Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived

by Lacey Ann Carrigan

  Chapter Five

  The next day, Dorina took a long lunch break and headed to the nearest electronic archives station. There was one nearby, at the studios, and she thought she could make it there and back as long as the traffic cooperated. Outside, glorious sunlight tinged with yellow haze. A few bars of the corny song from her grade school years played in her mind: “Seems it never rains in Southern California.”

  As a throwback to her college days, Dorina carried a backpack instead of a purse. It carried compartments for all her personal items but could also fit much more such as a laptop, or a change of clothes. Her friend at the fashion desk, Anisette, called it her “ho” bag. “Girl, carrying that around you’re ready for anything,” she would say. When she entered the garage she dug around in one of the outer compartments for her keys. In L.A., she’d heard long ago, you “are what you drive.” Once she had fished her keys out of the backpack she looked across the oil-stained garage floor and wondered what her car said about her.

  Mostly everyone she knew drove new vehicles, what Mitch called “Slot cars.” When they finally got the technology to mass produce them and got the power contacts strung up around the country, the cars finally became practical and everyone was buying them. In stark contrast, Dorina’s car was almost a dinosaur. She looked at the gleaming, sleek lines of the metallic baby blue 1989 Toyota Supra and the white swooping designs on the side panels. While the slot cars were all sensible small sedans hers was a coupe built for speed, rear-wheel drive, and the first of the hybrids. She could drive unencumbered in the outer two freeway lanes and didn’t have to worry about running out of power on city streets or in the country.

  It was early spring, featuring some of the best weather of the year, and a perfect late afternoon for going topless. She opened the door and poked around in the console for the Allen wrench. When she first bought the car an old boyfriend showed her in vivid, patronizing detail how to remove the roof panel and stow it in the hatchback. After much practice she could unbolt it, flip it up and outward and put it away within minutes.

  The targa roof offered the fun of a convertible without the worry. The same boyfriend who’d showed her how to remove the roof preached to her about its superiority over ragtops. “In a convertible,” he said, “someone can get into your car using a butter knife.” Dorina’s routine in getting behind the wheel was always the same. She would slide down into the low slung blue leather bucket seat, put her sunglasses on, and flip the edges of her long hair away from her face. There was a short moment of relished anticipation and then the mini-adrenaline charge that would come when she turned the key. The peppy six cylinder engine would metallically hiss and then spring to life, purring for her like a loving, faithful cat. She would back away from the stall then drop into first gear and pat the gas pedal down, causing the tires to chirp on the pavement, jolting her away to her evening.

  It was always the same. She would tool briskly through the side streets around work, past the grimy factories and neglected warehouses on her way to the interchange. A traffic copter fluttered overhead, drowning out the sweet vocal stylings of Manhattan Transfer that played on her car stereo. When she swerved onto the ramp for the freeway, the whole world stopped. Luckily Dorina had a whole set of games to play for the duration of one of the most unpleasant aspects of southern California life, the traffic jam.

  Sometimes she would enjoy watching the sea of humanity pass by her driver’s window. Trucks with gaggles of Mexicans or blond, tanned surfers at their week job splashed with white remnants of drywall, stained with grass or bare chests gleaming in the sun from sweat. Businessmen in gleaming Jaguars steering with an elbow while they used one hand to hold a cell phone to their ears and wrote entries on a day planner with the other. Secretaries or court reporters who would touch up eye liner or lipstick in their vanity mirror. Busloads full of children laughing and playing, pointing at all the commuters haplessly mired in stopped traffic around them.

  Her parents, her boyfriend and her best friend had all told her about one of the drawbacks of driving a five speed. They were a pain in traffic jams, they all said. Dorina liked to think of it instead as a workout for her legs as she deftly worked the clutch and gas pedals, throwing in an occasional pat on the brake as she inched the car along. When she rounded a bend she saw a reason for the traffic tie-up: police had pulled over a ZUB and arresting the people inside. A couple of distraught looking guys in handcuffs pleaded their case with the cops who stood before them, arms folded across their chests.

