If there were a definition of winging it, this was it. It was 30 years ago, and he was so far out of touch with this part of this life that he wasn’t even sure how old he was. On the plus side, at least this time he jumped to a time he remembered and was fully functional in.
Steve didn’t sleep a wink that first night. Once the initial shock of where he was dulled (because it sure as hell wasn’t going to completely wear off), he began figuring out exactly when he was. Not just the date, but who Steve Johnson was right now. One thing was for sure, he realized as he let his fingers touch his left eye and the smooth, untouched skin surrounding it, “Patch” wasn’t a moniker that was part of this Steve Johnson’s lexicon.
He saw Britta’s photo up on the wall, took it down, and did his best to narrow down a date. For the first time, however, his heart wasn’t really in pinning down the when of a jump. Instead, he very quickly felt drawn to look at himself. He wanted to see his two eyes, he wanted see out of his two eyes, and he had to do it right now.
Steve tiptoed out of the quarters he and Bo shared and made a sharp right to the head. He chuckled at the fact that he had no idea what his postal address was at this time but did remember where the bathroom was. It was the middle of the night, which didn’t mean much for the guys on the graveyard shift, but Steve tried to act as normal as possible, just in case he was walked in on. He could only act so normal, though, because his vision was really weird. He hadn’t had two eyes to see out of in so long that he actually felt somewhat unbalanced as he made his way the short distance from his bunk, out the door, down the hall, and to the mirror. What he saw staring back at him was a wonder. A true wonder. This was a face he hadn’t seen in so long that it brought tears to his eyes that he fought off with ferocity, as this was not the time and it sure as hell wasn’t the place.
“Baby, you should see me …,” he whispered as if Kayla were hearing him. “You’re a good lookin’ dude. You really were a good lookin’ dude back then. You look like you’re 23 years old.” That’s because he was. He realized with awe that he was younger right now than Kayla was the very first time he ever laid eyes on her. “That’s wild, baby. That’s really wild.” His hair wasn’t that long, kind of a medium length, and it seemed several shades lighter, too.
After several more minutes just staring at his left eye, feeling the contours of his face, and blinking several times to ensure it was really real, he moved on to the rest of his body. The first thing he did was lift his t-shirt. No tattoo. For the first time in really as long as he generally could remember, there was no dagger etched onto the skin of his chest. In fact, his whole body was not only different to look at, it even felt different on him. It felt young. It felt really young. Like he could run for miles without breaking a sweat. For now, however, he’d have to settle for going back to his bunk.
While there he tried to suss out the things he really had to know, like the day and the month and exactly where Kayla might be. Turns out it was February 2, 1979, which he saw on his way back to his quarters on the daily manifest posted outside the door. That meant Bo had dropped out of high school and been a Merchant Marine for three months, Steve had met Britta right around this time and saw her whenever he was in port in Stockholm, and that whole business with her and the bonds wasn’t going to happen until later in the year. That put Kayla at 18 and living at home with her parents as she attended her first year of college at Salem University. How the hell am I going to get myself to Salem? Steve thought to himself.
This was 1979. There were no cell phones. No email. No Internet. Of course, most of that didn’t exist in the timeframe they did most of their existing in on these jumps ten years later, either, but this was really old school. It was the ‘70’s. Telephones were the primary means of communication, hell, some of them still had dials, and Morse code was still being used ship-to-ship. If you needed something, you got up and got it. If you wanted mail, you used a stamp. If you needed a phone … well those didn’t exist in the bunks, and there were none for use on the ships. Your sole option was really to simply wait till you were in port unless it was a serious emergency.
And Steve was locked into his assignment, too. He was on a ship, he had duties, and he couldn’t just take off any time he wanted and make a phone call at the harbor payphone, which wasn’t even American at the moment. If he wanted to leave the ship, he had to request shore leave when he was off duty.
