by Jackie Braun
“If it is, then I don’t want to wake up,” he said.
“Ever.”
She turned in his arms, hugged him tight. She felt the rhythm of his heart, the beat as strong and as real as her own. A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Ever,” she agreed, fervently wishing that the man of her dreams could be there when she woke up.
* * *
This time, it was her growling stomach that shattered the mood. Apparently, even in the best dream of her life, basic needs required tending. Gregory dropped a kiss on her forehead before releasing her.
“I can start the coffee,” he offered, heading for the stainless steel percolator on the far countertop.
Despite the heat, coffee sounded heavenly. In addition to being hungry, she was thirsty, as well. She eyed the sink, swallowed. She was too thirsty to wait for the percolator to work its magic. She opened the cabinet to the left of the sink, somehow knowing it was where the glasses were kept. Sure enough, she found four clear tumblers inside. A guess? A hunch? Dumb luck? It seemed more than that. She filled a glass to the rim from the tap and drank it while Gregory finished measuring out coffee grounds and plugged in the pot.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked. At his questioning expression, she pointed to her now empty glass. “You need water to make coffee.”
Despite his gaffe, he had the easier job of the two. Coffee she could figure out how to make, even in an antiquated percolator. A meal? Even with the modern appliances in her own kitchen, it was hit or miss. Apprehension building, she turned her attention to the refrigerator. It was a bulky hulk of an appliance that hummed like a cicada on steroids. Inside, she found a couple of quaint quart bottles filled with milk. A dozen eggs and butter also occupied the top shelf. On the lower shelf was a package wrapped in white butcher paper that was tied up with string. Meat of some sort, she figured. Gregory came up behind her. He rested one hand on her hip and perched his opposite elbow on the refrigerator’s door. Peeking over her shoulder, he solved the mystery.
“I bought a ham.”
“A ham,” Devin repeated slowly.
It wasn’t exactly her favorite cut of meat. As such, she wasn’t sure how to prepare it. A few years earlier, she’d broken her and Emily’s long-standing Easter tradition of eating out by buying one. But Devin knew her limits. In addition to coming honey-glazed, it had been precooked and spiral-sliced. She’d added instant mashed potatoes and a salad that came in a bag and—voila!—dinner had been served.
Even without peeling back the wrapping on this one, she doubted it had been prepped in a similar fashion. Perhaps she could simply cut off a couple of slices and…then what? Pan fry it? Bake it? Devin was the queen of nuking meals, but obviously this kitchen was not equipped with a microwave oven and the gas stove was not only larger than her apartment-sized electric one, but looked a lot more complicated, even if it had fewer buttons and knobs.
Gregory’s laughter interrupted her thoughts.
“You really don’t know how to cook, do you?” It was said with too much humor to be an accusation.
“My skills in the kitchen are limited,” she agreed diplomatically.
He kissed her cheek. “I guess I had been hoping you’d exaggerated that part.”
“Exaggerated?”
“The day after our wedding, remember? You burned the pot roast and we wound up eating cheese and crackers for dinner. We ate a lot of cheese and crackers between then and the day I shipped out.” He was grinning, though, and his next words clarified why. “The fact that you weren’t preoccupied in the kitchen left us a lot of time for other things.”
Gooseflesh pricked her skin as her mind provided a visual of exactly what those other things had been. Not a visual…more like memories of the two of them making love.
Gregory pulled her away from the fridge and closed its door. He leaned forward, pinning her between the unforgiving appliance and his solid chest before capturing her mouth for a kiss.
“I like other things,” she murmured afterward.
“Uh-huh.” He grinned. “But we’ll save those for dessert. Right now, let’s get dressed and go out for a bite to eat. We can let someone else cook our meal and take care of the dirty dishes afterward.”
Devin was all for that. She didn’t want to take time out of the best dream of her life to prepare dinner and then hand wash pots, pans, plates and utensils since dishwashers weren’t standard issue in the average kitchen of the era.
“That sounds like an excellent idea to me.”
Back in the bedroom, the dress she’d been wearing was still on the floor. She picked it up and shook it out, but it was one hundred percent cotton and as such a wrinkled mess. The no-iron fabrics that made life in the twenty-first century so much easier weren’t yet on the market.
“I guess I’ll have to wear something else,” she said, a little curious to find out what kind of a wardrobe she had.
Gregory was at the closet, picking out a shirt for himself.
“How about this?”
He held out a rose-colored dress that had a cinched waist and a full skirt. The cut, the color, both were so pretty and feminine. It was just as she had told Emily at the shop. In the 1940s, women took the time to dress, whatever the occasion.
“I love it. Lay it here on the bed,” she told him.
They were husband and wife, and already had engaged in a couple bouts of no-holds-barred sex on the very mattress that now separated them. Yet she felt self-conscious as she slipped out of his shirt and put back on the undergarments he’d helped her out of a couple hours earlier.
