Faces in Time (6 page)
Authors: Lewis E. Aleman
Tags: #Thrillers, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Antacids have been his most expensive amenity since junior high, taking them in such quantities as to produce routine kidney stones from their high calcium content. The sharp sting of kidney stones paled in comparison to the perennial burn of a stomach fire fueled by an unsure mind and a discontented soul.
His forehead and back break into a cold sweat, and he’s well aware of the petite hell that awaits him.
He rocks slowly on his knees wishing his esophagus and hernia would relax enough to allow him to get the burning, sloshing, gurgling beast out of him. It feels that his nervous uncertainty has formed itself into a gelatinous demon, swelling and pushing against the tender walls of his stomach and shoving a scalding pitchfork into his lower chest. The feeling itself is miserable, but what torments him most about his condition is knowing he won’t be allowed relief for hours.
A memory flashes before him: another sour night that should have tasted like hope. He had won his first Emmy during his first season of writing for a television series.
For once he felt like he could behave as the person he’d always wanted to be and not have it be a venture into self-humiliation, but years of stifling himself and self doubt had carved a deep trench of shy habits and familiar inhibitions for him to climb out. Since routine digs a steep ravine from constantly retracing its route, he should have known that any liquid would make the assent slipperier and more difficult. Yet, he drank anyway.
The after-party was a barrage of toasts and beautiful young actresses bringing him drinks and trying to lure him onto the dance floor. Eventually, one persistent actress succeeded. While they danced, other aspiring women continually worked their way in the area. But, she managed to keep the others squeezed out of the space between her and the tipsy scribe, as if she were clinging onto a casting appointment.
Eventually the pulse of the bass and the blur of the lights meshed into a crashing rhythm of burn inside him. He leaned forward suddenly, placing his hands on her waist. She turned her ear toward his lips awaiting words her ambition longed to hear.
He eloquently stated, “I’m going to be sick.”
Her face was a mess of emotions before she settled on serious and said, “Okay, my name is Susan, and I’m the one who is taking care of you. Remember; it’s very important that you remember me. My name is Susan.”
The walk off the dance floor appeared to him as if the room were a ball rolling through space and he were inside of it as it rotated around him. The next memory was the cool of the tile floor seeping through his thin tuxedo pants into his knees and his forehead resting on the back curve of the toilet seat.
The sound of a female, “Ew!” is all that he remembers hearing besides his own guttural spasms.
The heaving convulsed him mercilessly.
“Honey, just shove your finger down your throat and get it over with.”
His hernia and esophagus tensed up tightly, making vomiting nearly impossible, and he grasped his right arm around her left thigh, pulling it against his shoulder. The spasms grew worse, but none of the toxic liquid in him was allowed to escape.
She called loudly for someone to get an ambulance, deciding it would have been a bad career move to have an Emmy-award-winning writer die in a women’s bathroom with his arm wrapped around her thigh.
Paramedics arrived quickly, already stationed in the neighborhood to handle any after-party mishaps as quickly and discreetly as possible. All he could see were smears of color and traces of movement.
He asked to a moving object whose colors were familiar to him, “Sandy, Sandy, where are my glasses?”
Her face crumpled up at hearing the wrong name, “They fell in the toilet; they’re probably swimming in pee right now.”
His eyelids began to shut.
One of the paramedics pushing the cart on the end closest to his head said, “Try to keep your eyes open and stay awake, sir. We’re getting you to a hospital.”
A faint voice called after, “Remember me; I’m Su…” and faded away as the cart rolled on.
He had no naiveté or illusions about her intentions, but he did try to locate her the next day, unsuccessfully. He didn’t have his heart to offer her, but he did have a thank you and an appointment with the show’s casting director.
“Susan…,” he says out loud, leaning out his car door over the curb of a street whose name he doesn’t remember, “Her name was Susan…actress…but she was no Rhonda…No one else is.”
He’s broken the laws of the universe, shattered the glass of time, only to have its jagged pieces slice into the tender earth and remain standing around him, imprisoning him like the bars of a cage. Each sharp object that steals his freedom holds his own reflection, forcing him to watch that which drove him mad the first time around. He can see her face, and he knows he can’t help her. A squeal wheezes out of his mouth, echoing from the canyon of growing darkness that tears through his chest.
His eyes open, filled with the unwanted brightness.
Sometime during the night, he had pulled himself into the backseat, although all he can remember is hanging out the driver’s door and the nonstop clenching and churning of his discontented stomach.
