by Maddy Barone
How long did he expect cooking and cleaning to take? And babies? She wasn’t sure she wanted kids, at least not right now. “It’s not like I’ll be spending ten hours a day designing clothes,” she said soothingly. “It’s only part time, okay? It will make me happy.”
Eddie’s turquoise eyes glowed brightly in a shaft of sunlight. “I want you to be happy, so if you want to do it, fine.”
She kissed him right there on the street. “Thank you.”
A faint flush colored his cheeks. “Come on. I want you to meet Mr. Gray. He’s one of the most respected men in Kearney. Even my dad listens when he talks.”
She realized Mr. Gray must work in the big, gray stone building at the corner because that was where Eddie took her. He opened the door for her and took a deep breath as if to savor the aroma of the place. “I love it here.”
She read the words carved into the stone arch above the door. “The library? You like to read?”
“Yes, but what I really like is the displays, things from the Times Before. It’s a museum. Maybe you’ll feel at home with the things here.”
Her husband really did like the library, it seemed. Ignoring the tall bookshelves in the main part of the library, he led her to glass cases on the other side of the marble-floored foyer and named the items the cases contained with a reverent voice. Lisa shivered when she saw the things under glass as if they were precious historical artifacts preserved in a museum. As her eyes slid from the smart phone to the tablet, to the Bluetooth headset, she swallowed dizzy nausea.
“These things were all collected by Mr. Gray, who was actually alive during the Times Before.” Eddie’s enthusiastic voice almost managed to clear her numbness.
“I was alive then too, Eddie.” Her fingers clenched on the edge of the case she leaned on. “You think these are antiques? I used them every day.”
Eddie didn’t notice her distress. “Good. Then you will be a big help when we start working on getting electricity up and running.”
“Me? I’m not a techie.”
“Come on,” he said, tugging her away from the display cases toward a narrow hallway. “I want you to meet Mr. Gray. When he was a young man, he traveled hundreds of miles from the east to come to Kearney, and he can even get some of these gadgets to work sometime. He’s the only man within a hundred miles to have been alive in the Times Before. Dane Overdahl has a bicycle he uses to make a tiny bit of electricity.” Eddie’s voice held the excitement of a kid on Christmas Eve. “He can power small kitchen contraptions like a machine that toasts bread without a fire.”
A toaster, Lisa thought. Eddie is excited by a toaster, for God’s sake. During the last two days in bed with a new energetic husband, she had almost forgotten she’d left her old world behind. Reality hurt, and what hurt even more was Eddie didn’t notice.
She didn’t say anything as they went down the dark hallway to a door whose glass window had been replaced by raw boards. Her husband rapped once, and then opened the door and drew her inside with his arm around her waist. Three tall, narrow windows let light in, revealing an office crowded by boxes of junk lining one wall, a large wooden desk at one side, and a working fireplace at the other.
Old Mr. Gray was there, dozing in a ratty recliner in front of the small fire. Eddie cleared his throat to wake him. Mr. Gray looked ancient, but he jumped up spryly when he saw them in front of the door. Eddie squeezed his arm around Lisa’s waist.
“Mr. Gray, I’d like you to meet my wife,” Eddie began proudly.
“Lisa Anton,” said the old man reverently. “The model. I heard Ray Mason had a pair of women from the Times Before and one of them was named Lisa Anton, but I didn’t believe it was you.”
Lisa surprised herself by blushing. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Heard of you? When I was twenty, I had the biggest crush on you ever!” He shook his head with a mostly toothless grin. “Eddie, you are a lucky man. In my time, about every man on the planet was in love with Lisa Anton.”
Lisa squeezed her husband’s arm. “Well, too bad for them. I’m taken now.”
Eddie’s smooth forehead was faintly wrinkled. “You knew my wife?”
“Personally? Heavens, no! A student like me wouldn’t ever meet a famous model like Lisa Anton.” Mr. Gray gave a thin, cackling laugh. “You don’t know who it is you’ve married. I’ve got a few publications with Lisa in them here. Let’s go find them. Then you’ll understand.” The old man fumbled to fasten the buttons on his cardigan sweater. “There were a couple PopNation magazines, and a Sports Illustrated, and…” His voice trailed off, and he stared at Lisa again for a long moment. “I can’t believe this. Lisa Anton is here, in my office. Why don’t you two come with me to the magazine archives?”
