OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (29 page)

"We
'll come back when he's sober," drawled Garrison, and put pressure on my arm as if to lead me out, but this time I couldn't do what he wanted. I tugged free and took another step closer, both fascinated and repelled. He knew me. This man, Everett,
knew
me!

"What
's my name?" I demanded. Of all the questions, that had become the most important. Once I had a name, maybe everything else would fall into place.

"You don
't know?" he probed, weak but amused.

I shook my head.

"She doesn't know." He sniggered. "Got a memory access problem, do we? Dumped some information in transit? Searching for a signal? That's rich!"

That
's rich.
  My throat suddenly tightened with an unpleasant memory.
What, you think you're too good for me? That's rich.
  A man's unwelcome hand on my bare thigh. Me, stumbling back from a face—one that
could
have peeled away and whiskered out into this.
A snapping sound, the heel of my pump broken. Damn. $85 pair of shoes, too
.

I recoiled from the nauseating sensation of memories that some deep, instinctive part of me still didn
't want to experience. Apparently I recoiled physically, too—right back into Garrison, who caught my elbow.

"Eighty-five dollar pair of shoes...?" I whispered, and the hand at my elbow tightened, maybe in shock.

"Still on the shoes, huh?" Everett shook his head. "Yeah, honeybuns. That was me. I usually look a lot more Wall Street-meets-
GQ
, that's all. So who's the Marlboro Man?" Now he was sizing Garrison up. "Goddamn. I knew you'd hook up with someone. You feministas talk a good game, but you couldn't make it three days without a man. You remember me telling you that?"

Calm. Present a calm, unaffected face. Someone had taught me that just this morning, forever ago—although I had to reach back a hand to touch my protector
's arm when I sensed him shifting impatiently behind me. He was probably just aching to correct this man's language. But this was
my
fight, this time.

"I don
't remember anything...Everett," I said soothingly, and the name sounded right. "I'm hoping you can help me fill in the blanks."

"So it
's 'Everett' now, eh
Ms.
Rhinehart? Pretty damn late for informality, if you ask me. Pretty fuckin' late—"

"That
's enough." The Boss's interruption, dangerously low, sounded more soothingly familiar than did Everett's voice...but nowhere near as familiar as the name.

Rhinehart. Miz Rhinehart. It
was
my name. I could sense it, could hear it, and the rest was so close now!

"Injured or not, you
'll stop that language 'round the lady," Garrison warned. But the language, like Belle and Dixie's profession, didn't bother me that much. I used language like that myself. I'd used it on the Boss.

"Ooooh! Don
't call her a lady, Marshal Dillon! She might slap a discrimination suit on you!"

Dillon, again.

"See," I heard the doctor murmur to the Boss. "No sense. One minute he
's fine, the next...."

But
it made sense to me
!

"If you just hadn
't gone all PMS on me," sighed Everett. "But nooo. You and your petty complaints. Didn't you realize they would shut you up? What was the big deal anyway?"

We
're supposed to be working close on this project, aren't we? So let's get close....

"What...?
" My voice shook. I heard a wooden scrape, then felt a chair being gently nudged against the back of my legs, and I gratefully sank onto it. "What happened?"

"You ruined our lives, that
's all."

Funny, how some of his words felt so right, but some of them... "I don
't think I did."

"You wouldn
't." His eyes, so bright with tiny pupils, focused behind me again. "Didn't take you long to latch onto someone, even here, huh? I'd probably be a lot healthier too, if I could've crooked my finger and fetched the Lone Ranger. Funny how you don't call it harassment when you want something."

"What
's my name?"

His voice was hoarse. "They had to shut me up too, don
't you see? That's your fault."

I heard Garrison
's breathing get rougher behind me, and I extended a hand, reticule-purse dangling from my wrist, to forbid him to go by. Damn it, this was
my
life we were talking about now. "What's my name?" I repeated shakily.

"But I didn
't realize how far they'd go. You can't blame that one on me...and I guess I can't blame it on you either. I never guessed they'd try it on either of us."

I stood up, stepped close, grabbed a handful of his shirt collar, and leaned into his ugly, ravaged face. "Tell me my name, you son of a—"

"Rhinehart! Elizabeth Rhinehart." He drew a shaky breath, and I could smell the liquor on him, but it wasn't half as strong as the wave of recognition that hit me. "Sheesh! Don't go postal on me now. I think your middle name is Katherine or something."

I straightened slowly, letting him go, and shakily said, "Kathleen. Elizabeth Kathleen Rhinehart."

I
knew
. That was it, sure as I had brown hair, sure as I was standing in Dodge City, Kansas. Lillabit. 'Lizabeth. Everything
didn't
come rushing back, damn it. But at least I could recognize the truth, and that name was it.

I glanced back at the Boss...and I couldn
't read his shuttered expression at all. "I'm Elizabeth," I told him, hushed. I had a name!

He nodded, solemn.

When I turned to look back at Everett, my skirts brushed against the chair that the Boss had pulled up for me. These skirts felt
completely
unnatural, wrong even.

Something awful had happened.

"Where are we from?" I demanded.

"Chicago.
" His slow smile warned me not to trust him, and yet—that was right too.

"Who are you to me? I mean...are we related?
"
Please
don't let us be married!

He snorted. "We were colleagues,
Miz
Rhinehart. We worked for the same company, remember? Emphasis on worke
-D
. You managed to screw that one up for both of us."

