The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3)

by John A. Heldt

  She turned north along the Ave, a major north-south arterial of the university district, and soon encountered another familiar landmark: the Mad Dog. From the outside, the celebrated tavern looked much like the place she had visited a few times with Joel in 1941.

  From the inside, it looked much more modern. Grace saw updated signs, brighter lighting, and large televisions that hung from the ceiling in strategic locations. She also heard music but could not locate its source. The console radios and jukeboxes she recalled had been replaced by vending machines. Within a minute, a waitress led her to a small table near the back.

  Grace ordered a glass of red wine from a wine menu that looked like a food menu. She could not believe the choices that were available to her, as a consumer, in 2000. Then again, she could not believe a lot of things about this mysterious time.

  When the waitress returned with her order, Grace gave her five one-dollar bills and settled into a surprisingly comfortable wooden chair. She observed the dozen or so people around her and noticed that most looked happy. A few talked about their summer plans. One announced a new job. Then Grace turned to her right and saw a woman in a booth that did not look happy. In fact, she looked downright distressed.

  "Is something wrong?" Grace asked. "You seem upset."

  "It must be the tears," the woman said with a laugh. "They're always the first clue."

  Grace pulled a rough paper napkin from a dispenser at her table and offered it to the woman.

  "Take this. It's not a tissue, but it will help."

  "Thanks."

  "Do you mind if I join you?" Grace asked.

  "Feel free. No one else seems to want to tonight."

  Grace grabbed her glass, left her table, and slid into the booth's empty seat. She nudged a nearly empty pitcher of beer to the side, eyed her new acquaintance, and stuck out a hand.

  "I'm Grace. It's nice to meet you."

  The woman, who appeared to be in her early twenties, was pretty. She had long brown hair, amber eyes, and olive skin that suggested a recent trip to the tropics. Like Grace, she wore a white blouse and a denim skirt. She wiped her eyes with the napkin and then took Grace's hand.

  "I'm Jana. Jana Lamoreaux."

  "I'm sorry to see you so sad, Jana. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Sure. You can go fetch my boyfriend and knock some sense into him. I think he dumped me tonight, and I don't know why."

  Grace offered a reassuring smile.

  "I know this is probably no comfort to you, but I can relate. My boyfriend dumped me two weeks ago and I don't know why. I've come here to look for him."

  "Let me guess," Jana said. "He said he had a lot of thinking to do and needed time alone to find some answers."

  "No," Grace said. "He just ran off."

  Jana laughed.

  "Well, I guess you do have it worse than me. There's still a chance my boyfriend might come back, but I doubt he will. We dated for two years. I thought we had something special, but now I see it was all an illusion."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I say it because it's probably true. He's been very distant the past couple of weeks. He's said the right things and done the right things, but he's said and done them with little enthusiasm. He hasn't been the same since he went on a trip to Yellowstone with his buddy."

  "Is he a student?"

  "He is, or was. Like me, he graduated yesterday."

  "Maybe he's nervous about entering the real world. I'd give him a little more time. I'm sure he'll come around. He probably just needs a few days to think about his future."

  "You may be right," Jana said, "but I don't think so. He's pretty well off. His family is loaded and he has a lot of friends in important places. I would be shocked if he doesn't find a good job by the end of the summer. I think the problem lies elsewhere."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can't prove it, but I think he met someone on his trip. I think he's found someone else."

  CHAPTER 14: GRACE

  When Grace returned to Penelope's house, she found her host reading the newspaper and drinking decaffeinated tea at the dining room table. Several envelopes, including a few that had been opened, cluttered a space at her side.

  "Did you have a nice walk?"

  "I did," Grace answered. "It's such a beautiful evening. I just couldn't pass it up."

  "There's no need to explain yourself, dear. Lovely young women like you shouldn't be cooped up with boring old women like me."

  "You're not boring."

  "Oh, yes I am. But that's all right. I've had a long, not-so-boring life.

  Grace laughed.

  "Where did you go?" Penelope asked.

  "I walked around the neighborhood and ended up at the Mad Dog."

  "Please tell me you had an interesting encounter with a handsome man."

  "No," Grace said. "I had an interesting encounter with a pretty woman. She was very sad and needed some comfort. Her boyfriend had just left her."

  Penelope shook her head.

  "I've seen a lot of that through the years. Once the boys get their college degrees, they don't think they need the girls who have supported them. They head off into the big blue world for something better, but it's rarely better. Just more expensive."

  Grace laughed again. She wondered whether it were possible to bottle Penelope's wit and wisdom. It would probably fetch a fair price at market.

  "In any case, I think she's better. I told her that I had had a similar experience. I think misery really does like company. She was smiling when I left."

  "Good," Penelope said. "That's good. She'll be fine, just as I'm sure that you'll be fine. Women today are strong. They adapt better to setbacks. Have you had any luck tracking down your elusive young man?"

  "No. But I remain hopeful that I'll find him."

  Penelope smiled weakly and then frowned. She stirred her tea and pushed the paper aside.

  "I'm sure that you will. But that brings me to something I've been meaning to talk to you about for a few days."

  "What's that?" Grace asked.

