Time Out of Mind (39 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
As Gwen Leamas changed into a bulky sweater and a
blue suede skirt, Corbin wandered into her kitchen, idly touching the appliances and countertops there. His fingers
brushed across her refrigerator door, then its chromium
handle, and then the anger simmered in him once again.
He opened the door.
“
Still hungry?” she called from the other room. “I'm afraid there's not much.”
”
I guess not,'' he answered. “Thanks.”
seal, the remains of a chicken, a partial bottle of good Cha
blis, a few eggs, and a six-pack of Molson's from which
one can had been removed. Also a jar of peanut butter—
Corbin did not understand people who ate peanut butter
cold—a pint of half-and-half, and a plastic bottle of milk, which was empty save for a quarter inch. He took out the bottle and allowed the door to swing closed as he examined it in his hand. Corbin saw his fingers tremble for an instant and then curl in against the plastic bottle, crushing it, spitting off its top, which fell to the floor and rolled. Someone
had been here. The man with the ruined hands had been
here. Corbin no sooner had that thought than his mind be
gan at once to deny it. He'd seen nothing. Nothing wrong. An almost empty milk bottle in Gwen's refrigerator meant
that Gwen had put an almost empty milk bottle in her refrigerator. Period. There was no man with ruined hands. Corbin knew that. But he also knew that there was and that
the man had held this milk bottle. He dropped the crumpled
plastic into her trash.
“
Do you mind if we go up the West Side Highway?” he
asked Harry Sturdevant once he settled into the back seat,
where Gwen joined him.
“
If you wish. The Triborough's much more direct”
“
The West Side Drive is prettier. Anyway, we're facing
that direction.”
“
We are indeed,” Sturdevant answered. He put the car
in drive and started across town, toward the roadway
through Central Park, glancing into his rearview mirror sev
eral times each block to see whether by chance a strange car might have fallen in behind them. He saw none.
“
Gwen, dear. Did you bring me that medication I asked
you for?”
“
I'm sorry, Uncle Harry. It slipped my mind,'' she lied.
As the tires of Sturdevant’s Mercedes hissed along the park
transverse road at Seventy-second Street, Corbin settled
back, Gwen's hand in his, and felt himself relaxing. The
park was beautiful. The morning sun had not yet melted
the snow, which turned each tree and bush into fragile shimmering glass. Tilden and Margaret. He wondered how
often they came here in winter. They'd come ice-skating,
he was pretty sure. On the big lake up near the Dakota Apartments. Maybe just Tilden skated. Yes. Margaret was
pregnant, wasn't she. She would sit by one of the bonfires, munching on a capon and watching Tilden try to show off
and laughing each time he went
splat.
And they brought a carriage up here in the summer. Several times. They would
either just go riding or tie up down near the Mall and listen
to band music from inside the carriage because they were
still being careful about being seen together then. And Mar
garet's belly was just beginning to show.
The Mercedes left the park and continued across
Seventy-second Street to the West Side Highway.
There,
turning north along the Hudson River, which was dotted
with slow-moving floes of ice, Corbin leaned forward in his seat to better see the view ahead of him. The concrete
highway stretched out before him in an almost straight line
leading to the George Washington Bridge, but Corbin's
mind erased both of these. He focused instead on the gen
tler, slower roadway of Riverside Drive and on the lovely
old homes that lined it, each with fine vistas of the river
and the green cliffs of New Jersey. There were now high
rises on those distant cliffs, but Corbin's mind erased those as well. This mental purging of the landscape was a delib
erate act on Corbin’s part. It involved no ghost; none, at
least, that Corbin feared this morning.
The elevated had done all this. All that was up here before the elevated were tiny farms and squatters' shacks and
pigs and sheep roaming freely. And rocks. Rocks and boul
ders everywhere. These had to be cleared. And broad avenues laid out. And trees planted. At first fast-growing
evergreens, which would shoot up fifteen feet in a mere
three seasons and then pause to wait for the the slower elms and pin oaks. Cyrus Field had done this. His Ninth Avenue
Elevated curling up beyond Morningside Heights meant
that all those office workers who'd been forced to live in
New Jersey or Brooklyn and rely on uncertain ferries could
now live an hour or more closer to their jobs. A horsecar
from Central Park to City Hall could take an hour and a
half, but Field's elevated line could cover that distance in
just twenty-eight minutes. Even from Morningside Heights
and the country lanes of Harlem, the ride lasted no more
than three quarters of an hour. And for only five cents. For ten cents, of course, one could choose to ride in one of the elevated's apple-green parlor cars with mahogany paneling on the walls, real Axminster carpets on the floor, and seats
of red leather. For pleasant viewing, each car had seven high-arched windows a side. Instead of the slat blinds of
ordinary cars, the windows had tapestry curtains trimmed
in red leather to match the seat coverings and mounted on
spring rollers whose mechanisms were concealed by cor
nices. All Field's doing. Other men may claim credit but it
was Field. That such a man should be ensnared and bro
ken ...