Now the street comes into focus. He knows where he is and why no one bothered to see if he was okay or why he was passed out in the backseat of his car with its front driver’s side tire invading up and onto the sidewalk like a tiger with its paw hanging out its cage.
He sees an antique shop that is framed between a clothing store and a retailer specializing entirely in quality writing utensils. It’s Cellar Street, and although he didn’t know where he was last night, he couldn’t have chosen a better place to sleep off his insurmountable anxiety.
The circular thoughts return to him, and his brow crumbles under their weight. He sits upright on the seat and looks through the windows at his surroundings.
Women in expensive, upscale clothing and younger girls in gothic, funky garb both stroll down the street and in and out of the stores, designer purses alongside flashy colored pantyhose marred with runs, and ornate diamond jewelry reflects the same light as a nose ring.
It is odd that both ends of the social spectrum enjoy shopping in the same quirky, over-priced boutiques, both wanting the feeling of having found something different than what is consumed by the middle class. It’s unlikely that they would have much to say to each other; nevertheless, they grab at the same items, counting on the purchases to take them to different and superior places.
The same overpriced lamp might find its way to an apartment or dorm room with black curtains made out of bargain bed sheets and unframed posters tacked to the walls of a bloody Caravaggio or
The Nightmare Before Christmas
just as easily as it could be placed in a room with high ceilings, a glittering chandelier, and crown molding beside a hand-painted Monet water lilies reproduction framed in gold. One could wonder if either woman would still see any magic in the lamp if she knew where else it could be found.
Feeling the urge to get out the back seat and the unpleasant memories and thoughts from the previous night, he exits the car and stretches.
Directly across the street, he can see a bar. The remains of broken bottles line the curb in front of it, their shattered pieces marking the crashing end of its patrons’ reent evenings, and the sidewalk near its double doors is stained a different color than the rest of the street.
As he glances around absorbing his surroundings, he thinks that it all is a perfect picture from his memory. Not the specific people, the bar, or the stores, but the style of clothing, the speech of the people, the cars, and the signs on the buildings: they are all as he imagined. He has landed in a crisp photograph of his ideal place in time, and now that he can’t change its path, it is one that he knows will leave him hollow.
It’s not as gloomy as the night before, but also not as bright as the return to the field of his youth. Something about being in the middle of the extremes feels real, be it a real hell, heaven, or a path betwixt.
Unlike after the failed attempts last night, he feels the urge to investigate his surroundings some more.
After all, the car and his clothing still make no sense. They were indeed part of his life, but not at this place and time. Even if he is doomed to helplessly watch all of the events that ruined his happiness unfold again, there is something else going on in this trip through time, something unexpected, and that will at least provide something to investigate, a distraction from staring at the dismal future that awaits him.
Scientific discovery is no longer of personal interest to him if it can’t lead him to her, but discovering the anomalies of time travel is something man has lusted over for eons. For our Chester, it might provide a pillow to clutch instead of the fair, red-maned body he longs to hold and to whisper that she is wonderful and irreplaceable and everyone around her is a terrible person for keeping that from her.
The worst part of this whole mess for him is that it appears he is helpless to save her from her life of heartache, abuse, and misery. In fact, it looks like he won’t be able to prevent even one of her ill-fated choices. Images of her lovely façade on the other woman’s body and the strange skin attached to her own skull stir up the burn in his stomach.
Part of him can’t believe it’s so, that she is doomed to that fate. It’s not hard for him to grasp that he is incapable of helping her, but it seems that all the universe is a lie if someone that is so special to him, someone whose heart he is convinced is as pure and vulnerable as a child’s, is forced to walk along such a painful path.
A small, convertible, baby blue, bubble-shaped sports car pulls up to the curb several stores down the street. A woman with dark sunglasses and a bizarre pink hat that matches her outfit steps out of her vehicle and slams the door with her stretched palm, keeping her fingers from touching it.
She steps around the side of the car, and even from a half blok away, Chester can hear an animal yapping from the passenger seat. She wraps its leash around her hand, pulls the dog to her face with a squeeze, and then places it on the ground while hanging onto the end of the leash.
The dog is small enough to be bullied by a large rodent, and at this moment, it lifts its leg at the corner of a dark blue newspaper receptacle. Suddenly the inconsequential scene sparks his attention.
