“I understand and I’m ready for it. So what do I do now?”
“The same as you did before. You will suddenly find yourself at your destination.”
“Will I be able to contact you?”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“You know that much?”
He offered me a half-smile. “I know that much. Do you have any other questions?”
Suddenly something flashed in my mind. “Just one. Why are you doing this?”
“You are demanding that I do it.”
“But you still don’t have to do it. I can’t make you. Why are you going along with this?”
Stephon turned away from me and stared at a porcelain figurine of a princess that stood alone in a display case. “Because you are willing to. You obviously don’t understand what a rare trait that is. Any other questions?”
I had dozens, but I was anxious to go.
“I think that’s it. Thank you, Stephon.”
He shook my hand firmly. “Good luck, Mr. Timian.”
I took out my pocket watch. The time was 12:34.
Red fog descended.
*
I strained to hear the sounds of piano as gray tiles and apple-green walls surrounded me. Last time those colors had been merely ugly. Now they were repugnant. I checked my pocket watch again. It still said 12:34, though I knew it was a different time here.
Piano notes tinkled from behind the door. The beautiful sound made by the woman I adored and the girl I’d come to love. Down the corridor came the click of high-heeled shoes. I turned to see the monster approaching me. I didn’t hide my face. I stared at her with all my surliness, as if it could make her disappear in a puff of smoke. She regarded me diffidently and made it clear I wasn’t a concern to her.
Miss Hoffman brushed by me. Her gray jacket swept my hand, but she didn’t excuse herself. She walked precisely but rapidly, leaving a trail of cold air that sent a chill down my back.
She paused at the door and looked me over again.
“Are you here for someone?” she said, her tone flat.
“Yes... I’m waiting for someone.”
“May I ask who?” Her nose twitched as if smelling carrion.
“My daughter. She’s down the hall.”
Miss Hoffman gazed at me, then nodded. “Please remember that visitors must obtain permission from the office before entering school grounds.” Then she walked into the music room and closed the door. The piano playing paused for a moment, and then restarted.
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t until then that I realized what a remarkable thing it was that the woman had spoken to me. She’d seen me, and I’d felt her cold presence. I was here, in the flesh, and able to feel the touch of others. My only previous thoughts of that woman had involved my hands around her throat. Now my skin tingled where she brushed against me, and I savored the sensation. I was here and I was real. I had it in my power to make things right.
The same janitor I’d seen the last time appeared around the corner, humming what sounded like “Cupid” by Sam Cooke. As he glanced at me, I checked my watch and shook my head irritably. “Where can she be?” I said, feigning irritation. The janitor shrugged. Another father waiting to pick up his kid – nothing to worry about. People were a lot more relaxed about this kind of thing in the 1980s.
The music stopped again. When the janitor disappeared inside a classroom, I moved to the music room door and put my ear against the metal. I heard muffled voices, one vibrant, the other clipped. I silently cracked open the door. Melissa sat at the piano, just as she had before. Miss Hoffman was rubbing her shoulders.
I rapped loudly. “Excuse me.”
Melissa turned and looked up at me. Her teacher’s look could have frozen steam. Her cheeks were flushed, and she took a deep breath.
“May I help you?” she said icily. There was something in her eyes and I could see that she was trying to place where she’d seen me before.
“Yes, I have a question for you. It’s about... teaching music to young people. I wonder if you could step into the hall.”
“This is not a good time. Can you not see I am instructing a student?”
Melissa shifted her gaze to her sheet music.
“This will only take a moment.”
“It will have to wait.”
“I don’t think you want me to say what I have to say in front of a student.”
Miss Hoffman’s sigh had a slight hitch to it, as though she anticipated trouble. “Carry on, Melissa. I will return in a moment.” Her hard gray heels thudded softly into the carpet as she followed me into the hallway.
“Yes?” she said curtly. The color in her cheeks had mellowed slightly, but she was still clearly exercised. Her foot tapped the floor once, twice. I hated her more every second I was in her presence.
I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I slammed her against the wall. Her bony shoulders squirmed in my grip and her face registered shock.
“Let me go or I will scream,” she said in a fierce whisper.
“Go ahead and scream. Go ahead and call the police. You know what they’ll do to someone like you? Tell me how many girls you’ve hurt, Miss Hoffman. Give me a number.”
Surprise loosened her clenched jaw. The color fled from her cheeks entirely, leaving behind flesh as gray as her jacket. “I do not know what you are talking about. Who are you? If you release me this instant, I will not go to the police. I will forget this ever happened.”
For a moment, I stood transfixed by my own power. A thousand fantasies of killing this woman in exquisitely painful ways crossed my mind. I could destroy her now with my bare hands and disappear into another universe. How could they prosecute a man who was never really here?
I squeezed her shoulders until she let out a thin whimper. That she was utterly terrified did nothing to lessen my rage.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “I know what you were planning to do. If you touch that girl in there – if you touch any child ever again – I will make you feel a level of anguish you could never have imagined.”
