Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  “This is a perfectly good floor,” Margaret said. “I guess they never finished building it.” She looked around at the plain concrete floors and bare walls. She looked up at the exposed wiring on the ceiling. “They must have abandoned it back in 1955, when all the spooky stuff started happening.”

  Zinnia stuck her foot in front of the elevator’s door to keep it from sliding shut while she retrieved the key from the control panel. As she rotated and removed the key, it gave her another tingle of magic running up her arm. She tucked the key into her purse, and followed Margaret out into the raw construction space. The elevator doors closed quietly behind her.

  “How did we not know about this floor?” Zinnia asked. “I’ve been working here for almost a year and a half and I never noticed.” She unbuttoned her jacket. The space was much warmer than the rest of the building, probably due to the air conditioning not being hooked up.

  “I’m shocked that even I didn’t notice,” Margaret said. “I don’t miss much, but somehow I missed the fact that there are six floors to this building, but only five floors on the elevator panel.”

  Zinnia tilted her head, looking up at the shadows, and tried to visualize the exterior of City Hall. Her mind’s eye flickered between an image of the building with five rows of windows, and an alternate vision with six. It was surprisingly difficult to remember how the building appeared. She couldn’t even recall the color of the exterior. Was it gray concrete, or red brick? Was the appearance of the building altered by some powerful glamour, or was she simply not that observant about the building she entered five days a week?

  “Is this normal?” Margaret asked. “Before they started labeling the thirteenth floor in tall buildings as the fourteenth floor, did they build a thirteenth floor anyway, and just leave it empty like this?”

  Zinnia chuckled. “If I know anything about real estate developers, the answer is no.”

  Margaret walked over to a concrete pillar, where she picked up a dusty hammer. The floor wasn’t as empty as it had appeared at first. The area was littered with piles of timber, buckets of plaster, and construction tools.

  Margaret used the dusty hammer to lightly tap on the concrete pillar. The tap-tap sounds reverberated through the cavernous space. Nothing stirred. The floor was quiet. Too quiet.

  Zinnia felt a chill, even though the air was quite warm.

  “There must have been a reason they abandoned this floor,” Zinnia said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

  “What’s your hurry? I pre-paid the babysitter for the whole night. She’ll stay on the fold-out bed if we’re out late.”

  “Why did you need a sitter, anyway? What’s Mike doing?”

  “Working late.” Margaret used her toe to nudge a pile of power tools, disturbing ancient dust that drifted upward.

  “Those tools look very old,” Zinnia said.

  “Nothing modern and battery operated, that’s for sure.” Margaret lifted a bladed tool, groaned, and set it down again with a noisy thunk. “Heavy.”

  “We shouldn’t touch anything,” Zinnia said.

  “Don’t be such a worrywart. Nobody’s been here for years.” Margaret picked up a newspaper, blew the dust off in a billowing cloud, and examined the front page. “This paper is from 1955.”

  “That’s not much of a surprise.”

  Margaret turned the newspaper over. “They really were excited about canned foods in the fifties,” she said. “And Jell-O. I guess it was new.”

  “Jell-O was already well established in 1955. Portable gelatin, as it was called, was patented in 1845. The inventor was more interested in making glue than desserts, though, so it wasn’t until 1904 when the new patent owners started advertising in Ladies’ Home Journal that...”

  Margaret was grinning.

  Zinnia said, “What’s so funny?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Is something behind me?” She didn’t see anything in the shadows.

  “It’s just that you’re soooo Kitchen Bewitched sometimes. You’re like a walking cliché.”

  Zinnia snorted. “I’m glad I’m able to provide you with the entertainment you so desperately need.”

  The two witches chuckled and went back to exploring the space. The windows were coated with some substance that made it impossible to see outside. The substance couldn’t be scratched or wiped off. It seemed to be a magic-based substance. Other than that, the rest of the materials within the abandoned floor were fairly mundane.

