Then Again Read online

  Her father’s obit mentioned “daughter Patricia Scarletti,” which I assumed was her married name. My agent had set me up with a LinkedIn account, and a search of that site brought up only eight results for “Patricia Scarletti.” Five of the profiles included photos, and hers was the third one I clicked on. She had posted a picture that complimented her; it was obviously taken years earlier. And with her face still vivid in my mind from the session, I recognized her instantly. She was apparently single again, and her resume listed her as the owner of “PWS Consulting - Management Consultation and Applied Psychology.” After that, I was stuck.

  On one hand, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity; on the other, I was reluctant to contact her for fear she would still be carrying a grudge. And then there was her intimidating Curriculum Vitae, which included doctorates in psychology and communications, and a master’s in anthropology—needless to say, a far cry from my high-school dropout status. Curiosity won out, but I decided to check Facebook first, rather than e-mail or call directly. I found Pat’s page, which was loaded with photos of her kids and grandkids, plus lots of posts about Jesus, fundamentalist religion, and conservative politicians and causes. I was about to send her a personal message, but I stopped to reconsider.

  I’d had this experience before. After my agent first set up my Facebook page, I spent a good deal of time looking up old friends with whom I had lost contact, and was often startled by how people had changed over the years. Back in our high-school days, my friends and I would occasionally get into mild religious and political debates, but these amounted to little more than momentary distractions from our preferred discussions of sex, sports, and rock & roll. Having grown up in a liberal family, I was always shocked to discover that many of my friends had turned out to be right-wing religious fanatics, and I found myself getting into heated online arguments. I soon tired of this and quit messing with Facebook altogether.

  Now I was faced with another possible reunion, one that would be superficial at best, confrontational at worst. And what was the point? I had already satisfied my curiosity: Pat was alive, apparently successful and happy, with a bunch of kids and grandkids. What more did I need to know? Our affair had ended on a bad note, and unless I could manage to bite my tongue, our reunion would end the same way. I mulled this over for all of thirty seconds before deciding not to pursue things any further, although thinking about it did remind me of my frustrating attempt years earlier to find Robin.

  One of my first Internet searches was for Robin Barbary. I spent days searching for her, but after our short marriage had been annulled she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. I even paid one of those online locating services, which turned out to be a waste of money. In a way, I was almost happy to have failed in this endeavor, because it would have killed me to learn she’d gone on to marry some conservative asshole, or joined the Church of Scientology, or become a member of the Tea Party.

  Fact was, I didn’t know much about Robin’s political leanings or religious beliefs, since we seldom discussed those things during our brief time together. I did recall her praying occasionally, though she never suggested we attend church. All I really remembered was her kindness and patience and loving affection. And, of course, the sex; the astonishingly sensual passion that had never been equaled until Aurélie not only equaled it, but surpassed it by a country mile.

  Oddly, other than a striking physical resemblance, Aurélie and Robin had little in common. Robin was quiet and reserved, as if she were trying to hide her real self from me. She seldom talked about her life or background, concentrating instead on mine and demonstrating an uncanny ability to draw me out in ways no other woman ever had before. It seemed her only goal was to see to my wellbeing, which mostly had to do with keeping me away from heroin and the other drugs that were dragging me into the gutter.

  Aurélie, on the other hand, was outgoing and sometimes demanding; sympathetic, but practical, and certainly not overly emotional as Robin had often been. Sex with Aurélie was different as well, though not entirely. There was nothing desperate or feverish about Robin’s lovemaking, whereas Aurélie had been uninhibited and passionate. Both experiences, however, held a magical quality that went far beyond the physical. This was especially true with Aurélie, whose willingness to share her most personal thoughts and desires made our relationship more meaningful and fulfilling.

  Unfortunately, that small taste of fulfillment was short-lived. Instead of finding salvation in Aurélie’s arms, the heartache I’d carried for Robin had been replaced by a new one, a pain that went far deeper. Not only was Aurélie now untouchable sexually, in all other respects we remained close, and I had to endure my frustration while seeing her on a daily basis. I tried not to let that frustration show when we were together, but as the days passed it became harder and harder to restrain myself, pretending benign acceptance while trying to convey the love I felt for her.

  As I approached my next trip back in time, I was again having second thoughts. And were it not for my increasing physical weakness reminding me of how little time I had left, I would have resumed my pleadings for intimacy with Aurélie and refused to continue. As it was, however, I held my tongue, following her into the chamber and submitting once again to the technicians’ elaborate operation of preparing me for a second walk down memory lane.

  “I know it’s hard,” Aurélie said, after they had returned to their consoles and left us alone. “But try not to get too caught up in this. As real as it seems, you have to remember that it’s only another preview. Like before, you won’t be able to change anything or communicate with your younger self. And unless we have to bring you out sooner, or you signal us that you want to come back, you will remain in the past for three years.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Hang in there,” she whispered, kissing me on the cheek. “And happy twenty-first birthday.”

