“Joe Reynolds,” she said as she came up behind him with her embrace.
“Nora Lansing,” he said, his voice filled with wonder. He was right: She had not been in the subway station at all, but here, on the Main Concourse.
She was wearing exactly the same dress, and he remembered: Yes, this was how tall she was; this was her sharp, sweet smell; this was the top of her head, with its amazing jumble of reds and browns.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” she said to him.
“You can’t believe I’m here? You’ve got to be joking,” he said. “Where did you come from?”
For the moment, she ignored the question.
“That man with the knife,” she said. “Did you get hurt?”
“No. No, he ran right off. He was just a kid. But when I looked back, you were gone,” Joe said.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Her voice was filled with a note of sadness he hadn’t heard before.
“So, you,” he said. “What happened to you? Where did you go that night?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“Try,” Joe said.
“You might not believe me.”
“I think I might,” Joe said. “Oh, honey, please try.”
“ ‘Honey’?” Nora asked.
Joe grinned. “Call a policeman,” he said. “I called you ‘honey.’ ”
Nora laughed with that deep, husky laugh he had spent the year alternately trying to remember and trying to forget. They embraced and then enveloped each other, and when Nora took a step back, she could see that there was no fear in Joe’s eyes, only excitement.
“How long has it been?” she asked him.
“A year.”
“Another year,” she said, looking around for changes. As he’d seen her do before, Nora circled her bare left wrist with her fingers.
“Come with me,” he said. He took her hand and again felt that burst of heat, as if she’d been outside in the sun.
He led her to the waiting room, which she noticed was emptier and cleaner this year. They sat side by side on one of the heavy wooden benches. They might have been in church, but the closest thing to an altar was the large clock hanging over the entranceway.
“Nora,” Joe said, as if her name would make her more real. He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.
She folded her hands in her lap, like a schoolgirl. “What?” she said.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Joe said, and he shook his head at the sheer craziness of what he was going to say.
“You want to know if you can call me honey?”
“No. I want to know if you’re—” He took a breath.
“If I’m real?” she said.
Joe looked around to make sure no one could hear him. There was no one immediately nearby, but he whispered anyway. “Well, I was going to ask if you were dead, but that’s the basic idea.”
She laughed lightly and looked down. She wasn’t shocked or angry. If anything, she seemed sheepish. “I think I got caught somehow,” she said.
“Caught?”
“Not all alive and not all dead,” she said. “I mean, more than most people.”
“Most people? Most people don’t show up in the same place every year wearing the same clothes and not knowing how they got there.”
“You never met my grandmother,” Nora said, and despite the strangeness of the circumstances, they both had to laugh.
She was sitting there, talking to him, fully human. She’d made a joke. She looked happy. He could touch her.
In his childhood, Joe had imagined ghosts as bloodless, transparent, and chilling. But Nora was nothing like that, and the only thing that seemed scary to Joe was the thought that she might disappear again.
The seats in the waiting room were beginning to fill with men coming in from the suburbs. They were chatting, smoking, drinking coffee, checking their watches, and the buzz from their chatter was suddenly annoying. Joe wished that he and Nora could have the whole room to themselves.
“Listen, Joe,” Nora said. “I’ve almost stopped trying to figure it out. All I know is I’ve shown up here at the same time, on the same day, for a lot of different years, and eventually I wind up disappearing.”
“But where do you go?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is it like being asleep?”
“No. There’s no dreaming. It’s like there’s nothing until I start coming back, and then it’s absolutely horrible. It’s like trying to wake up from ether. Did you ever have to have ether?”
Joe shook his head.
“Well, it’s kind of like that. It’s just, I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off, but then she tossed her head. It was an attempt to seem casual, Joe thought, but to him it seemed heartbreakingly brave.
“I’m just not anywhere when I’m not here,” she said, “but I guess time must go by, and then I start getting this awful, awful feeling. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like I’m being tugged in two different directions, and I can barely breathe. Then I either get pulled back into the ether or I show up back here. Time has passed, and things have changed a little, but I’m always the same. I know it sounds crazy. Crazy,” she repeated. “But I’m telling you the truth, Joe. Have you ever heard of anything like this happening before? I mean, what’s happened to me?”
“Well, I know other people have died here. I know there was an accident—”
“In 1925,” Nora said. “That’s when I— That’s when this started.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, for one thing, I was there,” Joe said.
“You were there? You were on that train?”
“Not on the train,” Joe said. “On the platform. I was pulling people up from the tracks.”
It took a moment, and then Nora’s eyes widened. “Do you think we saw each other?” she asked.
“I’ve been wondering that same thing,” Joe said. “It was really dark, and I couldn’t see faces. But I’ve been wondering if you were one of them—or if I missed you and that’s how you—”
“Died?”
“Well, yeah.”
