Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  Corbin seized him by the hair before he could finish. He tore the man's face from the table and forced his head back until it was braced upon the lower frame of the huge canvas of nudes. For a long moment, Corbin held the man there, suspended. He wanted the man to look into his own eyes and see a hatred greater than his own, and he wanted the man to see the right fist that Corbin held cocked at his ear. The thin man tried to snarl or curse at Corbin, but the sound turned into the whelp of a frightened dog as he saw the fist creeping slowly back and then uncoiling, smashing flat against his nose. Blinded now, and shrieking, the man in black felt his eyes being hammered shut by the chopping blows that followed.

  At last Corbin released his grip and let the torn and moaning mass slide to the floor. A tickle of hairs at the back of his neck caused him to sidestep and whirl in an upright boxer's stance. He was too late. A cane whipped downward, glancing off his temple and crashing against his collarbone. His left arm went numb. A second cane hooked over his right arm as the cane of the first man rose up to strike again. But it did not fall. It paused, quivering at the top of its arc. Its owner, his face suddenly afraid, moved his lips foolishly, first toward Corbin, then toward the man in the shoulder-length hair whose hand was clamped powerfully over his wrist.

  “Now that, you see, sir,” said the man who'd been watching from the bar, “is a foul.” He placed his other hand over the forearm that held the cane and, with a sudden wrench, dislocated the shoulder of the man who had struck Corbin and sent him reeling, howling, across the semiconscious form of his companion. The smaller man from the bar, the actor, now stepped past the one in the Western hat and, with his thumb and forefinger, seized the nose of the one who'd hooked Corbin’s arm.

  “And that, sir, was another.” He tweaked the nose until it bled, then underscored the point with a backhand slap across the face.

  “That will do, gentlemen.” A large man, bigger and more imposing than the others and dressed in formal attire, entered the bar from what looked like a dining room. He looked at Corbin with what seemed to be a mixture of approval and rebuke.

  ”A fair fight, Oscar,” said the long-haired man. ”A thrashing well deserved.”

  “Be that as it may, Colonel, it cannot be permitted here. Shall we call it a day?”

  The one he called Colonel turned to the bar and picked up a brandy, which he handed to Corbin, who was using his teeth to wrap a napkin around his knuckles.

  “With my compliments, sir,” he said. “After this settles your blood, it might be well if Nat and I watch your back until you are safely in a cab.”

  Jonathan Corbin loosed his fingers from their grip of Gwen's shag rug and drew the hot left hand farther back from the fire. Eyes still closed, he felt his hand brush against a soft bare calf that was almost equally warm. He stroked it tenderly and murmured with pleasure at the touch of her cheek against his and at the fragrance of her hair. One eye opened just a little. Enough to notice, to his mild surprise, that her hair seemed almost golden in the firelight. Once more he felt himself begin to swell and stiffen. He raised his body slightly to ease the pressure of her weight. Gwen felt the movement and understood the reason for it. Easing herself off his body, she knelt at his side and turned him, unresisting, onto his back. He was nearly nude, uncovered except for the terry sleeves that now bound his lower arms loosely to his sides. He smiled as he felt her cool hands tracing over his bare chest. His body quivered at the touch of her hair, which he knew meant her lips would soon follow. Slowly, so lightly, they caressed the skin of his chest and then began their exploration of his body. Her fingers found the part that had stiffened and their touch made it leap. Corbin shuddered as her lips worked lower. His back arched in a spasm of anticipation and his wrists strained against the robe that held them. A part of him delighted in what she was about to do, yet another part could not believe that such a thing was happening. She was touching him. Kissing him: Kissing him there. He felt the brushing of her lips and the warm moist touch of her tongue as they moved slowly along its underside. He felt the lips part. What was she doing? He felt the hot wetness of her mouth as it closed over. “What... what are you doing to me?”

