Somewhere in Time (13 page)

By then I was following the bellboy along the bare plank floor of an enclosed veranda. Looking to my left through narrow windows, I could see not a swimming pool or tennis courts, but an open walk about ten feet below and several narrow terraces below that, connected to the walk by short flights of steps. Again, it was astonishing to me to see how close the ocean was. In a storm, waves would doubtless hit the veranda windows with spray.

As we passed a wide doorway, opening on a staircase which descended to the walk, I looked through the window of one of the doors and saw three figures striding, side by side, toward the hotel, all wearing capes and hats, their sex indistinguishable in the blinding glow of sunset.

I blinked to refocus my eyes as the bellboy turned to the right and we moved through a short corridor to the open patio. The sight of it made me catch my breath. "Something wrong, sir?" the bellboy asked, stopping to look at me.

I tried to think of something to say. "The patio's so lushly grown," I answered. "Patio, sir?" I stared at him.

"We call it the Open Court," he said. I walked behind him up the west side of the Open Court. Despite the contrast of lighting and landscaping, what impressed me most about it was its sense of immutability. Perhaps it was the massive looming of the hotel around me; I wasn't sure. I tried to analyze the feeling but to no avail. The knowledge that every step brought me closer to Elise overshadowed all else in my mind. In minutes, maybe seconds, I'd be standing in front of her. What was I to say? My brain was unable to answer the question. The best it could manage was, "May I speak to you, Miss McKenna?" after which it blanked. Even the thought of speaking those words made me cringe. How could she possibly react with favor to such a feeble opening from a total stranger?

At that point, my imagination added its disrupting influence to my already jumbled mind. Doubtless, she'd be tired from rehearsing; nervous, maybe irritable. What if the rehearsal had gone badly? What if she'd been arguing with Robinson or her mother? Dizziness began expanding in my head again as a multitude of obstacles sprang, fullblown, to my mind, every one of them rendering it impossible for me to speak more than a few clumsy words before she excused herself, shut the door of her room in my face, and vanished from my life forever.

Once, when I was eight years old, I got lost at Coney Island. The emotion I experienced as I drew nearer to her room was identical to that which I had felt as a child- blind anxiety, an almost mindless terror, nervous system on the brink of panic. I came very close to fleeing. How could I dare face her? To come all this way only to utter several blundering words and lose the moment would demolish me. Desperately, I tried to hold on to the memory of reading that she'd met someone at the hotel during her stay here; someone who-

I stopped abruptly, frozen in my tracks, heartbeat so extreme it felt as though some maniac were battering a ram against the inside of my chest.

What if she'd already met that someone and was with him now?

The bellboy didn't notice my stop. Yards ahead of me, he turned left through an open doorway and disappeared from sight. I remained transfixed, heartbeats causing me actual pain as I visualized her opening the door and me catching sight of a young man in the room with her. The man I'd read about, her "Coronado scandal." The man I had deluded myself into thinking was me, so deceiving my mind that I'd succeeded in circumventing time itself to reach her. The bellboy reappeared, a questioning expression on his face. I clenched my teeth and drew in straining breath. "Looking at the Court," I muttered. I wasn't sure my voice was even audible, though I knew that if it was, my lie was horribly apparent.

All he did was nod and say, "Yes, sir," then gesture toward the doorway. "It's in here, sir."

I advanced on him, as stiffly infirm as though I were a hundred. Once more, all my hopes seemed pointless. I advanced only because I lacked the courage to retreat.

We entered a public sitting room that opened onto four bedrooms. Dazed by the enormity of what I was about to face, I noticed nothing of the decor or the furnishings. My heart still pounded slowly, heavily. I felt a throbbing at my temples and wondered, vaguely, if I was about to faint, some inner segment of my mind, unmoved by my distress, suggesting that it might be just as good a way of introducing myself to her as any I'd come up with.

The bellboy stopped at one of the doors and I saw a heavy, oval plate attached to it, the number 41 inscribed across its metal face. I twitched as he rapped the knuckles of his right hand on the door, felt the floor begin to stir beneath me, saw the walls take on a gelatinous aspect. Here you go, the mental voice addressed me calmly. Reaching out, I leaned my palm against the wall.

