Steamside Chronicles

by Ciar Cullen

  “Look at Emily in her jeans. Party animal.” Petti pointed through the crowd at Fen playing Beirut or some other drinking game. “You’d better slow her down. She doesn’t hold her substances well.”

  “She gave me a first edition of Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Baby, they’re all first editions. Go to her.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Instead, I sat on the bench with Fatty, who hadn’t taken a break for two hours. Fenwick caught my eye from across the room and slammed her empty drink on the table, rim down. She made a strong-arm motion to indicate she’d been victorious and I waved and laughed. It was almost normal human interaction. God, did I say she wasn’t beautiful? She’s incredibly beautiful.

  Fenwick wound her way more steadily than I’d imagined possible to the piano and leaned on the top. “Play it once, Fatty. For old times' sake.”

  Fatty stared at her, confused. I couldn’t have buried my smile if I tried.

  “Play it, Fatty. Play ‘As Time Goes By’.

  Fatty laughed. “I’m not sure I know that one, Miss…”

  “Ilsa. I'll hum it for you. Da-dy-da-dy-da-dum, da-dy-da-dee-da-dum...”

  Fatty winked. Despite the missing keys, he played beautifully.

  “Hello, Rick,” Fen muttered in a throaty attempt at a foreign accent. She slipped off the piano, brushed her hand along my forearm, and with a little come-hither motion of her finger, headed out the door. I watched her go, watched the life drain from the room.

  And realized too late that everyone was staring at me. Not their ‘you are awesome’ stare. A new look, one of disappointment. They wanted a happy ending, even if it wasn’t their own. Well, Casablanca didn’t end that well either. I shrugged, but they didn’t turn away. You think I was a wuss for not following her? It was one of the hardest things I’ve done in 1890, and that’s saying something.

  Screw brought me a fresh drink and motioned everyone to get back to the party. “I suppose this isn’t the time to tell you how lame you are.”

  “You don’t really expect me to hook up with Fenwick while she’s drunk.”

  “Just needed to hear you say it.” Screw grinned and we went back to pinball.

  * * *

  I was pretty proud of myself for falling asleep when I hit the cot rather than waiting for Jack to follow me to my room. I knew he wouldn’t, but it had felt really good to tease him.

  I watched Screw straighten his waistcoat before donning his newest jacket, a soft gray sack coat. I fiddled with his enormous floppy bow tie.

  “It just hangs there, limp. Aren’t ties supposed to be crisp?”

  Screw didn’t tolerate criticism of his clothes, so I took every opportunity to take a jab at his penchant for the newest styles.

  I wasn’t a clotheshorse in 2010, and I sure as hell didn’t know what I was doing in 1890. Petti corrected my choices every Tuesday when the Dodgers hosted a clothing exchange. The mess hall turned into a Salvation Army outlet gone haywire. If you were tired of a hat, or had outgrown a corset, you turned it in and picked up a new one. Everyone was pretty fair, even offering suggestions to one another.

  It helped that I was taller than the rest of the women, except Sweet Pea. I got what I needed, and always in blue.

  “Just because you’re a makeover screaming to happen…” Screw wound my hair in his long artistic fingers and did his magic. He was the only one able to keep my mane pinned into a proper chignon that wouldn’t fall to my shoulders within minutes. He said it was a type of structural engineering.

  “Are you sure you’re straight?”

  He clenched pins in his mouth and took them out one by one as he wrestled with my hair. “You can do better than that. Don’t forget your pistol. Strap it to your leg, unless you want me to.” Screw wiggled his brows.

  “What is Barber going to do? What are you going to do, Screw?” It wasn’t a comfortable question.

  “The Civil War was won by the North. The school system failed you.”

  “Meaning you and Barber can stay at the same hotel with us? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m a merchant from San Francisco, in business with Jack, and Barber is our man.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “Spoken like a 21st-Century white woman. Barber goes to walk in his ancestors’ shoes, as he says. He’s turned it into a positive, just like he does everything.”

  “And you? What does it do for you?”

