The Coffee Shop (19 page)

“How did you know that?”

“I know everything Annie orders from ten miles around. And I know Annie likes the Hawaiian.” She grinned to herself. “I also know she has a new cell phone. Only don’t tell her that. I don’t want her to know I know. That way she can come over, so she’s not so lonely.” She took a slice and leaning back into her chair she started eating. “So, what did you do to piss her off?”

He shrugged.

“Wait. There’s only one thing that would make her that mad.” She lowered her head, looking at him over the rim of her glasses. “Least I hope it’s the one thing I am thinking of.” She shook her head. “Derrick, Derrick, Derrick. You poor, silly fool.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yes, you will be. You obviously love the girl. That I can plainly see. But you have to learn the boundaries, and you just crossed a big one.” She took another bite, chewing while she rocked in her lazy boy. “Whatever you do, don’t try to fix it immediately. She’s still mad, and it will only stir things up again. But whatever you do, think before you leap. Oh, and do a whole lot of apologizing.”

“That’s it? What no pearls of wisdom?”

“Hey, buddy, I gave you some. The only one that can fix this is you. If I tell you exactly what to do and say, she’ll know it didn’t come from you and that will just piss her off more. Nothing she hates more than insincerity in an apology.”

“You’re right.” He stood. “You are absolutely right.” He started to walk toward the door.

“You’re not going to have any pizza?”

“You keep it.”

She looked up at him. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you.”

“Hey, don’t thank me yet. You still have to figure out a way to fix this.”

He nodded at her and left her apartment, taking the stairs down to the front. He had told Lawrence he wouldn’t need him for a few hours, so he started walking and thinking. Pulling out his cell phone, he punched in a number. “Angela?”

“Derrick? How did you get my number?”

“I saw it on Annie’s phone.”

“What happened?”

“What makes you think something happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You were going to be spending the evening with her, it’s early, and you’re on the phone talking to me.”

He sighed. “Why didn’t you warn me about this whole intelligence thing?”

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“You brought up the whole issue about how smart she is, and why isn’t she doing more with her life, didn’t you?” She sighed. “What is it with people that can’t mind their own business?”

“I take it this has happened before?”

“You could say that.”

“And?”

“What do you mean ‘and’?”

“And what happened?”

She laughed. “Do you see her with a boyfriend?” Derrick didn’t answer for a moment.

“I see your point,” he finally replied.

“Look, whatever you do don’t tell her you talked to me. I am going to keep out of this. If she finds out I’m even talking to you. Well, the last thing I want is to be blamed for breaking you two up by some advice I gave. No, I’m really sorry Derrick, but this needs to come from you.”

“That’s what Mrs. Fleming said.”

“Well there you go. If Mrs. Fleming said it, then it’s probably good advice. You don’t live as long as she has and not learn something.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Good luck.”

He could tell she meant it, from the tone in her voice, and he prayed he could figure out a way to fix this mess. He’d always been able to fix anything, but this was one time it
really
mattered, and it scared him. No, this is one problem he’d have to fix for certain.

Chapter Fifteen

Sitting up, Derrick looked at Annie’s side of the bed. It hadn’t been slept in, and as he stared down at the untouched sheets, he tried not to panic. Throwing the covers back, he jumped from the bed and ran into the walk-in closet.

Looking down the rods, he saw only suits or pants, not a dress, not a blouse in sight. Yanking the drawers forcefully open, he rummaged through their contents. There was no sign of anything belonging to Annie. “No!”

He ran into the washroom and opened the cabinet. He looked to the shelves for anything of hers, but there was nothing. Not a trace, not a hint, not a remnant of anything that had been hers.

“Brian. Brian will know.” Going over to the bed, he sat on the rumpled silk sheets and dialed.

“Brian?”

“Oh, so I’m good enough to talk to again, am I?”

“What?” Derrick stared. “Oh…that’s right. Annie was the one that got us back together two weeks ago. And she isn’t here because of what I did five months ago, so you and I didn’t fix things two weeks ago. But why didn’t I send myself a letter to be delivered yesterday so that I wouldn’t mess things up five months ago with Annie?” He raked a hand through his hair. “But then why haven’t I sent myself a letter saying what happened when I tried to fix it with Annie after the fight, so that I wouldn’t do that again? But if I sent myself a letter why didn’t it get to me? Oh, God I shouldn’t be talking to you…But then it was two days ago, here in the future, on a different timeline, I learned of your death, so it should be okay to talk to you now because whatever it was I said, or did, would definitely have happened by now…” He tried to gather his thoughts and sat down on the side of the bed.