Eddie and Lisa followed the old man down the dark hall to a musty section of the old library lit by a few narrow windows. It was colder here than in the office where the fireplace glowed with coals and low flames. Lisa understood why the old man had buttoned his sweater. As she looked at the tall metal shelves crowded with periodicals in archival boxes, all neatly labeled in fading type with the name of the magazines inside and their dates of issue, she was wrapped in that same dizzy numbness she’d felt earlier. These yellowed, dusty things were the same age she was. How strange was that? She paused by a set of boxes labeled Cosmopolitan.
“You know,” she told the two men, “I don’t need to see all those articles again. I probably have them memorized. But I think there’s a Cosmo I haven’t read yet. It must have come out after I—the plane…” Lisa’s nose prickled with incipient tears. “I think I’ll go over there to that bench under the window and read for a bit, okay?”
*
A small frown wrinkled Eddie’s forehead as he watched his wife settle herself on the wooden library bench against the wall. She sounded sad. He followed Mr. Gray to where he took down a box similar to the one Lisa had clutched. The memory of Mr. Gray taking him and some of his friends down an aisle just like this to show them the magazines of naked women made his cock stir. After this, he would take Lisa home and make love to her for hours.
“Yes! See who’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition?” crowed Mr. Gray. “And here she is on Vanity Fair, and look, isn’t she gorgeous in that evening gown on PopNation?”
Eddie took the stack of yellowed magazines and peered through the dim light at the cover of the one on top. An image of Lisa that looked more like a painted doll than the woman he was coming to love shocked him. She was wearing a long, silver-blue dress that looked like it was painted on. It barely covered her breasts and glittered with tiny silver beads. Her face was painted vividly, and her mouth was glossy bright red. She stood on a red carpet in the embrace of a man in a black coat, and they smiled at each other as if they were deeply in love. Eddie’s heart convulsed with a sharp pain. This must be her husband, the one who had taught her about bedroom passion. The printing that slashed over the skirt of her dress said—Lisa and Brent! Are they through?
Eddie turned to the article with a feeling of dread. His stomach churned as he read. Lisa had “dated” a dozen men. Eddie wasn’t sure what that meant, but there were pictures of her with several different men, and in some pictures she was hanging on their arms with an infatuated look on her face, and in some pictures she was wearing something called a bikini that covered almost nothing of her body. Her body, that too-slender body, which he had licked and sucked and kissed, was on display for anyone to see. Tiny flares of pain erupted at the ends of his fingers as his claws tried to punch out. He jerked in deep breaths through clenched teeth to control himself.
Whoever wrote the article called Lisa a heartbreaker who went through men like some women went through handbags, falling desperately in love only to spurn the man a month later. Her current lover was someone named Brent Hoff, who had moved into her residence three months ago. But, asked the article, was it over? Lisa had been seen with a mystery man on a beach in the Caribbean. That photo was grainy,
but the blonde woman in the picture was clearly naked, covered by black rectangles in strategic places, and a black-haired man was sucking on her toes.
Eddie smothered the urge to rip the magazine to shreds. No wonder she was experienced in bed. She’d had plenty of practice. Eddie dropped the magazine on a shelf and looked blindly at Mr. Gray. “My wife … is a harlot?”
Mr. Gray looked stricken. “No! Of course not! Eddie, it was a different world then. I taught you women and men behaved differently in the Times Before than we do now.”
“A good woman would do this?” Eddie flicked a finger at the magazine. “Live with one man and play sex games with another?”
Mr. Gray took a deep breath. “You can’t believe everything you read. Publishers printed anything to sell their product. Lisa filed a defamation lawsuit against PopNation. I remember that. She said the story was a lie!”
