Lyle gets an agent

Lyle was Restless he sat at the table with paper and pencils and pins scattered across it. He reached for his phone, once again he came back with a silver plated pocket watch. He liked the watch, but he couldn’t google “how to fill a fountain pen” on it. He wondered if he would ever get used to not having the world at his fingertips. “When will ballpoint pens be invented?” He addressed a stack of wooden pencils and pencil sharpener; picked up a pencil and began to write

October 24, 1922

I arrived suddenly in 1922 from 2023. I entered the Witness Protection Program after testifying against my boss in an accounting scheme. I am or was an accountant who got on a train in one century and got off in another. Now I drive a 1922 Rolls-Royce Silver ghost for a couple of spoiled ladies who go to charity events, book clubs and shopping. Since arriving here I have met some nice people, some crazy people, some shady people, and witnessed a murder. I was standing about eight feet from the victim of a drive by shooting. To my knowledge no one has been arrested for it. I've been here 12 days and I am still hunting for my phone. There's no such thing as a cell phone, in 1922 the nearest telephone is on the wall downstairs in the office of this house. It is a large family home that has been divided into apartments of a sort. Most are just rented rooms. I have two rooms and a bathroom. There's another bathroom on this floor, kind of in a corner under the stairs. There's a washroom downstairs that Ida uses to do laundry for people. The proprietor, Mrs Smith is an interesting character, she's an older woman and it is difficult for her to walk up the stairs. She relies on Ida to clean and keep an eye on things. I've met one older lady who lives upstairs. I caught a glimpse of an older man and a man around my age across the hall. I haven't met them officially. They go to work early and come home late. Ida and Willie and Daisy have the large room downstairs across from Mrs Smith's apartment. They have a toilet and a sink but not a tub. Daisy was involved with the man who used to live in my apartment and the three have been used to using the tub in here, so I have sort of inherited a family along with the apartment. I don't mind much, they have helped me find my way around, keep my mind off of what I've lost and focus on what I've gained. Besides trading death treats for anonymity; I've traded a refrigerator for an icebox, Word documents, ballpoint pens and spiral notebooks for some fountain pens I can't figure out how to fill, and loose paper. I miss doorDash. I miss SUVs. I miss computers, spreadsheets and online movies, in full color with sound. I miss Volkswagen bugs painted like baseballs. I miss elevators that run smoothly with the push of a button. I miss automatic doors and Walmart.

Lyle's writing was interrupted by a loud pounding on the door. “Hey Lyle, are you home?” He heard Willie calling from the hallway.

“Yes, come on in.” He shuffled the papers he was writing under the stack of blank sheets. Willy dashed in carrying his school books, his face shining with excitement. “I’ve been invited to a Hallowen party. Nothing fancy, we are to wear our scariest costume and bring an apple, and a cup of four.”

“An apple and a cup of flour?”

“Yes, to bob for apples, and prank a teacher.”

“You aren’t going trick or treating?”

“What’s that?” Willy tossed his books on the couch and sat down at the table.

“Trick or treating is when you wear your costumes and go around knocking on doors when people answer you say trick or treat and they give you candy.”

“Never heard of it, we knock on a door or two but when they answer we throw the flour on them.” Willy picked up a pen and unscrewed the cap. “Your pen is empty, can I fill it for you?”

“Please be my guest.” Lyle took a couple of cokes out of the icebox and opened them. He watched Willy turn part of the pen, then push a lever on the side, he heard the small sound of air being displaced, the boy then stuck the glass tip down into the ink bottle and let go of the lever. He wrote William Ian O’Reilly across one of the blank sheets of paper then handed the pen to Lyle. Lyle chuckled to himself. The boy was handy to have around.

“So what are you going to wear to this Halloween party?”

“I’m going to make an Abe Lincoln hat and mask, and see if I can find an old torn suit at the second hand store. What do you think?”

“I think that you will be down right scary” Lyle smiled, maybe he didn’t miss Netflix that much after all. “Do you have homework?”

