Jaclyn the Ripper (13 page)

“Marilyn?”

“Who is this?”

“It's Amber!” She chuckled. “God, has it been that long?”

“Where are you?”

“San Francisco. I'm with somebody.”

“God, it's about time.”

“No, no, it's not like that.”

A static-filled pause. “It's not?”

“No, it's—” Amber blushed and wished she hadn't called. “No, it's not. I mean, he's not gay or anything, but . . .”

“Look, honey,” said Marilyn, “it's almost midnight, and I just took an Ambien. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

 

Amber sashayed into the hotel bar, annoyed with herself for calling Marilyn, especially when she hadn't known what she wanted to say without blowing Wells's cover, without having people think that she
herself had gone insane. She couldn't even explain it to herself. She still couldn't get past him running from his time machine, and the more she thought about it, the more she worried that she had in fact become delusional. Yet no one was reacting to her strangely, and her world seemed otherwise the same as it had before. Yes, she was emotionally out-of-kilter, but who wouldn't be?

It's like all of a sudden I'm living inside a dream.

The bartender came over, and instead of a wine spritzer or beer, she ordered vodka on the rocks. Sensing her turmoil, he filled her glass to the brim, and she told herself to tip him generously. She drank deeply, relieved the vodka went down smoothly. It warmed her insides, spread and sent a pleasant flush to her brain. Her montage of thoughts slowed, then stopped altogether, and she was left with a haze and a smile, a blank mind, and that was just fine.

She studied the bottles lining the mirrors behind the bar. Some night she wouldn't mind trying the exotic ones, but not now. She appreciated the “summer of love” rock 'n' roll coming from the speakers. It reminded her of her mom; a simpler life; soundtracks from movies and waiting rooms; TV commercials. She hung on to the familiarity—an emotional life raft—and let the vodka do its work.

Like a therapist, the bartender came over and refilled her glass. She smiled and lifted it to him, pushed a twenty in his direction, then sat back, sipped and enjoyed. Her mind went back to H. G. Wells, encircled him like a dance and stayed—little corollaries of thoughts doing the moves. She remembered old boyfriends, some making love to her and touching her soul, others leaving her curled in a ball of nerves, some walking away, others left behind, none permanent.
My life has always been transitory, so as he might say, why the devil be afraid of anything?
She frowned.
Where the hell did that come from?

The vodka made her giggle.

Yes, she was just fine. Unconsciously, she caressed her cheek where he'd kissed her. Her thoughts went from reverence for H. G. Wells the gatekeeper to curiosity about Wells the man. What did the women in his life call him? Bertie? Not the sexiest of names, but he hadn't complained. Women had flocked to him, vied for his attentions, and he
had responded in kind. Her mouth curled in a tiny smile. Though he might have inspired reverence, he was definitely not religious material.

She wondered if he was as handsome without clothes on as he was within—or if a reformulation error had altered him. She blushed.
He's a gentleman. He wouldn't have said anything, but maybe someday soon I'll find out. He likes me—I know he likes me—I've caught him looking at me. I felt his lips like a tacit invitation, an hors d'oeuvre. Who knows if it was me or him that was the delicacy?
She giggled again. Obviously, the vodka had settled in her groin, and it felt oh, so delicious. Images filled her brain again, this time a kaleidoscope of Wells. An image froze. Her breath caught. She imagined him transmogrified by time travel into a human satyr.

She drained her drink, released a jittery sigh and left the bar—feeling warm, excellent and outrageous.
No. Beyond warm, beyond all of those.
She got halfway to the elevators, then stopped and inexplicably detoured to the hotel desk.

The concierge looked up from a computer screen. “Yes, ma'am. May I help you?”

“I'm sorry to bother you, but I seem to have locked myself out. . . .” She smiled sheepishly. “It's Room 529.”

H.G.'s dream started with Amy—her delicate, fine-boned body beside him, her curves a perfect fit for his hands, her lips brushing his, the scent of roses in the air; it segued into his cocaine-addict friend Sidney Bowkett's wife—he recalled her desperate flesh beneath him, but not her name; then a glowing alabaster-blond Cambridge student who liked to make love in the grass and talk philology between sets; then May Nesbit, young, stupid and uninspired—femininity in the dark ages; then Violet Hunt, then Rosamund, eager, uninhibited and mind-boggling, yet possessive beyond reason; and of course his Venus Meretrix for all time, the voluptuous brown girl the day after he'd had lunch with Teddy Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.; and then a succession of pretty faces contorted in ecstasy, breasts and round bellies flat against him, and hands and caresses and . . .

He smelled jasmine, and so the dream became specific. Jasmine gave way to musk and a moist sheen. A lover was on top of him, moving up and down, in circles one way, in circles the other, slowly, then slower still, then a warm and delicious pause. He moaned in his sleep; his psyche was no longer part of this; his senses were. He had surrendered to the dream, this wonderful dream that suddenly became extraordinary: the
lover remained still, yet was moving around him like liquid velvet, massaging him.

Her cries, and then her fingernails in his shoulders rudely awakened him, and he saw Amber above him, her body arching as she came in waves. He tried to stop, but his own pleasure was too intense, and as usual that old friend between his legs was not about to listen to reason or indignation, and he found himself involuntarily thrusting until he, too, climaxed. Then she collapsed on top of him.
So much for staying faithful to Amy in 2010.

 

“You raped me.”

“I most certainly did not!” She giggled a little-girl giggle, then whispered in a singsong, “I can still feel you. . . .”

