TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037

by Holloway, Peggy

  My jaw fell open when he said I would need to talk to Joe. “He be at one of the tables playing poker,” he said as he waved his hand toward a red door.

  When I opened the door, I never really expected to see my Joe but there he was, sitting at a table, covered in red felt, with three other men.

  He was dressed in a suit that fit like a glove but, instead of a tie and dress shirt, he was wearing what looked like a frilly blouse. There were ruffles down the front and at the cuffs.

  I remember watching a TV show, in the first life I could remember, named Yancy Derringer. He was dressed just like that and had his hair combed straight back.

  The other three were dressed in the same fashion. They looked like true gentlemen of that time. They looked up in surprise when I opened the door and I could tell that Joe didn’t recognize me.

  Although he looked just like Joe, he talked like a native New Orleans gentleman. “Can I hep ya, dahlin?” he said and I replied, “I’m here about the singing job.”

  “Can ya sing?”

  “Sure,” I said and decided to emulate Billy Holiday.

  He stood and bowed to the other gentlemen and held out his hand, palm up, “After you.”

  I followed him into a narrow hallway and up a narrow set of stairs and into a large room that looked like a combination restaurant/nightclub. There was a piano in the corner and sitting at the piano playing, “Ain’t Misbehavin,” was Irene.

  She quit playing when she saw us and Joe led me over to her. It turned out that Joe had recognized me after all. “She came,” he said to Irene.

  She got up off her seat and hugged me and started crying, “Thank God,” she said.

  I hugged both of them and then said, “How did this happen, Irene?”

  “Ashley, just wait until I tell you everything I’ve learned. Joe, get that nice bartender to bring us some of that excellent wine. Come on, you two. Let’s sit over here at one of these tables.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Irene took a long swallow of the wine and smacked her lips, “I almost don’t know where to begin. The day you disappeared, Ashley, the sky turned pitch black and the cave, or jellyfish or whatever it was that we had been traveling in, uprooted and floated away.

  “There were about half of us in it at the time and it didn’t wait for anyone else. Josie pitched a really good temper tantrum. She screamed at the cave thing to take her back so she could get you two.

  “We didn’t know it at the time but you, Ashley, had slipped into a parallel universe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Joe told me later after we connected that he had gone out to the cave and it wasn’t there.

  “Anyway, Josie ranted and raved for days until the cave thing got tired of hearing her, I guess and came back. She found Joe in the bar where you had disappeared and he and his band were playing there.

  “The cave thing took off again after it dropped Josie off. You wouldn’t believe the places I’ve seen since then, Ashley. But it would take too long to go into all that.”

  She took a deep breath and sipped her wine while I waited. She got tears in her eyes and then continued, “I don’t know how to explain this part but, after traveling for about 20 years, and experiencing many things, I had reached a place where I could see a much bigger picture.

  “I don’t know how else to explain it but I saw you wake up in the future, I saw Joe and Josie live almost a lifetime. I saw you try to find Joe.”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted, “He was an old man and I had great grandchildren. It was horrible.”

  Joe pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head, “Let her finish, baby.”

  “At one point I tried to intervene. I messed up big time and sent you into someone else’s body and you were hung. I’m so sorry you had to experience that, Ashley.”

  “I wasn’t crazy about it myself,” I said and I must have looked at Irene like I blamed her.

  “Don’t blame her, Ashley,” Joe said. “She was trying to help.”

  Irene chuckled and then continued, “What I finally learned by trial and error was that there are certain places where you can see over into the different universes. These are usually clear places or slick surfaces. There are many but, to name a few, mirrors, lakes or pools with no ripples, and windows. Did you ever think you saw someone out of the corner of your eye but, when you turned to look, no one was there? Well you had just gotten a glimpse into a parallel universe.

  “What I found out was that I couldn’t interfere, but I could get messages across the thin membrane between the different universes. I learned to project my image into these membranes and that’s how I was able to tell you to come back to New Orleans.”

  “But how did Joe get here?”

  “That’s a little harder to explain. You already know that time is not linear. Well I learned to not only project my image into some of the membranes, but I found that I could manipulate the time in which I did so. I’ll teach you some day, but it has to do with the fact that time and space are interconnected. All I had to do was to get you both to end up at the same time and place.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I asked and we all got a good laugh out of that.

  “With Joe, it was easy. I projected into the assisted living place where he lived and sent him a message while he was looking in his mirror, shaving.”

  “I thought I was going senile,” Joe broke in. “Then when she told me I had to walk to the riverboat and I had to go alone, I felt like she had lost her mind. I thought there was no way I could walk that far. But the farther I walked the younger and stronger I became. It was amazing.

  “I stopped at the bank and withdrew some money and got in a poker game and that’s where you found me.”

  “So, not only is time not linear but it’s also space related?” I asked. “I hope you both know that this is blowing my mind.”

  Suddenly Joe grabbed me and kissed me and it shut me up. I responded to his kiss but I was still feeling frustrated. Everything I had thought I had finally figured out about the universe was not what it was at all. It was so much more complicated than I would have ever imagined.

