If Only in My Dreams

by Wendy Markham

  Anyway, he doesn’t want to fire anyone if he can help it. When you get right down to it, he isn’t any better at handling employees than he is at dealing with customers.

  Jed steps out from behind the counter to straighten a towering display of boxed lead tinsel. Spotting a gap on a nearby shelf above the bin filled with packets of gift wrap, he makes a mental note to order more Scotch Cellulose Tape dispensers.

  In fact, next year, he really should have more on hand before Thanksgiving to ensure that he won’t run out so early in—

  Wait a minute.

  Next year, you won’t be here, remember?

  By then, he’ll have enlisted. He’ll be…

  Well, anywhere but here.

  The thought is as comforting as a steaming cup of cocoa would be right about now.

  The century-old building is drafty this morning, and he wishes he had layered long underwear beneath the plaid wool shirt and high-waisted trousers he’s wearing under his canvas apron.

  Crossing over to the plate-glass display window, he notes that the curved marquee beneath the vertical Majestic sign across the street has been changed. Tarzan’s Secret Treasure has replaced They Died with Their Boots On.

  Doris thinks Johnny Weissmuller is the cat’s meow. Maybe he’ll surprise her and take her to see the new movie tonight after she finishes her homework.

  Or maybe not, he decides as he replenishes a display of ribbon candy.

  She’ll expect popcorn and a Coke, Necco Wafers and Licorice Snaps, and she’ll insist on sitting in the very front row and chattering nonstop as the film unfolds, asking a zillion questions about what’s happening on-screen, and things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the movie.

  Jed sighs. It sure would be nice if he could see a movie with a female who doesn’t share his last name… or isn’t scheming to.

  Take Betty Godfrey. She’s real whistle bait and a terrific gal, when she isn’t implying that she’d love to get engaged. If she’d just stop dropping hints and take one for a change, he might ask her out again.

  Or not. Betty Godfrey is hardly his dream woman. He’s better off keeping his options open, just in case his dream woman walks through the door tomorrow.…

  Which is about as likely as there being a man on the moon.

  Wishful thinking is of no use to anyone, Mother always liked to say… back when Pop was still alive.

  Now, Jed suspects, wishful thinking is the only kind Mother ever does.

  If only he could snap his fingers and make Pop walk through that door again.

  Pop… and the girl of his dreams.

  A miracle, Jed decides. That’s what we need around here. A miracle…

  The whistle blows.

  Shouldn’t the train be slowing down by now? Clara wonders, suddenly on edge. She doesn’t know why, but her body feels almost as though it’s been zapped with a surge of electricity, every nerve ending tingling with…

  Apprehension?

  A bit of fear?

  They’re going so fast… they might overshoot the station if they don’t slow down.

  Clara bends her head to peek out the window and gauge how close they are to town. She catches a fleeting glimpse of the low stone wall. Then she sees the back of the wooden WELCOME TO GLENHAVEN PARK signpost.

  The train slows abruptly with a deafening, high-pitched squeal of brakes as it rounds a curve.

  Clara is thrown off her feet toward the back of the car, slamming her head against the hard edge of the nearest seat.

  “Ow!”

  Her hand flies up to rub her temple. The pain is so stunning that for a moment she sees nothing but a blinding glare.

  Then it subsides just a bit and she’s left with a dull ache.

  Terrific.

  Just what she needs in the midst of filming.

  A lovely bump above her eye.

  A bump to match my lump, she thinks grimly.

  Cancer. I have cancer.

  She shakes her head.

  I’m Violet. Violet doesn’t have cancer.

  Violet is happy, giddy, naive—about to fall in love.

  At last, the train is slowing down. Turning to face forward, she looks out the window and sees a vintage Packard tooling along the road beside the tracks. In the front seat is a young extra dressed in a military uniform.

  And… that’s funny. The ground is dusted with snow.

  She doesn’t remember seeing snow when she left her trailer a little while ago.

