Timeless

by Alexandra Monir

  “Stop that at once!”

  Michele jumped at Henrietta’s icy command. Clearly bewildered, Philip abruptly stopped playing. Violet’s face was red and she looked like she had just swallowed something sour.

  “We do not allow that music in our house,” Henrietta sternly admonished him.

  “I beg your pardon?” Philip asked in disbelief.

  “You were playing race music!” Violet hissed. “What would people say if they knew?”

  Michele’s mouth fell open in shock. Philip fixed Violet and her mother with a cold look. “It’s called ragtime,” he said evenly.

  “The music of red-light districts,” Henrietta said, shaking her head with disdain. “As my future son-in-law, I expect you never to expose my daughter to that music again.”

  “It’s a shame you feel that way.” Philip pulled out his pocket watch and gave it a perfunctory glance. “I’d best be taking my leave now, as Mother and Uncle will be expecting me.”

  “Philip!” Violet sputtered, no doubt guessing the reason he was cutting the visit short.

  “I expect I’ll be seeing you soon, Violet,” Philip said cordially. “Goodbye, Mrs. Windsor, Frances.” As he picked up his hat and headed toward the door, his eyes locked with Michele’s.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Michele, not even bothering with a hello, burst out the second Philip had left the room. “What they were saying was totally ignorant. Most of your generation may still think there’s a racial pecking order, but history proves them wrong. African American music isn’t race music; it’s just good music. And it’s great that you’re so inspired by it, because your song is amazing, and as much as I dig Chopin, the ragtime is way cooler.”

  The corners of Philip’s mouth twitched with amusement. “I confess I couldn’t make out any of what you just said. But I do detect a compliment somewhere in there,” he said, his voice low so as not to attract attention.

  “Oh.” Got to remember not to use slang in 1910, Michele thought. “I was saying that they’re completely wrong, and that you have to keep playing ragtime. I’ve never heard anyone play like that, and it was …” Michele searched for the right word. “Spectacular.”

  Philip stopped and looked at her, his eyes bright. Then he unexpectedly reached for her hand. Their fingers interlaced as if by habit and he led her out of the house, not saying a word until they were outside the Windsor Mansion gates.

  “There’s so much I’ve wanted to say to you, and ask you, since I saw you last,” he said intently. “I know it’s not quite proper, but the only place for us to talk without my being seen is in my home. Can I take you there?”

  Michele nodded, feeling a thrill at his surprising change toward her. “Of course.”

  Philip led her through the arched French doors of the Walker chateau and into the lavish mansion. They passed through crimson-carpeted hallways on the first floor, decorated with eighteenth-century French tapestries and paintings, until Philip opened a door into a formal room and closed it behind them. The room had white and gold paneled walls, a gilded ceiling, and elegant curtains and furniture in different shades of burgundy. In the center of the room was an intricately painted grand piano, beside a five-foot gold harp.

  “This is the music room—the one room in the house no one ever seems to enter but me,” Philip said with a grin.

  “It’s beautiful.” Who would have ever thought I’d soon be so familiar with houses on this scale? Michele thought in amazement.

  Philip gestured for her to sit beside him, and suddenly Michele couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “Philip, what happened?” she blurted out. “I thought you didn’t want … I mean, I thought you wanted to stay away from me.”

  “I didn’t want to. I thought I had to,” Philip said. “That scene you just witnessed with the Windsors? That’s the life I’ve been accustomed to—tightly controlled, with my uncle and this society holding the reins, pulling me back from any freedom or happiness. I’ve been numb for years, and I didn’t realize it until after you appeared and—and made me feel something. Since then, these past two weeks I’ve been … awake. Alive. Restless for you to return—and afraid that you wouldn’t.”

  Michele felt her face grow warm, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. “I’m glad,” she finally replied, shyly. She moved an inch closer to him, and the two of them sat smiling at one another. Philip’s eyes seemed to drink in her appearance, and his face flushed as he regarded her knee-length plaid skirt and short-sleeved white blouse. “You’re—you’re quite underdressed,” he commented.

  “Not for 2010,” Michele said with a chuckle. “These are my school clothes. This is actually considered conservative in my time.”

  “I haven’t been able to stop wondering about the future since I saw you last,” Philip said, his eyes filled with curiosity. “Will you tell me about it?”

  Michele hesitated. “Are you sure you want to know?” She wondered if there were rules about this kind of thing, if it was bad for her to reveal what was ahead. But Philip nodded so eagerly that she couldn’t stand to disappoint him.

  “Well … the truth is, it couldn’t be more different from now,” she began. “In my time, we fly around the world in airplanes. There are rockets that send astronauts into outer space. People have walked on the moon—” She broke off at Philip’s expression. He looked so incredulous she couldn’t help giggling.

  “We’ve been trying to get man to fly since ’03, but no one has quite managed it,” Philip said. “So it really works, then? And to go to outer space and the moon!”