His sensibilities were telling him that this “dream” with Amber was the best sex he'd had in years, yet he was annoyed that it had happened and particularly upset that he'd had little to do with it. Then the guilt rushed in on the wings of a conventional morality that he'd spend his entire adult life trying to get rid of. He rolled out from under her and sat on the edge of the bed. He turned on the light and put his head in his hands.

“Good bloody Christ!”

“Don't be mad at me, Bertie.”

“How did you get in here, anyway?”

She sat on her knees next to him, smiling and dangling the plastic key between her breasts. “I told the concierge that you had fallen asleep and accidentally locked me out of the room.” More giggles. “And that I didn't want to disturb you.”

“You
raped
me!”

She wilted under his glare. “I'm sorry.”

“You had no right! I'm in love with Amy.”

“According to your bio at the Getty—not to mention, my Edwardian lit class—you were always searching for—”

“Don't tell me about a life I haven't
lived
!”

“Okay, sorry, but those times you couldn't find your lover-shadow—”

“How did you know about lover-shadows?” he demanded.

“Not everybody here is illiterate.”

“You are not my lover-shadow!”

“Okay, okay, but when you were looking—you were having—what did you call them? Passades?”

“Amy left me because of passades! And I didn't come all this way just for a, a pint in a strange pub, if you will!”

“D'you like my perfume?” she said coyly. “It's jasmine. And you smell like candy.” She nuzzled him. “Why don't we—”

“I don't want to hear it!” he shouted.

“Okay, okay. Chill.” She moved a few inches away. “I'm sorry.”

“Do you mind, Miss Reeves?”

“I don't mind at all,” she said. “You know what they say about old wine.” She gave his shoulder a tiny love bite. “And you're definitely not vinegar.”

“I meant,
go
,” he said angrily.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Must I call the desk? Rape is still a crime in this world, is it not?”

“Try proving it when I'm the one with all the DNA inside me.”

“Get out!”

“Okay, okay.” She went to the door, then turned, tossed her lovely hair and said wistfully, “Did you ever think that maybe you are
my
lover-shadow?”

He imagined an eternity passed before he heard the door click shut behind her, and then he felt very cold. He got back into bed, rolled into a ball and wept. Not so much for Amy and his transgression—or whatever it was—but because this Amber Reeves had touched him deeply and he barely knew her. First Amy, then the world of 2010, and now this. He didn't know if he should be exhilarated or terrified.

Early the next morning, noise from a shower on a floor above woke H.G. He sat up and took in the room, nodding at the graceful lines of the furniture, much more forgiving than the enormous squat pieces from the turn of the century. Intending to sketch a “picshua” of these new designs for his office in 1906, he went to the desk, but stopped as he became fully awake. Amy, the missing, and Amber, the found, came roaring back into his brain, ruining his mood.

He jumped up and paced the room, wondering what to do first, and accidentally bumped into the armoire across from the bed, jarring its door open. Inside, he saw a large television and mercifully was distracted. He recalled television from 1979—it had inspired those awful “Babble Machines” he wrote about in
When the Sleeper Wakes
—but this was no late twentieth-century “tube” or “Babble Machine,” to put it mildly. The screen was flat and longer than his outstretched arm, and he marveled at its lack of physical depth.
It's thinner than some Rembrandts I've seen
, he told himself, unaware of the implication. He found the remote, had no clue what the multicolored buttons did, but turned it on à la 1979. He stared openmouthed at the instant picture, its brightness and perfect
colors in something labeled “Hi Def,” and realized that the images on the screen were inherently false in that they made reality appear more appealing than it really was. Regardless, he was engrossed within seconds. He hadn't watched TV in thirty-some years and—grinning sheepishly—realized that he had actually missed it.

PBS featured a story about Canada and Greenland sparring over newly discovered territory—islands which had emerged due to melting of the polar ice cap. The commentator summarized the doomsday scenario: By the end of the twenty-first century, the seas would have risen some twenty feet, erasing traditional coastlines and their cities, some island nations would have vanished, the tropics would have become semi-arid ovens, and an already overpopulated planet would have substantially less habitable space—all because of unrelenting carbon dioxide emissions from industrialized nations.

H.G. was first astonished, then mortified that he hadn't predicted this phenomenon they called global warming. His warnings about the mishandling of science and technology had been confined to more obvious phenomena: war conducted with weapons so destructive that the human race would obliterate itself. Even if calmer heads prevailed, the commentator suggested, the end was near—unless leaders and governments were willing to consider the Earth itself.
I must think about this when I go back. I must write, write and write for my world. I must use the prevailing sentiment of Edward's time to aim words at those industrial tycoons who burn coal for commerce and comfort in the name of progress.

Yet he had no immediate answers, for the problem was insidious, complex. Most global warming came from the maw of modern convenience and comfort all around him. Everything in his hotel room had been manufactured by factories that belched green house gases into the atmosphere.
I suppose I could forsake all this and sleep in Golden Gate Park, but then I'd become a minority of one, and if it didn't work for the likes of Henry David Thoreau, I doubt it will work for me. Besides, I have no desire to live like a Neanderthal and apparently no one else does, either.

When the PBS segment was done, he clicked uneasily from channel to channel, almost afraid of what he would learn next, then more afraid of becoming the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand.

He paused on Fox News, hooked by the quick cuts, the banners and scrolls, flashing sidebars and a scantily clad anchorwoman who looked like an actress or prostitute. After five minutes of commercials, he was flabbergasted by the visual images. He wondered how motor cars could speed through radically different terrains; how real people could interact with cartoon characters; how animals and chocolate candy could talk; but then his speculation was cut short by the lead story on the morning news that filled the room with its ugliness.