Smith's Monthly #16 Page 7

“I sure do,” I said, squeezing her hand. Actually, she sort of had a passing resemblance, but not much else. And her chest was half the size of Marilyn’s, even without the pointed bra.

  “You’ll be my Joe DiMaggio?” she asked.

  I wanted to say sure, if you let me slide into third base tonight, but instead just smiled and said, “Not sure if I can live up to that guy, but why not try?”

  Betty loved humility in her man, and I could be as humble as was needed.

  Suddenly her smiling face turned serious. “I’ve got an important question to ask you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Can I have your cherry?”

  I almost blurted out, I thought that I was supposed to ask that question. Somehow I managed to say instead, “Which one?”

  She laughed at that.

  I slid the milkshake closest to me toward her and she took the red cherry, holding it over her mouth for a moment before letting it go.

  “I’ll drink this one,” I said, pulling back my cherry-less shake and putting a straw in it.

  Then I put a straw in the third glass and slid it over to the seat beside me. “We’ll save that one for Marilyn.”

  Betty smiled again. “You think she might join us?”

  “Depends on if she can get out of the men’s room in time,” I said.

  Betty actually laughed at the lame joke.

  TWO

  Betty started talking about a coming dance she wanted me to go to with her, and I got to nodding and thinking of Marilyn and that amazing look on her face.

  Then the hamburgers came. I took the onions off of mine because Betty did the same, and sometime later tonight I hoped to be kissing Betty, and I didn’t want onion breath spoiling the moment.

  It was during my first bite that Betty said, “Not fair. You ate Marilyn’s cherry.”

  I glanced at where the third shake sat. She was right, the cherry was gone, and the glass looked like someone had taken a good drink from it.

  “I thought you didn’t like the cherries,” Betty said.

  “I don’t,” I said, looking closer at Marilyn’s shake without touching it. “The cherry must have just sunk when the whipped cream melted.”

  “Maybe Marilyn ate it.”

  Betty was looking at the shake and I had no doubt she was half serious. I just shook my head and went back to eating my burger.

  But three bites later the level of the third milkshake was lower still, and there was no sign of the missing bright red cherry.

  I hadn’t touched the thing, and I knew Betty hadn’t reached across the table and drank any of it. In fact, she was still staring at it, her eyes wide, her burger forgotten.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Marilyn,” Betty whispered, not so much that she didn’t want anyone to hear, but like she was in shock. Her face was white, her eyes round.

  I glanced at the third milkshake on the table beside me. Again some more of it was gone. I was about to say something about the hole in the bottom of the glass when I caught a slight movement out of the corner of my eye.

  Then I saw her.

  Marilyn.

  Sitting right there in the booth beside me, between me and the wall, leaning forward and sipping on the milkshake. She had on the same black, low-cut dress that she wore in the picture, so when she bent forward, everything about her sort of became skin. Beautiful, soft, pink skin. Not ghost-like at all.

  Betty leaned over the table and grabbed my hand so hard I thought she was going to break it.

  “You see her?” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said, not believing what my eyes were telling me.

  Marilyn finished the shake, sucking the last of it from the straw with a slurping sound. Then she turned to me and Betty, putting a hand on my leg.

  I kid you not, she touched me, softly, yet with overtones of sex like I had never felt before.

  Betty kept hold of my hand.

  Marilyn Monroe rubbed my leg.

  “That was wonderful,” Marilyn said, her voice almost a sigh, just like she had done in a bunch of her movies. “I haven’t had a good vanilla milkshake in years. Thank you.”

  “My—my pleasure,” I managed to say, even though my voice was screaming that I was dreaming, that I was still standing in the bathroom staring at her picture.

  Marilyn squeezed my leg and laughed. Then she turned to Betty, leaving her hand on my thigh.

  “Your boyfriend’s right, Betty. You do look a little like me, in my Norma Jean days.”

  For a moment I thought Betty would just faint away. She clearly was having trouble breathing. Finally she managed to say, “Thanks.”

  Marilyn gave me one of her famous sideways glances that said more with one look than a million words could get across.

  And then she went to rubbing my leg, up and down, up and down.

  I was definitely more up than down at that moment.

  I had to be dreaming.

  I swore I was dreaming. But right at that moment, to be honest, I didn’t care that I was or wasn’t dreaming. I was going to enjoy it all.

  Marilyn looked back at Betty. “You know the difference between Norma Jean and Marilyn?”

  Betty managed to shake her head.

  “Illusion,” Marilyn said. “I’m an illusion, what men think they want in a woman. Marilyn is the sexual side of Norma Jean. Marilyn got famous, Norma Jean didn’t.”

  Okay, now I knew this had gone too far. An illusion of Marilyn telling us she was an illusion. If it hadn’t been for the hand stroking my leg, I would have laughed.

  “Norma Jean was real,” Marilyn said. “You’re real, Betty. But you have a Marilyn side in you as well. Let it out to play, if you get my meaning.”

  Oh, god, I had died and gone to heaven. Marilyn Monroe was giving my girlfriend sex advice while giving me a hard on.

  Marilyn smiled at Betty with that smile that only girls know the meaning of.