  But you did tell Jesus the sky looked like it, she reminds herself, rubbing her sore forehead.

  Yes, and Jesus said it was supposed to warm up and rain.

  Some snowflakes must have fallen while they were setting up the scene back there. A lot of snowflakes. Enough to cover the ground and rooftops.

  How the heck did I miss it? she wonders, and decides it must be fake snow, part of the set decoration.

  Then she catches a whiff of cigarette smoke.

  Glancing around, she sees that two of the female extras have swiveled their seats to face each other and are puffing away.

  She wrinkles her nose in disgust. Period authenticity is one thing; a public health hazard is another.

  She opens her mouth to object when the conductor appears in the aisle. “Station stop is Glenhaven Park. Glenhaven Park. Next stop, Brewster. Please exit to the rear of the car.”

  Clara gapes at him, wondering why he seems different. For some reason, she thought the conductor was a much older, rotund character-actor type.

  He isn’t. He’s a skinny beanpole of a guy, with pockmarked cheeks and an overbite. She can’t help but feel as though she’s never before laid eyes on him in her life.

  Good Lord, am I becoming so much of a diva that I’m no longer noticing the little people?

  Pushing aside the troubling question, she bends to lift the suitcase Lisa stuffed with clothes.

  I’m Violet. Expectant. Exhilarated. New life.

  The train chugs to a halt.

  She gazes out at the platform, wondering why the crew isn’t in place.

  The door opens and she steps out into the brisk December chill, purse tucked under her arm, suitcase in hand. Brr. Is it her imagination, or has the temperature dropped a good thirty degrees in the last ten minutes?

  She descends from the train, trying not to wobble in her narrow 1940s’ heels. The wooden platform is caked with snow and ice—which must be real, because it’s pretty darned frigid out here.

  Hmm, she could have sworn the platform was made of concrete… and shouldn’t the crew have salted it?

  Oh, wait. They probably left it genuinely slippery for authenticity.

  You take three steps, and then you slip, she reminds herself, moving forward, lugging the suitcase with her.

  Yes, she slips, and Michael catches her.

  So where is he?

  And where are the other actors who are supposed to follow her off the train, chatting?

  She doesn’t want to blatantly turn her head to look, but she seems to be the only one who got off the train, and Michael doesn’t seem to be on his mark. Oh, well. He must be there. And the cameras and lighting, too. They’re just more unobtrusive than she would expect.

  Start walking.

  One step…

  Two…

  Three.

  “Oh!” Clara cries out, slipping on cue…

  And falling to the hard planks with an excruciating thud as the train chugs off into the distance.

  Dazed, she looks around the empty platform.

  Empty?

  Wait a minute.

  Where are the other extras who were supposed to disembark with her?

  Where’s Michael?

  Where’s Denton?

  And where are the damned cameras, and the lighting crew, and…?

  Clara frowns.

  What the…? I’m alone out here.

  She slowly gets to her feet and brushes the powdery snow off her skirt. Her breath puffs white in the wintry air.<
br />
  Shivering in the wind, she looks around, bewildered.

  Glenhaven Park looks just as it should: flags flying, vintage automobiles parked along the green—now blanketed in white.

  She can see costumed extras bustling along the sidewalks. Swing music even plays faintly from a distant radio.

  The crew has thought of everything.

  Everything but me, Clara thinks ruefully, uncertain about what to do next.

  Maybe Denton called a meeting in one of the trailers. Maybe he’s going to adjust the blocking schedule because of the snow.

  It doesn’t make sense—none of this makes sense—but it’s the only explanation Clara can come up with.

  She looks in the direction where the location trailers were parked in an A&P supermarket lot down the street.

  That spot is occupied by a large Victorian mansion with a mansard roof.

  Huh? Where’s the supermarket?

  She squints, blinks.

  No trailers.

  No parking lot.

  No A&P.

  Maybe she’s mistaken. Maybe the trailers were on the opposite end of town.

  She turns her head—still throbbing from the bump on the train—to look the other way.

