If Only in My Dreams (10 page)

“They do that where I come from, too,” he says, frowning, “when they’re in familiar territory and don’t have tremendous lumps on their foreheads.”

“Oh…” A shadow crosses her face. “Trust me… this particular lump is absolutely the least of my worries right now.”

Jed nods thoughtfully, wondering again what it is that’s got her so spooked.

But he’s pretty darned sure she isn’t about to tell him.

CHAPTER 5

F
irst cancer, now this… this… this bizarre hallucination she can’t seem to escape.

This is about as cataclysmic as things can possibly get, Clara has concluded, marveling that she’s still able to function on any level.

Yet here she sits, somehow having a coherent conversation with dead Jed Landry…
in 1941,
no less.

It’s almost as if focusing on the superficial details keeps her from facing the mind-bending situation itself.

“How about a Coca-Cola?” Jed is asking. “If you won’t drink a milk shake, will you drink a Coke?”

Just the details, Clara. Stick to the conversation. All you have to think about is answering the question
.

Will you drink a Coke?

No, she won’t. Not unless it’s Diet—which she highly doubts is available here in the, um… past.

And anyway, that’s an indulgence she can no longer enjoy…

Talk about superficial. Here she is, trapped in some alternate universe, and she’s lamenting her self-imposed diet-soda ban?

Well, it’s certainly preferable to lamenting the loss of everything even remotely familiar to her.

Plus, it’s much easier to be self-disciplined about artificial sweeteners when they’ve ceased to exist even in your fantasies
, she realizes with the tiniest hint of irony.

As if there’s anything even remotely amusing about any of this.

“I’d rather have water, thanks,” she tells the still-hovering Jed, realizing he’s not going to leave her alone until she allows him to hand her a beverage of some sort.

“Just
water?”

“Just water,” she assures him.

She watches him go around to the other side of the counter, where he picks up a glass.

A
glass
glass. Not a paper cup.

Paper cups must not have been invented yet, either.

Good Lord, is this 1941?
she thinks as renewed panic begins to well up again.
Am I really in 1941?

How on earth could this have happened?

Breathe, Clara. Don’t panic. And don’t hyperventilate, for God’s sake
.

Air in, hold it… air out
.

Air in, hold it… air out
.

Jed turns around. “Do you want a straw?”

A straw. Does she want a straw
…

Air in, hold it… air out
.

Jed is waiting.

A straw? Does she want a straw?

She manages to shake her head and smile.

He smiles and turns his back again, running water at the sink.

Okay. If you must think about what’s going on here, then do it rationally
.

And there’s only one possible
rational
explanation.

This
hasn’t
happened. Not really.

I’m just dreaming
.

Of course she is.

Like Clara in
The Nutcracker
ballet…

Or like Dorothy. Glenhaven Park is her own personal version of Oz. She even bumped her head right before she started dreaming, just like Dorothy did in that Kansas twister.

But…

It’s just…

Well, shouldn’t she have woken up by now?

Because whenever she’s dreaming, and in the dream she suddenly comprehends that it is, indeed, a dream… she wakes up. Always. Instantly.

She has never before, after being struck by the realization that she’s in the middle of a dream, managed to continue it. Especially against her will.
Especially
when the dream happens to be a nightmare.

The good thing about nightmares—if there is anything
good
about nightmares—is that sooner or later, you always wake up.

Not that this particular nightmare has been
entirely
nightmarish.

But only because of Jed Landry.

She’s just barely managed to hold it together—in part because deep down in some innately flirtatious and decidedly
unreasonable part of her psyche, she doesn’t want Jed to decide she’s a loony tune.

No, God help her, she wants Jed to think she’s desirable… and if he does think that, then it’s certainly mutual.

He happens to be much better looking than any Hollywood heartthrob she’s ever known—including Michael Marshall, last year’s cover boy for
People
Magazine
’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issue.

How could Clara never have noticed until just today that most actors’ looks are just so… premeditated? The big-screen heroes whose handsome faces cover the tabloids—men most women would kill to meet in person as she has—are men who spend way too much time in the gym, painstakingly applying hair products, and shopping.

Conversely, Jed Landry’s sex appeal seems utterly incidental.

Who knew a barbershop haircut and a canvas apron could make a man look so good?

He doesn’t just look good, he also smells good. She’s pretty sure it isn’t expensive cologne. It’s… well, she could swear it’s just plain old soap. Maybe a hint of pipe tobacco. And plain old masculine skin.
His
skin.

She got a good whiff of him when he was leaning over her, holding the ice pack against her forehead. It was all she could do to remain in control of her emotions.

She
was
shivering, but not because she was cold.

And not merely because she was afraid, either.

“Here you go.” Jed slides a glass of tap water across the counter. “Are you sure that’s all you really want?”

Tap water. Hmm
.

“This is perfect,” she tells him with forced enthusiasm, reminding herself that no five-and-dime circa 1941 is going to be serving Evian or even Poland Spring.

She sips, watching him watching her over the rim of the glass.

He’s such a sweet guy—or fella, as he might say—with his tender concern about her head, and his old-fashioned manners.…

Old-fashioned?

Does anything about Jed Landry technically qualify as old-fashioned when this is his era? And when this moment has already unfolded, or is currently unfolding, almost three-quarters of a century ago?

Does any of that even make sense?

Clara tries to wrap her mind around the thought, to rephrase it, but only winds up more confused.

How can
now
be in the past? How can
she
be in the past?