  "Your future. My daughter and son-in-law will return on Wednesday and again be able to take care of most of my needs. But I want you to know that you're welcome to stay here as long as you wish. I want you to find your beau – or at least find a job and a place of your own."

  "Thank you. I think I'll find him soon, or at least something soon, but if I don't I'd be happy to stay here a little longer. I do enjoy your company, and I don't mind at all helping out. It's the least I can do for someone who's been so kind to me."

  Penelope smiled and grabbed Grace's hand.

  "Oh, I forgot to tell you that something came in the mail for you today. It's from the university library. It's right here."

  Penelope handed Grace a manila envelope. It was thick, as if stuffed full of papers.

  Grace's heart beat a little faster as she eyed the corner of the envelope and saw the name Jennifer Prescott written above the return address. The woman who had offered to help her had found something. The only question was what.

  Grace opened the envelope and removed several letter-size sheets of paper. She glanced first at a note Jennifer had written on library stationery.

  "Here is what I found," the librarian wrote. "Sorry I could not find more."

  Grace examined eight more sheets and frowned. They were photocopies of pages from local phone directories, a comprehensive listing of all the J. Smiths in the Puget Sound area. She had already covered this ground and had personally called all eleven of the listed Joel Smiths. None had admitted to breaking her heart or traveling through time in the past month.

  Grace quickly moved on to the next item, a copy of a lengthy obituary. When she reviewed its particulars, she closed her eyes and sank in her chair. Her best friend was dead. Virginia Gillette Jorgenson of Seattle had died in 1995 of lung cancer at age 75.

  Ginny had apparently blazed several trails as a newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher and won more
than a dozen awards in her field. She had also belonged to four service organizations and left behind three children, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

  The newspaper had not seen fit to list the survivors by name. It had apparently cut the names from the bottom of the article for reasons of space.

  Grace found the obit disappointing. She wanted the names of the survivors. She wanted to know where they lived and whether one of the eight grandchildren missed a studious blonde he had dumped on a rainy doorstep. But she recognized that the answers she sought would probably not come in one tidy package.

  She paused for a moment and then turned to the last enclosure. It was a copy of a March 2000 news article on Katherine "Katie" Kobayashi Saito. Katie, age 80, had apparently created a new charity with money from a foundation she had started with her husband. Scribbled to the side of the article was Mrs. Saito's current phone number and street address.

  Grace reviewed each of the papers one more time and then shoved them into the envelope. She then slid the envelope into her skirt pocket and glanced at Penelope, who looked at her with obvious concern.

  "Are you OK, dear?"

  "I'm fine," Grace said. "But I do have a question."

  "Ask away."

  "Will you be OK if I leave tomorrow for a day or two?"

  Penelope laughed.

  "I've been taking care of myself for most of my eighty-nine years. I think I can manage until Doris gets back. Why do you ask?"

  "I believe I've found a big piece to my puzzle – a way to find Joel – but I won't know for sure until I contact a friend I haven't seen in a very long time."

  "Wouldn't it be better to call?"

  Grace shook her head.

  "Not in this case."

  "Then take all the time you need," Penelope said. "I'll be fine. I can always call someone at the senior center if I need anything. Do you need my bus pass? If you do, just say so."

  "I'll need a bus ticket, Penelope, but I don't think yours will do."

  "I don't understand."

  "I need to go out of the city," Grace said. "I need to go to Portland."

  CHAPTER 15: KATHERINE

  Portland, Oregon – Tuesday, June 13, 2000

  Katherine Saito arranged the flowers in the vase and set them on the dining room table. She knew that only two people would probably ever see her creative display of carnations and mums, but she didn't care. She would appreciate the colorful assembly, even if no one else did.

  Life had been quiet in the large house since Sunday, when daughter Joyce and her husband Bill had returned to Grants Pass with their five school-age children. Katie loved the kids. She loved their boundless curiosity and limitless energy. They kept her young. But she knew her ability to enjoy them was coming to an end. She could not move as well as she had even a few years ago. She certainly could not hear as well. Getting old was a pain.

  Katie grabbed her afternoon coffee – decaf, of course – and walked toward a large window that overlooked a resplendent redwood deck, a well-landscaped backyard, and the lush Tualatin Valley. She never tired of the view – a view that had been hers since her husband Walter, a Portland attorney, had built the sprawling mansion on a hilltop west of the city in 1960.

  She smiled slightly as she watched Walter strike plastic golf balls in the spacious yard under the watchful eyes of Butch, their three-year-old Rottweiler. She and Walter had come a long way since 1943, when they had been married in Minidoka, a war relocation center for Japanese Americans near Twin Falls, Idaho.

  They had gone there with their families in the autumn of 1942, shortly after President Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066 and had decided that thousands of Americans who had been born and bred on U.S. soil suddenly posed a risk to national security. The forced relocation had left Katherine Kobayashi bitter, resentful, and distrustful of anyone in authority.

  Walter had taken the change in stride. Even when confined to the crowded, dusty hellhole, he had maintained a positive outlook. He knew that times would eventually change and that both of them would survive – even thrive – in a world that had knocked them down.

