Interloper at Glencoe

by Julianne Lee

  Outside the courtyard, along the roadway, she rather cringed at the cars speeding past, but stuck to the white stone walkway and hoped they would all stay where they belonged. Black pavement stretched into the distance, crowded with the roaring carriages. The air smelled dark. Burnt, in a way. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, and she found herself taking deeper breaths for a lack of air. It seemed thicker than the air in Glencoe.

  She walked along the stone, toward a crossroads where lamps hung on poles that reached across the roadway. As she approached, she saw that the cars stopped under them if they were red, but continued on if they were green. Signals. She’d seen them last night when she and Nick were riding in his car. It was a mystery how the signals knew to change, but since everyone else seemed to accept it she figured she could also. She walked to the crossroad.

  A teenage boy dressed all in black, his hair in short, white spikes all over his head, waited there. He stared at a pole across the way, on which hung a box displaying a red hand. Red meant stop, and the hand made that plain. The boy wasn’t moving, and Beth didn’t blame him, for the cars crossing his path were moving exceedingly fast. She could feel the wind from them as they went by, and smell the stink of them.

  Then the picture on the box changed to a white man walking. The approaching cars stopped, and the boy stepped into the roadway to hurry across. So Beth gathered that a red hand meant “stay where you are” and a white man meant “walk across.” Simple enough. She stood and watched the boy go into a shop across the way. It was a temptation to follow, but as she looked around she saw that the roadway was lined with structures that all looked the same. Plain stone faces and rows of balconies as far as she could see. She could easily become lost among them and find herself unable to tell which was Nick’s. He would return home, and never be able to find her with all these people moving about. Once the black-clad boy was out of sight, she turned and went back to Nick’s chambers where things were just a bit more familiar.

  It was cool in here. Much cooler than out in the sunshine, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She knew how to turn on the lamps now, and thought about doing that, but decided she could see well enough as her vision cleared from the bright sunshine. The contraption hung on the kitchen wall began to make a tweeting noise, and she went to see what was wrong with it. The sound was intermittent. Regular. Tweeeet... silence. Tweeeet... silence. She reached for it to pick it up the way she’d seen Nick so yesterday, and held it to her ear as he had. Nick had spoken of voices coming through a wire, but she heard nothing.

  Then she jerked with surprise to hear Nick inside the thing. “Beth?”

  Och. “Nick?”

  “Beth. Good. You’ve figured out the phone.”

  She drew herself up, a bit stung. “Not so difficult. I lifted it, you spoke.”

  “Uh huh. Two more rings, and the phone carrier would have cut me off and I would have had to call again. Anyway, are you all right?”

  It was a joy to hear his voice, and she drew a chair from the table to sit in it. “Aye. As well as can be expected with you not here.”

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can. I just thought I’d call and see if you had any questions.”

  “Mmmm... no. No questions.” Except about the magical portraits, but that could wait until he was home.”

  “Have you tried the TV yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “It might be a good way for you to see what the rest of the world is like. Give you an idea of how things have changed since... well, since day before yesterday.”

  “I’ll have a look at it, then.” Better for Nick to come home, though, and tell her what the world was like. “How is your work?” She wished for him to talk more so she would hear his voice.

  “It’s going okay. I can’t sit and talk, though. Be sure to put the phone back on its cradle when we’re done talking.”

  “Aye. Just as I found it.”

  His voice gained a note of urgency. “Yeah. Listen, I’ve got to go now.”

  “Come home soon, mo caraid.”

  “Aye, Ealasaid. In a few hours.”

  “I love you.” The afternoon would be eternity.

  “Love you back. Really, I’ve got to work now. ’Bye.”

  There was a silence, then he added, “Say goodbye now, Beth.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Now hang up the phone on its cradle.”

  She obeyed, but slowly and with terrible reluctance. Suddenly she was alone again.

