Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  She met Bette at the arcade across from The Majestic, thinking that in a location like this, it was less likely that she’d break down. Still, she wanted to tell Bette how much the woman meant to her. But Bette had something of her own to talk about.

  ‘Don’t you ever want to try again?’ Bette asked.

  ‘You mean restart the game?’ Dori asked, intentionally misunderstanding.

  They were playing Centipede, and Dori was kicking ass. If Rowan managed to make this thing work, if they really did manage to get home again, she was going to buy one of these old arcade games for her living room.

  ‘Do something over. Have a second shot.’

  Dori shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but wondering if Bette knew somehow. ‘Sure. Doesn’t everyone?’

  Bette hung her head. ‘Look, Emma, I’ve just royally fucked it all up. If I could, I’d go back and do it over. I really would. I thought Gael was interested in playing the field. That’s what we always said. That’s how we always acted. That’s why I … I …’

  Dori stopped playing and looked at her. She sensed what Bette was going to say, and she tried to soften the blow for her. ‘Will’s married, isn’t he? Isn’t that why he doesn’t come around that much?’

  Bette shook her head. ‘Will’s not married, Emma. He’s not anything. He’s fictitious.’

  Dori found herself trying not to look as shocked as she felt. She hadn’t known that. But the fact explained a lot. Explained why Will never appeared. Ever. Why Bette never seemed to know whether she could count on him accompanying her to a show or a concert. But even more of a surprise to Dori was the way Bette was looking at her. She’d always pegged Bette as a party girl, someone with no plans or desires to settle down. Now, Bette looked demolished, so sad, and she seemed to expect Dori to be able to offer her advice. Dori wished she could. What would Violet say in a similar situation? Vi always seemed to know exactly the right thing to say.

  ‘He’s told me to make a choice between him and Will. And he wants to talk to Will for himself to make sure it’s over.’

  ‘Tell him what you told me.’

  ‘You don’t know men. He’s going to think I’m crazy.’

  ‘Seriously. Just tell him. You never know, Bette. He might understand. He might have something he wants to tell you, too.’

  Bette looked at her the same way Van had. This was Dori’s chance. She could remain quiet forever, or she could do her best to make a difference. Gripping onto Bette’s hand, she stared into her boss’ eyes and told her the plan – the idea that had been formulating in her mind for weeks. If it didn’t work, then nothing would be lost, right? Nothing could be worse than what had already happened. Or than what would happen if she didn’t intervene.

  Once she’d said goodbye to everyone, she told Rowan she was ready.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Go get your phone.’

  Her phone.

  She hadn’t thought about the thing in nearly a month, not after discovering that the device didn’t work in the 80s. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to envision where she might have put the cherry-red X-phone, but came up with a blank. She reached into her purse, and rustled around, knowing somehow that the gesture was useless. Rowan watched her dump her bag onto the kitchen counter.

  ‘Man, you have a lot of stuff in there.’

  Dori shrugged, consumed by the search.

  The detritus in her purse wasn’t anything unusual to her – a Stila compact, NARS blush, mascara, condoms, X-Pod.

  ‘Why do you have so many lipsticks?’ Rowan asked, bemused. He ran his hands over the fifteen tubes, all exactly the same shade.

  ‘The color was discontinued in 1997,’ she said absent-mindedly. ‘Don’t hate me for saying this, but I would have come back in time for Romeo Red alone.’

  Carefully, she repacked the items into her leather purse. The phone was the only thing missing.

  ‘Try to think back. Can you remember where you last had it?’

  ‘Well, it last rang when you sent me back in time.’ She glared at him again. She still felt a slight twinge of anger at what he’d done. Not that she wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to join him on this time-traveling adventure, but the way he’d gone about sending her back to the 80s still rankled her. Rowan gave her his wicked grin as if he could read her mind, then he stroked her hair off her forehead, and the anger melted away.