“Derrick…? I’m coming over. I need you to tell the doorman to permit me access. Do you think you can do that?”

Derrick sighed.

“Derrick?”

“Yes, Brian. I’ll tell him.”

“Good. I’m on my way now.”

He hung up and then pressed one. “Harold?”

“Yes, Mr. Sloane, how can I help you today?”

“I need you to inform security that Dr. Taylor is to be granted access to the building and to my suite.”

“Yes, sir. I will take care of it immediately.”

“Thank you, Harold.”

“Good day, Mr. Sloane.”

Derrick hung up and went over to the bar, pouring himself a large scotch. Swirling it in the crystal snifter, he watched as the amber liquid glowed against the light and he took a large drink from it.

“Derrick?”

Derrick turned to see Brian standing behind him, and he looked to his watch. A full ten minutes had passed since he had taken a drink. Ten minutes of staring into space, his thoughts drifting as in some endless loop.

“You’re not answering your door now? I had to get Harold to have someone let me in.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you knock.”

Brian looked to the scotch snifter in Derrick’s hand. “Mind if I catch up?”

“Oh, sorry. Yes, let me get it for you.”

“No, that’s fine. I know my way around your bar.”

“Right.” Brian poured himself a scotch and sat on the couch.

Pacing, Derrick then sat in the chair by the fireplace. “Every time I dream, I am seeing a timeline that has already played out, and I have no idea what the events were that led up to that specific timeline. And then the next time I dream, the timeline is different, something has changed it, but whatever happened…I don’t know what it was. So then why didn’t I send myself a letter to be delivered to me on a specific date in the future, telling me not to do something? Maybe I did do that. And I did follow the advice. And it made it worse. So I destroyed the letter before it got to me. But then if I had destroyed the letter before it got to me, I wouldn’t have followed the advice in the first place. So then I would have sent myself the letter to do it, and I would have done it again.” Derrick stared straight ahead. “Is any of this making any sense to you? Because it’s giving me a great bloody headache, I can tell you. If I don’t drive myself crazy thinking about this I just might…”

“Might what?” Derrick didn’t answer, and Brian sat forward on the couch. “Derrick? Might what?”

Brian was staring at him, their eyes meeting as Derrick raised his head once more. He laughed. “I don’t suppose you know what I did to try and fix it between Annie and me? But as we haven’t been speaking, you wouldn’t know. But whatever I did…who’s to say something else I do doesn’t mess it up just as bad. Maybe I tried to fix it too soon and that just pushed her further away.”

Brian nodded. “Okay, why don’t we just try to think this through?”

“I don’t think I need to say what I’m thinking right now, but I’m going to anyway. You’re kidding me, right? Oh, and while I’m at it, that patronizing: ‘There, there now, you poor deluded man.’ You can just drop that, please. That would be nice.” Leaning back, he shook his head. “This is happening, Brian. You may think I’m crazy. Hell I think I’m crazy. But I’m not. It’s real. I tell you what, I’ll prove it to you. Here, I want you to choose ten letters from the alphabet at random and write them down on a piece of paper.” He got up and grabbed the pad next to the phone in the kitchen, and he held it out to Brian. “Here. Any ten letters, but all different.”

“All right.” Brian took the pad.

“Just do it quick, off the top of your head, without even thinking about it. You choose.”

Brian grabbed his pen and quickly wrote the first ten letters that came into his head. B, R, D, E, F, T, S, O, V, P.

“Okay, now I want you to choose a number between one and ten, quick, without thinking about it.”

“Seven.”

“Okay. Give me the paper.” Derrick studied the letters and tearing the page off the pad he set it aside. Grabbing the pen, he started to rearrange the letters, trying to create words using what Brian had chosen. “Probes, proves, strode, stored, stoves, droves, strove, softer…” Derrick laughed. “You had to make this difficult, didn’t you? It’s easy to come up with a six letter word, but to find a seven letter word in that.” He stared at the letters, continuing to try every arrangement he could think of. “I found one. Frosted!” Derrick sat back in his chair and looked at his watch. The phone rang, and he picked it up. “A delivery for Dr. Taylor? Have them bring it up, please, Harold. Thank you.” Derrick crossed his arms and waited until there was a knock on the door, and motioned toward it.

Brian got up and answered the door, signing for the letter. Slowly returning to the couch he opened it. Inside was a note from his attorney stating an envelope had been delivered to him, dated five months ago, and that it held instructions to be delivered to Dr. Taylor on this date, at this time, to this address. The envelope looked like any standard business envelope, and there was a sealed note inside.

