He squeezed the doorframe until his hand hurt. Christmas music played softly down the hall. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” the same song he had just punched up on the jukebox at the Garden Lounge. How...? This made no sense.
He forced himself to take a deep breath and look around. There was a white-haired nurse sitting behind the counter at the nurse’s station. His mother was in her bed across the small room. Slight, wasted remains of the woman she had once been, she no longer recognized him or anyone else from her life. Most of the time she sat in a wheelchair and just drooled, her head hanging limp.
The doctors had said she would never recover from the series of strokes. She would spend the next five years in that bed and chair. He would grow to hate this room, hate his own fear, hate his own inability to do something to help her.
He glanced over at his own hand against the doorframe. It was his hand all right, only young. No scar where the broken window cut it last year. No deep tan from being outside for so long. He was somehow in his young body, his old memories combined with his young ones. He felt dizzy with the conflicting memories and thoughts. His mouth was dry. He could really use a drink.
From down the hall the song reached its halfway point and Carl felt panic filling his mind. Radley Stout and that damn jukebox of his had given him a second chance. An opportunity to do what he had always wished he had done. Now he was wasting it by doing what he had done the first time.
Nothing.
He took a deep, almost sobbing breath. This time would be different. He checked the hall and then moved across the room and around to the other side of his mother’s bed. She smelled of urine. The nurses would change her diapers many times in the next five years, and many times he would be forced to help.
“This is what you wanted, Mom.” He swallowed the bile trying to force its way up into his mouth. “I’m doing what you asked.”
He pulled the edge of the pillow up and over her face, pressing it hard against her mouth and nose.
“I love you, Mom,” he said, softly. “I’ve learned to be strong. I hope you would be proud of me.”
She struggled, trying to twist her head from side to side. But he held on, wanting to be sick, wanting to let go, wanting to let her breathe, but not wanting her to suffer day after day for five long years.
Finally the tension in her body eased and her head became heavy in his hands. Very heavy.
He gently stroked her soft hair as he held the pillow in place for another fifteen seconds. Then he eased his mother’s head back into a more comfortable position.
He stood up straight and took a deep breath, never taking his gaze from the face of his dead mother. A feeling of sadness filled him at the same time as a lightness, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Thanks, Stout,” he said out loud as the last faint chords of the song died and took his future memories with it.
CHAPTER THREE
As the last few notes of the Bing Crosby song faded into the carpet and booths of the Garden Lounge, the air shimmered as if a heat wave had passed though the room. None of the plants moved. And I felt no heat. But I knew what it meant.
I glanced around the room. Fred was sitting where Carl had sat, and the planter that Carl had built for me under the east window was gone, replaced with two chairs. Carl wasn’t coming back, that much was clear.
During the song I had calmed the other three men down, explained that Carl had gone back into a memory. Then, on the excuse of Carl needing a drink when he returned, I took his glass and moved over to the jukebox. I had stood there with one hand on the cool chrome of the jukebox for the last half of the song.
I glanced down at the glass with Carl’s name in my hand. So it had worked. Anything I held as I touched the jukebox stayed in this time line after the switch. Good. And because I was touching the jukebox, I still remembered Carl. Carl had changed something in his past and his new future no longer brought him to the Garden Lounge. I hoped it was a good new future for him.
I studied the jukebox to see if anything had changed. Damned if I knew how it worked. I had just taken it from storage in my old bar and fixed it, put a favorite record in, and the next thing I knew I had found myself facing my old girlfriend, Jenny, in my young body.
Scared me so bad all I did was sit there and stare at her. I had wanted to be with her more than anything else, but I had not had the courage or the desire to ask her to stay with me. On our third year of being together she had gone back to college while I stayed in our hometown to work. That semester she met someone else, and by Christmas she was married to him.
The song I had played on the jukebox had been our song. It had been playing the afternoon I had a chance to stop her leaving. And that was where the jukebox took me and left me for the entire length of the song.
The next day I played the song again and the same thing happened again. I did nothing but sit and stare at her.
I didn’t play another song on the jukebox until I had all the possibilities figured out, including what would happen if I changed something, as Carl obviously had done.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” David said, twisting his custom drinking glass in his good hand.
“Yeah,” Jess said. “You going to tell us what we’re supposed to do with these quarters?” He flipped it, caught it and turned it over on the bar. “Heads.”
“Play a song,” I said. None of them remembered Carl or my explanation of where he had gone or anything he had done, which included playing the last song. He had never existed for them because they had not been touching the jukebox.
I moved back around the bar, dumped the remainder of Carl’s drink out and set the glass carefully on the back bar.
“Who’s Carl?” David asked.
“Just another friend I wanted to give a glass to.”
“So how come you want us to play a song?” Jess asked.
I took a long drink of my eggnog and let the richness coat my dry throat. I was going to miss Carl. I just hoped he was happy. Maybe sometime over the next few days I would look up his name in the phone book. Maybe he had stayed around town. He would never remember me, but it would be nice to see him again and see how things ended up for him.