  Betty smiled and nodded back at Marilyn.

  I smiled as Marilyn’s hand moved up my leg a little more.

  “Thanks for the shake,” Marilyn said.

  Then with one last squeeze, very high up my thigh, she vanished.

  THREE

  Suddenly the noise from the diner came flooding back in, as if Marilyn being there had stopped it. A kid was crying two booths over, Buddy Holly doing his most famous song on the jukebox, and the waitress was talking to the people in the booth behind Betty.

  It was as if the world had stopped for a few minutes, and I had been holding my breath.

  I let out a deep sigh and looked around. It seemed no one had noticed Marilyn.

  No one but me and Betty.

  And my dick. It had most definitely noticed Marilyn’s hand rubbing my leg.

  Betty was still just sitting there, staring at where Marilyn had been, holding my hand across the table as if she was about to slip over the edge of a cliff.

  Finally, as someone knocked over a glass of water three booths over, I asked, “You all right?”

  Betty took a moment, then with what looked like a force of will, pulled her gaze from where Marilyn had been and looked into my eyes.

  “Did that just happen?”

  “I’m not sure what just happened.” I pointed at the empty milkshake glass. “But someone drank that thing.”

  Betty nodded, staring at the empty place beside me. Then she said softly, “Marilyn.”

  “One hell of an illusion,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Betty said. “Maybe not.”

  We both sat there for a moment in silence, Betty still holding my hand. Then suddenly she said, “I want to see that picture in the bathroom.” She stood and pulled me up behind her.

  “In the men’s room?” I asked. Betty had always struck me as the biggest prude to live in the new century. Imagining her going into a men’s room just didn’t seem possible.

  “You make sure no one’s in there first,” Betty said.

  We moved over to the door of the men�
��s room and I poked my head inside. “Anyone in here?”

  My voice echoed, so I turned to Betty and said, “Clear.”

  Betty pushed past me and stopped in the very center of the bathroom, with me still standing holding the door open.

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  “Over the urinal,” I said, but the moment I said that I knew the picture, just like the Marilyn beside me in the booth, was gone. There was no way Betty would have missed seeing that picture.

  I let the door close and moved to stand beside her, staring at the blank wall.

  “It was right there,” I said. “Honest.”

  Betty took my hand and laughed. “I know it was.”

  As she pulled me out of the men’s room and we headed back to the table, the waitress gave us a dirty look. All I could do was shrug.

  We finished our burgers and shakes, talking about Marilyn and what she had said, as if it really hadn’t been an illusion, that she had just joined us from the land of the dead to share a vanilla milkshake.

  After I had paid the bill, we left all three empty milkshake glasses together, touching in the center of the table, straws bent outward in three different directions.

  And that night, back at my apartment, the Betty I had known for six months added a Marilyn side to her personality.

  I have no idea if it was an illusion or not, but to be honest, I didn’t care.

  In a small diner on the Oregon Coast, Kelli Rae meets a handsome man named Jesse Parks. Turns out she had seen him in a picture taken in an old mining town in Idaho over a hundred years before.

  And even worse, he had been following her.

  A time-travel adventure in the popular Thunder Mountain series that promises to change everything about the series.

  LAKE ROOSEVELT

  A Thunder Mountain Novel

  This book is dedicated to Kris, who loves me enough to have gone with me into the remote lake once. Once was enough. Thanks.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The town of Roosevelt existed. And it was actually destroyed by a mudslide that filled the valley and formed Lake Roosevelt over the top of the mining town.

  I want to thank Bobby Young for helping me get to the remote lake the first time almost forty years ago now. Standing on the shores of Roosevelt Lake and staring down into the waters at the remains of the town of Roosevelt is a very strange experience that is very difficult to forget.

  PART ONE

  A Really Bad Picture

  CHAPTER ONE

  July 14th, 2016

  Oregon Coast

  WHEN A BESTSELLING historical crime writer sees a ghost, it’s a bad, bad sign.

  Kelli Rae had no idea why a ghost would haunt her, especially in the Whale Port Diner on the Oregon Coast.

  Coming north along the winding highway, the Whale Port Diner had looked clean and funky and just the type of place that might serve a great chicken fried steak lunch. A girl’s juices could really get moving over a good chicken fried steak with thick white gravy with just enough pepper to give it a bite.

  Add yellow corn near the white gravy and you have heaven built right into a small-town diner.

  She had wheeled her little blue two-door Mercedes into the small empty gravel parking lot and climbed out into the fantastic smell of ocean and beach. Two blocks down the hill below the two-lane highway, the surf pounded the rocks and sand, the sound so loud it almost covered up the noise from the few passing cars.

  It was just after four in the afternoon and the sun was still high in the sky, but the temperature and slight ocean wind made goose bumps appear on her legs. Since she had on Levi’s shorts and a light blue blouse with a halter-top under it, the sea breeze cut right through her. Middle of the summer and the place felt cold. She couldn’t imagine what the wind off that ocean felt like in the winter.

  The wind whipped at her short black hair, even more so than while she was driving with the top down.

  Note to self: Don’t come back to the Oregon Coast in the winter.

