Smith's Monthly #16

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  I eased around and looked behind the jukebox.

  “It’s not plugged in,” I said out loud, more to myself than the other four in the bar as I backed away.

  “Not possible,” Richard said softly. “That power is coming from somewhere.”

  At that moment the motor started to whir that brought up a record.

  I wanted to just run for the street and the heat outside, but instead stumbled back behind the bar, too shocked to even think.

  Somehow that jukebox, without power, was about to play a song. Not possible. It could take all of us out and back in time to memories we didn’t want to go to.

  Suddenly, I realized what I had to do and my mind broke free of the shock for the moment. In two steps I reached the drawer under the cash register and yanked it open. In the back was the box of high-grade earplugs clipped together in pairs. I yanked out a handful and scattered them in front of everyone along the bar, then grabbed two for myself.

  “Quickly, get these in and think about a pleasant memory.”

  All of them moved as one, grabbing earplugs and stuffing them into place.

  I did the same, moving back around the end of the bar to the jukebox to see which record the thing was going to play.

  It picked the slot A-1, where I used to have the record that took me back to Jenny. I hadn’t had that record in the jukebox for years, so the pick-up arm of the jukebox picked up nothing and moved toward the platter as I watched.

  “It doesn’t have a record!” I shouted so everyone could hear me over the earplugs.

  But the machine kept pretending it did have a record, dropping the imaginary record on the turntable. A moment later it spun up and the playing arm moved into place, resting over the empty, spinning turntable like a record was actually there.

  I had to be dreaming.

  That was the answer. This had to be an ugly nightmare. I had come to respect the jukebox and whoever had built it. Time travel in any fashion was dangerous and I had had many nightmares about that machine as well.

  But never one where the jukebox played without being plugged in.

  That was always the control I had over the thing. No power, it didn’t work.

  Up until now.

  TWO

  Then, as some imaginary song on an imaginary record started to play, there was a shimmering in front of the jukebox, or actually more accurately right over the jukebox, and the image of flowers and colors and bubbles appeared surrounding a beautiful woman.

  She looked almost see-through and she was wearing what looked like sound-dampening headphones.

  She smiled and started to speak, but I couldn’t hear her because of the earplugs. She indicated I should take them out.

  Trying to think of the best memory I could, I eased the plug out of my right ear.

  There was no song. No music at all, just this image of a woman shimmering over the jukebox, sort of fading in and out.

  “It’s clear!” I shouted to the others and everyone pulled out their earplugs. They were all looking as stunned as I was feeling.

  All of us had seen people disappear and then reappear as the jukebox took them back to a memory and then brought them back when the song ended. But only once before had a song brought a person to us.

  And never had someone come to the jukebox without it being plugged in and with no actual song playing.

  The woman floating over the jukebox smiled and the area around her sort of radiated the joy of her smile, the colors becoming brighter and the swirling lines moving faster.

  She did not take off her headphones.

  “Hi, Stout,” she said, nodding to me.

  I had never met her before that I could remember, and she was attractive enough I’m sure I would have remembered.

  Then she turned to Richard and the look in her eyes changed slightly in a way I couldn’t tell. “Thank you for giving me this chance. It looks like it worked, at least the first part of this.”

  I glanced around at my friend.

  Richard just sat there, looking shocked, his mouth slightly open as he stared at the beautiful woman floating above the jukebox.

  I finally managed to swallow, then through a very dry mouth asked the obvious first questions.

  “Who are you and where are you coming from?”

  I wanted to ask how, but figured I needed the first two questions answered first.

  “My name is Donna Neff. I’m thirty-seven and you don’t know me yet. I am coming back from a future I hope to change.”

  I nodded, tried to swallow again without much success. She was a young-looking thirty-seven.

  She smiled and answered my next question. “I don’t know how this is being done either. In the future Richard figures some of this sort of stuff out about this fantastic jukebox.”

  Again I glanced at my friend, but he wasn’t moving. His gaze was just locked on the woman.

  “The song is half over,” she said, glancing down at the jukebox and where the arm was in its position on the imaginary record.

  “What can we do to help you?” I asked. “And why should we?”

  “The why is the easy part, sort of,” she said. “To save the world, to put it bluntly.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I just let her go on. I didn’t much like any of this at this point.

  “Please don’t ask me how I know, I just do, just as I know about this wonderful jukebox. Time travel is very possible, as you all know. My son Danny will invent a device when he is in college that will eventually solve a lot of the energy problems of the world. That’s all I can say because it’s pretty much all I know.”

  I nodded and glanced at the jukebox. Whatever song that had sent her was getting close to being over.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I am told that in about ten minutes a girlfriend and I will come through the front door of the Garden looking for a cool drink and you all will treat us wonderfully, since you are all great people. And we will become regulars, using the Garden as a sanctuary away from our children and divorces and crummy ex-husbands.”