“You all right?” David asked. All three men were staring at me.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking about how songs are like time machines. When you hear one it takes you back to some special moment when the song was playing.”
I pointed at the little boxes and the quarters. “Those are for your memory trips. Fred. Why don’t you try it? But you’ve got to follow my rules.”
“More damn rules, huh?” Fred said. “Can I at least get off my bar stool or do I have to toss the quarter at the machine from here?”
I tried to laugh but it came out so poorly that David again looked at me with a questioning look. “Go pick out a Christmas song that reminds you of something in your past. Then after you’ve selected it, stand beside the machine and tell us the memory.”
Fred picked up the quarter from the bar and swung around. “I think I can handle that.”
“I’ll bet that’s not what your ex-wife would say,” Jess said.
Everyone laughed, and that started the nightly joking about Fred’s ex-wife. She was well known to the group because it seemed at times that was all Fred could talk about. Her name was Alice and she and Fred had gotten married young, had one child, and gotten divorced in an ugly fashion about ten years before.
Fred was tall and thin, with about twenty pounds of extra weight around his stomach. He used to have bright red hair that was now sun-bleached because he worked for the city streets department. He said that almost a quarter of his salary every month went to paying child support, even though his ex-wife very seldom let him see his daughter. He claimed he loved his daughter, and one Saturday had brought her in for all of us to meet. Sandy had bright red hair like her father.
“Got one,” Fred said as he dropped the quarte
r into the slot and quickly punched two buttons.
“So what’s the memory?” I asked. My stomach felt weak. Was I going to lose Fred, too? Maybe I shouldn’t warn him that he only had the time of the song, that if he wanted to change anything, he would have to do it fast.
“The first time I got laid,” he said, smiling. “The night Sandy came to be.”
God, what was I doing to my friends? What kind of presents were these?
“Stout,” David said. “You all right? You’re as pale as a ghost.”
I nodded and looked up at Fred. “You only have the time of the song. Remember that. Just over two minutes.”
Jess laughed. “More than enough time for Fred to get laid, from what I hear.”
Fred had taken a step toward Jess when the Gene Autry song started and Fred vanished from the bar.
CHAPTER FOUR
The snow blew hard against Fred’s face as he dodged across the rush of pedestrians on the busy sidewalk and in the front door of Abraham’s Drug Store. The bell over the door jingled as he entered. The store smelled clean, with a faint background of medicine. The tile floor looked slick from polish.
Old man Abraham was behind the druggist’s counter in his white smock. Judy, the clerk, was at the cash register waiting on a heavyset man who was buying cough syrup. In the background the song, “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” played. That was the same song he had punched up a moment before on the Garden Lounge jukebox. How the hell had Radley Stout done this? What was going on?
Fred glanced down at himself. He was young, dressed in his high school clothes. How could that be? Only a moment before, he had been in the Garden Lounge, drinking, eighteen years in the future. This was some practical joke. He’d get Jess for this. And Stout.
He was about to turn and head back into the storm when the younger memories that were mixed with the older ones reminded him of why he was here. He had come to the drugstore to buy a rubber. A condom.
He was on his way to Alice’s house. Her parents were at a Christmas party and would be gone for a long time. He and Alice would start out on the couch watching television and work their way naked to the floor. It would be their first time and because he had chickened out and not bought the rubber on the way to her house, she had gotten pregnant and they had gotten married right out of high school. Sandy had followed three months later.
He grabbed hold of the doorframe, then touched a bottle of hair oil on a nearby shelf. Everything felt real. Damned if he knew what was going on.
He turned back to face old man Abrahams who was now watching him. It was no wonder he had chickened out the first time. He had bought condoms hundreds of times in the last twenty years, but right now he felt afraid. But what the hell could the old man do to him? Fred shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that.
He took a deep breath and moved up to the counter.
“Can I help you?” Abrahams said, staring down from his high perch. The guy looked like a cross between God and his dad.
“I’d...” His voice broke and he cleared his throat and tried to lower the pitch to a more normal range. “I’d like to buy a...” He glanced quickly around. Judy was watching him and smiling. He’d had a crush on her for years. It was no wonder his younger self had chickened out.
“Well, young man?”
Fred turned back to face Abrahams. He could feel his face getting hot. If he didn’t ask now, Alice would get pregnant and they would end up married. That had turned out to be a fate much worse than asking one simple question. Much, much worse. All those years of shouting and the hate and the ugliness their marriage had been. The only slightly good thing had been Sandy. But who knew how screwed up she was going to be because of the ugly marriage he and Alice had had.
He looked up at Abrahams. “I’d...I’d like to buy a condom.” There. He had done it.
Old man Abrahams had the good sense not to laugh. But Fred could tell he was holding back a smile. “Well, son, they come in packages of three or six or twelve.”
“Six,” he said quickly. No point in having to go through this too often. But a dozen would seem like bragging.
