TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037 (10 page)

“
She still pitched a fit for the cave thing to bring her back, and she went to the French quarter, looking for both of you.  She went inside each club and finally saw a picture of you, Ashley, on the wall of one of the clubs.  You had had your p
icture made with Billy Holiday.
  You were in the twenties and she didn’t know where Joe was.

“I’m not going to go into any details, Ashley, but
Josie
died of a heroin overdose in a back alley
in New Orleans.  She was a prostitute.  She died at the age of 15.”

“No! No,” I screamed.  “Joe, you’ve got to fix this.  She was supposed to have children and grandchildren.  I saw them…I saw them.”  I turned to Irene, “Can’t we do anything about this?”

She put her head in her hands and then looked up at me, “From w
h
at I understand
, when a person commits suicide, they don’t have a choice of moving into another time or place.  If I had on
ly known then, what I know now m
aybe I could have helped her.

“After the cave thing let
Josie
off, it to
ok off with the rest of us and t
hat’s when I learned all I now know.”

Joe and I looked at each other.  I could tell his brain was working overtime like mine was.
  Then Joe said softly, “Irene, can you undo what you’ve done?  I will go back to being an old man if it will help
Josie
.”

“It’s not that simple,” She said.
  “How can I explain this?  Everything has to be aligned just right and at the right time and space in order to accomplish anything.  You’re talking about going back and changing an event that you already know the outcome of.”

“But isn’t that what you did with both me and Joe?”

“No, it is not.  I didn’t know the
outcome at all and
still don’t
.  I don’t know
in this time and place, what will happen to you and Joe
, the decisions you’re going to make, anything.”

“Irene, there has to be a way.  Couldn’t the cave thing help us?  We knew the outcome of Charles Manson but were able to go back and help him.”

“You have a good point, Ashley.  But the cave thing is not here in this time and place.”

I looked at Joe and he shrugged, “I’ll do whatever it takes to save our daughter, Ashley, you know that.”  He then turned to Irene, “Will you teach us how to project our image into
Josie
’s past, like you did with Ashley?

“And by the way, how did you get to this time and place yourself?  Could we all go back to the time and place before
Josie
overdosed and help her?  What is it you’re not telling us, Irene?”

“The whole process is very painful, Joe.  It takes a lot of study and calculations
.  Not only do you have to find
a slit in the fabric of both time and space, but you have to align them up perfectly.

“We’re lucky in that we already know where a slit in time is, because Ashley has already been
through there.  That’s the easy part.  But, if you go through that slit and it isn’t aligned with the space slit, then you are going to be caught between realities and that’s the painful part.  I’ve been there and it can be very confusing.  Nothing will be as it seems.  That’s why I ended up putting Ashley into another body and she had to suffer being hung.”

We were all silent for awhile, lost in our own thoughts.  Joe took my hand and squeezed it, “I’m willing to try, Ashley, are you?”

I nodded and Irene said, “Then I’ll go with you.”

CHAPTER 19

We had to get to the exact time and place where
I had gone through.  Irene said we knew the place, outside the club, but we needed to make sure it was aligned with the correct time and space.

It was really late by the time Irene had finished explaining everything t
o
us and Joe and I went to bed.  The lovemaking was wonderful.  I had missed Joe so much and didn’t know if I would ever see him again.  After we had exhausted ourselves making love, I fell into a deep sleep.

Now we were
outside the club.  It was 2:00 p
.m., about the time I had gone through before.  We didn’t know the exact time and, according to Irene, we could very well end up in a narrow area between the
correct time and space where
we
needed to be and we would have to manually align it ourselves within the narrow place.

I didn’t understand it very well but Irene said we had to go at the same time and to hold on to each other.

We must have looked comical standing on the sidewalk in a tight circle with our arms around each other.  “Now don’t forget,” Irene said, “You might feel faint but you’ve got to stay alert.  Hold on tight to each other.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before I felt myself pulled into the strangest place I could have imagined.
  If you can imagine a cylinder within a cylinder but spinning in opposite directions, we were in between the two.

I didn’t expect the noise and I guess Irene forgot to mention it, but it was the kind of sound a strong wind would make as it went through a tunnel.  Irene let go of Joe and we stretched the width of the space we were in.

Irene had explained to us that when she saw an opening at the same time as Joe they would put their hands in there and align them.  It was going so fast, I couldn’t make head or tails from anything.  “You have to focus,” Irene yelled, reminding us of what she had already told us.

I was glad I wasn’t the one to have to do what they had to do, but just as I was thinking that, it appeared that the two cylinders were slowing down.  But they weren’t really because, if I moved my head the slightest bit, they would speed up.  I kept my head staring straight at the cylinder that Joe was watching and suddenly I saw a gap.

Before I could warn Joe, I saw him reach out his hand and I saw Irene do the same from the other side of me, out of the corner of my eye.  We came to a screeching halt which made me dizzy.  I stumbled and would have fallen if I hadn’t still been holding onto both of them.

We were standing in front of the same club but it was later, in time, but not late enough.  The streets were crowded with couples.  The women were wearing knee length dresses with shoulder pads and most of the men were in uniform.

Everyone was laughing and singing and dancing in the street.  Men and women were grabbing each other and kissing.  One sailor
grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth and I had to hold Joe back.

