WINDOW OF TIME

by DJ Erfert

  The room felt cold, and her head hurt. Lucy didn’t want to change into someone else’s pajamas; she wanted her own nightshirt. She wanted to go to sleep, even if it happened to be in her hotel’s bed where a thousand other strangers had slept before her. As she closed her eyes, Lucy lifted her bare feet and curled up on the bedding stacked next to her, letting the crashing surge of sleep finally overtake her.

  ~*~

  She should’ve waited for the water to warm up some. It had been eons since Lucy had gone swimming in the Pacific Ocean, but she couldn’t remember the last time it had been so terribly cold. She couldn’t stop shivering. Terror seized her chest—she couldn’t breathe.

  “Wake up!”

  She pushed at the person holding her down in the water—trying to drown her—then she opened her eyes. Johnny was holding her under the icy cold stream of the shower. She was shaking, soaked through to the skin. He had an iron grip around her body, holding her upright.

  “What are you doing?” Lucy screamed, her heart racing.

  He hit the water off, and the only sounds left were of the water dripping off their clothes and their combined heavy breathing. Lucy had been frightened, but her emotion spun into anger at being drenched. He abruptly released her, stepped out of the shower, and grabbed a large towel before returning to her.

  “I told you not to fall asleep,” Johnny snapped as he wrapped the towel around her shoulders.

  “Why d-didn’t you j-just wake me up?” Lucy yelled, too stunned to move on her own. He pulled her out of the stall onto a cotton bath rug. “You d-didn’t have to try to drown m-me!”

  Rubbing her arms vigorously with the dry parts of the towel, Johnny dropped his voice, but not his sharp tone. “I tried to, but I couldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” He let her go, stripped off his wet t-shirt, and threw it on the floor.

  Grabbing a fresh towel, Johnny began to dry off his chest. “I tried for five minutes to wake you up.” He nodded toward the stall. “If a cold shower hadn’t worked …” He dropped down heavily onto the commode, shaking his head. “I would have called for an ambulance.” He caught her gaze and said, “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought you had slipped into a—”

  She couldn’t take a breath. Lucy’s rage fell away into dread. “A what?” The word momentarily caught in her throat. “A—coma?” He didn’t answer her, but he stared at her in contemplation. She knew the look. It was a true reflection of herself. Before he could speak, she adamantly said, “Don’t lie to me.” His dark brows betrayed his thoughts when they rose fractionally at her demand.

  Johnny got up, snatched another towel from a shelf, and wrapped an additional layer of terrycloth around her shoulders, pulling it tightly closed. “I won’t ever lie to you, Lucy,” he said as he pulled her into his arms.

  “Then answer me,” she whispered into his neck.

  “I’m sorry I got your hair all wet,” he said as he pushed her hair back away from her face.

  She laid her cheek against his shoulder and leaned into his body. “You aren’t going to answer me, are you?”

  “There’s no point. You’re … fine.”

  Seven

  The borrowed pajamas, while slightly too big, were more comfortable than Lucy thought they would be. Either they were very soft and broken in, or it could’ve been that her near-death experience had adjusted her attitude.

  She sat wrapped in the blanket on the couch, sipping hot jasmine tea and watching Johnny work in the kitchen. She’d never learned how to cook. Never had the opportunity to even try, considering she lived out of hotels. Before that, Lucy had lived in a dorm room with only an illegal hotplate to work with. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have anybody to cook for anyway.

  Watching Johnny pound out his frustrations chopping green onion and mushrooms seemed like a fine idea to Lucy. She had angered him when she fell asleep. Over the next thirty minutes, the small apartment went from cold and frustrating to warm and heavenly scented. He didn’t bother telling her what he had on the stove, but the aroma actually made Lucy’s stomach growl from hunger. It smelled familiar. When he brought two bowls filled with soup and set them on the coffee table, she discovered why she recognized the scent.

