My Deja Vu Lover (8 page)

  
“See anything you recognize?” Tom asked every three minutes. He leaned over my shoulder and looked at pictures until I told him to go find his own book and quit wasting time. He ruffled my hair, grinned at me, and then did as he was told.

  
When we didn’t find anything useful at Suzzallo, we headed across the red brick quad to the Undergrad library. When it gave us nothing, we trekked to the small collections in several departments in scattered buildings across the campus. Some were closed. A couple were open.

  
Those two went at research as though they were politicians planning a campaign, finding remote references to compare and argue about. They wouldn’t let me beg off, even though I tried the clutch-my-throat and crumple-to-the-floor act. They said I was their key witness, the main piece on the game board.

  
Exhaustion finally drove us home.

  
On Saturday we camped out at the library, all three of us dressed for serious digging, in jeans and sweatshirts and Nikes. Tom and Cyd perched on stools in front of the computers, Tom’s long legs wound around the legs of the stool.

  
I wandered off to climb the curved stone staircase near the main entrance, trailing my fingers along the gray wall. The stone treads dipped in the centers, worn by how many thousands of feet running up and down?
 
I adored the atmosphere of Suzzallo and felt kind of sorry I didn’t adore equally the knowledge it held.

  
When I returned to the computer area, Cyd and Tom had notepads covered with numbers and locations of books. They were ready to start sleuthing.

  
Cyd said, “Damn, wouldn’t you know half of what I want is over in a collection in a classroom building and they’re closed today?”

  
“The whole building is closed?”

  
“No, but the room with the book collection is.”

  
They pulled the few books on silent films that we’d missed on the first search and flipped through them, scanning photos. Most of the shots were of stars, occasionally with bit players in the background. I looked for a face to recognize behind the famous faces of Norma Talmadge, Maurice Costello, Helen Gardner, Mary Pickford, Ronald Colman, Blanche Sweet, Larry Semon.

  
Cyd read off the names in the captions as she flipped pages.

  
Larry. Laurence.

  
“Wait,” I said and turned back the page. No, another dead end. Larry Semon who had starred in a silent version of Wizard of Oz in 1925 was not my Laurence. Definitely not.

  
“Florence Turner, the Vitagraph Girl,” Cyd read. “What do you suppose a Vitagraph Girl is?
 
Oh look at this one. ‘Mabel Normand stars in The Extra Girl.’
 
Don’t you love the titles?
 
Wanderer of the Wasteland. That could be my life story. Or Jazzmania. Sounds like a cross between a phobia and a sexually transmitted disease.”

  
“Anything look familiar?” Tom asked me.

  
“The clothes, the hairstyles, the cosmetics. Not the faces.”

  
Cyd gathered up the books and dumped them on the re-shelving area. “That’s that. We’ll have to check out the other collection whenever we can get a weekday off.”

  
“I could come over Monday morning,” I said.

  
“You have a job interview on Monday.”

  
“Get real. They aren’t going to hire me.”

  
We joked about it, sitting together, drinking coffee in the Hub cafeteria, the center of campus life, never doubting our relationship would go on next week and the week after, nothing changing, best friends forever. And probably me unemployed forever and Cyd and Tom grousing about their boring jobs forever.

  
But after Monday nothing could be the same again between us, though it took us all a while to realize. Because on Monday, I found Laurence.

CHAPTER 6

  
When I got off the bus on University Way to walk to the campus, the mist blew across my face in thin veils, clinging to my eyelashes, blurring my vision. I pulled my windbreaker hood forward over my rapidly frizzing hair.

    
Dashing across the street, up the stairs and over the footbridge past the Henry Art Gallery, I hurried toward the campus. Rain bounced off the red bricks of the plaza.

  
After cutting down another shallow flight of stairs and along the older walkway that rounded the fountain, I made a run for the building that Cyd had said contained a collection of film history books. By the time I was through the heavy door, my soaked jeans clung to my legs.

  
I stood dripping in the foyer, wondering where the department library was located or if I even had the right building. Digging into my pockets, I pulled out a handful of change and a soggy bus transfer but not the list of call numbers that Cyd had given me.

  
If it was lost, I would have to start all over tracking down the books we needed. I sniffed, feeling really really sorry for myself. Tendrils of hair had escaped my hood and stuck to my wet face. I tried to brush them back.

  
A man hurried along the corridor toward me, bent forward over an armload of books and papers. He stopped by the outer door, his head down, and clumsily wrapped his papers in a plastic bag.

  
His dark raincoat was unbuttoned revealing a flame of red velvet shirt and white jeans above his white leather running shoes. Great head of hair.

  
He must have felt me watching him because he raised his face and looked straight at me. And smiled.

  
I knew that smile.