  “And you changed your past, right?” I asked. I knew the answer because she said that she had been told. She had gone through the jukebox at some point in the future and changed her past.

  She nodded. “One Christmas, because I was slightly drunk and not really thinking, I went back through the jukebox and said something to my future and ex-husband on our first date.”

  “And you never got married and Danny was never born to save the world.”

  She nods. “That’s what I am told by others from yet another future.”

  “You and Richard found me again, because I had never come into the Garden in my new life, and invited me back to the Garden and I met my old friend and she told me everything, since she was touching the Jukebox when I left.”

  I still didn’t understand the part about her son inventing something in a future that no longer existed. How could anyone come back from that future, that timeline to tell her anything?

  She smiled at Richard. “A while after you found me again, Richard, you got a visit from a son you had in my first world, our son, actually, a son that somehow crossed over timelines to warn us.”

  She smiled. “In the timeline I changed, you and I were talking about getting married and we had had a child. But you didn’t remember it either because you hadn’t been touching the jukebox when I screwed up.”

  As she started to fade, she glanced at me and then looked directly at Richard. “Please don’t let that happen to my first son, and to our son. Don’t ever let me go through the jukebox. Ever.”

  And then she was gone.

  THREE

  A moment later the jukebox ran through the return routine, put the invisible record back in the A-1 slot and then went dark.

  The quiet in the bar was so intense, it felt like my ears were ringing.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath and move back behind the bar, staying a good distance away from the now clea
rly unplugged and powerless jukebox.

  I was almost afraid to even look at Richard, but I did.

  He sat there, mouth open, staring at the now dead jukebox.

  “I’ve got to admit,” Fred said as I clicked on the stereo to break the silence. “You sure know how to put on an afternoon’s entertainment.”

  Everyone but Richard drank to that.

  I stared at my old friend. He was in his early forties, had never been married, and didn’t drink, although he used to. He was a plant manager by day and spent his evenings here in the Garden with friends sipping on orange juice and grenadine and helping me when I needed help. Sometimes, on long lunch breaks, like today, he came in to cool down. In the Garden we didn’t call his drink a Shirley Temple, as they did in every other bar. We called them “A Richard,” and Richard was proud of that fact.

  I took my glass of fresh-brewed iced tea and leaned against the backbar, trying to put aside the shock and deal with what had just happened.

  I was used to thinking about time travel over the last years of owning the Garden and that jukebox. And if we didn’t welcome the women who were about to come in the door, we would feel a faint shimmering and we would never remember she had come to visit us.

  I knew that for a fact. If we chased the two women away, we would have changed the future, the future where she and Richard meet and have a child. She would save her first son, but not Richard’s son. If we chased the two women away we would kill the child who would grow up to understand time travel well enough to cross timelines.

  Somehow we had to save both sons.

  And I knew exactly what I had to do. What we all had to do. We had no choice.

  And we had to do it quickly, before that door opened and let in the outside sun and heat and two women looking for a cool drink.

  “Listen up!” I said, not shouting, but getting everyone to look up at me instantly, including Richard.

  “That never happened,” I said, pointing at the jukebox. “We never saw her, never heard what she had to say.”

  “But Stout,” Fred said, “that would mean she would lose her son.”

  “No, it won’t,” I said. Then I turned to Richard. “You and I will never, ever allow her to go back through that jukebox. Ever. Once she learns about what the jukebox can do, we will just never let her travel in time.”

  Richard nodded. “At some point we’ll have to tell her why.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you,” I said, smiling. “When the time is right.”

  He just shook his head, staring down at his drink.

  I grabbed a pair of earplugs from the bar in front of Richard, quickly hooked them back together, then took a bar napkin and wrote in large black ink, “Donna.”

  Then with a tack I put the earplugs up on a post above and to the right of the cash register. “For the future,” I said.

  I turned back around to my four friends. “We can’t tell a word of this to anyone. Not even the other regulars. This is a very, very important secret. Lives are at risk, maybe in the future of our world. Are we in agreement?”

  All four of the regulars facing me across the Garden Lounge bar nodded, their expressions very serious and intent.

  “Then pick up your glasses for a toast,” I said as I grabbed my iced tea.

  All four regulars did and I raised my glass upward. “To the different possible futures.”

  “To the futures,” they all said and we all drank.

  A moment later the front door opened, flooding into the Garden Lounge bright sunlight and warmth. And through the door walked two attractive women. One was a slightly-younger Donna Neff.

  Again, my stomach sort of flipped over.

  It hadn’t been a dream and the secret we had all just agreed to keep really did have lives and worlds at stake.

  “Not a word,” I whispered just loud enough for the four at the bar to hear me.

  They all nodded as they all turned toward the front door, clearly staring at the two women.

  Both women stopped just inside the door as it closed, trying to look around as their eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  “Put on your most charming smiles, gentlemen,” I whispered again.

  Then I motioned for Richard to scoot down two stools closer to the jukebox to allow room at the bar for the two women to sit.