Nora shook her head. “No,” she said. “I did get pulled up from the tracks, but I remember it was a woman who helped me. She was another passenger.”
Joe didn’t want to overwhelm Nora with questions; he didn’t want her to think he was doubting her. But there was so much else he wanted to know.
“Do you remember dying?” he asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What do you remember?”
“All the lights went out on the train.”
“Why were you on the train in the first place?”
She told him about how she’d come from Paris, disembarking before dawn, making the trip to the hospital from the pier, seeing her sick father, and getting on the subway because there were no taxis around. “I remember the smoke,” she said. “I remember the screaming. And Ollie. Poor Ollie—”
Nora looked at the floor, as if she was searching for something she’d lost there.
“Who’s Ollie?” Joe said.
“My friend,” she said sadly. “Also my boss in Paris. He’d come to New York to meet art dealers. He came with me to the hospital to see my father so I wouldn’t be all alone. Otherwise he’d be alive. He died that morning. His head got smashed into one of the metal poles, and I had to leave him there.”
“Or you would have been trampled,” Joe said.
“That’s right.”
Nora waved her hand through the air, as if to wave away her memories, but it didn’t seem to work. She closed her eyes, and her eyelashes, grazing the tops of her pale cheeks, made Joe think of th
e sun’s rays.
“But you made it up to the Main Concourse?” Joe asked.
“Someone must have carried me there.”
“You’re sure?” Joe asked.
“I think so,” Nora said.
“Because if you’d been on the tracks and I’d missed you— I haven’t been able to get that thought out of my head.”
“Joe.”
“You know, it’s a Catholic thing—that ghosts are only sent to earth to teach humans a lesson. I thought maybe that’s why you were here—to haunt me.”
Nora bowed her head, and when she looked back up, her eyes were wet.
“Are you crying?” Joe asked.
“I don’t think I’m here to haunt you,” she said.
He leaned forward to kiss her and felt, in that grave, freighted moment, almost scared that the kiss might unmoor him or make her disappear. He imagined himself being suddenly weightless, lifted above the crowd and looking down from the great vaulted ceiling. Perhaps he could disappear with her.
He hesitated just long enough so that Nora leaned in slightly before their lips finally met.
8
LOST AND FOUND
1939
The kiss drew instant attention from the men in the rows behind them.
“Ni-i-ice,” one of them said.
“What else are you having for breakfast, buddy?” said another.
Joe turned to stare them down.
“What are all these people doing here?” Nora whispered to Joe.
“Oh, don’t mind them. They’re just waiting for the Lost and Found to open.”
“Why?”
“We call them the Drop-and-Carries. On their way home at night, they’ll leave their bowling balls on the train so their wives won’t see what they’ve been up to, and then they pick them up at the Lost and Found when they’ve got another game.”
Nora laughed. “And they do this all the time?”
“It’s sort of a ritual.”
“Don’t the people at the Lost and Found get furious?”
“Not really. It’s usually just Mr. Brennan at the counter, and he’s used to it. Sometimes he holds them up for ransom.”
She looked up, excited. “Joe!”
“What?”
“Joe, I had things with me!” she said.
“Yeah? What things? What things did you have with you?”
“When I— During the accident.”
“What things?”
“My winter coat and hat. And a clutch. I had a clutch.”
“A clutch?”
“A purse. But I had to drop it. And my bracelet too. This beautiful charm bracelet that my father gave me for graduation. I remember it being pulled off.”
Once again, Nora circled her bare left wrist with her fingers, a gesture Joe now understood.
“Do you think there’s any chance that the Lost and Found—” she began.
Joe had already stood up to start walking them there.
* * *
—
The Lost and Found was clearly labeled in the same wide black capital letters that spanned the broad stone arches throughout the terminal. Behind its graceful façade was a simple front counter made of thick, scratched dark wood, the kind you might find in any old Irish bar, and behind the counter, almost every day, stood the curmudgeonly Randall Brennan, also the kind you might find in any old Irish bar.
Mr. Brennan—Joe had grown up calling him that and, even when he’d worked for him, had never been tempted to try for something less formal—had a broken nose that had healed wrong and had given him a bruised, menacing look. From Joe’s first years at the terminal, though, he knew Mr. Brennan was more rogue than ogre, as long as you gave him his due. He guarded a storage room so vast that people always joked there had to be bodies buried in it. But if there were, they would have been toe-tagged by Mr. Brennan himself. Every single item in the Lost and Found was meticulously labeled and sorted. There were separate bins for eyeglasses, keys, umbrellas, handbags, wallets, books, and toys. There were long clothing racks bowed by the weight of men’s blazers and women’s coats, all organized by color, so that whenever they were wheeled out to be looked over, it seemed as if dusty rainbows were rolling by. A lot of lost items, especially the truly valuable ones, had been donated to the Salvation Army in recent years because of the Depression. But new stuff came in every day, and Joe was aware that there were boxes of things recovered from crimes and suspicious incidents, boxes that had been marked and tucked away separately by Grand Central’s police.
