Maybe Edgeworth tobacco in Pop Pop’s pipe would give him the vision — or the dream — that would explain what was going on.
But if that was the case, why didn’t Pop Pop have the same experiences?
His mind raced, trying to find some reason to believe that his grandfather had been a closet mystic, smoking his pipe to get a peek behind the curtain. But nothing fit. Pop Pop had been as secular and ordinary and ornery and practical-minded as any man he’d ever met.
Enough, he thought, then shook his head clear of fantasies and started on the day’s to-do list.
Chapter 5: Edgeworth
That same Monday John found a note on his door that his neighbor had a package for him. He wasn’t disappointed to find a box containing a somewhat familiar-looking tin of Edgeworth tobacco, along with a pleasant note from the man with whom he’d made the trade. He was a local guy and had just dropped it by the same day.
John was working on his first bowl almost before he got in his front door. Edgeworth was a mix of Burley and Virginia, and cut a little finer than most of the blends he used. It had a pleasant taste — somewhat reminiscent of chocolate, or molasses. The smell had a hint of prune, or raisin, or perhaps a trace of licorice.
It burned well, required little tending, and seemed like a serviceable “every day” tobacco he could get used to.
Too bad it’s out of production, he thought, and then went about the evening rituals with his pipe clenched between his teeth.
All day he’d been anticipating some sort of revelation. He hoped that he would put the pipe to his mouth and ... what? Jillian would appear before him? A Jinn would pop out of the tobacco tin and explain what’s been going on?
He didn’t have any clear idea what he had expected, only an irrational hope that something would be different.
The Edgeworth simply soothed him and put him in a better mood. He drank less that night — and what he did drink was more out of habit than want. He got to bed at a decent hour and awoke the next morning before his alarm, refreshed and ready for the day.
After a shower, a cup of strong black coffee and a bran muffin, he stopped at the book shelf to pick a mystery novel for the ride to town. A thin layer of dust on the book case reminded him that for the last few weeks he hadn’t been reading at all. He’d been brooding. Thinking. Obsessing. Reliving tortured dreams and wondering about might-have-beens.
After a productive morning at the office he thought about skipping Lafayette Park today. What was the point, after all?
“Stay away from the park today and do something fun,” said a voice in his head. But he’d told Lisa he would look for the old man with the boots. After all, a real person had tripped him. A real person had slipped a note into his pipe. Whatever else was going on, that wasn’t some crazy vision.
He loaded the briar with Edgeworth as soon as he cleared the office door. Objectively considered, it wasn’t the best tobacco he’d tasted. It burned cool and had enough of the right kind of flavor for his tastes, but there was a pedestrian edge to it. After smoking Draper’s custom blends, Edgeworth had a dime store quality that he couldn’t ignore.
If not for the handwritten note he’d found in his pipe, John would have been done with the Edgeworth, or perhaps tried it again from time to time to remember his grandfather. He persevered in the hopes that there was some meaning to all this. His grandfather’s pipe, mysteriously obtained. Odd visions of Jillian. A note from a stranger to smoke Pop Pop’s favorite blend. Surely there was a story behind it.
He felt like he was in the grip of stronger stuff, and he felt an almost religious feeling — as if he was trusting a higher power to guide him. Then he laughed and thought it would be a strange spirituality that would lead him to puff away on his pipe on the lookout for an old man in worn leather boots.
After a while he gathered himself up and went back to the office. The day and the evening passed easily.
* * *
By Wednesday he was feeling so much better that he didn’t even mind when Dr. Robbins asked him to stop by for a short visit after work.
The doc gave him a quick update on the situation with his records. For the time being it was tied up in court, and that was a good thing. “They can’t use anything in those records until the judge rules.”
“I have to ask, Doc, was there anything damning in what you wrote in my file?”
Dr. Robbins shook his head. “It’s hard to say. Objectively? No. But … reading between the lines, maybe.”
As they talked, Dr. Robbins seemed to relax more and more. They went over familiar territory, and it was the best session they’d had in months.
“I have to admit, John,” he said a half hour later, “that I was about ready to prescribe some medication. I’m encouraged by what you’re telling me today, so I think we can put that on hold for the time being. But I want to make this completely clear. You are right on the edge.”
“I get it,” John said, but he wasn’t sure if he cared. The last couple days had been restful, but … he hadn’t made any progress either. He still didn’t know anything more about Jillian or the old man.
* * *
Thursday dawned as another good morning with a clear head. John had two appointments that day. Susan for lunch and the happy hour crew after work. He wasn’t sure what he expected of his lunch with Susan. She’d never been shy about showing her interest in him, but he didn’t know if he wanted the trouble.
At lunch John sat on the park bench next to her, but he put his brown paper bag between them. She leaned over a bit and crossed her bare legs toward him. John tried not to notice, but felt his eyes drawn. She had very nice legs.
“I’ve learned some interesting things about tarot cards,” he said as he unwrapped his sandwich. “Been reading about it lately.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s a strange story,” John replied.
“It would have to be to get you interested in that kind of thing,” Susan said, unrolling some sort of vegetable wrap. “Aren’t you the confirmed skeptic?”