  Then I went around the bar with a wide smile to greet a woman I had just met a few minutes before.

  “Welcome to the Garden Lounge. Your eyes will adjust in a moment.”

  Somehow I kept myself from saying, “Welcome back to the Garden Lounge.”

  But I did.

  And that boded well for the future. Maybe a number of futures.

  When the ghost of Marilyn Monroe joins you and your girlfriend for a milkshake with a cherry on top, things change in a relationship, sometimes for the better.

  Especially when your girlfriend thinks she just might be Norma Jean.

  A VANILLA THREE-WAY WITH A CHERRY

  ONE

  Someone had hung a framed, black-and-white photo of Marilyn Monroe right over the diner’s only urinal. The picture was about a quarter life-sized, which made her a very dominating presence. The bathroom was the standard restaurant bathroom, with a tile floor, metal stall, and painted walls. It was as clean as I had ever seen a bathroom, no graffiti anywhere.

  Only Marilyn’s picture.

  In the photo Marilyn had turned her shoulders sideways, keeping her face straight and looking over her shoulder. She was wearing a low-cut black evening gown. Real low cut, actually, with the old fifties-style bra cups that looked so sharp they could poke out a guy’s eye if he went in at the wrong angle.

  The points on those breasts were right at head level as I stood at the urinal, and for half the piss I couldn’t look at anything else.

  Then I glanced up.

  Marilyn’s face was framed by light, almost angel-like. She stared down at me, sort of smiling, as if she had known when the picture was taken that some guy would be holding his dick while staring at her tits.

  I almost couldn’t finish the job I was there to do.

  And, to be honest, after looking into Marilyn’s eyes, I had trouble looking back at her breasts. It just didn’t seem respectful, even though those points were right there in front of me, and she was long dead.

  So I kept my neck cranked upward, staring at her perfect face, that I-know-what-you-are-doing-smile, those dark eyes. I have no idea how long I stood there, penis flapping in the air-conditioning, just staring at her. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I had never been attracted to Marilyn before.

  Finally, I realized I was finished and managed to pull away from the picture, get myself zipped up, hands washed, and headed out the door.

  “You all right, baby doll?” Betty asked as I slid back into the booth, her gum popping as it often did when she was flustered. Clearly I had been in there with Marilyn for a long time.

  Betty and I had been dating for five months, from the moment she had come into my garage to have her classic T-Bird’s transmission fixed. Betty loved anything about the fifties. She kept her blonde hair in the old flipped up way, and often wore fifties-style blouses, poodle skirts, and shoes with white socks. When she dressed like that it made her look one hell of a lot younger than her twenty-eight years.

  And hotter.

  She also loved Happy Days on television, and any movie set in the fifties, no matter how stupid. I know, because we had watched a bunch of them.

  This diner, “The Fifties Place,” was her favorite restaurant, with its Elvis pictures on the wall, Wurlitzer bubble jukebox, and bright red vinyl booths. But tonight was the first time the Marilyn picture had been in the bathroom. I was pretty sure I would have noticed it before.

  The diner seemed busier than it had been when I had gone into the bathroom. And the waitress had already brought us the vanilla milkshake we had ordered just as I left to pee.

  What the hell had happened to the time? People had always sa
id that Marilyn had a strange effect on men, but this was getting silly. It was just a damn picture.

  I pulled my thoughts back out of the men’s room and focused on the table in front of me and at the three milkshakes.

  “Three?”

  The servings in this place were so big, we usually ordered only one shake, and an extra glass to pour the rest of the shake out of the tin mixing cup. But this time we had three vanilla shakes on the table, all in the nifty glasses. The top of the tall, heavy, glasses was wider than the bottom, which tapered down to a glass base.

  The waitress had added whipped cream to the top of all of them, and two of the shakes still had their red cherries perched on top. Only the cherry from the glass in front of Betty was missing. She loved the things, so I had no doubt that cherry had given its life over her thick, full lips.

  “They needed the mixing cup,” Betty said, “so the waitress just poured it all in glasses and gave us extra whipped cream.”

  I nodded, just staring at the three milkshakes. Maybe I should offer one to Marilyn.

  Betty reached a hand forward and touched my arm. “Baby?”

  I looked into her deep brown eyes and saw the worry there. I hadn’t gotten past second base with her in six months, because, as she said, “Good girls don’t do that sort of thing.” Maybe if she thought I was sick or something, I might get a little nursing.

  I instantly decided against that idea. Betty liked the image of guys from the fifties who were macho types, with their cigarettes rolled up in their tee-shirts, who fought over their girls at drive-in movies. Sick played no part in any image Betty had of me, I was sure of that.

  “Fine,” I said, smiling at her. “Just got staring at a new picture of Marilyn in the bathroom. Can’t make myself believe how much you look like her.”

  Betty’s face turned red and she smiled like I had just promised her a meeting with James Dean. “You really think so?”