Consider Me Gone, page 3
part #1 of Time Shadows Series
3
Romy ran her fingers through her still-damp hair, trying to squeeze her curls dry as she walked down the sidewalk.
Overhead, flickering gas lanterns fought the electric glow of shop windows while the sound of clopping hooves echoed in the street. Everywhere she looked, the aggressive present bullied the past in this city. For everyone but her, that is.
For her, the past often expanded inside her heart with such intensity that she temporarily lost sight of the present. For most of her life, she had seen the past as an overlay, a vision of another time superimposed over modern sights and sounds. She’d always dismissed it as a hyperactive imagination. Until recently.
Now it was as if something inhabited her mind like a separate entity, swamping her with someone else’s emotions, someone else’s life. Navigating the crowd that evening, she could almost feel a presence ghosting her footsteps.
I am drowning in the past, she thought. I am dying in someone else’s life.
Would Adrian believe her enough to help?
Shivering in the heat, she tried to focus on the upcoming meeting. Whatever happened, she could not seem crazy. Free from greasepaint and the white plaster-like substance smeared in her hair, at least she looked human again. Only the just-showered freshness would never last.
Already the muggy air pressed against her body with a hot, sticky embrace that caused her skirt to cling to her legs like a lover’s touch. As if, she laughed to herself. Her last lover had been years ago and now the only man she wanted wasn’t interested.
Tonight she had chosen a black print shift, chic in that it hung with a simple grace from her shoulders, practical because it was still loose enough to catch a random breeze, and attractive because she knew its plain lines revealed her figure without being vulgar.
She knew she was reasonably attractive with her brown curls and brown eyes—not gorgeous like Jo but passable. Really, she needed all the confidence she could get. A glance at her reflection in a shop window confirmed that she looked pulled-together and composed though her insides were in turmoil.
She checked her watch: 7:15—less than half an hour to reach Adrian’s door, ring his bell, and say what had to be said before scrambling off to meet Cindy’s tour group at 8:00. She’d go for brief.
More time might lead to more words and more words might lead to more embarrassment. Get this over with was her mission. Either he’d help or he wouldn’t, end of story. One way or the other, she had to get on with her life.
Practicing sentences in her head, she paused in the door of a gift shop and gazed over at the two-story building across the street.
Leave it to Dr. Adrian Countway to own one of the choicest pieces of Old Quarter real estate. Located in the center of Royal Street, the house had been built just after the fire of 1794, with all the rounded pediments, tall windows, and ornate wrought iron balconies common to Creole-Spanish architecture.
Joquita’s aunt, a prominent real estate agent, had located it for him after the professor had decided to sell his Baton Rouge apartment for someplace ‘deep in the throb of history’, as he described it. He leased the street level shop to an upscale clothing boutique while taking the upper floors as his own.
The balcony’s wrought iron traced an intricate silhouette against the tall lighted windows. Romy stared. So, he was home, not visiting family in Boston. No excuses left. Now she’d have to do something she should have done weeks ago.
How long since that fateful day—three weeks, a month? She stepped off the curb and gave the thin fabric clinging to her legs a tug while she walked. Would he be able to hear her throbbing heart?
Moments later, she had climbed the stairs and forced herself to ring the bell, listening with amusement as the device tinkled the opening strains to When the Saints Go Marching In.
She knew without ever having been inside that his new flat would be decorated like his office—a jumble of artifacts and antiques gleaned from his travels and interests. If he ever managed to find a decorator to suit him, it would have to be someone with a curator’s eye combined with a joke shop wit.
Above all else, she reminded herself, she must remain in control. Whoever or whatever from the past impacted her life, must remain safely tucked away during this interview or all would be lost. He already thought her mad.
The door swung open. “Romy?” He stood there with his wire rimmed glasses magnifying those marvelous grey-green eyes and his expression echoing surprise. A halo of warm, moist scent surrounded him with hints of clove and Bay Rum aftershave, his dark hair curling damply around his ears.
Her heart tilted as she inhaled deeply, breathing out with a little gust. For an instant, she thought she might do something ridiculous and swoon.
“Dr. Countway,” she said, finding her voice. “I’ve just dropped by to deliver a fifteen-minute explanation for my recent behavior. Can you spare the time?”
“A whole fifteen minutes?” He glanced at his watch. “Does this mean you don’t believe the three-sentence text you sent was enough?”
“I—“
“Allow me. I know it by heart: ‘I apologize for any confusion this note may cause but, on no account must you attempt to contact me. I will not answer your calls or speak to you if you approach me on the street. Consider me gone.’”
She couldn’t believe she wrote such nonsense, and in a text, no less. “My word choice wasn’t up to my usual standards. May I come in?”
She didn’t stutter, mangle her words, or otherwise make an idiot of herself. Yet. That was something. Even so, if he looked closely enough, he’d see her trembling and, as always, he was looking very closely.
He cleared his throat. “Of course, my apologies if I seem rude. I don’t have much time, either, as it turns out. I’m meeting someone for dinner so fifteen minutes should just about do it. Come in.”
The chill in his voice hurt but what else could she expect? Adrian could be so stiff and formal when annoyed. Taking a deep breath, she stepped across the threshold.