  Now what to do? The TV? Those moving pictures gave her a bit of fright, so she hesitated. Nick didn’t seem to think much about them, but then Nick had no fear of competing for space on the roadway among cars at speeds that made her head spin. She would turn on the TV later. Now she went into the kitchen to try her hand at lighting the “stove.”

  She turned the circular handle at the front Nick had shown her, and the thing came alive with a burst of flame, then settled in to burn. It was a strong flame, high and yellow. It would cook fast, she thought. Then she turned the handle back and the flame went down until it disappeared. Another turn, and the flame came again, as strong as ever. No coaxing of wood to burn. No ashes and dirt. No crouching on the floor or poking the embers. She liked this stove very much. Careful to not burn up all of Nick’s fuel, she turned the handle back until the flame was gone.

  She wasn’t so sure about the oven that tweeted like a bird. Nick had told her to be careful and not put metal in it, and Beth didn’t see any pots about that weren’t metal. So she took a bowl from the cabinet and an egg from the refrigerator to try it out. With the egg in the bowl and the bowl in the oven, she then pushed the buttons the way Nick had shown her. A lamp lit inside, the oven hummed, and the glass plate began to turn. She couldn’t see what it could be doing, other than showing her the egg in its bowl for her to admire. She watched it go around and around.

  Pop! Beth jumped. Egg all over the glass window of the oven. The oven continued humming and the plate turning, and soon the stuff all over the inside began to bubble. Her heart leapt into her throat. Something had gone terribly wrong, she was sure. The egg began to turn brown, and still the oven kept on. Smoke filled the inside, and the glass plate turned. Finally she opened the door to put out the burning food, and the thing stopped. The light darkened, and the plate quit turning. Tendrils of smoke wafted up from inside. Beth thought of what Nick would do when he saw she’d ruined his oven, and her stomach flopped over. A prayer for assistance in knowing what to do moved her lips, for she knew Nick would be angry.

  She hurried to find a towel, and wet it in the kitchen basin. The bowl with the destroyed egg in it was hot, and she took it in the towel to remove it from the oven. Oddly, only the shreds of egg were burnt, and the bowl was unharmed. That much was a relief. With the towel again, she went to wipe the burnt egg from inside the oven. It was no longer hot, either, and she wondered at how this machine could so thoroughly destroy an egg and burn it brown, then become so blithely cool only a moment later. And the egg certainly was destroyed. It clung to the sides of the oven with the tenacity of porridge left for days. She sighed and set to scraping it off.

  It took quite a long time. Beth cleaned and scraped the egg from the oven until there was no sign anything had gone wrong beyond an egg being missing from the refrigerator. The glass plate she washed in the basin, then set it back inside the oven and shut the door. She heaved a great sigh, glad that was over.

  Now she was hungry, and took a pan from the cabinet to crack an egg into it. She would use the stove, and never mind the magical oven. The stove was a thing she understood. Magic was never to be trusted.

  o0o

  Nick ended up regretting he’d shown Beth the TV. That evening he returned to find her with the lights on this time, but she was as still and silent as she had been the day before. The tube was off, and a smell of burned food was in the air.

  “Nothing good on?”

  But she only looked at him sideways, then wen
t into the kitchen. “I’ve mastered the stove, and there is a stew a-simmering.”

  Nick watched her go, and tried to remember what could possibly have been in the kitchen for her to “stew.” The food smell under the sharp bite of carbon wasn’t bad, but he couldn’t tell what it was. “What burned?”

  “The bannocks. Which cannae truly be called bannocks in any case, since there was no oatmeal. But I made do with the wheat flour ye had, and it was a trial to keep the bread from burning too much.”

  “Ah.” Nick was familiar with too-crispy oat bread, for even in her own time Beth had always let them turn to charcoal on the bottom. He figured she liked them that way. By “too much,” she probably meant “blackened all through.” He followed her, and found her stirring his largest pot filled with a sludge that smelled like...

  “Bacon.”