  “That’s not all,” Michele continued, warming to her subject. “We have computers, which are kind of like typewriters, but with all sorts of programs and applications. Practically anything you can imagine, you can do on a computer. We have small portable telephones that we carry with us everywhere, and there’s this amazing invention called the Internet, where you can communicate with people from across the whole world in just seconds. We have access to anything we want—entertainment, communication, news—whenever we want it, just by logging on to the Internet on our computers and phones. There are video cameras in computers too, so I can be in New York and speak with someone in Africa as easily as if we were in the same room.”

  Philip sat on the edge of his seat, looking befuddled but listening in awe. Michele realized that what she took for granted as the simple necessities of life, he saw as a story beyond imagination.

  “Do you have movies in your time?” she asked him.

  “Yes, they’re the newest fad. Though the picture is always flickering and the stories are too brief, not even five minutes long. I much prefer stage plays,” Philip remarked.

  “Well, in my time movies are as long as plays, and they look perfect, with full color. And they have sound and special effects,” Michele said. “And then there’s this thing called TV, which everyone has in their home. It’s a big box with a screen that shows a bunch of different channels, and each channel has a different show at every hour. Wherever you turn in my time, there’s constant entertainment and new technology.”

  “It sounds incredible,” Philip marveled. “You must find our world so dull in comparison.”

  “No, actually. It’s just different. I like what I’m seeing of old New York,” Michele replied.

  “What is it that you like?” Philip asked.

  “I love the colors … the open spaces and unpolluted skies,” Michele said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I guess I like that it seems more … innocent, somehow.”

  Philip smiled at her. “You see our old New York quite well.”

  “Tell me more about 1910. What’s it like for you?” Michele asked.

  Philip stretched his arms behind him, thinking. “It’s like … living between the old and the new. The city has one foot in its Victorian past, and one foot in your future. New skyscrapers are being constructed every day, aiming to break height records, and in just the past years, we’ve been introduced to the telephone, the auto
mobile, phonograph records, Kodak cameras, and so on. But at the same time, we continue to obey the rules and customs of the 1890s.”

  “Living between the old and the new,” Michele echoed. “That’s just what I’m doing now.”

  “I suppose we’re not so different after all,” Philip said with a grin.

  “I don’t feel like we are,” Michele said, suddenly serious. “I mean, I know we’re a hundred years apart, but … I don’t know why, I just feel like I know you so well.”

  Philip nodded slowly. “I know just what you mean.”

  She gestured to the piano. “Will you play something for me?”

  “Of course.” Philip smiled and went to the piano. Michele knew instinctively what he was going to play before he began. Sure enough, the moment Philip’s fingers touched the keys, Schubert’s Serenade filled the room.

  “Our song,” he said to her with a wink as he played.

  Michele closed her eyes, soaking in the beautiful music, as goose bumps rose on her arms. When he finished the song, she asked him to play another one of his ragtime compositions. As he played a soulful melody with a swinging rhythm, Michele had the incredible feeling that she was listening to a legend in the making.

  “Writing music is what you were born to do,” she said passionately when he’d finished playing. “I’m serious.” Michele thought for a moment of her own songwriting aspirations as a lyricist, wondering if she would say the same about herself. But my abilities are nothing next to his. Especially now that I haven’t written a word in a month, she thought wryly.

  “I believe you are the one and only person who enjoys my compositions,” Philip confided. “I do love classical, of course, but my real passion is this new music coming from the South.” He set his jaw in determination. “No one believes I can do it, but more than anything, I want to make a name for myself as a composer, and I want our society to be rid of the hateful term ‘race music.’ I’ve always believed in music bringing people together, not setting us further apart.”

  “You’re right,” Michele agreed firmly, sitting next to him on the piano bench. “You’re just ahead of your time. You’ll see. People will finally start to get it. And if anyone can make it in music, it should be you. I haven’t heard anyone in my time play like that.”

  He gazed at her. “It’s a wonderful feeling—you believing in me.”

  The way he looked at her was so intimate it made Michele feel exhilarated and shy all at once. She glanced down at the piano keys, trying to calm her racing heart. And then she felt Philip’s hand gently lift her chin, and she looked, mesmerized, into those sapphire eyes. Their faces slowly drew toward each other, and he softly brushed his lips against hers. Michele felt her knees weakening, her stomach swirling, all from the simple touch of his lips to hers. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him closer to her, and they began kissing passionately, the searing kiss of two people who had waited a lifetime for each other. Oh, my God, Michele thought, as she felt his lips against her neck and her hair. So this is what everyone writes and sings and dreams about—this feeling.

  When they finally managed to pull away, Michele leaned against him and he nestled her in his arms, wrapping his black coat around her shoulders to keep her warm. She closed her eyes, and for the first time since losing her mother, she recognized the emotion inside her as happiness.

  She wondered what this meant for them, what it meant for Philip’s engagement to Violet. As much as she disliked Violet, she felt a sinking guilt in her stomach at the notion of breaking up an engagement, especially when she was just a traveler in Philip’s time, not able to fully be with him. But she also felt that she and Philip belonged together, that her dreams all these years and the key from her father were like a road map, leading her to him.