“Just some reading, I can do it after I do Ida’s deliveries” Willy jumped up and bounced into the hallway, he turned back at the door, “Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”

“Sure, why not.” Lyle smiled as the boy disappeared down the stairs. “ I’ve traded solitude and boredom for a smart, lively almost roommate.”

Ida collected Willy the next morning before breakfast. Lyle prepared for a full day of driving the Barone ladies around.

Lyle sat in the car outside the Library and thought about something Willy had said the night before. “You should write that story down and send it to the newspapers.” He pulled paper and pencils out of the pocket on the car door and began to write, not the story that he told Willy about a galaxy far far away but one about a teacher from 1922 that wakes up in 2023. He was still writing when Hazel and Ellen walked up to the car giggling. He hastily put his papers and pencils away and opened the back doors for them. He returned to the driver's seat and asked “where to for lunch Ladies?”

“The Chase Dining Room” Ellen answered. “We are meeting some friends, we'll eat and play cards for a couple of hours. You can leave the car in the corner of the lot under that big Oak tree and come back to get us at half past two.”

When he let the ladies out of the car in front of the building, Hazel said “be sure and park under the big tree and put the top up so the sun doesn’t fade the leather.” she winked at him over her shoulder as she and Ellen merged into a group of ladies walking up to the door.

“Yes ma’am” he shook his head. Last time she told him to leave the top down so it would “air out” but she wanted him to park under the same tree. He parked the car carefully, put the top up and went to get a sandwich. After eating and walking around a while to familiarize himself with the area; he went back to the car to get his papers thinking he would go to a park and write for a while, he heard voices and stopped, he peeked around the corner and saw Eugene and another man switching the cases in the boot. The other man was dressed in the uniform of the Chase Hotel and had a luggage cart. The two men put the cases pulled from the boot on the cart and the uniformed man pushed it toward the hotel. Eugene placed the other cases in the boot and fastened it closed the way it had been. Lyle waited until Eugene was out of sight before he went back to the car and retrieved his papers. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had witnessed and quickly decided to keep it under his own hat for the time being. He thought a lot about what he had witnessed throughout the afternoon of shopping then picking up groceries, by the time he delivered the car and the ladies back to the Barone estate He had decided that if Eugene was involved the Barone brothers were probably aware but he really didn’t want to jump into the mix if they weren’t. He couldn’t stop himself; he started to wonder what really happened to Claude. He had his apartment, his job and got the feeling he could have his girl too if he chose. Would he share his fate? whatever that was.

Lyly leaned back in his chair and watched the boy in front of him work away on his math homework. He smiled and wondered if this was what it would have been like had he had his own son. Thoughts of Vicky clouded his mind and he shuffled the pages that he had written throughout the day. Willy lay down his pencil and stuffed his homework pages into his math book. “That’s done, can I see what you wrote?”

“Are you sure, I am not really a writer.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Is that about a galaxy far far away?”

“No, It’s about a man in the future that lives in an apartment on the tenth floor of a building with quiet elevators.”

“Quiet elevators, No way!”

“Yes, it moves smoothly at the press of a button. And cars go more than seventy miles per hour, not in the city though.”

“Wow, that’s as good as walking space ships, does this guy have a laser gun?”

“No but he has a phone that he carries in his pocket.”

“Wow, No way, let me read that.” Willy snatched the pages out of Lyle’s hand and flopped on the couch to read, a few minutes later he looked up grinning. “I think that we could sell this to the Gazette.”

“We.” Lyle laughed, “Now I have a nine year old literary agent.”

“I don’t know what that means but I do think we can get this printed, some of it doesn’t make sense but we can work on that.” Willy wrinkled his forehead and hummed to himself.

“We’ll work on it more tomorrow, go brush your teeth, I’m going to close the windows most of the way it’s going to get cold tonight.” Lyle went to bed smiling. Life may have taken one child from him but it seemed that it had given him another.