Abrahams nodded and rummaged behind the counter. “Now, which brand would you like?”
At that Judy giggled and Fred could feel his face and neck burning. His younger self wanted to flee the store. He’d never be able to face her.
But his older memories kept him there. “I... I... I don’t care. Your best.”
Again Abrahams nodded. “That would be Trojans.” He slid the box across the counter. “Pay Judy.”
Damn him. He was doing this on purpose. He had a register. He could take the money. Again Judy giggled as Fred picked up the box and turned. At that very moment he noticed that the song was almost over and he knew without a doubt that his face was as red as Rudolf’s nose.
He pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and tossed it on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said to Judy and, without looking at her, he sprinted for the front door and the snow beyond. At least now he had the choice to have Sandy or not. He’d have to give this some serious thought.
As the door slammed shut and the song ended, the memories of the choice, Sandy, the marriage to Alice, and the next twenty years faded and were gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the lounge finished shimmering I let go of the jukebox and moved around behind the bar. Carefully I dumped what was left of Fred’s drink and placed his glass beside Carl’s on the back bar. I hadn’t felt this tired in years. I looked at the two glasses. “Good luck, guys,” I said softly. “I hope life is better for both of you.” But now I only had two friends left in the bar. I could stop this at any time, while there was still someone left to talk to.
“So what are we supposed to do with these quarters?” Jess asked. “I got to get home before that bitch of a wife chews my head off.”
I glanced at Jess and then at David. He was looking worried. “You play a song. That’s all.” I motioned at the jukebox. “But find one that has a strong memory with it.” I took a deep breath. I might as well give him a real present. “Maybe even one that was during the time that you met your wife.”
Jess laughed. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”
“Trust me,” I said. “Just find a song.” I dropped down onto the counter behind the bar and concentrated on taking deep breaths and not thinking about Carl and Fred.
“You all right? David asked. I looked up into his worried face. What would I have done over the last few years without David’s friendship? What was I going to do without it over the next few years if I let him play a song?
“Just suddenly got tired. Nothing big.” I stood and moved to pour myself another eggnog and watch Jess pick over the tunes. Jess was the best joker. He said he needed the practical jokes to keep his sanity with his bitch of a wife. But when asked why he didn’t just leave her, he always said marrying her was his mistake and he would live with it. That was what he had been taught. Then he would make a joke and change the subject.
“Found one,” Jess said. He held up the quarter. “You want me to play it?”
“Yeah. But after you select the song tell Dave and me what memory it reminds you of.”
Jess dropped the quarter into the slot and punched two buttons to start the jukebox. “You remember the song, ‘Snoopy Versus the Red Baron?’”
David and I nodded.
“That was playing the moment I asked my wife to marry me. Figures, doesn’t it?”
David laughed.
But I didn’t. I knew I was going to lose Jess also. “Remember that you only have the length of the song. Not one second longer. All right?”
Jess shrugged and started back toward the bar. “Whatever you...”
The song started and he vanished.
“What the hell?” David said, standing and heading toward the jukebox.
I picked up Jess’s mostly empty glass and moved around toward the jukebox, too.
David glanced at th
e two glasses on the back bar and then at the glass I held. Then he looked over to where Jess had been. “You want to explain exactly what the hell is going on here?”
I nodded, too tired to argue. “But come on over and touch the jukebox. It’s the only way you’re going to remember.”
CHAPTER SIX
Snoopy and the Red Baron were just starting to go at it on Jess’s ‘65 Ford car radio as Jess found himself face to face with Mary, his soon-to-be bitch-of-a-wife.
“What the...?”
“Is something wrong, Jess, honey?” Mary said, her hand stroking his arm up and down and up and down. She looked more beautiful than he had ever remembered, and she smelled wonderfully fresh, as if she had been outside in the country all day. But he knew the look and the smell wouldn’t last long. Six months after they were married she would gain fifty pounds and a few years later she would level out a hundred over her marriage weight. But now, in this dream or whatever it was, she looked sexy and very trim in her low-cut blue dress.
Jess pulled back away from her and looked around. This was his car all right. The same one he had sold in ‘71. The same one that he and Mary had first made love in. He rubbed his hands along the steering wheel to make sure it felt solid. They were parked just down the tree-lined street from Mary’s house.
So how had Stout pulled this off? This had to be some kind of dream or hallucination. That was it. Stout had hypnotized him and he was still sitting in the Garden Lounge while they laughed at him. He’d get them for this.
Mary scooted over closer to him and rubbed his leg real nice, getting the reaction in his crotch she wanted. “Were you going to ask me something?” she said, looking up at him with her large brown eyes.
“That I was,” he said. It was a clear memory that in this exact situation he had asked her to marry him. He knew that’s what his younger self had been planning to do. He was currently a second-year law student, and he remembered his classes that Friday morning real well. Yet he also remembered sitting having a Christmas Eve drink with his friends at the Garden Lounge twenty some years in the future. Strange. Too damn strange.
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