If Only in My Dreams Page 22

  “How can I forget? Poor Babs really got into a lather about it.”

  “Well, she should’ve. It was a lie. Ask me how I know that.” Pete elbows him in the ribs. “Go on, ask me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’m the one who was with Babs Woodfield in the balcony of the Odeon.” Pete chuckles. “That Babs was some solid sender.”

  “She sure was. No matter what Maisie said about her,” Jed adds purposefully. “There’s nothing meaner than a jealous girlfriend. Or wife.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Jed drives in the final run. “Especially when it’s old Tattletale Maisie—and she’s nine months pregnant and bigger than a house.”

  Pete absorbs that for a second.

  “You know, Crazy Maisie has a nice ring to it, too.” Pete’s grin is wicked. “You say Arnold made up that one?”

  Cringing inwardly, Jed says, “He sure did.”

  There will be hell to pay if any of this gets back to the Wilkenses. Which, of course, it will.

  Then again, they deserve it. Both of them.

  And you should have known better than to let Arnold in on anything and think he wouldn’t go running back to tell his wife.

  All right, so maybe Jed can’t really blame Arnold.

  How can he, when he himself was all set to go to the FBI with the contents of Clara’s suitcase and purse?

  But not anymore. Now all he wants is to be alone with Clara—no matter who or what she really is.

  “Listen.” Jed claps his old friend on the shoulder, “I don’t want to waste any more of your time on this hooey, so…”

  “Giving me the bum’s rush, are you, Jed?” Pete asks almost good-naturedly. “Can’t say I blame you. She’s a hot little number.”

  “Who?” Jed asks, all innocence.

  “Who? Maisie’s so-called lady spy, that’s who. You might want to go help her out in the back room, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” he says with a hubba-hubba bob of his eyebrows for added effect. “And listen, Pete, if I do run across any Nazi spies around here, I’ll be sure to send them your way.”

  “Well, all reet.” With a jovial wave, Pete is out the door.

  Jed exhales gratefully through puffed cheeks.

  Close call.

  It took Clara all of sixty seconds to ascertain that there are no butter-yellow chenille bed jackets in the store’s back room.

  Obviously, Jed was as eager to get rid of her as she was to flee… but in a purely supportive way, of course. She gets the comforting impression that he’s irrevocably on her side—and that the law officer, for whatever reason, is not.

  If only she had some idea why the lines are drawn in the first place.…

  Unless it was her imagination?

  Nah. That cop was looking daggers at her from the moment he spotted her, even after Jed vouched for her.

  But right now, Clara has other things to worry about.

  Like how she’s going to save Jed’s life.

  She paces the stockroom, past shelves of assorted merchandise: housewares, clothes, toys, stationery supplies.

  What if she simply tells him the truth?

  The truth being that she’s been miraculously—or perhaps magically—transported here from the twenty-first century.

  Yeah, that’ll go over really well. The proverbial men in white coats will be here to cart her away before you can say asylum.

  Unless…

  What if he believes her?

  There’s always a chance—slim, but a chance—that he might.

  He stuck up for her out there, didn’t he? With the cop? There he was, heroically coming to the rescue and giving her a perfect alibi for being here when she didn’t even anticipate she might need one… let alone understand why.

  Then again, Jed’s willingness to tell a white lie about her working in the five-and-dime as a clerk doesn’t mean he’s likely to buy a bizarre time-travel tale.

  Why would he believe her? Even she thought she was crazy until Mr. Kershaw provided the scientific evidence.

  Evidence…

  Hmm.

  Well, there’s always her sweatshirt. She can take off her coat and show him. AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES 2004.

  But what will that prove?

  It will prove that someone—say, a deluded Red Sox fan—can get a sweatshirt imprinted anywhere, with anything they want it to say.…

  Although maybe you can’t do that here in 1941.

