Page 15 of Melt With You

She hesitated once more and watched Gael’s brow furrow. Her silence seemed to worry him once more, and Dori didn’t want that. She couldn’t have him call for an ambulance, couldn’t take the risk of being brought to a hospital. Quickly, she said, ‘I’m Emma Martin,’ using her middle name. It was fine to state her real last name. She’d just outed herself as a relative. A cousin. A cousin on Dori’s father’s side.

‘I hope you’ll stop back while you’re in town,’ he said. When she turned around, she could feel his eyes on her ass, watching her leave.

She was dealing with this brilliantly, wasn’t she?

It was 1988, and she was 38, and the world was a crazy fucking place to be.

Chapter Seven

After leaving the café, Dori did the only sensible thing she could think of. She tried to call her therapist. Marjorie Dawson, who had come with the highest of recommendations, and whom she’d started to see when she and Bryce had first broken up. Her friends had insisted she visit a professional, worried about her when she started to look too thin, too hollowed out. Their concern grew when she refused to go out for drinks with them after hard days, feeling as if there was no way in the world she was ready to be back at zero.

‘Zero?’ Violet had asked when she’d tried to explain.

‘God, Vi. I have to start at the beginning again. I have to meet the boy and fall in love. I have to doll myself up to impress the parents …’

‘Not always,’ Violet had interrupted her. ‘Not any more, Dori. Sometimes the parents are dead.’

And the two had laughed together, delighted that they’d come up with one of the few good things about being single when you were older: sometimes the parents were dead.

But thinking of Violet made her feel dizzy again. She’d just seen Violet shoot off on her Vespa. An eighteen-year-old Violet off to God knows where. Christ, she had to talk to someone now, someone who could explain her hallucination to her.

Outside the Creamery, she tried to use the candy-apple phone in her purse, but she couldn’t even get a signal. A man passing her glanced openly at the device in her hand, and she remembered that nothing electronic was this small at the time. A Walkman was a bulky yellow plastic device the size of a brick. There were no X-Pods, no tiny GameBoys, no MP4-players, no Bluetooths. When she was in high school, the only blackberries around grew on bushes by the side of the highway.

Quickly, Dori headed to the payphone on the corner, bemused to find that a local call cost ten cents. She was even more surprised to spot a bit of graffiti etched into the Wall: DM + RG = TLA.

Her mind spun, remembering. She’d made out here with Rowan so many times, the two of them pulling the door shut, not caring about steaming up the windows. He’d pushed her up against the wall, kissing her, stroking her hair, touching her through her clothes.

Rowan was on her mind so often now. What if they hadn’t gone their separate ways after high school? Would her life have ended up so differently? As she had so many times over the past two days, she wondered why he hadn’t shown up at the reunion. Then she wondered if she’d ever see him again, and her breath caught in her chest.

No. She couldn’t cry. There wasn’t anybody to help her in 1988. She had to figure out a way to help herself. But how could she, when she couldn’t even make the fucking phone work? Her credit cards wouldn’t go through, no doubt because their start date was more than a decade in the future. And she never carried change.

What was she going to do?

She looked into her red leather wallet to see exactly how much cash she had on hand, and then realized in a flash that the new tens and twenties wouldn’t be accepted by any savvy shopkeeper. Did she have any bills dated before 1988? A five, a few ones. How far would eight dollars get her? Further in the 1980s, at least, than in 2008, but not very far.

Her thoughts traveled randomly from one concept to the next. How had she gotten here? She didn’t know. How could she get back home? Didn’t know that either. She exited the phone booth and wandered through the streets, heading vaguely in the direction of the hotel where Violet and Chelsea were staying, but when she arrived at the location, she found a row of bungalows.

That’s right. The hotel had been built in the 90s, when Silicon Valley had started to boom.

She sat down by the railroad tracks and tried to figure out what to do next.

A blur. That’s how the day went by for Dori. She wandered through the town, noticing the differences that hadn’t occurred to her when she’d first arrived. Subtle changes, like trees in the park that were mere saplings in the 80s, but full-grown in 2008. Major changes like whole neighborhoods existing in 1988 that had been demolished in favor of hotels, malls, and urban sprawl in the future.

She had to think hard to focus on what wasn’t there just as much as what was. At least there wasn’t a Starbucks on every corner. Her home town didn’t resemble Every Town, USA any more, the way it had over the weekend. A Chico’s, a Cheesecake Factory, the Gap, an IHOP, and a Starbucks every third block.

As the day slid past, she kept thinking that if she made the right turn, took the right route, she would end up back in the future. But it didn’t happen. She simply walked and walked, her mind whirring the whole time, certain she’d wake up any moment, with one hell of a dream to share with her friends in the morning.

Walking came naturally to her. She’d lived in New York for a decade, logged miles every day. But as the sun grew lower in the sky, realization came with it. She was stuck here, at least for the time being, and she’d better find a place to sleep. But she didn’t have enough money for a hotel. Maybe she could hang out at the café until a new idea occurred to her.

She walked slowly back through town. Her feet hurt. She felt not only exhausted, but mentally whipped. If this was a dream, it was the most realistic one she’d ever had. The smells, the colors, the memories she didn’t even know she had. How could she have recreated her town in the 1980s so accurately?

She took a shortcut to the Creamery, using the series of alleys that ran behind the stores. She thought that she must look as bedraggled as she felt, and she didn’t want to have to pretend to be normal right now. But when she got close to the mouth of the alley behind Gael’s shop, she stopped.

What was that noise?

Quietly, she continued onward, and peered around the corner to see Gael and a thin indigo-tipped blonde kissing by the dumpsters. God, it was Bette. Had she changed her hair since her morning cup of coffee? It certainly looked that way. Dori had forgotten what a chameleon Bette was, redoing her entire visage on a whim.

Now, Dori stayed still, watching, surprised at herself. Should she pass by, or retreat in the direction she’d come?

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