If Only in My Dreams (18 page)

Beneath it is an address on West Eleventh Street in New York, followed by a series of number clusters separated by dashes.

Jed stares at the card, turning it over and over, realizing what this means.

New York
—
and Clara McCallum
—
here I come
.

Gladys Knight sings in the background about leaving on a midnight train to Georgia, accompanied by the Pips and Jesus deJesus.

“Uh-oh, are you still on your seventies’ music kick?” Clara asks with a groan as she settles into the makeup chair.

His only response is a falsetto train-whistle-like
“Whoo-hoo”
in unison with the song lyrics.

“God, I miss my iPod,” she mutters.

“What happened to your iPod?” Jesus interrupts his singing to ask.

“Oh, I, uh… lost it.”

“That’s a shame.” He tosses a tube of foundation in the air, catches it, and sings into it, along with the Pips.

Unexpectedly struck by that line, Clara closes her eyes to shut out a vision of Jed Landry’s face.

It’s still there.

“God, do you really have to sing that song?” she snaps at Jesus, opening her eyes to glare at him.

Taken aback by her outburst, he reaches over and turns off the CD player. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I just don’t like that song.”

“Well, I don’t like ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ but I didn’t complain when you insisted on playing it over and over the other day.”

“Yes, you did. Repeatedly. And you threatened me with that ugly orange-apricot lipstick until I promised never to play it again with you in earshot.”

“Oh. Right. Whatever.” Jesus shrugs. “Listen, you should probably know that the entire world is talking about you.”

“So I’ve heard.” Clara reaches for her coffee, placed in arm’s reach. She takes a sip, then says, “So tell me what the entire
world
is saying.”

“Let’s see… that you’re on crack—”

“
Crack?”

“Or heroin. I’ve heard both versions.” Jesus drapes her in a black vinyl cape.

“Good Lord. What else have you heard?”

“That you’re having an affair with K.T., that you’re bulimic, that you’re pregnant—”

“With K.T.’s baby?” she asks, amusement mingling with dismay.

“You tell me, honey.” Jesus—and just about everyone else on the set, gay and straight alike—has a crush on the good-looking second assistant director.

“It’s not true. Not one bit of it. Did you tell them?”

“I told them it wasn’t true. But”—Jesus dabs thick foundation along the trenches beneath her eyes—“I wasn’t about to tell anyone what’s really going on. That’s your business. And you’re obviously losing sleep over it, Raccoon Girl.”

“I know. It’s been brutal.”

“You’re going to be just fine after all this, you’ll see.”

“And if I’m not, I can be reborn as somebody fabulous, like Coco Chanel.”

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“I know, I know… you take your past lives very seriously.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re going to survive. You’ll get it all behind you, the tests, the surgery, the treatment.… It seems like it’s going to last forever, but it isn’t. You’ll have a normal life again.”

“I know I will… but…”
It isn’t just the cancer
.

She wants more than anything to confide in him about what happened to her yesterday. The problem is, she doesn’t know what happened to her yesterday.

Better to shrug it off and vaguely attribute her absence from the set to her illness.

But what if it happens again?

What if, when she boards the train again this morning to shoot her scene, she finds herself in a repeat performance: blanking out and imagining that she’s back in the past?

She simply can’t let that happen.

No way.

But if she had any idea how it happened in the first place, she’d have a better chance of preventing it from happening again.

There’s a knock on the trailer door.

“Who is it?” she calls.

“Albany.” Her friend appears in the doorway behind her, reflected in the mirror before the makeup chair. She’s costumed as Violet’s friend Sue, in full makeup with her golden hair swept up in a wavy pompadour. “I heard what happened to you.”

“That I’m an addict?”

Albany’s pencil-darkened brows shoot toward the swoop of hair above her forehead.

“Pregnant with a crack baby?”

Albany shakes her head, laughing. “No.”

“Then what did you hear?”

“That you freaked out and ran away in the middle of a scene because K.T. was flirting with Lisa.”

“Good Lord. I swear that’s total bull, Albany.”

She grins. “I thought so. But I was worried about you anyway.”

