Written in Time (7 page)

Angela Street doesn’t know if she’s on borrowed time or has had life actually restored to her. But with whatever time she has left on earth, she’ll fight on the side of good, against the bad guys on the street. “Yada yada yada,” Ellen said aloud.
 

Jack, still talking with Lars, just looked at her uncomprehendingly. She smiled back and shook her head, hopefully signaling that she’d meant nothing.
 

“Okay, Lars. So, when do we see the contracts?”
 

Evidently, Jack had been sucked into Lars’ fantasy.
 

“FedEx today?” There was a pause. “Yeah, Ellen and I’ll read the contract as soon as it gets here and call you right away.” There was another pause. “Of course I’ve still got your phone number, pal.” Another pause. “Okay! Take it easy, buddy.”
 

Jack said to her, “Did you get the part about the twenty-five G’s?”
 

“I’ll believe it when there’s a check in my hand. Actually, that’s not true. I’ll believe it after the check has cleared the bank.”
 

“Come here, kid! Gimme a kiss!” But Jack didn’t wait for her to come to him. He was out of his chair like a shot and pulled her up out of her chair and kissed her so hard that her teeth hurt. “Twenty-five grand!”
 

“Wait to order the pizza at least until we’ve seen the contract, Jack,” Ellen advised.
 

They’d signed three copies of the contract, faxed one up to Lars Benson. He’d been a ten percent agent, but wanted fifteen, more currently fashionable. They gave it to him, feeling he deserved it just for breathing—all that he had actually done, in fact, to get them the deal. Lars was agent of record for a book that hadn’t sold very well at all; the rights had reverted from the publisher less than a year prior to Lars’ phone call the previous day.
 

Ellen had the Express Mail envelope with the signed contracts on her lap, her right hand clutching the seatbelt.
 

“This is great, isn’t it, Ellen? I mean, Angel Street as a western!”
 

“So, they’ll turn the drug lord into a corrupt town boss or rustling king-pin, Angela Street will grow testicles and become Tex Wannabe, bounty hunter, and the guardian angel sex changes, too.”
 

“Pretty much the way I figure it. A good, basic story has a lot of inbuilt versatility to it,” her husband told her.
 

“Write that down, will ya?”
 

“Soon as we get home, Jack.”
 

Jack made the left and slipped the Suburban into one of the diagonal spaces in front of the post office. Ellen grabbed her keys and climbed out. She couldn’t quite figure out why, but for some reason she’d worn a skirt. Maybe it was because the weather was too warm for long pants, but not warm enough for shorts. The checkbook was in her left hand, her keys in the right patch pocket. An older man—she recognized his face, didn’t remember his name . . . if she’d ever known it—held the door for her and she smiled.
 

Inside, she went first to the post-office box. “Crap,” she said as she looked through its contents. Among the bills, the advertisements and the usual junk mail, there were three things that would grab Jack’s attention. One was the Museum Replicas catalog, full of swords. Jack liked swords. Another was the A. G. Russell knife catalog. Jack liked knives. What had prompted her single-word remark was the third item, a legal-sized envelope, its return address label revealing that it was from Arthur Beach.
 

Ellen closed the door to the post office box, went to the counter and didn’t even have to wait in line. The pleasant woman behind the counter weighed the Express Mail package and Ellen wrote out a check and left.
 

“Anything exciting in the mail?”
 

“Well, Museum Replicas and A. G. Russell.”
 

“Great! Let me see.”
 

Ellen Naile passed them over. “And an envelope from Arthur Beach in Nevada.”
 

“Open it, kid.”
 

“Priority Mail. Why does the post office have to be efficient when you don’t want them to be?”
 

“Ellen!”
 

“This is really very creepy, Jack. This whole thing. For the first time in our lives, unless Lars really is whacko, we’re going to have some real money, and there’s this thing.”
 

Ellen opened the envelope. There were copies of documents, and newspaper articles and a copy of a photograph, just a Xerox, but remarkably—damnably— clear. It was a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Naile and their two (unnamed) children.
 

