Time Games

by Rex Bolt

  Wednesday would be the last day of school before vacation . . . so . . . why not leave on Thursday?

  He had a couple papers left to write, but he had the technique down pretty good, you just let it rip with as many extra words as you could so that you were turning in a paper longer than the requirement, and that normally got you a B. And you also wanted to write as fast as possible. He’d tried taking his time once and that didn’t go over any better, in fact he was pretty sure he got a worse grade.

  But forget all that for now. What Pike wanted to do today was drop in on his friend the librarian, and as soon as 8th period ended that’s where he went.

  Frankie was at her desk and looking a little stiffer than normal. “I’m glad you came by,” she said. “Though I may not have as much leeway as I did. They canned the head librarian.”

  “The one who was never here?” Pike said.

  “Exactly. And they elevated someone else. A younger man, more hard-nosed.”

  “I’ll get right to it then,” Pike said. “If someone happened to change their name . . . how do I locate them? Any ideas on that?”

  “When?”

  “When did they do it? Let’s say 20 years ago, roughly.”

  “Where, what state?”

  “Could be any of them . . . But how about California.”

  As usual, Frankie didn’t ask any more questions than necessary, and she stuck to the task at hand. Though she did give Pike a look that said she wouldn’t mind knowing more, if he volunteered it.

  “These are the Chico people,” Pike said. “I wasn’t going to try to find them, but someone said what could it hurt . . . So I did, and came up empty . . . Which gave me the beginnings of a heart attack . . . Then someone else, she said maybe they changed their name. So I’m back to being more rational.”

  Frankie smiled. “We don’t want any heart attacks. You can relax, there’s always an explanation for an anomaly such as this.”

  Pike was thinking: In a real world I’m with you . . . Not quite as confident here.

  But why throw a wrench in. He said, “So what do you think? Is there . . . like a database for legal name changes, or something?”

  “What’s not optimum,” she said, “is the time frame. If it were in the last 10, 12, even 15 years there normally would be, as county clerk’s offices nationwide have adopted computerized filing . . . Although if you are clever, even today, you can select a little-known rural county that still may do it the old fashioned way, and you might stay out of the system.”

  “You might be giving me too much information,” Pike said. “I’m pretty darn sure these people, they weren’t going to be taking it that far.”

  “That sounds understandable. They simply sought a clean, fresh start then.” Leaving the door open again for Pike to fill in the blanks.

  “My goal was to re-direct them,” he said. “I’m starting to be convinced that I was actually successful . . . It’s possible, in the process, they decided to take it a step further . . . Getting back to the timing though, if this thing pre-dates the computer, or whatever, could I drive to Chico and look it up in an office? Would that be one way?”

  “Okay let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let me have a look around in our system first.”

  “Well thank you.”

  “But as a starting point, you feel they may have changed their names in Chico?”

  “Like I say, it could have been years later, and wherever . . . But it could have been a day later too.” Pike was thinking of Mr. Milburn in the motel room, and his reaction when Pike bent the gun.

  “My sense is that Butte County was one of the later ones to fully automate,” Frankie said. “I’ll see what I can do though, and of course I’ll run the nationwide database, such as it is. It’s imperfect in my experience for these local filings, but we never know.”

  Pike nodded. “I’m spending Christmas in the southwest,” he said. “Maybe not Christmas day itself, but a little seasonal trip.”

  “Well . . . that’s somewhat surprising. Without your family, you mean?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

  “Ah,” she said. He’d told her at one point about his suspicions about his dad making it Mrs. Milburn. She’d reserved judgment, but he was comfortable telling her and it felt good to get it out.

  “Hey, you want to come?” Pike said.

  “I’ll take that as a joke,” Frankie said. “Though it’s kind of you to include me.”

  “The main reason,” Pike said, “is you have a late-model vehicle. I’m always nervous mine might break down.”

  “It could,” Frankie said, a little playfulness there, slipping out of her librarian role for a moment.

  Pike said, “And speaking of my beat-up truck . . . I was heading home Saturday night . . . I had a date that didn’t end too well, so I was pre-occupied, and pretty dang tired, and going the speed limit . . . but I could have sworn I saw you going into a house on 7th Street . . . between Miller, and whatever the next one is, going south.”

  “Powell?” Frankie said.

  “Was that you?” Pike said. “Or was it an optical illusion.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine what I would have been doing over there,” she said. “Was I alone?”

  Pike took a good look at her. “You’re either innocent of all charges,” he said, “or you’re the best poker player around.”

  “I hope you have fun in the southwest,” she said. “I believe you’re making a wise choice.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Allowing one’s mind to wander on the open road can be quite valuable . . . Meanwhile I’ll be holding down the fort here in the reference section.”

  “See there you go,” Pike said. “I know there’s another side to you because you keep showing flashes.”

  “Drive carefully,” she said.

  ***

  Later on, Pike was in his room putting the final touches on his second-to-last term paper, and a text came in from Andrea asking him if he’d be jogging again tonight. He actually was considering it, looking forward to a little exercise, but this was getting way too confusing so he deleted her message and that was that.