Patting his back pocket, he makes sure that his wallet hasn’t fallen out during last night’s backseat ordeal. Tapping his other pocket, he assures himself that the device is still there too.
He walks quickly, not knowing if what he’s looking for will still be there when he arrives. The dog seems to be finished his business as both he and his owner walk into the store immediately to the side of her parked convertible. The store’s façade is still out of his sight.
He digs his wallet out of his pocket and scans over his cards. He saw them briefly last night as he paid for his ticket to the play, but he was too focused on getting to that woman’s hat to pay them much mind. His original driver’s license from this time, the money dated two decades prior, and his birth certificate all reside in their designated partitions exactly as he had prepared them before embarking on this unnatural journey. He taps his pocket again now that it is missing the wallet. He hears some jingling, which provides a small relief.
Now, he can see the woman and her dog inside a hair salon.
Chester
looks at the dark blue machine, and sees there are ample unbought papers inside. He drops in some coins, opens the flap, and yanks a paper onto the top of the machine.
Flipping through its contents, he finds the Riverview section, and he sees the article. The headline is the same, “Drama Director Receives 20-Year Service Award.”
But, the picture is different.
The new picture is of the loudmouthed woman from the bathroom hallway handing the same award to Mrs. Edna Hoover. The fancy hat woman is nowhere to be seen. His eyebrows rise as the significance sinks in.
The description beneath the picture is slightly changed, now reading, “Doris Delbeccio of St. Christopher’s PTA, hands 20-year service award to drama club director Edna Hoover.”
He grabs up the rest of the paper between tight fingers and makes his way back to his car.
It’s different. I changed it. Things can be different here! Well, some things can be different that’s for sure. At least some things can be changed, maybe even all of them…
He looks at the activity of the people moving along the busy street. Urgency pumps through him, but he knows that the car is unsafe and that he doesn’t want to wait a short drive to access the device. He turns around ungracefully, directing his course toward the hair salon again.
The woman from the car reclines in a chair with her head pulled backward and over a black sink made for washing hair. On a hard-looking stylish couch sits the pink hat and her miniature canine beside a fluffy purse that quite resembles the dog.
The dog lets out a few yaps as it watches Chester walk through the door, stepping toward its owner and the stylist testing the temperature of the water with her hand before dampening the customer’s hair with it.
The stylist looks up with an annoyed expression, sniffles while crinkling her nose, and tries to hold a smile at him as she asks, “Can I help you?”
“Uhh, yeah, do you have a restroom that I could use?”
The dog owner snorts and snickers quietly without moving her head to watch the scene.
The stylist, whose smile has shifted to a disgusted face, responds, staring at the newspaper in his hand, “Bathrooms are for customers only.”
“Okay, I’ll get a haircut then.”
“All booked up, no openings today,” with annoyance clinging to her words.
Knowing he doesn’t have much time, his anxiety soars, “Well then, how about I pay you for a haircut anyway, and we’ll call it even?”
Her disgusted face breaks a little, “Awright, you’re on,” pointing to a white door with a light purple frame.
Subtle snorting and laughter find their way to his ears: the kind that should be, but never is, reserved until the subject completely leaves the room.
He shuts the door behind him and turns the lock on the handle. He rattles the handle testing the lock, and it wobbles but refuses to turn. Snickering from the other room follows the handle jiggling.
The bathroom is definitely one decorated and used by women. The light purple toilet seat cover perfectly matches the shade of the soap dispenser, the tissue box cover, the hand towel hanging on the wall near the sink, and the curtain-like material that wraps around the front of the vanity. Framed pictures also speckle the walls, but he has no time or interest to pay them any mind.
Sliding the device out of his pants pocket, his thumb nervously presses on its power button.
Nothing happens.
He tries again. Just a dim reflective screen that shows the fear on his face. It had just worked the night before. It’s been a reliable device since he finished it. Panic begins to raise his heartbeat.
Then he remembers his tinkering with the fire alarm. Diving his hand into his pocket, he hopes it is still there, and his fingers slide over its smooth metallic surface. With familiar speed, he pops open the battery compartment and snaps the battery in place.
Sliding his finger over the power button again, the screen illuminates, and so does his spirit.
His machine was designed for speed, but the brief moment that it takes to load its operating system is presently an unbearable wait.
At the sight of the welcome screen, his fingers start dancing along, diving from one folder into another, racing down the path to the image that he needs to see. Finally, it is before him, answering an unsolvable problem to physicists.