“This has to be an elaborate practical joke, Jack.”
 

“Lemme see, princess.”
 

She handed it to him. She didn’t need to look at the picture anymore. It was burned into her mind forever and she’d probably see it in her dreams—the kind called nightmares. Despite the age of the photograph and the fact that it was a Xerox, the resemblance between the Naile family of nine decades ago and the Naile family of the present was enough to make her want to throw up.
 

Her own counterpart, and that of her daughter, wore their hair piled up beneath feather-festooned picture book hats. They wore long, uncomfortable-looking dresses, their hands clasped in front of them at their obviously corseted waists like singers about to hit a high note at the opera.
 

The older of the two men wore a black hat, its shape identical to Jack’s, even the hatband looking to be the same. He wore a vested suit, but it was, somehow, still casual looking. His mustache was identical to the one Jack had sported since he was twenty-two. He’d grown it because Ellen had always liked the look of Omar Sharif’s mustache.
 

The younger man, clean shaven but with a noticeable five o’clock shadow—David always had that—was the epitome of male fashion for the period, from derby to cravat to spats. David always looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of G.Q. Ellen had helped her husband with enough firearms-related articles to spot a concealed weapon, and there was a slight bulge at David’s left side, as if his coat covered a handgun worn crossdraw.
 

And the older man also was armed, a gun on his right hip, what was perhaps the butt of a second one protruding from beneath his coat.
 

The gunbelt/holster was a Hollywood rig of the type worn in ‘50s and ‘60s television westerns, a style which didn’t exist almost a century ago. Ellen Naile had even recognized it as one that Jack’s friend Sam Andrews had made for him around 1990.
 

She’d been looking out the Suburban’s open window. She turned her gaze to the other items from the envelope. There was a summary of its contents typed on an old-seeming machine, Arthur Beach’s name scrawled at the bottom. She read it aloud to her husband. “‘The Naile family arrived in town in 1896. The Nailes were apparently on their way to California for some new business when their wagon suffered an accident and was destroyed. They were unhurt, according to accounts. Reduced to only a few personal belongings, the Nailes seemingly had considerable financial resources. There is no material yet available to me mentioning the fate of their descendants, nor concerning how or when Mr. and Mrs. Naile eventually died. The county medical examiner’s office burned to the ground in the 1940s, and all death certificates archived there were destroyed as a result. I’ll keep looking.’”
 

“Holy—”
 

“Tell him to stop the hell looking, Jack!”
 

“Startling resemblance, that photograph. I’ll say that.”
 

Ellen nearly retched as she said it, but she said it anyway. “Jack, it’s you and me and David and Elizabeth, and the fucking picture was taken almost a hundred damn years ago! Get me home before I throw up!”
 

The Suburban lurched into reverse, which didn’t help.
 

CHAPTER
TWO

Jack picked up the phone and tapped out the number from memory.
 

“This is Arthur Beach.”
 

“Yeah, Arthur, this is Jack Naile—the one in the present,” Jack added lamely.
 

“Did you get my envelope yet?”
 

“That’s the reason I called. Yeah. We got it. And thanks for being so helpful. Listen. Do you have any way of finding any more photographs of the Naile family? And getting them copied? Within reason, I’ll pay whatever it costs. I could use a better copy of the photo you sent us, too.”
 

“Before I forget, I uncovered some more information on the Naile family, Jack. And, even though Jack Naile was a businessman, he seems to have gotten himself a reputation for being handy with a gun. It kind of reads like some kind of a western movie,” Beach added, laughing. “But, yeah, I think I can get some copies made of the photos. See any family resemblances?”
 

“Yeah—a little bit, at least.” Jack lit a cigarette, his gaze fixing on the photograph of Richard Boone, long-barreled single action drawn and pointing at him.
 

Ellen sat beside Jack at the table. Unlike some of the higher-profile writers attending the science fiction/fantasy convention, she and her husband had no scheduled mass autographing, but their readers caught them at the beginnings or endings of panel discussions or merely stopped them in the lobby.
 

