Somewhere in Time (23 page)

Walking back to the Open Court, I found myself a rocking chair and sat there looking toward the fountain, watching water shoot up all around the naiad figure. If I can travel backward seventy-five years, I thought, why can't I travel forward an hour and a half? Frowning, I thrust aside the frivolous notion. I looked down at the back of my left hand, startled to see that a mosquito had landed on it. In November? I thought. I slapped at it with my right palm and brushed away the remains. Had I just changed history? I wondered, recalling Bradbury's story about a crushed butterfly altering the future.

I sighed and shook my head. Maybe if I slept, I thought; that was time travel of a sort. I didn't fear sleep now, so I closed my eyes. I knew I'd do better to walk around and familiarize myself with this new world but I didn't feel like it. I was beginning to feel tired. After all, I'd risen rather early to begin my account. My eyelids felt heavy. Relax; there's plenty of time, I thought. A nap would help right now. Despite all the sounds around me, I drifted into sleep.

� � �

I felt a hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes. Elise was standing over me, her hair in disarray, her dress torn. "Oh, my God, what is it?" I asked, shaken by the sight of her.

"He wants to kill me," she said, barely able to speak. "He means to kill me."

I started to respond when she whirled with a cry and fled across the Open Court toward the north entrance of the hotel. Twisting around, I saw Robinson charging at me, a cane in his hand, his black hair hanging across his face in threads. I sat in frozen silence, watching his approach.

To my astonishment, he ran by my chair, so intent on his pursuit of Elise that he didn't even see me. I jumped to my feet. "You can't do that!" I shouted, starting after them. Already, both were far ahead of me.

I rushed out through the side entrance and down the steps to the parking lot, looking for them. Wait, I thought; it couldn't be a parking lot. I had to jump over some white mice scurrying across the pavement. Then I saw Robinson chasing Elise along the beach. "God help you if you hurt her, Robinson!" I yelled. I'd kill him if he touched her.

I was on the beach then, trying to run on the sand but unable to do so. I saw their figures dwindling in size. Elise was running close to the water. I saw a gigantic wave coming in and screamed at her to watch out. She didn't hear. She's so terrified by Robinson she doesn't know what she's doing! I thought. I tried to run faster but could hardly move.

She seemed to run directly into the wave. It crashed across her with a roar, white spume flying in all directions. My legs gave way and I fell on the sand. Pushing up, I looked down the beach in horror. Robinson was gone too. The wave had taken them both.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes. Elise was standing over me.

For several moments, I could not distinguish dream from reality. I must have stared at her strangely for she spoke my name in questioning alarm.

I glanced around, expecting to see Robinson rushing at us. Seeing nothing, I looked back at her, realizing, only then, that I'd been dreaming. "God," I muttered. "What is it?" she asked.

Breath left me with a rush. "A dream," I said. "A terrible-" I broke off, conscious of the fact that I was still sitting, and stood up quickly.

"What have you done to your face?" she asked, appalled. I didn't know what she was talking about at first, then abruptly understood. "I'm not too good at shaving, I'm afraid," I said.

Her gaze moved over my face, her expression only describable as that of a woman who has just discovered that her companion has lost his faculties. A man of my age unable to shave?

"What about you?" I asked. "Are you all right?" Her nod was so slight, I almost missed it. "Yes, but let's walk," she said.

"Of course." I took her arm without thinking, then, at her glance, released the arm and offered mine. As we started along the curving walk toward the north entrance, I saw her look across her shoulder. The movement gave me a chill, bringing back my dream in vivid detail. "Are you fleeing someone?" I asked. I tried to sound amused. "In a way," she said.

"Robinson?"

"Of course," she murmured, glancing across her shoulder again.

When we reached the side door, I held it open for her and we went outside. There was a little sunlight now, warming the air. As we went down the steps, I looked to my left and saw some Chinese workers sweeping up dead leaves and grass from the Paseo del Mar and carrying armloads of it down onto the beach where several others were burning it.

