If Only in My Dreams (7 page)

You take three steps, and then you slip,
she reminds herself, moving forward, lugging the suitcase with her.

Yes, she slips, and Michael catches her.

So where is he?

And where are the other actors who are supposed to follow her off the train, chatting?

She doesn’t want to blatantly turn her head to look, but she seems to be the only one who got off the train, and Michael doesn’t seem to be on his mark.
Oh, well
. He must be there. And the cameras and lighting, too. They’re just more unobtrusive than she would expect.

Start walking
.

One step
…

Two
…

Three
.

“Oh!” Clara cries out, slipping on cue…

And falling to the hard planks with an excruciating thud as the train chugs off into the distance.

Dazed, she looks around the empty platform.

Empty?

Wait a minute.

Where are the other extras who were supposed to disembark with her?

Where’s Michael?

Where’s Denton?

And where are the damned cameras, and the lighting crew, and…?

Clara frowns.

What the…? I’m alone out here
.

She slowly gets to her feet and brushes the powdery snow off her skirt. Her breath puffs white in the wintry air.

Shivering in the wind, she looks around, bewildered.

Glenhaven Park looks just as it should: flags flying, vintage automobiles parked along the green—now blanketed in white.

She can see costumed extras bustling along the sidewalks. Swing music even plays faintly from a distant radio.

The crew has thought of everything.

Everything but me,
Clara thinks ruefully, uncertain about what to do next.

Maybe Denton called a meeting in one of the trailers. Maybe he’s going to adjust the blocking schedule because of the snow.

It doesn’t make sense—none of this makes sense—but it’s the only explanation Clara can come up with.

She looks in the direction where the location trailers were parked in an A&P supermarket lot down the street.

That spot is occupied by a large Victorian mansion with a mansard roof.

Huh? Where’s the supermarket?

She squints, blinks.

No trailers.

No parking lot.

No A&P.

Maybe she’s mistaken. Maybe the trailers were on the opposite end of town.

She turns her head—still throbbing from the bump on the train—to look the other way.

No trailers.

No parking lot.

No supermarket.

All she can see, beyond the white steeple of the Congregational church, is the tree-lined hillside overlooking the town.

Her heart pounds so violently—and her knees weaken so abruptly—that it’s all she can do to remain on her feet.

Just the hillside.

Nothing
on
the hillside but trees.

Nothing
.

Somehow, an entire condominium complex has vanished into thin air, along with the rest of Clara’s world.

CHAPTER 3

A
t the sound of a car horn honking in the street, Jed looks up to see wiry, bespectacled Arnold Wilkens, a childhood friend, passing by the five-and-dime in a new blue Packard. Arnold waves at him, and Jed waves back, wondering whether his wife, Maisie, has had their first baby yet. She must be due any minute now, judging by her enormous belly when she stopped in the store to pick up some pink knitting yarn a few weeks ago.

“Why not blue?” Jed asked.

“I’m betting it’s a girl,” Maisie said with the same self-confidence she’d displayed since their kindergarten days. “And we’re going to name her Daisy.”

Of course they are. Because it rhymes with Maisie. Poor kid.

“Well,” he said, “Arnold thinks it’s a boy.”

“Arnold took the Dodgers in the World Series,” Maisie retorted with a
what-does-he-know?
shrug.

“A lot of people did.” Jed excluded, of course. Being a Yankees fan, he was thrilled when the Bronx Bombers pulled off an unlikely victory against their crosstown rivals.

“How about a nice pale-yellow yarn?” he offered Maisie.

“No, thank you. If Arnold is right by some chance, and this baby is a boy, he’ll just have to wear pink booties and sleep in a pink nursery, because we’re painting this weekend.”

Jed has no doubt the baby will be a girl.

Maisie has a way of knowing things she can’t possibly know. Women’s intuition, she likes to call it.

Arnold calls it phonus bolonus.

Which makes a fella wonder why he married a gal like Maisie in the first place. Then again, with his wiry build and thick glasses, Arnold, who is now an accountant, has never exactly been known as what Jed’s sisters might call a Hunk of Heartbreak.

About to return his attention to the store, Jed notices big fat flakes in the air—drifting lazily, almost horizontally in the air as opposed to falling furiously as they did early this morning.

He turns away from the window—then back, realizing that he just glimpsed a familiar figure coming down the block.

It isn’t roly-poly Alice.

As he trains his eyes on this woman, he’s so caught up in admiring her shapely legs—even as he notes that she appears to be wearing stockings, and wonders where she managed to find them—that he momentarily forgets to look up to see who she is.

When he manages to tear himself away from those glorious gams, he realizes that he doesn’t know her after all.

Or does he?

He takes in the well-made hat and coat, the waves of chestnut hair curled fashionably above her shoulders…

Even from here, he can see that she’s a real dish.

He can also see that she’s hauling a large suitcase. Is she coming or going?

Coming. Definitely. Because she seems lost. He can tell by the way she’s looking around, as though she’s searching for something.

She must have just stepped off the train from Manhattan. In fact, everything about her says Glamour Puss.

Still, there’s something familiar about her.…

Jed is almost one-hundred-percent positive that he’s seen her someplace before.

So certain is he that he raps on the plate-glass window to catch her attention.

She looks up, startled.

Her smile is at once tentative, relieved, and laced with recognition.

So I must know her,
Jed realizes, watching her approach the store.
And obviously, she knows me
.

It’s about time,
Clara thinks, waving at the guy in the window of the old-fashioned five-and-dime. At last, a temporary haven from the icy wind, and a familiar face.

