Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (23 page)

A noise behind him made him stop and turn around.

The sidewalk was empty. Strange, it had sounded like a footfall amidst the rumble of traffic on I-75 and the splatter of rain striking the pavement. Tony moved on.

As he slipped into the alley behind the deli, he squeezed the brown leather suitcase’s handle more tightly. He’d borrowed it from his great aunt Louise, along with the double-breasted, gray pinstripe suit and fedora he wore. Luckily, his long gone Uncle Abe had been close to Tony’s size, maybe an inch or so shorter. Hopefully, the narrow band of his socks that showed above his shoes wouldn’t draw attention.

He stopped by a dumpster and looked around. Someone ducked away from the parking garage’s second level wall. He hadn’t imagined it.

That fluid movement, the salt-and-pepper hair, reminded him of someone. Keith Lynch.

He frowned. Why would Keith be skulking around Seventh Street, a block away from the office, after nine p.m.?

It’s not him.
He was imagining things again.

Tony looked back, then ducked behind the dumpster in case the person reappeared. He imagined the back wall of Bernie’s, decades newer, the bricks cleaner, the dumpster replaced by metal cans. The dizziness built, and he let it take him.

Cool droplets struck his hand as the vertigo faded, leaving him in an alley that looked just as he’d imagined it, flanked by a parking lot full of boxy, Model-T type cars.

He raised his hand to open the suitcase, but it lifted too easily.

The suitcase was gone, leaving only the hard, wooden handle in his grasp.

D
IZZINESS SWAMPED
C
HARLOTTE AS SHE REACHED
for the passenger door of Elmer’s car.
No!
She grabbed the door handle, focused on the here and now, as Theodore had taught her... the cool metal of the Model T’s door beneath her fingers, the bits of rust flaking from its fifteen-year-old finish, the rain striking her hand in tiny, cold spots...

“Charlotte?” Elmer said from somewhere far away, beyond the spinning and whirling.

Here-and-now, here-and now,
she couldn’t jump, not now...
Focus!
The smell of the moist earth, the crispness of the rain in the springtime night. She concentrated on the signs across the street, noting that Castle’s Fine Jewelry was going out of business. Rain had seeped through the frayed awning, causing the paint on the signs to run. Had it been only ten—no, nine years ago—that Fred Cheltenham had offered to buy her something from there? Charlotte concentrated on the dripping letters, focused on the rainbow-ringed streetlamps in the hazy mist—

“Charlotte? Are you all right?” Elmer’s hand, damp and clammy, closed over her arm as he opened the car door with his other hand. She lowered herself the rest of the way into the car.

The ground settled beneath her. “I’m fine... just a little tired,” she lied. Silly goose! Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t have jumped with Elmer watching. She scooted over, the cracked leather seat squeaking under her damp skirt.

He shut the car door behind her.

Someone else had jumped. Who?

Theodore always informed her before he jumped, so she could monitor the Society House in his absence.

Elmer’s umbrella bobbed over the car’s hood as he cranked the starter. Pity he couldn’t afford anything better, but it was more than Charlotte had. A pang shot through her. It had been over a year since she’d driven, and she missed it. It still saddened her to think of the Chevy she’d sold to pay her rent after Dayton Kitchen Products Research went under, taking her job with it. The position as a cook she’d found soon after wasn’t enough to pay all the bills, even though the Society paid for the telephone Theodore insisted she have.

Finally, the Ford roared to life, and Elmer climbed in.

Queasiness brewed in Charlotte’s belly during the quiet ride home. Whoever had jumped was not her concern. Theodore would see to him or her.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Elmer asked.

“I doubt they’re worth that much.” She cast him a wan smile and made a vague comment about the movie they’d just seen. Bland and ordinary, already forgettable.

Not unlike Elmer. He was a nice enough fellow, and not unpleasant to look at, but this was the fifth time she’d been out with him, and he had nothing more compelling to converse about than the weather or the show. Was this all there was?