“Have you got a minute? Or ten? I’ll tell you what’s really going on—”

“Not now. I’ve got to go back to wardrobe and change into my dress for the wedding scene, and you’re supposed to meet me over there.”

“Wedding scene? I thought we were doing the depot scene.”

“We were… until the sky opened up and it started pouring. It wasn’t supposed to rain until this afternoon. Denton’s putting the scene on hold.”

“Until when?”

“Who knows? It’s probably going to rain all day.”

Thank God
, Clara thinks, turning her head to look at the ominous sky beyond the rain-spattered windowpane. At least she won’t have to worry about a repeat performance of her notorious vanishing act.

Not today, anyway.

Maybe, by the time Denton’s ready to get back to that scene, she’ll know what happened to her yesterday—and how to keep it from happening again.

Every time the door jangles to signal a new arrival in the five-and-dime, Jed hopefully jerks his head in that direction.

But it’s never Clara.

Nor is it Alice, who has once again failed to show up for work.

No, just a constant parade of local shoppers, too many of them with impossible requests… and he’s just about got whiplash from all this wishful head swiveling.

All he wants is to get down to Manhattan to find Clara.

Instead here he is, swearing to Mrs. Robertson, yet again, that he really
doesn’t
have silk stockings in stock.

“I don’t think you’re being honest with me, Jed. I heard that you had a stash.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t remember. But I’m sure somebody mentioned it.”

“Mrs. Robertson, if I had silk stockings in the store, I’d be happy to sell them to you, believe me.”

Anything to get you off my back, you old biddy
.

“I just don’t understand why you can’t get them.”

Gritting his teeth, he reminds her—again—that most silk is imported from Japan, and the government cut off trade with Japan several months ago. He offers her an alternative, but Mrs. Robertson, who perceives the war as a major personal inconvenience, refuses to consider the “newfangled” nylon stockings.

“You’re charging too much for them,” she accuses. “No one in her right mind would pay that for a pair of stockings.”

He watches her browse for a good fifteen minutes, asking countless questions about the merchandise. As he answers them, his thoughts are on Manhattan, and Clara. He still hasn’t fixed the DeSoto’s flat, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be
able to borrow a car from one of his buddies. That’s the best thing about living in a small town—somebody is always there when you need a favor.

“Oh, look, there’s the dear little musical snow globe you tried to sell me,” Mrs. Robertson comments, spotting the damaged music box on the sale table. “I can’t imagine who would want an angel with a broken wing, even at half price.”

Jed merely shrugs.

“I’ll give you ten cents for it,” Mrs. Robertson announces, pulling out her change purse as though it’s a done deal.

Jed shakes his head. “I’m afraid I have to stick with the marked price.”

“You aren’t willing to bargain?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, as if he really is. Meanwhile, he promises himself that at this point, he wouldn’t sell her the sweet, wounded little angel if she offered him twice the original cost.

No sooner does Mrs. Robertson grumble her way out the door with just the morning paper than Betty Godfrey sashays in.

She’s wearing fashionably thick-soled shoes and a sweeping fur coat. Beneath a tall, tilted hat, her strawberry blond hair is carefully parted on the side and draped over one eye in an exaggerated imitation of Veronica Lake’s peekaboo style.

“Jed Landry! Where have you been?”

“I’ve been right here,” he says mildly as she marches right up to the counter, enveloping him in a cloud of Evening in Paris perfume. “Where else would I be?”

“You said you would call on me over the weekend, you naughty thing, and you never showed up.”

“I did?” He frowns, trying to remember when he might have made such an unlikely commitment.

“Yes, don’t you remember?”

“Refresh my memory, why don’t you.”

“I stopped in here on Friday afternoon to buy some navy thread for the divine dress I’m making, and I told you I had to hurry home because I had an apple pie in the oven, and you said that you like apple pie, and I said, why, then, come on by and have a piece.”

Hmm. Jed
does
like apple pie.

But the rest of it… well, he’s fairly certain he would not have made any brash promises to the likes of Betty Godfrey. Knowing her—and he does, all too well—she’d expect a ring and a vow in return for the pie.

