Smith's Monthly #23 Read online

  The place smelled of smoke and green plants and I immediately felt at home. Much more than at the hotel.

  Empty tables cluttered the center of the room and booths filled both side walls. Christmas candles were lit on every table. An old-looking polished-wood bar filled the wall opposite the front door and three men sat on stools near the bar’s center with their backs to the door. They were the only three customers. A medium-sized man in a white apron was standing behind the bar and when I came through the door he looked up and said, “Holy Shit.”

  The three men at the bar turned around as if pulled by the same string and the bartender put a glass on the bar and headed around the end to meet me.

  He dodged around a few tables with ease and we met in the middle of the bar. He grabbed my hand and shook it as if we were old friends seeing each other again after many years.

  I studied his face as he stared at mine. He looked to be in his early fifties, with thinning gray and brown hair. His eyes were green and his smile seemed to fill his entire face.

  After what seemed like a long moment he took a breath and sort of shook himself. “I’m sorry. I’m Radley Stout. I own this place. And I’m really glad you came.”

  All I could do was shrug. “Not as if I had much else to do,” I said. “And you did offer a free drink.”

  He just laughed and patted me on the back. “Come on up to the bar. I have a few friends I want you to meet.”

  I took the stool on the left of the three men and the lady P.I. took the open stool to their right.

  Radley Stout went around behind the bar as he did the introductions. Dave was the closest to me. He was an airline pilot and his daughter was the private investigator who had found me. Next to him was a big guy named Carl who did construction and beside him was a convict-looking man by the name of Billy. I nodded at them without really noting what any of them looked like, then turned to Radley Stout.

  “All right,” I said. “Why bring me here?”

  Again Stout laughed. “As you said, to have a Christmas drink. Give me a moment and I will explain.”

  He rummaged in the drawer under the cash register and came up with a key. Then he went to the end of the bar and unlocked a glass case that was mounted on the wall over an old jukebox.

  Everyone at the bar watched in silence as he pulled out three of the four glasses that were in there and walked back to the sink in front of us. He rinsed out one of the glasses and held it up for me to see.

  It was a crystal-type glass, with the Garden Lounge logo etched near the center and the name Fred over the logo.

  “So you needed a Fred to join the toast this year. That it?”

  Stout shook his head, set the glass down on the mat above the ice and started to rinse out the other glasses. “No, actually that glass was yours eleven years ago.”

  No one else said a word. They either watched Stout wash the glasses, or they stared down into their own drink, as if slightly uneasy about something.

  I had never seen that glass before and had never met Stout before or been in this bar before. This gift horse was starting to look like a bust, just as most of them had in my life. I laughed for a short moment and then said, “Not highly likely.”

  “That’s true,” Dave said from beside me. “It isn’t highly likely. But I think it’s true.”

  I turned to Dave. He was a clean-cut sort, with short hair and wrinkles on his forehead that cut lines across his tanned skin. “Were you there when I supposedly owned that glass?” I pointed in the direction of Stout and the glass. He had just finished washing out a glass that had the name Dave over the logo.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Dave said. “I was. But I too do not remember the first time. However, I do remember the second.”

  I just stared at him for a moment before shaking my head and pushing myself back off my stool. Free drink or not, this was just a little too much. “I knew this entire thing was crazy, but you folks are all a bunch of loonies.”

  Stout put the third glass on the rubber mat. It had the name Carl etched on it. “Fred. Please just hold on for a moment. I just want to buy you a drink and tell you a story. I know you won’t believe me, but what can it hurt? It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Sandy looked down the bar at me and sort of smiled. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe this.”

  I stopped with one hand still holding onto the back of the bar stool and looked down the line of faces staring at me. It seemed clear that everyone wanted me to stay and everyone was taking this craziness very, very seriously. I took a deep breath and let it out in a noisy sigh.

  Sandy laughed. “You said never look a gift horse in the mouth. So stop looking.”

  At that I laughed. “All right. One drink and then Miss Private Investigator there can take me back.”

  “And a story, too,” Stout said. “Don’t forget.”

  I nodded and climbed back up on the stool. “A story too. As long as you don’t want me to buy anything.”

  Stout nodded and smiled. “I promise. Now what would you like to drink?”

  I ordered a vodka tonic and for the next half hour the conversation was light and fun. I could feel the heaviness and gloom of the Golden Dream Hotel lifting from my shoulders as everyone laughed and talked and sipped their drinks. There seemed to be a friendship among these people that I had not felt before. A closeness that went far beyond customers in a bar.

  I ended up asking for a second drink and Stout refilled my special glass. As he placed it on the napkin in front of me he said, “I think it’s time for the story.”

  Everyone nodded as Stout went back to stand in front of the well where he was sipping on a glass of eggnog. He leaned against the backbar and raised his glass. “First, a toast. To friends again united.”

  I drank to the toast not knowing what he was talking about. I assumed the united friend he was talking about was me, but since I had never met the man before, that was going to be some story.