The phrase "almost jumped out of his skin" came close to being actualized by me as a shrill female voice spoke suddenly behind us, asking, "Lookin' for Miss McKenna?"

I whirled with a gasp, almost lost my balance, and reached blindly for the wall again. A plump young woman was regarding us. Peculiar what inanities the mind will pick up during the most unsettling of moments. All I really noticed about her were her chapped lips.

"Yes. Is she here?" the bellboy was asking.

"She went outside a while ago." The young woman threw a mincing glance at me, then looked back at him.

"Any idea where she went?" he asked.

"I think I heard her tell her mother she was goin' for a walk along the beach."

"Thank you," I murmured, starting past her, smelling an odor that I later realized was that of laundry soap. I headed for the doorway, hoping that my stride was not as lopsided as it felt. I wondered briefly if they thought I was drunk.

"Would you care to leave a message, sir?" The bellboy's question seemed to float behind me.

"No," I said. I raised my hand in an effort toward a casual gesture. There was obviously no message I could leave which would make the slightest sense to her.

Wavering through the doorway of the sitting room, I turned to the left and started along the walk which led toward the north side of the hotel. Oh, God, I forgot to tip him, I thought, then remembered that I only had the two bills.

I looked at the staircase leading to the cellar, wondering-an indication of my mental state-what had happened to the Hall of History sign. I turned into the corridor and walked past the small elevator; it was there then. The youthful operator standing by it stared at me in such a way that I knew I still presented a distraught appearance. My legs moved under me but they might have been somebody else's legs as I plodded to the door, pulled it open, and slipped outside.

The coldness of the sea air made me shiver as I descended the porch steps with cautious movements, holding on to the rail. I'd felt a sense of reassurance when I'd learned that she was walking on the beach, partly because I didn't have to face our meeting in her room, partly because it seemed to bring the situation into some minor semblance of perspective; I had read about her love of walking and here she was walking, proving what I'd read.

The reassurance had already dissipated, though. The chance of my meeting her along the beach was terribly remote. It was my last chance too, I felt. If I failed to reach her now, she'd soon become involved in dinner, more rehearsing probably, and then she would retire to bed.

I moved unevenly along the curving promenade, beneath a line of dripping trees; until that moment I had not been conscious of the many signs that rain had fallen earlier. I walked past the empty tennis courts and over to the sea walk. The sun was on the horizon now, three-quarters buried in the sea, its color molten orange. Dark clouds hung above the distant peninsula, their lower edges aglow with sunset. Along the sea walk, large electric globes on metal poles were lit, resembling a series of pale, white moons ahead of me. I moved past a wooden bench on which a man, wearing a tall black hat, was sitting, smoking a cigar. What if it's Robinson? the thought occurred. What if he keeps an eye on her at all times? He'd prevent me from speaking to her even if I saw her.

As I walked, I scanned the beach ahead and to the left of me; unlike what I remembered, it was less than fifty feet across. What if she isn't out there, came another question. What if she is? My mind reversed the challenge. Still, I kept on walking-if what I was doing could, charitably, be described as walking-eyes searching for some sign of her.

After a while, I had to stop and rest, turning my back to the wind, which was not particularly strong but quite cold. As I did, the sight of the hotel struck me, its gigantic, lighted silhouette outlined against the sky like some cutout of a fairy castle.

Suddenly, I had the chilling premonition that I'd walked too far; that my grasp on 1896 was confined to the hotel itself and that, now, I would begin to lose hold and be drawn inexorably back to 1971. I closed my eyes, fighting the threat of transposition. Only after many moments did I have the courage to open my eyes and look at the hotel again. It was still there, unchanged.

When I looked at the narrow beach again, I saw her. How did I know it was her? She was little more than a tiny outline moving almost imperceptibly against the dark blue background of the water. Under any other circumstances, I could not possibly have identified her from so little evidence. As it was, I knew it had to be Elise.