  Legal At Last

  Turning twenty-one was somewhat of an anticlimax for me, since I’d been using a fake ID for five years and working in nightclubs for much of that time. But the anticlimax threatened to turn into a real one when I awoke cuddled against the naked body of a woman. Careful not to shake the bed, I slipped out of her limp embrace and watched as her sleep-crusted eyes blinked open and a shy, embarrassed smile spread over her face.

  “Happy birthday,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward to give me a soft, trembling kiss. Her cheeks were faintly creased from the wrinkled pillowcase, but the creases faded quickly, revealing an attractive young lady, perhaps in her early twenties.

  “Uh, thanks,” I said, the gravel in my throat making the words sound like they came from a ninety-year-old derelict. “Sorry, but I’m a little hazy here. Maybe you could fill me in on last night?”

  “Not surprising,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed. “You were awfully drunk. We should probably wait until the haze clears before getting into the nitty-gritty details.” She reached for a pack of cigarettes, lit one with a slim gold lighter, and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m Carla, by the way. And, no, I’m not a hooker, if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact, most of the time I’m a rather respectable college student.” Before turning to look at me, she grabbed a shirt—my shirt, actually—from the floor, sliding her arms into the sleeves and leaving the unbuttoned front draped loosely over her breasts. “I happened to be with some friends on our monthly girls’ night out when I fell in love with the handsome singer. I overheard the bartender wishing you happy birthday, so I caught you between sets and said I wanted to be your birthday present.”

  “Girls’ night out?” I said. “Does that mean there’s a boyfriend or a husband?” This was not an unusual situation for me. I was often propositioned by attached women, and more than once those encounters had led to trouble.

  “Nope,” she said. “I’m between boyfriends at the moment, just hanging out at the beach for a well-deserved couple of days respite from scholastic drudgery. So, unless
you’d rather I didn’t, I can stay until tomorrow.”

  “No, no. Not at all. I mean, you should definitely stay.”

  “Great! How about some breakfast? I’m buying.”

  So, tell me about The Madisons,” Carla said as we picked at the remnants of the breakfast she’d ordered from Room Service.

  “Long story,” I said. “Probably bore you to death.”

  “Try me. I’ve seen you before, you know. About three years ago in Atlanta at an after-hours place called The Steak and Trumpet. I was with my folks at the time, so I couldn’t talk to you or anything, but I never forgot that voice of yours. You had a different band then. Something like The Ornamentals or The Instrumentals—”

  “The Continentals,” I said. “Eight-piece group with a horn section.”

  “Right. The Continentals. So what happened to them?”

  I drained the last of my orange juice, then looked at her skeptically. “You seriously want to know?”

  “I do,” she said. “In fact, I’d love to hear your life story, but I’ll settle for whatever happened to magically bring us together again.”

  “I’d say that had more to do with your showing up at the club last night than anything. We play here pretty often.”

  “Really? Well then, Surfside just became my favorite nightclub in the universe.”

  Surfside Inn was one of our regular venues. In fact, whenever The Madisons had a long enough break between private gigs, we were almost always booked at the Clearwater-Beach resort, a sprawling complex encompassing a hotel, several pools, two restaurants, and a 200-seat lounge that consistently placed first in local surveys of popular nightspots. I was about to mention this when a knock on the door stopped me.

  Our visitor was the maid looking to clean up and change the linens. I asked her to skip my room for today, then told her to wait while I went back to retrieve the breakfast cart. After she left with the cart, I closed the door and turned around to see Carla pointing at my crotch. I pulled the front of my robe out and looked down, then shook my head in mock dismay.

  “Not that, dummy,” she said. “The Do Not Disturb sign.”

  I slapped my forehead, grabbed the hanging sign, slipped it over the outside handle, and closed the door. I turned around and started to take a bow, but Carla had disappeared.

  “Out here,” she yelled from the balcony. I walked over, parted the drapes, and stepped out into the humid air. A vague, salty smell of decaying sea life mingled with the unmistakable odor of marijuana as she handed me a lit joint. “I found this on the nightstand,” she said in bits and spurts, trying to hold the smoke in her lungs as long as possible. “It’s pretty powerful stuff. What is it?”

  “It’s called ‘Gainesville Green,’” I said taking a hit. “Some students in the agricultural school at UF have been trying to develop a cannabis hybrid with a higher THC content. This is from one of their early batches.”

  “Interesting. How do you happen to come by it?

  “We play a lot of frat parties at UF and FSU,” I said, holding the joint out for her.

  “No thanks,” she said. “I mean it’s amazing and all, but I don’t think I need any more right now. Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about The Madisons? You guys are incredible, by the way. When we first walked in last night, I remember thinking there had to be an entire orchestra playing. You were in the middle of some Ray Charles thing, You Are My Sunshine I think it was, and when I looked at the stage I couldn’t believe there were only four of you. How do you do that?”

  “Magic,” I said. The grass was already making my head swim, so I dropped into the chair opposite her and knocked the flame from the end of the joint into an ashtray on the table between us. “Okay, The Madisons. Stop me if this gets too long-winded. I tend to get carried away talking about musical stuff, especially when I’m stoned.”

