The Bellbottom Incident (27 page)

Gigi had put away the hardcover book. The students were done with breakfast and, I couldn’t help but notice, had scattered more litter. How hard was it to find the nearest can and pitch your trash into it? Udo was already in the Ford Mustang, with the top down and the engine running. He revved the engine and, one hand on the leather steering wheel, waved Sabina over to the front passenger seat. It was a calculated decision, I thought, to avoid bad feelings between Missy and Gigi, who, with what could only be described as pouts, tumbled into the backseat. He took off, driving far too fast.

Nathaniel and Soren, having stared at the retreating Mustang, gave a shrug and started to fold up the lawn chairs. Abigail was still a bit puzzled as to which of the students was who, and I explained that the woman in the sari had been Gilberte “Gigi” Dubois, who was not yet using her married name of Kirkland. Abigail listened to what I had to say, then, perhaps in an attempt to distract me from the more pressing matter, said, “If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think either of the women is attracted to Udo so much as what he represents.”

“And what’s that?”

“You know, writerhood. Besides, both Missy and Gigi are with other people, aren’t they?”

“True.”

“Speaking of being with people, are you and Nate thinking about marriage?”
 

“What? No,” I said, a bit more loudly than I intended, causing Soren to throw a brief glance over one shoulder at us. Why was she even asking me this when I was out of my mind with worry about Sabina—and, I was sure, she was too? Besides, Nate and I had been dating only a few weeks, though admittedly it felt longer because of all the time travel. Plus my divorce from Quinn had only just gone through, not to mention the whole complication with Nate Sr. hanging out with my mother, which I was pretty sure meant nothing. I just wished I could be a 100 percent sure.
 

“Marriage is the last thing on my mind.”

“The last?”

“All right, perhaps not the
last
, but it’s at the bottom of the list, right along with clearing the house gutters and repainting the mailbox.” Thinking that she might be a tad crushed to hear me speak of marriage that way (I knew there hadn’t been anybody in her life since Dave, who had moved on during our five-month disappearance in Pompeii, having assumed, along with everyone else, that we were dead), I clarified. “Look, all I’m saying is that there’s no need to rush into these things. Engagement, marriage, all that.”

“Right, well, I guess that’s a good philosophy.”

Nathaniel and Soren had stashed the chairs in the VW, with the other four students, whose names we didn’t know—two men and two women—helping. Everyone seemed excited to finally be heading to the CSI. Soon the art bus also pulled out of the parking lot, though it set a course in the direction of the mainland bridge at a far more moderate pace. Dad had always been a careful driver.

There was nothing further to be gleaned from the empty parking spaces with their trail of litter, and Abigail and I turned to go. At least we had one thing going for us: a hint that we had been correct in our guess about where the book club was headed. As he was pulling out of the parking lot, Udo had called back to the others, “Onward to Edison’s tree!”

Abigail and I headed back to the pier.
 

Dr. Little wasn’t there.

Abigail and I had been gone no more than ten, fifteen minutes, but apparently that had been long enough for History to send the professor back—Dr. Little had left behind a hastily scribbled note, tucked into the gap between the cement pillar of the pier and the sand, the checkered page ripped out of one of his research notebooks:
 

Starting to feel odd, light-headed. Shallow breathing. My birth cutoff. Will send the Slingshot back via STEWie. Good luck. — Dr. Steven Little

Even though I was a month older, History had sent Dr. Little back first after all. Abigail and I concluded that he must already be home safe and sound, because we found the Slingshot nearby, wrapped in Dr. Little’s blanket. The professor had also sent the Edison Estate coordinates, the grid map of Fort Myers, some cash, two bags of trail mix, and his laptop—presumably in case we (meaning Abigail) needed to calculate new coordinates.
 

“I wonder if he really did feel light-headed, or if the lack of shoes started to get to him,” Abigail said half jokingly, unwrapping the Slingshot and blowing a bit of sand off it.
 

“I suppose I wouldn’t blame him if it
was
the shoes. It’s one thing to walk on the beach barefoot and quite another to do it all over town. Either way, I guess it’s just you and me now.”
 

I shook the blanket out in case we had missed anything. There was nothing from Nate—no note. I fought off my disappointment. He was probably too busy with things at his end.
 

I turned to Abigail. “If Dr. Little really did have to drop out and it wasn’t his footwear, and I suddenly do as well…”

“Then it will be up to me to bring Sabina back.”

“Count me in,” Marlin said. “ I got nothing planned for today. And I owe you for the shoes.”

He was like a jack-in-the-box, popping up everywhere we went. I wondered if he had seen Dr. Little disappear into thin air and, just moments later, the Slingshot and other items reappear wrapped in a blanket, and if so, what he had made of it. I made a decision. If History was willing to let Marlin help us, who was I to object? There was no reason
not
to accept his offer of help. As familiar as I was with the future Fort Myers, he was obviously much more familiar with the current town.
 

And—maybe—Marlin being allowed to help us was a sign that History was on our side, that Sabina would not be in Udo’s car when it went over.
 

Besides, if I
did
have to drop out as Dr. Little had, I didn’t want Abigail to be in this alone.

“Thank you, Marlin. We’re happy to accept your offer of help,” I said. Abigail sent a surprised look in my direction but didn’t say a word.