  Still, the shirt alone isn’t necessarily sufficient evidence. Not the same as it would be, say, if she were able to tell Jed the Yankees were going to play—and lose to—the Red Sox in the future playoffs before the fact… and then he were able to see it unfold, just as she predicted.

  Too bad that’s not going to happen for another sixty-three years.

  And anyway, Clara is baseball fan enough to know that these playoff series didn’t even exist back in 1941. Only the World Series.

  Historic details aside, the shirt is out as proof. What else can she use, then?

  She does have some cash and her Metro-North ticket receipt tucked into her mitten. The bills would be imprinted with future years, and the receipt would be dated December 3, 2006. But she supposes that those things could easily be faked, as well—if there were any possible reason to pull such a hoax.

  Jed doesn’t know her well enough to believe that she wouldn’t.

  For now, there’s nothing to do but try to fit in, once again, here in the past.

  In the far corner of the storeroom, she spots the prop suitcase she abandoned here the other day. The one Lisa said was filled with vintage clothing.

  If nothing else, Clara thinks, hurriedly unzipping her parka, you can get out of this sweatshirt before somebody spots it.

  Somebody like Pete the Unfriendly Cop.

  Jed opens the door to the stockroom with nothing on his mind but having a serious talk with Clara.

  One look inside, however, and conversation—serious or otherwise—is the last thing on his mind.

  Even in the dimly lit room, he can clearly see that Clara is nearly naked.

  She’s turned at an angle, but most of her left side is visible. She’s wearing some kind of flimsy black brassiere and skimpy black-lace panties like nothing Jed has ever seen before.

  Not that he’s seen much intriguing lingerie outside the collection of girlie magazines he confiscated from Gilbert’s clubhouse years ago. Not unless you count his ex-girlfriend Carol’s thick, white torpedo brassieres; rigid, durable nylon girdles; and billowing underpants and slips.

  Which he doesn’t.

  Though if he ever did, he wouldn’t after this.

  Clara’s undergarments amount to little more than three V-shaped transparent lace triangles held together by narrow wisps of ribbon.

  Jed finds it hard to believe that he actually ever considered her scrawny. Her figure is all taut skin and gentle curves, from the swell of her breasts to her flat tummy, rounded hips, and lithe thighs, and the shapeliest legs he’s seen this side of the silver screen. Heck, no. Even Betty Grable’s famous gams don’t hold a candle to these.

  He watches Clara bend to remove something from the open suitcase on the floor at her feet—and swallows hard, realizing that it’s a garter belt.

  This is wrong. You need to stop watching her. Now!

  But somehow, Jed can’t force himself to turn away. He’s as helplessly captivated by the exquisite woman before him as he is disturbed by his own voyeurism.

  Not a breath escapes his lungs in the interlude as she slips the first seamed stocking over her toes and rolls it ever so carefully up her leg. He exhales only when she grapples awkwardly with the clip.

  It takes her so many tries to get it fastened that he has to wonder if she was wearing dungarees earlier because she simply hasn’t the patience to don stockings every day.

  Then he’s back to holding his breath in rapt regard as she unfur
ls the second swathe of sheer silk, inch by painstaking inch, up the magnificent length of her other leg.

  Alas, this one is no easier to attach to the garter belt.

  Watching her fumble and hearing her curse softly under her breath, Jed briefly wonders whether all women have this much trouble with their stockings every day. It goes a long way toward explaining why, with his mother, his grandmother, and three sisters in the house, he often finds himself waiting impatiently for them to get ready to go anywhere.

  Clara bends over the suitcase again, and his attention is diverted back to the matter at hand. He watches her rummage through the clothes, shaking her head as though she doesn’t like the looks of anything there.

  Which is odd, since she supposedly packed it all.

  Finally, she pulls something out, briefly inspects it, and approves it with some obvious reluctance.

  She lifts it over her head to pull it on. Jed duly admires her toned arms and the curve of her throat and the way her long hair swishes lazily across her bare shoulders before the fabric swoops down to obliterate the glorious view.