John shook his head side to side, the way Indians nod maybe, and smiled a goofy smile.
“How about dreams, Susan? Do you know much about dreams?”
“I have them,” she said playfully. “And I have dreamed about you, which is why you asked, right? Do you want to hear about them?”
“I’m not sure,” he said with a wicked smile. “We are expected back at the office after lunch, aren’t’ we?”
“Now that’s more like it,” she said with a sparkle in her eyes. “It’s so hard to get you to play along.”
“I’m a fairly serious guy.”
“But something’s got Mr. Serious Guy wondering about dreams and tarot cards. Pretty soon you’ll be asking me to a séance.”
“Unlikely, but .... Seriously, Susan. I’ve been having some strange, intense dreams recently. I’m not sure what to make of them.”
“I have a book at home on how to interpret dreams. You’re welcome to borrow it. But I’m not bringing it into the office. You have to come get it.”
* * *
“So have you caught the old coot?” Lisa asked discreetly, leaning over to make sure the rest of the happy hour crew didn’t catch the question.
The Club Down Under wasn’t the most fashionable place in D.C., but the beers were cheap, the bar food was decent, and the waitress was gruff, slightly obnoxious, and made an easy mark for the obligatory after-work complaint. All in all, it worked.
John looked at Lisa seriously for a moment and thought about how different she was from Susan. Blonde rather than brunette. Not as athletic or as fashionable. Lisa wasn’t nearly as pretty — maybe a seven, while Susan was a solid nine — but she was so much smarter, and so much easier to talk to.
“I haven’t seen any likely prospects,” John said in a slightly louder voice. He didn’t want the others to think he and Lisa were sharing dark secrets.
“What about that tobacco blend?” she asked, getting
the message and sitting back in her seat.
“Got it. Been smoking it since Monday night. I had hoped it would lead me somewhere, but so far I’ve got nothing.”
Lisa looked him over. “You look good, anyway,” she said. “And you sound good. So whatever it is you’re doing, keep it up.”
John smiled, but a dark thought gnawed at the back of his mind. He’d been assuming he could trust the note — as if the old man was on his side. But why should he assume that?
He had to admit that he was feeling better than he’d felt in a long time. Something — maybe the Edgeworth — was calming him, making him less obsessive. He’d been drinking less. Walking more. Sleeping better. More positive about his life and his work. And there had been no disturbing dreams.
Chapter 6: Speaking with Jillian
Emails, meetings and the general churn of office work kept his mind occupied until his head and stomach told him it was time for a mid-morning break. The little shop on the first floor of his office building kept a decent pot of Kona, and the Korean lady who ran it baked a mean bran and raisin muffin. But today he indulged in a short walk and a smoke of the old Oxford blend.
He took the long way around the block and relished the smoke. After smoking Edgeworth for several days, the flavor of a truly fine tobacco was more than welcome. In fact, he decided to celebrate. Forget the Korean shop. He’d head over to the tea shop on the northwest side of the park. They served a great cup of chai, and he might even indulge in a salty oat cookie. Besides, the lady at the register was cute.
The new construction on the corner of H and 17th was just wrapping up, and he took an extra moment to smoke and watch the men lay block in the walk. A horn and the squeal of a sudden stomp on a brake caught his attention. He turned suddenly and bumped into ...
Jillian.
She was so close he could have kissed her, and it took all his self-restraint not to wrap his arms around her and do just that.
Something in her eyes said “stranger,” but when John blurted out her name, she looked at him closely and tilted her head to one side.
“Do I know you?”
It was her voice. Her face. Her figure. No twin could be this identical. John was torn between the violent desire to hold her or to simply break down and cry.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m John. Don’t you remember?”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together ever-so-slightly. John knew that face, and his heart sank. She didn’t recognize him at all, and she was starting to get suspicious.
“Can I buy you a cup of tea?” he said quickly before she could cut him off, and he gestured towards the shop a half block away. There were metal tables and chairs on the sidewalk. He hoped she knew the place. C’mon, Jillian. It’s safe. It’s public. It’s only tea.
“How do you know me?” she asked, taking half a step back. John’s heart sank further. She didn’t ask “how do we know each other?” She still doubted.
What could he say? We were married for ten years? I saw you in my dreams almost every night for a month? I can’t go an hour without thinking about you?
He thought he might start reciting details of her life — her birthday, her parents’ names, the name of her favorite dog. But then she’d think he was a stalker. What clever hacker couldn’t find those things?
It had to be something only he could know.
“Jillian, I don’t know why you don’t remember me, and this may be hard for you to believe, but we were together for a long time. And I can prove it. You have a small mole right where your bra strap crosses your left shoulder blade, so you’re choosy about the brands you buy. I believe Lord and Taylor carries your favorite.”
Her eyes did the reverse blink of surprise and a slight, nonsymmetrical smile flickered across her mouth, but it was quickly replaced by a bland, almost stoic expression, and John noticed that her hands tensed a little.
She took a step back to get a better look at him, but then two things happened almost simultaneously.