Ellen saw Elizabeth signaling from the back of the room that she’d wait for them outside, and Ellen shot her a wave. David hadn’t come, having to work instead. But in a way, he was with them in spirit; they’d borrowed his Bondo-mobile Saab because the hotel’s underground garage was too low for the Suburban.
 

Jack passed a copy of their latest novel over to her. He was still talking with the reader who’d brought it. Ellen signed and dated the frontispiece under Jack’s signature. She closed the book, handed it back to Jack, and they exchanged a few more words with the man and his wife. Jack returned the book. The man and his wife smiled and walked away.
 

“You all set, Ellen?” Jack asked, starting to get up.
 

Jack pulled her chair for her. As Ellen got up, a good-looking young man in his late twenties or early thirties, a little boy of about four in tow, approached the table. An interesting thing about cons was that one got to recognize a lot of the faces of the attendees. And Ellen Naile recognized this man—yet she had no idea from where or what.
 

Somehow, the beard that the man wore didn’t look usual for him, nor did the glasses.
 

“I was wondering if you guys would mind autographing your book for my son here. I’m a big fan, and I’m sure he’ll love your stuff, too—soon as he’s old enough to read, anyway.”
 

Jack laughed. Ellen smiled as Jack accepted the book and started writing in it. Even the voice sounded familiar, somehow. Ellen signed the book as well. Jack was joking with the little boy. He was very cute, with curly red hair and an almost pugnacious smile.
 

The young man offered his hand, and he and Jack shook. He offered his hand to Ellen, and she took it. “Your little boy reminds me of our son, David, when he was that age.” And Ellen extended her hand to the little boy. Like a little man, he shook hands. Ellen laughed.
 

“Do I get a handshake, too, pal?” Jack inquired. The little boy seemed a bit reluctant, but shook hands.
 

“It was really great meeting you guys. My little boy will cherish this book and so will I. God bless.” The young man swept his son up into his arms, smiled and walked away.
 

“What was his name, Jack?”
 

“He wanted the book autographed to his son. James was the name.”
 

“Didn’t that little boy remind you of David?”
 

“His father reminded me of David. Come on, I’ll buy you and Elizabeth a drink.”
 

They linked up with Elizabeth in the corridor, Elizabeth immediately told them, “That little boy and his father? Wasn’t that little boy cute?”
 

Ellen smiled.
 

Almost ten days after Jack’s conversation with Arthur Beach, Ellen Naile found herself being reminded of the Norsemen, their belief that at the moment of birth the skein of one’s life was woven by their equivalent of the Fates. The warp and woof seemed to be quite apparent.
 

Elizabeth, not seriously dating yet, was to go out with three of her friends, but one of them—the one old enough to drive—had to work instead.
 

David was to have been out with a few of his buddies from school, guys with whom he’d been on the wrestling team and the tennis team, most of them friends since kindergarten. But their plans fell apart; Ellen didn’t know why.
 

Clarence had called and accepted their standing offer to come up from Atlanta and spend the night.
 

At the post-office box that morning, there had been another package from Arthur Beach, this one quite a bit thicker.
 

Ellen and Jack had opened it together in the car. Considering the age of the originals from which the copies had been made, the photos were remarkably clear. The likenesses of the Naile family of nearly a century ago to the Naile family of the present were not just uncanny, but unmistakably identical.
 

She could have lied to herself that the queasy feeling she had was because her period had just started, but she didn’t; the reason was in an envelope on her lap.
 

The day had passed quickly—too much so—and, almost before she knew it, the entire family, such togetherness an increasing rarity, was seated around the kitchen table.
 

Perhaps to keep her mind off the photographs and their scary implications, Ellen Naile had done something that she rarely did—she made dessert. Lars Benson had called during the day, telling them that he had the advance check for Angel Street and that he’d have the disbursement check in their hands by the following day, Friday. Because of that, Ellen went to the grocery store and bought T-bone steaks, one of Jack’s favorites.