by Peter Clines
The fifth time the setting sun hit a smear of gnat juice on the windshield and created a glow.
Eli brought the Impala around again. He was running out of sunlight. Four, maybe five more runs, unless he wanted to keep trying in the dark.
Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He slapped his foot down on the brakes. A heartbeat later he killed the engine.
Harry sat on the steps outside the Last Paradox. Her frock coat sprawled open to show off a red vest and a baggy shirt, while her tricorne balanced on one knee. A brown bag sat next to her, along with a small drift of what looked like peanut shells. Her lips were pressed tightly together, but the corners of her mouth and eyes fluttered.
“Harry?”
“Please,” she said, waving him on, “don’t mind me. Just continue making an ass of yourself.” She shook two nuts out of the shell and pushed them into her mouth, stifling a laugh.
Eli got out of the Impala, dragging his coat after him, and walked over to her. “How long have you been sitting there?”
“How long have I been sitting here watching you drive up and down the road like a fool? Long enough that you’ll be regretting it for some time to come.” She pulled another peanut from the bag and tore it open. Then she giggled and dropped it back in the bag.
“I waited for weeks and you didn’t show up.”
“Well, I’ve been looking for you for months,” she said, pushing herself up off the steps. “I showed up in Sanders and everyone told me about how you’d bought a car and driven off into the sunset.”
“Once I realized I was going in and out of town with no problem, I figured it was safe for me to leave and come looking for you.” He crossed his arms. “Besides, how can you be late when you can travel through history?”
“Not there,” she said. “Not anymore. The closest slick spot to Sanders is down in Boston now, and it’s almost a year off.”
“That far?”
She nodded. “The best I could find was about four months after they let you go. Almost a third of them are gone. James thinks there may be a dozen or so new ones, but nobody’s quite figured out where they are yet. And Eleanor was a wreck. I worked on her for a month, and that was with John’s help.”
They stood there for a moment. Harry knocked some dust from her tricorne. She examined the hat to make sure she hadn’t missed any spots.
“So,” said Eli. He looked past her to the tavern. “We made it to the Last Paradox.”
“We did,” said Harry. She pushed the hat up onto her head. “Thanks to you.”
“I just got lucky, put a few things together. You did all the work.”
“We did it together, then.”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other.
“So,” he said. “Now what? There’s no search. No dream to be had. What do we do now?”
Harry’s lips formed a soft, nervous smile. “There’s always a dream to be had.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He felt his own lips pull into the same awkward smile and felt a sudden need to check his boots for dust or dirt.
Harry cleared her throat. “As I see it, there are two options in our immediate future.”
“Okay.”
“One,” she said, jerking her thumb behind her, “is there’s a celebration going on here back in 1886.”
“Right here?”
She nodded. “Everyone who made it. About three dozen of us. James is there. John’s there chatting with Monica. Did you meet her?”
“Dark hair, wears a business suit?”
“That’s her. Danny Cooper’s with her. Alice Ramsey’s come back for the end—and she’s so old now! Maisie Huang was just heading in when I left.”
“When you left?”
“I had to go looking for my partner,” she said. “Who, I might note, is not smart enough to just stay at home where I can find him.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be. Dumb luck I found you here.”
“I think I found you.”
“Don’t nitpick, Mr. Teague.” She overemphasized his name.
“So option one is a party.”
Harry nodded. “And they’re all waiting for you.”
“Me?”
“Us, technically. We are the ones who found the dream.”
“Ahhh. What’s option two?”
She looked at her own boots. “I’ve been driving around America for a while now. I was thinking it was time to try somewhere new. Maybe Canada. Or Cuba.”
“There aren’t any roads to Cuba.”
Harry looked up at him. “Not yet,” she said. “But I happen to know a shortcut if you don’t feel like waiting.”
She blinked twice and met his gaze again.
“Well,” said Eli, “is there any reason we can’t do both?”
“None at all.” She reached out, then pulled her hands back. “Eleanor’s just around the corner. Do you have everything?”
Eli looked down at the coat hooked on his fingers. He felt the brim of his hat against his head. He glanced back at the Impala and imagined a park ranger finding the muscle car in the center of town in a few days, still with half a tank of gas and the keys in the ignition.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got everything I need.”