What this all boiled down to was that Steve had no way of getting to Kayla in the short term. She jumped in very quickly last time, and he had no reason to think she wouldn’t do the same now. For all he knew she was there at her parents’ house right now. Or maybe she was still in limbo, and it was the destination version of Kayla, the one who didn’t know him. Either way, he had a challenge ahead of him to figure out how to get himself home. Steve started out doing some quick figuring in his head and realized it really didn’t matter. It was going to take quite some time to get home, even if he started right this minute. So, it was very likely he’d be jumping before he could make it to her, anyway.
That upset him. To jump and not be able to see each other before they jump again? It was a great way to get lost, actually. He couldn’t fathom losing touch with her on these jumps. No, that could not be allowed to happen. He was half a world away, however, it’s not like he could just go to homebase or the Emergency Center or wherever and wait her out. So, he resolved to call her the very next chance he had to get to a phone. It was up to him, really, because she was going to have no clue how to find him. Come on, dude, the woman found you in a secret compound on a private island in the middle of nowhere when the rest of the world assumed you were dead, locating you when she knows you’re with her brother will be a piece of cake. Steve smiled and went to adjust his patch. Which wasn’t there. Then he smiled wider. I get to see Kayla with two eyes that really see. When that would be was the real question. Until then, he had to go through these motions and play his role.
The next day it was showtime, and he made the best of it, learning his lines as the production was live on stage. All of these jumps had been surreal, but this one was downright trippy. The first time through this part of his life, Bo had followed Steve around like a puppy dog, looking up to him, almost idolizing him, and eventually becoming his best friend. Now Steve forced to be the follower for a change. So, for two days, he did only two things: stealthily watch Bo for the proper routine in a complete role reversal that made Steve strangely proud of Bo, and try to remember the names of the people around him, not to mention his way around this big ship, without looking like a complete idiot.
The lay of the land came back to him very easily. Like a riding a bicycle or making love to his wife, getting his sea legs and finding his way around the SS Alva Maersk, and remembering how to do the actual work was something he picked back up rather easily. It was literally as if the knowledge was hard coded into his being. Figuring out what he was supposed to be doing on this huge container ship and just when he was supposed to do it? That was a lot harder. Bo looked at him like he had two heads most of the time, especially when they awoke at 0530 hours. Steve acted like everything was normal, but Bo saw right through him. Said nothing, but clearly saw Steve was off.
It took two days of being Bo’s shadow while Bo, completely unaware, continued to be Steve’s. It was the blind leading the blind, and Steve busted out laughing more than a couple times at the irony of it. They must have looked like two of the three stooges, he figured, especially when they were towing in the massive rope that was as thick as a woman’s leg. Steve hadn’t seen rope that thick since the last time he’d been on this very boat, and he’d forgotten just how unwieldy that behemoth could be.
That rope wasn’t the only job that he had to navigate, there was a whole routine. Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long to get into it, either. Steve tiptoed around the people and locations and just concentrated on getting the work done, and to his surprise, it wasn’t actually a chore. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. It was cathartic, and he realized with a bit of introspection that it didn’t actually surprise him that he needed it.
The fact was that the last jump really affected him. He was spent and needed … peace. He just needed peace. Well, what he really needed he wasn’t going to get, and that was Kayla; to have that peace while she was with him. Even just to hear her voice and know that she’d arrived so they could simply connect. But he knew he couldn’t get to a phone until they were in port, and there was no way to get to her until then. So short of having her with him, he would gladly take the close friendship he had with Bo, the peacefulness of the sea, and the work of a mariner that he knew he did well. He allowed himself that solitary time apart from Kayla, because he didn’t have any other choice. So, he took some comfort from the sea, the salty air, the wind biting at him, and the feel of the boat beneath his feet. The good, honest work he did with Bo by his side made him feel good and gave him a sense of security. Not that he didn’t feel the anxiety of separation that any jump brought; he did. But having Bo nearby helped to tamp that down. Such a kid, it was amazing to look at him. They really were a pair back in the day.
“Steve, no more weed unless it’s from Amsterdam,” Bo said to Steve in a low voice at dinner two days into Steve’s jump. “That stuff you bought off that hooker had something in it.”