  “I had the Garden for just over a year,” Stout said. “And I had some really good, regular customers. But four of those customers had become my good friends. Dave. Carl. You, Fred. And Jess.” With each name Stout tipped his drink in the person’s direction. With the last name he tipped it in the direction of the glass case that still held one glass over the jukebox. I assumed the name on that glass was Jess.

  “Fred,” Stout said, “you see that jukebox there?” I nodded as he went on. “Everyone here except you knows just how special that jukebox is. This is the part of the story that you will not believe no matter how hard or well I explain it, so just think of this part as fiction. All right?”

  Again, I just nodded, so he went on. “That jukebox can take a person back to a memory. Not just in your mind, but in real flesh and blood. It’s a sort of time machine.”

  “Fiction is right,” I said and Stout just held up his hand.

  “I discovered how the jukebox worked by accident before I ever opened the Garden. Ten years ago on Christmas Eve I decided I would give my four friends a chance to go back into their pasts. A special Christmas present from me. At that time you were divorced from a woman by the name of Alice and you had two kids.”

  Suddenly the bar felt very warm. He was assuming that I had been a regular in here for almost a year and once been married to Alice. But I knew that wasn’t true. I must have had too much to drink with just two drinks, since it felt as if the room was spinning. How could he know about Alice? And he was saying that I had married her and divorced her after having two kids.

  Stout was watching me and after I looked up at him he went on. “You had been divorced from Alice for ten years and you hated her. Completely and totally hated her. It was a standing joke among the five of us. You also had a daughter by the name of Jenny.”

  “So what happened to her in this crazy world of yours?” I asked. My voice had more anger in it than I could remember.

  Stout just shrugged. “I assume she was never born. When you left here through the jukeb
ox, you said the song reminded you of the night you and Alice first made love. The night you conceived Jenny which forced you two to get married out of high school.”

  Again the room felt too warm. The night Alice and I first made love was the night her parents were gone to a Christmas party. Right before going over to her house, I had gone to the drugstore to buy some rubbers. I remember almost chickening out and then the next thing I knew I had a pack of them in my hand and was heading out of the store. Alice and I always used one every time we made love. She met another guy a year later and left me because she said I was never going to ask her to marry me. She was right. I never did.

  “You all right?” Stout asked. I glanced up. He had moved down the bar and was standing in front of me. Everyone was looking at me. I tried to laugh, but it sounded sort of weak, even to me. “You did your research real well. Sandy there must be a really good investigator.”

  “She’s good all right,” Stout said and Sandy held up her glass in a thank-you gesture. “But she didn’t find any of this information out. I knew about Alice and your divorce because you told us over and over for almost a year.”

  “So how come I didn’t live any of this?”

  Stout just sighed. “Because you lived a different life after you changed whatever it was you changed that evening. The only reason I remember you is because I was touching the jukebox when the song ended. For some reason that allows me to remember the old timeline. I remember you being in here, but no one else does.”

  He pointed at the glass in front of me. “I was holding onto the glass, too, when you didn’t come back.”

  “Didn’t come back? What do you mean I didn’t come back?” Again I was trying to keep the anger out of my voice. But all of this was making me mad. And damn tired.

  “You changed something while you were back there. And whatever you changed did not lead you to the Garden again in your new life. At least not until now. If you had not changed anything, you would have come back when the song ended.”

  Dave was nodding beside me. “That happens every year to me. This year I plan to go back and watch Sandy being born. It will be a Christmas present to myself. Trust me, I will be very careful to not change anything.”

  I looked at Dave for a moment and then shook my head. “So why bring me back here now. Assuming that all this is true, which I find not likely, why now?”

  Now it was Stout’s turn to look slightly embarrassed. “I guess I just wanted the old group back together again on Christmas Eve. Selfish, I guess.”

  “Looks like you didn’t pull it off,” I said. “What about that other glass? Didn’t your P.I. there find the guy?”

  Stout took a sip of his eggnog and then looked up at me. I could see the pain in his eyes and the sadness that coated his face. The silence in the bar seemed to fill the room with a thick, heavy feel. “Sandy found him all right,” Stout said. “He changed something, also, when he went back that Christmas Eve ten years ago. In the new world he created he was killed by a drunk driver. We found him up in Memorial Cemetery.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and looked down at my name in the old glass. “So what did I do in the previous life? Be a lawyer or something?”

  Stout took a deep breath and then laughed. “Not hardly. You worked for the city. I think you had something to do with streets or something like that.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “I did that in this life, too. Fancy that. So how come, if that machine can change someone’s past, you just don’t go back and stop that guy from getting killed?”

  Stout shook his head. “I am actually glad it doesn’t work that way. Way too much responsibility. No, you can only go back to your own memories. You can’t change other people’s memories. Or their lives.”

  Dave stood. “Tell you what, Stout. Plug in that jukebox and I will go watch my daughter being born. That might just give old Fred here a new outlook on life.”

  Stout shrugged and walked down the length of the bar to the jukebox. Dave downed the last of his drink and joined him.