A familiar voice called John’s name from behind in a warning tone. He turned to look, and as he turned he barely caught sight of a hand with a spray bottle. He felt a cool mist on his face and then he spun around in time to see the back of an old man in a suit and a hat taking off across the street.
His immediate thought was to give chase, but then ... Jillian. Where was she? He couldn’t see her anywhere. He had a clear view of the street for a hundred feet in all directions, and there was simply no way she could have disappeared that fast.
A hand grabbed his shirt sleeve. “Are you okay?” It was Susan.
“I think so,” he said, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I think it’s only water. But I need to catch that guy.”
He took off at a run, clutching his still burning pipe in his hand and completely heedless of the traffic on 17th street. A yellow taxi narrowly missed him. The driver stuck his head out the window and gave John a good cussing, but he might as well have been cussing at Confucius. John’s entire mind was bent on catching this old man who had ....
What? What had the old man done? Had he made Jillian disappear into thin air? With a spray bottle full of water?
It didn’t make any sense, but it didn’t matter either. John was going to get the story. The old man was spry for his age, but not nearly spry enough.
As soon as the old man got to the statue of Baron von Steuben at the Northwest corner of the park, he stopped, put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.
John was next to him a moment later. He gave the old man a minute to catch his breath, then said, “Care to explain yourself?”
* * *
Susan approached the park bench at noon with a worried look on her face, which didn’t surprise John. The last she’d seen of him he’d been attacked by some old guy and was nearly run over after foolishly dashing through the middle of D.C. traffic. And he hadn’t returned to the office afterwards.
“I was worried you wouldn’t make it,” she said, but her voice held much more concern than that.
“I told Herman I needed a couple hours for personal business. I should have asked him to pass along the message. I’m sorry. That was inconsiderate of me.”
“You have a lot on your mind,” she said through a faint smile, and suddenly John wondered if he could trust his co-workers. Someone had given an “anonymous tip” to ... somebody, resulting in “rubber-soled goons” collecting his medical records from his psychologist.
He looked at Susan for a moment and his suspicions melted away. She had no motive to do something like that, and he didn’t think she was that devious.
John shook his head. “You have no idea.”
“So did you catch him?”
“Yes, but he didn’t tell me much. He claims he saw me talking to myself on the street, and that he just happened to have a spray bottle that he uses for his office plants, so he suddenly decided to be devilish and squirt me in the face — to wake me up or something.”
“Well,” Susan confided sheepishly. “You were talking to yourself.”
John looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? I was talking to .... Didn’t you see anybody?” John had never had a panic attack in his life, but at that moment he felt one might be coming on. “Wait,” he said. “When you came up to me on the street, I was talking to ... a woman. Pretty. About your size, but a little taller, wearing a blue business suit.”
Susan shook her head with an increasingly sad look on her face, and John could see her inner turmoil. She wanted to help him, but she was getting a little scared, and feeling like this was more than she could handle.
“All I saw was you talking to nobody, like that homeless guy does over on K Street. People were looking at you funny and they were keeping their distance, until that old man came up and sprayed you. I saw him coming toward you and he looked like he was up to something. That’s why I called out.”
John shook his head angrily and said, “No, I was talking to ....”
&nbs
p; Then he stopped. He realized how useless it would be to say anything further. Not only useless, but self-destructive. What could he say? “I bumped into my dead wife Jillian on the street today — you know, the one I’ve been having intensely weird dreams about. But she didn’t recognize me. Her memory had been erased or something. And I’m sure it was really her despite all that, and despite the fact that two people — you and some crazy old man — saw me talking to nobody. And if you don’t believe me, just ask my shrink. He’ll vouch for my sanity ... and my sobriety.”
His shoulders slumped, his head fell forward and he barely breathed. He sat still and stared at his shoes, slowly shaking his head.
Susan didn’t know what to do, so she started talking. She tried to comfort him. She tried to say it was all okay, that he’s been under a lot of stress, that this sort of thing can happen to anyone, and couldn’t they take a long walk down by the monuments, or go get a coffee or ... anything.
But John just sat and looked at his shoes.
Susan eventually gave up. Her normal reaction to this kind of stony silence would be to feign anger and stomp off in a fit of rage, but this time she sat back, tore a few pieces of bread off her sandwich and fed them to the fat little pigeons that congregate around every park bench in D.C.
After a few minutes, John roused himself. He sat up, looked at Susan clearly, and somewhat coldly, and said, “Please tell Herman I’m done for the day.”
Then without another word he walked off in a hurry, heading east down H Street.
Susan shook her head sadly and made a quick phone call.
* * *
John walked aimlessly for an hour, covering parts of the city he hadn’t been in for years. He stopped at RFD for a couple pints as the lunch crowd was leaving. He sat silently at the bar and kept his unlit pipe in his mouth, as if daring the bartender to make an issue of it. But the bartender knew his business and left him alone.
Then he wandered some more, and eventually found his way back to Drapers.
He was a regular, so they greeted him with a smile, but one stormy look from John seemed to turn the place silent.
The Five Lives of John and Jillian Page 29