A young boy was standing on the corner with a stack of newspapers yelling, “Read al
l about it, Japan has surrendered, the war is over, read all about it.”

“We’re in 1945,” I said.  “We need to go to 1983.  That’s when all of this started.”

Irene
nodded, “We need to go back in, but we hav
e to wait until tomorrow afternoon
.  It’s night time here now and we no longer belong on the riverboat.  We need to find rooms.”

CHAPTER 20

I was dressed in the 1920s green dress Rita had loaned me, Joe was dressed like
Yancy
Derringer and Irene was dressed like Irene with the long jean skirt and peasant blouse and sandals.  It didn’t seem to matter in New Orleans.

Joe had money in his pocket that he had taken out of the bank and some he had won in the poker game.  He counted it and discovered he had almost $2,000.00.  I thought that must be a lot of money in 1945.
  I had the roll of bills that Al Capone had
given me.  It was $342.00 which was a lot of money during the depression.

Irene told Joe to take out all the bills t
h
at were dated later than 1945.  After he had done so, he only had $247.00.

We got a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel on
Baronne
Street and at
e at the
Sazerac
Dining Room, then
went
across the hallway to The Blue Room and heard Leon
Kelnor
and his orchestra.  Both p
laces were full of military men
and their girlfriends and wives.  I also saw some women in uniform.  It was an exciting time to be in New Orleans.

When we got back to
the suite I asked Irene, “Why
are we able to
slip through to another time fro
m 3:00 p
.m. and end up at nighttime?”

“That’s a good question.  Not only is time not linear but it is warped in places,
like in between the cylinders.  When we go in between the cylinders, we cheat time in a way and that’s the best I can exp
lain it.

“I have always thought that there was a parallel universe and that, based on the decisions we make at any given time, we could end up in another universe and never kn
ow it.  I was wrong.  There is
more than one parallel universe, in fact there are thousands.

“Tomorrow we may have to do something even more difficult than we did today.”

She was silent for awhile and Joe and I looked at each other.  I was feeling apprehensive.   I swallowed hard, “Even more difficult?”

“The cylinders we were in between are just the simplest
of the
time/space possibilities.  There are many more connecting cylinders.
If we have to move in between two other cylinders, we could get separated.  That’s the main thing that scares me.

“If we get separated, not only may we l
ose our chance to find
Josie
, w
e may never find each other again.”

“What are you saying, Irene?” I asked and I knew my voice must sound panicky.

“I’m asking you to make a choice.  The three of us are together now. 
Josie
is lost to us, for now.  When I said you may have to do something even harder than you did today, that’s what I meant.  It is a difficult choice.  The choice itself is what I was talking about.”

“Damn you, Irene,” I said.  “Why didn’t you tell us this up front?  Why did you wait until we got our hopes up and then throw this at us?”

“I’m sorry, Ashley.  I know you’re mad but I had hoped we could find the right time/space pair
so that we could get
Josie
and we wouldn’t have to consider the other thing.”

I tossed and turned and didn’t get any sleep.  Making love with Joe didn’t even relax me enough to sleep.  I didn’t want to lose both Joe and Irene in an effort to find and rescue
Josie
.  I was being asked to choose between Joe, my husband, my soul mate, my best friend and my daughter.  I couldn’t do it and neither could Joe.

He sat up in bed at three o’clock in a panic.  “I can’ do this, Ashley.  I can’t choose.  This is the most unfair thing I’ve ever been faced with.  I love you so much but I love my daughter too.  Who do I love the most?  Is that what I’m being asked to decide?  I won’t do it. Ashley.  Honey, forgive me but I can’t go.”

He put his head on my breast and shook as he cried and I soon joined him.  We must have worn ourselves out and slept because the next thing I knew
it was morning and someone was knocking on our door.  It was Irene and behind her was a room service waiter with a push cart full of food.

We were still angry with Irene and no one spoke much while we ate.  The coffee was delicious and I had three cups even though my nerves were already on edge.

I wiped my mouth and threw down my napkin.  No, I didn’t fold it.  People in the South don’t fold their napkin.  Why would you fold something that needs to be washed?  All these mundane things were going through my head and then I realized they were sitting there looking at me like they wanted me to respond to something they had said.

“What?”

“Ashley, Irene asked you if your decision was the same as mine.”

“It is,” I almost shouted.  “I will not play God and choose who will be rescued and who will not.

Irene got a huge smile on her face.  I had seen her smile like this before, where her whole face and body seemed to light up with happiness.  I thought it was inappropriate at this point in time and I told her so.  I was still mad at her.

She didn’t comment on my anger but said, “If you two are through eating, I have something to show you.”

She waited while we both dressed and we followed her out of the hotel, down Bourbon Street, and outside of town.  We walked for several miles and then she turned down a one lane dirt road.  There were wild plums growing on each side of the road and we stopped and picked some.  They were so sweet.

After eating the plums, I felt completely relaxed, and then, just up ahead, I saw it.  The cave was back once again.  I looked at Joe and we both looked at Irene.

She laughed, “I woke up this morning at three, out of a sound sleep.  I felt like I was still dreaming as I got out of bed and got dressed.  I didn’t
even question what I was doing.
I just went with the flow.
  It was like an invisible thread was pulling me here and when I entered the cave I went straight back to the city.