The man had haunted her dreams for years. Finally, they were together, and it turned out they were married. Devin had so many questions. While she had managed to cobble together a rough timeline from some of the comments Gregory had made and the quasi-memories she had, she still wasn’t sure how they’d met or where. How long had they dated before saying I do? For that matter, when had they wed? Those fuzzy recollections she had of the courthouse didn’t include a date. Exactly how much time had they spent together before he’d been shipped out? How long had he been deployed? And why did she get the feeling something had happened between them that had threatened what otherwise seemed to be such an idyllic relationship?
Perhaps Devin was a coward, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask and risk ruining the mood. A dream, even one as good as this, couldn’t last forever. So, she remained silent. In fact, they both were quiet as they dressed.
When they emerged into the afternoon heat half an hour later, Gregory took Devin’s hand and tucked it through his arm. The old-fashioned gesture made her want to sigh. She had found several pairs of white cotton gloves in a bureau drawer. She was wearing a pair now. Even though they were embroidered with tiny white flowers at the cuff, they were intended for everyday wear. Fancy, she thought again.
The description applied to Gregory’s wardrobe and accessories, too. Despite the heat, he had on a suit and tie. The lightweight fedora on his head was the icing on the proverbial cake.
“Do you want to go to our usual place?” he asked as they strolled idly along.
“Usual place?” she asked, lost in thought.
“Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, considering we only ate at Claudio’s three times before I shipped out.” The gauzy image of checkered tablecloths and dripping white candles in squat, rattan-wrapped wine bottles came to mind. “Or we could take a cab to Murzel’s.”
“That’s where we went on our first date,” she murmured with near certainty.
“Second,” Gregory corrected and gave her arm a pat. “I’ll always count Central Park as our first.”
“I broke the heel on my shoe,” she said slowly.
“Not just any old shoe. Your favorite pair, or so you told me.”
He chuckled, and his laughter seemed to beckon a flash of memory, for lack of a better word. The shoe in question was black and tan with a rounded toe and an ankle strap. She’d stepped in a crack
while walking by a fountain and…snap!
“You flagged down a horse-drawn carriage to take me back to the park’s entrance.”
“It was the chivalrous thing to do.” He leaned close and admitted, “Of course, I bribed the driver to take the long way around the park before coming out at Columbus Circle. I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible.” He grinned before adding, “Forty-eight minutes of heaven.”
“The carriage let us off outside the park on…on Fifty-Ninth Street.”
“That’s right.”
“Then…” She rubbed her temple. “Then you hailed a cab for me.”
“But not before I got your number and asked you out on a proper date.”
“What made you notice me?” Devin asked.
She’d never considered herself the sort of woman whose looks could turn a man’s head after a glance.
Gregory shrugged. “It wasn’t one thing. It was everything.” He kissed her cheek before adding, “The whole, pretty package.”
“Love at first sight,” she said, echoing their earlier conversation.
He nodded. “One minute I was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich and thinking about my upcoming deployment. And then the next, I saw you, limping along on a busted heel, and I just knew.”
It had been the same for her, Devin realized, albeit in a dream. From the first time he’d appeared in her subconscious, she’d felt the connection and had wanted him to be real, so much so that she sometimes found herself glancing at faces in a crowd during the day, searching for him. Emily once questioned whether the reason the men in Devin’s life might never measure up to her expectations was because she was always measuring them against, quite literally, the man of her dreams.
Who knew? Perhaps her sister was right. But at the moment, Devin was achingly certain of one thing: whether Gregory was real or not, after she woke from this dream, she would never be able to get over him.
The thought had her steps faltering even as her grip tightened on his arm.
“You want to eat here?” he asked.
It was no wonder Gregory sounded surprised. She had stopped in front of an establishment that, while probably perfectly respectable, was still little more than a glorified bar. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place a woman, even one with an escort, frequented in 1945.
Devin shook her head. “No. I…I.” An idea came to her. “Actually, I know a diner that serves excellent food. It’s a ways from here, I’m afraid.”
“Shall I hail a cab?” He cast a meaningful glance down at her shoes.
“Yes, please.” On a smile, she added, “It would be the chivalrous thing to do.”
Chapter Six
Something about Devin was different. Gregory couldn’t quite put his finger on what, though. Even so, she wasn’t the same woman he’d married. Of course, after six months in the Pacific, neither was Gregory the same, especially after what had happened to his ship, the USS Bunker Hill.
At times Devin seemed surprised by the things he said, even confused. Earlier, when they’d made love, she had been shy at first only to become bold to the point of brazen as things progressed. Not that he’d minded. What man in his right mind would take issue with having a passionate wife?
Except…she hadn’t been quite that passionate on their wedding night. Rather, she had been reserved, almost like she had been today when they’d dressed to go out. She was a puzzle, but then, despite being married, they were largely strangers, he reminded himself.
They had wed in haste, after only a handful of dates. They weren’t the only couple to do so, of course. Plenty of other couples he knew had. With the war going on and his deployment imminent, he’d felt an urgent need to make their bond permanent. Perhaps it had been selfish of him, Gregory thought now, but he’d needed to know that if he were killed in action, he had someone to mourn him. With his parents gone as well as the grandparents who had raised him, who else would?