  She wondered how much money the ZUB Gestapo collected for the city and county coffers every year. The huge Russian made vehicles were strictly regulated and only available through rental or permit. Families liked them for their size and spaciousness and supposed comfort on a family trip. Dorina thought they were ugly and reminded her of the big unwieldy woody station wagons around her neighborhood when she was in grade school, except ZUBs were taller. To some misguided nouveau-riche types, ZUBs were a status symbol. Many styles were quite luxurious and they were combustion-only fuel hogs. A few people eager to flaunt their wealth, saying “Look at me! I’ve made it!” with their vehicular extension of self, were able to purchase ZUBs on the black market. But Dorina knew that being caught unauthorized in one brought stiff penalties, multiple offenses even jail time.

  Soon she arrived at the studio complex where the archives were housed. A bored-looking gray haired attendant at the gate glanced at her press credentials and waved her through. Once she made it inside she thought that it seemed oddly busy for a midweek afternoon. Cushman carts buzzed past, weaving across intersections in front of her and behind her while she toured through the labyrinth of narrow streets. Lots of energized looking people about on foot also: young women carrying clipboards, men talking on cell phones, and paunchy, balding suited legal-looking types also swished past.

  On a weekday Dorina could usually park just a couple of rows away from the archives but that day she failed to find a spot anywhere near it. She had to settle for a slot beside a metal building that appeared to be a small airplane hangar. A man in a security Cushman whizzed past as she stepped out of the Supra, scowling at her. She felt a pang of anxiety at leaving the car parked there and decided to try and find someone in the building beside it. A crew of young men and women building what appeared to be scenery flats scurried about inside the hangar-like structure. She also thought she saw scale models of buildings and villages. As her eyes glanced about at the hive of activity she discovered that a Paul Bunyanesque tall man with a red beard was appraising her, brows, lifted, lips parted. He called out to her: “Something I can help you with, miss?”

  Dorina took a couple of steps toward him. “I just want to make sure it’s okay to park my car on the side of the building. I’m going to the archives.”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  Reassured, she started to walk back through the gaping, open entrance but instead turned back to him. “What’s going on, anyway?” she asked, having to raise her voice above saws, hammering, and conversation. “I’ve never seen it this busy around here.”

  Several of the workers in the hall glanced at the red-haired man as if to check his reply. He smiled and said “‘Portals Beyond’ is back in town.”

  Satisfied, Dorina continued her exit with a nod. “Portals” was always a huge cinema event. As she made her way onto the sidewalk, dodging a steady stream of people rushing toward her, she tried to remember what installment the series was on. The fifth or sixth, she supposed. Now why couldn’t Vic have sent her out to investigate some aspect of that? All the major stars had appeared in the offerings either as villains, warriors or bit players such as wizards, courtesans, god or goddess like rulers or just faces in the crowd. There was always a push to make the current installment bigger and better than the one that came before. Legendary directors had tried their hand at leading the action.

  She paused for a moment to look more closely at the droves of people passing her. Would she recognize any of
her colleagues, on the way to a plum assignment with the Portals powers-that-be? With the doorway to the Archives building drawing closer, she felt a guilty pang of misspent leisure time and missed opportunities. In the two years she had worked for Spectrum there had been endless cocktail parties, art gallery openings, premieres and press conferences. Many times she’d begged off or made excuses (“I have a migraine”) but in truth she’d always felt intimidated. Other people at the functions seemed to know about every major cultural phenomenon in the country, dropping names, figures, ideas of their glib tongues, leaving her to wonder if she lived in a completely different world.