  “Talk about a waste of good space,” Margaret said after a while. “We should see about getting the whole Permits Department moved up here. We’d have so much room to ourselves. No more shared desks. Every single one of us could have our own window.”

  “That does sound appealing.”

  Margaret put her hands on her hips and made a tsk-tsk sound. “It’s a darn shame nobody’s been using this perfectly good floor for sixty-some years.”

  Zinnia approached a pile of lumber that was different from everything else in that it wasn’t covered in dust.

  “I wouldn’t say nobody’s been using this floor,” Zinnia said. “Remember, Liza and Xavier have been coming here. It looks like they cleaned the dust off this pile of wood.”

  Margaret came over and frowned. “That doesn’t look very comfortable.” She waved a hand over the stacked lumber. “Not for doing whatever it is they’ve been doing up here.”

  They both chortled, then Margaret sighed. “Ah, to be young and have a man be interested in you like that.”

  Zinnia said, “Lust is not necessarily limited to the young, my dear.”

  Margaret sighed again.

  Zinnia took a seat on the pile of wood. It was the perfect height for a chair. “Perhaps they were simply eating lunch up here, away from the likes of us, or the crowds of the cafeteria.”

  “Sure, they were.” Margaret smirked as she picked up a dusty aluminum lunch box and blew off a cloud of dust. “Look at this old thing.”

  “I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Zinnia said. “Does it have the matching vacuum flask inside?”

  Margaret snapped open the metal buckles and flipped open the lid. “Sure does.” She pulled out the squat vacuum flask, shook it, and unscrewed the lid. A wisp of steam floated up from its contents. “Um,” Margaret said.

  As the steam continued to wisp up from the open flask, the silence around them felt even more eerie. There was more to this floor than met the eye. They should have been able to hear the hum of the adjoining floors, or at the very least, the building’s central ventilation system.

  “Um,” Margaret said again.

  “I saw.” Zinnia leaned in close to Margaret and waved her hand over the open container. Steam clung to her fingers. If it was an illusion, it was the kind that came with a sensory component.

  Zinnia said, “I don’t know if that’s soup or coffee, but clearly it’s still hot. How can that be?”

  Margaret plunged her hand in through the wide rim. She grimaced, removed her hand again, and immediately licked her fingers.

  “Soup,” Margaret said. “Tomato soup.”

  Zinnia wasn’t too surprised by Margaret’s taste test. Witches, blessed as they were with resilient fingers and germ-killing saliva, could be very bold about tasting unknown liquids.

  Zinnia said, “Since it’s still hot after sixty-some years, the vacuum flask must be charmed in some way.”

  “To keep tomato soup hot for decades?” Margaret shook her head. “No way. If magic worked that well, we witches would have solved the planet’s energy crisis years ago. Actually, we’d all be enslaved in some underground geothermal production facility by now.”

  “Thanks for that mental image. As if we witches didn’t have enough to worry about.”

  Margaret screwed the lid back onto the vacuum flask, and tucked it back into the lunchbox. She returned the box to the spot where it had been, matching the base to the rectangular-shaped clean patch of concrete floor.

  Margaret said, “I wonder what the m
ayor thinks about this floor.”

  “Mayor Paladini? That must be why she was at Queenie Gilbert’s hospital room. She must have been trying to get the key from her.”

  “Why? She’s the mayor. She could have ordered someone to make the elevator start going to this floor again. She could have gotten it fixed in a day. She wouldn’t need a key.”

  “Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of she didn’t want anyone else to have access.”

  “Like us.”

  Zinnia nodded. “Like us.”

  They both turned their heads at the same time to stare at the cloudy windows.

  Time passed.

  Zinnia kept coming back to the idea of City Hall having six floors, not five. She listened for the sounds that should have been coming from the other floors, and heard nothing. Surely the floors weren’t insulated from each other that well? After a while, she even scuffed the sole of her shoe on the floor to make sure her ears were working properly. She heard the scuff but nothing else.

  She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, and tried again to remember what the building looked like from the outside. She tried to hold the image in her head so she could count the rows of windows, but she kept coming up with five.

