Emperors of Time

by Penn, James Wilson

  After they had been dancing a little while, Tim finally worked up the courage to say, “You look really pretty tonight.”

  She smiled warmly. “You too,” she said sincerely. Then she winced. “No, I mean, you look nice or whatever. But seriously, you do.”

  Tim laughed. “Wow. Most awkward compliment return ever. Good thing you’re beautiful or people would really notice how awkward you are.”

  Julie was blushing a bit, but grinning. “How come you can notice, then? You’re immune to my looks?”

  Tim thought for a second. “Nah, I’m just especially adept at picking up awkwardness.”

  “Kind of a takes one to know one type thing?” asked Julie without missing a beat.

  “Exactly,” laughed Tim.

  A little later, Julie put her head on Tim’s chest as they danced. They danced like that for a bit, and it felt right… natural, somehow.

  At one point, Julie looked up at him. “You’re nice to dance with,” she said.

  Tim was going to respond, “You, too.” But then he didn’t say anything at all. Instead, he bent down a little so their faces were close. Then, he kissed her, putting his hand on the back of her head to draw her in, kissing first softly, then a bit harder.

  They didn’t talk much about that kiss, either. They just kept dancing. It turned out that he was okay with this. Maybe they were the type of people who just kissed every once in awhile. They could talk about it some other time… Maybe in their own decade.

  They danced for awhile. Tim even started to get halfway comfortable doing the fast dances. Even though he was still not overly sure of what he should be doing and how he should move, Julie seemed to have a better instinctive grasp of what to do. This was lucky, because it gave Tim a good excuse to stare at her, to mimic her moves. She really did look quite pretty this evening.

  Eventually, Rose came over and asked them if they wanted to go over to the barroom with her and Billy and try to get some soda.

  The barroom was a little out of the way from the ballroom, so it was quieter, which Tim thought was nice for a change. Just about everyone in the room, though, seemed to be men, many middle aged or older. Not exactly the way bars were portrayed on tv-shows from Tim’s own century.

  Upon further inspection, there were only two women in the room, aside from Julie and Rose. These looked to be in their twenties and were handing out a small piece of something to anyone who would take it.

  This piqued Tim’s curiosity, and after they got their drinks (bottles of Pepsi, which led Tim to recall that he had once read somewhere that Pepsi had been invented late in the nineteenth century and had more or less national scale distribution by the 1910s), he watched to see what it was that they were handing out.

  Soon, after a rather confused and slightly tipsy man of about fifty took one of whatever they were distributing, he came over toward them. Tim saw what was in his hand and gasped.

  “They’re handing out buttons for Charles Hughes!” he whispered urgently to Julie. He realized a second later that whispering was maybe counterproductive. It was the week before a presidential election. To anyone else, handing out buttons for one of the candidates in a bar might be annoying, but it certainly wasn’t suspicious. Although maybe whispering about it would strike people as a little off.

  Either way, Julie whispered back when she said, “So they probably know where we can find other Hughes supporters.”

  “Including maybe someone who would…” Tim trailed off, but they both knew what he was talking about. These women handing out buttons might be able to tell them where the type of people who would stop at nothing to help their guy win might hang out; people who, with a little extra incentive, might be convinced to set a bomb if it would guarantee that their guy would win.

  Julie and Tim let Billy and Rose in on their idea, and Rose looked confused. “I thought most women were Wilson supporters.”

  “Most, but not all,” said Tim. “Besides, if Hughes has any young female supporters in San Francisco at all, this would be a good place to put them tonight. Slightly drunk men in a bar? They’re not going to take a button from a middle aged man nearly as quick as from a young attractive woman.”

  Julie laughed. Tim looked at her and she said, “No, nothing… Just you’re calling everyone good looking tonight, aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t-” Tim said.

  “Just joking, just joking!” said Julie with a giggle.

  “Alright, you two. Let’s focus on the task at hand. We’re in the market for some Hughes buttons, yeah?” asked Rose. “And maybe we’d like to know where there might be a rally for Hughes in San Francisco in the next two days?”

  Julie stopped laughing. “Yeah. And why don’t you boys let us take the lead on this one?” she asked. “They might be more eager to talk to other young women. After all, politics in the 1910s is even more of a men’s club than it is today. Er… In our today.”

  The four of them went over to the women with the buttons, the two girls in the lead, although Tim doubted if they were going to have any trouble getting the women to open up. They were political enthusiasts the weekend before an election. This was not a typically shy demographic.

  “Campaigning for Hughes, I see?” asked Rose, as she approached.

  The women turned toward her immediately. They seemed pretty excited to have someone speaking to them on purpose, rather than having to ambush passers-by with their buttons as seemed to be their normal procedure.

  “Yeah, we are,” one of the women said to Rose. She was really chirpy at first, but then her face fell. “Oh… you’re… you’re not twenty-one, are you?”

  Tim could have smacked himself in the head. He had forgotten that the voting age had been twenty-one in 1916, and actually until pretty recently in American history. He and Billy had pulled off nineteen earlier that day, but not even Billy could convincingly pretend to be twenty-one.