  I had some more questions but the most important one was what I now asked, “Irene, where and when is Josie?”

  Joe and Irene looked at each other and I saw tears in their eyes. Then Irene spoke, “Sometimes, there is a price to pay for moving around within time and space. Sometimes someone or something is sacrificed.”

  I pulled away from Joe, “You sacrificed Josie so that we could be together? How could you? She was your own flesh and blood.”

  I took a deep breath to continue berating Joe but Irene jumped in, “It wasn’t his choice, Ashley. Quit acting like a two year old. Sit still while I explain. I didn’t say that either one of us sacrificed Josie, not on purpose anyway.

  “By coming back here and now, you and Joe changed history. We didn’t realize that everything affects everything and everyone else. If you want to blame anyone, you could blame me but you know that my heart has always been in the right place concerning your family.”

  I sat still for a few moments and I became ashamed of myself. I whispered, “What happened to her, Irene?”

  “She still pitched a fit for the cave thing to bring her back, and she went to the French quarter, looking for both of you. She went inside each club and finally saw a picture of you, Ashley, on the wall of one of the clubs. You had had your picture made with Billy Holiday. You were in the twenties and she didn’t know where Joe was.

  “I’m not going to go into any details, Ashley, but Josie died of a heroin overdose in a back alley in New Orleans. She was a prostitute. She died at the age of 15.”

  “No! No,” I screamed. “Joe, you’ve got to fix this. She was supposed to have children and grandchildren. I saw them…I saw them.” I turned to Irene, “Can’t we do anything about this?”

  She put her head in her hands and then looked up at me, “From what I understand, when a person commits suicide, they don’t have a choice of movi
ng into another time or place. If I had only known then, what I know now maybe I could have helped her.

  “After the cave thing let Josie off, it took off with the rest of us and that’s when I learned all I now know.”

  Joe and I looked at each other. I could tell his brain was working overtime like mine was. Then Joe said softly, “Irene, can you undo what you’ve done? I will go back to being an old man if it will help Josie.”

  “It’s not that simple,” She said. “How can I explain this? Everything has to be aligned just right and at the right time and space in order to accomplish anything. You’re talking about going back and changing an event that you already know the outcome of.”

  “But isn’t that what you did with both me and Joe?”

  “No, it is not. I didn’t know the outcome at all and still don’t. I don’t know in this time and place, what will happen to you and Joe, the decisions you’re going to make, anything.”

  “Irene, there has to be a way. Couldn’t the cave thing help us? We knew the outcome of Charles Manson but were able to go back and help him.”

  “You have a good point, Ashley. But the cave thing is not here in this time and place.”

  I looked at Joe and he shrugged, “I’ll do whatever it takes to save our daughter, Ashley, you know that.” He then turned to Irene, “Will you teach us how to project our image into Josie’s past, like you did with Ashley?

  “And by the way, how did you get to this time and place yourself? Could we all go back to the time and place before Josie overdosed and help her? What is it you’re not telling us, Irene?”

  “The whole process is very painful, Joe. It takes a lot of study and calculations. Not only do you have to find a slit in the fabric of both time and space, but you have to align them up perfectly.

  “We’re lucky in that we already know where a slit in time is, because Ashley has already been through there. That’s the easy part. But, if you go through that slit and it isn’t aligned with the space slit, then you are going to be caught between realities and that’s the painful part. I’ve been there and it can be very confusing. Nothing will be as it seems. That’s why I ended up putting Ashley into another body and she had to suffer being hung.”

  We were all silent for awhile, lost in our own thoughts. Joe took my hand and squeezed it, “I’m willing to try, Ashley, are you?”

  I nodded and Irene said, “Then I’ll go with you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  We had to get to the exact time and place where I had gone through. Irene said we knew the place, outside the club, but we needed to make sure it was aligned with the correct time and space.

  It was really late by the time Irene had finished explaining everything to us and Joe and I went to bed. The lovemaking was wonderful. I had missed Joe so much and didn’t know if I would ever see him again. After we had exhausted ourselves making love, I fell into a deep sleep.

  Now we were outside the club. It was 2:00 p.m., about the time I had gone through before. We didn’t know the exact time and, according to Irene, we could very well end up in a narrow area between the correct time and space where we needed to be and we would have to manually align it ourselves within the narrow place.

  I didn’t understand it very well but Irene said we had to go at the same time and to hold on to each other.

  We must have looked comical standing on the sidewalk in a tight circle with our arms around each other. “Now don’t forget,” Irene said, “You might feel faint but you’ve got to stay alert. Hold on tight to each other.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before I felt myself pulled into the strangest place I could have imagined. If you can imagine a cylinder within a cylinder but spinning in opposite directions, we were in between the two.

  I didn’t expect the noise and I guess Irene forgot to mention it, but it was the kind of sound a strong wind would make as it went through a tunnel. Irene let go of Joe and we stretched the width of the space we were in.