  The dress is short-sleeved.

  Huh.

  Short-sleeved. In December.

  Jed watches Clara smooth the snug-fitting skirt over her narrow hips, as if trying to make it drape properly. But it doesn’t. Even he can see that it’s cut for a woman more petite in stature. The hem falls just above her knee, revealing slightly more of her leg than is fashionable—not that he’s complaining.

  Nor is he dissatisfied when the crepe fabric strains slightly across her full bosom as she lifts her arms to adjust the square neckline.

  He can’t help but wonder why the ill-fitting dress was in what she claimed was her own suitcase.

  She buttons on the matching belt, which accentuates her waist.

  Then she looks down to inspect herself and shakes her head, less than pleased with the finished effect. She sighs a disappointed sigh, and it’s all he can do not to speak up.

  No, you’re beautiful, he wants to assure her. Yet concealed in the shadows just beyond the doorway, he doesn’t dare give himself away now. She would have every right to slap him across the face and storm out of here forever.

  “… shoes,” he hears her mutter as she digs through her suitcase with little concern for the clothing, which has gone from neat stacks to a rumpled heap.

  You’d think a woman would be more careful with her wardrobe… unless it isn’t her wardrobe. He can’t think of a single nonincriminating reason why it wouldn’t be. But there are plenty of incriminating possibilities.

  She stole it.…

  She’s on the lam and grabbed the wrong bag.…

  It’s part of the charade and she really is a spy.…

  Okay, Jed, that’s enough speculation about spying.

  Which, ironically, he is doing while spying. On her. A pastime that has admittedly lost some of its allure now that she’s fully clothed, aside from the shoes.

  Shoes she can’t seem to find… which, now that he thinks back on his own investigation into her belongings, might be due to the fact that she didn’t pack any.

  Which she would know… if she were the one who packed the suitcase.

  All right, that does it. It’s time to get to the bottom of this.

  Jed backs up a few inches, clears his throat loudly, knocks on the door frame, and sticks his head into the storeroom as though he’s just showing up.

  “Oh… you changed,” he comments, as though he’s surprised.

  “I did. I felt… I mean, those clothes were… I just wasn’t…”

  “Comfortable?” He didn’t mean to help her out of her verbal trap—far better to hear what she has to say for herself—but he doesn’t regret it when he sees the spark of gratitude in her eyes.

  “Exactly. I wasn’t comfortable in those jeans and sneakers. This, um, dress feels much better.”

  He nods as if that’s a perfectly logical thing to say, even as he watches her once again attempt to adjust the neckline, the drape of the skirt.

  Meanwhile, he’s thinking, Sneakers? Those big white shoes of hers look nothing like any sneaker he’s ever seen. Sneakers are dark-colored, like regular shoes—or bright-colored cotton with open toes like the new Kedettes he had in stock this summer.

  Clara gives up trying to conform her too-small dress to her luscious figure and looks at him again.

  He wishes he could read her mind.…

  And he sure hopes she can’t read his.

  Because if she can, she knows that he’s not seeing the dress at all.

  No, he’s seeing what’s underneath the dress. He can’t seem to help himself. Now that he knows, in graphic detail…

  Well, he can’t seem to banish the provocative image of her, all but naked and breathtakingly beautiful.

  “Oh, by the way,” she says, “I couldn’t find it.”

  He blinks. “Hmm?”

  “The pale-yellow chenille bed jacket for that lady. Are you sure it’s back here?”

  “I’m sure it’s not,” he admits. “And Mrs. Shelton is long gone. I was just trying to save you from Pete.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think he liked me.”

  If she only knew.

  Aloud, Jed says, “Well, he can be a little bit of a…”

  “Pain in the—er, neck?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So it had nothing to do with me?”

  He shakes his head.

  She obviously doesn’t believe him.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says, in case he missed the skyward roll of her pupils.