  The first “Portal” movie came out when she was in the eighth grade. Back then she and her best friend Rachel and her two other friends Monica and Megan would haunt the Cineplex nearly every Saturday night, especially during the long, dreary Indiana winters. Many times they would wait till they arrived at the theater to decide what movie to see. Though they would look at the posters and discuss ads they had seen, buzz they had heard, many times it came down to the most convenient starting time. Dorina remembered that Monica had glanced at the poster for Portals Beyond and said “Hey guys, let’s see this! My brother said it was cool.”

  Megan, who was a cheerleader with perfect golden blond hair she liked to wear in a high ponytail, sneered at the poster filled with images of glass castles, strange looking hooved creatures and godlike creatures staring out at them. “Your brother’s a geek,” she said. “If he thinks it’s cool, it probably has all kinds of computer hooey and spaceships in it or something. The Accidental Tourist starts in ten minutes. Let’s go see that.”

  And Dorina had failed to see the four or five other movies, though she knew that they were hugely successful financially. They also grabbed an Oscar here and there for costumes or special effects or one of the other technical categories. At a party in college she encountered a group of theater majors who said that they were “Other Siders,” the nickname for fierce enthusiasts of the Portals movies. A guy and a girl in matching black t-shirts with mythic-looking characters silk-screened on had told her all about their devotion. The girl, who had died her short bobbed hair beet red, said “We call it ‘going to church.’ The movies are so positive, they give so much hope.”

  In the archives building, Dorina liked to visit the computer terminals first. She could find lists, abstracts and video clips there. The screens were much larger than what she normally worked with and she could open five or six windows and surf them simultaneously. With all the excitement in the streets outside, she was pleased that only a couple of other studious looking types had made their way into the building to work at terminals beside her. At first she just typed “Jacy Rayner” on a search engine and was surprised to find that it brought up thousands of listings. On one window, she called up a page for personal facts and another for “Filmography.”

  The photo accompanying the personal facts page looked like it had been taken by an ordinary portrait photographer. Jacy’s expression was pleasant, with a look of contentment yet she was unsmiling. Her long hair was lighter, reddish, highlighted and swept away from her face in swirling whorls. Dorina saw a vague weariness beyond the surface glamour and wondered whether the woman may have had a difficult personal life. She had been born in October, 1934. Among the text that stood out were entries that said “Lifetime student of the ballet,” and “possessor of a near-genius I.Q.”

  Her early career featured lots of bit parts and appearances as a dancer in musical numbers from romances. An uncredited appearance had her clad in a revealing chain mail outfit, painted silver as temptress nymph in the big budget Merlin’s Folly from 1955. After a few appearances on Broadway in the latter parts of that decade she started showing up in television once the sixties began. As a child’s doll who becomes a full grown woman in a Twilight Zone episode. As a mischievous witch guest starring beside Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched (she turns Darren into a frog).

  Then, one entry jumped off of the screen at her: “Jacy Rayner is rescued – Cape Canaveral day.” Dorina positioned the cursor over the entry and clicked on it. The screen refreshed and a film clip started in a separate window. Like all the other footage she’d seen throughout history classes all the way through school, the images were grainy, the sound garbled. A large ship floated in the ocean in the middle of a fog. The viewpoint seemed to come from a helicopter fluttering above the ship as stat icky, stressed voices said “We’ve gone on board the ship and found no survivors but there is a closed decompression chamber.”

  The images on the screen jumped violently to another view of a group of men wearing radiation suits and hoods opening the steel door of what looked like a miniature submarine although it was too round. One man spun a wheel on the door and another pulled a latch so that the massive door swung open. A still figure of a woman lie on a gurney inside the capsule and the men frantically rushed beside her, rolling the gurney out of the capsule and onto the ship’s deck. Someone hastily clamped an oxygen mask onto the woman’s face and Dorina suddenly allowed herself an “Ah-ha” moment.

  She had learned in school that when the atom bomb dropped on Cape Canaveral, it destroyed everything within a three hundred mile radius. Jacy Rayner, the actress had been saved because she’d been shut away inside a metal chamber on board a ship in the Bahamas.