From the beginning she thought she could control herself, would never behave like one of those fool freshmen who threw themselves at attractive professors. Sex and power was too strong a brew for many young women to resist. Yet, at thirty years old, she expected to be both old enough and smart enough to navigate her way around that quicksand.
But she had been so wrong. A crush, for heaven’s sake! And a crush of such intensity she had lived in fear of making a fool of herself by exposing some lovelorn gaze during tutorials or doing something worse.
In the end, worse won. She’d made a pass at him, right in his office, right before his display of rare African fertility carvings and right in the middle of a heated discussion on eighteenth century sexual politics.
His shocked expression as he held her at arm’s length told her everything she needed to know: she’d crossed the line; she’d breeched the code of ethics between professor and student; she’d put both of them in an untenable position. How could she stay after that?
On impulse, she texted him and exited her studies, her thesis, and maybe even her career. Spinning with confusion, she had no explanation for any of her actions.
Until now.
“How’s your book coming?” she asked, studying a montage of eighteenth century printers blocks on the wall.
A scan of the rest of the room took in a baby grand piano placed before the tall windows, a wall-mounted mahogany bookcase stuffed with artifacts, and a Flemish hunting tapestry behind a moss-colored leather couch. Two comfy-looking leather chairs were angled together beside a small pedestal table in the middle of the room.
Here was the home of a man with an insatiable appetite for the rare and arcane, a man who collected artifacts as if they were touchstones to the past, a man who excited her in multiple ways, both physically and intellectually. A man she could not have.
“Excellent, thank you, but I doubt you came by to check on my ‘publish or perish’ woes.” His voice maintained the cool veneer of a man with his defenses firmly in place. “I trust this small talk won’t gobble up too much of your allotted fifteen minutes. Please take a seat.”
“Every minute’s budgeted for.”
He nodded, a smile playing on his lips as she sunk into one of the club chairs.
“I see you’ve moved some of your statues from the office to here,” she said, pointing to the Cameroon carving of a pregnant female deity perched on the piano. “I’m sure Moonapula appreciates the view.”
“I’m trying to acclimatize Moona to city life as gently as possible while still preserving her queenly pride of place,” he said, taking the chair beside hers. “I’m having a proper stand made so she doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of vibrating every time I play the piano.”
Finding herself fidgeting with her purse straps, she laid the bag at her feet and folded her hands in her lap. “Vibrations are very good for pregnant women, I understand. Where’s her mate?” She glanced around for the three-foot tall statue of the companion god, Ulla. She spied him tucked behind a stack of books, his erect phallus discretely shielded from view. Now she didn’t even try to suppress her grin. “No pride of place for him, I see.”
The wry smile that crossed his face always took her breath away. “He’s also waiting for a proper stand so he can stand up properly, so to speak. In the meantime, I simply can’t risk having his appendage amputated by the workmen I still have hanging about. The other day, I came home to find a baseball cap hanging from Ulla’s crowning asset.
“Oh, the indignity!”
“Horrible. For the sake of the fertility god’s everywhere, I tucked him out of sight.” Then, his smile disappeared. “Is it true you’re still doing statue performances off Decatur Street?”
Ah, the sudden about-face. “Frozen Angel. Yes.”
“Why, for heaven’s sakes?”
“Because I’ve had the most interesting experiences while frozen like a cemetery angel and I don’t care how bizarre that sounds. My experiences are part of my explanation for my recent behavior, by the way.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he said, his voice softening. Was he even aware of how seductive that tone could be? Silk running across bare skin, a tongue tracing a wet trail down the back of her neck.
An instant of dimly-remembered memory slipped and slid at the back of her brain—wet tongues, deep kisses—but she had never experienced anything so heated in her all waking life. She shivered, trying to catch Adrian’s words.
“It’s perfectly understandable when two people work in close proximity and share so much together for attraction to combust, but—”
“Stop. Please.” Was he about to say that it wasn’t possible for a tenured professor to enter into a relationship with a student without jeopardizing his career? That he was secretly engaged to some European professor emeritus or some fashion model with floor-to-ceiling legs, or, the worst possible scenario, that he didn’t find her attractive? Did she need to hear any of that? “Do you believe in past life regression, Dr. Countway?” she blurted.
He sighed in annoyance. “Call me Adrian, for God’s sakes. I haven’t been Dr. Countway to you for months, and, to answer your question, in the absence of proof, no.”
“Proof being something concrete, you mean?” she asked. “Like, um, a video filmed during some past life event? No, wait—we all know videos can be faked, so that wouldn’t work. Tell me, Professor, how do you prove the existence of a personal experience? Never mind,” she added with a wave of her hand. “We both know it can’t be done to academic standards because it depends on trust in the person describing the phenomenon.”
He shot her a look of disbelief. “Are you implying that you’re experiencing past lives?”
“I’m saying I’m being affected by past lives, yes. For weeks, it’s been as if I’m being possessed by another personality, a woman who lived in eighteenth century New Orleans, a French woman. I’ve literally not been myself.” It sounded lame even to her.