  “Bacon and cabbages, the last of the onions, and these carrots ye’ve neglected.”

  The carrots had been ready for the garbage, wrinkly and with a slight hair thing going, and now he wished he’d thrown them out when he’d had the chance. He glanced at the trash can, and found a small pile of black things he took for the ruined bannocks. But on the counter sat a plate stacked with ones that appeared edible if somewhat extra crispy.

  Beth served up the stew with bannocks and butter, and Nick found it not as bad as he’d feared. A little like the food she’d served him in her father’s house, and the odd sensation of being in two places at once passed over him again. The slightly burned bread and the slightly over-greasy vegetables did well together in a way that was very strange and serendipitous, and he ate as he had in Scotland: ignoring the taste of the food and thinking instead of the woman who had prepared it for him.

  After biting off a bit of stew-soaked bread, he chewed a moment then said, “You didn’t like the TV?” He’d noticed it wasn’t on.

  She glanced up at him, then back at her bowl and didn’t reply.

  “Okay... we’ll call that a ‘no’. Maybe even a ‘hell, no.’ How come?”

  Another glance, but no reply.

  “What about the music? Did you try listening to music?”

  Now she sat back with a sigh and said, “It was very strange. Some I liked, but most I did not care for. ’Twas more like noise than music.”

  “We can pick up some traditional Scottish CDs for you. Celtic is pretty popular these days.”

  “I would like that.”

  Nick made a mental note to hit a music store on Saturday after his football game with the guys. The grocery store as well, for bacon stew wasn’t a culinary treat he wanted to make a staple in his diet. And a bookstore for some children’s books so he could teach her to read. Then it occurred to him he would need to teach her to cross the street by herself, and Saturday began to look like a very busy day indeed.

  Since she didn’t want the TV on, he spent the remainder of the evening reading poetry to her from an old college lit textbook. At first she sat next to him on the sofa, looking over his arm at the page. Then with her head leaned against his shoulder. After a while he lifted his arm to let her under, and she snuggled up to his chest as he read. Before long he was lying back against the side cushion with her stretched out on top of him, her head on his chest as she gazed at the words she couldn’t read. When his voice began to crack and fade, he hugged her with his knees and said, “You asleep?”

  “Nae.” Almost asleep, though, he could tell by her thick voice.

  “Want me to go on?”

  “Aye.” She slipped a hand up under his shirt to his chest and fiddled with the hairs there while he read on. It was so quiet there with the TV off. Only his own voice disturbed the silence. He could hear her breathing, could feel it against his thighs, the press of her face against his belly. It was a fine thing. So fine, that when Beth’s breathing turned to the deep, heavy breaths of slumber he simply set the book on the back of the sofa, reached up to the end table, and clicked off the light. Then he closed his eyes and slept, too.

  Early Saturday morning the first thing they did was take a walk. Nick figured Beth would need some sunblock. “We’re going to be in the sun all morning. There’s a bottle in the medicine cabinet.”

  “Medicine cabinet?”

  “The cupboard behind the mirror in the bathroom. It’s a white bottle with blue writing on it. Put some on your face and arms; you’re so fair, you’re going to need it.”

  She went to the bathroom, and came back with no fewer than three white bottles with blue writing. She handed them to Nick.

  “Oh. Okay, here.” He finished tucking the tail of his sark into this trews, then selected one of the bottles and tossed the other two onto the bed. “Put out your arm,” he ordered. She did so, and gasped at the cold he smeared on her shoulder. Quickly he rubbed the stuff into her skin, over her arms, then dabbed some on her face.

  “This will keep me from burning in the sun?”

  “Somewhat. You probably would be better off with an SPF of, like, a thousand, but this will be better than nothing.

  “The sun is terribly strong here.”

  “Yeah, California is known for it. We don’t see it all winter, then in summer we get it every day for six months. It’s still spring, so at least it won’t be too hot out there.” He finished, tossed the bottle onto the bed with the others, and took her hand. “Come on.”

