“An infinite number of timelines,” Ryan said to himself.
“So tomorrow, we’ll head back to Boise and show you the institute,” Duster said. “But the job we are offering, the challenge we are offering, is finding out why sound waves can travel through time. And what else can cut through time as well?”
“Will we be able to also travel to another timeline?” Talia asked.
“Actually, if you accept the job, we will insist on it almost immediately,” Bonnie said.
“Why?” Ryan asked. That made no sense at all.
“We will jump you a hundred years into the future,” Duster said, “to the institute of that time. Then bring you right back.”
“Holy shit,” Ryan said again. “You want to set us in that future time, as if we were born in the future, so anything we do in this time is just lasting slightly over two minutes in the future.”
“Exactly,” Duster said.
“I don’t understand,” Talia said.
“By jumping you to the future and then bringing you back through another crystal,” Bonnie said, “if an accident happened say in a year to either of you and you died, you would end up in the future just two minutes and fifteen seconds from when you left.”
“You are offering us unlimited money,” Ryan said.
Duster nodded. “You will both be rich beyond anything you could ever spend.”
“And you are offering us basic immortality,” Ryan said.
Bonnie and Duster and Dawn all nodded.
“Just for us to do the mathematical research,” Ryan asked, “on how sound can travel through time?”
Again Bonnie and Duster and Dawn all nodded.
Ryan just shook his head, not really believing what they were saying, but knowing in his heart and mind they were telling the truth.
“So we assume you would like time to think about this,” Bonnie said. “And either of you can say no if you like. You just have to abide by the nondisclosure agreement.”
Ryan couldn’t imagine saying no if all this was real.
He glanced at the stunned expression on Talia’s face, then looked at Bonnie and Duster. “Think you might sweeten the deal a little?”
They both instantly looked puzzled.
Ryan smiled. “I always wanted an espresso machine.”
With that, everyone laughed.
Even Talia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
December 24th, 2018
Boise, Idaho
SANDY REEVES, MISS Private Eye with the Big Black Gun, held the front door of the Garden Lounge open for Fred to head through. He had passed by the Garden a hundred times and always thought about stopping. Never had. It had just not been the right time. He never expected Christmas Eve to be that right time.
The place smelled of ancient smoke and green plants and he immediately felt at home.
Much more than at the hotel.
Empty tables cluttered the center of the room and booths filled both side walls. Christmas candles were lit on every table. An old-looking polished-wood bar filled the wall opposite the front door and three men sat on stools near the bar’s center with their backs to the door. They were the only three customers.
A medium-sized man in a white apron was standing behind the bar. He looked up and said, “Holy Shit.”
The three men at the bar turned around as if pulled by the same string as the bartender put a glass on the bar and headed around the end.
He dodged around a few tables with ease. He grabbed Fred’s hand and shook it as if he was seeing an old friend after many years.
Fred studied the bartender’s face. He looked to be in his early fifties, with thinning gray and brown hair. His eyes were green and his smile seemed to fill his entire face.
After what seemed like a long moment, the bartender took a breath and sort of shook himself. “I’m sorry. I’m Radley Stout. I own this place. And I’m really glad you came.”
All Fred could do was shrug. “Not as if I had much else to do. And you did offer a free drink.”
Stout just laughed and patted Fred on the back. “Come on up to the bar. I have a few friends I want you to meet.”
Stout had Fred take the stool on the left of the three men and the lady P.I. took the open stool to their right.
Stout went around behind the bar as he did the introductions.
Dave was the closest. He was an airline pilot and his daughter was the private investigator.
Next to him was a big guy named Carl who did construction and beside him was a convict-looking man by the name of Billy.
“All right,” Fred said to Stout. “Why bring me here?”
Again Stout laughed. “As you said, to have a Christmas drink. Give me a moment and I will explain.”
He rummaged in the drawer under the cash register and came up with a key. Then he went to the end of the bar and unlocked a glass case that was mounted on the wall over an old jukebox.
Everyone at the bar watched in silence as he pulled out three of the four glasses that were in there and walked back to the sink. He rinsed out one of the glasses and held it up for Fred and everyone to see.
It was a crystal-type glass, with the Garden Lounge logo etched near the center and the name Fred over the logo.
Fred now understood why he was here. Damn silly reason. “So you needed a Fred to join the toast this year. That it?”
Stout shook his head, set the glass down on the mat above the ice and started to rinse out the other glasses. “No, actually that glass was yours three years ago.”
No one else said a word. They either watched Stout wash the glasses, or they stared down into their own drink, as if slightly uneasy about something.
Fred had never seen that glass before and had never met Stout before or been in this bar before. This gift horse was starting to look like a bust, just as most of them had in his life. He laughed for a short moment and then said, “Not highly likely.”
“That’s true,” Dave said. “It isn’t highly likely. But I think it’s true.”
Fred turned to Dave.