  He was spared the burden of deciding whether or not to try to lie about their age anyway by an awkward moment from Julie, who stammered something like, “Twenty-one, uh, we… uh-”

  Rose mercifully cut her off. “Just turned eighteen. But hey, it’s our country, too, right? And I’m not going to college so Germany can win the war and take over France and England, am I? Who will pay back the loans American companies have already lent them, hundreds of millions of dollars? I mean, I know that Hughes isn’t gung-ho about getting us into war either, and I can respect that, but, Wilson… He kept us out of war all right, and he’ll keep us out of war right into another recession if he has his way. Hughes is being quiet about it now, but I know when he gets into office, he’ll make the right decision.”

  The other woman, the one who had not spoken yet, smiled warmly at Rose. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “There are things that you can do to help out the cause other than voting. Of course, we wish you could vote, too, but… Like I say, there are other ways to help. We’ll be knocking on doors through Tuesday to get out the vote, and we’ll be holding an event tomorrow… In this very hotel, actually, in the ballroom. We’re getting together some prominent supporters of Hughes. We’ve got a state congressman and some other people big in the California Republican party.”

  “Here?” asked Julie, clearly surprised at the coincidence.

  “Yes, well, this is one of the grandest hotels in San Francisco, after all,” said one of the women.

  “Still the best, I would say,” argued the other. “Even after it had to be rebuilt because of the fire.”

  Tim suddenly remembered that he had come across information about a big earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906. He tried not to look surprised at the reference, but Julie and Rose apparently didn’t succeed in doing the same.

  “You must remember the fire…” said one of the women, noticing their facial expressions. “You would have been young, it was ten years ago after all, but… over three quarters of the city was destroyed.”

  “We’re from out of town,” Tim supplied ha
stily. “All of us. We… moved here together pretty recently, actually.”

  The women looked a bit perplexed, but recovered nicely with smiles in short order. This made sense, Tim supposed, given that they were budding politicians. “Well, the important thing is that you are here now,” registered one of the women, in a friendly tone.

  The other woman nodded, and then seemed to have an idea. “We need some people to help us serve refreshments tomorrow. You could all help, if you boys don’t mind serving some punch,” she said. She paused a second and then gasped dramatically. “Where are my manners?! Here I am, asking for your help, and I haven’t even told you my name! I’m Anna.”

  “And I’m Margaret,” said the other woman. “And not to be too forward, but we really could use your help.”

  “Absolutely,” said Rose. “Anything we can do for the cause, right?”

  “Of course,” said Julie. “I’m Julie, by the way.” They each introduced themselves and the women eagerly handed each of them a button, which they promptly put on after noticing that the women were wearing their own.

  “Well, we’d like to ask you to help us hand out these buttons,” said Margaret. “But we know you came to dance, and it’s probably only a two person job anyway.”

  “You see, mostly we’re only succeeding in encouraging people to walk away from us,” Anna confirmed. “But you’ll be doing us a huge favor helping us out tomorrow night. The event starts at six, so if you could be here at five, that would be splendid.”

  Rose assured the women they would, and everyone shook the two women’s hands before they walked to another part of the bar to drink the rest of their sodas.

  The four teens were fairly silent. They had a lot to talk about, but seemed to tacitly agree that they needed privacy to discuss it.

  “You fellas think it’s about time to head back to the room, then?” asked Julie.

  “I’m not a fella!” protested Rose. “But yes, I think we ought to head back.”

  “Don’t worry Rose, she called me pretty earlier,” registered Tim. “She’s a little bit confused about gender tonight.”

  It was actually with a bit of regret that Tim crossed the dance floor without getting another chance to dance with Julie. Perhaps dancing wasn’t as bad as Tim thought it was, once you found the right person to dance with.

  “You did great in there, by the way,” Billy told Rose, as they exited the hotel and started heading back toward the YMCA. “I don’t know whether half the stuff you were saying about businesses and France and Germany was true or not, but they certainly seemed to buy it.”

  “No, seriously, that was awesome. Take it from someone who’s actually opened a History textbook,” said Tim with a laugh. “Good thinking about putting Hughes pro-war but acknowledging that he doesn’t come out and say it. I’m a bit surprised his supporters would be so quick to agree with you on it, though.”

  “They were probably off script,” acknowledged Rose. “But most books I’ve read figure he was always going to go to war, he just didn’t want to anger the pacifists.”

  “Let’s keep the history-nerd talk to a minimum,” said Julie. “But we definitely just got invited to an event that pretty much all the Republican political junkies in San Francisco will attend. I mean, I know we’ve been on a bit of a gambling hot-streak lately, but I think this might be the luckiest thing that’s happened to us yet!”

  Chapter 17

  Hughes for President

  The next day, promptly at five o’ clock, Tim, Billy, Julie, and Rose entered the Palace Hotel for a second time.

  This time, they were dressed in new clothes. Well, not exactly “new”, but they had purchased the clothes from a thrift-store earlier that day. The thrift store hadn’t been their first choice, but it turned out that even at a time when the price of a six ounce bottle of Pepsi was only a nickel, you still couldn’t do much clothes shopping if you only had nine dollars to your name. The cheapest skirt they found at a new clothing store cost $2.49, dresses were significantly more, and even men’s dress shirts ran $1.50. But at a thrift shop, they were able to find men’s shirts for a dime each, and even bought a new jacket for Tim at 75 cents. All told, they made it out of there with new outfits for everyone after dropping only four dollars.

