He didn't. Oh, he didn't look happy. If his set expression weren't so fierce, I'd even call it miserable. But he said nothing.
And, scowling, he offered me his arm.
I took it, almost as fast as Alice had grabbed hold of that three-dollar coin, a lot of my own misery melting away at his gesture. Sure, it felt awkward to touch him so formally, after we'd just, well, been about as informal as you can get with a person. My body remembered his. I felt vaguely swollen... there.
But at least I was touching him.
If he noticed me shiver at the not-unpleasant memory, he didn't show it.
We walked up Second Avenue, past loud cowboys and saloons, and I wished I knew where he thought he was taking me. I wished he would say anything at all.
What he did finally say, though, was, "Reckon we'd best find the preacher."
And now I knew the true meaning of the phrase, 'stopped in my tracks.' If he hadn't had me anchored by the arm, I might have fallen over, right there. "What?"
He knew I'd heard, though, and just scowled down at me, waiting for my agreement. He didn't mean to make confession or something, did he? No, that was priests, not preachers. He meant... "Get married?"
He released an angry breath. "What you wanted."
"Excuse me?" I raised a hand to fend off his glare. "Yes, I heard you, but—what I mean is, what do you mean, that's what I wanted? When did I say that I wanted to get married?"
If anything, his scowl deepened with his disbelief. He deliberately aimed it away from me, scowling at the world instead.
"We can't get married just like that," I insisted.
"You've got a name," he clarified at the spot he was glaring toward, apparently remembering a similar statement at the Peaves farm. He dropped his voice for the second argument. "And y'ain't already married."
"But there are blood tests and licenses and...." But this time I didn't need him to correct me to know that in fact there weren't, were there? As clearly as I knew there should be such things, I also realized, looking around me at the false-fronted businesses and the horses standing at hitching rails, that such things were not. I didn't belong here. I knew that now.
That was by no means the only reason I couldn't accept his grudging proposal, but it was the most compelling. I didn't belong here. I sure as hell didn't belong with him.
That knowledge ached.
"Just the preacher." The Boss still wouldn't look at me.
"I know that you mean to do the right thing," I said carefully, around the not-quite-uncomfortable clenching in my stomach at the outlandish idea. I liked the hardness of his arm beneath my hand, the strength of him beside me... and the memory of the sex didn't completely suck either. He could solve my problems. I would be taken care of. I would have a place.
But it so definitely wasn't my place. And that he apparently hated my guts wouldn't help matters either.
"I know that," I repeated. "And I appreciate that—it's one of your nicer traits. But you don't have to marry me."
He started walking again, stiffer and angrier than ever—unless I wanted to pull away from him, I had to trot at his side to keep up. "Late for second thoughts," he scolded, dipping his head so that his words were shadowed by his hat.
"I never even had first thoughts," I reminded him. "Thinking wasn't a big part of the... of...."
But from the accusatory glare he'd dropped on me, I suddenly realized why he looked so angry, even hurt, and I felt like I'd been slapped. "You think I planned it? You think I've been setting you up all along, and now I'm just playing hard to get? I can't believe this!" I yanked free of him, stepped back. I couldn't think clearly, that close to him. "For your information, Boss, I do have more self-respect than to trap unwilling cowboys into marriage!"
He looked confused, now, and he clearly didn't like it. Good! "Ain't said—" he started.
I cut him off. "I know what you said and ain't said, and buddy, you just insulted me a hell of a lot more than you did back in that—" His eyes flared, horrified that I would even mention it, in time to keep me from announcing our liaison to the folks lounging outside the Lady Gay Saloon.
I stepped closer to him, lowered my voice... and couldn't keep myself from touching the lapel of his coat, softly enough that I could hope he wouldn't notice. Not that I needed to touch him. It just steadied me, that's all. "I think it's safe to say that we made some pretty big errors in judgment today," I whispered up at him, and tried not to be distracted by how closely he searched my eyes, my face, looking for... what? Proof of my innocence, or my duplicity? "Both of us. Mine was a mistake too—not a scheme, not a con, nothing underhanded or premeditated and certainly not directed at you...."
