On the radio the Red Baron shot down Snoopy. Stout had said Jess only had the length of the song. Whatever was going on, it was halfway over. Mary rubbed Jess’s leg and waited. Waited, knowing what the question would be. Waited, knowing that she had led him right to where she wanted him.
Well, this time around she would get a surprise, because dream or no dream, this was going to be fun. Hell, after all the years with her, he deserved a little fun.
“I wanted to ask you,” Jess said, then paused, trying not to smile.
The Red Baron and Snoopy drank a Christmas toast.
“Yes,” Mary said, her voice low and sexy. She had been one beautiful woman on the outside. That had kept him blind to all the ugliness that was just under the surface. Blind until it was too late.
“I wanted to ask you if it would be all right if I slept around with a few other women? You know, sew a few wild oats before I settle down?”
That did it. The sultry look drained from her face like wet makeup, to be replaced by the bitch look he had grown so familiar with. “What did you say?” she asked, her voice low and mean and controlled. He knew that voice real well, too.
He smiled, easing toward her, trying to act romantic. “I was just thinking that for a few years, maybe five or ten, we could have an open relationship. I’d love to sleep with a few other women. It would be good for us. Honest. You know, free love and all.” He moved as if to kiss her and she backed away across the seat.
“Wouldn’t you like sleeping with other men? Then after we’ve both got a little more experience we could live together for a few years. Trying on the old shoes, as the saying goes.” Jess knew that would get her. She had said a hundred times how much she hated the thought of living together. For her it was marriage or nothing. Damn it was hard keeping a straight face. He was going to thank Stout for this one. Best Christmas present he had ever had.
“You’re sick!” she screamed. “Sick! Sick! Sick!”
Jess tried to look innocent and sad.
On the radio Snoopy flew off singing about Christmas cheer as Mary rammed against the car door, opened it and ran up the sidewalk.
“Thank you, Radley Stout. I’ve been dreaming about doing that for years.”
The song ended.
And so did the dreams.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I moved slowly around behind the bar, dumped out the remainder of Jess’s drink and set his glass beside the others on the back bar.
“Got quite a collection there,” David said as he moved over to take his stool. “So Carl and Fred were friends of mine in another time line?”
I took a long hard drink of my eggnog and then nodded.
“Jess,” David said, “was sent back by the jukebox to his memory and he changed something that moved his life in another direction. And with that new direction he didn’t end up coming in here. Right? And he would have no memory of ever being in here because he hasn’t been.”
Again I nodded and finished off the drink.
David picked up the quarter in front of him and glanced over at the jukebox. “You know this is a wish that everyone has had at one time or another? How come you’ve never done it?”
“Oh, I did. Actually twice when I first discovered what the jukebox could do. But I didn’t change anything. Too afraid, I guess. And, I suppose, not that unhappy with this life.” I nodded at the three empty glasses. “That is until tonight.”
David took a sip of his drink and looked at his name on the glass. “So you gave the gift of a second chance to your friends for Christmas.”
I laughed. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. But I didn’t expect to lose everyone. Not exactly sure what I expected, to be honest with you”
“I’m still here.”
I glanced over at my best friend. He worked as a vice president of a local bank and enjoyed flying his small plane on the weekend. But back twenty-some years ago he and his new wife, Elaine, had been driving home from a Christmas party. David was scheduled to finish flight school that next spring. He had a dream of flying for the airlines.
That night David had had a little too much to drink and the car missed a slick corner and plowed into an embankment. Elaine was killed and David lost most of the use of his right hand. End of flight school. End of dream.
I reached out and slid the quarter at David. “Your turn.”
David shook his head. “No chance. There’s no way I’m leaving you after what you’ve done for Jess and those two other guys.” He pointed at the glasses lined up on the back bar.
I laughed a laugh that sounded bitter even to my ears. “I don’t know what exactly I’ve done except change their life in some fashion. I can only hope it is for the better. But you I do know the jukebox can help.” I reached across the bar and patted his ruined right hand. “Go back to before the crash and save Elaine. And yourself.”
David jerked as if he had never thought of the possibility.
“You saw it work,” I said. “If nothing else, give it a try. You don’t have to change anything. Just go back and see Elaine again. It’s not a one-way trip if you don’t change anything.”
He looked dazed. “If I don’t change...”
I nodded and picked up the quarter and placed it in his good left hand. “Go say hello to your wife.”
Still looking dazed, he slowly stood and moved toward the jukebox. “Is it really possible?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now pick the right song.”
He nodded and turned to study the song list. His tie hung loose in front of him, his right hand useless against the glass of the jukebox.
My stomach hurt and I downed a little more eggnog. I knew that once he saw Elaine he would be unable to stop from changing the past. I was going to lose my best friend. But maybe someday I would see him again, striding through an airport in his pilot’s uniform. That alone would be worth it.
“Found the song,” he said and turned to look at me.
“Then go for it,” I said.