  When I didn’t go on she said, “If this is what you call getting carried away, you must think I’m a mind reader.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “The story’s a little complicated. Anyway, the original idea for the group came about when I met this weird scientist who was developing ways to clone the human brain. I talked those three guys you saw on the stage last night into volunteering as test subjects, and after a couple of failed experiments this scientist managed to copy my brain and insert it into each of their heads. The result was a group where all the members had identical talents, musical tastes, and temperaments, something unheard of in the annals of rock history.”

  For a moment there I had her going. But then she broke through the high and came back to reality. “Right,” she said. “And I’m Mary Poppins. Are you gonna tell me the real story, or do I have to unfurl my umbrella and float away on the breeze?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention,” I said. “But, you know, sometimes it seems like that story’s more truth than fiction. You’d be amazed how much alike the four of us are. Every once in a while, we’ll all switch instruments for a set, and if we do it late enough in the evening, the audience doesn’t even notice.”

  “Now that I might be able to believe,” she said. “Although I can’t imagine you as a drummer. I mean, what a waste.”

  “It would be a waste,” I said. “I can hold my own on the drums, but I’m not in Jimmy’s league by a long shot. Nor can I play sax anywhere near as good as Billy. But I can handle either for one set. My main instrument is the guitar, though I spend half my time playing organ. In fact, that organ is one of the main reasons we can create the sound we do with only four pieces.”

  “If you want to know what I think, your main instrument is your voice. But that’s neither here nor there. Come on, let’s hear the real story.”

  “Well, it isn’t quite as interesting as the brain cloning, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. I guess it all started while I was on the road with The Continentals. I don’t know if you remember, but Jimmy was the drummer in that group as well. He and I have been friends since high school, and not long after we started traveling with The Continentals, we began to realize how much of a problem dealing with eight opinionated musicians could be. By the time we hit Atlanta, we were both sick of having to play referee all the time to keep things from falling apart, so we started talking about forming a smaller band.

  “What we wanted to do was put together a tight-knit group of maybe four or five guys, and we had a good idea who two of those guys should be. One was Kenny, a Julliard-trained musician who gave up the cello for the guitar, and since then had become one of the most sought-after rock guitarists in the southeast. And the other was Billy, who, in addition to playing sax solos that would make John Coltrane weep, was an accomplished keyboardist. The problem was they were working in other bands at the time. So when things finally blew up in Atlanta, Jimmy and I headed back here, hoping to think of some way to entice them into joining us.”

  “Gee,” she said, “all their names end in Y.” It was obvious the grass was screwing with her head. “Hey, I just realized I don’t even know your name.”

  Figuring I would get her off on a tangent and change the subject, I said, “Actually, at the time, I went by Ricky, so I guess all four of us had names ending in Y.”

  “At the time? You mean you changed it?”

  “I did. I’d always hated my birth name, so about a year ago I had it legally changed to Rix. Rix Vaughn.”

  “Rix Vaughn,” she murmured. “Sexy. It fits you well.” The shirt had fallen open, and the sight of her naked breast sent my stoned libido into overdrive. I was about to suggest we retire to the bed, when she said, “So what happened when you got back?”

  The mercurial nature of THC, I thought, pausing for a moment to refocus on the story. “I guess you could say it was sort of serendipitous the way things turned out. Jimmy and I hadn’t had any luck finding Billy and Kenny, so we booked a gig at the Skyway Lounge in St. Pete as a duo, just organ and drums, with both of us singing. The Skyway has always had this Sunday afternoon jam session that usually
draws a lot of musicians from around the region, and one Sunday the two of them showed up together. They were still with other bands at the time, but when we got to talking it became clear they weren’t happy. The conversation soon turned into a mutual-admiration lovefest, with all of us complimenting each other and kicking around ideas for what we wanted musically. And when we asked them to sit in with us, something magic happened.”

  “See,” she said, “I told you what brought us together again was magical. So what made this chance meeting so special?”

  “Well, in addition to the way we clicked on stage, they’d been just as frustrated as we were trying to find like-minded, similarly-talented artists. I don’t mean to brag or anything, but Jimmy and I had been through this several times. What happens is a few mediocre wannabes will hook up with one or two serious musicians who then end up carrying the band on their shoulders.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

  “You do? Are you a musician?”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I was thinking of study groups. You know, kids who get together and agree to research a particular course, then offer their summaries to the group. In most cases, maybe one or two actually do the work, while the rest hang around making excuses and benefiting from what the others bring to the table. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Go on, please.”

  “You sure this isn’t boring you? I mean, for someone who’s not a musician—”

  “Will you please stop saying that?” she said. “I told you I wanted to hear the story, and I meant it. I know you probably think I’m some kind of ignorant slut, and I couldn’t blame you after finding me in your bed this morning. I’m no Miss Goody Two Shoes, mind you, but neither am I a shallow-minded, starry-eyed teenybopper. I swear on my father’s grave I’ve never done anything like this before. I like you, Rix, and not only because of your amazing voice. You seem like a nice person, and I’d like to get to know you better. So I really am interested in hearing about how you got where you are, and nothing you say is going to bore me.”