  Along the two-lane coast highway small wooden buildings seemed to huddle together, forming a sort of downtown area about three blocks long. A couple antique stores, an old-style theater, and a small grocery store that she could see. The ocean roared down the hill to one side, steep mountains climbed away from the town on the other side. It felt like the town was just hanging onto the side of the hill, hoping to not get blown away in a big storm.

  She took a deep breath, letting the thick ocean air clear her mind as she moved her shoulders and arms around to loosen up tight muscles. There was a slight hint of fish in the air, and ocean salt. She could understand just from the wonderful smell why someone would live out here in the sticks, on the edge of land.

  She took another deep breath of the thick air. It was almost good enough to eat.

  Maybe not as good as chicken fried steak, but it could be close. Depended on how good this diner’s food was.

  She studied the front of the little place for a moment. It looked good, like it had top food. A person could always tell the quality of the food in a diner by how rundown a place looked. If it was rundown, but not cared for, the food sucked. But rundown and still loved, the food would be top notch.

  This diner looked like it had been a shop of some sort at one point and been remodeled a few times. It now had a steep pitched roof and black shingles. The reddish/brown paint on the wood siding was peeling slightly from around the large windows across the front facing the ocean and the highway. And one roof edge was warping slightly. But the windows were clean, the sign fairly new, and no trash littered the gravel parking lot.

  Rundown, but loved. She could be in for a top-notch chicken fried steak.

  The door actually had a bell on it and it clanged softly as she entered. Oh, how perfect!

  Then things just got better. The freshly baked bread smell hit her like a hammer and she just stopped with sensory overload. Ocean breezes outside and fresh bread inside. Clinging to the side of a hill trying not to slip into the ocean might be worth it just for the smells.

  Four empty booths filled the area under the front windows, another on the end next to what looked like a real Wurlitzer Bubbler jukebox. That thing had to be worth thousands. It wasn’t on at the moment and instead some oldies radio station played faintly in the background, not loud enough to be distracting.

  A Formica-topped counter ran along the back wall with eight bar stools attached to the floor in front of it with cracked red leather seats. She was in diner cliché.

  Or maybe she was still back in her hotel room a hundred miles back down the beach dreaming of this place.

  She was the only customer, so she had her choice of where to sit, so she headed for the counter and grabbed the stool third from the end on the left, facing the kitchen window where the sounds of pots banging could be heard. The cash register, an old black one with real push keys, covered the far left end of the counter.

  The leather seat felt cold against the back of her legs, but not sticky. Another good sign.

  “Hi,” a woman said to Kelli, smiling as she came out of the kitchen area in the back wiping her hands on a white towel. “Howya doin’?”

  The women was taller than Kelli’s five-six by a good six inches and had wide, square shoulders and a face that looked square as well. A big woman with dark hair pulled back and a wide smile that filled her almost oversized face. Her accent told Kelli she was from the Chicago area of the Midwest.

  “Doing great,” Kelli said. “Hungry. How’s your chicken fried steak?”

  “Best on da coast,” the women said. “Comes with potatoes, yellow corn, and a fresh dinner roll. Choice of clam chowder or a salad to start. Eight-ninety-nine.”

  “The rolls are what I’m smelling?” Kelli asked.

  “Sure are,” the women said. “Dave just took them out of the oven, so they’ll be really hot and soft.”

  “Perfect,” Kelli said. “Chowder to start, with a cup of coffee.”

  Her mo
uth was already watering and her stomach growling as the women turned and went back into the kitchen without writing any kind of ticket up. She had only had a sandwich for lunch about three hours before, so this was perfect.

  Behind her the door chimed and she glanced around to see a state cop come in. He was a looker, with deep blue eyes and a handsome square face. He had on a leather jacket and all the stuff police lugged around with them on his belt. He smiled at her and she smiled back as he took a seat in one of the booths looking out the window.

  This little town was really starting to look up. A great diner and a handsome man, all in the same five minutes. She was a writer, she didn’t need to live anywhere. She might think of staying here for a short time, although if she did that she would miss her office in her home in Las Vegas. She loved that book-filled, light-filled room. She had already been away from it almost too long.

  Of course, the ghost was still fifteen minutes from walking through the door and changing everything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  July 14th, 2016

  Oregon Coast

  THE WILD PACIFIC Ocean pounded on black rocks to Jesse Parks’ left as the coast highway wound around a sharp ridge in a mountain and went into a massive tunnel through tall pine trees that made the bright sunny day seem suddenly dim. He loved the beauty and extreme ruggedness of the Oregon Coast. Not as much as he loved his home in the remote Valley County in Idaho, just miles from the small tourist town of McCall. But the coast was a close second in his heart.

  Jesse Parks glanced at the tablet-sized tracker sitting on the passenger seat of his Jeep SUV and made note that Kelli Rae had stopped about ten minutes ahead. More than likely to get something to eat in the small town of Whale Port.

  He had been following her for two days now as she made her way slowly up the Oregon Coast. She clearly hadn’t been in a hurry to get anywhere and so far today had only covered about a hundred miles in just about six hours. She seemed to stop for anything that looked interesting.