  After a while, Michele realized that she must have been with Philip for hours. “I should get back to my time,” she said reluctantly. “If I miss my curfew, my grandparents might put me under house arrest.”

  “Wait—what if I come back to your time with you?” Philip’s eyes lit up at the thought. “I would give anything to see it.”

  Bring Philip home with her? Michele smiled. It sounded too good to be true. Could she do it?

  “Let’s try,” Michele agreed. She took Philip’s hand, and with her other hand, she held her key tight, willing Time to send them to 2010—together.

  “What the—”

  At the horrified shriek, Michele looked up, disoriented. She was lying on a cold kitchen floor. The hum of a refrigerator and the laugh track from a nearby TV let her know that she must be back in her own time. But she was alone. It didn’t work, Michele thought, a wave of grief overcoming her as she realized that Philip wasn’t there, that he didn’t exist anymore in 2010. When will I see him again? she wondered anxiously.

  Michele blinked and a face hovering over her came into focus. It belonged to Caissie Hart, who looked stunned and terrified. Caissie? Where did she come from? Michele thought, bewildered. That was when she remembered that Caissie’s apartment building used to be the Walker Mansion. This kitchen must be where the music room was one hundred years ago, she thought.

  “You’d better explain what’s going on before I call the cops,” Caissie warned. “Did you just break in?”

  “No, please, let me explain,” Michele pleaded, slowly getting up off the floor.

  Just then, a man’s voice called from across the hall, “Caissie? What in the world are you yelling about?”

  Caissie’s eyes darted from Michele to the door as she no doubt planned to turn Michele over to her dad.

  “No, please don’t!” Michele whispered frantically. “I have a seriously good explanation for this. It has to do with—with what I talked to you about at school today.”

  Luckily, Caissie’s curiosity won out. “I just—I just saw a spider,” she called back to her dad. “I killed it, so all’s okay now.”

  Michele exhaled in relief. “Thanks. Can we talk somewhere in private?”

  “Fine. Follow me.” Caissie marched through the narrow corridors of the apartment unit until they reached her bedroom. It was a cozy room, cluttered with clothes and books. Radiohead and Coldplay posters covered the walls.

  “All right. Explain,” Caissie demanded, closing the door behind her. “And while you’re at it, why are you dressed in formal menswear?”

  Michele glanced down and realized she was still wearing Philip’s jacket. She stuck her hands in the pockets, and to her surprise, she felt a small card. She quickly pulled out the card and looked at it. Her heart constricted as she saw Philip’s name written in bold calligraphy on the card, his address underneath.

  The presence of his belongings made the whole thing seem a lot less crazy, and she felt a rush of courage to tell someone. And who else could she tell? Amanda and Kristen didn’t believe in magic in the slightest, so if anything, Michele’s story would further convince them that she belonged at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. While Michele barely knew her, Caissie was the one person who had seen Michele appear out of thin air, so that made her the one person who might have reason to believe her. Plus Michele owed her an explanation now. She took a deep breath, gathering her nerve and steeling herself for Caissie’s reaction, and handed her Philip’s card.

  “This jacket and this card belonged to Philip Walker in 1910,” Michele said. “My dad—who I never knew—had this old key that I got from my mom’s safe after she died. Long story short, the key led me to my ancestor Clara Windsor’s diary from 1910, and the key and the diary together sent me back in time. And I know this sounds crazy, but I met them all, Caissie! I danced at the Windsors’ Halloween ball, and I was just with Philip, in his music room, and I was trying to bring him back to our time with me. That’s how I ended up in your kitchen. That must be where the music room used to be. And that’s who I was with last night, when I needed you to be my alibi.”

  Caissie stared at her incredulously. “Either this is a ridiculously over-the-top prank, or you’
ve completely lost your mind.”

  Michele bit her lip anxiously. This was the reaction she had been afraid of.

  “Please try to believe me. This is real,” she insisted. “How else do you explain how I got into your apartment? How else do you explain all this?” Michele pulled off Philip’s coat to show to Caissie.

  “This is just some vintage jacket you bought and that card could easily be a fake. They did not belong to some old Walker,” Caissie argued. She was giving the coat to Michele when something caught her eye. She yanked the coat back and stared at the inside collar.

  “What is it?” Michele asked.

  Her face suddenly pale, Caissie approached the wall by her dresser, where the corner edge of the wallpaper was peeling. Caissie pulled back the piece of wallpaper, and underneath was the old wall panel—designed with the Walker family coat of arms. The very same coat of arms was sewn into the jacket collar.

  “The outside of the mansion was demolished when they decided to turn the place into an apartment complex, but they saved parts of the interiors. So this is the original old wall paneling,” Caissie said, her voice sounding odd as she looked up at the Walker coat of arms.

  “Don’t you see?” Michele breathed. “It’s the same. I was really with him a hundred years ago!”

  “You still could have found this at a vintage store,” Caissie replied, but her hands shook as she passed the jacket back to Michele.

  “You know I didn’t.” Michele gave Caissie a serious look. “Please, you’re the only person here I can tell.”