“So, this woman caused you to want to kiss me, is that it?” Now she read amusement along with the skepticism.
Her cheeks flushed. “Of course. You don’t think I’d lunge at you like that otherwise, do you? Had you seen any signs that I’m a lunging kind of woman before that?”
“Well,” he hesitated. “No overt signs of lunging, no.”
“Seriously, the truth is that another woman’s emotions are affecting me and confusing my own. It’s embarrassing, humiliating, and I haven’t handled it well so far.”
“You are serious.”
“I am. Something is happening to me, something that can’t be explained by fact alone,” she added. “I’m frightened and…well, I could certainly use your help.”
“Of course I’ll do anything to help, you must know that,” he said, his expression solemn, puzzled, and concerned all at once. She had the overwhelming urge to finger one of those tiny damp curls frolicking at his shirt collar. “How can I help? Anything I can do. Have you seen a psychiatrist?”
Damn, just when she allowed herself a flare of hope. “I’m talking about the paranormal, doctor—I mean, Adrian. Medicine won’t help me here.”
Then with a historian’s attention to sequence and detail, she described everything that had happened to her, right up to the possible identification of Antonio de Ulloa and the woman he accused of treachery. By the time she had finished, she had used up all but five of her allotted fifteen minutes.
And Adrian looked stunned. “I hardly know what to say.” From his miserable expression, she knew he didn’t, or couldn’t, believe her. “And this woman’s identity?”
“Maybe a prostitute or a French colonist, it’s hard to tell. I haven’t heard her speak much and, when I have, she’s been extremely distraught.”
“An Acadian?”
“I don’t think so. She seems too well-educated for a peasant farm girl.” She could just imagine his derision if she should conveniently manifest into her topic of study.
Leaning forward, his hands clasped loosely between his knees, his words were every inch the academic. “Romy, this all sounds highly unlikely. For one thing, Ulloa was a very private and principled man. He had very little interaction with the locals during his two year stay in New Orleans—a Spaniard out of his element trying unsuccessfully to stay out of hot water with the French.”
“I know that.”
“On top of everything else,” he continued, “he was a writer with a writer’s tendency towards the reclusive and also a devote Catholic as well as a newly-married man. To think he may have had some kind of a relationship with a prostitute is just—”
“Highly unlikely, as you said.”
“Exactly.”
“Even though he was presumably a healthy man with the same inclinations as other men, regardless of religion or marital status?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Well, of course, he may have entertained a woman of ill-repute, seeing as every second house in New Orleans was a brothel. The point is, there’s no evidence of him behaving in that manner.”
‘Ill-repute’. How like him to slip into that kind of old-fashioned terminology. Romy smiled. “I suspect he might even entertain a woman of ‘ill-repute’ despite his marriage vows. Wouldn’t be the first time a man had done that, would it? Bet he wouldn’t want to advertise it, either.”
A flash of annoyance crossed his face. Adrian Countway approved of principle and integrity, championing any historic personage who held up against the odds—his kind of hero.
It was one of the things that endeared him to her, that old fashioned upstanding nature coupled with a powerful personal magnetism and a sexuality of which he barely seemed aware. That his one and only fiancé fell for another man a decade ago completed the picture. Rumor was that he still held the torch. “In his case, there’s nothing to prove he behaved in that manner.”
“Looks as though we’re falling back into our same old argument, Adrian. You insist on evidence whereas I explore speculation.”
“A historian’s speculation needs to be grounded on some identifiable proof, Romy, as I’ve so often said. From all accounts, Ulloa was a disciplined man, a naval officer as well as a scientist of the first order. He would understand the perils of fraternizing with a people who detested him. Furthermore, mention of another woman has never emerged in his writings or in any of the accounts.”
“The fire of 1788 eliminated most of the city’s records. I assume Antonio, a reputation-conscious officer of the King of Spain, not to mention a married man, wasn’t about to admit to being involved with a local woman in his correspondence anyway. His public persona would be focused on his accomplishments, not his nature.”
That wry smile again. “I see this affliction you’ve described hasn’t deadened your debating skills.”
“I said I was being possessed, not lobotomized.”
Adrian only nodded as if accepting her irritation. “We’re not going to agree here either, are we?”
“Look, Adrian, you know the real human story goes far beyond documents and accounts. It exists within the very souls of the people.”
“I’ve never disagreed with you on that point but unless those souls talk, how can you prove anything? We historians can’t believe in past life regressions, possession or, God preserve us, ghost sightings.”
“Souls do talk, damn it, and by historians, I presume you mean you?”
“I am a historian, Romy, and so are you. I know you have an extraordinary sensitivity towards the past, coupled with a heightened imagination, but do you seriously expect me to believe that you have been encountering Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre Guiral, a man who died in 1795?”
“Frankly, I’d hoped you’d trust my judgment enough to do just that.”
“Do you realize how one of the symptoms of mental distress is not knowing one is—”
“Crazy?” she offered.
“Distressed, I was about to say. You’d been studying too hard, slaving over that thesis, marking papers for me, and working part-time besides. I blame myself for pushing you too hard.” His face had flushed the color of a Mississippi sunset.
