Jaclyn the Ripper (28 page)

“It was a bit risky,” she murmured back.

“You have no idea.”

She giggled. “Where did you get those awful glasses?”

“It was either that or learn Braille.”

“What happened?” she asked fearfully.

“I'd rather tell you when I don't feel so wonderfully close to you.”

“Um.”

Amber watched them hold on to each other for dear life, bit her lip
sorrowfully and started back to the Milan, having no desire to be embarrassed by someone's else's intimacy or her own foolish dreams.

H.G. noticed her then, extracted himself from Amy and smiled sheepishly. “Amber.” He laughed softly. “Please. I haven't forgotten you.”

She turned, tried a warm smile and hoped her face didn't give her away.

“Amy, this is Ms. Amber Reeves,” he said.

“Hullo, Amber,” she said, her accent refined after thirteen years in England. They shook hands. “How nice.”

“Without her help, I doubt that I would've found you,” he added.

Her smile fading, Amy gave him an inquisitive look.

“Yes,” he nodded, “she knows,” then said smoothly, “She was there when I arrived at the Getty Museum, and thank God for that.”

He gave Amy a glib and funny rendition of their time together since Sunday morning. Amber almost blushed at his sanitized version, curtsied like a schoolgirl instead, then realized it wasn't the right thing to do, since Amy frowned darkly, maybe recalling
her
time with H.G. in 1979 San Francisco. Amber endured the heavy silence, the questions hanging in the air, answered inanely by thousands of crickets who seemed to be shrieking, “Yes, yes, yes!” She almost explained,
It wasn't that way, he talked about you nonstop, he didn't come to my bed eagerly, so I had to go to his, and, hey, I'm really sorry, but I didn't believe he'd ever find you again, so I didn't think it would matter, I couldn't help myself, I—
Amy was staring at her as if listening to her thoughts, and this time Amber couldn't hold back a vivid blush, then changed the subject.

“It's getting kind of cold,” she said.

“Yes,” H.G. and Amy both agreed.

“You guys want a ride somewhere?”

“I should probably take the bicycle back,” said Amy.

“Shouldn't we ring first?” asked H.G.

“Oh, right.” Amy reached for the cell, then stopped and giggled, her eyes twinkling. “No, that's far too normal, Bertie. They think I've been in Bedlam.”

 

______

 

When the road bike was folded up in the Milan's trunk, Amber turned the car around and drove slowly down the hill toward the city, stealing glances of them in the rearview mirror cuddling close like teenagers and talking low so she couldn't hear. Amy giggled with embarrassment when H.G. gave her her purse back, then nuzzled and kissed him. He was pleased with her show of affection, yet went on intensely, and soon Amy seemed to shrink within herself and some awful memory. She turned red, then ashen, and Amber figured H.G. had told her that Leslie John Stephenson was alive and well in 2010, once again on the hunt for them.
“I'm so dreadfully sorry!”
Amy mouthed and covered her face. H.G. comforted her, yet mechanically so, and then briefly his eyes met Amber's in the mirror. She glanced back at the road thinking he must have told her the truth, something like:
Jack the Ripper is back because you unwittingly sent the time machine to infinity.

Then their dialogue changed again, Amy shaking off her little-girl despair and taking charge with a succession of emphatic whispers. H.G. nodded methodically—again a foot soldier on the fourth dimension, Amber guessed—then caught her eye again. He smiled weakly. Amber grinned and felt better.
Maybe he misses me already. Maybe he realizes that if anyone helps him nail Jack the Ripper it'll be me; whereas all his wife will do is carp from a distance, and he'll be lucky if he gets laid.

Amber had been so absorbed with them on the backseat that she'd missed the turn and gone all the way to Santa Monica Boulevard, then had to backtrack to Shadow Hills Drive. She squared her shoulders, broke the silence and the mood.

“Excuse me. What are we looking for?”

“Oh,” said Amy, leaning forward. “It's the Spanish house on the left, next block up.”

Amber pulled in to a circular drive and killed the lights, but left the car running. Amy hadn't invited her in. She felt totally rejected—but then again, if she had been Amy, she wouldn't have invited herself in, either. She glanced at H.G. He seemed uncomfortable, and Amber guessed he wasn't looking forward to meeting Amy's parents. Maybe being left out wasn't such a bad deal.