“But you never showed up, Jed,” Betty concludes unnecessarily, obviously waiting for an explanation.

“Sorry you were disappointed, Betty. I guess it must have slipped my mind. What can I help you with today? More thread? Different color?”

“Oh, I think I’ll just browse.” She makes no move to do so.

He nods, and begins to unpack a carton of music boxes that arrived this morning.

“You know, Jed…” Betty leans toward him, elbows propped on the counter, her pretty face cupped in both hands, her one visible eye gleaming with what appears to be accusation. “I heard a rumor about you.”

“About me?”
Oh, for crying out loud
. “What’s that, Betty? I suppose you heard that I’ve got a stash of silk stockings. Well, let me tell you, it isn’t—”

“No, I heard that you were chasing a dame through the streets yesterday morning, hollering at her.”

“Well, you don’t say.” He shrugs, thinking that this is the worst thing about small towns. A fella can’t get away with anything.

Betty just nods.

Jed can’t help but notice that she seems to spend an awful lot of time waiting for him to say something. And that he seems to spend an awful lot of time trying to think of something to say.

This, then, is clearly not a relationship made in heaven—not that it’s news to him.

“Well, where’d you hear about this rumor?” Jed mildly asks Betty at last, shifting his weight, filled with renewed longing to flee Glenhaven Park.

“First from Gladys Van Tassel, and she heard it from Floyd Mead. I don’t know where he heard it.”

I do
, Jed thinks, remembering that Floyd’s twin brother, George, was one of the eager fellas who helped Clara up when she tripped and fell.

“I told Gladys, ‘Jed would never make such a public scene.’ But now that I’ve heard it from a couple of people, well… I told them all that I was sure she was a customer.”

“She was.”

“And I said that she must have shoplifted something from you, and that’s why you were chasing her. Was it?”

“No.” He looks around the empty store, wishing for a distraction—like Mrs. Robertson coming back to go at it another round about the silk stockings or break more fragile merchandise.

“Then why?”

“She left something behind. I just wanted to give it to her.”

“What was it?”

“A couple of bags, Betty, that’s all.” He wishes he didn’t feel so gosh-darned defensive about it.

“Did you catch her?”

“No, I didn’t.”
But I will
.

“Well, some people are saying you were chasing her like a love-crazed fool.”

“Oh, they are, are they?” he mutters.

“Are you in love with her, Jed?”

“I don’t even know her, Betty.”

She smiles coyly and winks at him. Or maybe it’s just a blink. He can’t tell, what with that hairdo of hers.

Veronica Lake might look sexy with one eye, but Jed swiftly concludes that on everybody else—including Betty—the style is somewhat ridiculous.

You don’t see Clara going around half blind.

No sir, when she was here, both of her big green eyes were clearly visible—and frightened.

If she were a spy, Jed muses, you wouldn’t expect her to be frightened. As the legend goes, Mata Hari was calm and collected right until her last moment, blowing kisses to the firing squad before they executed her.

There was nothing calm about Clara.

Again, Jed longs to drop everything and rush to the city to find her—not just to put his curiosity to rest or do his patriotic duty.

She needs me
, he finds himself thinking irrationally.

“Say, there’s still half a pie left over at my house, Jed,” Betty is cooing. “Why don’t you come by after you close the
store later? My mother is out at her bridge game and she won’t be home until late.”

“I can’t. I have to be… someplace else.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“I’m afraid that’s no good, either.”

“Then Thursday?”

“I would think that pie of yours might be moldy by then, Betty,” he can’t help saying.

She shoots him a one-eyed scowl and straightens up, adjusting her hat. “What a thing to say!”

“I’m sorry. It’s swell of you to invite me, but I’m afraid I’m just too shorthanded and busy here at the store to squeeze in much of anything else at this time of year.”

“That’s just your loss, then, Jed Landry.” Betty flounces out of the store without a backward glance.

He watches her go, thinking his life would be much simpler if he could will himself to fall in love with Betty.

But he can’t do that any more than he can stop obsessing over the troubled mystery woman.

He looks impatiently at his watch.