“I do not know you,” she said weakly. “Who are you? Are you the father of one of my students?”
“Who I am isn’t relevant. The only thing that is relevant is what I can do to you if you don’t take me very, very seriously.”
The woman’s breath came in great gasps as if her own lungs couldn’t bear to live inside her. “You have no proof. No one will believe you. I am a respected member of this community. What are you but vulgar trash?”
“You don’t think I can find proof? Do you think Melissa and the other girls would lie to protect you?” I was guessing about the other girls, but based on her reaction, it appeared my guess had hit the mark. “I hope you look good in an orange jumpsuit, Miss Hoffman.”
“Why are you doing this? I have done nothing to harm you. Is it money you want? I have some savings. You may have it all if you keep silent.”
“This isn’t about money. You were about to hurt someone I care for. You were about to destroy the promising career of a girl who trusts you as a mentor. Right now, I could snap your stiff neck like a wishbone, but I am going to give you a break. I am going to show you the mercy that you never gave anyone else.”
I could see the relief in her eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
“You are going back in that room to tell Melissa that you are no longer her piano teacher. You will make clear that this is not because of anything she did, but because of a scheduling problem you have. You will then inform her that she will be getting a new teacher, which you will arrange as soon as you leave. You will then resign your position with the school and never cross Melissa’s path again. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Her teeth were bared like a cornered rat. She made a guttural sound.
“I trust that meant yes.”
Her coldness flared into a glare that could have melted steel. “Very well. I will do as you say.” Her voice was subdued but her eyes were not.
I released her shoulders, my fingers leaving dents in her jacket. She hissed through her teeth and spun on her heel.
“Miss Hoffman.”
She stiffened, then turned around.
“Remember that I know what you have done and what you are capable of doing. Just as I know what you did before. I will know if you ever do it again. One false step, one hint that you are even thinking of doing something like this again, and you will rot in jail for the rest of your life.”
Her lips opened, but no words came out. She reentered the room and closed the door behind her. I pressed my ear to the door, but all I could hear were faint voices. A minute later she strode out of the room, glared at me one last time, and marched away. Her anger told me just how frightened she was. She wouldn’t bother anyone again. Of that much, I was absolutely sure.
A door opened down the hall, and the janitor emerged pushing his squeaky sidekick. His white-thatched head swiveled as the piano teacher stomped past him. Then it swiveled toward me. I shrugged. He shrugged. Then he whistled something that sounded like “Strangers in the Night” as he clanged into another classroom.
It was time to go. My brain warned me not to linger by the door, but my body had other plans. I froze as Melissa stepped out, a book bag over her shoulder. Her neck was red where her teacher’s fingers had rubbed her. She seemed confused by everything that had happened in the last few minutes, but this confusion would be gone quickly, maybe even before she left the school. She stared at me for a second. Then she smiled shyly and walked away. She strode confidently down the hall, and I watched her admiringly until she turned a corner.
Gray and apple-green dissolved into red fog and when it lifted, Stephon stood in front of me wearing a blue suit. I tilted my head.
“When did you change clothes? You were dressed in a turtleneck before.” The wall clock still read 12:34. A nice trick – the physics of this process must be fascinating.
A blue suit? With a red tie? I glanced around the shop. There seemed to be more silver and less gold than I remembered. Behind the counter, a samovar bubbled. Samovars made tea. When had Stephon given up cappuccino?
It looked like an antique samovar. That kind of samovar must have come from... oh, no. I couldn’t have caused that. Suddenly the science fiction stories I’d read when I was a kid came back to me. My brow dampened as I tried to remember my college language classes.
“Gov-or-itz-iya Pah-ruskee?” I said in butchered Russian. I knew my pronunciation was as bad as my professors had always told me, but I hoped it was clear enough.
Stephon’s eyebrows twitched, and then he laughed. “Yes, Mr. Timian, I do speak a little Russian, though I have not had reason to use it in many years.”
“I... I saw the samovar. I know they come from Russia.”
“Yes, I picked it up some years ago on a trip to Siberia. Allegedly it belonged to the Tsar, though if the Romanovs owned every item that was offered to me, even the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg would have been too small. However, it does make excellent tea. Would you like a glass?”
“No. No, thank you.”
Stephon walked behind the counter and poured tea into a tall glass. I continued to look around the store, finding new things in every display. Even Stephon’s inventory didn’t turn over this quickly.
“If I understand your implication,” Stephon said, taking a brief sip, “you are wondering if your adventure in the past has caused the Soviet Union to conquer America. No, the Soviet Union is still gone and America still won the Cold War. Though you might think otherwise from much of the rhetoric you hear in this city. In any event, this is still Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. The nation and world are essentially the same as the ones you left behind.”
“Nothing has changed?”
Stephon put a cube of sugar in his mouth and then took another sip, a quaint Russian custom.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Don’t play games, Stephon. I’m more than a little nervous now that I’m back here. Are things different or not?”