They all got out. Amber was going to help H.G. lift the bike out of
the trunk, but Amy took her aside, across the lawn to a bench behind manicured bushes with tiny white flowers. A surprisingly beautiful smile was on her face, and she said intimately, “You must be wonderful, Amber. . . .”

“Hey, thanks,” said Amber, taken unawares.

“As you may or may not know, I had to look after him in San Francisco when he was a mere child from the nineteenth century. Though now he professes to be a man of the world and wants to be taken more as a philosopher and politician than a fiction writer, I suspect he hasn't changed much.” She laughed low. “Despite meeting with presidents and heads of state—he has no patience for royalty—he can be a bit ditzy, to say the least. . . . I suppose that's where his incalculable charm comes from.”

Amber was struck speechless; Amy was thanking her. Moreover, she couldn't get over the sweet, articulate melody of her voice. And her smile. She was so lovely, so friendly, so . . . sisterly.

“Yet somehow he talks you into things without actually mentioning them,” Amy went on. “His enthusiasm is infectious. . . . So you must be careful.”

Amber nodded and gulped.

“Very careful, or else you'll find yourself in love and traipsing through universes alongside him as if on a crusade, and then suddenly you look back and wonder what on earth you have done.”

Amber blushed crimson.
Does she know?

Amy chuckled. “And then—irony of ironies—he grins at you with those eyes of his, and you don't care.”

Amber looked down, gulped and nodded again. “He seemed so helpless.”

Amy smiled nostalgically. “Oh, I know. . . . I still remember the morning he came in the bank. . . .”

“Wait,” Amber said anxiously. “You don't think—I mean, I don't know how to say this, but—”

“Oh, I'm sorry, my dear!” Amy leaned forward and touched her arm. “I wasn't suggesting anything like
that
! My God, no. I was merely apologizing for his behavior because I know how he impossible can be.” Her
eyes sparkled. “And I'm not sure how I can repay you for looking after him in this rather ugly century.”

Amber sighed gratefully and bit her lip. She whispered, “You don't have to repay me.”

“Ah, but I do. . . . We're the same, you know. We're both from the States, we're both so-called modern women, we're—” She giggled and put her hand to her mouth. “We've both saved him from himself.”

Amber started to laugh, and then tears welled up in her eyes. She put her arms around Amy and held her, realizing they weren't rivals or enemies and never would be. If anything, she admired this woman. Amy had given up her own century for H.G., and then his passades had forced her to invent something called a modus vivendi for her own self-respect.
He's probably not good enough for her.

“Well, you don't have to worry about him,” Amber said truthfully. “He was a prince.”

She raised up on tiptoes and kissed Amber on the cheek, whispering, “Thank you so very much.”

“I say,” H.G. called. He was standing in front of the garage with the bicycle. “I'd put this away, but I don't know how to open the door.”

Amy chuckled, took the remote from her pocket, pushed the button and the door swung silently open. H.G. studied the process, turned back to Amy. “Did you push something or merely think some combination code.”

“I'll never tell.” Smiling, she waved good night to Amber, then went through the gate into the front courtyard.

Amber handed H.G. the Beretta he'd forgotten. “Here.”

“Oh, yes.” He slipped it in his coat pocket.

“Try not to shoot yourself.”

“Good night, 'Dusa.” He hesitated, then pecked her on the forehead.

“She's so cool.”

“Yes. . . . I'll ring you tomorrow.”

 

Amber watched the gate close, heard a rush of greetings and music from the house as the door opened, then hurried back to her car. She
drove home the same way that they'd come on their high-speed race with destiny. She tried to remember their excitement, the close calls, the rush she'd gotten from driving so crazily, but her mind didn't cooperate. Instead, she was confused. She still loved H.G. and wondered how that was possible when she had just bonded with Amy. Her tears came again. She told herself to forget H.G., the magic of the last two days, to dismiss it all as some weird form of virtual reality and go back to work in the morning, insulate herself from her so-called colleagues and resume paying off her mom's bills, saving for grad school and a real life. Yes. Get a doctorate in record time, meet some budding genius along the way, fall in love (again), and get married. Go to some sprawling, renowned university—never in the UK—have a couple of genius kids and . . .

