NINE
I checked my pocket watch again. “It’s two,” I said.
We’d enjoyed a leisurely early lunch at the café, then picked up some mints for me and cigars for Drake at a little stand we saw along the way to the Arnold residence. So far, everything was going well. No one balked at the counterfeit money, and we made it in time to catch Dorothy as she left the house. My retro clothes very much looked like the antiques they were but I was grateful they received only a few double-takes from one or two women. For the most part, no one seemed to notice or care.
But now I was feeling nervous. So far, this had all been way too easy.
Drake stood at the base of the steps to a townhouse, calmly watching the house across the street with a cigar in his mouth.
“Do you think,” I lowered my voice as a couple strolled past us, “we missed them?”
“Non. I doubt it.” He casually puffed his cigar, but his gaze never left the townhouse. “Here she is,” he said, the expression on his face unchanging. One of quiet intensity.
I glanced up in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner. Drake was right! There Dorothy was and I easily recognized her. She looked so much like the photo Jill showed me of Alice. I felt like I was watching an old movie of her.
Dorothy stepped lightly down her front steps, and true to the articles that I read, she appeared to be in good health. My eyes dropped to her midsection, but the winter coat she was wearing made it impossible to detect whether she was pregnant or not. Just when she reached the bottom of the stairs, an older woman approached her.
“Her mother,” I said.
“Oui,” Drake exhaled a puff of smoke that dissipated quickly in the chilly December air.
The women chatted before going in opposite directions. Dorothy headed toward Fifth Avenue while her mother ascended the steps to go back into the house.
Drake’s eyes briefly dropped to mine, and I could see the eagerness of the chase in them. “Shall we, mon chaton?” He held out his arm and I tucked my hand in the crook of it, the gesture now a little too familiar.
I couldn’t dwell on my ease in being physically close to Drake; there wasn’t any time. Instead, I tried my best to appear casual as we strolled down the street. But I was nervous that Dorothy would somehow try to evade us.
As we walked, my mind wandered in a million different directions. This was it. We could finally discover what happened to Dorothy Arnold. Watching her walk down the street, it hit me with a wallop that this was so much more than just an unexplained mystery. Dorothy was alive at this moment. She was alive, yes, but soon, she wouldn’t be.
We followed her for over an hour as she walked down Fifth Avenue, stopping to chat with people she knew here and there before going into various stores and coming out with more and more bags.
We finally made it to the corner of Fifth and Twenty-Seventh, where Dorothy would stop at the corner bookstore. Sure enough, she disappeared inside.
Drake rubbed his hands together, then blew into them, his warm breath creating wispy clouds of fog around his fists. “I think I’ll get a newspaper.” He stepped over to the stand next to us to purchase a paper while I stared at magazine covers from 1910. “Do you see anything you want, darling?” Drake asked.
“Um.” The “darling” tripped me up. That’s a new one. And what’s more, he said it exactly the way I would have expected any man to address his wife. It brought an instant smile to my face, one that reached my eyes. For that moment, I forgot what we were doing and I liked pretending to be Drake’s wife. But when he registered the smile on my face, seeming to read my mind, and an answering smile blossomed on his face that told me he felt the same way, it didn’t seem like we were pretending anymore.
Caught in the moment, I barely had enough time to think. I just let my heart flutter beneath my chest as the warm elation rose to my cheeks in a flush. It felt good to me and right but my smile faded when I remembered that I couldn’t allow myself to indulge the feeling. After my initial jolt of seeing his physical body—and I don’t think any amount of time could manage to normalize that—being with Drake felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I wished I had an on/off switch so I could turn off my attraction to him. I would gladly have preferred that my feelings for him evaporated into thin air; at least, I wouldn’t have to spend so much energy fighting my desire. And fighting my guilt over subsequent desire because as soon as I felt the stirrings of passion for Drake, it was Ryan’s face I saw.
Surely my attraction to Drake was only natural right? He was a handsome man, to be sure, and I couldn’t argue with simple biology and chemistry. But I had to admit it was much more than that, and my connection with Drake was rooted in something so much deeper and more profound. The longing in my chest when I was near him, and the urge to touch him and be with him and finally know him intimately and completely were undeniable. It wasn’t something attainable for either of us, I needed to remind myself of that, and that instantly made me think of Ryan with pangs of guilt. Now, however, while standing next to him, I couldn’t imagine a world beyond this, where I was anything other than Drake’s “darling.” What’s even more astonishing, I didn’t want to!
All at once, I remembered why we were here and what we were supposed to be doing. I pictured my physical body lying unconscious while Ryan watched over me. I visualized him reading something to distract himself, and checking on me every few minutes. I knew he was wondering what I was doing and where I was. Honestly, it was the first time that Ryan crossed my mind since our leap back in time. That realization quickly sobered me and left me with a dark cloud hovering in the space around my head.
“A copy of Time magazine, please?” I said.