  No trailers.

  No parking lot.

  No supermarket.

  All she can see, beyond the white steeple of the Congregational church, is the tree-lined hillside overlooking the town.

  Her heart pounds so violently—and her knees weaken so abruptly—that it’s all she can do to remain on her feet.

  Just the hillside.

  Nothing on the hillside but trees.

  Nothing.

  Somehow, an entire condominium complex has vanished into thin air, along with the rest of Clara’s world.

  CHAPTER 3

  At the sound of a car horn honking in the street, Jed looks up to see wiry, bespectacled Arnold Wilkens, a childhood friend, passing by the five-and-dime in a new blue Packard. Arnold waves at him, and Jed waves back, wondering whether his wife, Maisie, has had their first baby yet. She must be due any minute now, judging by her enormous belly when she stopped in the store to pick up some pink knitting yarn a few weeks ago.

  “Why not blue?” Jed asked.

  “I’m betting it’s a girl,” Maisie said with the same self-confidence she’d displayed since their kindergarten days. “And we’re going to name her Daisy.”

  Of course they are. Because it rhymes with Maisie. Poor kid.

  “Well,” he said, “Arnold thinks it’s a boy.”

  “Arnold took the Dodgers in the World Series,” Maisie retorted with a what-does-he-know? shrug.

  “A lot of people did.” Jed excluded, of course. Being a Yankees fan, he was thrilled when the Bronx Bombers pulled off an unlikely victory against their crosstown rivals.

  “How about a nice pale-yellow yarn?” he offered Maisie.

  “No, thank you. If Arnold is right by some chance, and this baby is a boy, he’ll just have to wear pink booties and sleep in a pink nursery, because we’re painting this weekend.”

  Jed has no doubt the baby will be a girl.

  Maisie has a way of knowing things she can’t possibly know. Women’s intuition, she likes to call it.

  Arnold calls it phonus bolonus.

  Which makes a fella wonder why he married a gal like Maisie in the first place. Then again, with his wiry build and thick glasses, Arnold, who is now an accountant, has never exactly been known as what Jed’s sisters might call a Hunk of Heartbreak.

  About to return his attention to the store, Jed notices big fat flakes in the air—drifting lazily, almost horizontally in the air as opposed to falling furiously as they did early this morning.

  He turns away from the window—then back, realizing that he just glimpsed a familiar figure coming down the block.

  It isn’t roly-poly Alice.

  As he trains his eyes on this woman, he’s so caught up in admiring her shapely legs—even as he notes that she appears to be wearing stockings, and wonders where she managed to find them—that he momentarily forgets to look up to see who she is.

  When he manages to tear himself away from those glorious gams, he realizes that he doesn’t know her after all.

  Or does he?

  He takes in the well-made hat and coat, the waves of chestnut hair curled fashionably above her shoulders…

  Even from here, he can see that she’s a real dish.

  He can also see that she’s hauling a large suitcase. Is she coming or going?

  Coming. Definitely. Because she seems lost. He can tell by the way she’s looking around, as though she’s searching for something.

  She must have just stepped off the train from Manhattan. In fact, everything about her says Glamour Puss.

  Still, there’s something familiar about her.…

  Jed is almost one-hundred-percent positive that he’s seen her someplace before.

  So certain is he that he raps on the plate-glass window to catch her attention.

  She looks up, startled.

  Her smile is at once tentative, relieved, and laced with recognition.

  So I must know her, Jed realizes, watching her approach the store. And obviously, she knows me.

  It’s about time, Clara thinks, waving at the guy in the window of the old-fashioned five-and-dime. At last, a temporary haven from the icy wind, and a familiar face.

  Not nearly as familiar—or as welcome—as, say, Michael’s would be. Or Denton’s.

  But this costumed bit player—whom she must have met in passing on the set at some point—is better than a total stranger.