Her copy of the special key burned in her pocket, and she wondered how she could have been so presumptuous.

When a harried Jaclyn went inside the Radio Shack on Sunset, she was surrounded by three salesmen barking “How can we help you” and imagined herself a feline cornered by hyenas. Once again, she realized that living in a shell of beauty and sensuality could be an annoyance rather than a convenience. She chose the most intelligent-looking specimen—a rotund boy with bad acne who wore a high-tech sneer that supposedly was a winning smile. She asked him for a product to disguise her voice. Within seconds, he had six voice changers on the counter ranging in price from $650.00 to $49.95 and was rambling on about pitch levels, modulation warps and battery packs. She understood little of it, but did explain that she would also be working with components of a “electrical sort.” He quickly filled a plastic toolkit with small tools, tossed in a headlamp and rolls of electrical tape and duct tape. Back at the register, he identified each item as he rang it up. Finally, Jaclyn chose the voice changer with a cell phone adapter that he said would make her voice sound like the monster in the movie
Scream.

“I like people to scream,” she said to the boy.

He grinned stupidly, and she was sure he had picked up on the sexual innuendo when that had been the furthest thing from her mind.
Bagging her voice changer and tools, he offered to help her build or repair whatever she was working on, his wink and implication: Why would somebody with a body like yours waste time with tools when we'll do it for you?
If I had time
, she thought nastily,
I'd take you in the back room and try out my new tools on your blubber and make your unfortunate face a happy one by replacing your pockmarked cheeks with ones from below
.

Cruising along Sunset, she tried to look at the bright side of the incident in Franklin Canyon, her plan in shambles. Neither Wells nor Amy had recognized Jaclyn. That gave her an enormous advantage. If it hadn't been for the girl with the pistol, she could have surprised them both right then. Nevertheless, she did have the presence of mind to befriend them and now could plan for a more predictable showdown, then carve them up and be rid of them forever—free to ride the fourth dimension as a dark-haired Satanic beauty or whatever incarnation evil blessed her with. Still, the encounter had left her frustrated, for she had miscalculated and was baffled that Wells had appeared from out of nowhere. She had been anticipating the foreplay of kidnapping his wife and terrorizing her, then bargaining with Wells for the special key, then betraying them both. What with the unisex fashions that seemed de rigueur in 2010, she could give them each a happy face decorated with the other's sex organs, and “REMEMBER ME?” in script.
Smashing.

She went north on Sepulveda, eschewing the sluggish crawl on the 405 that reminded her of a backed-up sewer in London spewing methane instead of carbon monoxide, then turned on Getty Center Drive and drove slowly to the entrance. The parking structure was deserted because the museum was closed on Mondays. She paused, made sure she was alone, then parked next to the fleet of Getty Center cars and golf carts.

She changed into jeans and T-shirt, pocketed keys and phone, picked up her toolkit and got behind the wheel of a golf cart. She found the key on the floor, then inspected the controls—what with forward, reverse, brake, throttle and lights it was child's play compared to the Mercedes. She sped out of the parking structure and up the access road.

She gazed in awe at the lights of the museum's perimeter, the warm
glow from within. The complex struck her as a glorious castle of the future, awash and heady with the good works of man, ripe for ruin.
In what year will the barbarians come—their fathers and mother-whores propagating right now on the mean streets of this very same city? In what year will the barbarians blow up the place and burn the art, murder the patrons and rape the docents? When will they pillage? It is only a matter of time, for this museum is but a self-righteous mockery of truth, a turning of the cheek to the real nature of the human beast.

Where the road forked, she went around the complex until she saw light spilling from a ring-shaped building. On the other side of a curved hedgerow and trees, a walkway led to the gardens and pavilions beyond. She bounced over the curb and whizzed up the path, enjoying the cool wind through her hair. She recalled being young Leslie and going carriaging with Penny on crisp summer nights, their legs pressed together, her furtive hand teasing him—unlike the others whom Penny would straddle and fornicate desperately, her cries in concert with the horses trotting on cobblestones. It wasn't that she preferred them to her brother. He—and now she—had learned that above all things, Penny had loved the ecstasy of betrayal.