But my mind was beginning to work again. "...or perpetrated by me," I realized, slowly.
"Beg pardon," he drawled finally—but I think he was being sarcastic. "Still gotta find a preacher."
"No, we don't. Aren't you listening? I'm not holding you to any of this."
He folded his arms. "And if there's issue?"
What? Oh. Score one for the Boss. Why hadn't the possibility of pregnancy immediately occurred to me as well?
"That would be my problem," I tried feebly.
He glared, not about to accept that little gem of an argument. This was not a man to turn his back on his responsibilities, no matter how distasteful. And apparently he found the idea of impregnating me distasteful as hell. Romantic, huh?
Suddenly it was too damned complicated, too damned unreal for me to worry about. Too many maybe's and what's, too few answers. And I knew where the answers lay: Retreat.
"I've got to go back to the doctor's," I told him, and his hard front faltered.
"Y'ain't..." Again he leaned nearer, to be sure we weren't overheard. "I didn't hurt you too bad?"
No more than anyone else would have my first time, I assumed, and he'd sure made up for that. But that wasn't what I'd meant. "I've got someone to talk to," I clarified, backing away from his reluctant concern. Too much of his concern, too much of his nearness, and I could get confused and end up wearing the Garrison brand. And I mustn't do that.
I really, really didn't belong.
He crossed the overlarge street with me, back to the City Drug Store, pretending to ignore the people on the north side of the street who solemnly stared at our return from the wrong side of the tracks. Wrong side of the tracks, Lillabit—get it? At first I didn't understand why he was leading me to the back of the building, until I realized how quiet this side of the street was. The saloons were still open, classical music drifting out their open doors, but the non-drinking-establishments were now closed. Not a lot of 24-hour service here.
When he reached to open the side-door, I stopped him with a hand to his arm. "I need to see him in private," I told him—and winced under his resulting glare. Scary man. Even having tasted his kisses, known his passion, I found him a scary man. "No, I am not going in there to conspire against you. I'm going in there to beat the crap out of a lying sack of shit. It's my own fight, and what will be said —" including the probable foul language that will fly fast and furious "—is my own business."
He hesitated.
"I'll try to stay out of jail this time," I promised, but couldn't quite manage a grin.
He still didn't look especially trusting. Maybe he was remembering how I'd skipped out on him, the last time I'd had him wait outside.
"Meet me here in an hour," I coaxed. "Go ride your horse, or check on your cows, and give me some space. Please... Jacob. Just for an hour. I promise I won't go anywhere."
"This ain't finished," he warned, and my stomach sank at the certainty in his tone. No, obviously it wasn't.
But when he opened the door for me, and I walked into the back room I'd left only a few hours ago, he didn't try to follow me in.
Everett Heard—yes, I remembered his last name now—lay asleep on his cot, looking like the son of a bitch he was. I seriously considered dumping him off the bed, broken leg or no broken leg. I re
ally tried not to notice the furrow of pain on his sun-ravaged forehead, or the sheen of sweat, or how much less "medicine" he had in the bottle beside his bed than he'd had before.
I didn't want to be a nice person. I'd tried that for far too long, a lot longer than a week, maybe for my whole life. It made me too easy to victimize.
So I compromised with myself and kicked his bed until he woke up groaning.
"Wha—?" he protested, scrunching his eyes farther closed, then finally opening them to squint, as if the curtains weren't already drawn against the impending sunset. "What, already? Oh... it's you."
And he covered his eyes with an arm, dismissing me.
I kicked the bed again.
The arm came down. "Crap! I've got a fuckin' compound fracture, for God's sake! Set by some 1870s quack, without X-ray or anesthesia, or even a cast, and it hurts like a mother bear! Stop it!"
When he groped for his medicine, his hand was shaking so badly that he knocked the bottle over; even once he captured it, he had a hard time with the cork, and he took three wincing sips, in quick succession. "Goddamn," he muttered sulkily.