He put his glass down on the counter. “You will recall that I warned you that if you changed events, there could be consequences. Fortunately, you did not assassinate a world leader or something equally cataclysmic. The world as you know it has not fundamentally changed. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been any changes at all. As far as your personal life is concerned, I have no way of knowing.”
“No way?”
“I’m not omniscient, Mr. Timian.”
I felt a little lightheaded. “Someday maybe you can tell me how all of this works.”
He smiled patiently. “I really can’t.”
The glint of a passing car drew my attention outside. Melissa was outside. Out there where the rest of my future was waiting. I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to hold her in my arms.
I turned back to Stephon. “I have to go.”
“Yes, you do.” He reached for his teacup again.
I had a little trouble getting my legs to work. I wondered if it was a byproduct of being shunted to an alternate world or if it was something else entirely. “Can I come by again if I have any questions?”
Stephon nodded. “I’m here, Mr. Timian.”
“Please call me Ken.”
“If you’d like.”
“And only you and I know what happened?”
“To the best of my knowledge.”
I shook my head. I had a feeling I wouldn’t fully comprehend the strangeness of this episode for some time. I made my way toward the door. I turned to say something more to Stephon.
But he had already disappeared into the back room.
Chapter 9
Not the Boundaries of Space or Time or Circumstance
I stepped out into a strange new world. Only it wasn’t strange and it wasn’t new. Taxis dipped in and out of traffic as cars maneuvered to avoid buses picking up passengers. Drivers honked as they zoomed in death races to capture parking spots.
The uneasy feeling I’d had since returning to Stephon’s had began to subside. I hadn’t done irreparable damage to the time-space continuum. There were no antigravity cars here or pedestrians zooming through the air with jetpacks. Dolphins hadn’t become the new master race. This looked and smelled and sounded just like the Washington I knew.
I looked up at a White House helicopter overhead, so I didn’t see the rollerblader until he banged off my arm. The gawky teenager went into a split-legged landing like a fledgling ballet dancer. His pimply face twisted into a feral snarl. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, dude?” he said sharply.
“Why don’t you rollerblade in a park? And don’t call me dude, dude.” If he had been halfway polite, I would have helped him up. Instead I left him wallowing in a pool of his own obscenity as he struggled to stand. There was someplace else I needed to be.
For further assurance, I reached my hand into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, flipping through the compartments. My Platinum Visa and American Express cards were there. My name and address were the same on my Virginia driver’s license. So was my photo – I refused to contemplate the implications if that had changed. I definitely seemed to be the same Ken Timian who walked into Stephon’s shop some indeterminable time ago. I relaxed a little bit more.
I really wanted to hear Melissa’s voice. I could be home soon enough, but at that very moment, the thing that was most important to me was checking in with her, just to hear what she sounded like. I wondered if her voice would be a little different coming from a body that hadn’t had to carry a huge secret around for the past eighteen years.
I pulled out my phone and my number. One ring (so it hasn’t been disc
onnected). Two rings (a stranger hasn’t answered). Three. Four. Then a loud click. “Hi, this is Ken. I can’t take your call now. Leave your name, number, and a brief message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
I assumed Melissa was out running errands. We certainly had enough of them to do this close to the wedding. I took a deep breath and held the phone against my forehead.
My Audi was where I’d parked it, and when I reached the car, I discovered yet another indication that the world was very much the same. The supernatural powers of the Washington parking cops were still as strong as ever. The red EXPIRED tab had flared only three minutes before, yet already a ticket lay under my windshield wiper. This was a $25 tariff that I wouldn’t even think of complaining about.
Traffic on the way to Arlington was light for a late spring Saturday. I lowered the power windows as I crossed Memorial Bridge, smiling at the joggers and bicyclists on both sidewalks. The farther I got from Stephon’s the more real everything felt to me.
Jeez, I pulled this off. I kicked that horrible woman’s ass and I’ll still have plenty of time to make Melissa a great dinner. I hope she still likes Fettuccine Alfredo.
As I turned into the parking lot, luck blessed me again as a packed minivan backed out of a space near the apartment house door. I waved at the boisterous tots in the back of the van and they waved back. I didn’t even think twice about whether the doorman would recognize me, and his friendly nod underscored that I had nothing to worry about.
The mailman was just leaving as I entered the building. My mailbox key fit perfectly, revealing the usual flyers for pizza and oil changes, a couple of bills, and assorted solicitations. As I closed the mailbox door, my eye went to the white address label stuck to the front. KEN TIMIAN – APT. 12D. It would say, “Ken and Melissa Timian” soon. I was a little surprised that Melissa wanted to take my last name after we got married, but almost any guy will acknowledge that this is what he hopes for.
I glanced through the envelopes in my hand. I sighed longingly at the notion of changing history to eliminate whoever invented junk mail. Then the light bulb finally went on in my head.
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