Dave was a clean-cut sort, with short hair and wrinkles on his forehead that cut lines across his tanned skin.
“Were you there when I supposedly owned that glass?”
Fred pointed in the direction of Stout and the glass. He had just finished washing out a glass that had the name Dave over the logo.
“In a manner of speaking,” Dave said. “I was. But I too do not remember the first time. However, I do remember the second.”
Fred just stared at him for a moment before shaking his head and pushing himself back off the stool. These people were all nuts. Free drink or not, this was just a little too much.
“I knew this entire thing was crazy, but you folks are all a bunch of loonies.”
Stout put the third glass on the rubber mat. It had the name Carl etched on it.
“Fred. Please just hold on for a moment. I just want to buy you a drink and tell you a story. I know you won’t believe me, but what can it hurt? It’s Christmas Eve.”
Sandy looked down the bar and sort of smiled. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe this.”
Fred stopped with one hand still holding onto the back of the bar stool and looked down the line of faces staring at him. It seemed clear that everyone wanted him to stay and everyone was taking this craziness very, very seriously. He took a deep breath and let it out in a noisy sigh.
Sandy laughed. “You said never look a gift horse in the mouth. So stop looking.”
At that he laughed. “All right. One drink and then Miss Private Investigator there can take me back.”
“And a story, too,” Stout said. “Don’t forget.”
Fred nodded and climbed back up on the stool. “A story too. As long as you don’t want me to buy anything.”
Stout nodded and smiled. “I promise. Now what would you like to drink?”
Fred ordered a vodka tonic and for the next half hour the conversation was light and fun. He c
ould feel the heaviness and gloom of the Golden Dream Hotel lifting from his shoulders as everyone laughed and talked and sipped their drinks. There seemed to be a friendship among these people that he had not felt before. A closeness that went far beyond customers in a bar.
Fred ended up asking for a second drink and Stout refilled the special glass. As he placed it on the napkin in front of Fred he said, “I think it’s time for the story.”
Everyone nodded as Stout went back to stand in front of the well where he was sipping on a glass of eggnog. He leaned against the back bar and raised his glass. “First, at toast. To friends again united.”
Fred drank to the toast not knowing what Stout was talking about.
“I had the Garden for just over a year,” Stout said. “And I had some really good, regular customers. But four of those customers had become my good friends. Dave. Carl. You, Fred. And Jess.”
With each name Stout tipped his drink in the person’s direction. With the last name he tipped it in the direction of the glass case that still held one glass over the jukebox.
Fred assumed the name on that glass was Jess.
“Fred,” Stout said, “you see that jukebox there? Everyone here except you knows just how special that jukebox is. This is the part of the story that you will not believe no matter how hard or well I explain it, so just think of this part as fiction. All right?”
Again, Fred just nodded, so Stout went on.
“That jukebox can take a person back to a memory. Not just in your mind, but in real flesh and blood. It’s a sort of time machine.”
“Fiction is right,” Fred said and Stout just held up his hand.
“I discovered how the jukebox worked by accident before I ever opened the Garden. Three years ago on Christmas Eve I decided I would give my four friends a chance to go back into their pasts. A special Christmas present from me. At that time, you were divorced from a woman by the name of Alice and you had a kid.”
Suddenly the bar felt very warm. Stout was assuming that Fred had been a regular in here for almost a year and once been married to Alice. But he knew that wasn’t true. He must have had too much to drink with just two drinks, since it felt as if the room was spinning. How could Stout know about Alice? And Stout was saying that Fred had married her and divorced her after having a kid.
Stout was watching and after a moment he went on. “You had been divorced from Alice for ten years and you hated her. Completely and totally hated her. It was a standing joke among the five of us. You also had a daughter by the name of Jenny.”
“So what happened to her in this crazy world of yours?” Fred asked. His voice had more anger in it than he could remember feeling in recent times.
Stout just shrugged. “I assume she was never born. When you left here through the jukebox, you said the song reminded you of the night you and Alice first made love. The night you conceived Jenny which forced you two to get married out of high school.”
Again the room felt too warm.
The night he and Alice first made love was the night her parents were gone to a Christmas Eve party. Right before going over to her house, he had gone to the drugstore to buy some rubbers. He remembered almost chickening out and then the next thing he knew he had a pack of them in his hand and was heading out of the store.
He and Alice always used one every time they made love. She met another guy a year later and left because she said he was never going to ask her to marry him. She was right. He never did.
“You all right?” Stout asked.
Fred glanced up. Everyone was looking at him. He tried to laugh, but it sounded sort of weak. “You did your research real well. Sandy there must be a really good investigator.”
“She’s good all right,” Stout said and Sandy held up her glass in a thank-you gesture. “But she didn’t find any of this information out. I knew about Alice and your divorce because you told us over and over for almost a year.”
“So how come I didn’t live any of this?”
Stout just sighed. “Because you lived a different life after you changed whatever it was you changed that evening. The only reason I remember you is because I was touching the jukebox when the song ended. For some reason that allows me to remember the old timeline. I remember you being in here, but no one else does.”