Okay, now the scary one. "What kind of work did we do?"

He slowly shook his head, bright eyes still. "You really don't know?"

"Would I be asking you if I knew? Come
on
, Everett!"

He glanced from me to the men behind me. "Ah...look, Rhinehart. Not that I owe you jack, but you might want to lose ol
' Yosemite Sam for this part. He, uh, might not understand."

I hesitated, torn. Unfortunately, Satan
's gimpy spawn had a point. If my past was as wicked as my ease with swear words indicated, then I probably wanted to hear it myself before facing Garrison with the bad news.
Especially
after he'd been seen around town with me all day. And if Everett lied to me—don't think I hadn't considered
that
possibility—I wanted the chance to sort fact from fiction before asking the Boss to deal with any of it. It wasn't like Everett was in any shape to hurt me....

...to grab my leg—my bare leg—so that I stumbled in pulling away from him, so startled I
'm unsure how to react properly, breaking the heel of my shoe....

But I hated to lose the Boss
's protection.

Everett smiled, smarmy as ever. "Let
's just say we're in the entertainment biz, honeybuns." And the minute he said it, I knew that was true too, and it was
more
than I wanted anyone else to hear. I spun around to ask, beg, for some privacy....

...and found myself already alone in the room with the spawn. The door remained cracked behind Doc McCarty and the Boss as they left. I almost panicked—was the Boss just leaving the room, or was he leaving for good? Had he already heard too much?

It didn't matter. He was heading out for Wyoming tomorrow anyway. It hurt, to tell myself those things, but it also gave me the strength to step forward, push the door the rest of the way shut, then turn back to Everett.

"The entertainment business? But what did I
do
?"

He took a small sip out of the bottle by his bed, and sighed happily. "Client relations.
"

More euphemisms, always more friggin
' euphemisms! But they were the right euphemisms. I knew those words.
Client relations
. "Are you—are you telling me I was a prostitute?"

Everett blinked at me, considering that, then settled himself more comfortably on his pillow like someone with a purpose. "You would never deign to use that particular job title, Ms. Rhinehart, but as a matter of fact, yeah. Yeah, that
's
exactly
what you were. The high-priced kind."

Everything kind of spun around me, and I sank weakly onto the chair Garrison had left for me. Part of me still didn
't believe, and yet my fear made it all the more likely, didn't it? I did
not
want to believe this man, and yet I hadn't heard anything to challenge....

"You make sure the clients have a good time," prompted Everett. "Fulfill their every need...isn
't any of this sounding familiar to you?"

Horribly, it was. It was sounding
too
damned familiar. "I'm afraid you'll have to convince me," I said, downright prim, still fighting it.

So he did.

Maybe I could have resisted, if Everett had just fed me information and left it up to me to believe him or not believe him. Not that I
didn't
believe that we were from Chicago, that we were co-workers, that I was "too damned selective" and had turned down his advances. I also believed that the fuss I'd raised over his advances attracted too much publicity and prompted "management" to rid themselves of us. That sounded somehow on-target. But I
could
have denied it if I'd wanted to, just because he was the one saying it. What Everett did with the rest, the really damning part, was that he let me provide my own information.

"Come on, Rhinehart, are you really comfortable in that granny gown you
've got on? Your work clothes are a hell of a lot skimpier than that, remember? You don't wax your legs just to cover them."

And I
did
remember—sleeveless blouses, open necklines, skirts that hit me above the knee, sheer stockings, slipper-like shoes with heels and no buttons.
Slut slippers
, I thought.
Fuck-me pumps.
At his urging, I
did
glimpse memories of how scandalously I liked to dress—just like how comfortable I'd been in my underclothes, in the back room at Morris Collar's General Store. And my legs were hairless—which, after a week, had to mean I'd done something extra to slow down re-growth.

"What about makeup?" he urged. "This is the first time I
've ever seen you without foundation, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick. I can't believe you let yourself go out in public like this!"

That was familiar too.
Put on moisturizer first
, I thought vaguely.
Use warm colors....

It got worse.

He challenged, "Can you not name at least three forms of birth control?"—and though I didn't say it out loud, they rushed through my head
. Pills, condoms, diaphragms
,
sponges….
He asked, "You know what syphilis and herpes are, right? You do know what STD stands for?"
Sexually transmitted disease
. I knew. "How about the term 'blow job?'" he continued, getting uglier the longer I fought admitting it to myself. "'Hand job?' 'Missionary position?' 'Doggie style?' How about pulling a 69?"

Okay, so it took me a minute to figure out 69, until I realized how the numbers fit together, one upside-down and one right-side up, at which point the probable erotic meaning clicked. That wasn
't the sort of thing an innocent would figure out so fast, unless she already knew what it referred to, right?

Everett sighed. "Come
on
, Rhinehart. You think Cowboy Joe out there knows stuff like this? I don't think Doc
McCarty
knows it, and he's a man of science! This is the Victorian Era, here!"

Him mentioning Garrison—I assumed Cowboy Joe meant Garrison—startled me to my feet, but when I tried to stand, I stepped on the ruffled hem of my
wrapper and stumbled, catching myself dizzily against the wall. I wasn't used to proper dresses. My
own
memories, what I could access of them, didn't put me in petticoats or corsets. Garrison thought I was improper to comb my hair in front of men, and here I was, defining "blow job"—and on my own! Everett was feeding me the terms, but I was the one recognizing them.