When we reached the bottom of the steps, Elise said, "Shall we go this way?" gesturing toward Orange Avenue, and I had a momentary impression of a woman more accustomed to giving suggestions than receiving them. We started along the promenade which curved around the east face of the hotel.

"How did the rehearsal go?" I asked.

Of all the questions I might have presented to her, that was probably the least appropriate. "Abominably," she answered.

"That bad?"

She sighed. "That bad." I m sorry.

"It was my fault," she said. "There's nothing wrong with the company"

"Or Mr. Robinson?"

Her smile was grim. "He was not exactly a noncombatant," she admitted.

"Sorry again," I told her. "I'm sure it was because of me."

"No, no." She wasn't too convincing. "He has had these moods before."

"It's only concern for your career," I said.

"That is certainly what he keeps telling me," she replied. "Enough times for the world to memorize."

The phrase made me smile. "He means it."

She glanced at me as though surprised to hear me speaking well of Robinson despite his treatment of me. Yet how could I do otherwise? He did regard her career as sacrosanct; I knew that better than even she. If there were personal emotions involved as well-and I could scarcely doubt that-it was another matter.

"Oh, I suppose he does," she said. "But he is a tyrant when he is this way. It will be a miracle if I have a manager at all by tomorrow the way we have been pegging at each other."

I smiled and nodded but actually felt envious of their long relationship, even if it was based more on friction than harmony. Perhaps I overemphasize what feeling may exist between them. I cannot truly visualize Elise loving him, though I can see him adoring her from a "noble" distance and converting this unspoken devotion into a kind of tyranny over her life.

Abruptly, she squeezed my arm and smiled again, this time brightly and-did I imagine it?-affectionately. "But I'm being gloomy company," she said. "Forgive me." "There's nothing to forgive," I said, returning her smile. She stared at me intently while we walked several yards, then, with a sound of self-reproach, turned away. "There I go again," she said.

She looked back quickly. "Richard, I wonder if you are truly aware of how remarkable it is that I speak to you so freely" she said. "I have never done that with a man before. I want you to know what a compliment it is to you that I can do so."

"And I want you to know that you can speak to me about anything," I told her.

That look again. She shook her head in bafflement. "What?" I asked.

"I've missed you," she said. I had to smile at the flabbergasted sound in her voice.

"How odd," I replied. I looked at her adoringly. "I haven't missed you at all."

Her smile grew brighter and she squeezed my arm again. Then, as though her pleasure had to be released in a burst, she looked ahead and cried, "Oh, see!"

I turned my head and saw a group of men and women riding bicycles along the hotel entry road, heading toward Orange Avenue. I had to laugh aloud because the sight was, at the same time, so amusing and so charming. All the bicycles had one wheel as wide in diameter as that of a truck tire-some in back, some in front-and another as small as the wheel on a child's tricycle. That was the amusing part. The charm came from the couple on each bicycle, the men in knickers with caps or derbies on their heads, the women in long skirts and blouses or sweaters, caplike hats on their heads. In each instance, the woman rode in front, some co-pedaling, some being pedaled. Seven couples in all, they rolled in a broken line away from the hotel, chatting and laughing. "Looks like fun," I said.

"Have you never done it?" she asked. "Not on-" I stopped, about to have said: Not on bikes like that "-city streets," I finished. "I should like to ride with you though.'

"Perhaps we shall," she said, and I knew the thrill of hearing, from a loved one's lips, the hinted promise of future moments together.

I noted that she held up her skirt and petticoats with her right hand as she walked and it came to me that, in 1896, a walking woman is a one-handed woman since one of her hands must always be occupied in keeping her hems above the dust or dirt or snow or rain or whatever. I smiled to myself. At least I thought I did it to myself, but Elise noticed and asked why I was smiling.

I knew immediately that telling her the truth could only restore an atmosphere of differentness about me, so I said, "I was thinking about your mother's reaction to me last night."

She smiled. "She never really storms," she said, "but you know you have been blown on nonetheless."

I chuckled at the phrase. "Was she successful as an actress?" I asked. None of the books had mentioned that.