  ‘I might have put it down somewhere.’ She tried harder to remember. She’d set her purse on the dresser in her room, and … and … she raced up the stairs to look. Her room was the one place that had been nearly off limits during her return trip to her past. This was the one environment that had made her feel the strangest, so she’d spent the least amount of time here.

  She hurried into the room, knowing ahead of time that the phone wouldn’t be there. Knowing in her heart what had happened, where it had gone to. Because that was the night when Dameron and Chelsea had broken in.

  Dori sat down on the mattress.

  ‘Where is it?’ Rowan asked, a beat behind her. Now, he was looking around her room in wonder. She hadn’t let him in here. He stared at the posters on the walls, at the leopard-print bedspread, and then at Dori herself.

  ‘I think I know,’ she said, staring at her hands, wondering how much of a problem this would cause. ‘It’s not here. It’s with Dameron.’

  Dori met him at the coffee shop. He looked defensive and rebellious, slinking into the café with an unlit cigarette in his hand, playing with the Marlboro during their entire conversation. He wouldn’t meet her eyes when he sat across from her, not even when she said, softly, ‘Come on, I know you have it.’

  ‘Why, because Dori thinks I’m a thief?’

  He was. She’d known the truth back then, and she knew it now. But there was no time to argue. ‘Dameron …’

  He shrugged and looked off down the length of the café.

  She put out her hand. ‘Please.’

  ‘What are you? Some sort of spy or something?’

  ‘A spy,’ she repeated, laughing. In a way, she was. A spy from the future.

  ‘Cause the thing is pretty space-age,’ Dameron continued.

  ‘No. I’m just a make-up artist. But this is important to me. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. I won’t tell Chelsea.’

  ‘Or Violet,’ he spat out. ‘That girl has a mouth on her.’

  ‘Or Violet,’ Dori promised, thinking that Dameron had it wrong. Violet was loyal. It was Chelsea who had the mouth. Still, she watched hungrily as he reached into the side pocket of his coat.

  ‘Doesn’t work, anyway,’ he said, tossing the phone onto the table.

  He’d thought it was a new hand-held game. It had been second nature of his to slide the phone into his jacket. Old habits. She wanted to tell him to straighten up. She wanted to give him words of advice. But all she could think to say was, ‘Don’t blow off the competition, okay? Go with Van.’

  ‘What’s so important about this one?’

  Dori sighed. ‘Trust me. All right?’

  He didn’t trust anyone. And why should he? But she hoped he could see the urgency in her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’

  She hesitated, not sure he was going to like what she had to say. ‘I want to help Van. His band’s in a competition, and they leave tomorrow. If I remember right, the van blows up, with the instruments inside. With Van inside, as well. I told him to sleep at Bette’s tonight.’

  Rowan’s eyebrows went up.

  ‘But you know, I want to do more.’

  Rowan looked at her hard.

  ‘Not because I love him, but because it’s right.’ When he didn’t respond immediately, she said, ‘You said we could make changes for the better.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well this would be for the better.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘It’s no different t
han changing the theater. In your opinion, that’s a change for the better. But what about all the people whose lives it will affect in a negative way?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘The developer who was going to turn it into a bookstore.’ Even to Dori, that didn’t sound like a big deal. She stared at Rowan. ‘Seriously, I want to help him.’

  ‘What else have you done?’

  She swallowed hard.

  ‘I saw Violet one night at the Creamery. She had her sketch pad out, and I told her I thought she was good, that I thought she should go to the Rhode Island School of Design. She was accepted, you know. She just turned them down. Out of fear, more than anything else. Fear that she wouldn’t be good enough. I told her I thought she had a lot of talent, and that I’d seen plenty of artists in New York with less ability than she had …’

  ‘So, basically, you want to help Gael? You want to use Van’s truck to get rid of the coke.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I did my research before coming back. I know what happened in 1988. Van’s truck blew up. Gael was arrested for coke. There was a bust at the Creamery. And you want to put the drugs in the van, don’t you? And take the instruments out.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m awful, do you?’

