The Blue Bottle (Part 9)
While in Havana, Franks meets up with Earnest Hemingway who gives Frank a gift. It is the finest of gifts.
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Before their breathing mixed, Frank puts his hands on her shoulders. “Rosie, you may believe you have feelings for me, but you must trust me, okay. Lorenze would love nothing more than to find us in an embrace. That isn’t going to happen. I’m not the one you love, Rosie.”
Rosie steps back, embarrassed. Why had she shown him her feelings? “So, you know what’s in my heart. Why, because you’re a time traveler? I don’t think so, I know what is in my heart, Frank. I’m sorry I showed you.”
Frank kept his hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me, Rosie. I’m sorry. Look, I said it wrong,” Franks says, taking his hands off her shoulders and grasping hold of her hands. “I try to be good with words, but sometimes… well, look at this way, you’ve made the longest journey. But right now, you’re in this future time with me, waiting for someone. That someone is two thousand years away. I came to find you and to take you back.”
Rosie is almost furious with such an idea. “What am I? A prize in a fairground? Spoils for the victor. I don’t think so. If what you say is true, and we are not in some damn experiment together, then clearly, I’ve forgotten this person you call Raven. I have you, Frank. I see you, I can touch you, like being with you, and I love you, Frank. Maybe in those two thousand years, I’ve fallen in love with a different man?”
Frank understands Rosie’s torment. “The visions I’ve seen, Rosie, they exist in Raven’s mind. Lorenzo, yes, he has the same visions, but wants you for himself, and if he were to succeed, will change the course of the world as we know it. The truth is you have not yet grasped the reality. The vision we see is you. It is the vision that has led me here. It is a vision the world has seen, Rosie.”
Rosie takes a long look at Frank, as if seeing him for the first time.
“Maybe, but what if these visions you talk of mean I’m meant to be with you…I’m just saying what if?”
Rosie stares at Frank, wrinkles her brow, pleading with him to consider, and asks, “Did you save Mark? Don’t lie to me?”
“Rosie, I lied once. You will learn what that lie has cost me. Yes, I helped Mark.”
“No, Frank, you saved his damn life, and the lives of his friends. Why did you do that, if not for me, why?”
“For you, yes, in part, Rosie. For the love you keep for him, and because he would have died for his friends. He wouldn’t turn away, he wanted to die with them on the battlefield.”
“But he didn’t. You saved them.”
“Such men are rare in the history of humanity.”
“Stop sidetracking. Why me? Why are we doing all this, why Havana, the farm, the motorbike, the red Thunderbird, and now that monstrosity in the street, Frank?”
“Please don’t call it that, Rosie. It is a 1930 Duesenberg, La Grande Torpedo.”
“Whatever it is…why me?”
“Because you are the one, Rosie.”
“One what? One for you three boys to fight over? Am I the one for that?”
“No, Rosie, and I’m sorry if anything I’ve said makes you feel insignificant, because without you, well…” and as Frank is about to explain the importance of Rosie being here, a breeze sweeps up from the hot street, coming into the store and swirling the hem of Rosie’s dress above her thighs as her hands shoot to flatten it down, holding it there while the breeze plays with her, teasing at her dress, caressing her thighs.
“Is this him, Frank, is this Lorenzo?” Rosie asks, her torso bent keeping her modesty covered, but the breeze is persistent.
Frank doesn’t answer, instead he reaches into his shirt pocket, and pulls out a finely wrapped cigar.
Frank holds it to his nose, savoring the aroma. “It will be a shame to stamp my foot on this fine cigar, would it not, Rosie?” Almost instantly, the breeze moves away from the shop. Rosie can relax.
“How did you do that? I mean what did you do to stop the breeze lifting my dress?”
“I’ll explain, but first we need to get back to the car. Lorenzo is watching. Here, take my hand,” Frank instructs.
No sooner does Rosie grasp Frank’s hand then she finds herself sitting in the Duesenberg beside him.
“How…oh it doesn’t matter, I give up,” Rosie says exasperatingly.
Frank lays his wrist atop the steering wheel, counts onto those fingers with the forefinger of his other hand. “I killed Lorenzo in 1960 but received a vision from Raven telling me I’d failed. That vision came to me in 1963. If Lorenzo wasn’t dead in 1960, where was he for three years?” Frank shakes his head. “I can’t unravel that bit.” Frank lifts his brow.
Rosie is beyond exasperation. “Forget three years, Frank. In the last three days you and I have visited how many different dimensions, or time zones, if that is what they are called? It may be impertinent to ask,” Rosie says, setting her eyes on his face, “but in which dimension of these time zones were you, and Lorenzo, born into?”
Frank isn’t ignoring her, he is looking for an opening into a portal, moving into the outside lane and presses the Duesenberg’s throttle to the floorboard.
“Don’t ignore me, Frank, I hate it when you do that. You said, I remember it distinctly, it was about dreams, you said, we pick the parts we want to fret over… when we could as easily pick the parts that comfort us. So why not do that now, Frank? Since we don’t know the outcome, why not pick the outcome we do know? We can believe that Raven sent you to me, not for you to save me, but for me to save you.”
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