Summer of Love, a Time Travel (54 page)

The
squares are staring at Ruby and Susan with cold, uncomprehending eyes. Ruby
knows how to handle this scene, but the kid is cringing, losing her nerve. She
hasn’t been in society this polite in quite a while. And now she’s going to see
her parents for the first time in months? This will not do.

“Stop,”
Ruby commands.

They
duck out of the stream of pedestrian traffic. Ruby takes out the vial of East
Indian musk she always carries, dabs two drops under each of Susan’s ears, two
drops under her own. The kid starts to giggle. That’s better. In the bottom of
her purse, Ruby finds the beaded suede headband Luther gave her. Very pretty. She
ties it around Susan’s forehead, threads it through her golden-brown curls.

“You’re
beautiful, Starbright.”

And
it’s true.

“I
love you, Ruby.”

“Then
you be strong for me.”

They
stroll through the airport, two wild-haired, perfumed women. Their exotic
skirts rustle. Their bracelets clink. Their beads sway over lacy blouses of
silk and cotton.

They
arrive at the gate. The plane her parents took is already there.

He’s
a handsome man, the kid’s father, tall with a bit of a belly that goes with his
prosperity. The hair and eyes and nose he gave to his daughter. His mouth
trembles despite his effort to quell it, and that instantly wins Ruby over.

He
strides to the kid and seizes her in a great big hug. “Sweetie pie! Oh, sweetie
pie!” And he bursts into tears, right there in the middle of the airport.

“Hi,
Daddy,” Susan says.

The
mother hovers beside her husband and her daughter. A plucked and dyed dame with
deep frown lines, she’s got the flabby, stooped shoulders of an old woman,
though she can’t be more than forty. She joins their reunion, pecks the cheek
of her daughter, but she can’t restrain her cold disapproval even now—look at
her
clothes,
look at her
hair.

This
mother, Ruby thinks, will have to learn a thing or two from her daughter.

“I
want to be a doctor, Daddy,” Susan says.

“Well!
That’s fine,” he says, nonplussed.

“I
don’t want to be a nurse. I don’t want to be a dental assistant. I want to
study bacteria and be a doctor.”

The
parents exchange an uncertain look, and Ruby sees that the daughter as the
troublesome child was the glue keeping their fractured marriage intact. And her
defection has revealed deep rifts between them. Will the daughter’s return
restore the reality they knew before? Not likely.

“Also,
I’m pregnant,” Susan says. “I want to have the baby. I want to keep her and raise
her myself. You can’t change my mind, so don’t try, okay?”

“Who?”
her father says.

“The
father is gone. We love each other, but I’ll never see him again. So I don’t
want to talk about that, either.”

They
are speechless, these square parents from Shaker Heights. This is not what they
expected of their runaway to the Haight-Ashbury. And everything they expected,
and then some.

The
father checks out his daughter’s costume, then checks out Ruby. His eyes flick
up and down. The corner of his mouth twitches. Yeah, his daughter is beautiful.
And yeah, Ruby is beautiful.

Catching
his glance, Ruby raises her hand, extends two fingers in a peace sign, and
says, “The Summer of Love did not compel America’s children. America’s children
compelled the Summer of Love.”

Ruby
kisses Susan’s forehead, then turns and walks away. In her heart she knows she
will never see the kid again.

She
will close the Mystic Eye and leave the Haight-Ashbury behind. Get out of town,
somewhere like Santa Cruz or Bodega Bay where the air is fresher. Where it’s
easier to believe in a New Explanation. She’s started over before. She can damn
well start over again.

And
she has business to attend to besides her own. The future survives because she,
and the women of the world, take care of themselves. Take control of their own
destinies. Take responsibility for their children.

Dawn
glows in the east. The future is hard for the world. But we have a future. We
survive.

She
feels it as she pulls onto 101 northbound, the forward-moving future plunging
beside her like a trusted companion. Yet the arrow of time is an illusion, Ruby
knows that now. Day and night do not move forward, they spin, like the Earth. The
hours meted out by the clock are tools for human survival, boundaries and
categories, not reality. Dates and years measure the pace of a person’s life,
mark initiations and graduations, but they are not the woman or the man. In
truth, there is but One Day, always new, always coming forth into Being.

About Lisa Mason

A
graduate of the University of Michigan School of Literature, the Sciences, and
the Arts, and the University of Michigan Law School,
Lisa Mason
is the author of eight novels,
including
SUMMER OF LOVE
(Bantam), a
San Francisco Chronicle
Recommended
Book and Philip K. Dick Award finalist, and
THE GOLDEN NINETIES
(Bantam),
a
New York Times
Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended
Book.

Mason
published her first story, “
ARACHNE
,” in
Omni
and has since
published short fiction in magazines and anthologies worldwide, including
Omni
,
Full Spectrum, Universe, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror,
Asimov’s Science
Fiction Magazine
,
Unique
, Transcendental Tales,
Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction
, Immortal Unicorn, Tales of the Impossible,
Desire Burn, Fantastic Alice, The Shimmering Door,
Hayakawa Science Fiction
Magazine
, Unter Die Haut, and others. Her stories have been translated into
Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

Lisa Mason
lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, the renowned artist and
jeweler Tom Robinson. Visit her on the web at
Lisa Mason’s Official Website
,
follow
her
Official Blog
, or
e-mail her at
[email protected]
.

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra
Series
, Mason’s urban
fantasy, is on
Nook
and
on
Kindle
. A print
edition is planned for late 2013. Also available in affordable installments as
THE
GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA TRILOGY
on
Kindle
,
Book 1: Life’s Journey
,
Book 2: In Dark Woods
, and
Book 3, The Right Road
, and
on
Nook,
Book
1: Life’s Journey
,
Book 2: In Dark
Woods
, and
Book 3: The Right
Road
.

At
her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College
of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through
school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a
mysterious, magical apartment building on campus. She discovers that her
tenants are witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards and each apartment is
a fairyland or hell. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a
supernatural multiple murder scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up
hitchhiking the day before. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation and
torn between three men, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and
ongoing war between good and evil, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past,
and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her
own life or death.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie
Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

The
Bantam classic is back!
SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL
(a Philip K. Dick
Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) is on
Nook
and on
Kindle
.

Nineteen five-star Amazon reviews
“
Summer of Love is an important American literary
contribution.”
“
This book was so true to life that I felt
like I was there. I recommend it to anyone.”
“More than a great science-fiction, a great novel as well.”

The
year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad
vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension,
free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of
danger. The Summer of Love.

San
Francisco
is
the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to
join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.

Lost
in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has
run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best
friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and
beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.

With
the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant,
Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the
world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?

New!
Summer of Love Serials
will be published for your affordable holiday
reading in seven installments. Check the
Official Blog
for links as they
roll in the door.

The
Bantam sequel,
THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (
a
New York Times
Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book) is on
Nook
and on
Kindle
.

The
year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the
transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope
demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to
morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are
the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a
dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are
held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave
girls.

Zhu
Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice--stand trial
for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to
rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour,
Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control
activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured
servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall
desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading
fortune.

And
when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will
discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference
between her own life or death.

“A winning mixture of intelligence and
passion.” The New York Times Book Review