  Out on the street, where cars zoomed past at a decibel level Nick found disconcerting. He’d never noticed before how loud traffic was up close, for he hardly ever walked anywhere. He glanced at Beth, who seemed far more comfortable on foot than she’d been in the car a few days ago.

  “If you want to cross, don’t ever cross here,” he told her. “Go to the corner where there’s a light and a crosswalk.” He took her hand and headed up the sidewalk in that direction.

  “You mean, like those folks over there are doing?”

  “Just like they’re doing.”

  “And you push the button on that column, and wait until you see the little white man on the sign opposite.”

  Nick stopped walking and peered at her. “How did you know that?”

  There was an impish smile on her face, and she raised her chin. “Do ye think I’ve spent these past two days sitting in your chambers by myself, awaiting your return of an evening? That I’ve frittered the time away when I could be learning of your world?”

  For a moment he had no reply for that. Of course she needed to explore, and she wasn’t an idiot. Then he laughed, and tried to ignore the uneasy feeling in his gut. What if she’d been hurt? How could she know of the dangers everyone else here avoided by ingrained habit the same way he himself took for granted the things in his apartment she thought luxuries? But she was right. They both needed her to learn his world, to become more independent. They began walking again. “How far have you gone?”

  She pointed with her chin up the street. “Quite a ways that direction. I’ve not gone off to the side, for I feared being lost. The roads seem all the same, and were I to be turned around I couldnae tell which way to go. In particular, I’ve noticed the mountains here move about, and I think they would trick me if I let them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Mountains move? What are you talking about?” He looked back along the street toward the green Santa Monica Mountains that rose to the south. It was a breezy day, so the air was relatively clear and the mountains stood out in crisp, green relief against a bright blue sky.

  “They wander about the place like great herds of cattle. There one day, and the next nowhere to be found. Today they’ve come home, ye see.”

  Nick frowned at this, struggling to figure out what weird thing in her perception could possibly make her think mountains could walk around.

  Then it came to him, and he had to laugh out loud. “Oh. Smog.”

  She replied with only a blank gaze, so he explained. “Smog is like smoke. In the air. But it’s a more pervasive haze. And there’s a lot of it here. When the wind doesn’t blow, the smog builds up and it
gets so thick you can’t see very far through it. The sky still looks blue, but the horizon turns white or brown. And the mountains disappear. They never went anywhere; you just couldn’t see them through the smog.”

  “Och. Air which ye cannae see through. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  He shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets, and looked around. “It was worse when they used coal for heating in the cities back east. And the smog here was worse than this a few decades ago, before they started cleaning up the air. LA is really bad because of the way the mountains hold it in. It takes a lot of wind to blow it all out.”

  She was still staring at the mountains, and said in wonder, “And I thought your terrible birds of prey were odd.”

  “What birds of prey?”

  She looked up, scanned the sky, and found one. “There.” She pointed at a commercial jet descending to Burbank airport. “Your gray birds.”

  Nick made a choking sound, trying not to laugh again, for she would think he was being mean, looking up at the plane. “Oh,” he said.

  “You’ve never noticed them before? They’re terribly graceful creatures, like eagles. Is there something the matter? Should we fear them?”

  “They’re not birds, hon.”

  “They have wings, and they fly. You dinnae call them birds?”

  “We call them airplanes. They’re machines. Very large machines, and they carry people inside them.”

  He could tell she wasn’t getting it. She examined his face for a hint he was joking. “They’re nae big enough.”

  “They’re farther away than you think. Those things fly very high. As far away as that plane is, if it were the size of an eagle you wouldn’t be able to see it. Close up, you’d see that the body is as high as my apartment building and the space inside enough to hold several hundred people. They’re made of steel, and they fly with engines that make them go fast enough for the air passing over their wings to lift them up. Those particular ones go about four times as fast as my car is even capable of traveling. And that’s not all that fast for a plane.”