  Meanwhile, if you could believe it, who was downstairs currently with Hannamaker but Foxe.

  They were jamming in The Box. Foxe had come in with a guitar and a little amp and it killed Pike to admit it but the idiot wasn’t bad. Hannamaker had been working the last couple evenings on repairing that side wall, and you had to give the guy credit for a) not involving Pike or bringing it up at all and b) for doing good work. When he finished the job, no way you could tell there’d been a strange gaping hole there 48 hours earlier.

  Something that didn’t occur to Pike for a couple minutes, but how could you play guitar with your hand all bandaged up. He couldn’t resist going down there to have a look, and he hoisted himself up and straddled the wall and peered down at the action.

  Sure enough, Foxe was doing his thing, holding a pick with the ends of his fingers that were sticking out of his cast thing and making it work. The two of them finished off part of a tune and took a break.

  “What do you think?” Jack called up to Pike.

  “Nah, I was just curious,” Pike said.

  “You were bopping your head,” Jack said, “so you must have been digging it.” Foxe laughed, and started getting his equipment together, and Pike could see it was going to be an ordeal lugging it in and out of The Box, so rather than feel guilty he told Foxe to leave everything there if that made it easier.

  Foxe nodded at Pike and said that would work. No big thank you, that would have been going too far, but at least no more punches were flying at the moment and Foxe managed to climb up and out of the The Box and took off.

  When he was gone Pike said to Hannamaker, “That Andrea chick -- any idea what the story is there?’

  Jack was as poker-faced as Frankie the librarian. “Dude, you keep bringing that up, and you’re asking the wrong guy. Your buddy Anthony s
hould have a better a bead on it, last I checked.”

  “Yeah, well . . . is he floating her boat, do you think?”

  Jack took off his hat and started methodically pushing back his hair like he was deep in serious thought.

  “To be honest with you, I’m trying to take care of my own boat . . . That girl over by the JC? Who you helped me out with? It’s on-again, off-again.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Pike said.

  “Why? What’s so bad about it?”

  “Well when you put it like that . . . nothing at all, I guess. Other than you could get extremely messed up, but who cares?”

  “Okay let’s don’t get carried away.”

  “I mean besides death,” Pike said, “what could possibly go wrong?”

  “There’s something about an older woman,” Jack said, looking off in the distance, shaking his head slightly. “Until you’ve experienced one it’s hard to relate . . . Have you?”

  Pike was thinking, yeah right pal, you’re 18, she’s all of 20, 21. But no, unfortunately, he couldn’t say that he had dated an older woman, even a couple years older.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Pike said. “But what’s so different about it, you want to risk Lou and the other guy again?”

  “She moved,” Jack said, “she broke up with him, so they’re out of the picture . . . Answer your question, I can’t pinpoint it, but it’s there.”

  “You . . . introduce her to The Box at all?” Might as well throw it out.

  “No, no. It’s all on her terms. She calls the shots . . . Part of the appeal I guess.”

  “Whatever,” Pike said. “Don’t do anything stupid when I’m gone, is all I ask.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I told you, I’m going to Arizona.”

  “No you didn’t. You told me you were thinking about it . . . what’s so special down there?”

  “I don’t think anything . . . It is what it is.”

  Jack said, “People still send post cards when they go places? My grandma always did that.”

  “I don’t know . . . why?” Pike said.

  “If they do, send me one,” Jack said.

  Chapter 19

  When school let out Tuesday Pike couldn’t take it anymore and he got in the truck and right away started off toward Uffington.

  He didn’t like the idea of leaving for a week or two and still not knowing for sure what happened to Henry’s kid brother, Jeff.

  He supposed you could google the guy and see if by any chance he was still in Monterey . . . but if he wasn’t, then you’d start to worry and your mind could run away from you in a hurry, just like it had been with the apparent disappearance of the Milburns.

  And if the dude did happen to be there, it would still be tough to know what to do. Did you just call him up and say are you okay?

  That would be awkward and suspicious and you easily might not come away with a satisfying answer even then, and then you’d be left speculating worse than before.

  So the idea now was to stop and see Henry, who at least would know and recognize him, and you could work your way up to it in casual conversation and then slip in the only important question.

  First of course at the halfway mark was the hot dog stand with the Hawaiian theme and Pike pulled off and ate, and while he was at it he saw that Henry Geraghty was listed in the white pages, address and phone number, which was interesting because he wasn’t listed that last time, when Pike was getting ready to go over there but ended up getting enough information from Frankie to do the job without needing to.

  In spite of this little wrinkle, it was a good sign that Henry was still around, no big changes or anything, which meant you should be able to get to the bottom of this.

  Or was that a good sign?

  Maybe not, actually. If Jeff was fine all these years then maybe the two brothers started a business together or something, or stayed in San Francisco when their parents died and took over the house in the Marina district. Or a bunch of other possibilities.

  Now Pike was starting to panic just a little and he bit the bullet and googled Jeff Geraghty, but like he feared, there were an awful lot of them, and here we go again trying to narrow people down.