  She just can’t help wondering why she didn’t recognize any of the other vintage-fashion-clad extras she glimpsed hurrying along the sidewalks as she walked over from the train station. Maybe she was just too busy trying to figure out what on earth was going on with the set… and the scene she’s supposed to be blocking.

  She supposes something could have come up and caused the camera crew, Denton, and Michael to beat a hasty retreat.

  Maybe Michael’s contagious stomach bug has infected the whole production.

  Or maybe there was a problem with the filming permit. The town’s administration is a stickler for rules.

  It just would have been nice if somebody had mentioned the abrupt change in the schedule to the cast and crew on board the train.

  Yet a communication breakdown doesn’t explain the vanishing condo complex on the hill. A cluster of buildings can’t just walk away.

  Then again, Hollywood magic can make anything possible. Clara has seen, at the hands of capable set designers, the southwestern desert become a tropical island beach, a wall of white Styrofoam blocks transformed into an ancient Roman villa.

  All right. Maybe they’ve created some kind of optical illusion to camouflage the condos.

  It would have been nice if somebody had mentioned that, too.

  And what about the enormous bronze statue on the green—the one that depicts the eleven lost soldiers of Glenhaven Park? Obviously, it’s been removed for the duration of filming. Yet she could have sworn the set designer tried—and failed—to have the statue relocated. The town refused to allow it to budge an inch. Yes, and Denton had to alter a number of long, establishing shots as a result.

  Clara glances again at the spot where the statue should be. Nothing there now but a towering maple tree. The kind of tree that can’t be plunked down by a set designer to hide an unsightly bare spot. The kind of tree that takes centuries to grow… and wasn’t there last week. Or yesterday.

  But that’s crazy. You must be imagining things.

  And no wonder. It’s so cold, and her head hurts, and this suitcase weighs a ton. Is it so surprising that she can’t think straight at the moment?

  Noticing that the actor in the store is now out beneath the striped awning, holding the door open for her, Clara covers the last stretch of icy sidewalk quickly, and gratefully.

  “Come on in… chilly out
today, isn’t it?” he asks pleasantly as she steps over the threshold and deposits her suitcase on the worn wooden floor with a thud.

  “That’s the understatement of the year.” Her teeth are chattering as he closes the door behind her.

  “Have we met?” he asks, and she turns to find him looking curiously at her.

  “I don’t know.… I’m Clara,” she says politely.

  “I’m—” Instead of introducing himself, he frowns, peering into her face. “I thought you looked familiar, but I didn’t realize…”

  You were the star, Clara thinks.

  How often has she heard that? People are always saying she comes across as a regular gal because she doesn’t put on airs like some actresses.

  “… I was wrong,” he concludes the sentence unexpectedly.

  He was wrong?

  She looks into his eyes and sees that he doesn’t seem to have a clue who she is. Either that, or he’s a terrific actor.

  He smiles pleasantly, revealing teeth so white she wants to ask who did them and how much he paid. She’s had her own professionally whitened twice in the last year by two different oral-health-care experts, with less than perfect results.

  She wonders why this guy’s dentist didn’t repair the slight gap between his front two teeth while he was at it. Then again, if it weren’t for that barely visible flaw, he would be almost too handsome.

  He’s clean-shaven with angular features, a full mouth, and a deep cleft in his chin. His hair, so dark it’s almost black, is neatly trimmed over his ears without a trace of sideburn. It’s so short it spikes up on top with the help of some gel, as though he combed it straight up from his forehead with his fingers. His eyes, wide set beneath straight, sooty slashes of brow, are the striking blue of the sky on a clear winter day.

  Clara is so busy noticing his good looks that it takes her a moment to confirm that the lack of recognition is mutual. She’s never seen this guy before. He must be a local. She thought he looked familiar when she spotted him from afar. But up close and personal like this, he’s as much a stranger as anyone else in this town.

  Disconcerted by his expectant blue gaze, she looks away and is startled to find that the dime store’s interior now matches the forties’ facade. It isn’t just the pressed tin ceiling, exposed pipes, soda fountain, or antique register…