  “Johnny,” Lucy asked, setting her empty cup down next to the bowl of golden liquid, “is this—”

  “Egg flower soup,” he finished for her. “I remember you said you wanted some.”

  “You made this for me?” A familiar stirring filled Lucy’s chest. As angry and as disappointed as Johnny had been, he still went out of his way to make something special for her. She searched his dark eyes for any evidence of his remaining bad mood but found nothing more than concern for her. Her heart swelled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And for me. I told you I was hungry.” He turned and retrieved a plate of yeast rolls from the counter. He sat down on the couch next to Lucy but didn’t wait for her to start eating before he tore apart a roll and lifted a spoonful of soup.

  A strong emotional urge pushed aside Lucy’s hunger for food. She had an overpowering need to fulfill it before she could satisfy her stomach. When Johnny dipped his spoon into the bowl again, she leaned closer to him, turned his curious face toward her with a gentle touch of her hand, and kissed his warm lips. It lasted for a brief moment. “Thank you,” Lucy whispered, her lips drifting above his, “for taking care of me.”

  Johnny swallowed hard, and said quietly, “You’re welcome.”

  She noticed he didn’t resume eating again as quickly as he might have if she hadn’t interrupted him. He watched as she relished the delicious homemade soup. “This is perfect. You’re a great cook.” She glanced at him picking up his bread again. “I guess, living alone, you learn to do a lot of things, huh?”

  He dipped the roll in his soup. “I didn’t learn to cook at home.”

  Lucy kept sipping her dinner and waited for him to tell her his secret—before she told him hers.

  “Spending twenty-four hours at a time in a fire station with a dozen other men kind of forced all of us to learn to be domestic.” Johnny grinned. “We had to do our own cleaning and cooking in between training and going on calls, and after a while we started trying to one-up each other.”

  “Huh?”

  He lifted his spoon. “Our meals started out simple. We used recipes we got out of books, or from our mothers, sisters, and girlfriends. Over time, like any men with healthy egos, we competed with each other to be the best.”

  Lucy closed her eyes and deliberately savored a spoonful of soup in her mouth, letting it swirl slowly around her tongue where each taste bud could reap the flavor of the seasonings before she swallowed. “You must be the best.” As she dipped her spoon into the bowl, Johnny turned her face toward him, leaned in, and kissed her.

  It lasted much longer than a moment.

  His strong lips coaxed her heart into a faster pace as he held her face close, and she felt the stirrings deepen throughout her body. Johnny moved away marginally, and as he gazed into her eyes, he said, “Thank you for trusting me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lucy said, disappointed he stopped so soon.

  “You better eat some more.” Johnny snatched a roll from the plate and handed it to her. “Try one of these.”

  It felt warm to her fingers. “Don’t tell me.” Lucy tore the bread apart and lifted a piece to her nose. The steam wafted the delicate scent upward, making her salivate in anticipation. “You made this, too.”

  If the old saying, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” was old-fashioned, Lucy knew a new phrase should be “the way to a man’s heart is through complimenting his cooking.” The pastry nearly melted in her mouth with its buttery taste and tender texture. Bread was Lucy’s favorite part of the food pyramid. She wouldn’t mind if it was the whole pyramid. “Mmmm,” she said low and deep. “It’s delicious.” Johnny’s face glowed at her reaction.

  “I knew you would like it.” Johnny dipped a piece of his bread
into what was left of his soup. “What school did you go to?”

  After taking another bite of the delicious bread, she said, “Arizona State, in Phoenix.”

  “And after you graduated, you became a courier?”

  “When I was a senior, just a month away from graduating from the university, a woman showed up outside my dorm room. She showed me her CIA identification and said they wanted me to put my application in with them.” Lucy popped another small piece of roll in her mouth and slowly chewed, remembering the events of that afternoon. “At first I thought I was being punked. My roommate kept telling me I studied too much and that I didn’t have enough fun.”

  Johnny let his gaze linger on her animated face. “Was she right?”

