A 20th Century Time Travel Romance
by Sherry Morris
Palm trees stood sentry at the Art Deco hotels lining the road. The fronds rustled in the wind. I heard a spewing sound and took a few steps westward to investigate. A fountain. I crossed the rest of the street and hurried over to it. Sitting on the wide concrete rim, I swung my legs over the side, careful to keep my dress out of the pool. I arched my back and faced into the spray as I swung my feet, dredging them through the cool water. Hey, my ankle didn’t hurt anymore. Magic. I rose up and inched my way under the spout of water.
It felt cold but so very inebriating. I swept my hands through my hair, got it drenched. I slicked it back. I turned and thrust my chest into the spray. The pulsating flow on my nipples felt wicked. They grew hard. I longed for his hands to caress my breasts. Damn that cop creeping up on us. Thoroughly wet, I gazed up into the starry night sky, picked out Venus. I closed my eyes and made a wish. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…bring my special mate back to me and let us live together in eternal love. I opened my eyes. I was shivering. I’d overdone the water. I heard footsteps behind me and then felt a hard slam on my back. It knocked me down. I grabbed the concrete fountain edge and didn’t scrape my face. My abraded fingers burned. I turned my head. I spotted a midnight blue eye. Just one, the other had a patch over it. A pirate patch. My attacker was devilishly handsome. Unsettling. I realized I should scream, so I did. Not that anyone else was out to hear it. The pirate groped me under the water.
“No! No! Leave me alone! Who are you?”
He flipped me over, facing him. He pinned me down, his knees on either side of my hips, underwater. With one hand, he suspended both of my arms over my head, back on the wide, smooth concrete fountain rim. Then he kissed me. I bit his lip. He raised his hand as if to smack me. In slow motion, I watched it coming down. But it stopped.
He spoke as he searched my face. “Where is Chloe? Tell her to give me back my money or else…” He motioned to push me underwater again.
“Chloe who?” I whimpered.
“Chloe Lambert.”
“She’s my mother…and she’s in trouble.”
A look of sickness paled over the pirate’s face. “No! She can’t be your mother. You are way too old, lady. Besides, you don’t look anything like her.”
“Well, she is my mother and I have to find her. She’s in trouble.”
“I know she’s in trouble. Tell her to give me back my dough and maybe the trouble will go bye-bye.”
“What are you talking about? If she gives you money, she’ll be released from the mental hospital?”
“Mental hospital? That’s a swell place for the stupid dame. Where did she stash my money?”
“What money? Who are you?”
I heard footsteps galloping and then felt the weight of the pirate collapse on me. Just for a moment and then that old cop yanked him out of the fountain.
The cop said, “It’s the end of the line for you now, Billyboy.” The policeman turned to me and said, “I am so sorry, Miss. I’ll get you an ambulance right away.”
“No! No, no. I don’t wanna go to the hospital. Been there, done that, don’t like it.”
“But we need to gather evidence.”
“What? Oh no, no, he didn’t do that.”
The pirate struggled and made a run for it. The cop chased after him and took a flying leap but missed. As he scrambled up, two teenaged soldiers materialized. They threw the pirate to the sidewalk. One sat on him. The other smashed his black polished leather boot into the pirate’s head, near his ear, on the side with his good eye.
The cop marched over to them. “Thanks, corporals. Hold him a minute until I get to the call box to request backup.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in monotone unison.
The cop trotted around the corner. I trekked over to the men. The pirate’s eye was flashing up at me. I’d never seen an eye that color blue, nor that sparkly. It had a magical allure but with an imminent sense of evil.
The seated soldier asked, “Ma’am, are you injured?”
“No…no I’m all right.” I glared at the pirate. “Who are you and why did you attack me? Why are you asking about my mother? What is she to you?”
The copper returned with two more of Miami’s geriatric finest. He said, “Billyboy here has a nasty little problem of seeing pretty ladies and forcing his company upon them. Don’t ya, Blandings?”
“Billy…Bill Blandings? Vera Blandings’ first husband? What do you mean he’s got a problem of forcing his company on ladies?” I turned from the copper to my attacker. “What have you done to my momma?”
The soldiers handcuffed the pirate. They yanked him to his feet. He was really handsome. Rogues usually were. He turned his head toward me and gave me the evil eye.
“Why are you looking for my mother?”
“She has my money.”
“Oh yeah, and that’s another little problem this scoundrel has. He prints his own dough. Boys, get him outa here,” the old cop snarled.
The quartet marched pirate boy away.
The copper took out his little notebook and licked the tip of his stubby pencil. “All right, Miss, you’re sure he didn’t injure you?”
