“Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure,” Maddie replied, slipping off her glasses and letting them hang from the silver chain around her neck. She looked toward the phone booth, then said confidentially to her co-worker, “She might have a drinking problem.”
It took Goldie a couple of moments to figure out what she was supposed to do, having never used a phone booth before or having never seen this particular type of telephone. The phone was a rotary dial with an earpiece for listening and a horn that the user spoke into. When she picked up the earpiece and heard a dial tone, she dropped a dime into the coin slot at the top of the phone, and an operator came on the line a few seconds later. Goldie read the number from the paper Maddie had given her into the horn, and the operator placed the call for her. After her boss, Owen Mitchell, answered his phone, Goldie then had to deposit two more dimes for a three-minute conversation before the two could speak.
“Well, it’s about damn time,” Mitchell began with an irritability in his voice. “I’ve been worried about you. It’s standard procedure to call once you’re on-site, Goldie. You know that. I should’ve heard from you yesterday.”
He called me Goldie,she thought.He knows my nickname. What else can I learn from him?she wondered.
“How long have I been workin’ for you?” she asked.
“What?”
“How long?”
“I dunno… two years maybe.”
“And in all that time, have I ever called in late?”
“Constantly!”
“Oh… well… sorry. You’re right. I shoulda called earlier. But I went to the Denver Library today and did some research.”
“Well, at least you’re on the job,” Mitchell said, calming down. “You met our sponsor yet?”
“Charles Banyan?” she assumed. “No. But I hear he came by the hotel today lookin’ for me?”
“Don’t put him off, Goldie. He paid for your plane, hotel, and meals at the Sparkledove Arms. He expects your full attention and a great three-thousand-word article.”
“So much for objectivity, huh?” Goldie mused, starting to piece together how things worked with the magazine.
“We’re not theNew York Times Book Review,”Mitchell noted. “We’re a travel magazine where people read about idyllic faraway places we hope they’ll visit. This should be a great piece for next year’s December issue. Please, God, let the war be over by then.”
“No, not until September of ’45,” she responded unthinkingly.
“What?” Mitchell asked.
“Uh—a, a guess,” she responded quickly. “Just a guess.”
“Three more years?” her boss considered. “Geez, I hope you’re wrong.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Don’t forget, you’re having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with Banyan and his family.”
“I am? I-I mean, Iam.”
“Okay, Goldie. I just wanted to make sure you arrived safely. Check in with me in a few days. And I do meancheck in.”
“Alright, Owen. Uh, boss—Mr. Mitchell,” she stammered, not sure what to call him. She wanted to ask him a dozen more questions. Like, how did a young woman from the Bronx wind up working for a travel magazine in Columbus? She supposed that’s where she lived since the concept of working remotely was decades away, but she didn’t know. Was she married? Did she have a family? She assumed no because she was in Colorado the day before Thanksgiving, but that was just a guess. Who was this World War II version of Goldie Maraschino? She decided to wait and see if she could subtly extract more information from Mitchell when she checked in again. So, she simply said goodbye, hung up, and thought:This is the weirdest day of my life. If this is even real life.
She came out of the phone booth, trying to recall how she knew World War II ended in September of 1945.I musta seen it on Band of Brothers or somewhere,she figured. It was too random a fact to remember from a high school history class.
As soon as she stepped out of the booth, the delightful smells from the restaurant beckoned to her again. It was only 4:12 in the afternoon, but she was ready for dinner.
The restaurant of the Sparkledove Arms was a cheery room with light-yellow walls and a fieldstone fireplace that hadn’t been lit yet for the dinner guests. The twelve tables that made up the place had clean white linen tablecloths, small vases with a few dried flowers in them, and little salt and pepper shakers in the form of a pilgrim couple from the 1600s.
When Goldie entered, there were only three people in the place: a waitress, Sheriff Eli Johnson, who she had met earlier that morning, and a big, barrel-chested, bearded man in his early sixties who was sitting and chatting with the sheriff.