Steve tensed. Please tell me I did not just have sex with a hooker.
“Now what?” Bo whined when he saw the alarmed look in Steve’s eyes.
“When did I sleep with the hooker?”
“Now I know that pot is bad. You didn’t do her, man, you just smoked the sh*t with her.”
Steve visibly exhaled. Bo sat back on the mess hall’s vinyl covered stool that was screwed into the floor, and just laughed. “Come on, what the hell is up with you, man?”
Steve put on his best smile and plowed a hand through his hair. “Beauregard, it’s been a long couple of months.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it. My folks want me to come home, even if they did disown me after I joined up, then again when I missed Christmas.” Steve smiled at that, knowing Kayla was there, too. Tomorrow, in fact, they’d be in Marseille, and he’d finally be able to call his wife. Hopefully she was his wife by then. “If you’re that beat, man, why don’t you get some R-and-R in Stockholm?” He said it with a smirk and nudge across the table. “Before your next 90 kicks in.”
Different blonde, Bo. And different city that begins with an S. “Yeah, maybe,” he smiled as he thought of the few pictures he’d seen of what Kayla looked like right about now. Then Bo’s words hit him. “Wait, my next 90?”
“Yeah. Ya know, four days? Till our tours end?”
“Right … oh, right, ‘I got you in here on your birthday.”
“Shh! Not as far as they know, remember?” he said with a look over his shoulder at the officer’s mess beyond them. He was genuinely annoyed with what Steve realized seemed like a cavalier attitude.
“Beauregard, whaddya take me for, huh?” That came out convincingly, and Bo backed off. He’d never get away with it in 2009, but now in the late ‘70’s, he had been lying about his age, using his sister’s birthday instead of his own, when Bo joined up for the first time on November 7th, no one had known that he had just turned 17 that very day. He confessed it to Steve, who’d been in the office to sign up for his next 90-day tour and liked the kid immediately. Steve had been around a good while, was well-known and well-liked, and basically got Bo into the Merchant Marine and onto the Alva with him. Something about Bo struck a chord in Steve way back then, and they’d been like brothers from practically the word go. It felt good to have that with him again. The whole place just held good memories until the very end.
They wouldn’t be getting to the bad part this time, because this was not a place he could stay long term, and he was sure to jump by then, anyway. Even though he was enjoying this particular visit and, frankly, needed the enjoyment as part of the healing that began in the Blondie’s parking lot, he missed Kayla and was starting to worry about her. So, his top priority was getting himself to Salem. And now he had a way.
“Yeah, ya know, I think I just need a little shore leave.”
Bo laughed. “When are we due for Stockholm?”
Steve had no idea. “Uh …,” Steve appeared to think it through, “I know this is gonna seem like a shock, but I think I could use US soil for a change. Maybe …” He paused and tried to look transparently needy. “… maybe I’ll bum around LA, see the old orphanage.” Steve tried not to grin when he saw that it had the desired effect on contact.
“The orphanage? Did you … I didn’t know you had anyone there.”
“Oh, well, there’s an old teacher or two.”
Bo looked almost wounded that his best friend and the guy that he loved as much as he loved his brother, Roman, would kick around a dusty old orphanage that he knew he didn’t have anyone left at. He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs. “Wait, why not just head for Stockholm?”
Steve knew where Bo was headed and was going to have to nip that in the bud if he were going to get himself invited to Salem to meet Bo’s family. “Yeah, Britta just isn’t doing it for me. Seems like trouble.”
“You like ‘em when they spell trouble. Isn’t that what you said?”
Dammit. Why’d you have to be such a sh*t back in the day, man? “Bo, I’m just not that into her.”
Bo’s jaw dropped. “Well, I am!”
“No, you’re not!” Steve spat out quickly and began choking on the coffee he’d been swallowing.
“You alright, man?”
“Fine! Bo, look, you don’t want Britta.”
“Are you kidding, man, she’s a fox!”