Brian opened the note. On the page was a single word. “Frosted.” For a while, Brian just stared at the note. He put it down on the coffee table and left it there, looking as though he didn’t want to touch it.

Derrick grinned. “You know what’s interesting about this? I haven’t sent this yet, and yet it’s already here because we are experiencing the future of something I am planning to do.”

Brian slowly took a deep breath. “Okay…so then why haven’t you just sent yourself notes into the future to tell yourself what to and what not to do?”

“That’s just it, I would have, so where are they? I can only assume I did do that and as a result it made things worse in the long run, and so I destroyed the note before it got to me so that I wouldn’t use it.”

“But how would you know you had destroyed the note, if you never got it to read it in the first place, so that it messed things up further?”

“That has to be the logical progression of this whole thing. Otherwise, where are the notes?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that the reason there are no notes is because you had this conversation with yourself, and never sent any in the first place?”

“It had occurred to me.”

“So, how do you know it makes things worse to give yourself advance notice then?”

“Every time I see the future, it changes. Something different keeps happening every time I go back into the past, which is my present. I can only assume I am having these glimpses because it shows me something I need to see. But as to why and what it means, I have no idea. And as to why it’s happening to me, just out of the blue like this? I don’t understand what purpose this could possibly serve. What could I possibly do with this foreknowledge other than affect those individuals in my own little circle of life?”

“Have you ever?” Brian paused.

“What?”

“Oh, looked at the newspaper to see where things are five months in the future.”

“Please tell me you are not suggesting what I think you are.”

“Why not? Maybe that is what this is for. Maybe that is what this is all about. Maybe you are supposed to be affecting things on a much greater scale.”

“Oh, now you’re playing with fire. I start trying to affect things in the past based on what I read in the newspaper of my future, and it could lead to alterations in the timeline on a catastrophic level.”

“Isn’t that just a bit grandiose?”

“Armed with foreknowledge of five months into the future? One stock or trade could set into motion a domino effect and lead to who knows what. It could be disastrous, and you know it.”

“You can’t blame a guy for giving it a try.” Brian finished the drink he was holding. “Mind if I have another?”

“Help yourself.”

“One thing is for sure, your hosting abilities have taken a serious downhill turn.”

Derrick glared.

“There’s the Derrick I miss and love.”

Derrick laughed. “You said that to me three days ago.”

“Three days ago?”

“Oh, I guess you have no idea what’s been happening, do you?”

“Kinda been out of the loop…if you know what I mean.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

Brian poured himself another scotch and took a drink. He turned to look directly at Derrick.

“You remember the conversation about the dream, you know the day I met Annie?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess, you thought I was crazy then, too.”

Brian looked like he was about to say something, but he didn’t speak.

“Uh-huh, thought as much. Anyway, that night the dreams continued, picking up where the first one had left off. Only it was different, Annie was different, just little things, pierced ears, calling me honey, she no longer read books and she loved to read, nothing major. But it wasn’t the Annie I had known the last time I saw her in the future. And when I tried to call you to find out what had happened to alter the timeline, you told me I had an argument with you the day after I met Annie and that I never spoke to you after that. I have no idea why I did that. I can only assume.” Derrick stopped speaking.

“Assume what?”

“Well, the argument happened, just as you said. You know, I have wondered why I didn’t send myself a note about that, but there would have been nothing I could have done. All I could do was to try and avoid it as best I could. And calling to cancel our appointment would probably have led to the same fight.”

“Because it was about me being ticked at you for choosing Annie over me. And if you had cancelled it would have just been the same bad feelings on my part all over again.”

“Yes, I had assumed as much. So I couldn’t avoid it. Just figured I’d call you the next day and try to fix it, but that night I dreamed my trying to fix it somehow got you killed, only I had no idea what happened, or when. Did I try to call you the next day, and that’s when it happened? Or did I assume I would call you the next day and so I just waited a day and then that’s when it happened? Or did I wait two weeks, or a month, and then try and as a result that was when it happened?” Drawing his hand across his forehead, he sighed. “So when I woke up five months in the past, I avoided you completely. Who knows, maybe my sending you something as simple as a note is what set into motion whatever caused your death. I just don’t know.”

“You did the only thing you thought you could to keep me alive.” Brian came over to the couch and sat across from Derrick, slumping back into the cushions. “Wow, and here I just thought you were a world class a
—
”