Her smile grew faintly melancholy. "I know what you are thinking," she said, "and that is part of it, I suppose. But she never forced me to act. I went into it naturally."

I hadn't intended to enter the delicate zone of less successful actress-mother living vicariously through triumphs of more successful daughter but I didn't say so, only smiling as she added, "And she was successful in her own way." "I'm sure she was," I said.

We walked without speaking for a while. I felt no actual need for words and I believe she felt the same; perhaps even more than me, it now occurs. Fresh air, quiet, and the calming stimulus of movement on the earth, beneath the sky; that's why she loves to walk so much. It gives her a chance to escape the tensions of her work.

I started to indulge myself in a fantasy about my future with Elise. There was, to begin with, no reason I should not remain with her. Granted the anxiety about my hold on 1896 remained, but it was more irrational than sound, I felt. Hadn't I slept on three separate occasions now without losing hold? Anxiety or not, all evidence denoted that, with every passing hour, I was becoming more securely rooted to this time.

Accordingly, it was a sound assumption on my part that I would stay with her. In time, we would marry and, since I'm a writer, I would begin to study, then write stage plays. I would not expect her to help me get them produced. They would, sooner or later, be worthy of production in their own right. That she would offer to help, I had little doubt. I vowed, however, that our relationship would not proceed on such a basis. Never again would I take the risk of seeing doubt on her face.

That all the books I've read about her would be different did not concern me. I felt amusement now at my concern about impinging on this new environment even to the extent of cutting away that doorjamb. History must, after all, have some kind of flexibility at lower levels, I had decided. It is hardly an impending Battle of Borodino I seek to alter.

My attention was caught, at that moment, by the sight of a railway car standing on a siding about a hundred yards from the southeast corner of the hotel. I realized that it might belong to her and asked. She said it did. I made no comment but it gave me an odd sensation to be so graphically reminded of her wealth. No wonder she suspected me; perhaps still does, although I think not. I almost asked if I could see the car's interior, then realized that it would hardly be the most circumspect of requests to make.

We walked across the Carriage Drive, past a circular, floral island, and onto open ground. To our left was a long wooden bar for tying horses and, ahead, a profusion of trees and bushes. We walked through the heavy growth and came to a plank walk which extended down the strand between the ocean and Glorietta Bay.

As we started along the walk, I looked toward the ocean and saw blue skies far out, white clouds moving north with the wind. Approximately two hundred yards ahead of us were the peak-roofed Museum and the bathhouse, across the narrow strand from them the boathouse, connected to them by another plank walk. Ahead and to our right was the immense iron pier jutting blackly over the ocean on what looked like inverted Vs, a half-dozen men and one woman standing on it, fishing. The beach was very narrow-no more than thirty feet in width-and quite unkempt in appearance, covered by seaweed, shells, and what appeared to be garbage, though I found it hard to believe that it was.

After moving about seventy yards, we stopped by the railing of the walk and looked at the heavy-running surf. The ocean wind was brisk and almost cold, blowing a delicately tingling spray into our faces. "Elise?" I said.

"Richard?" Her imitation of my tone was so accurate it made me smile. "Stop that now," I said, with mock severity. "I have something serious to say." "Oh, dear."

"Well, not so serious you can't endure it," I assured her, weakening the assurance by adding, "I hope." "I hope so too, Mr. Collier," she said. "I thought about us while we were apart this morning." "Oh?" Her tone was not as light now, bordering on uneasiness.

"And I realized how thoughtless I've been." "Why thoughtless?"

"To expect my own commitment to force you-" "Don't."

"Please let me say it," I persisted. "It isn't all that terrible." She gazed at me worriedly, then sighed. "All right." "All I want to say is that I know you need time to adjust to the idea of my being a part of your life and I mean to give you all the time you need." That sounded arrogant, I realized, and added, smiling, "So long as you realize that I am a part of your life from now on."

Thud went the ill-timed humor. Elise looked toward the ocean, her expression harried once again. Dear God, why do I keep saying the wrong things? I thought. "I don't mean to pressure you," I said. "Forgive me if I do."