“She’s my age. I think you’d do a lot better with a dark-haired sweet thing if I know you.”
“What’s wrong with blondes?”
“BO!”
“What?!”
“You joined up right before the holidays, pissed your folks off big time, right?”
Bo stared at his best friend. “’Big time?’” he mimicked with more enunciation than usual. “What the f*ck’s that mean?”
Steve was amused and frustrated at the same time and made a mental note to watch his vernacular. “All I’m saying is that I need a week off before the next 90. I’m gonna head to LA for a week, and you should really go home to your folks.” Bo grabbed the coffee cup in front of him and palmed it as he mulled over the seed Steve had planted in it.
“I … I ain’t got a lot saved up for the trip.”
“You can work it out, dude. Take it from me, dude, you don’t wanna take your family for granted.”
That hit Bo in the heart. Steve saw it working through him, his best friend who’d done so much for him had no one.
“Where you gonna stay? You don’t have enough dough for a hotel or nuthin’.”
“I’ll just slum it on Venice Beach.” Bo didn’t like that. Steve fought not to smile as Bo stared down very thoughtfully at his coffee cup.
“Ok, yeah, I … I should see my folks. I miss ‘em, even if they are gonna kill me when I get back. But … you wanna spend a week with me in Salem? You could stay at my ma and pop’s.” He looked so hopeful, the thought of showing off his friend to his parents becoming more and more appealing by the second.
“Home with you?” Steve said, acting sufficiently surprised. “Where’s that burgh you live in, Salem?”
“Yeah, it’s got a great riverfront.”
Steve appeared thoughtful. “Thanks for the offer, man … ya know, I could see LA some other time, I mean, I grew up there. Never spent much time in the Midwest.
Bo smiled, the fuzz around his chin that would one day be a real beard poking out haphazardly. “Really? You wanna come meet my folks?”
“I dunno might be kind of nice to get some home cookin’. Your ma cook? Don’t suppose she does much with fish from that river.” Steve tried not to give himself away, knowing full well that Bo was about to sing the praises of the best chowder in the entire continental US.
“Are you kiddin’? You haven’t had clam chowder until you’ve had my ma’s. Seriously, man, it’s the best stuff you’ve ever tasted, she should bottle that sh*t.”
Now Steve let himself smile as he rubbed at his chin to mask it a bit. “Yeah, sure. Sounds great. Thanks. Tell ya what, I’ll pay our way there.”
Now Bo’s smile got even wider. “You serious?!”
“I’ve been in a lot longer than you, I have enough to get us both to the States.”
“I can’t let you do that, Steve.”
“You’re about to put me up for a week. I can get us there mostly on favors alone.” Steve had no idea if that were really true, but he thought he might be able to swing a couple passages out of Marseille, into Barcelona, and then he’d find a way to Salem by plane.
“Aw, my folks are gonna love you, man.”
This time they just might.
Bo and Steve headed back to their quarters; they’d be moored in Marseille in the morning and would stay docked until their stint was up three days later on Wednesday, February 7th. That would be plenty of time for Steve to beg, borrow, and steal a way home.
“So, Bo, you’ve got a big family, right? Roman, a couple of sisters …?”
“Yeah, Kay and Kimmie.”
“Tell me about ‘em again.”
=============
In the Merchant Marine there were no days off. You signed on for 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days, and you worked them every day. You could swap shifts and get others to cover for you, but in 1979 there were no arranged days off. Shore leave happened when you were in port and your shift was over or you got people to cover. So, Steve waited the agonizing nine hours from the time he woke up to the time his shift ended before he could get permission to leave the boat and head for the nearest payphone. He’d finally figured out where his money was, as he knew it wasn’t in a bank at this point in his ill-thought-out life, and grabbed what he thought was a safe amount.
The port city was crawling with as many cruise ship tourists looking for souvenirs as locals trying to sell them their cheap souvenirs. Knowing the number to the Brady Fish Market off the top of his head, he shoved a ton of coins into the public phone that looked like nothing short of a contraption and asked the operator to help him make the phone call. When it rang, his heart was beating hard.