“Time, please. For the missus,” Drake said to the man tending the newsstand. If Drake were aware of my shift in mood, he didn’t show it. He handed the man a bill, and the man gave him our purchases as he winked to me.
I responded with a subdued smile this time.
Drake smoothly reached for my hand without any hesitation and placed it back in the crook of his arm. “Would you like to sit down?”
I nodded, trying to ignore how acutely aware I was of Drake’s solid arm beneath my hand. I reminded myself (again) that we were here for Dorothy, and we couldn’t lose track of her. We were so close now to witnessing the last time Dorothy Arnold was ever seen alive.
Without waiting for my reply, Drake led me over to a bench, which allowed us a perfect view of the front of the bookstore. Once seated, I had my first reprieve from being hopelessly fixated on Drake. I brushed a gloved hand over the shiny new cover of the magazine that bore the date: December 1910. If not for my deep foreboding regarding Dorothy’s fate, I would have been giddy with excitement.
It was every history lover’s dream, the manifestation of all the images of another era perfectly represented, and in this case, perfectly accurate. Once I opened the magazine, However, I had a hard time concentrating on the words. I failed at reading, and obsessively checked the front of the store as well as the watch in my hands.
“Read your magazine, mon chaton,” Drake said, his voice hushed. “You are making me anxious.”
I blew out a puff of air and settled in, determined to try and make sense of at least one paragraph in front of me. That didn’t go well, so I resigned myself to flipping through the pages and reading the captions beneath the photographs.
“I think it might be time to, ahem,” a pause for emphasis, “get going,” Drake said as he leisurely folded up his newspaper.
Before I knew it, I looked up from the magazine toward the front of the bookstore. Sure enough, Dorothy was standing there, chatting with another friend. It looked like they were in the process of saying goodbye.
“Remember, mon chaton,” he said, his voice low, “whatever happens, we must not intervene.”
As if he were still in my head, Drake sensed my nervousness about what was going to happen. I intended to ask how long she’d been standing out there, but only managed to say, “Oh!” as I scrambled to my feet.
Drake rose off the bench much more gracefully, taking my arm with a smirk and staring at me for a beat longer than necessary.
“What?” I asked.
“Later, ma minette.”
With that, we were off again. I recalled the article we read about Dorothy’s friend; she had just been talking with the last person who saw her before she disappeared. And now she continued down Twenty-Seventh Street, moving further away from Fifth Avenue, and away from her home.
The hair beneath the brim of my hat grew damp with cold sweat as we followed her at a distance. Somehow, even with the freezing wind on our faces, seeping through any cracks in our clothing, I was still hot, and sweating. My hand that was unattached to Drake was shaking, and I pulled it up closer to my chest. This was it. What it all came down to. Would Dorothy be fatally mugged somewhere? The criminal realizing too late she was pregnant? Would he somehow save the baby? Or was she the victim of a tragic accident? Possibly getting hit by one of those old cars? That would better explain what happened to the baby. Someone could have been overwhelmed with guilt, but being a good person nonetheless, possibly saved the infant when they discovered the victim was pregnant. What if I’d gotten it completely wrong though? Maybe something much more horrific was about to occur…
We walked several blocks, my head swimming with possibilities as I tried to prepare myself for the worst. Drake began to slow down as the streets became less crowded. When Dorothy rounded a corner and suddenly ducked out of sight, Drake craned his head to look for traffic before tugging me across the street with him. We walked quickly and quietly, the tension between us palatable. We slowed when we came to the corner where Dorothy turned and I followed Drake’s lead. As a couple, we tried to appear as if we were out for a stroll, even though by then, my feet were aching. The chilly air finally crept under my coat, and I cooled down quickly thanks to all my nervous sweating.
As we came around the corner, a rush of relief flooded me. Dorothy was right in front of us, although she had almost a two-block lead. When she turned another corner, my anxiety came back with a vengeance.
“Is she trying to lose us?” I whispered to Drake.
“Non,” he said, “I don’t think she’s even noticed us.”
Then why did she seem to be in such a rush?
Drake picked up the pace again, but this time, when we came around the corner, she was gone. Even more ominous, the street was completely deserted.
“No!” I whispered.
Drake pulled me to a stop and paused, listening. “Over there,” he said, pointing to a narrow alleyway across the street.
I barely heard the sound of an old car’s engine rumbling.
Dropping all pretenses, we jogged across the street to the alleyway. We arrived just in time to see the car when it pulled away with Dorothy sitting in the back seat; we both stopped.
“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Drake said. “Merde!”
“And not a cab in sight, of course,” I groaned.
“The license plate,” Drake said. “Do you have something to write with, ma minette?” he asked in a rush of concern.
“Yes,” I answered, fumbling with my bag. I got it open and pulled out the map I brought of New York along with a pen.
“It’s 176-54,” Drake said and I wrote it down.
“Is that right?” I asked, holding the paper out for Drake to verify the numbers.
“Oui,” he answered with a quick glance, before he looked at me. “Now we just need to look up the registered owner of the vehicle.”