Mr. Brennan was just taking off his coat when Joe and Nora approached the counter.
“Smile big, and don’t mind anything he says,” Joe whispered to her.
“Joseph,” Mr. Brennan said as he leered at Nora unapologetically. “Where’dja find this? And who would’ve been careless enough to leave it lying around?”
Nora managed to keep smiling brightly as she faced forward, but she whispered to Joe, “He called me ‘it.’ ”
“Mr. Brennan,” Joe said. “This is Miss—”
“Nora Lansing,” Nora said politely, but, apparently unable to resist, added, “and I am not an ‘it.’ ”
“What’s that you said?” Mr. Brennan asked.
Joe nudged Nora gently in the ribs.
She hesitated. “I am not—lost,” she said.
Like Joe’s father, Mr. Brennan was past sixty-five now. He had white hair and a bright red face, but his hands, speckled with gold liver spots, were so pale they looked as if they belonged on another body.
“What’d you lose, then, Miss Lansing?” he asked.
“It wasn’t Miss Lansing,” Joe said, before Nora could answer. “It was an aunt of hers. Passed away in the twenties. The subway fire. You know. There’s still a police box or two, I’d wager.”
“More like a dozen,” Mr. Brennan said. “Maybe fifteen. Yes, Joseph. Steady Max hired you away from me that same day. Before you could help me handle them.”
Nora nearly purred. “You wouldn’t allow us to take a look, would you, Mr. Brennan?”
“What is it you’re looking for, darlin’?”
“A gold bracelet. And a clutch,” she said.
“Huh. That’s a word I haven’t heard for a while.”
“A clutch,” Nora repeated. “It’s a woman’s purse.”
“I know what a clutch is, darlin’.”
“Well, this one was about the size of a football. It was blue satin, with a little pattern sewn in, and the clasp had a little sapphire, and—”
“Wait, wait, hold your horses,” Mr. Brennan said. “This’ll take a while. Those boxes are way in the back by now.”
* * *
—
When Mr. Brennan had left the counter, Nora leaned over and kissed Joe’s cheek, right next to his ear.
“Who have you kissed before me?” he asked her.
“Who have you kissed before me?”
Plucky, Joe thought. Maybe that was the word for her.
He looked at the clock a few yards behind her.
“What?” she said, following his gaze.
“You won’t believe it,” Joe said, “but—”
“But what?” Nora said.
Another kiss.
“I have to go to work,” Joe said miserably.
“To work? Now?”
“I have a shift,” he said.
“That’s right, you told me last time,” Nora said. “You work here in—in a tower, right?”
“Well, that makes it sound like there’s princesses there. I work in a signal tower. Believe me, it’s no castle. It’s just a crowded couple of hot rooms, and they’re underground.”
“Can I come watch you work?”
Joe laughed, imagining it. “No!” he sa
id. “Lord Jesus, no!”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, you’ve got to wait for those boxes. And for another, there’s only four or five guys allowed in the room at a time. It’s hot as blazes, and I’m not sure any visitor’s ever been in there, let alone a woman, let alone a looker like you. Who knows where the trains would end up. But—”
“But what?”
Joe lowered his voice and leaned in closer to Nora in case Mr. Brennan was within earshot. “But you’ve got to promise you won’t disappear again,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you forever—”
“Forever!” she said, cutting him off. “Don’t you think I know a little more about forever than you do?”
Their faces were inches apart when Mr. Brennan came back with a box—a dusty but undented corrugated box with a police label on top and TRACK FIRE #1 scrawled on each of its sides.
Nora was at the counter in a single eager step.
“There’s a table over here,” Mr. Brennan said. “You can have a look. But it’s one box at a time, and”—he winked—“I’ll have my eye on you.”
Nora lifted the hinged part of the counter, but Joe took her arm before she could step through.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Nora said, “I’ll be right here.”
“I’ll get someone to split my shift if I can,” Joe said. “Back in four hours.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and she slid past the counter into the crowded but tagged and organized world of the Grand Central Lost and Found.
* * *
—
Joe did trade shifts and finished by two. He managed to keep the trains from colliding and to hide his fear and excitement. No one could have guessed that he was having the most extraordinary day of his life. He showered in record time, anxious to wash off the sweat but desperate to get back to Nora. His chest was tight and his teeth set as he made his way through the tunnel.
His hair was still wet when he returned to the Lost and Found, but, miraculously, Nora was still there as promised, sitting behind the counter, reading a newspaper, her legs elegantly crossed: all proper and poised. Joe felt his jaw unclenching, his whole body unwinding.
Time After Time Page 11