“Brady Fish Market,” Caroline’s unmistakable voice answered.
“H-Hello, uh, hello, ma’am. May I speak with Kayla Brady, please?”
“You sound like you’re in a tunnel, what did you say?”
“I said, is Kayla there, please. Kayla Brady?”
“Kayla? Oh, David, is that you? We’ve got a bad connection. Shawn! I think something’s wrong with the phone line, you’d better call up Bell and get the phone man out here!”
“Mrs. Brady, no, this isn’t—“
“David, I’m glad you called, now we know there’s a problem with the phone. But, you’ve called the wrong line, The kids use the phone upstairs, we don’t like to use this line for the house. Can you call upstairs, please?”
“Upstairs?” Sh*t, it was the other number.
“Better hurry, David, she might have already left for class!” Then she hung up.
“Great,” he said to the empty line.
He repeated the process with the upstairs phone line and this time the woman that answered was not Caroline.
“Hello?” asked the bubbly voice on the other end that was distinctively Kayla’s. Steve was silent. Because he knew just from the tone of her voice that this was not 2009 Kayla. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Steve should have hung up. But he couldn’t bear it. Just hearing her voice, different but hers, made him pine for her. He cleared his throat. “Kayla?”
“Yes, this is Kayla.” Three days. Three days and she really hadn’t arrived yet? It made Steve nervous.
“Do you remember …”
Kayla laughed nervously. “Do I remember what?”
Steve let the hope go that she was her. But he couldn’t let her hang up. Now that he had her on the line, he just couldn’t let it happen. God, he missed her. The one day they got to spend together on the last jump just wasn’t enough, he needed her so much. He dug deep and kept her talking.
“Do you remember the last time your phone was serviced? I’m with the phone company, and we’ve had several reports of problems with the phone lines with the – with the Riverfront businesses this morning.”
“Really? I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, so I’m – we’re checking the lines.
“You do sound far away, actually. Could that be from the problem with the phone line?”
“Could be. Can you say a few more things?”
“Like what?”
Steve was thinking real fast. “Are you in school?”
“Yes. College. I’m studying to be a nurse.”
“Why don’t you just run down your weekly schedule.”
“Well, let’s see.” Her voice was intoxicating. He wanted her to hold him, kiss him. “Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have anatomy classes. I have the hardest time with the skeletal system, I have to just repeat those over and over or I’ll never get it. Ya know, femur, patella, tibia, fibula … I always get those two mixed up.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s the academics.” She paused there. “Should I go on?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have what you need, or do I need to keep talking?” She was so eager. So happy to help. Her voice was like a garden of blooming flowers.
Steve glanced at his watch. His time was about to run out, and the last thing he wanted was for the French operator to give him away.
“No,” he said regretfully, “I think I have what I called for.”
“Ok, well, I hope you fix it.”
“Yeah, I hope we get all fixed real soon.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Kayla!” he said quickly.
“Yes?” She started to sound wary. He was surprised that his use of her first name had not set off her alarm bells yet.
“Thank you for your help.”
She was silent for just a beat. “Yeah. Sure. Goodbye.” Then she hung up.
“Bye, Sweetness,” Steve said softly into the dead line. He stood in the phone booth, the rain starting to lightly fall, and kept the phone to his ear. The memory of her voice still sounding within him, he unconsciously didn’t want to let that phone go yet.
Finally, Steve left the phone booth and headed back to the Alva Maersk. He knew it was possible that she hadn’t jumped in yet, but he was surprised, anyway. He’d gotten away with hearing her voice, and when he did it stirred him. But it wasn’t his Kayla, and after what they’d been through he missed her terribly.
From that point on he spent every moment arranging passage home for he and Bo. Now he began packing up his things. Bo didn’t know it yet, but Steve wouldn’t be signing on for the next 90 (or 60 or 30, either). Because in just two more days, he’d be on his way. Back home. To his wife.