  She raised her head and looked at him, a smile of mischief on her face. But the smile faded quickly as she saw the confusion, the discomfort, even something approaching revulsion in his eyes. She saw those eyes now darting across her features, to her mouth, to her own eyes, to her hair. Especially her hair. Something seemed to surprise him about her hair.

  “Damn!” Gwen Leamas wiped the moisture from her lips and sat upright. “Damn!” she repeated more sharply. She reached for the flap of his robe and threw it roughly across his body.

  Corbin tried to rise but fell back in the tangle of the bathrobe. She offered him no help. He rolled quickly onto one side and, freeing himself from the terry cloth, pushed himself into a sitting position facing her. He reached for her shoulders but she jerked away.

  “Gwen, I didn't...” Corbin stammered, searching for words. “Gwen, I was dreaming. There was a fight, a fist-fight. Then suddenly I was here with you and I—”

  “Like bloody hell, you were,” Gwen Leamas spat “You were here with her.”

  “Gwen.” He reached again and she slashed at his hands.

  “What is it, Jonathan?” she asked. The fire danced off pools of moisture that were forming in her eyes. “Doesn't your precious Margaret go down on you? Or is she too much of a lady for anything but the fucking missionary position? To show pleasure is unseemly is what my great-grandmother used to say. Just close your eyes, dear, and think of England. Well, fuck off, Jonathan Corbin. I'll not subject you to my sluttish ways ever again. That, I promise you.”

  “Margaret was a whore,” Corbin said quietly, his voice almost a whisper.

  Gwen straightened. First confusion, then surprise, then a growing astonishment softened her features. Most of the anger and hurt drained quickly away. Because in Jonathan's eyes she saw an anguish far more profound and crushing than her own.

  “Your eggs,” she said, setting the tray on the floor between them. Corbin glanced at the steaming plates and mugs of coffee and then at Gwen, who had changed into an unalluring quilted robe that reached the floor. He picked up a muffin half and spread it thickly with marmalade. This he offered to Gwen as she settled facing the dying fire.

  “How did you know that?” she asked, not looking at him. “About Margaret being a whore, I mean.”

  “It was this dream.” Corbin made a helpless motion with his hands as if uncertain how to tell it. He was not even sure it was a dream.

  “You were with Margaret and she was a whore?”

  “No.” Corbin shook his head. ”I tried to tell you before. I was in a big elaborate bar. It might have been a men's club because there weren't any women, but I think the place was a hotel. There was a fight. I went there to beat up a man I know, who I think I've always known, but I just can't seem to place him. After I belted him a few times, he told me he was going to get me and my whore. He was talking about cutting up her face. I knew that he was talking about Margaret.”

  “The fight was over Margaret?”

  “No.” Corbin took a long sip of coffee. “My impression is no. She didn't enter into it until the man threatened her. I don't think I know why I hit him. But I hated the son of a bitch and could happily have blown his head off except that I wanted other people to see what a coward he was.”

  “Jonathan”—Gwen Leamas kept her eyes on the scrambled eggs she held—“are you in love with Margaret?”

  “No.” Not the way you think.

  “You say that as if you're certain.”

  ”I think the ghost is in love with her,” Corbin said slowly. “The man I become when it snows, the man I was in that fight, I think he's in love with her. I know that they've had sex between them. A lot of it. But as for the kind of sex, I think what you said before was right. I think it's very basic. I also think it's all he knows. Maybe it isn't all Margaret knows, but I think
he would have been shocked if she tried anything fancy with him.”

  “Which, it seems, is what happened.” Gwen made a face. “You're telling me that I was about to give a blow job to a ghost.”

  Corbin winced.

  “Well?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what, exactly?”

  “It's true that...” Corbin paused, again sipping from his mug, once more searching for the words. “It's true that when I came out of the dream, I thought for an instant that you were Margaret, and I was a little shocked to see blond hair. But that was all me. It wasn't the ghost. I, Jonathan Corbin, was lying there naked with this person named Margaret and we were going to have sex. I was horrified. It's true that at first I thought it was the kind of sex that bothered me. But it wasn't. It was any kind of sex. Missionary, S and M, or hanging from a chandelier, it wouldn't have mattered. Sex between me and Margaret just seemed so terribly, awfully wrong.”