  “You got the record I brought on there?” Dave asked as Stout reached around behind the jukebox and plugged it in. The colored lights flickered for a moment and then held steady. It was a beautiful old Wurlitzer, with the chrome arch, red, green and blue colored lights, and bright red buttons. Inside I could see the disk full of forty-five records all waiting to be played.

  “Just punch up old B-4,” Stout said and handed Dave a quarter.

  Everyone at the bar had swung around on their stools and were watching intently. I felt uneasy and nervous, even though I knew the only thing that would happen was that the song would start playing and that would be that.

  Dave dropped the quarter into the slot, punched the two buttons and then stood back as the machine clicked and whirred. Inside I could see a record being picked up and placed on the turntable.

  Stout saluted Dave.

  “Don’t go changing anything, Dad,” Sandy said. I want to be here when you get back.”

  Dave laughed. “Don’t worry. Just going to watch.”

  The jukebox clicked and the song started. I recognized it immediately. An old Rick Nelson song called, “It’s Up To You.” That song reminded me of...

  The bar shifted and was gone. For a quick instant I felt dizzy and then everything went black.

  And then came back to a bright white spotlight. Right in my eyes.

  SIX

  “God damn it!” Stout shouted as the song started. Sandy, Billy, and Carl had all been looking at Dave and Stout. But as one they turned to look at the bar stool where a moment before Fred had been sitting.

  “Oh, no,” big Carl said.

  Sandy just shook her head. “Every year we do this and every year something weird happens.”

  Stout moved down the bar and put his hand on Fred’s bar stool, as if that would help bring him back. “Damn it! I forgot to ask him if he had a memory with that song. What the hell was I thinking?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Stout.” Sandy said. “He’ll be back.”

  Stout picked up Fred’s glass and looked at the name. “He didn’t come back last time he left here through the jukebox.” Stout reached over and picked up Dave’s glass. Then he headed back for the jukebox. “I want everyone holding onto the jukebox when the song ends. If he doesn’t come back this time, I want someone besides me remembering him.”

  Sandy laughed. “Boy won’t Dad be in for a surprise when he gets back.”

  SEVEN

  When a spotlight hits you square in the eyes, your first instinct is to raise your arm to cover your face. And that is what I did. Only my arm hit the steering wheel of my ’57 Chevy.

  “What...?” I said out loud as I glanced around like a frightened deer caught in a hunter’s sights.

  The car’s engine and lights were off and the windows were rolled up tight. Rick Nelson belted out the song on the radio. Sweat trickled down the side of my face and down my bare chest. The temperature inside the car must have been that of a steam bath and the spotlight was coming through the fogged-up front window.

  “Oh, no!” A young woman’s voice said from beside me and I turned to look at her. That was when the memories flooded in like light pouring through an open door between a dark room and a lit one.

  Marcy was struggling to get her bra back on. We had dated for two years after Alice left me. She worked at the department store downtown in the men’s section and wanted me to be her husband more than almost anything. That fact had suited me just fine because it made parking with her a lot of fun. She ended up marrying a guy from the appliance section of the store and had three kids last I heard.

  Tonight was our first anniversary of going out and we were parked on the canal bank behind the orchard to the south of town. It was the only night we ever got caught parking by the police.

  “This can’t be,” I said. I looked completely around the car. It was my ’57 Chevy all right. The one I wrecked in 1969 while driving drunk on New Year’s E
ve. A moment ago I was sitting in the Garden Lounge with a bunch of people who I thought were nuts and now I was back here parking with Marcy.

  I held onto the steering wheel with sweaty hands. I could still freshly remember getting here and what Marcy and I had been doing just a few short moments ago. I remembered taking her bra off and almost putting my hand up her skirt. In fact I was still aroused from all of it and I hadn’t had anything but a piss-erection in years back at the old Golden Dream Hotel.

  I had said I never looked a gift horse in the mouth. The Private Investigator’s words now echoed back through my mind: “You just never know when a miracle might happen.”

  So this was what she was talking about.

  Marcy smacked my arm. “Hurry! Get your shirt on.”

  Outside I heard the car door close and a vague shape through the fogged window started toward the door. I had a clear memory that we had gotten dressed before the cop got to the window and he let us go with a strict warning to be moving along. We had laughed about it for days.

  Stout had warned Dave not to change anything when he punched up the song. And he said that the reason I didn’t end up back at the Garden was because I changed something when I did this music/time-travel thing the last time.

  If what Stout had been saying back there at the Garden was true, and it looked like it was, I had better do some fast dressing.

  Real fast.

  Marcy was already buttoning her blouse as I turned around and grabbed my shirt off the back seat where my younger self had tossed it a short time before. I had it on and buttoned, in what seemed like impossible speed to my sixty-two-year-old brain, just as the cop tapped on the window.

  Marcy straightened her hair as I rolled down the window and looked into the cop’s flashlight. “Wow, that’s bright.”

  I remembered that was the exact same thing I had said when I didn’t have sixty years of memories to draw upon.

  The cop shined his light on me, then on Marcy.

  She smiled at him.