I knew what an X-ray was, and a cast. I knew a lot of things I shouldn't know, not here, not now. I didn't want to face it—but I no longer had the luxury of just doing what I wanted, did I? The things that I knew explained why I couldn't marry Garrison. They explained why I'd been so stupid, so awkward, for this entire week.
They started to explain, if I let them, the awful thing that had happened, to start all this.
"You lied about me being a prostitute," I told him coldly.
He lay completely still for a moment, then shuddered, sighed... and smiled. Strong stuff, whatever he was drinking. When his eyes fluttered open, they were calmer, unnaturally so, his pupils strangely small again, but no less wicked. "How long'd it take you to figure that one out, Einstein?"
I knew who Einstein was, too. And I was beginning to accept how different that made us two from the world around us.
"You lied."
"No, you misinterpreted. I just went along with it. You did work in Client Relations. Cushy job if ever there was one."
No it wasn't. There'd been transportation to arrange, lodgings to confirm, menus to coordinate, a bastion of executive assistants to breach daily. There'd been follow-up letters and emails and tweets and calls, conciliatory meetings, weekly battles with marketing, bi-weekly confabs with quality control, and don't get me started on our… website. I knew all the pieces... but I couldn't quite grasp the whole on my own.
It was that big.
"I need you to tell me the truth, Everett," I warned him. "If you do not tell me the truth, and I find out that you didn't, I will come back here with a baseball bat and further compound your fracture. Do you understand?"
"Yeah." He rolled his eyes. "Right. Tell me anoth—"
But he stopped, and whimpered, because I'd grabbed his foot.
"No, I didn't used to be the sort of person who would do something like that." Hell, if I'd once had the grit to knee him in the balls myself, instead of running to management after he'd made unwanted advances at me, none of this would be happening, would it? I knew that too. "But we aren't where we used to be, are we Everett? I'm getting just a little too desperate to let you mindfuck me any further. This is my survival we're talking about. So I'll do it. I might not like doing it, but I will do it. And considering the crap you've pulled, maybe I would like it!"
He nodded anxiously, holding his breath, and I let go of his foot and stared at my hand, at its healing blisters and new calluses. He gulped more medicine, shaking, and I hated the ugly person I'd become.
But that's how badly I needed to know.
"Where are we from?" I asked, low.
"I told you. Chicago. The Windy City. Hog Butcher for the World. It's off Lake Michigan, in Illinois."
"No! I mean... ." Say it, Lillabit. Admit it. It's time to admit it. "When are we from, Everett?"
He smiled a drug-hazed smile, apparently transcending the pain to his leg. "Ding ding ding, we have a winner."
"Damn it, Everett, when are we from?"
And I must have looked just desperate enough, because he toasted me with his bottle and said, "We are from about a hundred and thirty years in the future, give or take a decade."
And it was the truth.
And now, with the truth made real by words—now I remembered.
Chapter 16 – The Truth
The avalanche of suspicion and implication and that had been churning around me all afternoon finally stilled into a reverberating silence. Within that silence, my mind settled into a new and yet completely natural, completely familiar realignment.
I remembered. I knew.
My name was, as reported, Elizabeth Kathleen Rhinehart. I was born and raised in Illinois, and I was 26 years old. At least, last week I'd been 26 years old. Today I seemed to have passed the negative century mark.
Until last week, I'd been a Client Relations Facilitator at A Closer Look Inc., a cutting-edge, multi-media, virtual-reality-oriented educational consortium. Looking at Yesterday and Today through the Eyes of Tomorrow!
Really.