  Lucy shrugged a single shoulder. “Maybe.” She grinned slyly. “Probably.”

  “And you decided to join the CIA because you couldn’t be a cop?”

  “No, I really thought my roommate and her stupid boyfriend were playing a joke on me. The ID Agent Laurence showed me didn’t look real. I didn’t even know the CIA carried identification. I thought everyone was undercover, you know?”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “She basically recited my whole academic history to me, including every meeting I’d had with my advisors.” Shaking her head, she took another roll from the plate. “She knew things about me that no one else did.”

  “But not everything, right?” Johnny paused for a moment.“Lucy, can you tell me what happened to us on the freeway?”

  He made it sound like answering his questions would be easy and casual. But she would need to reveal dark secrets about her past, and it would be difficult to explain something even she didn’t understand. Johnny caught a glimpse into the future like Lucy had done countless times over the years, and she didn’t know why.

  She set the roll down and dropped her hands to her lap trying to find a place to begin. “Johnny—” Lucy kept her eyes on her intertwined fingers. “I need you to promise me that everything I tell you tonight will remain only between us.”

  Johnny set his spoon down and turned toward her. “Is it that bad?” He put his hand on hers, prompting her to lift her gaze to him.

  Scooting back, Lucy pulled her knees up and tightened the blanket around her legs, trying to ward off the icy memory of her youth. Leaning sideways against the couch cushions, she tried again. “You have to swear to me, or I won’t tell you anything.”

  Johnny leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, I promise.”

  Leaning in closer, she studied his eyes, searching for any sign that might tell her he was lying.

  A tender touch of his warm hand against her cheek made her believe. “I swear, Lucy, never to betray you. Please, I need to know.” His fingers lingered against her skin.

  Lucy took a deep breath. “I can glimpse into the immediate future if someone is about to be killed and I have a chance to change the outcome.” He didn’t laugh or look shocked. Just the subtle shift of his eyebrows clued her in that he had heard her. “Johnny, did you understand what I said?”

  Nodding, he said with a low voice, “I think I already knew that. But how can you do it, and why did it … leak over to me?”

  “I don’t know why or how you saw it, too,” Lucy leaned her cheek against the back of the couch. “I don’t know why it happens to me.”

  “How long have you been able to—to, uh, predict the future?”

  “I don’t do that,” Lucy said, raising her voice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the morning, or even later tonight. I certainly didn’t know you were going to drench me in the shower an hour ago.” Taking a breath, she tried to calm down, to be less defensive. “I can never predict when I’m going to have one of these ‘windows.’ I don’t believe our future is set in concrete. We all choose our paths to walk. Like those men tonight. It was their decision to chase us on the freeway.”

  “And,” Johnny said, “to shoot me.” He laid his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I saw it happen like I was watching a movie. I couldn’t feel anything, or hear a sound, but I … I saw that man from the staircase pull up next to my window and shoot me. It was horrible. I’d never been so scared …” He pushed his hand on his chest and took in a heavy breath. “Then the pickup swerved around and faced a semi that was trying to stop, but the trailer jack-knifed and kept sliding toward …”

  “Go on,” Lucy said, waiting for the inevitable.

  “It exploded, but before the fire reached my truck, I could see the road in front of me again. We were lucky I didn’t crash.”

  “You learn to get over the shock faster the more often it happens to you,” Lucy said quietly. At least it used to. She felt her emotions hit her harder tonight than since she was a teenager.

  He snapped his head toward her. “How many times have you had to go through”—he shrugged his shoulder—“whatever it is you go through?”

  “They’re windows into the future.” Lucy ran her hand up into her damp hair and lightly touched the bump on the back of her head. “I’ve had too many to count.”

  “And you can’t tell me why I saw it, too?” Johnny ran his fingers up her arm, pulling her hand away from her wound. “When I caught your arm,” he said, holding her hand, “I saw myself being shot the first time, on the staircase, along with my whole crew. But that was different. It was like an instant memory, not like what happened this evening.”