It was a relief when the car rumbled to a stop in front of her house, the rain-slicked Room for Rent sign gleaming balefully in the Ford’s headlamps. Elmer opened the car door, took her arm, and walked her to the house.

She pulled her sweater around her as he unlatched the front gate and moved toward the little bungalow she’d rented four years ago, right before the stock market crashed. Her insides dropped a little at her realization they’d soon reach her front porch, where Elmer would want to kiss her.

He’d kissed her the last couple times they’d gone out, with all the ardor of a man saying goodnight to his mother. It was like laying her lips on a slab of meat, with as little appeal.

“Life’s not like the movies, Charlotte,” Mabel had told her after she’d introduced Charlotte to Elmer, a friend of her husband’s. “You’re practically an old maid.”

Charlotte was nearly thirty. Maybe Mabel was right, and it was time she put aside fantasies of love and passion and settled down with a practical man.

Elmer was polite, and he treated her well. He had a good job at the paint factory. And his attention was easily ensnared by the radio, enough that he might not notice if a woman slipped down to the basement from time to time when there was no laundry to do. He might not realize she was building things and mixing powders in said basement.

She tried to conjure some interest in him as they proceeded up the walk.
It will be fine if he kisses me.
The movie had been enjoyable and romantic. Despite the light sprinkle, a warm breeze caressed the hem of her skirt. A pleasant May evening before the heat and humidity of summer set in. A nice enough night that Elmer might sit on the porch swing with her to smoke a cigarette, and listen to Ozzie Nelson drifting out though the open window. He’d tell her to fix him a cup of tea. She’d do it, though it made her feel like she was at work and Elmer a customer. He wouldn’t stay long, as he had to rise early in the morning.

They walked up the three steps to her porch, then Charlotte stopped.

A long, black mass lay in the porch swing. She clutched Elmer’s arm.

“What is it?” His voice held a note of impatience.

“Someone’s on my swing,” she said quietly.

“Wait here.” Before she could protest, Elmer extracted his arm and approached the swing. “Hello!” He shook the form within, but the man barely stirred.

Dread lanced through Charlotte’s chest. Was he dead? She haltingly walked forward.

“Some derelict.” Derision filled Elmer’s voice. “Out cold.” He took her arm again and steered her toward the steps. “Wait in the car. I’ll go in and phone the police.”

“I’m perfectly capable of ringing them myself.” Charlotte jerked her arm out of his and marched toward the swing, but she stopped short, her gaze drawn to the man in the swing. The porch light glinted off the gold rim of his glasses. She took a step closer, and her foot bumped something. A gray fedora, lying on the porch floor, beside the wooden railing. She picked it up, its dampness chill in her hands. “He doesn’t look like a derelict.” The man was dressed too well, his water-darkened, gray pinstriped suit appropriate for church, a wedding, or a night out dancing. She sniffed the air. No liquor odor. “I don’t think he’s drunk.” Something about him struck her as familiar.

She moved closer, and gasped when she saw the strange scar ringing his neck above his collar. “Tony!”

Excitement rushed through her, a good-exciting as she would have said when she was a girl. The kind she felt when a project worked after months of trial and error. The kind she felt when she completed a particularly arduous equation.

The kind she’d felt with Louie Lambert in the back seat of his car.

It was unmistakably Tony.

He hadn’t aged at all since she’d seen him twenty years ago. It was he who had jumped. She clutched the hat to her chest with both hands, barely aware of Elmer’s footfalls behind her.

“You know this man?”

The hat slid from her hands and hit the porch with a muted plop. She crouched beside Tony and pressed her fingers to the side of his neck, above the scar. A slow but steady pulse beat beneath her hand. Relief trickled down her insides. Her eyes roved over his handsome face, serene in recovery sleep. Elmer remained behind her. “Who is he?”

“A friend.” She reluctantly pulled her hand away. Tony’s head lolled toward her as she bumped the swing. “He saved my life. In the flood.”

The rain intensified a notch, drumming on the tin roof of the Paulson’s house next door. Elmer shifted his feet. “Do you want me to go in and call a doctor?”