Until last week, I'd had a one-bedroom loft condo with den, two affectionate cats named Pinky and Brain, a teddy-bear hamster named Chewey, and an aquarium with two angelfish (Cupid and Psyche), four guppies (Fred the first, second, third, and seventh), and a plecostomus named Hoover. I'd had a grandmother, Nana Connelly, whom I visited on Sundays at her retirement community, and some cousins with whom I corresponded regularly, and a very best friend named Rita who lived just four buildings down from me and who was always trying to drag me out of my shell and who could hardly believe I'd never "done it." One Saturday a month I volunteered secretarial services at a local homeless shelter. Once a year I treated myself to a beach vacation, usually with Rita. And I'd almost finished paying off my Mazda two-door.
I'd had a life, my life. It might not sound like much, but I'd enjoyed it, and it was mine.
And then Everett Heard had created an increasingly hostile work environment, then groped me in the staff room, and I reported him to H.R., and they filed sexual-harassment charges against him... and something awful had happened. That, I didn't want to remember—but it was too late, because I already had, in my nightmares of the past week. Apparently the Research and Development team of A Closer Look, Inc. was doing some kind of covert experimentation on a technological breakthrough that Everett threatened to expose unless the upper management supported him against me.
Make that, some kind of covert experimentation on an impossible technological breakthrough. Or, as Everett now put it after another swallow of his medicine, "Time-ime-ime-ime Travel-havel-havel-havel." Then he giggled.
Except that it clearly wasn't impossible. We were who we were... with the return of my memories, I couldn't deny that. We were where we were which, after my brush with cattle drives, army forts, and 19th-century prostitution, I couldn't deny either. Mainly because Everett had been a creep with a taste for extortion, and maybe partly because I'd threatened his job instead of handling things myself, we'd both found ourselves unwilling test-subjects, putting in way too much mandatory overtime.
I must have murmured that last part.
"Too damned bad we're salaried," Everett slurred.
Oh, God. It wasn't impossible at all. It should have been, but it wasn't, and now everything I loved, everything I'd collected and worked for, was a forever away!?
"You're lying to me," I accused, as if my protest could make it true.
"No I'm not. Not this time. Scout's honor." He flubbed a Boy-Scout salute—yeah, he was believable. "Not as fun as in the movies, is it?"
"How can I believe any of this?"
"You know, I have a theory about that." He tried pointing at me, but missed. "I betcha that's why you weren't firing on all cylinders when you got here. You couldn't believe it was real, so you didn't. Get it?" He giggled again. "Get a load of me. I shoulda majored in P
sych."
"But how?"
"It has...has something..." He frowned at the flaking tip of his nose, thoughtful, and stopped talking.
I realized I'd found the chair and seated myself some time ago—could you stand through news like that? Now I leaned forward on it. "Everett?"
He looked back up at me. "Hmmm?"
"Everett!"
He winced. "Don't! Don't... do not yell. Just... don't. It hurts when you yell. I'm tired of hurting. I'm tired of this whole stinkin' place."
Well join the club! "How is it even possible? How do you know we aren't imagining all this?"
"Do I look like a techno-geek? All I know is, is... is they do something. With hypnosis, and 3D glasses... and drugs. Goood fuckin' drugs. And then poof! You're here. Or maybe you aren't but everyone including you thinks you are, which maybe would mean you are. My head hurts too bad to try to play meaning-of-reality right now, 'kay?"
Not a particularly coherent answer. When he tried to take another swig of medicine, I intercepted it. "What is that, anyway?"
He tugged.
Disgusting though it was to let my fingers touch his, I held tighter.
He made a snarling sound, tugged harder, and pulled it loose, sloshing some onto his hand. Then he licked it off his hand. Then he grinned sleepily at me, and savored the word on his tongue. "Opi-yummm."
"What?"
"Street legal, too." After one more swig, he corked it and handed it to me. I read the label, which looked like something you'd find at an antique store, but not faded. There were no ingredients or nutritional information. But it was called laudanum and, among other things, it promised "safe and miraculous relief from pain."
"This is addictive, you idiot!"
"Well duh!" He closed his eyes and took a deep, deep breath, then sighed it out, seeming to shrink as he did. I don't think the pain was bothering him as badly. "So I'll check into rehab when I get home. Big fucking deal."
OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) Page 23