  “I know you don’t.” He shrugs helplessly. “And you know what? I’m having a hard time figuring out what to believe myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Here goes nothing, he thinks, taking a deep breath.

  Whatever Clara is expecting Jed to say, it isn’t “I checked out your address this morning. On West Eleventh Street in Manhattan.”

  Her stomach churns.

  Her address? How could he possibly know her address?

  “Somebody else was living there,” he goes on. “And they never heard of you.”

  She searches her mind wildly, miraculously managing to pluck pertinent information from a maelstrom of panicky thoughts.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Sloan,” she blurts, grateful that she never entirely tuned out her chatterbox building super—and hoping she got the year right. She’s pretty sure Mr. Kobayashi said the Sloans were there at least until after the war.

  If Jed’s raised eyebrows are any indication, she’s correct about that.

  “Yes,” he says, with a slow nod. “The Sloans. That’s the name.”

  “You talked to them?”

  “No, not to them. To a little boy… and his mother. But she didn’t speak any English.”

  A little boy…

  Comprehension swoops over Clara like a bracing sea breeze on an August afternoon.

  “They were Japanese!” she shouts like an exuberant game show contestant determined to ace the final round. “Right?”

  Jed nods, but he still looks unsettled. “Right.”

  “What was the little boy’s name? Wait, I’ll tell you. It was Isamu. Right?”

  “Right,” Jed says again, and she realizes that she probably shouldn’t be quite so jubilant about discussing her supposed neighbors. “He spoke English. And he liked to talk.”

  If you only knew, she thinks, trying to picture Mr. Kobayashi as a child.…

  And as a child, of course, he would never have heard of Clara McCallum.

  “How is it that you found my address in the first place?” she asks Jed.

  Wordlessly, he reaches into his pocket, pulls something out, and hands it to her.

  Oh. Her card. With the name and telephone number of Jesus’s life coach written on the front.

  She should have remembered it was in her purse.

  What now?

  “Oh, that Isamu,” she says with a grin and a wave of h
er hand. “He’s such a mischievous little imp. He’s always pretending he doesn’t know me.”

  All right, that was lame.

  Clearly, Jed is in agreement. “Why would he do that?”

  “He thinks it’s funny,” she says with a kids!-what-are-you-going-to-do? shrug.

  “His mother didn’t know you, either.”

  “I thought… she didn’t speak English.”

  “I showed her your picture. Isamu translated for me that she didn’t recognize it, either… or so she claimed.”

  Oh, that Mrs. Kobayashi… she’s such a mischievous little imp isn’t going to cut it this time.

  Clara just looks at Jed, wondering what she can possibly say that will make any sense.

  But before she can speak, Jed does.

  “Clara,” he says with a forthright lift of his chin, “are you working for the Japs?”

  In that first moment of confusion, all she can think of are her cousins Rebecca and Rachel.

  Then she realizes he doesn’t mean JAPs; he means Japs—as in Japanese.

  Her jaw drops.

  Working for the Japs? In wartime?

  No wonder the police were here.

  She shakes her head, dumbfounded at the paranoid conclusion Jed seems to have drawn based on…

  What? The fact that she has Asian neighbors?

  How can he be so small-minded? So prejudiced? So…

  Politically incorrect?

  This is a different era. In Germany, at this very moment, her grandmother’s uncles and aunts are imprisoned in Auschwitz, never to be seen again.

  In this century, African Americans are relegated to the back of the bus. Martin Luther King Jr.’s fiery “I have a dream” speech is still decades away.

  So much for the Good Old Days, Clara thinks grimly.

  It’s understandable that to Jed, the so-called Japs are the enemy. In fact…

  December 7 is mere days away.

  The Japanese are plotting their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor at this very moment.

  What if I’m supposed to stop it?

  What if she’s here in December 1941 not to save one man’s life, but hundreds of lives? What if she’s destined to change the course of history?