  He shook his head. ‘The opposite.’ And now he put his arms around her. ‘The fact that you want to help him is why I love you Dori. That’s why.’

  And they were kissing again. She wondered why kissing felt so amazing with Rowan. Bryce had stopped kissing her a few months into their relationship. He’d seemed to decide that if they were going to be together forever, he shouldn’t have to waste any more time on foreplay. But Dori had always loved kissing. Was it because of the way she’d felt with Rowan, when kissing could consume them for hours at a time?

  He cradled her head in his hands and let his lips linger on hers. Then he was moving, kissing the hollow of her neck, planting small kisses into the v-neck of her shirt, so that she no longer felt like standing any more. But Rowan wasn’t ready to have her sit, or to let her pull him back to the bed. He pressed her up against the wall, forcing her to stand tall while he moved down her body.

  She thought of Luke. Thought of the games they’d played together. Wondered whether she and Rowan would find themselves in similar kinky situations. Of course, they would. The first time he’d fucked her after twenty years was as part of a Frank-N-Furter sandwich at The Majestic. There really weren’t any limits to what they might do together, were there?

  But now, Rowan stopped. Yes, they might have all the time in the world. Except for now, with Dori’s family due to arrive home any minute.

  ‘We’ll hurry,’ he said. ‘You know Van’s at Bette’s?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

  They walked downtown together, under the shade of the maple trees and past houses she remembered. Houses that had been torn down. She tried to memorize everything this time. She tried to pay careful attention, knowing that this was it. She would never go home again. Not the way she had on this trip.

  ‘We should go, Dori,’ he said, after they’d arranged everything to Dori’s satisfaction. ‘We can’t do any more than that. We’ll have to hope for the best.’

  ‘Everything’s in place?’ She wanted one final bit of confirmation.

  ‘Yeah. I have the stock in my name. It’s set.’

  They slipped out the back of the café, and Rowan took both of their phones in hand and punched in the codes. ‘You’re calling me. And I’m calling you. I’ll see you in 2008. Okay?’

  God, that sounded weird, didn’t it? Not ‘See you tomorrow.’ Not ‘See you later.’ But ‘See you in the future.’

  ‘Kiss me first,’ she begged, and he did, hands in her hair, mouth pressed to hers. It was the last feeling she had before she picked up her phone, dialed in the number he’d given her, and hit enter.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Dori couldn’t believe the view in front of her. Even though she was staring at the building. Even though she could have put her hand out and touched the cold concrete, she still refused to believe her eyes.

  There she was, standing on University Boulevard, in the exact same spot she’d been in two seconds before. The only difference was that her head spun, as if she’d just drank three vodkas tonics at top speed. And when she looked up at the broad white marquee with the cobalt-blue plastic letters, she read the titles Repo Man and Blade Runner.

  It hadn’t worked.

  She was still in 1988. Rowan had failed. Somehow, he had failed, and they were stuck in the past together. At least, she thought they were. But where was he? Shouldn’t he be standing at her side? Had he mistakenly sent himself somewhere else, or really, some-when else? She shook her head, her heart sinking, until Rowan walked out of the theater, coming toward her fast with something in his hands.

  Her eyes widened.

  Dori couldn’t figure it out. He was dressed in 80s clothes still, wearing a Hard Rock Café London T-shirt and well-worn 501s. She didn’t understand.

  But right before he got to her, a woman stepped out of the courtyard in front of him to block his path. Dori, head still spinning, stayed where she was. The woman was accompanied by a cameraman, and she thrust a microphone in front of Rowan’s mouth and began speaking, rapid-fire.

  ‘What prompted you to buy this dilapidated theater, Mr Gray?’

  Rowan seemed to want to brush her off, and yet the word dilapidated gave him pause. ‘It’s not,’ he said. ‘It’s in need of repairs, yes. But the structure is sound. They don’t make buildings like this any more.’