  “I get offered opium a lot. You meet a lot of interesting characters downtown.”

  “It’s like a Sherlock Holmes story. You in a smoky opium den with a secret agenda. What is our agenda, by the way?”

  He shrugged. “Something to do with you and anachros. Ask the Man. I just work for him. By the way, that bit last night was harsh.”

  “What bit?”

  “The watch me be angsty over Jack while pretending not to care bit at the piano. Wasn’t fair to him. What was he supposed to do with all of us watching and you plastered?”

  “Nothing.” He was supposed to run after me, pull me harshly into an embrace, kiss me, tell me how much he wants me. “Nothing,” I repeated.

  Screw pulled one of his rings off and slid it onto my finger. “Don’t forget that you’re married. And not to me.”

  “Then there is an upside.”

  No, there wasn’t. I couldn’t shake the feeling this trip to Normal was all about me. Now the Man was pissed off at me for flirting with him at the party. If I was now part of the inner sanctum, why did I feel like a target?

  Chapter Eight

  A remnant of antiquity carries great import for our friends.

  “Nothing.” Petti walked back and forth in front of Cleopatra’s Needle for half an hour. At one point she did the unthinkable and in clear sight of the Normals, put her hand on the obelisk, closed her eyes, and hummed.

  The same damned cop who always walked the east end of Central Park stopped cold and watched her.

  “Crap,” Screw muttered. “Say something, Jack.”

  “He’s not going to arrest a society type.”

  I left the bench and strolled to stand by the cop. “My sister is a bit of an Egyptophile. I imagine she’s reminiscing over our travels.”

  “She’s a wot?” I hated this guy. Pompous, chip-on-his-shoulder, wannabe tough guy.

  “She likes things from Egypt. That,” I pointed to the obelisk with my walking stick, “is from Egypt.”

  “At least she can’t pinch it.” He snorted out his laugh and looked at me for a reaction.

  “Very good, Officer.”

  “Just mind she doesn’t take a pick to it. Property of the city, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her, my good man.”

  He sniffed in satisfaction and wandered down the path of Greywacke Knoll, arm cemented to his back, chest puffed out.

  “Hate that guy,” Fen said as I approached the bench. “I keep thinking he might be an ancestor. Reminds me of my uncle.”

  “Stay in character.”

  “Tell that to your sister.” Fen pointed to Petti, who was now hugging the obelisk.

  “Oh, Annalise! Tea time.” My sister could be a freaking handful.

  “Yes, dear Miss Pettigrew, do come now! Is she off her rocker?” Fen looked to me for an explanation.

  I sat between her and Screw while Barber wandered in lookout mode, smoking a pipe. She had that scent all the women did in Normal—lavender or lilac or something. I also detected a bit of machine oil. She’d cleaned her pistol before we left. The two combined to disturb my libido, and I wasn’t sure which part of her got to me. The crack shot or the soft curves. Maybe the combination. I had to stop thinking about the gun strapped to her thigh and didn’t need Freud to point out the metaphorical significance of that fantasy.

  “Petti once heard the obelisk call to her.”

  “I want some of what she’s taking.”

  “This is where we first arrived from our 21st Century lives. This is where we end up when we shred
to Normal. She thinks the obelisk is a vortex, or marks a vortex, or something.”

  “It doesn’t mark a vortex. The Normals put it up a few years ago—what would they know about vortexes? What is a vortex, anyway? It came from Alexandria, was taken there by Cleopatra as a gift to Mark Antony. The original location was Heliopolis. Tuthmosis the second, or third. Can’t remember which.”

  “Why do you know that?” I took another deep breath of machine oil and flowers wafting off her.

  “You think I don’t read? Didn’t go to school?”

  God, she was sensitive about my every move, every word. How the hell was this going to work if I couldn’t talk to her?

  “Stop turning everything I say into an insult. I would simply like to know how you know that. Did you study about it in school? Did you read up on it yourself? How? Simple question, looking for a simple answer.”

  “I’m descended from some wacky archaeologist. Although I use the term lightly, because I think he was more an Indiana Jones kind of guy. You know, dig and take. My grandmother had a book of his drawings.”