  “I wish I could tell you why you’re involved with all this,” Lucy whispered, gazing down at their hands folded together.

  “Do you have to change what you see?”

  “No. I didn’t even know that I could change things before I was eleven years old.”

  “How did you find out?” Johnny asked as he scooted closer to her.

  Lucy thought back to that warm autumn morning long ago, to how her life had changed with one simple act. “I lived close enough to my elementary school to walk during my sixth grade year. I left a little early one morning and got to the busy street in front of the school before the crossing guard had arrived. I sat on this low wall near the corner and waited for her to get there.”

  Lucy closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift back in time. “That’s when I felt a freezing wind blow across my face so hard I couldn’t breathe, and everything around me turned to black and white. All the sound around me just stopped. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the birds in the trees. But I knew someone would die, so I looked around until I found the place that was still in color. It didn’t take me long to find the window.”

  The tears prickled the edges of Lucy’s eyelashes, as she continued. “My best friend was riding her bicycle on the sidewalk heading toward the crosswalk.” She stared into Johnny’s compassion filled eyes. “I had to watch Pattie ride off the sidewalk and into the street just as a car sped by. He hit her, throwing her body into the air, and killed her without ever slowing down. He left her dead in the gutter.”

  “Lucy,” Johnny said, squeezing her hand, “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her achy head. “When things changed, and the color flooded back in, and the sounds around me pounded loudly in my ears, I saw Pattie riding her bike down the sidewalk again. She was alive, and it broke my heart to know that in a few seconds she would be killed.

  “I couldn’t let my best friend die without at least trying to do something to stop it. So I ran. I ran straight over to Pattie and knocked her off her bike. A moment later I heard a loud engine, and I turned to see the car that hit—that would have hit Pattie—speed through the school zone. Shortly after, I had an icy cold feeling wash through my whole body. It seemed to originate from deep within my chest and flowed in waves into my arms and legs.” Making sure she had his full attention, Lucy added, “And then I fainted.”

  Johnny placed his hand against her face. “In the truck, when you passed out, I thought it was a result of you hitting your head, but your body temperature went from warm to as cold as someone found in a freez
er—in an instant.”

  “Yes. It’s a side effect of when I change an outcome. It lasts for just over a minute. I’ve timed it. But during that time I’m completely vulnerable.”

  “How do you explain it when someone notices it?”

  “The crossing guard thought that I was in shock. She told the school nurse about how cold my skin felt after the incident, but the nurse took my temperature, pronounced me fine, and then sent me to class. The worse thing that happened to Pattie was a skinned elbow.” Lucy ran her hand over her head. “I lost my best friend. She said I pushed her off her bike on purpose, and I told her that I had. But then I made a serious mistake.”

  “What did you do?” Johnny ran his thumb across her wet cheek.

  “I told her I saw her get killed, and that I just saved her life.”

  Johnny grew still. “How did she take that?”

  “I never should have said anything. Not only did she not believe me, but word got around school that I thought I could predict the future, and that I was pretty much a crazy lunatic. After a month of the worst teasing, and one fight at recess, my dad pulled me out of a school I’d been going to since I was in kindergarten and enrolled me in another one across town. I learned never to tell another soul again.”

  “Nobody else knows about … this?”

  “My curse,” Lucy said quietly. “Only my dad knows, and … my husband knew about it.”

  “Your husband.”

  “Yes. Mac found out about it while we were on a mission. It wasn’t something I felt like I could explain while we were dating. I didn’t want to scare him away.”

  “You worked together?”

  “Technically, Mac was an operative and I was in charge of getting the packages delivered, but, yes, we went on missions together.”

  “Mac …”

  “Seth. His name was Seth Mackenzie. His nickname was Mac.”

  “Did he believe you the first time you told him?”

  Lucy wearily leaned her cheek against the couch cushion. “No. I saved him three times before he caught on and he asked me about, well, what we’re talking about now.”