  ‘And how about the eyesore graffiti wall? What will you do about that? The city is concerned about …’

  Rowan was staring at Dori, trying to convey a message to her. The camera was right in his face now. Dori started walking closer.

  ‘We’re keeping the wall,’ he said, sounding firm, and then Dori suddenly recognized the newscaster. Chelsea. The woman seemed as surprised to see Dori as Dori was to see her, and she frowned as Rowan stepped aside, abruptly ending the interview. At least, she tried to frown. Dori realized that Chelsea was as concerned with appearances as ever. Her brow was Botoxed into smooth submission. Her blonde hair was teased high, and she had the type of elongated eyelashes that could never be real.

  Dori’s eyes traveled down the slim blonde’s body, to see that finally Chelsea had won her own twin silicon peaks. She was now fake all the way through.

  ‘Dori?’ Chelsea asked, staring at Dori’s short blue hair, squinting in a way that Dori knew meant Chelsea didn’t like what she saw. Or didn’t approve, anyway.

  Dori thought of a million things she could say to Chelsea. But then she realized where the woman was from. Zena Squared, the tabloid TV news. Suited her, didn’t it? How had it happened? Some minor change Dori had made in the past had altered Chelsea’s life. Was it for the better? She couldn’t say. Then Rowan was at her side, embracing Dori, one arm tight around her body, the other handing over the item that he’d been holding: the leather jacket she’d always craved.

  ‘I thought you left,’ Dori whispered, sliding into the jacket. It fit as she’d known it would: to perfection.

  ‘We both left.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He took her hand and brought her to the news kiosk, pointing inside to the date on the paper. It was June 30th, 2008. But … now, when she looked next door to the theater, she realized that the café wasn’t The Max Pad, where she and her friends had gotten drunk the night after the dance, but it was Gael’s place. Yet, looking closer, she saw the neon Internet Café sign glowing in the window.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I told you I had a plan, right?’

  ‘Yes, you bought the stock in Cherry Computers …’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and I sold it at a record high in June of 2006. I couldn’t come back the same time as you, Dori. The theater had already been changed i
nto a bookstore. It would have been too late. I had to come back a little bit earlier, to set everything up. I purchased The Majestic. For us. I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  She stared at him for another moment, and then flung herself back into his arms. His kiss was as good as the very first one they’d ever shared. With his hand tight in her short hair, pulling her head back. She felt that first kiss now, but better. The power behind this embrace different now that they were all grown up.

  He led her around to the other side of the marquee and pointed up. She saw the name of Van’s band up there on the opposite side.

  ‘He’s promised to play whenever he’s in town,’ Rowan explained.

  ‘But, Van. How did he … I mean, I thought that …’

  ‘You made sure of that, Dori. You saved his instruments, and he went on to tie for first in that competition.’

  ‘And Gael?’ She was curious about the fact that the yuppy bar was no longer next to the theater. That the café remained.

  ‘You told Bette to talk to him. And she did. She told him about the sting in the works.’

  ‘But it happened correctly?’ Dori wanted to know everything. ‘Did the van catch fire?’

  ‘Of course. Chelsea saw to that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was the one who started the fire in the first place, Dori. It wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t Dameron. She didn’t want him to go, to leave her. Then with the drugs gone, the sting didn’t work. But the fear of being caught did. Gael gave up that sideline business. Did rehab. Focused on his café. He and Bette settled down and he helped her to buy the beauty store. It’s Bette’s Beauty Box now, or BBB. And Violet took your advice. She went to the Rhode Island School of Design on a scholarship. She’s known for her queer-positive art, because, you know, she and Janie hooked up. They’ve been a couple for fifteen years. And Violet even designed Van’s latest album cover.’

  Dori’s head was spinning. ‘Did she know the plan?’ she asked him. ‘Did Violet know?’

  Rowan looked sheepish. ‘I told her I wanted to win you back. I didn’t tell her everything that meant. Just the bare bones of the plans.’