Not nearly as familiar—or as welcome—as, say, Michael’s would be. Or Denton’s.

But this costumed bit player—whom she must have met in passing on the set at some point—is better than a total stranger.

She just can’t help wondering why she didn’t recognize any of the other vintage-fashion-clad extras she glimpsed
hurrying along the sidewalks as she walked over from the train station. Maybe she was just too busy trying to figure out what on earth was going on with the set… and the scene she’s supposed to be blocking.

She supposes something could have come up and caused the camera crew, Denton, and Michael to beat a hasty retreat.

Maybe Michael’s contagious stomach bug has infected the whole production.

Or maybe there was a problem with the filming permit. The town’s administration is a stickler for rules.

It just would have been nice if somebody had mentioned the abrupt change in the schedule to the cast and crew on board the train.

Yet a communication breakdown doesn’t explain the vanishing condo complex on the hill. A cluster of buildings can’t just walk away.

Then again, Hollywood magic can make anything possible. Clara has seen, at the hands of capable set designers, the southwestern desert become a tropical island beach, a wall of white Styrofoam blocks transformed into an ancient Roman villa.

All right. Maybe they’ve created some kind of optical illusion to camouflage the condos.

It would have been nice if somebody had mentioned that, too.

And what about the enormous bronze statue on the green—the one that depicts the eleven lost soldiers of Glenhaven Park? Obviously, it’s been removed for the duration of filming. Yet she could have sworn the set designer tried—and failed—to have the statue relocated. The town
refused to allow it to budge an inch. Yes, and Denton had to alter a number of long, establishing shots as a result.

Clara glances again at the spot where the statue should be. Nothing there now but a towering maple tree. The kind of tree that can’t be plunked down by a set designer to hide an unsightly bare spot. The kind of tree that takes centuries to grow… and wasn’t there last week. Or yesterday.

But that’s crazy. You must be imagining things
.

And no wonder. It’s so cold, and her head hurts, and this suitcase weighs a ton. Is it so surprising that she can’t think straight at the moment?

Noticing that the actor in the store is now out beneath the striped awning, holding the door open for her, Clara covers the last stretch of icy sidewalk quickly, and gratefully.

“Come on in… chilly out today, isn’t it?” he asks pleasantly as she steps over the threshold and deposits her suitcase on the worn wooden floor with a thud.

“That’s the understatement of the year.” Her teeth are chattering as he closes the door behind her.

“Have we met?” he asks, and she turns to find him looking curiously at her.

“I don’t know.… I’m Clara,” she says politely.

“I’m—” Instead of introducing himself, he frowns, peering into her face. “I thought you looked familiar, but I didn’t realize…”

You were the star,
Clara thinks.

How often has she heard that? People are always saying she comes across as a regular gal because she doesn’t put on airs like some actresses.

“… I was wrong,” he concludes the sentence unexpectedly.

He was wrong?

She looks into his eyes and sees that he doesn’t seem to have a clue who she is. Either that, or he’s a terrific actor.

He smiles pleasantly, revealing teeth so white she wants to ask who did them and how much he paid. She’s had her own professionally whitened twice in the last year by two different oral-health-care experts, with less than perfect results.

She wonders why this guy’s dentist didn’t repair the slight gap between his front two teeth while he was at it. Then again, if it weren’t for that barely visible flaw, he would be almost too handsome.

He’s clean-shaven with angular features, a full mouth, and a deep cleft in his chin. His hair, so dark it’s almost black, is neatly trimmed over his ears without a trace of sideburn. It’s so short it spikes up on top with the help of some gel, as though he combed it straight up from his forehead with his fingers. His eyes, wide set beneath straight, sooty slashes of brow, are the striking blue of the sky on a clear winter day.

Clara is so busy noticing his good looks that it takes her a moment to confirm that the lack of recognition is mutual. She’s never seen this guy before. He must be a local. She thought he looked familiar when she spotted him from afar. But up close and personal like this, he’s as much a stranger as anyone else in this town.

Disconcerted by his expectant blue gaze, she looks away and is startled to find that the dime store’s interior now matches the forties’ facade. It isn’t just the pressed tin ceiling, exposed pipes, soda fountain, or antique register…

The set dresser went to a lot of trouble to track down authentic-looking merchandise, too. Everything on the shelves and in the bins—from Christmas decorations to clothing to
penny candy—is either an incredibly realistic reproduction, or in terrific condition for being at least sixty-five years old.

Just last week, this was an Internet cafe. She checked her e-mail on a computer right over in that corner, now occupied by a display table holding a pile of bright blue boxes and a sign that reads
PARAMOUNT STAR-LITES
.

“Are we shooting interior scenes here?” she asks, wondering why anyone would bother to go to these lengths if they’re not—and she could have sworn they aren’t.

About to lift her suitcase and move it away from the door, he looks up and frowns as though he doesn’t comprehend.

He must not speak English
, she realizes in the split second before she recalls that he did, indeed, speak English when he greeted her.

“Shooting?” he asks blankly without a trace of an accent.

“I thought this place was just for exterior shots,” she clarifies, and is met with an even more puzzled expression.

Oh. Maybe he’s a little slow, like Eddie, the bag boy at Gristedes near her apartment. That would explain, too, why he was knocking on the window and waving at her as though she’s a long-lost friend. He probably knocks and waves at everybody.

“Never mind,” she says sympathetically. Marlene, the casting assistant, must have hired him for his looks. He can’t possibly have a speaking part.

“Say, what’s in this thing?” he asks, grunting as he moves her suitcase. “Rocks?”