  Margaret said, “I’ll pull up a picture on my phone.”

  “Good idea.” Sometimes it was nice that Margaret picked up on Zinnia’s thoughts, at least when doing so helped solve problems. It was like having a computer with an extra processor.

  “No signal,” Margaret said, looking at her phone screen. She grunted as she hopped off the pile of timber. She held her phone up and walked around the space. “Nope. No bars. There must be a dampening field in here.”

  “That could explain why Liza and Xavier seemed to wink out of existence when they came here.”

  “Still no bars.” Margaret put away her phone. “And I’m starting to get bored now.”

  “We can go in a minute. I just want to see something.” Zinnia hopped off the timber. She stepped carefully around the lunchbox with the eerily warm tomato soup, and walked toward the fire exit stairwell.

  Margaret clomped behind her, taking two steps for every one of Zinnia’s, her hard-soled boots sounding like hooves.

  “Wait up,” she cried. “Don’t leave me behind. What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing what we ought to have done in the first place,” Zinnia said. “I’m going out to the front lawn where I can count the floors from outside. It’s driving me nuts! How could there be an entire floor that’s been closed off for over six decades and this is the first we’ve known about it?”

  “Fine, but I’m coming with you.”

  “I can count floors all by myself,” Zinnia teased. “I can count all the way up to ten, you know.”

  Margaret used her tongue to make a raspberry noise.

  Zinnia expected the concrete stairwell to be cool, as it always was, but it was actually hot. Hot like a summer day. They walked down three flights of stairs, and let themselves out through the fire door.

  Blazing-hot sunshine and even warmer air hit their faces. They hadn’t left the building for lunch, and Zinnia was shocked by how much hotter the day was than when she’d arrived at work that morning. She took her jacket all the way off and slung it over her shoulder.

  The two turned right on the concrete pathway to make their way around to the front of the building. They’d only walked a few feet before they were stopped by a pile of rubble.

  “That’s rude,” Margaret said. “Who put this on the sidewalk?”

  Zinnia realized that the small details she was noticing didn’t add up. The air was too hot. The lawn at the side of the walkway was dirt, not grass. And the walkway itself was practically gleaming, it was so clean—as though the cement had been poured yesterday.

  Zinnia looked around. Really looked around. She gasped and grabbed Margaret’s arm.

  “I know, I know,” Margaret said. “I can see the giant pile of dirt right in front of us. I wasn’t going to walk through it.”

  “That’s not why I grabbed you. Look.” Zinnia pointed to the parking lot, which was actually a bare dirt area that hadn’t been paved yet. “Look at those cars,” she said.

  Margaret pulled her head back, giving herself a double chin. “Is it Show and Shine day already?”

  Zinnia shook Margaret’s arm impatiently. “It’s not Show and Shine day.” She waved emphatically at the collection of shiny, colorful cars from eras gone by. There was a shiny red 1951 Mercedes-Benz Type 300 Limo, and a 1954 Buick Skylark, along with a couple dozen beat-up trucks that might have belonged to the people who worked for whomever drove the Mercedes.

  Zinnia said very slowly, “It’s not Show and Shine day, because the people who live here drive those kinds of cars every day.”

  Margaret snorted. “Maybe in 1955 they did. Nope. It must be Show and Shine day.” She wiped some sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. “Why’s it so hot out all of a sudden?”

  Zinnia looked down and rubbed her temples with both fingers. Very loudly and clearly, she thought, Margaret, we are in 1955. She repeated it in her head for good measure.

  When Zinnia looked up again, Margaret’s eyelashes were fluttering.

  Suddenly, she gasped, “Zinnia! I just figured it out! We’re in 1955.”

  Chapter 19

  When Zinnia Riddle and Margaret Mills found themselves smack in the middle of the town of Wisteria, circa 1955, they were torn between the idea of exploring versus turning around and running back to where they’d come from. Well, Zinnia was torn. Margaret had no qualms about exploring, even if it did mean causing paradoxes and other calamities.