He paused, as if he wanted to say something. Then he turned and dropped the quarter into the machine and punched the two buttons.
“State the memory,” I said. “Got to follow the rules, you know.”
He smiled. “This song reminds me of the night my wife died.”
I nodded. “Good luck. And say hello to Elaine for me.”
“I will,” he said.” And I’ll be back.”
“In case you’re not, I’ll be holding onto your glass and the jukebox.”
He smiled. “Thanks.” The song started and he vanished.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A light snow kept the old Ford’s windshield wipers busy as David and Elaine headed down the gravel country road toward the lights of the city.
“Silent Night” was playing on the portable radio on the seat between them. She was singing along, her voice pure and clear, even though a little drunk. The party, just south of town in the foothills, had been a good one and they had stayed far later than they planned.
David looked over at his wife of six months. She had dark brown hair that flowed long and straight down her back. Her eyes were a dark green and her face lightly wrinkled with laugh lines. While David was in school she worked at a dress shop. Her desire was to someday design clothes, and he knew she would be, would have been, good at it.
“Son of a bitch,” he said out loud. “Stout was right.”
“Who was right?” Elaine said, then went back to singing and watching the beautiful wooded countryside flash by through the snow.
David glanced once more at her and then back at the road. He couldn’t let her die. Stout had known that.
David braked the car to a quick stop on the side of the road. He turned off the car, yanked the keys out of the ignition and got out. Then as hard as he could, he tossed the keys into the woods. In the silence of the night he could hear them catch brush as they landed.
That was his only set. Now there would be no way he could drive again tonight.
&nbs
p; “David,” Elaine said, getting out of the car and coming around to him. “What are you doing?”
“Saving our lives,” he said. He grabbed her and held her tight, relishing in the feeling of her against him after such a long time. He had never remarried because there had never been anyone again he felt this way about. No one woman who had felt this good.
The faint sounds of “Silent Night” drifted from the portable radio in the car. The song was about half over. He didn’t have much time.
“Are you all right?” Elaine asked. “Why did you throw the...”
“I’m fine. Like I said, I was just saving our lives. But now, before that song ends, I need to save a friendship. A very important friendship to me. And I’m going to need your help.”
CHAPTER NINE
I let my hand slip off the jukebox as the last strains of the song faded into the empty Garden Lounge. David’s glass was in my hand and I looked down at it, feeling its heavy weight.
David must have stopped the wreck.
“Well, Stout,” I said to myself out loud just to hear some noise. “Looks as if you’ve gone and done it now.”
I moved slowly around behind the bar and set David’s glass beside the other three, name out. “I’m going to have to find some special place for these.” I laughed. “To remind me of another life that never was.”
The silence seemed to echo in the room. It was going to be a very long, very quiet Christmas.
I refilled my glass of eggnog and moved around to what had been David’s favorite stool. The jukebox seemed to call to me. “Come play me, Mr. Radley Stout. Come and see your old girlfriend again. Ask her to marry you. What would it hurt?”
“No,” I said, loud enough to echo between the empty tables and booths. I squarely faced the glasses on the back bar and held up my mug in a toast.
“Merry Christmas, my friends.”
Then I added softly, “Wherever you are.”
The empty glasses didn’t return my toast, so I went ahead and drank alone. I had the sneaking feeling I was going to be doing that for a while.
I had finished the eggnog and was about to start closing down when someone knocked on the front door.
“I’m closed,” I yelled. “Merry Christmas.” I was in no mood for visitors now.
But the person knocked again. “All right, all right. Hang on a minute.” I went around to the back bar and, being careful to not look at the four glasses lined up there like so many tombstones, retrieved the keys and headed for the front door.
As I unlocked it and swung it open I heard, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Radley Stout.”
David and a woman about his same age stood arm in arm facing the door. He wore an airline overcoat and she had on a nice leather jacket. “David,” I said. “How...?”
He unhooked himself from the woman’s arm and extended a perfectly healthy right hand for me to shake. “Your hand,” I said as I shook it. “You didn’t...?” Again I stopped. There was no way he could know about the wreck and his lame hand if it hadn’t happened. And in this world it hadn’t.
“This is my wife, Elaine,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say,” I took her hand. I felt as if I was shaking the hand of a ghost. “Please come in.” I stepped back, the feeling of shock washing over me.
David and Elaine moved into the bar. Both of them walked directly to the jukebox.
“But how could you remember?” I asked moving up beside them.
“He doesn’t,” Elaine said, laughing with a tense sort of laugh. David only nodded and then turned to face me.
“Christmas Eve, twenty years ago, Elaine said I suddenly called out the name ‘Stout,’ then stopped the car. I then proceeded to toss the car keys into the trees. For what crazy reason, I have no idea.”
I laughed. “I do. Pretty smart thinking if you want to make sure you can’t drive that night.”
“But why would I want to do that?” David said. “And how would you know anything about it? This entire thing has been driving me nuts for two decades.”
