Chapter 4
Darkness is a place that many people understand, but for those who don’t, it might as well be a word from a foreign land that has been lost to history. The death of a loved one tends to push some people into this land. Tom followed that darkness to another level altogether. Over the past few months he had buried himself alive in that dead place. There was only one thing on his mind: getting his experiment to work.
“Hey’a, Stretch,” a blonde woman barked. “Toss me another, will ya? For the love of Pete. All you men make a lady beg for a second go-round.” She licked her top lip.
The bartender yelled, “My name isn't Stretch.” He grasped a bottle by its neck. “Dames.”
“What’ya care what I call you? Do your job or get lost.” The woman’s hair flayed out from her mess of a face.
The bartender, Jeff, tipped the bottle and slapped it on the wooden bar top.
He said, “Sally, You’ve been coming here for the last three nights now. You should know how to mind your P’s and Q’s.”
“Yah, yah.” Sally threw the freshly poured drink into the back of her neck. She grunted with satisfaction and settled back into her seat.
Jeff barked, “Well, la-di-da, your droll gaiety shtick is wearing quite thin if you don’t mind me say’n.”
“And I’m over you.” She flipped a flighty smile. “How bout that position as the cigarette girl?”
“And have you drink all the profits? No thanks.”
Sally turned her head over her shoulder in order to focus on a man. With a rising sense of recognition she looked sidelong at him. Maybe someone who could buy her a drink. Or, this someone was who she was waiting for.
A handsome yet rundown gentleman in a tweed jacket settled into a booth.
Jeff said, “What’s your poison, Mister?” He then recognized the man. He said, “Tom, supper is on its way out.”
Jeff the bartender walked back to the bar and on his way he whispered to Sally, “Butt out. Leave him be.”
She ignored the comment.
Tom didn’t look up. Furiously he jabbed his fountain pen into some yellow paper. A pencil would not have handled the abuse. Sally watched in a still excitement that grew with her interest with this man.
The bartender dropped the food off and Tom forced himself to take on half an open-faced roast beef sandwich with gravy and an Old Fitz, plus a side of cigarettes, three of them.
Sally waited until he was finished, but could no longer contain herself so she walked the distance of the bar. Her short boots and medium sway, along with the heavy plant on the heels of her feet as she walked, caused a bouncy sway to her breasts that enticed the men in the gin-mill to pay heed. She slyly settled into the booth. Tom looked up over the frames of his reading glasses with silent eyes, just for a moment, and then he quickly pushed himself back to his work.
“Sally, I said to leave him alone,” announced Jeff.
Tom held quiet.
“Oh, I ain’t doin him no harm,” retorted Sally, “Am I, Handsome?”
Tom said, “It’s okay, Jeff.”
Sally said, “How bout a drink?”
“I’ve one right here, and six more coming.”
“How bout for me?”
Tom nodded to Jeff. Jeff responded and poured Sally’s drink. He brought it over to the table.
There was a raucous laugh that came from somewhere and then two men walked behind Jeff as he set the drink on the table and removed a dirty dish. Both men were in suits. One had no defining features whatsoever. Very plain and quite lame. The other man looked over at Tom. His features were quite defining. It was his skin. His skin was pale-white as if blanched with bleach. It was translucent, too. Blanched skin you could swear you could see through. Blue veins under tight thin skin spread out like a web over his face and neck. He grinned dead teeth at the table.
They moved like ghosts to the back of the bar where Quoits was being played. The two men began to engage in an awkward display of the game. Such an odd sight, two grown men in suits playing Quoits in the backroom of a nondescript nightspot. Faking it at best.
“What’ya working on?” asked Sally.
“I’m a professor, I’ve a project that--” stuttered Tom. He added, “I mean, I’ve classwork to prepare for my students.”
“Wow, brains, too. Oh, my.” She sipped her drink and looked at the table as if maybe she had made a mistake. She was a bit too calculated for being so inebriated. “I believe you might be too classy for this shabby dame.” She winked.
Tom scribbled as if by himself. The two strangers stepped briefly from their game to take off their coats and order a drink. Mr. Pale Yet Translucent looked over his shoulder. Mr. Plain seemed unaware and sipped his whisky from a snifter. His pinkie in the air. His smirk adjusted to a wince when the liquid hit his mouth.
“It’s not that, Sally,” whispered Tom.
Sally smiled. “Oh, you remember my name.”
“I’m married.”
Sally stalled then inquired, “Well, where’s your wedding ring?”
At the comment, Sally put her hand to her mouth with a curt gasp. “Oh, Deary, your hands.”
The backs of Tom’s hands were crusted a bit with blood and the pale scar tissue was swollen, drawing the skin taut. He looked at them and said, “It won’t fit my finger any longer. But, that’s what’s best. I reckon.”