  “We’re here already,” Margaret said in a cajoling manner, as though talking to a shy toddler. “We might as well go for a milkshake at the soda shop.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “I never joke about milkshakes.”

  Zinnia looked around. It was the same City Hall, all right, but the surroundings were different in small ways. The mighty oaks that lined the street were mere saplings. The nearby traffic was lighter, and each vehicle was louder.

  “This is all very unexpected,” Zinnia said, holding her jacket under her arm while she wrung her hands. “I thought we were going to the place the monsters were coming from.” She scanned the sky and saw only a few fluffy clouds. “But if they’re coming through from here, from the past, then I suppose we’ve solved the mystery.”

  “Great! Let’s celebrate.”

  Zinnia shook her head. “We ought to head back inside the building and return to where we belong. If we stay here, we could mess up the past and create problems in the future. You’ve seen Back to the Future. We could run into an ancestor and prevent ourselves from being born.” She rubbed her temples, remembering what Liza had said about her nightmares, about not existing. Had Liza done a Back to the Future on herself?

  Zinnia explained this theory to Margaret, who listened patiently before stamping one foot like a billy goat pawing the earth. “But I want a milkshake.”

  “So did Marty McFly, and look what happened!”

  Margaret grinned. “Marty McFly tried to order a Tab, and then a diet Pepsi. See? I know what I’m doing.”

  “I see,” Zinnia said flatly. “Because memorizing lines from a 1980s movie about time travel is exactly what qualifies you to be a time traveler.”

  “Please, Zinnia? Pretty please? I promise not to mess up anything with the timeline.” She pleaded with her eyes. “Let’s not be the boring women who traveled back in time, got sweaty standing next to a parking lot, and went home ten minutes later. Let’s not be those boring women.”

  “We can get milkshakes in our own time, Margaret. We don’t exactly live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where cows have gone extinct.”

  “Sure, we can get milkshakes, but not authentic 1950s soda shop milkshakes.”

  Zinnia frowned. Darn it all if her mouth wasn’t watering just thinking about it. And darn it
all if she didn’t want to avoid being boring, like Margaret had said.

  “And how are you going to pay for this milkshake?” Zinnia asked. “With brand-new dollar bills that haven’t been minted yet? Or perhaps with the handy-dandy chip embedded in your bank card? Oh, that’s right. They don’t have machines in the 1950s that read chips in bank cards.”

  Margaret shrugged and clomped over to the parking lot. She leaned from side to side, admiring them the way someone would view the vintage cars at a Show and Shine. “I’ll pay cash,” she said over her shoulder. “What does a milkshake cost in 1955?”

  “About ten cents.” Zinnia followed Margaret over to the cars. They were all rather remarkable to her modern eyes. The windshields were flecked with genuine bug splats from 1955. It didn’t get more authentic than this.

  Margaret said, “I’m sure I have more than enough coins with old dates that I can use to buy us a full meal. Not that people are going to look at the dates on my pennies. Who would do that?”

  She did have a point. But something was amiss. It was so hot, and Zinnia’s hair was sticking to her face at the sides. Zinnia lifted her chin and shielded her eyes as she checked the position of the sun in the sky. It was directly overhead.

  “Margaret, don’t panic, but it appears to be lunch time.”

  “Perfect. I’ll buy you lunch. We’ll go to Lucky’s Diner. They’re always bragging about how they’ve been in the same location for seventy years, so they must be here already.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’m getting a strawberry milkshake.”

  “We just ate dinner.”

  “So? Get a milkshake and call it dessert.”

  “What I mean is it’s noon here. Look at the sun.”

  The short, gray-haired witch peered up at the sky. “Yup. Looks like noon to me.”

  “It was past six o’clock when we came through. Time of day must not be in sync here with where we came from. It might even be running at a different rate.”

  “I guess we’ll find out when we get back.”

  “Which really ought to be right away.” Zinnia glanced around. She turned and looked at City Hall.