  Cosmic convergence and coincidence battled it out in my brain. Petti had given up her stone hugging and joined us. She tapped her finger on her lips and I knew she was working on the same thing.

  “Nah,” I said to Petti.

  She gave me an ‘are you sure?’ look. I shook off her question with a look only she’d know. Later, it said.

  Screw broke the silence with a groan. The rest of us saw it at the same time—a little boy with a clubfoot, limping behind his siblings, dragging his kite. I imagined him trying to keep up, running through the grass as fast as he could—but not fast enough to get the kite airborne. God, I wanted to pick him up in my arms and make him laugh, make him my son. Tell him he could do anything, be anything, that the world didn’t care about deformities. But that’s only a half-truth in 2010, and it sure as hell wasn’t true in 1890.

  Besides, we’d seen much worse. Deformities of every variety that would be sliced off with a laser or cured in an hour of surgery in Modern. Hacking coughs that would kill for the want of an antibiotic. The number of Civil War amputees still limping on the streets of New York was astounding. Children dying from Scarlet Fever, the measles, and God knows what else.

  We called these Screamers. The moments when you wanted to tell the idiots what to do, but you couldn’t. You wanted to scream, but waited until you were Steamside and had a drink instead. We’d soothe ourselves with platitudes. ‘You’d never convince them,’ or ‘We don’t know enough to fix it ourselves,’ or the worst, ‘We shouldn’t interfere’.

  “Twenty-Eight,” Screw mumbled.

  Fen looked at him, puzzled.

  “TOS, Episode Twenty-Eight,” he expounded.

  “Riiiight.”

  Petti held up her hand to ward off Screw’s lecture on one of his favorite topics. “Star Trek, the Original Series, Episode Twenty-Eight. In which Kirk and Spock must go back in time to stop McCoy from doing something that will change history.”

  “Is this one of those things? You know, where you shouldn’t meet yourself in the past or the universe might implode.”

  Barber knocked the ashes from his pipe. “That’s a paradox. We call ‘Twenty-Eight’, when we encounter a moment in Normal in which we would like to interfere, but feel we shouldn’t. Or in most cases, where we don’t know how.”

  “But in those paradoxes, aren’t you changing things by just being here? Aren’t we? By talking to that cop. Maybe it stopped him from…”

  Screw cleared his throat. “Been there, Fenwick, had that conversation. A zillion times.”

  “So do you call ‘Twenty-Eight’ when a woman is about to be run over by a carriage? Or a child who can’t swim falls into a pond? I don’t believe it.”

  I wondered for the hundredth time what Emily Fenwick was like, without fear and anger coloring every thought and word. Still a little cocky and defensive, maybe never happy. Smart, attractive, strong, and pretty sane, was my guess. And we’d taken it all from her. Maybe.

  “Well, let’s try the obelisk another day…” I stood and offered my arm to Fenwick as the unmistakable roar of a modern car engine made us all spin toward Fifth Avenue. It was tough to see over the incline, but it sure as hell looked like a silver sports car.

  As the five of us watched in amazement, the car jumped the curb and jolted down the hill, skidding and spinning out of control, until it finally rolled onto its roof. One man was thrown from the car, another mangled in its wreckage. Barber closed in on it before the rest of us, but before he reached it, car and passengers misted into nowhere.

  “It was a Porsche,” Barber mumbled, pulling off his hat and rubbing at his neck.

  “A Porsche,” Screw repeated numbly. “With a number on it, like a race car.”

  They looked at me for an explanation.

  Fenwick pulled at my sleeve. “It didn’t have one hundred thirty on it, did it? Did it?”

  “Yeah, it did,” Screw said. “Why? Phew, that was freaky. I mean, my nerves are still buzzing.”

  Petti adjusted her hat and let out a deep breath. “Jack, look at the Normals.”

  I’d noticed they noticed nothing. A middle-aged couple walked serenely along the path near the phantom wreck, and our annoying park constable made another pass near the obelisk, no doubt worried about Petti making off with it.