  There were no more Stephen Blade movies made after Red Tide, according to the archives information. The producers had been able to piece together a cohesive movie from the footage that had been shot before April 5 and it had been released in the summer of 1965 with lukewarm reviews. The country had still been in a state of shock.

  Several places acknowledged that she was still best known for her role as “Empress Tigra” in Journey Galaxian yet Dorina was amazed to find out that the character only appeared on three of the episodes. She clicked onto a site for devotees of the science fiction television show and found that a whole section of it had been devoted just to her. It contained a video clip from one of the episodes.

  Dorina decided to click on it, hoping that someone hadn’t cranked the speakers too loudly. A media player metamorphosed onto the screen and Jacy’s body faded into view. She was wearing the famous, feline-striped, ultra-clingy bodice and leggings and a royal coat fanned away from her. Several fierce, shirtless guards flanked her. Suddenly the the stillness broke and Jacy’s eyebrows rose slightly. Inhaling, her eyes narrowing, she glared at someone out of camera range and remarked, in a throaty purr: “Admiral Vantage, are you attempting to amuse or enrage me? I made no such covenant on the order of prisoners for fuel.” And, leaning backward, inhaling reassuringly, calmly, while allowing her shoulders to relax, said “Guards, show him our version of purgatory.” The film clip then faded out and Dorina checked the rest of the filmography.

  After her appearances on Galaxian, there were a few more guest shots in comedy and drama shows during the latter sixties and early seventies. She played a hooker in a made-for-TV movie and an Indian in a big budget Hollywood western. After that, she strangely faded out, apparently falling off the radar for the rest of the seventies and into the early eighties. Though she turned up in a few “B” movies in the middle and late eighties and continued to make guest appearances they were far fewer in number. It appeared that her stint as Empress Tigra was the zenith of her show business career.

  Dorina then chose the periodical index and gasped when she saw the volume of references and entries for Jacy Rayner. Newspaper articles about her appearances at Hollywood parties. A photo of her in a fashion show. A sprawling layout in People magazine about her second marriage to an investment banker. Another article a few years later detailing the couple’s breakup over his involvement in the junk bond scandals of the mid eighties. Scores of write-ups in the tabloids with such spectacular titles as “How Jacy Rayner stays fabulous at sixty.”

  Out loud, Dorina murmured “Quite an enigma, this lady.” She closed out all the windows and embarked on the next part of her research. On the sear
ch engine blank she typed the words “Coma, 1969" and hundreds of entries appeared showing mostly dry scientific articles about states of consciousness and prosaic research. “Coma, 1968" brought up the same kinds of entries but then she entered “Coma awakenings.” Once again, she had to weed through line after line of dry, scientific research until she realized she could open a macro and use it as a mini-concordance. She entered “Empress Tigra” into the first field and lines of text jumped upward on the screen. Overjoyed, Dorina clapped her hands together, bouncing up and down in her seat as she read a newspaper with a dateline “Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 29, 1967.”

  It said: “Ronald Lewandowski, 12, of Broken Arrow, awoke from a coma early this morning at St. Francis hospital in Tulsa. He had been in the unconscious state for thirty days according to hospital officials. An unidentified family member stated that young Mr. Lewandowski had been hospitalized due to injuries sustained while riding a moped, or motorized bicycle on June 29. Head trauma resulting from a collision with a truck sent the youth into a comatose state. Surgeons and physicians following the boy’s progress had reportedly listed his prognosis as “day to day.”

  A night duty nurse first noticed young Ronald’s first movements, leading to his eventual awakening from the coma. His first words upon regaining full consciousness, according to observers were “Empress Tigra saved me.” Mr. Lewandowski, who also received multiple leg and shoulder fractures during the June 29 accident, is expected to make a full recovery.”

  Dorina clicked on the print button onscreen and exited out of the opened windows and sat back, to reflect.