the counter, then pirouetted and smiled. “Anything else?”
“Trousers. I'd like to have a look at some of them, if you don't mind.”
“It's a pleasure.” She led the way into an ell of the room where pants were stacked on shelves. He was acutely conscious of her behind and the fact that there were no lines beneath her pants. She wore no undergarments. His face became hot.
“These are all cut differently, so I better check your size and then you can try some on, okay?”
“If it's not too much of a bother.”
“Hey,” she said with a laugh. “It's my job.” She looped a tape measure around his waist.
She was so close he could smell her. The odor was clean, yet a trifle musty, as if she accepted that it was perfectly natural for women to perspire. The palms of his hands became moist; he felt himself stiffen slightly against the fabric of his trousers.
“Thirty-one.” She kneeled and held her tape along the inside of his leg. She seemed to pause, and the moment froze in his brain. He couldn't tell if she was looking at him or trying to read the tape measure, but he could see all the way down her loose top past her breasts. He could not control the twitching in his groin.
“Thirty-five.” She rose, flashed him a bright smile, but gave no indication what she was thinking. “Any particular kind?”
He began looking through the stacks of pants. “Are you alone here?” he asked, his voice thick and guttural.
“The other girls are on a lunch break. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Oh, I don't run the place, if that's what you mean. I just work here, and it's not a bad job. I get half off on anything I want.”
She talks too much, he thought, as he selected a pair of jeans that had a small Union Jack sewn on one back pocket. He held them up and admired them.
“Want to try them on?”
He nodded.
She indicated a changing booth, and he went inside, stripped off his trousers and sighed with relief. His erection had vanished. Now he would be able to speak to the girl without stuttering. Now she would not know that she had touched the core of his lust and hate.
He slipped into the jeans. They were the tightest trousers he had ever worn, but they were not uncomfortable. He came out of the
dressing room, went to the mirror, turned in front of it and loved the blatant fit and feel of the jeans. He was about to question the girl when he saw that she was looking at his crotch. He followed her eyes. The thin material actually outlined his private parts! He glanced up; she was still looking. He couldn't believe it. He knew that he had always been attractive to a certain kind of woman, but this genuinely surprised him because no self-respecting, nineteenth-century English shopgirl would ever look at a man that way, no matter what was in their hearts.
Still, she stared! Why, she was behaving like the most obvious prostitute on Commercial Street. Come to think of it, he had noticed while on The Broadway that courtesans in 1979 looked like any other kind of woman. There seemed to be no special code of dress or behavior so that a gentleman might know if he were approaching a professional. Perhaps all women responded like slatterns nowadays, even if some didn't receive money for services rendered. If that were the case, then he could solicit sexual favors from any female and not have to fear a response of outrage. Great Scott, he thought, how bloody marvelous. How simply smashing! Never again would he have to fear rejection, or a lass—like his sister—who was overly eager and willing. He could treat them all like prostitutes. He could control them until that sublime moment when their barriers gave way and they acted like frenzied animals. Then he could take both their degraded lives and their noble virginities, for it wasn't right that a lady should enjoy the filth of a man or a father inside her.
He returned to the changing booth and quickly donned his other trousers. Then he came out and selected seven pairs of the jeans, all in different colors. She was at the counter, boxing his shirts. When she heard him, she glanced up and smiled.
“Find what you like?”
He nodded and set the jeans down on the display case, his hands trembling with fear and excitement, for he could not find the courage
to ask. He had never asked in his entire life. Furthermore, didn't he already have plans for the night? Wasn't he going to visit the Robbins girl, hence clear up the affair with Wells? Yes, but that could wait.
She rang up his purchases and handed him two plastic bags thick with boxes. “It's been a pleasure serving you, sir.”
The bill was close to three hundred dollars. He handed her a roll of bills, and when she gave him his change, their fingertips touched. He felt a surge of emotion that gave him all the courage he needed.
“Marsha?” His knees felt weak; his voice sounded strange. “I mean, that was your name, wasn't it?”
“Unhuh.”
“I was wondering,” he stammered thickly. “Did you have a previous engagement for this evening, or could I have the honor of calling on you?”
 
 
It wasn't that late, but the night was already black and cold. H.G. stood there drinking expensive gin—something he did not ordinarily do—and stared out the dining-room window. It was a time for contemplation. Playing cause and effect as well as Thomas Aquinas ever did, he silently cursed his early interest in mathematics, for that really was where it all had begun—ending with the construction of the time machine and his rendezvous with Amy Robbins in 1979.
Then she came into the living room, fresh from a shower, looking gorgeous in faded jeans and blue work shirt tied loosely at the waist. She dropped down onto the couch and gestured for him to join her. He wished that both the past and the future would disintegrate, leaving him with this woman in this room for eternity. That hope realized would remove him from the responsibility, the mandate that lay heavy on his mind. But it was not to be so.
“Before I sit down, may I offer you a drink?”
“Sure.”
“Neat or American?”
“American?”
“With ice.”
She giggled, pressed her thighs together and curled her toes, anticipating and enjoying it. “Ice and Seven-Up. Please.”