  Gwen leaned toward him and took his hand. “Have you any idea why?”

  “None.” He touched her fingers to his lips. “It's about the way I'd feel if I woke up tomorrow morning and found myself in the buff with your sister.”

  “You're saying that lovemaking with Margaret is inappropriate. Even though she seems to be a prostitute.”

  “Yes.”

  “That's an interesting puzzle all by itself. And you're certain, by the way, that Margaret was not the same woman you left frozen in the snow?”

  “I'm sure. They weren't anything alike.”

  “But you said the murdered one was young and attractive. And dark-haired.”

  Corbin nodded.

  “What if you woke up in the buff with that one? How would you feel?” .

  A very good question, Corbin thought. Also an unpleasant question for some reason, though not an upsetting one. His mind wanted to fly from it. It wanted instead to replay the scene in the hotel bar where he pummeled the tall, thin man he hated so. Could the tight have been over that woman? He wasn't sure.

  “Just plain disgust,” he answered. ”I don't like her.”

  ”I daresay.”

  Corbin couldn't help but smile at the dimension of his own understatement. I don't like her. I chased her through a blizzard in the black of night and pinned her down in the driving sleet until it covered her and she was dead. I didn't like her.

  “It's good,” Gwen told him, “to see you getting a bit more relaxed about this.”

  ”I guess it's a relief to be able to talk about it.”

  “Are you ready to talk to a professional?” She expected Corbin's hand to stiffen and pull away, but it didn't.

  “You're kidding, aren't you?” he asked. But he did not seem upset by the question.

  “I'm quite serious,” she said evenly. ”I assumed you'd want to get to the root of all this. And it strikes me that a psychiatrist might help you do so more dispassionately than you're likely to manage by yourself.”

  “It struck me too,” he admitted. “Months ago. But can you imagine how long it would take a shrink to even get around to considering the possibility that I'm haunted? Besides, it's almost spring. If the ghost only turns up when it snows, I might spend the next eight months thinking the guy really helped me and then be right back where I started as soon as the temperature drops below freezing again.”

  “This ghost is in your mind, Jonathan. Surely you realize that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Now he did let go of her hand. He pushed to his feet and wandered the several steps to Gwen's window, holding back the curtains long enough to see that the snow rushing past the streetlight had not slackened. “But it's real,” he added.

  “Jonathan—”

  “Don't bother saying that it's only real to me. I'm dreaming things, even seeing things, that did happen. I'm seeing details I don't think I could possibly imagine unless I'd lived with them and remembered them. I know almost nothing about horse-drawn vehicles and yet right now I could name almost every kind of carriage or wagon I've seen on those streets. I can tell you how to drive a drag and I could probably show you. I could see some of those carriages in the street and be able to tell you what family owns them from a block away. The Vanderbilts, for example, always had maroon livery. The Astors' was blue. I can remember slang phrases and speech idioms I've never heard anyone use in my life. ‘Throw him down, McCloskey' springs to mind.”

  “Who is McCloskey?”

  “No one. I mean, it's a saying. It's the equivalent of ‘Watch out’ or ‘That's all she wrote.’ It's probably from a song of a popular joke of the time. I can even tell you who I heard use it. It was a big tough Irishman named John Flood who I think taught the ghost how to fight. I know other things too. I can tell you the styles of clothing people wore. I can even tell you what they drank in cold weather. And as long as you've made up your mind that I'm slipping over the edge, I'll tell you that you can also add paranoia to your diagnosis. There's a man out there who hates me and wants me dead.”

  “The man you thrashed in the bar?”