  
From across a room he would have looked like a student with his light brown hair, arched eyebrows, narrow nose, square jaw, and that line of straight teeth in a smile that made my heart stop. He was average size and moved quickly, giving the impression of walking with his weight over his toes the way dancers do. But it wasn’t only his features that I knew. It was his expression. He had an actor’s face.

  
When he smiled his whole face moved, so that even the edges of his eyes seemed to lift and a pattern of small lines fanned out beneath the tan, giving away his age as pushing forty. Not that any of that mattered.

  
All I could think was, that’s Laurence’s smile.

  
When I stared like a dummy and didn’t smile back, probably had my mouth hanging open, he looked down at his hands, finished wrapping his books, and pushed open the door and left. He hurried along the walk but he didn’t duck his head. The wind lifted his thick hair and the edges of his raincoat, and he bounced with an easy jogging step as though he enjoyed the rain.

  
I wanted to shout, Laurence!

  
My throat was so tight, I couldn’t make a sound. Whoever he was, he was the key to something major and I had no choice really. For all I knew, there wasn’t a book collection room in the building, or this was the wrong building, or it would be closed today, anyway. And why chase information that might not be there when I could chase the living, breathing man?
 
I followed him.

  
It is all very well to argue about free will, as Tom and Cyd were always doing, but what existed in theory could collapse under the fact of circumstance. They’d both agree that I had free will and did not have to follow a strange man. They’d have been wrong. The needle does not choose the magnet. And I was the needle, all right, and to go poetic about it, I was being pulled through the warp of time by a powerful magnet. That man was absolutely out of my past.

  
The magnet followed changing pathways across the campus, circling the fountain, crossing the plaza, hurrying up a short flight of cement stairs, cutting beneath the bare, gnarled branches of rows of hawthorns. I followed him across lawns and parking lots and finally off campus, kept going along University Way which everyone calls The Ave.

  
He turned in at a Greek restaurant that was a favorite of Cyd’s. I closed the distance and was maybe ten steps behind him by then, no more.

  
He dropped his books and bag on a table by the front windows of the restaurant, slipped out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair, then sat down on the chair next to it. I stood at the opposite side of the table and waited for him to look up. When he did he didn’t seem surprised. Instead, he smiled.

  
Don’t know what he saw besides a woman in a hooded rain jacket dripping water on his table. Nothing in his face indicated that he knew me or even vaguely remembered me.

  
He said, “Hi.”

  
I wanted to ask him if I could talk to him but honestly, I don’t go around picking up strange males. And that’s what he thought I was trying to do. Written plain all over that face, that very charming face with the Laurence smile. And jaw line. And the tilt of his head.

  
My voice stuck in my throat.

  
“Want to join me?” he asked.

  
“Please.”
 
I felt the blood rush to my face, damn, I was blushing like a teenager. I forced myself to pull out the chair opposite him and sit down.

  
“Are you in my Shakespeare lecture?” he asked.

  
“Oh. Are you a professor?”

  
“Yes. I thought, ah, but if you aren’t one of my students, do I know you from someplace else?” Same line between his brows when he was puzzled.

  
“Do I look familiar to you?” Stupid, but I blurted it before I could think of something clever to say.

  
He chuckled, then said, “I’m not much good at guessing games. Why don’t I order omelets for both of us and then we’ll figure out who we are.”

  
He turned and caught the eye of the passing waitress, held up two fingers of one hand, made a pouring gesture with the other.

  
I knew that I should refuse his offer but as I could barely think, let alone speak, I peeled off my wet jacket, hung it over the back of the chair and then sat down and waited. The waitress put a full coffee mug in front of
 
me. I stared at it while he made the decisions. He ordered for both of us.

  
Then he said, “Shall we start with names? I am Graham Berkold. Want to tell me who you are?”

  
“Do, uh, does the name Laurence, um, were you ever called Laurence?”

  
“I’ve been called numerous names, but never Laurence. Oh! I see. You mistook me for someone named Laurence. Lucky Laurence. But you must not know him very well.”

  
“It was a long time ago.”

  
“Is there some reason why you prefer not to tell me your name?” He gave me an amused glance from under those arched eyebrows while he stirred sugar into his coffee.

  
“Not really. No. I was hoping you’d remember Laurence. Umm, can I ask you something?”

  
“Beautiful ladies who share my table may ask me anything at all.” There it was again, that Laurence smile.

  
“Is there anything about me that looks familiar to you?”
 
Stupid, April, stupid, stupid, but I wasn’t clear headed like Macbeth or clever like Cyd.

  
Tilting his head back, Graham Berkold gave me a long scrutiny, his eyes narrowed, the corners of his mouth twitching, and I could have sunk under the table. Trouble was, I’d have to come out sometime.