“Yes. I need to leave now. You’ve been awfully diligent but I need to find information about my mother. There’s so much I don’t understand. I have so many questions…” Why did my mate bring me here? If in fact he had brought me here and I wasn’t dreaming all of this. Why did I have to meet Bill Blandings? And what money was he talking about? Did Momma have money problems? Wait, Daddy had told me before he died that Momma had attacked him because he wouldn’t give her the money. Could there be a connection? How much did I know about Momma’s past? “I know she used to live in Miami Beach. Perhaps someone here knows something. She had a room above a bakery. Paddy Cakes
Bakery. I remember her telling me how she gained weight just inhaling the buttery cinnamon wafting through the walls. I’d love a good doughnut, are they still in business?”
“They’ll be plenty of time for noshing doughnuts tomorrow. I need some information for my report. Your name?”
“Orpha Donna Payne.”
“Address?”
“One–three–one–two–seven Spyglass Street, Reston, Virginia.”
“Local address where you’re staying.”
“Don’t have one.”
He glared at me. “Now we don’t allow that type of young ladies around here.”
“No! I-I mean that I just got into town late tonight and I haven’t made arrangements yet.”
He pointed with his pencil. “Right across the street is the Young Women’s Christian Association. They’ll take good care of you there, my dear.”
“Right.” Whatever will get me away from you.
“Do you know this brute?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea why he attacked you?”
“He said he wanted to find my mother.”
“Who is your mother?”
“Chloe Lambert. I think that’s why I’m here. To find out about her life.” I couldn’t very well tell him that I was dreaming all of this and that he was just a figment of my own imagination. Just like my Mr. Jones was just a figment. Not real…or? He’d told me to trust him and I couldn’t do otherwise, even if it probably meant joining Momma at the cuckoo’s nest.
“Chlo-e…Lam-bert. Chloe Lambert.” He rolled Momma’s name on his tongue, looking up at the sky. “Oh yeah, there’s an APB out for her arrest. Where is she?”
“Here in Miami? At this time? I dunno! Why is there an APB? Must be some mistake. A horrible mistake.”
“She’s wanted for counterfeiting and murder one.”
“What? No! My momma is no murderess…or counterfeiter. She doesn’t even pick up pennies from parking lots.”
“The information we received from the Secret Service indicated Chloe Lambert was a dirty agent, she made a counterfeit money drop in Bermuda.”
“No. That’s wrong. You must be mistaken.” I returned to the fountain and perched on the rim, sticking my legs in. I’d just wait here for my mate. Perhaps he’d have some answers for me. He’d come and make everything better. Please come back quickly. I need you with me now.
“That’s my brief, Miss. Chloe Lambert is still a fugitive.” He slapped the cover on his notebook shut. He stashed it in his pocket, along with the pencil. Walking over to me, he took me by the hands and glared into my eyes. His were gray and bloodshot. “Get outa there now. Making wishes in a fountain never solves nothin’.” He helped me out of the water.
“Thanks,” I begrudgingly said.
“Don’t leave town, Orpha Payne.”
Orpha. Nobody calls me Orpha. People at dentists’ offices call me Orpha. But they screw it into Oprah, like Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host. It’s so embarrassing. And poor Oprah’s real name was supposed to be Orpha, from the Bible, but someone wrote it down wrong. The cop said, “I’ll be around tomorrow to take a statement from ya. I’ll call for ya at the YWCA. You be there now. And if you find your mother, ask her to turn herself in now.”
I could still feel the effects of the medication I took. I was groggy and feeling a little loopy. I giggled. YWCA? Like the Village People song, “YMCA”, where it’s fun to stay? I broke into disco dance moves spelling out the letters with my body, mouthing the words.
The cop said, “Miss, what’s wrong? Are you having a seizure?”
I giggled and giggled.
“How much have you had to drink this evening?”
“Drink? I had a diet soda and some tap water to wash down the aspirins and Benadryls.”
“Diet soda? What in carnation is that? And you say you did Bennys? Oh lordy. Let’s get you a room before you… No wonder all these men are taking advantage of you.”
He escorted me into the YWCA. The matronly gargoyle behind the desk was reading the racing page of a newspaper. She barely cast an eye our way.
The cop said, “Evenin’, Mother Mary. I have a wayward young woman in need of a safe place to sleep off some narcotics.”
“I did not take narcotics! Benadryl is just an allergy medicine that helps me sleep. It’s readily available at lots of stores. No prescription is required.”
He said, “Maybe after you come down from your high, you and I should have a little talk about which pharmacists are selling you the Bennys. I’ll be around on my shift tomorrow evening. Now, Mother Mary, would you please show this young lady, Orpha Payne, to a room and be sure to lock the door. She’s already been molested by two men that I know about.”
Mother Mary Gargoyle eyeballed me with her bulging ones. “What happened, child, you fall into a swimming pool?”