  “As it happens, yes.” Corbin's voice remained strong. ”A man I, or someone, beat hell out of several lifetimes ago is still out there and he's after me. How's that for funny-farm material?”

  Gwen ignored this last. “You've considered, I suppose, that you might have lived before.”

  “Which would make me a different kind of nuts.”

  “Not at all. A third of the world believes in reincarnation. Who's to say they're all wrong?”

  Corbin shook his head. “This is not the same. Those people feel they've lived a lot of different lives without really knowing very much about any one of them. I don't feel like I've lived before. What's going on here is that I remember very specific events and even emotions in the life of a man who was definitely not me. But I'm seeing them through his eyes. Whatever that is, it's not like any reincarnation I've ever heard of.”

  “The house you bought in Connecticut. Was it his house?”

  ”I don't know. I don't think so. Everything about it seemed familiar except the upper floors. It's like I've been there but only as a guest. The damnedest thing about it is that I don't feel like him when I'm in that house. It's a very different feeling. Very happy. Like a...” Corbin let his voice trail off.

  “Like someone else entirely?” Gwen asked. ”A third person?”

  ”I don't know. Maybe. When I try to make sense out of that I just... The truth is I don't even try. I just enjoy it.”

  “Jonathan”—she rose to her knees—“perhaps trying to reason this out is not the way. Perhaps what you must do is go along with it and follow it where it leads.”

  He shook his head blankly. Gwen put down the plates she'd been gathering and stood up, stepping closer to him.

  “Whatever is happening here,” she told him, “is very real to you. And yet you fight against believing that it's real. At times you even feel that you are being possessed and yet it's at those very times that you are the least frightened. My suggestion, Jonathan, simple-minded though it may be, is that you make up your mind that you are not mad, that all of this is quite real, or was, and that you begin trusting and following your feelings until we are able to trace down their source.”

  “You believe this?” he asked. “You think it could really have happened?”

  “How the hell do I know?” She threw up her hands. “But as for finding out, you're certainly not short on clues. Tomorrow, we can try to retrace this route you keep taking during the storm. We can just walk around midtown in the light of day until you see a part that strikes a chord. Or we can go over to the New York Historical Society and look at old photographs, or to the library and look at old newspapers. And if that doesn't work, we can go up to Greenwich and do the same things. And why are you grinning at me like a bloody imbecile?”

  He took her to her bedroom, where they made love until the blackness outside her window had softened to a pearl gray. He made love to her, fighting sleep, until he knew that he would sleep without drea
ms. He made love to her in all the ways he could think of that would keep Margaret away.

  Lesko had not planned to follow Dancer. Too easy to get spotted. All Dancer would have to do was turn a corner anywhere in Grand Central and wait, and he'd see Lesko, who was not easy to miss, and that would be all she wrote. What Lesko had planned to do was walk up to the Ticketron outlet in the Pan Am Building and see what Knicks tickets he could get and then maybe get a steak next door in Charley Brown's before he took the subway home to Queens. But the Ticketron window had closed down early and Charley Brown's was packed, so Lesko walked on to the newsstand past the public phones, where he could at least get a couple of Milky Ways to tide him over. He'd just passed the first phone booth when he smelled the Aramis. He kept on moving.

  Could it really be Dancer? he wondered as he paid for his candy bars. What are the odds against finding two people in the same station who sponge on enough of that fruit juice to penetrate a phone booth door? Lesko eased himself down the row of telephones and peeked quickly into the last. There was the haircut. It was Dancer all right. And he was making a report.

  Lesko couldn't hear the words very clearly but he heard the tone. It was respectful enough but not really deferential. As in, Don't worry, I'm handling it. This mildly surprised Lesko, who had pegged Dancer as your basic toady with whoever held the high cards. And now he was trying to end the conversation. Sir. Lesko heard him say sir. But not like he meant it. Later, sir. Something like, I'll get back to you later when I have more time. Lesko braced himself to get quickly out of sight if Dancer touched the phone booth door.