Charlotte whirled around. “No!” Doctors wouldn’t be able to help Tony. They hadn’t been able to help her when she started going off to the past soon after the flood. “No,” she repeated. “I... I don’t think he’s ill. And I can’t afford a doctor anyway.” She rose and faced Elmer. “He just needs to rest. Please, help me carry him inside.”

Go
inside, ring Theodore,
her conscience urged, but she ignored it. She bent to slide Tony off the swing but Elmer hesitated. “This is highly... irregular,” he said.

You
shouldn’t do this!
the little voice admonished. “Please, Elmer.” She spoke softly. “I know what’s wrong with him. It’s happened to me before. He’ll sleep for a day or so, then he’ll be fine. There’s no sense wasting money on a doctor.” She would call Theodore in the morning. No point in waking him at such a late hour.

Elmer drew back. “You mean that strange childhood condition you spoke of? When you disappeared, then remembered nothing?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.” At least not in this situation. She shoved Theodore and the Society out of her mind, crouched and wedged a hand beneath Tony’s back.

After a couple of seconds, Elmer moved to her side. “I’ll get him, you get his legs—no, get the door first.” He waited while Charlotte pushed the door open, then slipped his hands under Tony’s armpits. Charlotte dashed back across the porch and gripped Tony’s ankles, and the two of them carried him inside. “Where...?” Elmer asked with a grunt.

“The spare room.” Charlotte labored to cross the threshold, then finally, they deposited Tony on the narrow bed her boarders used. “Perhaps it’s just as well I haven’t found a tenant.” The sparse, plain room held nothing but the bed, a lowboy, and a single lamp, but her boarders never complained.

Elmer wiped his brow. “I still think we should call a doctor. I have credit, if you need—”

“I won’t have you running up a bill, and he doesn’t need a doctor.” She could phone Theodore, claim he was a doctor, as he himself had done twenty years earlier. But Elmer would find it odd when a colored doctor arrived. Her voice softened. “Please, Elmer, I know you’re trying to do the right thing, but... believe me, this is what he needs.”

Elmer backed away and straightened his tie. “You’re not going to let him stay here?” His inflection made it sound more like an order than a question.

Tony lay motionless except for the slight rise and fall of his chest. “What else would I do?” Charlotte asked. “Of course he’ll stay here.”

“I can’t stay with you,” Elmer said.

“Of course you can’t. Nor would I expect you to—”

“You can’t just take a strange man into your house.”

“He saved my life! It’s the least I can do for him.”

Elmer let out a humph. “Well, I don’t like it. People will talk—”

“The Paulson’s can’t see my front porch from their house, and Ida’s long in bed by now.” Charlotte didn’t care what the neighbors thought. All that mattered was taking care of Tony. She bent to pull off his shoes.

“What are you doing?” Elmer asked.

“We have to get him out of these wet things.” Mesmerized by Tony’s inert form, she dropped the shoes on the floor with a clunk as she rose. “Could you...?” She backed toward the door.

“You want me to undress him?”

Charlotte put a hand on her hip. “We can hardly leave him to sleep in that sopping wet suit.” Elmer’s expression softened. Charlotte backed out the door. “Just bring his clothes out and I’ll hang them in the bathroom to dry.” She pulled the door shut and waited in the hall.

Rustles and the occasional grunt issued from the room. “Jumpin’ Jiminy!” Elmer said.

Charlotte moved closer to the door. “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing... but this fellow has the strangest set of drawers I’ve ever seen, and his socks...”

“What about them?”

Another grunt and more rustles, then Elmer emerged from the room. He thrust a wadded ball of fabric at her. “Elmer?” What was so unusual about Tony’s clothes?

“His socks... all stretchy. Stay up all by themselves. And his drawers...” He cocked his head at the armload of clothing. “Have to be mighty uncomfortable. Tight around the waist...” His eyes met hers and his face reddened. “Nothing a lady need concern herself with. It’s getting late, I must be going. If you’re sure you’ll be all right with him—”