  But Walter hadn't been the only one to see the shifting winds. Someone else had seen change coming in the early 1940s. Someone else had known change was coming, and he had provided Katie with the financial means to take advantage of that change.

  Katie let her mind wander as she recalled the happy, peaceful summer of 1941, when a 22-year-old cowboy from Montana had come to Seattle and profoundly changed her life and the lives of her dearest friends. Oh, what a time they had had. Oh, what a time that had been.

  She had seen him just once since December of that fateful year – in September 1995, when she had attended the funeral of Virginia Gillette Jorgenson. He was a different person, of course. He was a 17-year-old high school senior who had not yet traveled through time to 1941, a boy who did not know that the somber Japanese woman greeting him in the receiving line would someday be his very good friend and a confidante of the woman he loved.

  Katie had initially doubted his time-travel story, which he had told in a December 1941 farewell letter. Though she had always wondered what had become of him and the young woman who had left Seattle to find him, she had difficulty believing in something that most physicists believed was impossible. But when Ginny Jorgenson's daughter Cindy Smith gave birth to a boy in 1978 and named him Joel, the impossible had suddenly become believable.

  It had become more believable with each passing year, as the boy pictured in Christmas cards Katie had received from Ginny and then Cindy began to resemble the boy she had known in college. By the time Katie had finally met Joel at the funeral, she had abandoned all doubt.

  The question now was what to do with knowledge that she had possessed for years. Katie had every reason to believe that Joel's time travel had come full circle. When she had called Cindy Smith Monday night to inquire about a graduation gift, she had been told that Joel had recently returned from the Rockies. He had gone hiking and biking with a friend in Yellowstone National Park and had explored an abandoned mine in Montana on his way back.

  Katie had also learned that Joel was going through a few personal struggles and had planned to spend some time alone in the coming days in nearby Seaside, Oregon. Seeing an opportunity to have a meaningful reunion with her long-lost friend, Katie had asked for and received Joel's travel itinerary. She now had a dossier on Mr. Smith as thick as a small-town phone book.

  Mrs. Saito had far less on Grace Vandenberg. She had seen neither hide nor hair of her friend since she had walked out of her life on the evening of December 7, 1941. She knew that Grace had followed Joel to Montana – a call to Helena's Buick dealer had confirmed as much – and knew that she'd had enough information to find him. But Grace had not yet materialized, to her knowledge, and her absence in the modern world had begun to cause Katie great concern.

  Katie saw Walter traipse through her petunias, in an apparent search for a missing ball, and knocked on the window to signal her alarm. She loved her flowers and didn't want to see them trampled by a duffer who viewed the backyard as Pebble Beach. But she also adored the man who had given her so much, including a life she'd once thought she'd never have.

  Satisfied that Walter Saito was not about to flatten the flora, Katie grabbed her half-empty mug, which validated her status as "Number One Grandma," and walked toward the kitchen. She made it about halfway to her destination when she heard the doorbell ring.

  Curious as to who might be paying a call at this unusual hour, Katie walked first to a bay window in the living room. The rightmost pane offered an unobstructed view of the front porch. When she reached the window, she peered through the tinted glass and saw a young woman.

  Wearing a short yellow dress, the woman appeared fidgety. She moved her head frequently, tapped her fingers on a thigh, and wiggled her toes in thrift-store sandals. Twice she looked toward the bay window. Twice she turned away.

  Katie smiled as she watched the w
oman. She appeared every bit as sweet and vulnerable as she had remembered – and, of course, as beautiful. The decades may have taken a toll on three of the one-time housemates of Klickitat Avenue but not this one. Time had not diminished her milky skin or platinum locks. She had remained an Eden for the eyes.

  Katie stepped away from the window and walked to the entry. She paused to catch her breath, brush away a tear, and fully prepare for a moment she had feared would never come. When she opened the imposing front door, she lifted her head and gazed upon Grace Vandenberg for the first time in fifty-nine years.

  "Welcome to Portland, Grace. I've been expecting you."

  CHAPTER 16: GRACE

  Wednesday, June 14, 2000

  Grace watched the noontime masses go by and marveled at how shopping had changed in six decades. In 1941 she would have driven to a department store to buy clothes and then driven somewhere else for a bite to eat. In 2000 all she had to do was walk from place to place inside one immense air-conditioned building.

  "What do you call a place like this?"

  "Most people call it a shopping mall," Katie said. "I call it organized chaos."

  Grace giggled.

  "I mean this part of the mall, where we are now. What do you call this?"

  "This, my dear, is a food court."

  Grace looked beyond their table for two to the far edge of the public space, where more than a dozen food vendors offered everything from pizza and pretzels to cupcakes and cinnamon rolls. She had opted for a plate of sweet and sour pork, or what a sign at one of the food stations called "authentic Chinese cuisine." But she knew from living in Nanking for three years that the dish was about as authentic as the fortune cookie on her plate.

  Grace paused for a moment as she thought of that place. What a happy and magical home it had been, at least before the Japanese army and the weight of the world came crashing in. She put her plastic fork on her paper plate and gazed at the woman who had purchased her lunch.