The initial sight of her had caused a chill to flood my body, made my heartbeat leap. Now, the only sensation I felt was one of numbing fear that the moment wouldn't last, that, having reached her, I'd be taken back to where I'd come from. Fear that, even if I managed to accost her, her reaction would be one of distaste at my presumption. I had, against all logic, hoped that the sight of her at long last would instill confidence in me. The exact opposite was true. My confidence was at its nadir as I stood there wondering what I could possibly say to convince her it was not some madman who confronted her.

My head seemed to be pulsing slowly, my entire body cold, as I watched her walking near the surf line, holding her long skirt above the sand. Her approach seemed dreamlike in its slowness; as though, in the instant I'd caught sight of her, time had altered itself again, seconds extended to minutes, minutes stretched to hours, Time 1 no longer in effect. Once more, I was outside the realm of clocks and calendars, condemned to watch her moving toward me through eternity, never reaching me.

In a way, it was a relief since I had no notion of what to say to her. In a larger way, however, it was torture to believe that we would never truly come together. Once again, I felt as though I were a ghost. I actually visualized her walking up to me, then by me, eyes not even moving toward me since, to her, I wouldn't be there.

Exactly when I started toward her at an intercepting angle, I cannot recall. I first grew conscious of movement when my boots began to skid down the eroded, four-foot-high slope to the beach, then crunch across the damp sand toward the water. Adding to the dreamlike vagueness of the moment was the now nebulous sunset along the cloudy horizon and the summit of Point Loma. My eyes kept going out of focus, sometimes losing sight of her as we walked toward each other like figures on a phantom landscape. I remembered the soldier on Owl Creek Bridge moving toward his beloved yet never reaching her, because his movements were the last, fierce moments of a dying delusion. In such a manner, endlessly, Elise McKenna and I approached each other while the low waves rolled in, one by one, the noise they made as they struck the shore so unremitting that it sounded like a roar of distant wind.

When she first became aware of me, I cannot say. I only knew, for certain, that she'd seen me when she stopped and stood immobile by the water, a silhouette against the last, dim lambency of the sunset. Her eyes were on me, I could tell, though I couldn't see her eyes or face or dream with what emotion she regarded my approach. Was it fear she felt? I had not anticipated that she might behold my coming with alarm. Our meeting had seemed so inevitable that I'd never considered such a possibility. I considered it now. If she were to bolt or scream for help, what would I do? What could I do?

At long last, I stopped in front of her and, in silence, we gazed at each other. She was shorter than I'd expected. She almost had to tilt her head back to look at my face. I couldn't see hers at all because her back was to the sunset. Why was she so still, so motionless? I felt some relief that she was not calling out for help or turning away to run from me. Still, why no reaction at all? Was it possible she was disabled by fear? The thought unnerved me.

What I had felt while approaching her had been nothing in comparison to what I felt now. My body and mind seemed paralyzed. I could not have moved or spoken if my life had depended on it. Only one thought penetrated. Why was she, too, standing mutely, staring at me? Somehow, I sensed that it was not because of disabling fear but, beyond that, I could neither fathom her behavior nor react to it.

Then, abruptly, unexpectedly, she spoke, the sound of her voice making me start. "Is it you?" she asked.

If I had compiled a list of all the opening remarks she might have made to me, that one would have had to be on the bottom if it were there at all. I stared at her incredulously. Had some enchantment totally beyond my visions taken place so that she knew about me? I could not believe it. Yet I did sense, -within a moment after she had spoken, that I had the miraculous opportunity to bypass what might be hours of persuading her to accept me. "Yes, Elise," I heard myself answer.

She began to waver and I reached out quickly to support her by the arm. And how do I describe, after all my dreams about her, what it was like to have those dreams acquire flesh that I could feel beneath my fingers? She tightened at my touch but I couldn't let go. "Are you all right?" I asked. She didn't answer and, although I wanted, more than anything, to know what she was thinking, I could say no more, struck dumb by the very presence of her. Once again, we were like statues, gazing at each other. I feared my silence would undo the small advantage I had seized, but my brain refused to function.