“Pictures don’t lie.” Eddie turned mechanically to find his wife. At the end of the aisle of bookcases he saw her on the bench, thigh to thigh with Dane Overdahl, both blond heads bent over her open purse. The nausea churning in his belly was overwhelmed by betrayal. Betrayal was swallowed by homicidal fury. Nothing could keep the claws under his skin or the roar in his chest.
“Dane! I’m going to kill you!”
Chapter 10
Lisa went to the bench, holding the magazine like a long lost friend. Since the moment she’d set foot in the library, she been painfully reminded of all the things that were gone forever. Her old life was over, and she was alone in this new world. If anyone ever had reason to cry, she decided, it’s me. The magazine she held like a long lost friend was loaded with advertisements for skin care products, makeup, and clothes. She would never blow dry her hair again. She would never pose for a camera again, never saunter down a runway, or laugh when she flubbed her lines for a commercial.
She tried to control herself. Dwelling on unpleasant things was unproductive. She’d always preferred to concentrate on good things. Every time someone hurt her feelings, every time a man she was in love with dumped her, every time her family disappointed her, she focused on something else, something better. But the obvious age of a magazine that should have been only a few days old brought her to tears. She cried for family and friends probably long dead. Had her selfish mother survived? Or her deadbeat father? Honestly, she didn’t care about them. The only one she really cared about was her little brother. She truly loved Derek. He was the only person in her family who hadn’t taken advantage of her beauty, her fame, or her money.
Lisa drew a quivering breath, closing her eyes against the pain. She should have spent more time with Derek. It wasn’t a good enough excuse she’d been busy with her modeling career on the West Coast and he was busy opening his own landscaping business in central Minnesota. Why hadn’t she made time for Derek? He had just gotten engaged to a girl named Emily. She only called him to say congratulations, even though she had been at the Mall of America for a photo shoot only a few hours away. She could have taken time to drive up to see them. She should have taken the time. Out of all her family and friends—even men she’d thought she loved—only Derek had really loved her back.
As she wept silently on the bench, a pair of boots came into her watery view. She was embarrassed and relieved Eddie had seen her tears. Crying made her eyes red, and she hated to be seen as anything less than perfect, but like Derek, Eddie loved her. He wouldn’t care her face was blotchy, only that she was crying. He would remind her of the good things in this new world.
But it wasn’t Eddie. It was his friend, Dane Overdahl, holding out a handkerchief. “Are you all right?” he asked awkwardly. “Where’s Eddie?”
“Oh, Dane.” Lisa took the handkerchief and quickly mopped her eyes. She put on a more cheerful face. “Thank you. Eddie’s right down there with Mr. Gray.”
Dane hesitated. “Is there anything I can do? You’re upset.”
She straightened with a determinedly cheerful smile. “Oh, no, thanks.”
He looked at the magazine in her lap. “You must be homesick,” he said sympathetically. “I can only imagine how difficult it must be to suddenly find yourself back in the Stone Age. You know, I’ve seen your picture in magazines from the Times Before. Mr. Gray showed them to me when I was young. In fact, that’s what I’m here for today, to look at them again. I have to admit, I had something of a crush on you while I was growing up.”
Dane was nowhere near as handsome as Eddie, but Lisa could see how attractive he was with his square jaw and sun-bleached blond hair. Lisa smiled automatically at his compliment.
“I wish the notice for the Bride Fight would have gotten to me in time.” Dane’s eyes searched hers. “I would have won you and treated you like a princess.”
It soothed her distress to see the genuine admiration in his face, but she said primly, “Eddie won, and he treats me just fine.”
“Yes, he’s a lucky man. While you’re waiting for him, could you show me any of your technology? Eddie and I are working together to bring some conveniences to our area. If you have anything with you, I’d love to see it.”
Lisa pulled her purse into her lap. “Sure. I have my phone. I just got it last month… Well, a month before I came here.” She struggled against the tears again. “It has about a million apps.”
Dane sat down on the bench with her. He was a little closer than she liked, but even living in L.A. competing with bitchy models for the best jobs hadn’t rubbed her Minnesota Nice off, so she didn’t say anything. She just scooted a little farther away against the arm of the bench and opened her purse. Dane leaned down to watch as she opened her phone to demonstrate how it used to work.