“No. There was an incident at the Lincoln Road fountain… Oh never mind.”
Mother Mary waddled up four flights of stairs.
I limped along behind, my ankle smarting. Some cover story dream boy made up. I didn’t even hurt my ankle but now it does. And where is dream boy?
The cop took up the rear and made sure the desk clerk escorted me to a room and locked the door.
Good, they were gone. Some room. More like a closet. I thought about the closet under the stairs at my parents’ house. That one was much bigger. It was stifling hot in this one. I shuffled to the window and heaved the sash. It flew up and then right back down, smashing my hand. “Oww!”
I tried opening it again, this time quickly putting my hands under my armpits as soon as I launched the pane upward. It slammed back down. Great. The counterweight must be broken. I glanced around and found a Holy Bible to prop the window open with. Before I placed it in the sill, I realized that wasn’t very nice. So I scouted around in the dim light of the lone bulb. It had a brown shoestring for a pull chain, just like the big walk-in closet in my childhood home. I spied a brown rubber doorstop on the dusty hardwood floor. Yes. That would do. I raised the sash and positioned the doorstop vertically against one side of the window.
A tiny breeze flitted in. I knelt on the floor in front of the window and crossed my arms on the windowsill. I laid my head on them. I felt flakes of paint crunching under my arms. I heard helicopters. Loud, louder, quieter, gone. The neon lettering on the building buzzed. I could see it sideways, without moving. Pink neon letters, YWCA.
I heard a noisy motor. It looked like a green pickup truck. A really old classic one. It parked under the streetlight in front of the bakery across the street. Paddy Cakes Bakery. Hey, this is where Momma used to live. I couldn’t wait until they opened in the morning. Maybe they could give me some answers. I sighed. I started to get up when the door opened on the truck. A bearded man, dressed in a gray suit, emerged from the vehicle. I recognized him. He was the cute guy in the sepia photo with Momma that I was looking at before I had my first special dream. I called out to him but he’d already disappeared inside the building. Oh well. At least I must be on the right track finally. I just had to wait until the morning. The fresh air felt good on my heated skin but my jumbled mind was still racing. That pirate boy had said Momma had his money. What money? And what was with his eye?
I shut my own eyes. Very grateful to have mine intact. It was finally cooling off. The wind rustled through the street trees. I heard water gushing through pipes in the wall. Other tenants. Or occupants or renters or, wait, I knew, other “wayward girls” like the cop called me. If only he knew exactly how respectable and honorable and what a good girl I really was. Back in the twenty-first century where I belonged.
Where I belonged? Oh how I wished I didn’t belong there. I didn’t, did I? In the Payne family. How I came from them, I had no idea. I was nothing like them. Maybe I was adopted? That would be great. No, my birth certificate was black and white. I was begot from Chloe Lambert and Nathan Payne. The all-American couple. Sure, they clothed and fed and sheltered me, kissed my booboos, sent me to public school and drove me to church. But they always treated me like the odd girl out.
Tammy and Perry were always more important. And they were invariably in trouble. Nothing Momma’s money couldn’t remedy. Chirping hatchlings devouring the regurgitation.
I wished I belonged here. Right here. If here was real, that is. I would have had a much more glamorous job in the forties. Maybe I could’ve been a switchboard operator? That would’ve been fun. I heard men used to dial the operator just to have a girl to talk to. Maybe I could’ve made dates with some classy guys. Yeah, perhaps switchboard operator was not much better than being a file clerk in the peon job category but, hey, it would’ve been more enjoyable. I knew it would have.
Or maybe I’d have been a girl newspaper reporter. War correspondent. No, not that. Dangerous. How about covering the gossip scene in Hollywood? Yeah, that’d have been great. Interviewing Cary Grant and William Powell and hey, why not, Vera Blandings. At least that way I’d have known what the first love of my father’s life had been like. I wonder why they broke up.
And I’d write Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for the front page, on important issues of the day. Wouldn’t I be something? And I’d be respected. And I’d have friends. Witty, intellectual friends. We’d go to parties and premieres and jet set. Not just an email relationship with a roommate that I’d never actually seen face-to-face. I didn’t even know what Ashley looked like. Probably heavy, with short hair. Taller than me though. Everyone was taller than me.
It would have been fun living in the forties with my dream man. He wouldn’t have let me miss our wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Donna Jones. I couldn’t wait to drop my maiden name. I wasn’t going to hyphenate. Speaking of my Mr. Jones, where did he evaporate off to? He’d said I would meet someone from Momma’s past. Check. Been there, met Bill Blandings. Now I was done.
The wind roared in. I heard music. Oh no. Not that one—yep. The darned “Donna” song again.
~*~
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