He pointed at the glass. “I was holding onto the glass, too, when you didn’t come back.”
“Didn’t come back? What do you mean I didn’t come back?” Again he was trying to keep the anger out of his voice. But all of this was making him mad. And damn tired.
“You changed something while you were back there,” Stout said. “And whatever you changed did not lead you to the Garden again in your new life. At least not until now. If you had not changed anything, you would have come back when the song ended.”
Dave was nodding. “That happens every year to me. This year I plan to go back and watch Sandy being born. It will be a Christmas present to myself. Trust me, I will be very careful to not change anything.”
Fred looked at Dave for a moment and then shook his head. “So why bring me back here now. Assuming that all this is true, which I find not likely, why now?”
Now it was Stout’s turn to look slightly embarrassed. “I guess I just wanted the old group back together again on Christmas Eve. Selfish, I guess.”
“Looks like you didn’t pull it off,” Fred said. “What about that other glass? Didn’t your P.I. there find the guy?”
Stout took a sip of his eggnog and then looked up. Fred could see the pain in Stout’s eyes and the sadness that coated his face. The silence in the bar seemed to fill the room with a thick, heavy feel.
“Sandy found him all right,” Stout said. “He changed something, also, when he went back that Christmas Eve three years ago. In the new world he created he was killed by a drunk driver two years before I opened the Garden. We found him up in Memorial Cemetery.”
Fred shook his head in disbelief and looked down at his name in the old glass. “So what did I do in the previous life? Be a lawyer or something?”
Stout took a deep breath and then laughed. “Not hardly. You worked for the city. I think you had something to do with streets or something like that.”
It was Fred’s turn to laugh. “I did that in this life, too. Fancy that. So how come, if that machine can change someone’s past, you just don’t go back and stop that guy from getting killed?”
Stout shook his head. “I am actually glad it doesn’t work that way. Way too much responsibility. No, you can only go back to your own memories. You can’t change other people’s memories. Or their lives.”
Dave stood. “Tell you what, Stout. Plug in that jukebox and I will go watch my daughter being born. That might just give old Fred here a new outlook on life.”
Stout shrugged and walked down the length of the bar to the jukebox. Dave downed the last of his drink and joined him.
“You got the record I brought on there?” Dave asked as Stout reached around behind the jukebox and plugged it in. The colored lights flickered for a moment and then held steady. It was a beautiful old Wurlitzer, with the chrome arch, red, green and blue colored lights, and bright red buttons. Inside Fred could see the disk full of forty-five records all waiting to be played.
“Just punch up B-4,” Stout said and handed Dave a quarter.
Everyone at the bar had swung around on their stools and were watching intently. Fred felt uneasy and nervous, even though he knew the only thing that would happen was that the song would start playing and that would be that.
Dave dropped the quarter into the slot, punched the two buttons and then stood back as the machine clicked and whirred. Inside Fred could see a record being picked up and placed on the turntable.
Stout saluted Dave.
“Don’t go changing anything, Dad,” Sandy said. “I want to be here when you get back.”
Dave laughed. “Don’t worry. Just going to watch.”
The jukebox clicked and the song starte
d. Fred recognized it immediately. An old Rick Nelson song called, “It’s Up To You.”
That song reminded Fred of...
The bar shifted and was gone. For a quick instant he felt dizzy and then everything went black.
And then came back to a bright white spotlight.
Right in his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
About two years later…
June 10th, 2020
Central Wilderness Area, Idaho
TALIA HAD NO doubt she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, so when Ryan suggested the two of them get coats and go sit on the deck, she suggested instead that they just sit by the fire.
Dawn showed them where they could get hot tea or soft drinks in the kitchen and then she excused herself and headed off to bed. Duster and Bonnie had already retired for the night, and no lodge employees were left at all.
So it was just the two of them with a slightly crackling wood fire in a large stone fireplace in a lodge that felt more comfortable than almost any place Talia had been in before.
She could easily see herself living here at times. Easily. And she didn’t consider herself any sort of mountain person. But this lodge was that special.
They pulled two of the thick overstuffed chairs closer to each other in front of the fire and turned them so they slightly faced each other. The chairs were the most comfortable Talia could remember, not too hard, but yet soft enough to feel like she was being embraced by the fabric.
Talia had made herself a cup of tea and Ryan was sipping on a Diet Coke. The orange of the flames gave his face a sort of deeper color that made him look even more handsome than he already was. And the light from the fire caught his dark eyes at times and made them almost look as if they were twinkling.
She had read far too many romance novels in her time to not realize what this situation was, and she didn’t mind that at all.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, both lost in their own thoughts. And it felt comfortable.
Very comfortable.
Talia could have never imagined sitting and just thinking (without saying anything) beside a handsome man. And she wasn’t the slightest bit nervous and trying to think of something to say.
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