  Irene had explained to us that when she saw an opening at the same time as Joe they would put their hands in there and align them. It was going so fast, I couldn’t make head or tails from anything. “You have to focus,” Irene yelled, reminding us of what she had already told us.

  I was glad I wasn’t the one to have to do what they had to do, but just as I was thinking that, it appeared that the two cylinders were slowing down. But they weren’t really because, if I moved my head the slightest bit, they would speed up. I kept my head staring straight at the cylinder that Joe was watching and suddenly I saw a gap.

  Before I could warn Joe, I saw him reach out his hand and I saw Irene do the same from the other side of me, out of the corner of my eye. We came to a screeching halt which made me dizzy. I stumbled and would have fallen if I hadn’t still been holding onto both of them.

  We were standing in front of the same club but it was later, in time, but not late enough. The streets were crowded with couples. The women were wearing knee length dresses with shoulder pads and most of the men were in uniform.

  Everyone was laughing and singing and dancing in the street. Men and women were grabbing each other and kissing. One sailor grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth and I had to hold Joe back.

  A young boy was standing on the corner with a stack of newspapers yelling, “Read all about it, Japan has surrendered, the war is over, read all about it.”

  “We’re in 1945,” I said. “We need to go to 1983. That’s when all of this started.”

  Irene nodded, “We need to go back in, but we have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. It’s night time here now and we no longer belong on the riverboat. We need to find rooms.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I was dressed in the 1920s green dress Rita had loaned me, Joe was dressed like Yancy Derringer and Irene was dressed like Irene with the long jean skirt and peasant blouse and sandals. It didn’t seem to matter in New Orleans.

  Joe had money in his pocket that he had taken out of the bank and some he had won in the poker game. He counted it and discovered he had almost $2,000.00. I thought that must be a lot of money in 1945. I had the roll of bills that Al Capone had given me. It was $342.00 which was a lot of money during the depression.

  Irene told Joe to take out all the bills that were dated later than 1945. After he had done so, he only had $247.00.

  We got a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel on Baronne Street and ate at the Sazerac Dining Room, then went across the hallway to The Blue Room and heard Leon Kelnor and his orchestra. Both places were full of military men and their girlfriends and wives. I also saw some women in uniform. It was an exciting time to be in New Orleans.

  When we got back to the suite I asked Irene, “Why are we able to slip through to another time from 3:00 p.m. and end up at nighttime?”

  “That’s a good question. Not only is time not linear but it is warped in places, like in between the cylinders. When we go in between the cylinders, we cheat time in a way and that’s the best I can explain it.

  “I have always thought that there was a parallel universe and that, based on the decisions we make at any given time, we could end up in another universe and never know it. I was wrong. There is more than one parallel universe, in fact there are thousands.

  “Tomorrow we may have to do something even more difficult than we did today.”

  She was silent for awhile and Joe and I looked at each other. I was feeling apprehensive. I swallowed hard, “Even more difficult?”

  “The cylinders we were in between are just the simplest of the time/space possibilities. There are many more connecting cylinders. If we have to move in between two other cylinders, we could get separated. That’s the main thing that scares me.

  “If we get separated, not only may we lose our chance to find Josie, we may never find each other again.”

  “What are you saying, Irene?” I asked and I knew my voice must sound panicky.

  “I’m asking you to make a choice. The three of us are together now. Jos
ie is lost to us, for now. When I said you may have to do something even harder than you did today, that’s what I meant. It is a difficult choice. The choice itself is what I was talking about.”

  “Damn you, Irene,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell us this up front? Why did you wait until we got our hopes up and then throw this at us?”

  “I’m sorry, Ashley. I know you’re mad but I had hoped we could find the right time/space pair so that we could get Josie and we wouldn’t have to consider the other thing.”

  I tossed and turned and didn’t get any sleep. Making love with Joe didn’t even relax me enough to sleep. I didn’t want to lose both Joe and Irene in an effort to find and rescue Josie. I was being asked to choose between Joe, my husband, my soul mate, my best friend and my daughter. I couldn’t do it and neither could Joe.

  He sat up in bed at three o’clock in a panic. “I can’ do this, Ashley. I can’t choose. This is the most unfair thing I’ve ever been faced with. I love you so much but I love my daughter too. Who do I love the most? Is that what I’m being asked to decide? I won’t do it. Ashley. Honey, forgive me but I can’t go.”

  He put his head on my breast and shook as he cried and I soon joined him. We must have worn ourselves out and slept because the next thing I knew it was morning and someone was knocking on our door. It was Irene and behind her was a room service waiter with a push cart full of food.

  We were still angry with Irene and no one spoke much while we ate. The coffee was delicious and I had three cups even though my nerves were already on edge.

  I wiped my mouth and threw down my napkin. No, I didn’t fold it. People in the South don’t fold their napkin. Why would you fold something that needs to be washed? All these mundane things were going through my head and then I realized they were sitting there looking at me like they wanted me to respond to something they had said.

  “What?”

  “Ashley, Irene asked you if your decision was the same as mine.”

  “It is,” I almost shouted. “I will not play God and choose who will be rescued and who will not.