  Even this seemed a little steep to Tim, in terms of percentage of their total net worth, but he had to admit it would probably look weird if they showed up to a fancy fundraiser wearing the same clothes they had worn for the last two days. They had also managed to head to a drugstore, and for only a dollar bought some cheap soap, shampoo, and toothpaste. A quarter from that dollar was spent on some perfume for the girls, so it wouldn’t be quite so apparent they still hadn’t found a place to shower.

  Whether or not she had showered, though, Julie still looked good to Tim, after having found a cute outfit at the thrift store.

  “You look stunning,” Tim, had told her. This made Julie blush again, which Tim didn’t mind, since he thought that she looked especially cute when she blushed. Besides, he really did think that she looked stunning, but he had already called her pretty and beautiful the evening before and didn’t want to come off sounding repetitive.

  Julie had smiled at him and said, “And you look handsome.” She overemphasized the word handsome, as if to draw attention to the fact that she had said the right word this time.

  “Well, I’d certainly better, after all the money we had to spend on this jacket,” quipped Tim.

  Even after all this, though, they still had a couple dollars left to eat with over the next couple days. And they were really hoping that by being at this function and listening in on conversations, they might be able to get an idea of the landscape of the Republican political party in 1916 San Francisco, a group that they were now rather desperately hoping included whoever the Emperors of Time had convinced to do their bidding.

  “You made it!” exclaimed Margaret, as she hurried over to meet the four teens at the door.

  “We did,” confirmed Rose, who was put in the awkward position of having to acknowledge the obvious. “You look fantastic, by the way.”

  And Margaret did, too, wearing a bright festive dress. “Yes, well… perhaps the day will soon come when women can contribute more to a political campaign than their looks and their ability to throw parties, but today is not that day,” she said with a frown. The frown conveyed some bitterness, but she brightened up quickly. “Of course, we have to start somewhere… And look at you two, helping out before you can even vote.”

  Julie and Rose smiled at this. Rose seemed like she was going to say something in response, but Billy interrupted her. He was clearly more interested in getting to the task at hand than in idle chitchat, and until the guests started to arrive, their task was helping to set up. Tim had noticed Billy scan the room as soon as they walked in. Like Billy, he noticed that although the stage had been cleared, except for a single microphone, the clear floor still mostly resembled a ballroom, aside from the fact that there were hundreds of chairs stacked in neat piles of six each around the edges of the room.

  “Should we start setting up the chairs?” asked Billy politely.

  “Oh, yes, yes… That would be just splendid, I think,” said Margaret. “You and… was it Tim?--” Tim nodded. “--can start setting up the chairs and the young ladies and I will work on making the punch. You want to make rows of ten chairs per side with an aisle down the middle. Put the aisle in the middle of the floor and work your way out from there, and there will be extra space on both sides as well. There should be enough chairs there for twenty rows. We’re hoping for a big turnout.”

  So Billy and Tim began putting the chairs up, and soon two members of the hotel staff were helping as well. The chairs weren’t foldout chairs, and they were actually kind of heavy, at least when you were carrying two at a time.

  This was what Billy was doing, being the athlete that he was, and it was what the hotel staff were doing too, each of them being strapping young men in their t
wenties who kept looking over at Margaret and Anna like they were trying to impress them or something. Which meant that Tim didn’t want to be the only one carrying just one chair. This in turn meant that his arms ached a bit by the time the four of them had set up five of the rows.

  Tim still wasn’t completely sure what Margaret and Anna did for the campaign, except that it clearly involved handing out buttons. However, over the first twenty minutes or so of being there, Tim realized that it was clearly Anna who was in charge. So it was no surprise when, after Anna started yelling something about how they needed more banners, it was Margaret who came over thirty seconds later to talk to Billy and Tim.

  “So, yes… apparently we’re simply going to need more signs,” said Margaret, with an almost imperceptible eye roll.

  Rose and Julie were still helping Anna make the punch and other refreshments, so Billy and Tim worked together on a banner that said “Charles Hughes for President” in red and blue letters on a white background as Margaret flittered around the room trying to solve organizational problems before they got onto Anna’s radar.

  “So,” Billy said quietly to Tim, as he painted in an ‘H’ that Tim had drawn with a pencil, “this is the first time in my life I have ever given half a crap whether or not Wilson won a second term. And now, even though I desperately want Wilson to win, I’m making a banner for Hughes. So, my question is… Is that ironic, or just plain weird?”

  Tim paused and thought about this for a moment. He looked around to make sure no one else could hear before he said, “I’m going to say just plain weird. But to be honest, that’s my default answer, given that you’re only doing any of it because you just got here from a different century.”

  Billy grinned. “Sounds like a good rule of thumb,” he agreed.

  Billy and Tim completed two banners before people started trickling in at 5:50 pm. Margaret came over to tell them to get over to the door to help greet people with Anna, Margaret, Julie, and Rose.