So, on their fourth date, he’d proposed. Devin would say their third, since he counted the carriage ride and she apparently did not. He’d bought a cheap band and a dozen red roses, and he’d gotten down on one knee. When she’d agreed, he’d thought his heart would explode. He’d been that elated. By necessity, their engagement had been equally short. She’d seemed happy enough at the time.
But had she had second thoughts?
Once again, Gregory recalled the argument they’d had just before he’d shipped out. Argument was really too strong of a word. They hadn’t disagreed really. Rather, he’d tried to offer comfort and reassurances, but to little avail. She’d been so unnerved, frightened. And she’d talked about having dreams.
“They’re just nightmares,” he’d tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“Something bad is going to happen when you leave. I’m sure of it.”
“Every woman with a loved one heading off to war feels the same way. It’s natural, I think.” Upon saying so, he’d tried to gather her close, but her body had remained stiff and unyielding in his arms. “I’ll be careful, Devin. I’ll come back to you. And when I do, we’ll start our life together.” He’d nipped her earlobe before starting down her neck, murmuring as he went. “We’ll have babies and raise them, and grow old as husband and wife. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“I do.” He had said the words with the same solemnity he’d used when uttering his marriage vows. Still, she had not seemed convinced.
“But what if you can’t keep your promise, Gregory?” She’d frowned. “What if something keeps us apart? Something that neither of us has the ability to control?”
“Nothing can keep us apart, Devin. Nothing! I’ll come back to you,” he’d assured her a second time. “And when I do, we’ll celebrate. You’ll see.”
But no matter how he’d tried to persuade her, when he left the following morning, he’d been consumed with the unsettled feeling that the kiss they shared at the train station might very well be their last.
Unnerved by the memory, as well as how he’d felt yesterday upon arriving home to an empty apartment that clearly had not been lived in for some time, he pulled Devin close to his side in the taxi’s back seat. He had questions, but when she glanced up, he kissed her.
“What was that for?” she asked afterward.
Pushing aside the questions that were bothering him, he asked, “Do I need a reason to kiss my wife?”
“Never.”
* * *
The restaurant Devin had in mind was adjacent to her shop in the East Village. She knew the diner would be there since it had recently boasted its seventy-ninth anniversary. But what about her shop? Would it be there also? Oh, the building would be, she figured, but what or who would be occupying the main floor?
For a moment, as ridiculous as it seemed, homesickness assailed her. Not for the building or the shop, but for her sister. Although it had been mere hours since she’d last seen Em, whether she counted the time that had passed in her dream or the pizza they’d shared the evening before when they’d met up near New York University, she missed her. Would her sister be here? It didn’t seem likely, but anything was possible in a dream, right?
It was stifling hot inside the cab, even with the windows rolled down and the wind rushing in as they traveled down Fifth Avenue. In the apartment, the temperature hadn’t been too bad with the heavy draperies pulled closed and the metal blades of a tabletop fan circulating the air. It was amazing the attention to detail in this dream, right down to the lack of air conditioning and the perspiration Devin could feel gathering on her brow.
Gregory had moved closer on the bench seat. Despite the heat, she welcomed his nearness. He had questions. She could see them brewing in his hazel gaze. What kind of answers did she have for him? For that matter, what answers did she have for herself? This was so real, yet it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
The remainder of the drive was made in potent silence.
* * *
“Here you are,” the cabbie
said as he pulled to a stop several minutes later.
In the present day, the neighborhood was more eclectic, eccentric, than it was here. While Gregory paid the fare, Devin scanned the storefronts. The shop wasn’t there. The building was, of course, but the sign that hung in Yesterday’s Closet’s big front window read: Sal’s Timepiece Repair. She hadn’t really expected to see her shop, but as foolish as it seemed, she had hoped to find Emily. Devin had no desire to wake up from this dream, but she was eager to share her thoughts with her sister.
She sighed in disappointment.
“Is everything all right?” Gregory asked.
“Yes. Fine.” How could she tell him otherwise? She fanned her face. “God, it’s hot.”
When in doubt, talk about the weather. It was Devin’s standard fallback whenever she ran out of things to say while on a date. Not that this was a date. Nor had her mind gone blank. More like it was full of topics, brimming with them in fact. But how to bring them up without having the man think she was insane?
She shook her head, bemused.
“And now I’m worrying about what a figment of my imagination might think of me,” she murmured.
“Devin?”
“Nothing.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m just talking to myself.”
“We’d better get you out of this heat.”
Whether she was in a dream or not, the look of concern on his face was refreshing. Other than her sister, Devin had no one looking out for her. Even with Em, Devin held things back. She was the older sibling, after all. It was up to her to put on a brave face and march forward, and she took the obligation seriously. That didn’t make it any less wearying.
As they passed the repair shop, Devin slowed her steps so she could peer through the front window. Beyond her reflection, she could see that a half-wall divided the space nearly in two. Otherwise, the shop’s floor plan was remarkably similar to Yesterday’s Closet. But then the building’s original finishes and vintage vibe had been what prompted Devin to sign the lease in the first place when she’d been looking for a location to open her business.