  I nodded to Petti. “As I thought. They don’t notice any of it. The Titanic docking, the Hindenburg gliding overhead, James Dean wrecking, and God only knows what else.”

  “James Dean?” Petti put her gloved hand to her mouth. “Oh, what a shame. I would have loved to have spoken to him.”

  “Yeah, what a shame.” I looked at Fen and she paled as we locked gazes.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” She turned her back on me. I grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her toward me.

  “Tell me. Go ahead, tell me you didn’t think of James Dean today. God knows why you would, but you did.”

  “Me? Why does it have to be me?” But her eyes misted over and I saw her doubt and frustration. “Send me home, go ahead. I dare you.”

  “We’re not sending you anywhere. I know you don’t mean to do it.”

  “Mean to do what exactly? Think? How can I not think? I’ve thought about Snickers bars, but they haven’t materialized. Have you noticed that?”

  “Three disasters. God knows how many more.” I stood for a while, staring at the serenity of the Park, taking in the sounds of the busy street behind, mulling over the only clue to our present circumstances.

  I could practically hear the gears turning in Screw’s brain, but he was silent as well.

  Petti clapped her hands to bring us all around. “Why so glum? This is good, very good!”

  I gave her my ‘what the hell’ look.

  “The Normals aren’t affected, as far as we know. Fen must hold some clue in that noggin of hers, which is a start. I’d say we’re headed in the right direction.”

  “Direction?”

  “To getting back to Modern. Come on, now, let’s enjoy this day and see what more transpires. For a couple of Sherlock Holmes fans, you don’t seem to be intrigued by this mystery. Let’s get on the case at once!”

  Chapter Nine

  Tripping the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York…

  Since none of us knew what else to do, we wandered back to the Hotel Henry. Petti complained that the Waldorf Astoria hadn’t been built yet. I don’t know where she developed a taste for the finer things—our upbringing had been one of solid blue-collar sensibilities. Brand-name cola had been a luxury, Friday was fish-stick night, and you didn’t earn an allowance by doing chores. You earned peace, maybe a chance to stay up past eight.

  I enjoyed strolling down Fifth Avenue, despite the dust the carriages kicked up and the smell of manure as they readied the bottom of the Park for new plantings. Fenwick didn’t flinch when I offered her my arm, and I fancied we made a pretty good pair. She walk
ed fast, and I had to keep pulling her back to the lethargic stroll of the socially blessed. We didn’t discuss disasters, and I prayed I could keep her spirits up so she didn’t think about them.

  The five blocks took an hour. Screw had to look at everything. Lampposts, watch shops, carriage wheels, paving stones, horse harnesses, and the organ of the organ grinder. The monkey didn’t interest him at all, but Fenwick giggled and played with him, which relieved me. I wished I had a strong antidepressant to give her, but if a monkey worked, I was fine with that.

  “Careful, they bite,” I warned.

  “Bah. It’s a white-headed capuchin. They’re harmless.” He climbed up and down her arms, sat on her fine hat, and tipped his own little hat for a tip. Fenwick looked at me, her gaze pleading.

  “Do we have any money?”

  “For the little rascal? Of course, dear.” She was asking if we had money at all, or if we’d be stealing our way through this ‘vacation’.

  I fished a few pennies out of my pocket and the grinder fell over me with gratitude in a thick Italian accent. I knew he rented the instrument, and the pittance would at least allow him to break even for the day.

  “Fatty would love this,” Screw said to me. “I mean, if we could take it back. It’s like a music box, with a number of songs embedded on the roller.”

  “I’m sure you could make him one. It’s just a computer, isn’t it?”

  “No, it most decidedly is not.” I might as well have called his mother a whore. Perhaps worse.

  “On and off signals, right? A raised bump to play a note, no bump for silence. Zeroes and ones. Isn’t that a computer?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Come on; let’s go back to our rooms. We’ll freshen up and take in dinner, discuss things.”

  “I want a cheeseburger,” Fen said. “I really, really want a cheeseburger. Do you think if I told them how to make one, they would?”