  What he really wanted to see, was there a Jeff Geraghty living in Uffington, which wouldn’t have been a total surprise, as close as the brothers seemed to be.

  He couldn’t find any, and now since he’d opened a big can of worms he went ahead and checked the Monterey and Carmel area, and that came up empty.

  Which didn’t mean anything one way or the other, and he got back in the pickup, put the radio on loud so he wouldn’t rattle his brain anymore with all the extreme scenarios, and would have made a beeline for Henry’s house except he got stuck behind a hay truck for the last ten miles into Uffington.

  It said that Henry lived on Commerce Way, which turned out to be a dead-end cul-de-sac where all the houses looked the same, except with some of the front doors reversed and a couple front lawns torn up and converted to those drought-resistant shrubs you see sometimes.

  Pike didn’t waste any time. He couldn’t find a doorbell but there was a brass knocker that was surprisingly loud and soon a woman came around from the side of the house and asked if she could help him.

  She looked good for a mom, in shape and tan, like she spent plenty of time outdoors doing physical stuff, which she seemed to be doing now, pulling off a pair of gardening gloves as she greeted him.

  “Thank you,” Pike said. “First of all, I was hoping I have the right address for Henry . . . and then, would he be available?”

  “And your name is . . . ?” She said it friendly enough.

  “Pike. He gave me a ride once. I live over in Beacon . . . I really appreciated it, he kind of bailed me out.”

  She smiled. “I’m Margie. I can see you’re probably not looking for another ride, but why don’t you come in. Henry gets home between 5:10 and 5:20.”

  Pike checked the time. It was close to 5, later than he thought, which was good, and he followed her inside, and there was a side room with a little TV and she said to make himself comfortable, that she had a bit more pruning to finish.

  “You’re pretty trusting,” Pike said. “What if I was going to clean out the joint, or something?”

  “We have to use our best judgment,” she said, playing along.

  “But Henry . . . he always comes home in that little 10 minute window?”

  “Oh yes, he’s very efficient, and and always dependable,” she said. “I suppose that’s one reason I married him.” She laughed, and went back outside. There was a nice spirit to the woman.

  Henry walked in a few minutes later like clockwork. He was a little leaner than before, and had a goatee now. Pike stood up and re-introduced himself. Henry shook his hand, but there was a bewildered look to him.

  “Don’t you remember?” Pike said, after the formalities were out of the way. “I got in a jam downtown that time, no wheels, and you picked me up in the Suburban? . . . You had kids in the back, girls, going to watch Bellemeade play Hamilton . . . That was the lucky thing for me, since I needed to get all the way back to Beacon.”

  “I don’t have a Suburban,” Henry said, a little more cautiously than Pike would have liked.

  “Okay, that part I probably have wrong,” Pike said, “that’s not important.” And it wasn’t, since vehicle changes in different realities were apparently common and kept happening.

  Henry said, looking at him closely, “You twist my arm, I do know you . . . Can’t place driving you, but yeah, we met someplace.”

  “That’s great then . . . And it was fun talking to you, and hearing your stories about growing up in Frisco, the Marina, going to Galileo High School, your brother, everything else.” Pike hoped throwing the brother in there would seem low-key, like he was only part of a list of a bunch of other stuff.

  “What about my brother?” Henry said, everything about the guy stiffening up now. />
  “Nothing,” Pike said, scrambling to change it up, “just the whole nine yards, I enjoyed hearing it, in fact it reminded me of going up to your old neighborhood to get some autographs after the Giants won the first time.”

  “You enjoyed . . . hearing it?”

  “Huh?” Either this guy was off his rocker, or else had had a really bad day . . . or, the worst possibility, he was awfully sensitive about his brother. Whatever that might mean.

  The wife, Margie, came back in and you could hear her washing her hands in the kitchen, and a minute later she handed Henry a cocktail in a short thick glass and asked Pike if he’d like a 7-Up.

  Pike said thanks but no, and Henry said to Margie, “The kid. I believe he’s asking questions about Jeffie.”

  Pike said, “I apologize then. I didn’t mean to be.”

  Henry said, “You come into someone’s house . . . cold . . . You need to show more respect son.” Henry picked up the briefcase he had walked in with, and took it and his drink upstairs.

  When the door up there clicked Margie said, “He’s having a rough time at work these days. But I’m not sure why you would need to bring up Jeff . . . Not that I’m at all sure what you’re doing here, actually.”

  Pike was thinking, of all the various ideas he’d had recently, which definitely covered a lot of ground . . . this might have been the worst.

  “I’m not sure either,” he said, trying to regain even a tiny bit of footing. “Your husband, he gave me that ride . . . then we met another time at the gas station, your daughter was playing a basketball game, and he said she didn’t like him watching so he was killing an hour-and-a-half . . . The way we left it off, he said look him up some time.”

  “We have two daughters,” Margie said, more coldly now. “Neither one of them plays basketball.” She folded her arms. Pike took it as his final signal to get the hell out of there.

  “Well,” he said, trying to keep it light, hoping she wasn’t about to call the police or something, “what I’m learning, you can’t always take things at face value, can you?”