His right hand, the one that held the pen, was bleeding slightly in the cracks. He pulled a handkerchief from his jacket’s breast pocket and blotted at the blood from the ragged laceration.
Sally watched and said, “Thanks for the drink, um--”
“Tom.”
“Thanks, Tom.”
“You’re welcome, Sally.”
Sally went to the bar. Tom continued to work his pen, paused to wake a cigarette to life, turned sideways in his seat and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. The cigarette smoldered until he felt the heat on the backs of his fingers. The ash broke and landed on his shoe. He let the burn linger on his skin. A tear splashed off his watch. It was midnight. Or maybe it was two. There was definitely a two in the time.
As the hours ticked by and the drinks ran dry Tom found a vision. His eyes flitted about under closed lids. His head spun off-kilter like a child’s spinning top that was wobbling as it was about to topple over. Once again all color was gone. His dream led him to a baby that was in a carriage at home and it was a Sunday. Tom was in the kitchen as his wife walked behind him and gave him a hug. She hugged him firmly. He kissed her hand. His lips were wet. Kathy had blood on her fingers. It was blackish red.
Tom smashed awake. He gripped the table with both hands and darted his eyeballs about the room. The bar was dark except a lightbulb that dangled straight down from the end of a black wire over the bottles. He fought to regain his bearings. He felt like a man underwater. Trapped. Drowning. Once he realized where he was, he inhaled deeply and with a gasp. A song, “If I Didn’t Care,” reverberated from the jukebox speakers.
“You okay?” asked Bass.
Bass was seated at a bar stool with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. He spoke in between bites.
“I...I am,” said Tom. “Maybe.” He looked around the empty bar and said, “What time is it?”
Bass looked at his watch and said, “Just shy of three. Why? Got somewhere to be?”
“How’d you find me?”
“I’ve known about you coming to this bottle club for quite some time now.”
“Oh, following me?”
“Something like that. Got a call about three months ago. One night you were stumbling home and someone recognized you, gave me a call. You know how it goes. I promise. Not playing father figure here. Although Sam has been pressuring me. You understand, he’s a worrier.”
“Oh . . . and where is Father-Detective Sam?”
Bass took a bite, chewed, and said, “He’s here somewhere. Always is.”
It was quiet as Tom tried to remember where he left off from his
work. The top of the paper read: Time Shift Circuit.
He whispered: “Time Shift Circuit.”
Bass sat himself down at the booth. He said, “Anything I can help you with?” He smiled.
“No, but your daughter might be able to,” answered Tom.
Tom allowed something like a smile to cross his face, or at least the closest thing to a smile since his wife’s death, just before sharp and deep furrows creased his face.
“Don’t look so shamefaced,” said Bass.
“No, it’s--” The pen went to work. “I’ve got to--”
“You’ve got to sleep.”
Tom wrote rapidly and with force. Bass waited. When inspiration hit, he let it ride. The data on the paper was math. Complicated math.
After a bit of time Tom said, “Drink?”
“I’m game.”
Tom abruptly stopped his writing and stood and tramped across the room to behind the bar. He lifted a bottle: “Old Fitz?”
“Works for me,” said Bass with a smile.
“Snifter?”
Bass adjusted his position and said, “A snifter? No thank you. I drink my whisky, I mean bourbon, from three places: a shot glass, a tumbler and a third that will remain secret. But I can assure you, it ain’t from a dandies’ highfalutin brandy glass, for Christ-sake. Have we met?”
Tom surrendered his first real smile, lifted two tumblers from under the bar-stand and said, “I’m just duping you. Works for me.”
The two friends drank in silence for five minutes. The bond never needed to be out in the open and vocal.
Tom broke the quiet and said, “The phone rang.”
Bass stopped and thought and glared and said, “A message?”
“Yes, it was your daughter. She said the date and time.”
“No kidding? Emily?”
“Yes.”
“And...”
“In three hours.”
“What?”
“Yes, in three hours we make that call . . . or less.”
“Holy Mother of Moses.”
“Emily and I do it.”
Bass tossed a drink.
Tom continued, “She left the time and then some. She let us know in no uncertain terms that there will be trouble.”
“And what kind of trouble are we talking about?” He stretched. “Oh, I wish I’d taken in a nap today.”
“Well, she just said there will be trouble. I don’t want to alter what’s to happen. Because when we’ve made that call, I’m going to make a call to Kathy.”
Bass nodded. Detective Sam slipped in from a shadow.
Tom said, “But the issue is with the two men that were here earlier this evening.”
Sam said, “I saw them. A bit hotfooted I thought.”
Bass replied, “This has become quite the compelling case.”
From the Pen of Greg Norgaard, Book 1: Change the Past Page 7