“Seven-Up?” His eyes widened and his free hand went to his mustache, a sure sign that he had been caught short. 7-Up? What the devil was that? he wondered. Some synthetic substance, or perhaps vegetable, that guaranteed that a person would rise at seven o'clock sharp regardless of what had happened the night before? The name made no sense.
“It's in the fridge. There's a six-pack on the bottom shelf.”
He quickly translated “fridge,” for the word was derivative of both “frigid” and “refrigerator,” and he knew that she was referring to the electrically powered cooler in the kitchen. (As he did the other devices that a 1979er so nonchalantly plugged into the wall, he regarded the refrigeration appliance as a technological stroke of genius.) But the other noun that she had uttered left him feeling stupid. For an instant, his mind went blank. Then he grinned.
“I know this is terrible,” he said enthusiastically, “but I'm all sixes and sevens.”
“Herbert, that's not terrible, it's awful!” She laughed.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“My dear lady, just what the devil is a six-pack?”
“Come on, you're putting me on! They have six-packs in London!”
“Under a different appellation, I'm sure.”
“The Seven-up is in the six-pack of green cans on the bottom shelf—you do know what a shelf is, don't you?”
He bowed slightly and started for the kitchen, his eyes twinkling. “Of course. It's a geological phenomenon created by the erosion of
winds or tides, generally found—but not exclusive to—the polar regions of the earth.”
She stared after him, laughing and shaking her head, not quite sure whether he had a terminal case of naïveté or an overdose of charm. It didn't matter. Either condition would win both her heart and her hand.
He found the 7-Up and opened a can with relative ease. The effervescence reminded him of quinine water. He grew curious, sniffed the liquid, then tasted it.
“Hmmm.” It was like sweet lemonade, only—to use a modern image—somewhat electrically charged. He took a large swallow and made the mistake of sloshing the stuff through his teeth. The resultant fizz bubbled up into his sinuses and down into his lungs. He gasped for breath, then was left coughing violently over the sink.
“Are you all right?” she called.
“It's nothing,” he managed to reply. He wiped his eyes dry, then made her a drink. He put the 7-Up back into the refrigerator as if it were a can of nitroglycerin.
“Bloody Yanks'll drink anything,” he muttered.
He returned to the living room with the drinks.
“How'd it go?” she asked softly.
“Not well. The police refused to cooperate.”
“But why?”
“They didn't believe me.”
“Didn't you show them your credentials?”
“You know as well as I that I am traveling incognito.”
She sipped her drink and thought for a moment. “Why the secrecy, Herbert? I mean, really. It worries me.”
He had a chance to tell her then, but when he looked into her open, concerned eyes, he could not bring himself to do so. “Believe me,” he said glibly, “you have nothing to worry about.”
“For sure?”
“For sure,” he replied, thinking that the American vernacular sounded strange on his English tongue. “It is I who am beset with problems.”
She nodded, uncertain about what he would say next. She was afraid, too, sensing love and not wanting it aborted at such an embryonic stage. She nervously ran her fingers through the curl of hair alongside her face. “What problems?”
“You know. I have to stop Stephenson.”
“You'll do it. You followed him this far.”
“Only with great difficulty and some blind luck,” he understated. “The man is a very wily fellow.”
“I'll help you in any way I can, if you'll tell me what to do,” she said brightly.
“You will?”
She slowly nodded. “I'd love to.”
“It may be dangerous.”
She smiled quickly and looked up at the ceiling. “I took a modern history course in college. And Robert Kennedy once said, ‘Those who never dare to fail greatly never succeed greatly.' And that pertains to more than just your Dr. Stephenson.”
“Ah, yes, Robert Kennedy. Irish chap.”
She laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. “Will you stop it with your pretensions of ignorance?”
And then suddenly they were embracing and kissing tenderly. He held her tighter than usual for a long time. He felt her muscles relax and then her warmth.
“Amy. My dear. You're wonderful.”
She pushed her head up alongside his, kissed his ear lobe, then whispered, “All I ask in return is that you be honest with me.”
He fell back against the couch and felt the breath go out of him, but held on to her still. Never before had he experienced such tender emotion. At the very least, they had become temporary partners and
lovers, but who knew where it might lead? Perhaps they would hopscotch along the fourth dimension pausing to meet with her ancestors, then his. Maybe they would twirl in time and meet—their children? He blushed with delight at the thought and felt his mustache move against her cheek. Who knows? Maybe he would manipulate time so that they could exchange nuptial vows at a way station somewhere in the universe, and in attendance would be their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, children and grandchildren. Why—Moses could officiate the ceremony, reading from stone tablets! Aristotle could be there, too, along with … Who was that man she had mentioned responsible for the admirable quote? A Robert Kennedy? He grinned and drifted back to the reality of her arms.
He considered their alliance. He understood that she was perhaps more capable than he. He was going to have to depend on her and hoped that he could return the favor with love and companionship. The partnership, then, was an equal venture, a union of two individuals on the same footing. Neither had experienced such reciprocity before.

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