“We gonna try to follow your students?” Marlin asked. “You want me to organize transport? A friend of mine runs an off-the-books taxi service. He’d give you a mighty proper discount.”
 

“Thanks, but we already have transport.” So he
hadn’t
seen Dr. Little vanish off Estero Island in a seeming violation of the laws of physics and reality after all. Well, he was in for a surprise. I thought I’d better warn him. “You’re welcome to come along, Marlin. Just—well, be aware it’s a bit unorthodox.”

“Unorthodox suits me just fine.”

“All right then. Abigail, are you ready with the you-know-what?”

She nodded and Marlin said, “Which way, ladies?”

“We aren’t catching a ride. We’re going to have to, uh, link hands—”

“Well, Udo didn’t say they were going to come here directly,” I pointed out. Having a faster mode of transport, we had arrived at the estate ahead of the book club. But it had already been half an hour. I checked the parking lot again, as if the Ford Mustang and the art bus could have somehow snuck in past our post on the sidewalk by the lot entrance. The parking lot held a handful of station wagons—to my modern eye, it seemed odd that there weren’t any SUVs—and also a telephone booth tucked into one corner.

“Could they have stopped for ice cream or coffee or whatever?” Abigail suggested.

“But they just had breakfast,” I protested.

“Nothing wrong with stopping for ice cream right after breakfast,” Marlin said. He had taken our Slingshotting from Estero Island to the Edison Estate in stride, his only comment being “What will they come up with next?” He had shaken his head at the speediness of it all, as if we were messing with nature. Were we? Probably, but like with any technology, there was no going back. Abigail and I had told Marlin that the Slingshot was an experimental apparatus and held back the important detail about us being from the future.

“Could we have heard wrong? Maybe the tree is somewhere else?” Abigail asked after a few more minutes had passed.

“You heard Udo. He definitely said Edison’s tree. It’s got to be here on the estate.”

There were certainly plenty of trees all around. In fact, we were under one. Tall, graceful palms lined McGregor Boulevard like a squadron of slender, top-heavy soldiers, swaying gently in the calm morning. The estate sprawled on both sides of the boulevard, and there were trees of all kinds to be seen on either side of the road.

As I had been doing periodically, I got to my feet to check for Udo’s Ford Mustang—and the art bus behind it—shading my eyes from the bright sunlight with one hand. There was a steady trickle of cars on the boulevard, and a driver went past tooting the car horn in celebration of Carter’s victory, the body of the car adorned with election posters. He waved at me, and I waved back.

“Maybe they stopped to pick up a newspaper,” I suggested as I sat back down on the yellow-edged curb between Marlin and Abigail. “To read about the election results.”
 

Abigail was chewing her nails. “Where’s the fort?”

“What fort?” I asked.

“Well, it is Fort Myers, right?”

“Oh, that. I looked it up once. There used to be one on the shores of the Caloosahatchee River. It was built during the Seminole Wars but was taken down in 1876 and the wood reused to build the first houses in town.”

“I like that word,
Caloosahatchee
,” Abigail said.

“I looked that up, too. The
hatchee
part means river, so it’s a bit redundant to call it the Caloosahatchee River.” I got to my feet again to check the road. “The Calusa Indians lived here on the Gulf Coast for more than a thousand years,” I added in a further educational note.

“You folks are very impatient.” Marlin appreciatively stretched his toes out in Dr. Little’s shoes. “Not everyone moves as fast as your—
thing
.”

The Slingshot was in my backpack, taking up most of it, and Abigail was carrying the laptop in hers. We’d had to leave out the mats and blankets and a few other things, which Marlin had accepted and hidden back at the beach.
 

“We call it the Slingshot,” Abigail explained, taking a break from chewing her nails.
 

“Abigail!” I chastised her.
 

“What? Julia, you were the one who invited him along. No offense. I’m very glad to have you here, Marlin.”

“I’m glad to have Marlin along, too, but that doesn’t mean we should spill everything.”

Abigail gave a tiny shrug. “What’s that old saying? In for a penny, in for a pound. I read it in a book once. It refers to British money. Besides, I figure History will stop me if I say too much.”

This was true. My complaint wasn’t really with her—it was the absence of the book club that had me on edge. Where were they? Had we misunderstood Udo and gotten everything wrong?

Marlin scratched his beard. “The Slingshot and History, you say? Well, I’ve seen a lot of odd things in my seventy-three years.”

“And?” I prodded him.

“And that’s it. I’ve seen a lot of odd things. Don’t be thinking yours stands out.”

Despite the circumstances, I chuckled. “Okay then. Nothing unusual about us. I suppose we just have to wait—probably the book club had to stop to fill up on gas and that’s all it is.”
 

A town bus whooshed by, dousing us with a noseful of polluted air. I checked my watch. It was just past ten. I decided we needed something to keep our spirits up, not a repeat of the granola bars we’d eaten for breakfast or trail mix; something more comforting, in the cookie or ice cream category, was called for. I sent Abigail to the gift shop to see what they had on hand while Marlin and I kept an eye on the road. She came back with a box of cookies, which we all shared. They had the desired effect of buoying everyone’s spirits.
 

I noticed that a tour group had started to gather outside the gift shop and had a sudden brainstorm. “Let’s buy tickets on the off chance that the book club parked elsewhere and are already on the estate.”