She can’t be. Therefore, she must be dreaming.

It’s that simple.

Okay, you can wake up now
, she tells herself for the umpteenth time since she figured out what’s going on here.

Or rather, what her subconscious
thinks
is going on here.

But she doesn’t wake up.

So how can she help but wonder if this
isn’t
a dream?

Well, if it’s not a dream, then what the heck
is
it, Clara?

How the heck should I know?
she shoots right back at the inner voice, as irritated by the ridiculous questions riddling her stream of consciousness as she is by the fact that she can’t seem to stop talking to herself.

But there’s nobody else to talk to. Not about her predicament, anyway.

Certainly, she can’t ask Jed Landry—regardless of whether he really exists—if he thinks she could possibly have fallen through some kind of cosmic time warp.

Could
such a thing possibly happen?

I wouldn’t know that, either… I always did suck at science,
she recalls grimly. Then she reminds herself that it’s unlikely that her all-time favorite teacher, Mr. Kershaw—who ironically taught her all-time least favorite subject—covered cosmic time warps back in high school physics. If he had, she’d have been paying attention, because time warps are infinitely more interesting than studying tedious formulas all day.

When it comes to time warps, Clara’s only frame of reference is Hollywood.

God knows there have been countless time travel movies—including the
Back to the Future
remake she auditioned for just last year. She didn’t get the part. Last she heard, the movie itself had been scrapped, anyway. Presumably, some studio honcho figured out that not every halfway decent box office hit is begging to be remade. Certainly not a mere twenty years after the first version.

“Feeling any better?” Jed asks.

No. She won’t feel better until she’s awake—or returned to her own century, as the case may be.

Unfortunately, she can’t climb into her DeLorean and accelerate herself back to the future, as Marty McFly did in the old movie.

However…

Doesn’t it make sense to assume that since it was the train that delivered her to 1941, the train might just be her means of escape?

That, or waking up, dammit.

This is ludicrous.

Wake up! Wake up, Clara!

She squeezes her eyes shut, certain that when she opens them, she’ll see Michael and Denton and Jesus deJesus hovering above her like a trio of Kansas farmhands, telling her that she hit her head and dreamed the whole thing.

All right, then. She just needs to concentrate. Really concentrate.

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like
—

“Clara?”

She opens her eyes and there’s Jed Landry again, back on this side of the soda fountain, blue eyes laced with concern.

“I’m sorry…” She swallows a lump in her throat. “I just want to go home.”

“Maybe I can drive you, if I can borrow a car and—”

“You can’t,” she says desolately. “I have to take the train.”

“Well, if you’ll wait until I can drive—”

“I can’t wait and I can’t drive home.… I have to take the train.”

“I don’t think you should. Not alone. Not when you’re so…”

He trails off, too polite to say
mentally unbalanced
or whatever it is that he’s thinking about her.

“What about your folks, then? Can’t they come up from the city and get you?”

“No.”

“I’m sure if they knew—”

“They’re not even in the city. My father lives in New Jersey and he’s probably away on a business trip anyway, and my mother lives in Florida.”

“They don’t live together?” he asks in obvious dismay.

“No, they’re divorced.”

“That’s a shame. I’m so sorry.”

Judging by his sympathetic tone and expression, divorced parents are uncommon in 1941. She hesitates, wondering if she should assure Jed that it’s really okay.

But she opts not to…

Because she realizes that it
isn’t
okay.

Divorce might be the norm, but it’s never okay. Coming from a broken home is painful no matter what decade you live in—no matter how old you are.

“What about your mom and dad?” she asks Jed, supposing they’re madly in love. As far as she’s been able to tell, Glenhaven Park in 1941 is small-town Americana at its vintage best: an insular, idyllic place despite the horrific events unfolding in the rest of the world.

But Jed winces as soon as the question has left her lips, and she realizes that his parents’ marriage might be as painful a subject for him as her parents’ marriage is for her.

“We, uh, I lost my father. Two years ago today, actually.”

I’m sorry
seems such a trite response, but what else is there?

So she says it softly, inadequately.

Then, needing to comfort him further, she allows herself to lay a hand on his sleeve. Her fingertips encounter woolen fabric as rough as her own suit, and she fantasizes, just for a moment, about the warm skin and defined biceps that lie beneath.

Jed looks down at her hand, then up at her, clearly startled.

Maybe women didn’t touch strange men back in his time. But she doesn’t move her hand away. She can’t. Not having seen the tears that rim his blue eyes.

He clears his throat a few times.

Then he says, “I should be over it by now.”

“Over it? I don’t think you ever get over it, really, Jed.” Funny how strange his name sounds. It isn’t the first occasion it’s crossed her lips, by far.

Running lines with Michael, she’s said it many times. Said it in anger, in passion, in delight—whatever emotion the script demands.

But she’s never said it to
him
. The real Jed Landry.

Who is either a figment of your imagination or a ghost
.

Looking very much alive, he says, “I guess I never really expected him to die. Not even while he was doing it and I was watching. I figured he’d pull through somehow. He always managed to. That was how he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad’s nickname was Lucky when he was a kid. Which I think he might have come up with himself, since he really, really hated his real name.”

“What was it?”

“Abner. But Lucky Landry suited him better—back then, anyway. He was known around town for surviving a lot of close calls. He had smallpox when he was a baby. Then, when he was about seven, he was hit by a milk wagon and broke both his legs and a couple of ribs. And when he became a doughboy, my grandmother was convinced he’d never come home alive.”