A Novelist

The Beginning

“Would you like anything else?” asked a female voice.  The girl stood patiently with a pitcher of water.  The crooning sound of a male vocalist along with a soulful background rhythm was heard in the pub.

A man in his early twenties lowered his reading glasses and looked up at the lady. He scrunched up his face in a smile and gave her a quick wink. “Yes, please.” As she poured, the man looked her up and down slowly, smiling softly. “Do you like swing dancing?”  She broke into a wide smile and her face became a shade of pink. 

“I haven’t heard about that since my parent’s generation.  You know they met dancing in Germany when swing wasn’t allowed here in Europe.  But now they live here in London.”

“You should come next time.  I bet you’re a great dancer,” the man said, flattering her and breaking into a grin.

Flirting back, the girl giggled.  “I still can’t get over that you’re from America.”

The two of them shared a nervous laugh before another voice spoke up from the table.

“You must excuse my friend,” the other said in a soft British accent as he leaned forward in his chair.  He was two years younger than the first man.  His light blue eyes gazed up at the lady, begging her to ignore his friend.

“It’s okay, sir, thank you.  Enjoy the rest of your meal.”  The girl whisked away, her ponytail swinging about her shoulders.

The American took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.  He looked across the table and smiled sheepishly.  “I know what you’re going to say, Ed, and you can keep your mouth shut.” He brushed his fingers over the table cloth and popped the collar of his leather jacket.

“Say what?  That she’ll never see you again?  Because that’s what will happen—happened to us yesterday.”

“True.  But that’s because you were going into the unnecessary theory of time travel with a girl who was clearly not amused.  That’s why she walked out.”

Edmund shrugged and took a sip of his water.  After finishing his refreshment, he placed the glass down gently and folded his hands on the table.  “Benjamin,” he whispered, “do you still wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t ripped up those pages?”

“Of course.  There’s not one day I don’t think about it.  I still wish I understood why we’re here,”  Benjamin twirled a finger up in the air, motioning to the retro pieces surrounding them, “and before that, with those suffragettes.”

“It’s easy. We had several random pages, we tore them, and now, somehow, we’re lost in those windows of time.  Not just our minds, but our persons now.  The pages we tore are the only dates we’re allowed to travel in.  When the pages end, it starts all over again."

“So, we’re stuck in a time-loop? Forever?”  Benjamin pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table top.

“Yeah.  Remember, we’re not living through entire chapters.”

He looked up at Edmund without moving his head.  “And obviously we’re aging—just like we would during real time.  If we were forever young and traveling through time, I would be happy.  But nope, we’re stuck in these slivers of time forever and we still age.”

Wandering off the depressing topic, Edmund chirped up, “Hey, how many times did we hear about Amelia Earhart’s crashed plane?  Where were we?  America?  Anyway, and then we had to stand there amongst the crowd, pretending to be sad again. It was your fault you started laughing the fifth time we were there for her memorial service.”