“The battery is dead,” she explained, “but even when it had some power, it didn’t work. At first we thought we were so far into the boonies there wasn’t coverage. I could still see my stored messages and pictures, but I couldn’t connect to anything.”
“Hmm.” Dane nodded his head like he knew what she was talking about. “May I?”
Lisa handed him the phone, bending and leaning closer to show him how to turn it on.
“Dane!”
Lisa jumped six inches at least at Eddie’s roar. She jerked her head up to see her husband running at them, boots thundering like gunshots against the floor.
“I’m gonna kill you!” Eddie yelled
Lisa gaped open-mouthed, clutching her purse as Eddie lifted Dane by his neck and threw him several feet away. Eddie’s face was so twisted by rage he hardly looked like himself. Her phone flew out of Dane’s hand to smash on the floor.
Eddie stood with a snarl on his lips. “Dane, you woman stealer, if you ever come near my wife again I will kill you.”
Dane got up and came back down the hall with heavy, deliberate footsteps. “I’m coming near her, Eddie,” he taunted. “She should have been mine.”
“But she’s not.” Eddie’s voice dropped so low it sounded like he was filtering it through grinding rocks. “She’s mine. Wife stealers get hanged, Dane. So keep away if you want to live.”
Dane reached behind his belt and brought out a knife. “I’m not gonna steal Lisa. I challenge you for her.”
“Challenge accepted!” Eddie snapped back at him, his voice an icicle breaking and shattering on pavement.
Lisa leaped up, spilling her purse. “Wait! What are you—”
Eddie turned his head and looked at her as coldly as he looked at Dane. “Shut up, Lisa.”
Utterly shocked, she stared in bewildered hurt.
“Tomorrow, noon, in the Old Theater,” Dane confirmed. His smile was a sneer. “Enjoy your wife one more night, Eddie. We’ll bury you tomorrow.” He inclined his head once to Lisa, his sneer turning to an intimate smile that chilled her. “Until tomorrow, love.”
Lisa saw how the smile enraged Eddie. “I don’t want you!” she shrieked at him. “Why are you doing this?”
Dane didn’t answer. He turned to walk away. Mr. Gray blocked him. He had somehow changed from
a stooped old man in a frayed cardigan sweater to a dignified elder. “Dane, Mrs. Madison already said she doesn’t want you for a husband. Eddie isn’t going to give her up. You have no grounds for a challenge.”
“I never had a chance to win her. No one told me about the Bride Fight until it was too late.”
Mr. Gray shook his head. “Not good enough. I forbid you to challenge Eddie.”
There was a tense silence between the three men. Then, amazingly, Dane backed down. His face was as hard as marble, and his eyes narrowed with fiercely controlled fury. “I withdraw my challenge,” he told Eddie stiffly. To Lisa he said, “Ever since I was a teenager and I saw your pictures in those old magazines, I have wanted a woman just like you. I would have done everything I could to make you happy.”
Lisa tried to find something to say, but there were no words. Eddie started making a deep, threatening growl in his throat. Dane turned again to leave, and this time Mr. Gray let him pass. After a few seconds of silence, Lisa bent to retrieve the scattered contents of her purse. Her phone was in pieces. Eddie kicked the battery as he turned sharply away from her.
“Eddie,” she began, “what—”
“Don’t speak to me,” he said distantly. “I have some things to do. Mr. Gray, will you look after her for a little while?”
”I sure will,” the old man said quietly. “When will you be back, Eddie?”
“An hour. Perhaps two.”
Eddie turned and strode down the hall, never even glancing at Lisa. She opened her mouth to protest, but Mr. Gray laid a hand on her arm and shook his head. “Come on back to my office, Lisa. We’ll have some tea.”
Lisa gathered the pieces of her phone and hugged them to her breast as she followed him to his office. Eddie had kicked the battery. On purpose? It felt like he’d kicked her heart. She laid the broken phone in a clear space on the desk and her purse on the floor while Mr. Gray put another piece of wood in the fireplace. The warmth of the fire was comforting. She let Mr. Gray pull another chair close to the hearth and give her a cup of herbal mint tea.