I waved my hand. “I’ll try to explain in a minute. For now please go on.”
Elaine reached into her purse, pulled out a few tattered pieces of paper, and handed them to me. “For the next minute after he tossed the keys into the brush, David madly wrote this while repeating your name and the name of this bar over and over again so that I would remember it. He made me promise that no matter what he claimed he didn’t remember, we would come to this bar on this Christmas Eve at this time to meet you. Not one minute before or one minute after.”
David looked at me and shrugged. “Dammed if I can remember why. It was as if I was possessed.”
“In a way, you were,” I said.
“You know what else he said?” Elaine asked. She looked at David and he motioned for her to go ahead. “He said it was his Christmas present to you.”
David looked at me. “Did it work?”
I nodded, afraid to say anything. But I could feel the smile trying to break out of the sides of my face. And after a moment all three of us were laughing just because I was smiling so hard. I was going to enjoy these new friends.
I motioned for them to take a seat at the bar. “Boy have I got a story to tell you.” I scampered like a kid around behind the bar and grabbed the glass with his name on it.
“And for you, David,” I said as I held the glass up for them to see. “A very special Christmas present and a toast to friendship.”
Even superheroes can’t always save the girl.
As one of the greatest superheroes in all of the Gambling Universe, Poker Boy does everything he can to help, but when the damsel in distress refuses to be rescued from her own deadly breasts, what’s a superhero to do?
“The Old Girlfriend of Doom” was first published in the anthology Crime Spells in February 2009 from Daw Books, edited by Loren L. Coleman and Martin H. Greenberg.
THE OLD GIRLFRIEND OF DOOM
A Poker Boy Story
ONE
Sometimes even superheroes can’t save the day, or the girl, or the dog, and that fact is even sadder when the girl is one of the superhero’s old girlfriends.
Honest, Poker Boy, and just about every superhero, once had a childhood, a life as a young adult, without powers. I only discovered my Poker Boy super abilities later in life, after I had lived a fairly regular life until the age of twenty-nine. Little did I know that some day I would put on the black leather jacket and the fedora-like hat and become Poker Boy, savior of blind women, lost husbands, and dogs.
It was Christmas Eve, a holiday for me just about like every other one. I was home, alone, in my double-wide mobile home that I had bought twenty years ago with the money from my winnings in a poker tournament. The green couch and chairs had come with it, and so far I had seen no reason to replace the perfectly good, but dog-ugly furniture. As a national-level poker player, I had more than enough money in a dozen accounts to buy a nice home, and nice furniture, but since I was in poker rooms and hotels more than I was here, what was the point?
Besides I spent most of my time with Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, in her apartment in Las Vegas. She was working tonight, pulling a double shift, so we had no plans until later in the week.
I was watching some lame Christmas program on television and eating a TV dinner with fried chicken and the really good cherry desert. I had about two hours to get to the casino to sign up for the poker tournament, and I was enjoying the quiet, to be honest.
Then there was knock on my door.
As Poker Boy, I very seldom have the people who need help come to me, but there have been exceptions. And since I wasn’t expecting any company, I figured right off this was one of those exceptions.
I opened the front door of my double-wide mobile home and saw my old girlfriend, Julie Down, standing there on the other side of the screen door. Of course, right at that moment I didn’t know it was Julie. All I could see was that it was some woman about my age with a nice smil
e and an over-built chest.
“Hi,” Julie said, smiling at me as I stood there, hand on the wooden door, staring at her through the screen.
Now I have a great memory for faces across poker tables. I can tell you the moment a person sits down if I have played with them before, the style of their play, and their poker tells. I won’t remember their names, but I know the important stuff and how to take their money.
With old girlfriends, from the life before I became the superhero Poker Boy, I am lucky to even remember going out with them, let alone things like their names, or if we slept together. I assume that any old girlfriend coming to find me years later is someone I must have slept with.
On top of my bad memory, Julie didn’t look like the Julie of old. Granted, I’m forty-nine in human years, and Julie and I were an item back twenty-five years before, when she was only twenty. But that said, she just didn’t look the same. Not even close.
Julie of old had long blonde hair that had touched the top of her butt. I remember I used to love lying in bed and watching that hair flow over her back as she walked naked around the bedroom. This Julie standing in front of me had tight, short graying hair, curled in a style that made her look older and very business-like.
Julie of old was rail thin, with no real breasts to speak of, and no body fat at all.
This Julie had filled out, as all of us have. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t that light and rail thin either. And she had had a boob job at some point. Or one hell of a growth spurt focused only on her chest. The white blouse she now wore under her open suede jacket made sure that everyone could see the growth spurts and the lace bra trying to hold back the progress.
“Hi,” I said in return, at that point not yet knowing who the hell I was talking to. I wished at that moment that I had my black leather jacket and hat on, and was closer to a casino. Then I could use my super powers to help me figure out exactly what this woman wanted to sell me.
Smith's Monthly #13 Page 3