The corners of her mouth twitched, and her lips stretched a little wider across her face. She leaned forward, brought her face close to his, and then settled back on her heels. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
They stepped off the stairs of the Last Paradox together.
“Oh,” she added, “one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“If this is going to be a permanent arrangement, I’m going to need you to chip in for fuel.”
“I’m sure we’ll work out something,” Eli said.
“I’m sure we will.”
Afterword
This is the longest I’ve ever spent on a book.
Okay, that’s kind of a lie. Not a great way to start this. It’s the longest I’ve ever spent on a published book. My actual “first novel” (never before seen—with good reason) took me almost nine years to finish, depending on how you want to count it. And then another three years to edit.
Since I’ve started doing this full time, though…yeah, this has been the longest.
It’s also been very odd writing a book about the United States and the American dream as all of 2016 and the first few months of 2017 have rolled by. Things I worried were a bit too dark now feel almost cartoonishly simple. Things that started out feeling a bit optimistic have come to feel almost hopelessly naive.
Then again, nobody seems to be getting tired of watching movies about Captain America…
As always, I’m both thrilled and stunned some of you decided to pick up my latest tome. Even more surprised you’ve made it all the way to the back and are reading the afterword, hoping to glean some more fun facts about the people and things and situations I made up this time.
Of course, this time I didn’t make all of it up.
For example…
James Dean was an American film icon, nominated for two posthumous Academy Awards, who absolutely loved automobiles. In fact, he considered giving up Hollywood to devote more time to racing. His death in an automobile accident was far too well-documented to be a hoax…but it’s nice to dream.
Alice Ramsey was the first woman to drive across the United States in 1909, and the third person to ever do it. At age twenty-two she took three friends from New York City to San Francisco in a brand new Maxwell touring car, setting a new cross-country record in the process. She repeated the trip numerous times during her very long life and would often be away on the road for weeks at a time.
Henry “Frank” Hawkins was one of the original miner 49ers, rushing out to California from Maine at the age of fourteen! He made several successful trips out west, trying different routes, and finally settled in New Orleans (although he still visited Maine from time to time). It’s probably
also worth mentioning that he’s my great-great-grandfather.
Many of the cross-country oddities mentioned in this book—the town of Dinosaur, the wrong soldier statue in York, Maine, Pasadena’s fork in the road, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar in New Orleans—are real and you can visit all of them.
But, yeah…I did make up some of it. The town of Hourglass, alas, is pure fiction. So is Harry’s hometown of Shame, but we may still need to visit it someday, just to find out exactly why her parents left. Sanders, Maine, is also fiction, but the Founders House is loosely inspired by the old Ocean House Hotel, which stood on a hill in York Beach for almost 130 years before being torn down in 1985.
I also tweaked history a bit. There were a few times and places where I needed things to happen. Or to have happened, as is the way with time travel. If you didn’t notice them, don’t worry. If you did, I meant to do that. Really.
And, of course, there are a lot of folks who helped me with this in one way or another and deserve a bunch of thanks.
First off, all of you following me on Twitter or Facebook who put up with my constant vague hints and refusal to tell you anything useful. I have to assume you’re sticking around for all the geeky nonsense.
Ed and Alex educated me on the fine differences between bourbon and rye whiskey.
Ray and Bo both offered helpful tips and insights about classic cars.
Dennis, my dad, helped me with some railroad history.
Mary talked to me about wounds and injuries, plus some cutting-edge medical stuff that might be boringly common in a decade or so.
CD, David, and John all read early versions of this book, caught many problems, and offered many suggestions. CD and Kristi went through a later version of it too.
David, my agent, championed this book when it wasn’t much more than three pages of notes and something we’d talked about over drinks at San Diego Comic-Con.
Julian, my editor, continued to believe in it even after the completely crazy, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-it-got-away-from-me-yeah draft I first handed him.
And, as always, so many thanks to my lovely lady, Colleen, who puts up with so many random, rambling discussions and segues about train tracks, 1850s coinage, time paradoxes, plus all the usual moaning and self-doubt. I’m still not sure why she puts up with it, but I think it’s good for all of us that she does.
P.C.
Los Angeles, March 2017
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