Corbin folded his arms across the top of the empty front
seat and rested his chin upon them. More fine old homes drifted past. Some of them, more than a few, he felt as if he knew. Ahead lay a wide stretch of Riverside Drive,
where he—where Tilden and Margaret had cycled. And an
inn, the Claremont Inn, where they'd dined. More than
dined. They'd stayed there, had they not? Yes, Margaret
had taken a room there until the house was ready. And right
across there, at the foot of that hill, was the stable where
he'd rented the rig in which he took her to see her first
baseball game over at the Polo Grounds. They'd tethered
their horse to a cast-iron weight right in the outfield of the
New York Mets—he must learn to stop calling them that,
the public fancy these days being to call them the Giants
although he was at a loss to explain why when Margaret
asked. The biggest player on the team was Roger Connor,
at three inches over six feet, followed by Del Gillespie, who
was the same height as Tilden. None of the other players,
to his knowledge, was over six feet. Not Buck Ewing or
Monte Ward or the outfielder Silent Mike Tiernan, whose
back was to them all afternoon as they lunched from the
picnic hamper assembled by the Claremont Inn. But who can explain the public fancy where nicknames are con
cerned. The Boston team is called the Beaneaters and that
makes sense enough. And the Brooklyn players are the
Trolley Dodgers, although of late they are being called the
Bridegrooms, four members having been wed in as many
weeks this past spring.
“
Would anyone like some grapes?” Gwen Leamas
opened the cake box Cora Starling had handed her.
“
Not just now, dearest,” Corbin murmured.
devant's shoulder. Sturdevant nodded, indicating that he'd
heard.
“
Nice day,” he said to Corbin.
“
It certainly is.” Corbin did not move his chin from its
resting place on his arms. The roadway, the river, the build
ings of the West Side, had faded. Before him, Corbin saw
only a broad green field dotted with men dressed in
white
except for their caps and he wished he'd brought a pair of opera glasses because Buck Ewing was at bat as the poten
tial winning run and Hank O'Day was on second with two
out. Brooklyn's Adonis Terry had the full count on Ewing
who seemed baffled by Terry's underhand curve ball which
Terry would change to an overhand fastball every time
Buck thought he had figured Terry's number. Corbin didn't
know how he could since even from his distant vantage
point he could see that a considerable flap had been torn in
the ball's hide and a new ball wouldn't be allowed unless
there was another inning. Every time Adonis Terry got his
hands on the ball he would tear the flap a little more and
in a different direction so that with each pitch the ball
would do ever-crazier things.
“
You're Tilden Beckwith, aren't you?”
“
Hmmm?”
“
I say, you are Tilden Beckwith, are you not?”
Corbin made a please-wait motion with his fingertips. That was Harry Sturdevant. He knew that. And he knew
what Gwen's uncle was trying to do, but the fact is he was
not Tilden Beckwith at the moment. But he
was
trying to
watch a game. And even if he were Tilden Beckwith it
should have been clear to Harry that if he wished for social intercourse during the game he would have sat in the grand
stand and not out here at the outfield's perimeter. Besides, he was in the company of a lady and it was just possible that he
might not care to be put in the position of having to introduce
her. In any case, there's the pitch and—oh no, Bucky, not a fly ball—oh, oh, look out. A sigh rose from the grandstand
because Ewing, having choked up on his bat for a hard
ground ball through the infield, had caught the pitch low and
fat and the result was a looping fly to right field. But the
crowd's dismay turned to astonishment, then glee as the mis
chief Adonis Terry had worked upon the ball being pitched had a similar effect on the ball in flight. There was the right
fielder waiting for an easy catch but the ball played him false
and died like a bird shot on the wing and the right fielder
made his desperate lunge too late. The crowd was screaming
as Hank O'Day headed home and Buck Ewing had rounded
second and against their advice was dashing toward third.
Slide, Ewing, slide, they screamed and this he heeded but he
threw his body high in the air in a broad jumper's attitude, hurtling toward the aghast third baseman and diverting his
eye from the ball which now whizzed past him and into a
crowd of onlookers, one of whom promptly pocketed it. Giants, Giants, the fans chanted as Buck Ewing crossed home
plate and as the Brooklyn players threw their hats and gloves
to the ground in frustration.
“
Giants.”
“
What?” Gwen asked.
What did you say?”
”
I didn't say anything. You said ‘Giants.’ ”
Just daydreaming.” He wiped his eyes. ”I was thinking about a baseball game.” But the details of it were receding
as fast as the passing landscape.
“
As yourself or as Tilden Beckwith?” Sturdevant turned
his head but kept his attention on the road ahead of him.
I don't know.” He stretched. “It was nothing. Just a
daydream.”
made a production out of selecting an appropriate tape cas
sette. He was fairly sure that Sturdevant would not be so
obvious as to pop in a Gilbert and Sullivan tape of
Iolanthe,
but he might play something by Corelli, the composer Cor
bin said he'd never heard of before he told that story about
asking the Palm Court's violinist to play a more lively
piece. But no, the label he chose said Gustav Mahler. Cor
bin was not really familiar with Mahler's work, but he would have bet anything that the piece he was about to
hear was a hot ticket back around 1888.